Anne - Simple Cooking

Today I went to buy a large sweet potato because since yesterday I am craving for sweet potato soup. Actually I am no big soup fan, but as it's pretty cold and I am a little sick, I had minestrone last week and can't think of nothing else but hot, steaming soup (and only hot, steaming soup!)

As it is the easiest thing in the world (and the fastest!) to prepare hot, steaming sweet potato soup I thought I should share!

I give you the recipe for two bowls of soup!
Also, it is up to you how you season your soup, I'll tell you how I seasoned mine, but in the end tastes are so different... just add as much of the incredients you like best and you'll have the best result!

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp coconut oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 inches ginger, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 HUGE sweet potato, cut into cubes
1 - 2 Tbsp red curry paste (I had 2 1/2 and it was HOT XD) OR make your own seasoning with turmeric, chillies, dried coriander, cumin, salt, black pepper
500ml/ about 2 1/2 cups of vegetable broth
100ml/ about half a cup of soy cuisine
1 handful freshly chopped corianda leaves (if you don't like this, take parsley!)

Heat the coconut oil until it melts. Add the onion and ginger and roast gently until glazed. Add garlic for 1 minute, then add the sweet potato cubes and stir another two minutes. Add curry paste/ spices and roast everything another few minutes. Be careful not to have the spices burnt, a second before that happens you should deglaze everything with the broth. Put a lid on your pot and reduce heat. Let cook until sweet potato is soft (that should be in 10 - 15 minutes!) Purée, add soy cuisine. In case you find your soup too thick, add a little water until you have the consistent you like. Serve with chopped corianda/ parsley leaves!

YUMMY :D

First of all... PREHEAT THE OVEN! ^^

So... I bought those two cute, little eggplants. Not those baby/ Asian eggplants, normal ones, just pretty small.
I cut them in halfes and put lots of salt on it.
In the meantime I chopped half a yellow bell pepper, some leftover cocktail tomatoes (uhm about 7?) and three large garlic cloves (because it's healthy, yummy and goes well with eggplants!) and mixed them together. I also added some leftover pasta sauce with olives.
Then I added some freshly chopped basil, cayenne pepper and black pepper. You have to try out what you like most or additionally want to egg. I didn't use extra salt as the eggplants still taste a little salty and my pasta sauce was quite good anyway ^^
Then I cleaned the egglpants with a tissue and put them into a baking dish which I dabbed with olive oil.
Also, I put olive oil on the eggplants. Don't worry if you take "too much" because you can't never take too much olive oil for eggplants, they'll soak it in ^^ they shouldn't swim or drown in oil though.
Next the yellow bell pepper - tomatoes - garlic - pasta sauce - salad was added onto the eggplants and all together it went into the oven.

It's real yummy.

If you're not vegan as Anne and me you may add some grated cheese ^^ (Or if you are vegan and have vegan cheese, add it too, only I ate all my vegan cheese and can't add it anymore, booo)

:D

Pumpkin-tart with tzaziki-salad

This is my favorite pumpkin-recipe
I do it without the hot pepper and chili- and last weekend I even droped the garlic in the tzaziki - It still tasted as real tzaziki!?


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I unearthed these old treasures yesterday, and ran them through the new Fischer-Paykel dishwasher.  They had not been unwrapped since I first left Wisconsin over 10 years ago.

They were considerably grimy; but have an interesting history.

My Great - Grandmother used them for canning back in the 1880's until the time of her death in 1970.  I inherited these few directly from her basement with old root cellar from the original farm built back in 1870, by my Great - Grandfather, Jadusch.  (phonetic spelling)

From left to right they hold:
Sun dried tomatoes, whole rolled oats for oatmeal,  pasta, Urid Dal, ( Indian legume ), pasta, and orzo.

My Great-Grandmother's antique  "Ball" and "Drey" Mason Jars.  Original zinc tops and glass with wire bales.

