Organic Granny

So, you said you would watch how you ate over the holiday, but, well, you know, it WAS the holiday!  And now you feel kind of punky. Icky. Not 100%. Not great. (and the 6,000 other ways Canadians have to say "unwell"-- we are such a stoic breed). Here is a flavour-full, very restorative and comforting soup that is maybe slightly reminiscent of the soup you ate as a child when your "Old Country" Auntie found you were malingering.  Maybe you didn't like the garlic so much then, but now that you are considering being a life-long healthy plant-strong soul, you kinda like the savoury tang and bite of cooked garlic. And if you got an  Instant Pot   for Christmas, here is the chance to see it do its pressure-cooking wizardry in a much shorter time than you would need if you were standing up over a stock pot.  However, if you don't have an Instant Pot, the stock pot-- or even a slow cooker-- will do the trick.  I will give you three versions to cook this: (1)St

We had a pretty simple vegan Christmas dinner, basically the veganized ideal: Turkeyless cutlets (by Gardein), mashed potatoes, a stovetop dressing made of chickpeas, onions, some crumbs, mushrooms and the usual poultry seasoning, a home-made cranberry sauce (frozen cranberries, frozen cubes of Meyer Lemon juice, a sprinkle of sugar, and about 6 chopped dried apricots), and Brussel's Sprouts. Boxing Day Veggie Stew: Today there weren't many leftovers (which suits me fine). I put the following into the Instant Pot on sauté: 1/2 C. Water 2 Onions , sliced 4 Garlic cloves, roughly minced 2 crowns of Broccoli and stems, chopped 2 C. (about one 16 oz can) of Red Beans 3 C. Leftover cubed Potatoes (cooked) 1/2 C. Frozen Corn Kernels (organic) 1 tsp. Hungarian Smoked Paprika 1 Best Golden Bouillion cube 2 T. Hickory Liquid Smoke 1/2 tsp. Chipotlé Ground Pepper After the sauté, I put on the lid, and pressed the Stew button, adjusting the time to about 20 m

I spend a lot of moolah on vegan soup bouillion... or have in the recent past.  I particularly got used to the little jar of dark brown bouillion from Costco that smelled very yeast-y and was quite salty and set me back $7 every time I bought it.  It was good for about a couple of weeks of soups and veggie stews. And then, when looking for some delicious bean recipes in the never-fail The Great Vegan Bean Book: More than 100 Delicious Plant-Based Dishes Packed with the Kindest Protein in Town! - Includes Soy-Free and Gluten-Free Recipes! (Great Vegan Book) I came across a couple of delicious-sounding (-reading?) bouillion recipes in the front of the book.  The one called Savory Golden Bouillon is actually from her first recipe book, the only recipe she transferred from that first book The Vegan Slow Cooker.   In there it was called "Chickeny Bouillion". Since I have become pretty much habituated to my Instant Pot, I bypassed the 'stove method' and the 'slo

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel My rating: 5 of 5 stars I motored through this well-written, tell-it-like-it-was memoirs ("true novel") of Jeannette Walls' maternal grandmother. I am not quite sure why I picked it up, except that I was in a compulsive reading state (allergies, fed up with FB), since my experience reading the memoir of Walls' own childhood, "Glass Castle" was the sort where I felt triggered and zoned-out after reading it. Then I remembered how Walls had held her maternal grandmother up as the one safe and nurturing adult in her childhood. This was that story. Top-rated courses sale: Save up to 90%! Lily Casey grew up on a Texas ranch in the early 1900s-- she was her father's 'right hand' in many ways, and helped him with breaking horses for his carriage horse business. She was an all-round hard-working rancher as a child, and also had an active brilliant intelligence that helped her get ahead in the "