insanely delicious, insanely easy black bean soup

Faith and I needed a quick and easy vegan lunch for today, so I made this black bean soup. I really love this soup. Here's how you make it:
Take 2 cans of your very favorite black beans ( I like Sun-Vista), undrained, and dump them in a pot with 1/2 cup fresh salsa, 1 T. chili powder, and 1 cup broth (I used 1 cup water + 1 t. "Better than Bouillon" vegetable base).
Bring to a boil.
When it has simmered a little (not much), blend it with your stick blender, a lot or just a little--it's up to you. Incidentally, I think a stick blender is one of those gadgets that's "worth it" in the kitchen. You can make lots of healthy blended soups without having to deal with hot liquid in the blender.
That's it--enjoy! I served this with avocado slices and a couple tortilla chips, but it is delicious plain as well.

random thoughts

I am loving the "Vegan 'til Six" lifestyle so far. I feel good and it's not hard. The only hard part is the coffee. I think the problem is that I don't like sweetened coffee and the soy and almond milks are too sweet. Must find unsweetened, as Jessica pointed out.

Yesterday I checked out a vegan cookbook from the library. When I cracked it open I realized it's full of tons of fake food--fake vegan eggs, fake vegan cheese, fake vegan bacon. That's so the opposite of what I'm trying to do here. I so prefer Mark Bittman's concept of "sane eating"--eating tons more plants and being very smart and selective about what animal products you do use.

When I set out the soft mushrooms on a place where the children could reach them, Dieter immediately started playing with them by making them "shoot." Very boyish, I think. And he doesn't even watch any "shooting" type shows or movies. What's with that? Similarly, when I gave Ken his "stick valentine" Dieter played with it by bonking and poking his brother. Hmm. (On the other hand, what a great indoor stick alternative!)
I need to start exercising. I haven't exercised all winter and my weight shows it. It's hard to get motivated for a walk after work, but time and again I hear that exercise is what helps us slow down the aging process in so many ways. And I must stay as young as possible for these little boys. And myself too. I start on Saturday.
I was amazed when Dieter and I made these roasted potatoes and garlic cloves from the River Cottage Family Cookbook. He was totally into it, even though it wasn't baking. I must capture this enthusiasm. I think we'll switch to mostly this type of cooking while I'm doing the vegan thing.
This is what the boys have been dancing to nearly every day since Ken got out this old CD. Oh how they love it! Oh how cute they are dancing! Must make a videotape. (Sadly, I have Jan & Dean songs stuck in my head all the time now) . . .

Happy Friday! Ken and I are going to try to work out a date night.

vegan 'til six--start

I'm excited to finally be starting my little "vegan 'til six" project--(although in our house it might be more like "vegan 'til five" on some nights, because we do try to eat early). Thanks for your vegan bread suggestions. I found a whole grain bread that doesn't appear to have any milk/eggs/honey in it, and I'm not getting any more technical with it than that. It's for Faith, anyway. I'll be going the brown rice/whole grains route at lunch.

So, over the weekend I made up a big pot of beans. This was my first attempt in quite awhile at making dried beans. I chose the soak-them-overnight method. And I didn't salt them until the end. Other than that, I just threw in some minced garlic and a bay leaf at the beginning. I think they're quite good for a first attempt. They're perfectly tender, but some are split. I honestly don't know how to prevent that, but on the other hand it doesn't really matter for my lunches. I also made a big pot of brown rice using the Angry Chicken method. So along with the beans and rice I'm taking fresh salsa and a half an avocado, some nuts and fruit for my snack, and just a bit of dried pineapple and glazed walnuts for my dessert (I'm dessert obsessed . . . we'll see if this feels like cheating and if so, I'll ditch it . . . I think it's okay). For breakfast I'll eat oatmeal. The big problem right now is the milk for my coffee. I previewed soy milk in my coffee yesterday and it was yucky. Any suggestions?
I think it's going to be fun and "cleansing." Good luck to you, if you're playing along.