I think they look lovely in my cool, modern kitchen, and they always start great cooking and family conversations!
What memories does your kitchen hold for you?
 

After going to the market and finding the perfect strawberries and red bananas, I decided to make myself a real indulgence for my "supper." So,  I got out the honey which I purchased in droves of jars during the last Asian New Year's  (common  to give rare food gifts during that time, as I did when I lived in South Korea) and had myself a real diet treat!

Anytime I feel hungry now, I am going to drool over these pictures. 

Strawberry and banana "supper" with my favorite accompaniment; Pomegranate honey from South Korea. photo copyrighted 2007; all rights reserved.

Strawberry and banana "supper" drizzled with pomegranate honey.  YUM!  (about to dig right in!) photo copyrighted 2007; all rights reserved.

Can't wait to go and find more strawberries; this entire "supper" was less than 350 calories.  Not bad, eh?

I've come up with a menu for Thanksgiving day:

Grilled turkey  (smoked over a mesquite fire)
Baked Idaho potatoes with all the luscious toppings 
Sherry and shitake mushroom sauce (gravy)
Cranberry conserve ( home made, today's item;  it ages beautifully due to the sherry in it.)  Mine has mandarins and apricots in it, too.
Pear Cherry conserve made with port
Baked fresh corn spoon bread with cheese  (much better than most stuffings)
 Yams made with Indian spices and maple syrup
 
A lovely madeira (sp?) from Spain
Home made pumpkin  pie
Home made cinnamon ice cream

A new dishwasher to provide the clean up for all of the above!


Anyone else care to share their menus?  I'd love to hear about yours!
:>D

Yummy yum yum!

(I should never ever become a food photographer XD tastes better than it looks, my attempt to make it more appealing failed bitterly^^)

700 g fresh green peas (with jackets) / 500 g peas in tin
1 yellow pepper
1/4 basil tofu (you could also use plain tofu and fresh basil)
veggie water

shell the peas and cook until nearly done in as much veggie water as needed. then add the quartered pepper and cook for another 2 minutes. finally add tofu and purée the lot. done. it's as easy as that and contains everything you need.

so today a simple vegan chocolate cake.



mix the following ingredients and pour into a cake tin


300 gr flour
300 ml soy milk
150 gr sugar
1 pckg backing powder
100 gr margarine
3 heaped spoonful of (fair traded^^) cacao powder


then carefully stir in some fruits such as pears, apricots or mandarines (though mandarine tastes rather boring with this dough ;o)

190C 35+ minutes (my oven's rather strange...simply try the consistence of the dough with a needle)

enjoy.

I found this website full of useful tips for vegan lifestyle including over 312 recipes...

http://tierrechtskochbuch.de/

enjoy :)

Good Morning my Lovlies,

here's the today's challenge.
My flatmate found out we have a LOT of flour.
Everyone always buys a new package if he/ she only needs 50g.
Now he wants to bake bread.
And we all know what that means, disgusting stuff being wet inside and tasting extremely strong and wrong because he put feta cheese (jeez it must have been rotten, it tasted horrible, I LOVE feta cheese actually) and corgette in.

What can a smart little girl like me do in such cases?

INDEED!

Thinking of my greatgreatgreatgrandmother(s) and make a Challah.
It's obviously a jewish recipe and it's simply wonderful.

It resembles the normal yeast-braid (Hefezopf, levure-tresse) but mustn't be made with milk. It wouldn't be kosher if you eat meat afterwards (no problem for me but since I read an article about milk I feel more lactose intolerant than ever, it questioned why human beings are the only creatures on earth drinking breast milk a) until they're mad old and b) from another species... to realise it was breast milk of cows (yeah obviously -.-" that's milk in general, right? It's for calf, not humans) made me feel all ewwwwwww) and it's healthier, too.

I'll give you the recipe first, pictures will follow.
I guess I am not able to plait the Challah how it's traditionally made but I try my best :)

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