Organic Granny

Stop What You Are Doing And Read This! by Carmen Callil My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was deeply into a detective-mystery novel when my husband ruptured my thrall (twice!) to suggest that I might want to read this book of essays on the power and joy of reading literature. I was irritated and made rude dismissive gestures. However... I ran out of something to read and decided to pick this up. I apologized to my husband for my unspoken assumptions. This slim and quickly read book contains eleven essays by twelve esteemed writers talking about their individual love stories around reading. It was a little like stepping back into an English Lit class at University nearly 50 years ago, but, really, a great pleasure to have the rich experiences and rewards of books and reading reiterated in a time when the electronic media would sometime make "old school" literature and literary pursuits seem outdated and without value in a changing world. Not so. Since reading this book m

This is a delicious and easy-to make recipe, and I vouch that the crust for this veggie pie is absolutely not able to be a disaster (from a person who always fails at pie crusts). I suggest that you might want to make the following ahead of time: 1 1/2 Cups of White Beans (or you can just opt out and buy a 15.5 oz can) 1 1/2 Cups of Cooked Quinoa 1 Cube of   Best Golden Soup Bouillion   (or 1/4 Cup of your usual vegetable broth)   Here is the list of other ingredients that go into this pie: 1/4 Cup NonDairy Milk (unsweetened works best) 2 T. Nutritional Yeast (NOT brewer's yeast or baker's yeast) 1 T. Almond Butter 1 T. Corn Starch 1/4 teaspoon Smoked Paprika 1/2 teaspoon Onion Powder 1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked (ground) Black Pepper 1    small Onion, minced 4 cloves    Garlic , minced 9 ounces Baby Spinach 6 ounces Cremini (brown) Mushrooms, finely sliced 1/2          Red Bell Pepper , seeded and diced 1/4   Cup Sun-drie

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. When you purchase this book and 3+ other books from Thrift Books, you can get credit for another book FREE-- It's part of the  #ShareBookLove program ! Click here to check this out -- the book deals are real!  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

My husband grew up in a European home (he was born in Canada, the only child in his family to have accomplished that) and cheese was a big feature of everyday eating and entertaining. He love d  cheese.  Any kind.  Soft sweet Camembert or "hand-made" Cheeses that smell and taste somewhat like a sporty boy's laundry (not that I've tasted that, but you know...).  I honestly don't think there is a cheese that he did not love. Then.... we began to cross from ovo-lacto Vegetarian Land (a nice place to live if you adore dairy products and eggs) into Vegan territory.   We did it for health reasons, mainly (we ALL have dairy sensitivity and/or allergies), and for ethical reasons (our older son got physically ill when served an egg as a small child-- he was adamant that we were eating a baby chick-in-the-making.  And you know, he WAS right. The more we learned about the many benefits of eating vegan, the faster our face accelerated into the vegan arena.  Three of