Food Journal 4

I have had some wonderful meals this holiday season, including some at restaurants or other people's houses. A few things stood out as things I needed to try to replicate!



I had a wonderful and surprising Carrot Soup at Felix's at the Orange Circle. I immediately tried to figure out what it contained so I could make it myself. I may not have gotten it 100%, but this is the overall impression I had of the soup:

Carrots
Lemons
Garlic (so much garlic I could see it in the soup)

My replication was delicious and only took about 10 minutes to throw together for lunch.

I also had a really wonderful Red Cabbage Salad that my aunt made. I didn't ask for the recipe ( I will have to do that), but instead I tried to make it myself and, while it wasn't as good as my aunt's, it turned out well. I dressed the cabbage simply: white vinegar and balsamic vinegar and sugar mixed together to taste (that is, if you like your slaw really vinegary, don't add as much sugar). It's very important that the cabbage sits in the dressing for a while, so it will soften and take on the flavors.

My parents ate the red cabbage salad the next day as a topping and dressing on their green salads. I'm a big fan of things that only get better as they sit, and both this soup and this salad are in that category.



Also with leftovers, I remade the pounded nut pesto and put it on broken spaghetti. The next day we had tons of leftovers because the pesto goes a long way; you can just keep adding pasta, and it tastes just as rich. That day we wanted something a bit more hearty, so I put together a simple tomato sauce (crushed tomatoes, onions, and garlic, with plenty of salt and a smidge of wine), and I cooked it up with some spinach. Very nice second day interpretation



My family is now officially doing vegan with me as well, so we have had to come up with some things we can throw together fast for their busy schedules.

One of my sisters favorite vegan meals is Tofu Tacos:
We season the tofu with garlic and cyan pepper and salsa, and we pair that with shredded cabbage and black beans cooked in lemon. Of course all of that is served in corn tortillas. Yum.

Another quick thing that my family can grab on the way out the door is cookies. I made these sugar- free vegan oatmeal cookies from a recipe I found with a Google search. I won't post the recipe I used because I changed everything in it. But any recipe can be made Vegan and sugar-free by adaptation. Substitute oil for butter, banana for egg, and maple syrup for sugar. (Yes, I know that means that these cookies aren't really sugar free, but they don't have any white sugar; maple syrup is supposed to be better for us because it is less refined.) I also used almond meal instead of flour, which made the cookies extra good.

I don't particularly like banana as a flavor, though I've grown up eating banana bread, and these cookies were really very good despite their undertone of banana flavor.