good morning

Ooh, thanks so much for your input yesterday on the fabric bucket. It does make me feel "spurred along" to keep experimenting. And yes, I agree that most people could find a use for one if they really thought about it . . .
Sometimes after I stop at the post office, which I did yesterday, I also pop in to our library used bookstore. I came out with these. Aren't they delicious? That Chanticleer one is ideal. We already call our black rooster in the farm "Chanticleer" so the book really caught Dieter's attention. He loved it and wanted it read to him 3 times. The illustrations are exactly my taste. Child of Faerie, Child of Earth was not so popular with him, but he did let me read it to him. I think it's lovely.
Look what appeared in my mailbox "unexpectedly" last week. I say unexpectedly because when I preordered Soulemama's book (which comes out in August), Amazon "suggested" that I might like to preorder Weekend Sewing as well. So I clicked on it, having no idea it was being released the very next week. It is gorgeous! Really good stuff in there--exciting projects, a very cute section on how to set up a sewing corner in a small space, and the book just has the sweetest tone to it. Heather Ross talks about growing up on a lovely property in the country and playing outdoors all the warm months, but when the weather drove her and her sister indoors they would craft the whole winter away. This book does have a lot of the typical projects all the sewing books have--napkins, tablecloth, pillowcase, and that sort of thing (although it is lovely to see them sewn up in her cute fabrics), but also some really original projects as well, like a leather purse (!), gardening gloves, and way more women's clothes than I've ever seen in this type of book before. I'm very excited to try some of those.
And finally I've been meaning to share these lovely fabrics with you. I placed an order from Superbuzzy a few weeks back, and since the business is located in Ventura, I picked it up on my way home from work one day. It was so fun to see her warehouse and glimpse all the loveliness. I wanted to mention how lovely everything was in person. The lady who runs the shop said business was really bad in 2008, but she hopes things pick up in 2009. I want to support her business so I guess I'll be buying more! I really don't think it's expensive when you consider that you can get a lot of little projects out of a half a yard of fabric.

Tomorrow starts "Vegan til 6." It turns out Faith is doing it with me, so I need to find a vegan bread for her pb and j sandwich I pack in her lunch every day. Any suggestions? Thanks.

fabric bucket

So, I'm already contemplating Christmas gifts for next year. A lot. Every single year I get busy and overwhelmed right at the very end and every year I swear to get things done earlier next year. This time I'm thinking the only possible way to do that is to have most of it done in summer. Really done. So this is the start of that. I want to make fabric boxes or containers of some sort into which we will bundle homemade jams and whatever else we are giving that year. So last weekend I made this soft bucket, just to sort of get my feet wet. It's been sitting on my shelf with office supplies bundled into it.
This one is soft, but I'd have to interface the ones for gifts. And I'm thinking that maybe a box shape would be better for most people? But on the other hand, this round shape is useful and very quick to make up. I just wonder if other people would find it to be useful as well. Or is it a weird gift. Faith thinks no one would know what to use it for. What do you think?
Here's how it looks inside. See all these ugly things it bundles together? I like that they are well contained but close at hand. But I could also see this container holding craft supplies in the studio, baby supplies on the changing table, toys in the "children's area", etc. There are lots of pretty fabric buckets/fabric boxes online to get inspiration from. I loosely used the tutorial here. Other inspriration here and here.

Happy Monday! It's raining a little here. Hooray!

the winner

Aunt Kirstie! She said:

"I also give something up for lent & I think that at this time in my life this might be the perfect choice. I will be listening to the podcast later! I may join you."

February 19, 2009 6:57 AM

Congratulations Kirstie. Please e-mail me with your address and I'll send you your book right away. Happy weekend to everyone!

revisiting the purees

First of all, thanks for all your interest in my "Vegan 'til 6" plan. It's always heartening to see that others are interested in healthy and environmentally conscious eating. I'm excited about it and am using these days before lent kind of visualizing what I'll be eating and gathering recipes. I see myself making all the veggie side-dish recipes I've been marking but never getting around to. I'm aiming to close the drawing around 7 tonight, so feel free to leave a comment below if you haven't yet. All this is presupposing that Rainer doesn't end up in the hospital tonight. He probably won't, but he is going into the clinic today to be seen for some "extra" symptoms he's been having. I'm a little paranoid after his long hospital admission in Oct./Nov . . .

Okay, so about these purees. Last year I was excited about my Deceptively Delicious book, made a few recipes, then set it aside. I was annoyed by the extra step of having the make and freeze the purees, and then by having to have a specific puree onhand for each recipe. But after seeing this photo on flickr', I decided to give it another go. I have two thoughts this time around:
One--that making and freezing purees is a great way to use up vegetables that might otherwise languish in the crisper. Someone from work gave me a head of cauliflower that was going off, and trimming it and making puree was a great use for it. I did the same with so many carrots we had on hand but weren't using.
Two--I'm just going to be more flexible about subbing purees into the recipes if I think it's a reasonable substitution. That will make the book work better for me.
Oh, and Three--I still really love the concept of adding in extra nutrition to something you might be making anyway--especially for muffins or quick breads for the teen lunches. I love including those things in their lunches instead of packaged "bars".
So thus encouraged, I made the blueberry muffins from the book, subbing carrot puree for the yellow squash puree, and they were great. In fact, they were all gone the same morning. The blueberries were frozen, so they bled a bit into the batter, but no matter--everyone was happy.

