German Cabbage Soup (Krautsuppe)

Alright, the pigging out has got to stop! I've been a naughty naughty thing and have eaten so much indulgent foods this holiday weekend. Pumpkin pies, apple tarts with cashew cream, biscotti, bread stuffing with mashed potatoes, gravy, potato chips and chocolate chocolate chocolate! I tell you there's nothing more satisfying than laying in bed watching a dvd with a bar of chocolate by your side. Trader Joe's dark chocolate truffle, Ritter Sport marzipan and Anassa orange marzipan with dark chocolate have been my friends.

So to start off healthier this week, I opened up my favorite cookbook 'Olive Trees and Honey' and made the German cabbage soup recipe. It's very simple: cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, onions, potatoes and veggie broth flavored with caraway seeds, salt and pepper. And it tastes so warm, comforting and very delicious. To make it heartier, I added about a 1/3 cup cooked rice to my bowl at lunch. I wouldn't mind having this every week.

Soup for the week and plans for the weekend.

You see this? This is approximately 8 cups of soup that I will be eating all week. It's the sephardic red lentil soup recipe from Olive Trees and Honey that I just absolutely love love love. I don't know if 8 cups of this is enough for the rest of the week to be honest!

Yesterday I had a day off and my two younger cousins visited me. We made a day of tea sandwiches, tea, cookies, chips and a Doctor Who marathon! Sorry, no pictures!

This saturday is my dad's 65th birthday party and I'm planning to make the following for my family: spanakopita (recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance), potato salad (Veganomicon's Prospect Park recipe), hummus and a three bean salad (kidney, white and fava). I'm also making Isa's cookies again because everyone loved them last time. All these treats shall keep my mind occupied until the weekend. I love to cook!

Sephardic Red Lentil Soup (with Kale)

Oh my this soup is good! It is so rich in flavor; it's earthy, tangy and just tasty! It's the Sephardic red lentil soup recipe from the coobook "Olive Trees and Honey" which happens to be one of my favorite vegetarian cookbooks. Seriously, go buy it right now. I made a big pot of this soup which is flavored with garlic, onions, cumin, olive oil and lemon juice. Soooo good. I served some to my dad who ate it over rice (he eats everything over rice, even pasta!) and he loved it. I'll be happy to eat this soup all week. I added chopped kale at the end which gave the soup some texture as well as giving a little color.

Sephardic Rice Stuffed Peppers

More whole grain cookin'! Today's assignment: make something with brown rice. I want to make sure I'm getting more whole grains into my diet. Yesterday was brown rice pasta, today brown rice! I checked my 'Olive Trees and Honey' cookbook and found this simple recipe for stuffed peppers. It is very basic with very few ingredients: rice, tomatoes, onions, sugar, salt and pepper. I added some garlic, mushrooms and spinach to give it more color and flavor.


I also added tomato sauce for the tops.


Split open so you can see the inside. In the foreground is a cabbage salad with a sweet and sour dressing made from vegan mayo, red wine vinegar, agave syrup, salt and pepper.

Dinner was delicious and very satisfying. I ate one and a half peppers and a lot of salad. (Cabbage is very good for you! It prevents colon and breast cancer as well as being very good for your stomach! So if you have ulcers and stomach issues, eat your cabbage!)

Moroccan Pumpkin Soup (Shorabit Yatkeen)

After barreling through the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers (sniff sniff...bye bye mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy!), I wanted to make something low key and easy yet kinda sorta staying with a fall theme. This beautiful yellow-orange pumpkin soup was in order. It's from one of my favorite vegetarian cookbooks "Olive Trees and Honey". A few of the recipes in the book uses eggs and dairy and I was happy that this recipe was completely animal free. I checked online and found it posted here in case you want to try it.



It's a fairly thick and hearty, warm comforting soup with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg which melds well with the sweetness of the pumpkin (I used butternut squash). I added yellow split peas instead of chickpeas because I realized mid recipe that I ran out of chickpeas which is a far superior bean in my opinion. But the split peas are very nice too. I also added a bit of cumin which is not called for in the recipe because I wanted to add some earthiness to it. It was a good call. A bowl of this and a warm pita was a perfect dinner for me.