Vegan MoFo, Day 1: Lentil Soup

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Hello, MoFo'ers! Happy to be part of another year of inventive and good-looking cookery! This is my third Vegan MoFo.

Today's a dual-post kind of day. Remember my theme? I'm broke, so I'm going through recipes in Meatless Meals by Jean Prescott Adams. You know what's cheap? Lentils. Especially lentils you already have on hand because you tried sprouting half the bag, they soured, and you didn't want to think about another damned lentil for months. Glad I could finally put them to good use!

This recipe comes from the 1943 section of the book (basically, she wrote the book in 1931 and added a revised version at the front in 1943). You can find this on page 3N ('N' for NEW!), and I made a few modifications.

Lentil Soup
slightly adapted from Meatless Meals, page 3N
serves 5--supplies thiamin, riboflavin, iron and protein

2 cups dried lentils
8 cups cold water
1/2 cup celery, diced
1 onion, minced
2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 Tbsp flour

Soak the lentils for 8 hours. Drain, then add the lentils and 4 cups of the cold water to a pot. Bring to a simmer slowly (otherwise, it will foam over). Cook for 1 hour until lentils soften (the book says 2hrs, but 1hr worked for me). Add diced celery and 4 more cups of water, and cook for another hour (again, she says 2hrs, but 1hr was sufficient). Saute the minced onion in butter (separate pan). Add seasonings and flour and blend thoroughly. Add 1 cup of soup stock gradually to combine with flour. Once smooth, add roux to soup and stir to incorporate. Cook 10 minutes to thicken the soup.

{rustic bread from the farmers' market is the perfect accompaniment!}

{what better cheap and old-timey garnish than dried parsley?}

{oooooooohhhh yeeaaaaaahhh. lentils never looked so good.}

This was HANDS DOWN the BEST lentil soup I've ever tasted. Simple recipe FTW!

On a totally different note, I finally got around to watching the mid-season finale of Doctor Who and cried more at the end than I did when David Tennant left or when Rose got stuck in the parallel world. Holy Christmas...I was still crying half an hour later when I was trying to fall asleep. 

Jes

VMF Day 1 2011: Curry is for Lovers
VMF Day 1 2010: Green Soup

Vegan MoFo, Day 3: Soup's On!

While not really totally in keeping with my theme (must it always be a "foodie" post? nope.), this post still fits into the fall season.

Seriously, it's already October, guys! That means it's almost the end of the year. It means that I'm going to have to shell out some $crilla for xmas gifts soon. It means that it's almost our one-year wedding anniversary (eek! commitment!).

And it also means the beginning of cold and flu season. *cough/sniffle*

This roasted butternut squash soup should do the trick.

"Feel-Good Golden Yumminess in a Bowl"

makes 4 servings, not indicated in the picture of my gigantic ass serving...

1 butternut squash

1/2 yellow onion, cut into chunks similar in size to the squash

2 cloves of garlic

canola oil (or oil of your choice)

S&P

1 no-beef bouillon cube

~3 cups water

cooked pinto beans

spicy roasted seeds

squash seeds, picked clean of the fibers

oil

S&P

1/8 tsp chipotle powder

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

Preheat your oven to 375 deg. F.

Cut the ends off of your squash, then cut that sucker in half lengthwise (hotdog, not hamburger). Scrape out the seeds into a bowl or strainer. You'll deal with those later. With a veggie peeler, peel off the skin of the squash. Easier done with the squash on its side, lest you repeatedly hit your hands on the cutting board with each peel. Ouchies. Cut squash into cubes, toss then onto a baking tray, drizzle with oil and seasonings, mix with your hands to coat the squash, and toss in the oven (middle rack) for about 50-60 minutes.

Remove the seeds from the squash fiber. This is best done over the sink with a little water. Pat the seeds dry and put them into a separate casserole dish/pan. Sprinkle with a little bit of oil, add the seasonings, and toss with a spoon. Seriously, chipotle powder forgotten and rubbed into the eyes later = infinite sadness. Pop them into the oven on the top rack. The seeds only need about 20 minutes to bake, so by the time you get them into the oven (de-fibering takes a while), they should be done with the squash.

Bring a pan of water and 1 no-beef bouillon cube to a boil on the stove. Add the cooked squash, garlic (remove the yumminess inside the clove), and onion to the pan of water/bouillon. With an immersion blender, blend up the soup until it is a creamy, smooth, beautiful concoction.

Ladle the soup into your vessel of choice. Top with some cooked pinto beans (that's what I made earlier in the day for the week) and some of the spicy seeds.

Noms.

{it's seriously sunshine in a bowl,

going straight to the part of you that needs it most}

And then hope that your general feeling of shat goes away...it might also help to read something, watch some DVR'd shows on the couch, and make up a cup o' green tea with a drizzle of agave.

Jes

Finally, access to my computer...

I've been a little slacker-ish on the blog lately; just kind of busy doing nothing (and the hubs insists on using both the PC, which has a dual screen, AND the laptop in the evenings to both watch a DVD while playing a game on the PC. "Because if I have it all on the PC at the same time, it lags." Lag you.). So I haven't been able to download my rad pics of food until tonight--I know, wth?

Here's the DL on some of the cooler things I've been consuming lately:

{more tofu shirataki noodles. this time, the angel hair kind. yum.}

{apple crisp. recipe from vegweb.com. my first fruit crisp!}

{deeeeelish}

{i had half a bag of apples that were going bad. best use of "on the verge" fruit, ever.}

{choco-nana and strawberry-chia smoothie}

{chia seeds, 5 froz. strawberries, 1 froz. banana, small palm of vegan choc chips & choc almond breeze}

We've decided to have a BBQ at the end of April around my birthday. I'm obviously going to make some veg-friendly dishes, and I am drawing a complete blank besides the obvious grilled portabello...any ideas? What do you like to bring to BBQ's?

Jes

The Most Wonderfully-Wonderful Soup...

I am in food-love.

*heart* Chipotle Black Bean Soup

from Ripe From Around Here by jae steele *heart*

I was a little scared to add the chipotle peppers to the soup at first, but the peppers and the minced cilantro really made the soup for me.

For a drink--my cranberry syrup with seltzer. Sa-weet!

What a perfect winter supper.

Jes