Back tonight to post the winner. Yea for Fridays . . .

vegan 'til six

I've decided that for Lent this year I'm going to do a "vegan 'til six" plan like Mark Bittman describes in this podcast. Every year I "give something up" for Lent--I've been doing it for years and I love the structure of it. This vegan til 6 plan seems perfect for right now. I'm excited about it. It starts next Wednesday. Anyone care to join me?

Since hearing the podcast I've been reading the book, Food Matters. In it, I've learned a bit more about the approach that Mark Bittman takes to eating. He says that he has been motivated to change his eating habits due to personal health issues and the state of the environment. The main thing is to cut back, way back, on the animal products that we eat. The meat industry alone adds hugely to global warming. Instead, he promotes eating more plants of every type, especially vegetables and whole fruits. Sounds easy, huh? He says you can do this any way you want, but the approach he takes, and what sounds so appealing to me, is to eat mostly plants throughout the day, then eat a normal dinner and a treat at night. He does mention in the book that he still takes some milk in his morning coffee. Otherwise, he is eating maybe a whole grain for breakfast, and maybe beans and vegetables or a salad at lunch. Snacks might be fruit and nuts. I think I can do this. It's not unusual for me to eat oatmeal for breakfast (it's only in recent years that I've been doing the daily egg) and black bean soup or beans and rice for lunch. What will be different is (3 things actually) I'll be piling on way more vegetables, forgoing dairy and eggs, and giving up my little sweet taste at lunch. Vegan junk food or candy is not part of the plan, for obvious reasons--that's not what is healthful or will help the planet.

Bittman points out in the book that it is only quite recently in human history that so much meat, dairy and eggs--and calorie dense food in general--has been available. Mostly humans throughout the ages have eaten plants--I love thinking of how eating this way connects us with our hunter/gatherer ancestors. I've always loved hunter/gatherers, so I'll be thinking of them as I follow the plan. Also, I've been interested in eating more vegetables, but have always claimed I didn't have time to explore that. Now I'll have to.

I have an extra copy of the book (I received mine from Ken on Valentine's day, but had stupidly already ordered a copy from Amazon, so I have that one as well). So if you'd like my extra copy leave a comment here between now and Friday night. In the meantime I'll figure out how to use a random number generator--if you win, I'll mail you the book on Saturday. Also, let me know if you'd like to play along with the eating plan. It's going to be fun.

********* Okay, comments are turned off. I'll be back in a minute to announce the winner. Good luck!

rainy weekend

It was wonderful to have a long weekend at home in the rain. I love love love having extra time at home to hang out with the family and do domestic things. This morning I'm getting ready to go back to work, but I feel rested and restored, so I'm ready. One of the reasons I'm feeling rested is that Rainer slept through the night two nights in a row. That's a huge miracle, along with the fact that I slept through as well, not waking to check on him. I estimate it's been about 5 years since I was last able to sleep through, so it's not a small thing. Alas, last night he woke a couple times, but I still do think he's making progress.
Yesterday the boys and I made the Oat Cookies from Apples for Jam. Here is a simple, old fashioned cookie of the type I should be making for our mother/son baking projects. These were very easy to whip up and they make a tiny batch, which can be good or bad, but sometimes it's nice not to have a bunch of cookies hanging around. These seem downright wholesome compared to last week's cookie with all the chocolate chips and shavings.
Also, for Valentine's day on Saturday, I made these. They are the layered brownies from the current (March) issue of Wondertime. I just thought I'd share them here in case you have the issue and were thinking of making them. They are not worth all the fuss, I think. I like a brownie for sure, but these were not all they were hyped up to be. To be fair, I think I overbaked the bottom, so they were a little dry.
Happy work week to those of you heading back to work this morning. Now it's a long haul 'til spring break--sort of a "pure" time with no interruptions, just work straight though. That can be a good thing, or so I'm telling myself.

