VeggieTalk

I hope everyone who celebrates the holiday had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

After giving it much thought, I’ve decided that I need to give this blog a rest. In the next few months I not only have a book manuscript deadline, but I need to finish my master’s degree, which includes a thesis. I’m always involved in way too many things and had to sit down and take a hard look at what I can let go of for a while. I’d really like to enjoy these last few months of grad school and not feel like my energies are scattered to the four winds. It’s pretty much of a rarity to go to grad school at my age. Current fantasty: A Ph.d—something I totally don’t need! But I just love learning and acquiring new skills.

So I will leave this post up for a week or so, then turn off the comment feature so I won’t have to moderate so much spam. At Alanna’s suggestion, if I do that, I can leave the blog up for the duration—there are lots of recipes, travel tips, and general blatherings to refer to. I may come back to it, but not at least until May, as that is when I will graduate.

I’ve really enjoyed communicating with readers, and appreciate all the tips, recipe ideas, and opinions you’ve contributed. Have a wonderful winter, and keep in touch!

Jill Yarnall, of New Heritage Cooking, has chosen me to be this week’s Veggie Hero. You can read the mini-interview at New Heritage Cooking. And while you’re there, you can brows the Veggie Hero archives. I’m in such good company. Thank you, Jill!

Today, we decided to take a break from our usual Potato and Tofu Hash Browns/ Israeli Salad brunch and revisit an older Sunday tradition of pancakes. However, of late, my younger son Evan has been subtly hinting that my pancakes are kind of uncooked on the inside. So, I looked into some alternative recipes and settled on one from the currently wildly popular Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, a book I’ve been meaning to use more often.

One of the many pancake recipes in the book is the stripped down version, descriptively titled “Pancakes.” The only changes I made to the recipe were to use spelt flour instead of the all-purpose called for, and I cooked them in a little Earth Balance on the griddle instead of the oil called for in the recipe. MMMMM, these were good, just the right flavor and texture, cooking to a perfect golden brown quickly without leaving the inside raw. Now I will have to try some of her other pancakes, which include Banana-Pecan, and Chocolate Chip.

The sauce, however, is mine, and here is how I made it: Combine 1 cup fresh blueberries with 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cook until the blueberries burst. Dissolve 1 tablespoon cornstarch in a little water; Pour into the sauce pan and cook for just a minute longer, until thick. Remove from the heat. Stir in 1 pint ripe strawberries (sliced), and if you have it, one perfectly ripe peach or nectarine (peeled if you prefer). Sweeten to taste with a little agave nectar or maple syrup.

I can imagine that this sauce would be delicious on ice cream (Soy Delicious, or even some mango sorbet, for us vegans) as well.

Hello! I just returned from a 4-week trip abroad; I’ll be spending the day organizing my photos and will start posting a report of the food portion of our travels a bit later. I expect to be posting once or twice each day about our journey to Israel, Paris, and Amsterdam, until I get caught up to the present.

Meanwhile, I had this surprise while abroad: VegNews magazine has named Vegetarian Kitchen “Best Web Site for Nesters” in their first annual Veg Webby Awards. Here’s what they said:

With a score of cookbooks to her name, Nava Atlas has become a prominent vegetarian personality. One of the coziest destinations on the web, her quaint Veg Kitchen includes recipes sorted by season, details on setting up a pantry, and a rudimentary nutrition reader. Browse her entertaining blog, which covers recipes, ideas for cooking lesser-used veggies and grains, and tidbits about her family—including one content vegan cat.

You can see the entire Veg Webby Awards. on line; pick up the July-August issue of VegNews on the newsstand to read my review of Le Potager du Marais in Paris from my trip to Paris last March.

Dear readers,

I am about to leave for more than 4 weeks for a trip to Israel, England, Paris, and Amsterdam with my family. We decided not to take laptops, since we will be moving around a lot, so I will not be able to blog during that time, though I will be checking e-mail and I will be able to respond, maybe even to posts.

PLEASE come back around July 20, and you will be amply rewarded with photos, food notes, restaurant reviews and recipes from all of the above locations. Until then, have a wonderful summer and I look forward to reconnecting then!

In last month’s issue of Vegetarian Times, readers answered the question “what is your least favorite vegetable, and why?” A few responders named beets—one said they “taste like dirt.” I can understand loving them or hating them, but dirt? Perhaps they simply were not washed well enough.

I love beets. I especially like them fresh from a farm market or from my CSA. If just picked and smallish, they’re just about the sweetest veggie I know of. The easiest way to cook them is to rinse well (yes, they are roots and grow in dirt!), leave about an inch of stem on, and put them in a deep heatproof container with a half an inch of water. Then, microwave, starting at 2 minutes per beet if small and working on up. Best to use less time, check frequently, and cook until each beet can just pierced with a knife. Once cool enough to handle, you can peel them right into the garbage and make less of a mess.

