Peachy Keen Green

Dan Suthers shared his favorite dal recipe with me. Yay! For so long I've wanted a good dal recipe. How did he know? This dal is from Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen Cookbook , which is now on my wish list. In the book it's called Masala Lentils or Sabut Masoor. Dan suggested doubling the recipe if you want a second meal, and since we always want a second meal, here's the recipe doubled. I made just a few other minor tweaks. Ingredients 1.5 cups lentils, brown or yellow, rinsed 4 cups water 1 cup finely chopped onion 1 T canola oil 4 T water 2 cans diced tomato (or 3 cups fresh) spices: 12 cloves garlic (I use TJ's jar of minced) 1 tsp cumin 4 tsp coriander 1 tsp cardamom (I ground seeds) 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds (if you have it) 2 tsp sweet or hot paprika (I had smoked) 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1/2 tsp pepper 2 T sriracha (or 3T if you like really hot) 1 tsp salt 4 T chopped cilantro (optional, garnish) 1 T vegan butter (optional, gar...

Dan Suthers is visiting! After a hike with Jeff, Jeremy invited us over for dinner, and allowed us to use his awesome kitchen to make Collaborative Couscous: a treasure hunt for ingredients that add color. Among the discoveries were figs, carrots, parsley, and green beans. Jeremy also grilled up fresh veggies from the local farmer's market, and prepared beets beforehand in the instant pot. Delicious! Ingredients 3 cups whole wheat couscous 3.5 cups vegetable broth (we used  Better than Bouillon vegetable base + water) 2 tsp olive oil 2 cups dry garbanzo beans (about a pound, pre-soak optional) whatever else you have on hand, for color; we had: 3 fresh figs, chopped 1 cup carrots, chopped 1/2 cup green beans chopped seasoning (for layers & top): cumin garam masala salt & pepper fresh chopped parsley Instructions Make garbanzo beans in the InstantPot: For dry beans, we used 40 minutes on manual setting (if pre-soaked for hours, 20 minutes would probably do...

This cashew cream potato salad is delicious, but I wanted to try a not-creamy potato salad. I found a Roasted Garlic Potato Salad from Oh She Glows that looked easy and worth trying. I don't know where to get hemp seeds, so I skipped that. Below is my adapted recipe. Then last week, Elsa gave us some fresh dill from her garden, and I used that instead of arugula - also delish. But generally, roasting potatoes for salad is a win! Ingredients 2 pounds potatoes, cut into 1" cubes 1 T olive oil 1 head garlic salt and pepper 3 C arugula - or - 1 C fresh dill, chopped Pesto: 1 C lightly packed fresh basil leaves 1/4 cup olive oil 2 T lemon juice 1/4 tsp salt fresh ground black pepper roasted garlic head (above) Instructions Toss the potatoes and head of garlic in olive oil and a little pepper and salt. Roast about 40 minutes at 400 degrees. Turn off oven and let it all cool. Squeeze garlic cloves out of the bulb into the food processor. Make the pesto. Pu...

I've tried to make beet burgers a few times, with just so-so results. Often they're too soft and just not as tasty as I hoped. But for Labor Day this year, I finally did mashup of a couple of different recipes, and it was delish. I learned a lot from this  Ultimate Veggie Burger recipe -- how you can swap in and out various vegetables and grains, for example -- and crossed this Amazing Beet Burger recipe with my other favorite Double Double burgers  from Chloe. I think what made this mashup a winner was roasting the beets (don't buy them pre-cooked!) and adding  mushrooms (yum). I also think that for the grain,  tempeh  is much tastier than the rice many recipes call for. Ingredients 2 T canola oil 1 onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 pound trimmed, scrubbed beets, roasted 8 oz mushrooms, quartered 1/2 cup flour 1 cup walnuts, toasted 1 tsp dried basil 1 tsp salt 1 tsp ground pepper 1 8 oz TJ package tempeh, steamed (optional - we did ...

Shelley and Michael had us over for lunch this weekend, and served us the most delicious, thick carrot leek soup, sourdough bread (City Bread from Cheeseboard ) and salad (a mix of leaves, garbanzos, red peppers,  avocado, and more, with a thick balsamic oil dressing). Shelley said the soup recipe was from Fields of Greens . I thought I had that cookbook but I don't (I have the first one; this is the second one). But I found the recipe on the web! Here's the slightly-adapted version (she said she left out the cream and added more carrots) that I'll try to replicate. Ingredients 6 C vegetable stock 1/2 lb potatoes (1.5 cups), thinly sliced 1 T vegan butter 1 large leek (2 cups), thinly sliced 2 cloves garlic 1/2 tsp dried thyme 1 T chopped fresh thyme 2 T olive oil 1.5 lb carrots (3+ cups), sliced 1/4" thick 1 sweet potato/yam (optional, to sweeten and bring out flavors) Salt and pepper Instructions Make the stock and keep it warm over low heat. ...