Yesterday was a nice comfort food day in the kitchen. Easy recipes and lots of warm flavor. While making my banana walnut bread, I soaked some black-eyed peas for an hour and then cooked up some really low-prep soup. Dry black-eyed peas soak fast and cook fast, so they are an ideal bean to have around. Black-eyed peas are creamier than your average bean and green chard is milder than your average dark green, making this soup a very effective comfort soup!

black-eyed pea soup with green chard

This recipe’s quantities are dictated by need. This is the quantity that I made for Greg and myself — we had two bowls each, served a friend who stopped by a bowl, and have enough for another bowl each leftover in the fridge (though the chard in the pot has mostly been consumed).

Soak 1.5 cups of black-eyed peas for an hour
Drain, rinse and put into large stock pot
Rinse 1/2 cup of brown rice (I used brown jasmine in mine) (and I always rinse my rice, just because I have no idea if rice is treated with talc) and add rice to the stock pot
Fill the stock pot with water a couple of inches above beans and rice and bring to a boil
Cook on high for 20 minutes

Meanwhile, chop 1 onion, 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, and remove leaves from the thick stalks of 1 bunch of green chard (no chopping of chard is necessary as it cooks down so much, but if you want it more evenly distributed throughout your soup, go for it.)

Add onion, garlic, green chard and 1 or 1.5 tablespoons of veggie bouillon to pot and cook for another 20 minutes, or until rice is done.

And that’s it. The quality of your veggie bouillon will affect the final flavor of your soup, so you could also add some more spices to adjust to your liking — I use Rapunzel Vegetable Broth powder, and I have to say that this might be a key ingredient to making this soup awesome. I recommend salting this soup only after cooking, if at all. Salting a dish while it’s cooking masks the flavor of the salt and you end up using way more. Plus, your veggie bouillon probably has more salt than you realize, unless you have low sodium bouillon. When you salt right in your bowl, you can more effectively control your salt-intake and the flavor of the salt is much more prominent.

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molasses

The recipe in Robbin’s book had actually called for maple syrup, but I wanted to incorporate molasses instead, making the bread more dense nutritionally. It was kind of awesome getting molasses out of the bulk section. It was housed in this big wooden box and I slow-poured it into a plastic tub, mesmerized by its smell and texture. Molasses is not something that I’ve ever really incorporated into my diet, and before looking it up just now, I could only answer with half-certainty when asked what molasses is that it’s the by-product of making white sugar. I also knew that it was loaded with iron. Well, both of those things are true. While the calories in molasses are primarily sugar, it’s also a significant source of calcium, potassium, and magnesium.

Banana Walnut Bread with Molasses

Preheat oven to 350
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons whole ground flax
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix wet ingredients in a blender, or well by hand:

1/4 cup soy milk
5 medium bananas
3 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses

Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and mix with spatula while folding in 1 cup of chopped walnuts. Doesn’t need to be mixed well, but just enough to make everything wet.

Pour batter into a bread pan pre-oiled with some canola oil to prevent sticking/burning. Baking times will vary depending on depth of your pan. I used a standard 9″ x 5″ loaf pan and baked for 60 minutes uncovered. Sticking a toothpick or sharp knife into the center of the bread and extracting it to find it clean will reveal if your bread is cooked all the way through. Let it cool for awhile, maybe 30 minutes, then eat it while it’s still warm, or let it cool for awhile before putting it in the fridge, and eat it cold.

I think this is kind of a sophisticated take on banana bread. It’s sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s whole wheat, which is great, and the bananas, while definitely playing a big role in its flavor, don’t steal the show. I was worried as it baked that the molasses would throw it all off, because the smell is strong, but that wasn’t the case at all. Good stuff!

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2. Wheat bread is not Whole Wheat
3. Vegan Gravy

I’ve been really into tofu lately. My pregnant body needs a lot of iron, and since soybeans are the beans highest in iron content, tofu is a great way to add iron into my diet. Tofu is also rich in calcium, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, and of course, protein. (If you are feeling a little iffy about soy in general because of all the conflicting things you’ve read about it, I suggest you read this article about soy written by John Robbins.)

Thinking of new ways to eat soy at home, I wanted to experiment with some tofu noodle comfort soup. I started out boiling enough water for my intended allotment of rice noodles and tofu with a shredded carrot, 2 low-sodium veggie bouillon cubes, a bit of onion powder, a pinch of nutritional yeast, a large dash of soy sauce, a tablespoon of white vinegar, maybe 1 tablespoon of sesame oil (though it could’ve stood more), and a very small pinch of salt (tasted it all to make sure it was working – as I was just digging through the cabinets to find things on-hand) — then I added the rice noodles and a couple of minutes later a generous helping of baby spinach and an entire container of tofu. I let that cook for only a few minutes more until the rice noodles were done (which only take like 4-5 minutes total) and voila. Yum. I served myself a bunch of noodles so the broth is barely visible, but it was so tasty. Total comfort soup.

Related posts:

1. Black-Eyed Pea – Green Chard Soup

sans soy substitute

Now, Frank’s Red Hot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce has all kinds of recommendations for things to pair the sauce with — chicken & eggs and the like. There’s a recipe for buffalo wings on the label, which of course calls for butter as Frank’s itself only has 5 ingredients: cayenne pepper, vinegar, water, salt, & garlic powder. Frank’s plus that buttery addition is the flavor that everyone comes to recognize as classic hot wing material. Well, take the naturally-buttery and slightly greasy consistency of avocado and put it together with Frank’s right out of the bottle, and you’ve got yourself a dish that mimics the tender portions of hot wings in a way that Greg says is “creepy.” For someone attempting to approximate a well-known meat dish, this combo blows soy products out of the water and is about 8 million times better for you, and doesn’t require frying to boot. It’s also just a really interesting way to consume a whole avocado and everyone could use more avocado in his or her life!

