. Yesterday I made a cauliflower leek soup. It was a little watery. I have a much better recipe that uses cheddar cheese, but I'm really trying to go vegetarian, and that includes no dairy.
Today I did much better by adapting a plain tomato soup I found at food.com. Ordinarily plain tomato soup would bore me, but I've been trying to use up the many bags of frozen crushed tomatoes from my garden.
By adding a teaspoon of unsweetened baking cocoa, some freshly ground allspice, a bay leaf and basil (the recipe already called for thyme) I really ratcheted up the complexity of the soup quite a bit. It has quite a bit of flavor and is simply delicious. To ensure protein, I also added a half cup of sprouted mung beans and lentils and about a half cup of red kidney beans. I'll bring it to work tomorrow with some croutons.
I also made another batch of granola. I use old-fashioned oats, flaxseed that I grind myself in my little Braun coffee grinder, honey, oil, Cinnamon, allspice, toasted walnuts and either raisins or chopped dried apricot. I used to also add unsweetened coconut flakes and wheat germ, but I prefer it without those two ingredients.
I have some leftover kale I should really use up in a salad as well. (I'm thinking marinated in orange juice with dried cranberries, raw onion, dried currants and toasted walnuts).
I really do love cooking healthy and trying new recipes, especially vegetarian.
As for the electric snow thrower, I noticed the last time I used it on some ice-crusted snow that I was smelling a plastic burning smell, so I stopped using it. Then I decided to try it again, thinking maybe I was imagining the smell, but within a few minutes, I smelled it again.
So today I brought it to my local Toro dealer. I was hoping it wouldn't cost too much, but he'd told me it would be $75/ hr and they'd let me know if it was a simple belt change or something worse.
They have a 5-week backlog of repairs to do!
Maybe 10 minutes after I dropped it off, they called me at home and told me they checked out everything on the thrower and they can't find anything wrong with it!
So I drove down there to pick it up, wondering how much they might charge me. Thankfully, he said there'd be no charge, but I'm still a little worried about using the snow thrower.
I have a very long driveway and use it with a 75-foot-long outdoor extension cord, so today I examined the entire length, looking for something amiss, but didn't see anything.
I guess if I use it again and it begins to smell again, I might consider getting a new cord, just to be sure. The dealership guy said it's possible it could overheat after long use, and I'm wondering whether this very small thrower, which I got about 5 years ago for $279, wasn't really intended for such a big driveway as mine.
Connecting with my inner Julia Child, and the snow thrower mystery
January 20th, 2014 at 08:50 pm
January 21st, 2014 at 02:13 am 1390270410
FYI : No dairy makes you a VEGAN, not a vegetarian.
January 22nd, 2014 at 12:16 am 1390349815
@PS - Have you tried Nutritional Yeast Flakes? They aren't a great cheese sub, but they definitely help the flavor of things where you'd normally use cheese. (plus they have lots of B12 vitamins)
January 22nd, 2014 at 01:35 am 1390354518
Here's what wikipedia says, for the record:
There are a number of types of vegetarianism, which exclude or include various foods.
Ovo vegetarianism includes eggs but not dairy products.
Lacto vegetarianism includes dairy products but not eggs.
Ovo-lacto vegetarianism (or lacto-ovo vegetarianism) includes animal/dairy products such as eggs, milk, and honey.
Veganism excludes all animal flesh and products, such as milk, honey, and eggs, as well as items refined or manufactured through any such product, such as bone-char refined white sugar or animal-tested baking soda.
Raw veganism includes only fresh and uncooked fruit, nuts, seeds, and vegetables. Vegetables can only be cooked up to a certain temperature.
Sattvic diet (also known as yogic diet), a plant based diet which may also include dairy (not eggs) and honey, but excludes anything from the onion or leek family, red lentils, durian fruit, mushrooms, blue cheeses, fermented foods or sauces, alcoholic drinks and often also excludes coffee, black or green tea, chocolate, nutmeg or any other type of stimulant such as excess sharp spices.
Buddhist vegetarianism. Different Buddhist traditions have differing teachings on diet, which may also vary for ordained monks and nuns compared to others. Many interpret the precept 'not to kill' to require abstinence from meat, but not all. In Taiwan, su vegetarianism excludes not only all animal products but also vegetables in the allium family (which have the characteristic aroma of onion and garlic): onion, garlic, scallions, leeks, chives, or shallots.
Jain vegetarianism includes dairy but excludes eggs and honey, as well as root vegetables.
Macrobiotic diets consist mostly of whole grains and beans.
It's enough to make your head spin! Based on this, I aim to be a vegan but I don't plan to stop eating honey or a very small amount of sugar if ever needed in a recipe. (I tend not to use sugar anyway.)
January 22nd, 2014 at 01:36 am 1390354592
January 22nd, 2014 at 02:37 am 1390358240
There's also pescatarian (eats fish) and what I like to call .. sometimeatarians