valentine's day wrap-up

We had such a fun Valentine's day. I love that it fell on a Saturday. I'll go backward. Ken got me presents--I'm so excited about this new book. I heard Mark Bittman interviewed on a podcast (here) and he was talking about how going "vegan 'til six" is not only good for your health, it's extra good for the planet too. I really think that podcast is worth listening to if you happen to get some time. Ken also got me a rose plant, which he planted in the yard for me, a box a chocolates from Trufflehounds, and he wrote me a beautiful letter. I'm a very lucky girl.
We had our annual "trail of hearts." The heart trail leads to the little presents. Here we are opening the gifts. I was dismayed that Dieter was more excited this year about the gifts than the trail. Every other year it has been the opposite. My own doing, I suppose. I still love getting them little presents, though. On the other hand, he loved the handmade Valentines his Daddy and I made for him and carried them around with him after dinner. I wrote a compliment to each person on the valentines and placed them around the table. That was fun--I think it will be a tradition.
And earlier in the day we went to the snow! I loved it so much. I pulled Dieter along in the "sleigh" (actually a plastic sled), which is what I was doing here. I was elated to be in the snow with them. I was getting all kinds of crazy notions about getting snow gear for the boys and learning to knit mittens. In reality, though, there is no snow without precipitation, and there is so little of that here. So I just drank it all in for what it was.
I hope your Valentine's Day was sweet.

valentine preparations

I had a rainy studio morning this morning. Here's a peek at my I've been up to. Stitched heart valentines, inspired by The Purl Bee.

Stick valentine for Ken, inspired by Stephanie Congdon Barnes.

Gifts for the children. I decided to wrap everything in wax paper bags this year.

Happy Valentine's day tomorrow!

this week's cookie and etc.

So I decided to try a recipe from The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook. I had it out, looking for bean recipes, and came across a recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. This book is by Christopher Kimball, the Cook's Illustrated guy who tests recipes to within an inch of their lives, trying to reach perfection.
These cookies are delicious, but look how ugly they are! I have another complaint about the recipe too. It's a big hassle. You have to grind up the oats in the food processor and grate the chocolate, so it's way more involved than a standard recipe. At least with toddlers, it's just too many steps. The boys lost patience. My favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe is so much easier and just as delicious in my opinion (but it lacks oats). I'm finding that with the boys a quick cookie is the only way to go.
Ken took the boys to the snow while I was at work yesterday. I love seeing what they did while I was gone.
And I'm always so happy when they get to experience some real wintery weather.
The other night I rounded the corner to find Rainer engaged in playing with these toys. He'd gotten them out and arranged them all on his own accord. He was playing that they were having a train crash. Very boyish, I think.

Thanks so much for all the kind blogaversary wishes yesterday. You're all so sweet and make blogging so fun for me. Thank you.

two

Today is my two year blogaversary. Two years ago, little Rainer was a 3-month-old in the Moby wrap. Dieter was a charming two. I discovered the world of craft blogging after Parents magazine ran a little blip recommending some "favorite sites" and one of them was Kiddley. On the sidebar of Kiddley was an amazing links list of craft blogs. I was completely drawn in. I remember distinctly that Soulemama was doing her "making our way" series of posts. I found that completely enchanting. What I loved so much about these blogs, and what I still love, is that they are not about having the latest thing, showing off, or having everything smug and perfect. They are down to earth, creative, and very real. It was such a relief to me to find other women who love motherhood and domestic life, who don't have it all figured out, and who like to sew and bake a little. I still, for the most part, haven't found that connection locally, but it is amazing to be able to come here and have these little chats with you all and feel connected. Thank you!
I have a blogaversary giveaway sort of loosely planned in my head, but alas, not at all organized or ready to go. So for now I just thank you heartfeltly for reading my words and commenting and sharing little bits of your stories and ideas.

another pillow

Choosing thread colors . . .
letters stitched, now choose buttons . . .
It's a pillow! (with buttons on the back).
In other pillow news, the ties on this one are useful for taking your pillow for a walk.
It was a lovely rainy (wintery for us) weekend. I very much enjoyed having a studio rainy day on Saturday. Not the whole day of course, but a few hours to make a pillow. There is something soul nourishing about rain and crafting.

I'm looking forward to a short week this week--Friday and Monday are holidays for us. Don't get me started on how I'd much rather have two Monday holidays (which my district has always taken in the past), but this will do. On Friday I'm looking forward to taking Faith to breakfast and enjoying some extra studio time.

Also, I've switched back to morning blogging, so I can wish you all good morning in all honesty. Good morning!