(Turns out Frank’s is pretty tasty on mangos too.)

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It turns out the SE Asia version is in English, yet all the dishes are completely different from the U.S. recipes site! The American version is full of cup cakes, but the “.Asia” version has all sorts of yummy veggie dishes I’ve never tried. One of the downsides to the lack of an American culture is not only are most of the foods I know from childhood bland and boring, they are terrible for my health. It’s a shame I can’t read Japanese because some of these recipe pictures look amazing!

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Jana DrJoel is a new blog that chronicles Jana’s journey through Dr. Fuhrman’s eat for health book. She’s making all the recipes and posting pictures of each one. This blog makes me hungry. This is a website that Dr. Joel should have made. I love his recipes, but it’s so much easier to eat them when I’m reminded of them in photographs. While, you’ll need a copy of eat for health to follow along with the recipes, Eat for Health is a book that I recommend everyone read anyway. The blog is an inspiration, and I’m going to be enjoying a couple of the recipes myself this week. You should too! Follow Jana in her new blog and subscribe to her updates.

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1. Interesting South East Asian Vegan Recipes
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3. Black-Eyed Pea – Green Chard Soup

Here is a salad idea that I got from watching Simply Delicioso on Hulu. It combines a vegetable that I recently learned about, jicama (hee-kah-mah), a crispy and refreshing root plant with a very subtle and sweet flavor, and a fruit that I’ve been enjoying on a daily basis, the mango.

I used a head of romaine lettuce as my base greens, and that works well as another crispy component. Throw in some roughly-chopped cilantro, some sliced radishes, and eat with a homemade peanut-lime dressing, which is made simply by taking the peanut butter of your choice (I used crunchy and unsalted), adding freshly-squeezed lime and water, and whisking and adding more moisture until the consistency is runny, almost watery, making it possible to really coat the salad.

I made way too much peanut dressing, but happily put it into a container and into the fridge for future salads! I’ve always loved using peanut sauce with greens, even back when I was an omnivore prone to eating ranch dressing – peanut dressing is creamy, but light. It’s full of protein, antioxidants, and high levels of resveratrol, the chemical that is also found in grapes and wine. It has been shown in studies that people who eat nuts on a semi-regular basis are much less likely to gain weight. While nuts do have fats in them, they aren’t the kind you’re going to find in food made from animals – they’re the good fats. They will fill you up and satisfy your cravings for fats, but they will keep you healthy and trim too!

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As far back as I can remember, pizza has always been my favorite food. During the progression of my gradual diet change to a whole-food plant-based diet, cheese was the last on my list to go. It’s the stronghold of omnivores everywhere: If only were it not for the cheese, they say.

Well, I can’t promise you a facsimile of cheese on this side of eating, but I can tell you that there are many tasty approximations, and with the new variety of foods you find without cheese and the health benefits that take immediate hold going dairy-free, I can also tell you that you do get over the hold that cheese once had on you.

That said, let’s talk about this pizza. I’ve experimented with soy cheeses, and I’m sure there are many that are better than the ones I had, that melt better and taste better. But I’m not really interested in finding them, because I’m not a fan of soy cheese and other soy products that attempt to mimic dairy and meat products. They have way too many ingredients for my everyday consumption. They’re what I now consider to be my junk food, only allowing myself to eat them on occasion.

This pizza recipe uses a nutritional yeast sauce that’s simple to make on the stove. Nutritional yeast flakes can be found in the bulk section of Whole Foods or other health food stores, in other grocery stores sold by Red Star, or they can be ordered online from companies like Bob’s Red Mill, who makes really great products in my personal opinion.

Nutritional yeast is usually fortified with B12, which is great for a vegan diet, and it has a nice smooth, savory flavor.

nutritional yeast “cheese”

1/2 c. nutritional yeast
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1 tspn salt
1/2 tspn garlic powder
2 c. water
1 tspn mustard
1/4 c. olive oil

-mix dry ingredients in sauce pan/pot
-whisk in one cup of water on high heat until thick and bubbles
-remove from heat add oil and mustard
-return to medium high heat and slowly add the rest of the water, stirring constantly, cook until thickened

whole wheat pizza crust

4 c. whole wheat flour
1 tbsp yeast
2 tbsp agave (or honey)
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 tspn salt
1 1/3 c. water

-put flour, salt, sweetener, and oil in large mixing bowl
-if fast-activating yeast, pour the yeast on top and add the warm water to let it sit on top of the flour for a minute – you’ll be able to smell the yeast
-if not, activate yeast in normal way and add to the mixing bowl with the rest of the water
-stir with a fork until all the water is absorbed
-then get in there with your hands and knead to make a dough ball
-the dough ball should be solid, all the flour used up, and a little elasticky
-cover with a cloth and let it sit for at least ten minutes to rise some, more if you can, but not that important
-split in half, makes two pizzas
-roll out or stretch out thin

I rolled the dough in cornmeal before stretching it out for a little crunch.

prebake crust 5-8 minutes
cook pizza (with sauce, “cheese,” and toppings) for 30 minutes

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