No, really, they ARE made with love

I promised a while back that if anyone wanted to hear about our recent forays into new and exciting vegan recipes, I would share them. Well, one person did ask, so I'll go ahead and share. However, there are a million beautiful and detailed vegan food blogs out there, and all of them totally dedicated to the genre. I won't try to talk technique or recipes here, but just talk about how my family has come to this place of having Adventures with Food.

I grew up in a home where the focus was very much on what was HEALTHY. By healthy, I suspect strongly that my mom meant "low calorie." Like many, many women in this culture, she was terribly concerned with being overweight, and when I hit puberty, she became very concerned with me becoming fat. She told me quite often that she had been heavy as a teenager, and that she did not want me to go through that. (Side note: I recently had the opportunity to spend a few hours with my mom's first cousins, who are younger than her, and when I mentioned this to them, they looked at each other, puzzled, and said, "We don't remember her ever being overweight.") I remember distinctly being told to watch what I ate in the months before I had my Bat Mitzvah, so that I would not be fat and pimply for the occasion.

This sounds horrible and scandalous to almost everyone, and in many ways it was, but I can also see the side of my mother who really did find being overweight to be a traumatic experience, perceived or real though it might have been. She wanted to spare me that trauma. Instead, though, she created a different trauma, where I looked in the mirror and saw a skinny kid, and wasn't sure exactly how many cookies it would take to make me otherwise. Was it two? Was it four? I didn't want to deal with the comments about what I ate, so I often biked to the gas station a couple of miles away, bought a handful of candy bars, and ate them in the bathroom sitting on the toilet. Years later, I still associate solitude with an opportunity to eat junk food. It's an association I would love to break.

My mother made healthy, really delicious food, though, and she continues to be a phenomenal cook. She enjoys the process, and this is something I'm happy to have inherited. The difference is that I want the healthy food to taste good more than I want the healthy food to be low-fat or low-calorie. Sometimes it works out that way (big wonderful salads with hearts of palm, fresh peppers, and balsamic dressing; vegetable soups) and sometimes it doesn't (fried corn fritters, macaroni & cheez). I've had to force myself to disassociate "unhealthy" and
"fat" as it relates to cooking. It's something my mother has never been able to do, though she has finally relaxed her eating habits to include treats without too much guilt.

So now here I am, finding myself the cook in a house with two daughters. I really was a little chubby as a teen and remain so now -- nothing truly unhealthy, but certainly on the soft and cushy end of the spectrum -- and I honestly don't care if my girls are X pounds above or below the norm, as long as they're healthy. It is much more important to me that they are aware of how GOOD non-junk food can taste, and how important it is for our bodies to eat a variety of foods, including some junk food just because it's fun. Neither has mentioned people being fat or food being fatty or anything like that yet, but I absolutely know it is coming. It's too pervasive in our culture. I just want to set them up with a good base of knowledge before that hits.

That's a long road I just took to get to what we've been cooking these days -- but it's worth telling, because it explains the variety in our diets in a way that a list of recipes and photos could not. So here we go! If anyone wants the recipes or info on the cookbooks where we got them, let me know!

Pumpkin & Carmelized Onion Baked Ziti with Sage Bread Crumbs - holy shmoly was this a pain to make, but it was the most delicious thing we ate in the last two months.

Leek & White Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits - this might have been Shmoo's favorite. The biscuits get baked right on top of the beans & leeks...so downhome good!

Crock Pot Seitan Pot Roast -- this was pretty, and the flavor was spot on, but no one liked the consistency of the homemade seitan. Bummer. We'll have to try a different recipe.

Corn Fritters -- this wasn't vegan (three eggs), and it probably was a little too greasy to be called healthy exactly, but these fritters sure were delicious. Shmoo almost snorted them through a straw!

Miso Soup with Udon Noodles & Chickpeas - This will be an absolute staple next winter. We made it with some mushroom boullion, and that gave it a hearty and rich flavor that had a friend of ours swooning in the street outside our house, where she ate a serving of it out of a washed-out yogurt container I had on the counter.

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies - I made these for Doodlebug's birthday party, and they were not pretty, but everyone raved about them so much that I had to make them the next weekend for a graduation party too. They are vegan and none of my meat-eating, milk-swilling in-laws noticed!

Chickpea Cutlets - these are so fantastic I can't even begin to explain it. They are quick to make, the kids love them, they make good sandwiches or pasta toppers or eat-em-cold-out-of-the-fridge food.

Garlic & Sesame Sauteed Purple Cauliflower -- I don't know how they grow purple cauliflower, but thank goodness that they do, because the kids think it's magical. Cook it in a frying pan with sesame oil and garlic, and everyone will eat it gleefully!

Oven-roasted Kale - This is simple, and basically makes kale chips that melt in your mouth. My kids won't eat anything that looks like leaves, usually, but Doodlebug told her friends at school the next day that she ate "cracked kale" and it was "so so so so so so good!"

Boston Creme Pie Cupcakes  - Yes, they were vegan, and even better, True spent four hours making them for me on Mother's Day. The poor guy is not, at heart, a cook, and he was flustered and overwhelmed when I found him in the kitchen that morning. Despite all that, the cupcakes were delicious. Really! REALLY, True, I'm not just saying that, THEY WERE WONDERFUL!

Tonight we're getting take-out food, though!!!!!!