Breakfast breakout

"May I eat this for breakfast?"

Oh wait. I'm the adult around here.

Chocolate covered coffee beans. Check.
Earl Grey tea. Check.
An avocado. Check.
On a silver tray with a Lotus candle from Tokyo Milk. Pretty.
Forget food. Forget calories. Forget food groups!

Anyone else feel like indulging taste and color when the rain pelts Seattle? Have a great one. Let's just say this was ...

Well worth it!

Just the thing to warm a cold vegan

Today we're featuring a cool-weather food: curried pea soup, to be exact.

Don't think of it as your mother's traditional soup. Here's what's in it today, though it looks similar to the goopy, glue-ey green-ish stuff your mama probably served in the winter:

1 tbsp curry paste (I look for the jar with the lady on it from Thailand - green, yellow, or red is fine.)
1 chopped onion
1 tbsp chopped garlic

*Browned in:
1-2 tbsp oil (I use Asian-taste corn oil)

*Add to the pot:
 2-3 c split peas, rinsed and sorted
2 bouillon cubes (I use a vegan brand)
2 bay leaves
Pinch of nutmeg
Trader Joes Smoke Seasoning (imagine smoked meat)
8-9 c water (Like thinner soup? Use more water. Prefer it thick? Use 7-8c.)

(optional: 1 c hulled barley or other grain)

Taste it when it's simmered for an hour, uncovered. If it needs salt or soy sauce, add some. Same for pepper.

For fun: garnish with popcorn, peanuts, red peppers, chopped tomatoes, or leafy veggies.

Servings: 4-6, depending on the bowl size
Taste: 4/5 Rich, nourishing, warming, savory
Time to prepare: 10 minutes. Cook for an hour-ish
Calories: 300-500 calories per bowl, (or more, depending if you cheat and use more oil)
Beauty: looks better with red pepper garnish or tomato. Pea-soup green is ugly.
Improvements: Pea soup tastes best with ham hock broth. Sadly, that's out of the question for a vegan.

Front porch pleasures: Lia's treat

Guess what showed up on my front step yesterday? A fall basket, lined with a white napkin and beautifully arranged. Lia, the artistic friend who dropped it off, beat a hasty retreat, but I was thrilled to show it to three women who were over for tea and study.

I pulled out the parchment-wrapped homemade bread first.

Then I found two bags of tea.

There was a jar of homemade paprika spread. (We LOVE this, having met it in England, imported from Eastern Europe. )

Lia included in a jar of her homemade pickled vegetables. Along with a brick of cheese
and an exotic sausage.

Last but hardly least, home-baked pumpkin bread.

I felt like jumping in the car and picnicking in the park. Thank you, friend. What a delightful feast which will take us a few days to consume! Won't last long though. I'm enjoying the bread and paprika spread as I write...

Weather change and my food response

When the weather changes to Seattle fall, we get grey skies and rain. My mood shifts within a few days to depression and fatigue. Unless...

Indian food - oh yum

I'm eating vegan again. Ingesting only eating plant-based foods. It works for me, though my leaving the traditional American diet is purely based on my body's health not on vegan philosophies of care for the planet or animal rights extremists' preferential treatment of animals over humans.

Mexican lunch - can't wait!

Many websites provide info on what vegans DO eat. Some of the best and easiest recipes are at the websites below. If you deal with seasonal depression or ill health, consider giving your food a change in nutrition for a chance to heal. Remember that it takes 2 weeks to remove dairy toxins from your system, about 3 weeks for beef, and up to 4 weeks to shed pork residues - so you might want to put yourself on a 4-week challenge to see if your body benefits from a pure plant diet. I'd love to hear from you if you do!

Enjoy. And if you eat out, you can usually find vegan options at ethnic restaurants - Mexican, Chinese, or Indian meals anyone?

Dr. McDougall Medicine
Forks Over Knives
Vegan 101
101 Cookbooks blog - more gourmet recipes