If the beets are very fresh, I like to serve them just as is, diced or sliced, or tossed into salad. If they’ve aged a bit, they may need a bit of help, and a combination of lemon juice and a sweetener (agave nectar is my choice; or honey for non-vegans) perks up the flavor. In winter, I like to add beets to roasted root vegetable combos, even though the red variety color everything, and peeling and cutting them is a pain. Other flavors that marry well with beets are orange, tarragon, ginger, and mint.

A reader commented (see comments, below) and left a delicious recipe for a grated beet salad. That reminded me, indeed, I do like to use beets raw in grated salads. I did a post on Great Grated Salads which is in the recipe archives toward the bottom of the page.

Pictured above are golden beets. I just can’t resist these when I see them, even though the ones I got yesterday are kind of gnarly and sprouting. They definitely wouldn’t win a beauty contest. I’d say it has been quite a while since they’ve seen the soil from which they came. Still, they tasted fine—really smooth and sweet (more so than even the freshest red beet). Chiogga beets, which are striped red and white, are also supposed to be awesome, though I’ve yet to try them. Both golden and chiogga bleed far less than red beets.

Today I spent most of the day preparing for, then participating in, a photo shoot for the cover of the revised edition of my Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons, due out in September.

First, a little back story. I first wrote this book for a British publisher back in the late 1980s. As soon as I completed the manuscript, they went out of business. So, my agent shopped it around in the U.S.; no bites: “Too narrow a niche,” and comments like that. So I got brave and, in 1992 published it myself. A small publisher that specializes in veg cookbooks distributed it for me, and just like that, I sold about 20,000 copies in two or three years. To this day, I still have no clue how that was accomplished. I mean, it’s hard to sell 20,000 copies of any kind of book, let alone a tiny vegetarian soups cookbook.

In 1995 my editor from Little, Brown, decided to buy the rights for the book; I expanded it and they published it in 1996. It went on to sell tens of thousands of copies more; so much for “too narrow a niche.” A couple of years ago, I asked Little, Brown to let me do another revised edition; a book’s design and content do get tired after so many years in print. But LB declined. My editor had long been elsewhere—I followed her to Random House; but they already had another vegetarian soups book in the works. So I decided to come full circle and pubish it myself once again.

I’ve spent quite some time retesting the soups, re-editing the text, re-designing the pages and adding new recipes and illustrations. The book will now be completely vegan—the first ever vegan soups and stews book on the market (if anyone knows otherwise, I’ll throw myself out the window!).

So today represented one of the last major tasks and milestones—shooting the cover. On Sunday I bought all kinds of funky and colorful bowls and linens to play with at Pier One. Above you will see the talented Michael Polito preparing one of the soups for shooting; the second shot is another one of the contenders for the cover. My younger son, Evan, is on vacation from school this week so he helped me with all the preparation and schlepping, and documented the photo shoot with his own camera. Whichever soup does not make the front cover will go on the back.

This is a lot of work! I really don’t like being the publisher. It involves wearing way too many hats. I feel lucky to be a Random House author at the same time. With them, I just hand in the manuscript and the illustrations and a few months later a lovely package emerges. Well, at least dinner is ready for tonight. Two different soups—Spanish Vegetable Stew (above) and Puree of Carrots with Broccoli. With them I will make some sort of Reuben sandwich.

So now you’ve gotten a taste of the trials and tribulations of self-publishing, and a preview of the cover of the forthcoming Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons: Bountiful Vegan Soups and Stews for Every Time of Year.

Amie Breeze Harper is a researcher who is putting together an anthology called Sistah Vegan: Black Women on the Social Implications of Veganism. She is seeking submissions from black female vegans for this project, which, according to her, “will weave together stories, poetry and critical essays by Black identified female vegans. This particular demographic is solely invited to share their voices because my research largely focuses on Black female developmental wellness.” To read more about the project, go to Sistah Vegan. Or, go straight to Submission Guidelines.

A friend of mine, another vegetarian author, sent me this very funny (in a silly sort of way) video of “Steven the Vegan” (a chef, but I’m not sure if he’s for real or not). Click on Steven the Vegan. I’ll post something more serious soon, I promise!

OK, I’ve joined the 21st century. VeggieTalk will present a variety of musings, info, and opinions on all things vegetarian and vegan, from health issues, to travel and restaurants, to what I made for dinner the night before, and more. I welcome your comments and look forward to yet another way to connect with my readers. So without further ado, I’ll begin posting.