Carrot and Ginger Soup

Hello hello everyone! Sorry for the long absent. I know blog posting have been really sparse lately - except for the knitting posts :). It's been a busy few weeks and I was not feeling like posting.

But I am back now. And hoping to post more regularly.

Back to today's topic. Soup!!!

We love soups. Even before becoming a vegetarian, I would make soup every week. Now with the new diet, the soup tradition continues. No meat of course. Everything is 100% plant based.

It makes it a bit more challenging definitely but fun! In the past, it was so easy to just use chicken broth or beef broth for that extra flavor and depth. Now I have to improvise.

Heidi Swanson's Carrot Soup Recipe.

I followed Heidi's instruction on the how to, but I used a lot more vegetables. And spices!

I was a bit surprised that Heidi's recipe has no spice. I added basil, parsley, oregano, and thyme. All dried because that's all I have on hand. And freshly ground pepper. Lots of them.

I also added ginger. I thought of the ginger addition a bit late, so it was added along with the carrots. Next time, I would saute the ginger alongside onions and garlic.

Recipe: Carrot Soup

Black Pepper Tempeh

I just got a new cookbook: Super Natural Every Day from Heidi Swanson. I leafed through the cookbook and a lot of things look interesting and yummy. This is one of them.

I've tried to make tempeh several times but it's never really good. The recipe on the back of the package tells you to pan fried it with a little bit of oil and 2 Tbsp of soy sauce, until browned. I don't know you can just rely on soy sauce as the only seasoning, except maybe sushi, but even then I still need wasabi and pickled ginger. In the end the tempeh is usually pretty oily and blah tasting.

But let's back up for a second. What is tempeh?

Tempeh is a soy product originating from Indonesia. Similar to tofu in that it's made of soybean, but tempeh has different nutrition and texture than tofu. Tempeh, or tempe as it is called in Indonesia, is made by naturally culturing and controlling the fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form. Tempeh is used worldwide in vegetarian cuisine and can usually be found in the vegetarian section of your grocery store. You can read more about tempeh and see pictures of several tempeh dishes here on Wikipedia.