Vegan Corn and Kale Dip or Soufflé

Vegan Corn and Kale Dip or Soufflé

This is the time of year when it’s nice to entertain outside, and Vegan Corn and Kale Dip is one of the appetizers that I have been serving. Its creamy, Mexican flavors are perfect with tortilla chips.

Making this recipe is simple. First you purée some silken tofu, non-diary milk, nutritional yeast and a few other ingredients in your food processor. Then add some vegetables, and turn your food processor back on to chop the vegetables and combine all ingredients. Pour into a prepared pan, bake, garnish and eat!

Tortilla Chips with Vegan Corn and Kale Dip

Chris always prefers to eat this dip with tortilla chips rather than crudités, but he’s also willing to make chips in our air fryer.

Vegan Sourdough Pancakes

Sourdough Pancakes with Date Syrup and Fresh Fruit

I delayed posting this recipe for so long because I imagine that a Venn diagram showing the intersection of people who eat vegan and those who have sourdough starter in their fridge might contain just 7 people – made up of friends and family members I once gave sourdough starter to.

But who cares about statistics when it comes to recipes! If you follow a vegan diet, there are great reasons to give sourdough a try. The first is these Vegan Sourdough Pancakes, which are:

• light and fluffy
• made from whole wheat flour
• oil-free
• delicious, with a tangy taste from the sourdough

Most vegan pancakes rely on the chemical reaction between an acid like vinegar or lemon juice and baking soda or baking powder to create the bubbles that make the pancakes rise. However, you get many more tiny bubbles formed when you use sourdough because the sour taste is due to the presence of acids already in the dough. In fact, when you make this recipe, use a bowl that’s plenty large. Otherwise, it will overflow when you add the baking soda mixture.

To give you an incentive to think about giving sourdough a try, I will send one person a container of my sourdough, which I have nurtured for over 20 years. If you would like to be entered into a drawing to receive some of my sourdough, 

Weeknight Lentil and Potato Stew

Weeknight Lentil and Potato Stew

As many of you know, when my husband was only 10, his dad died of a heart attack. Chris didn’t have any siblings, so he and his mom made up a family of two. Since his mom just cooked for the two of them, and Chris was a picky eater, she tended to make the same simple recipes over and over, and most contained the same two ingredients: meat and potatoes. Chris grew up in a meat and potatoes family, and he loved his mom’s pot roast, which she made for special occasions.

Although he’s given up meat, Chris still loves potatoes. Sometimes I wonder whether he would be perfectly happy to eat potatoes as part of every dinner. When I’ve cooked spicy ethnic dishes several days in a row and I ask him if he’d like me to fix anything in particular, he often replies, “How about something with potatoes?”

Bok Choy Slaw with Peanut Dressing

Bok Choy Slaw with Peanut Dressing

This morning, my husband asked me why I hardly ever eat bananas. In comparison, he eats one almost every day. I answered, “I don’t like bananas enough to bother with them because they don’t contain as many nutrients per calorie as the fruits I like better.” To me, they typically aren’t worth the calories. If bananas are the only fruit available, I’ll eat a banana. Otherwise, I won’t.

There are definitely foods with a high calorie content that I find worth the calories, like chocolate: cocoa powder sprinkled on dates – delicious! I can overdo a treat like that.

But the same kind of reasoning applies to many of my food choices: if I like two foods equally, I’ll choose the one with more nutrients per calorie. In a slaw, I prefer to use bok choy rather than green cabbage because bok choy has about twice the amount of calcium per pound as green cabbage. I also like the crispness of the bok choy, but it’s the calcium content that’s the deciding factor.

According to registered dietitian Ginny Messina, as with our meat-eating friends, vegans need to make sure we get enough calcium in our diets. Greens are an excellent source of calcium, and although the calcium in cooked greens is absorbed better than in raw; a salad of bok choy, kale, mustard greens, or turnip greens is still a great source of calcium.

Of course, just knowing that something’s good for you isn’t going to make you want to eat it, but I think you’ll find this salad has terrific taste and texture. 

Yes, you really need another hummus recipe!

Sriracha and Garlic Hummus

Here’s why: We all have a love – hate relationship with change. Some of us like the familiar, which seems comforting and safe. Some seek out what’s new and different, and many of us are somewhere in between.

My guess is that people who eat plants exclusively are more open to change than the average person because eating vegan is such a change from our cultural norms. I can’t imagine there are many vegans who worry about fitting in. My husband, Chris, is a vegan who finds yoga and meditation helpful. Not exactly the picture of the average, middle-aged, American male. So what if he’s the only man in a yoga class filled with women!

Creamy Sriracha® Sauce

Creamy Sriracha® Sauce

During the holidays, I feel like people are willing to spend more time cooking and baking. Once New Year’s Day arrives, I’m eager to devise quick and easy recipes with ingredients that people might have on hand because I think many want to spend less time in the kitchen. With that in mind, I came up with this recipe for Creamy Sriracha Sauce.

Even though this sauce is easy to make, I found it hard to develop, and that’s because of the main ingredient – the Sriracha® sauce.