Another Lazy Saturday Post

Hello on the 20th day of the Vegan Month of Food!  No new recipe tonight, just a post about a dinner from earlier this week with leftovers and quick fixin's.  

Menu:
--leftover mushroom vegetable soup
--snap peas and mushrooms (with soy sauce and lemon)
--plain potato
--garlic rolls
--lemon water

The leftover mushroom vegetable soup was good; I added a little less than 1/4 cup water to it before re-heating it since some of the liquid had gotten absorbed.  The rolls were nice for dunking in the soup.  My mom was just going to make the snap peas plain--cooking them in olive oil, with soy sauce and maybe garlic salt--but I decided it would be interesting to try adding chopped mushrooms and lemon juice.  It wasn't.  (I didn't like the way they turned out, because a) mushroom overload with it already being in the soup and b) the lemon was way too strong.  But my mom liked it, so I guess that balances out.)  Not much to say about a plain potato, haha, though I did end up adding some ketchup to it, so it wasn't completely plain.  And finally, the lemon water--a nice touch, but probably only something I'll do when I have a lemon I'm wanting to use up.  Otherwise, plain water is more my style.

Mr. Boogie, on his new favorite perch, with my sister's soccer blanket.

Peace.  :)

Mushroom Vegetable Soup

Hello on the 17th day of the Vegan Month of Food!  Tonight's post is about a veganized version of my dad's beef vegetable soup.  My sister and I have veganized his recipe in the past (simply leaving out the beef), but this time I decided to add mushrooms, both because I still had more I needed to use up and because I figured that they would contribute a "meaty" texture to the mix.  I didn't have his recipe on hand, and had to scramble a bit (and half it), but it turned out alright.

Mushroom Vegetable Soup

  

Ingredients:
--4 cups of vegan "beef"-flavored broth
--1 cup elbow noodles
--1 can corn, drained
--1 cup frozen mixed vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots)
--mushrooms 
--spaghetti sauce 

Bring the broth to a boil, add the elbow noodles, lower heat to medium.  Add the corn and mixed vegetables.  Eventually bring to medium-low to simmer.  Chop up mushrooms (I used 2, but I'm not sure what that came out to, measurement-wise, maybe about 1/2-3/4 cup worth?) and add to the soup.  Finally, add about 6 T spaghetti sauce.  Simmer for a little while longer, and then serve with rolls or crackers.

I enjoyed it, but the soup tasted different (from the vegan versions we've made before).  Next time I'll make sure to dig out the recipe beforehand, and to make sure that I have a can of mixed soup vegetables on hand so I don't have to make do with corn and frozen mixed vegetables.  Also, adding the mushrooms was an interesting experiment, but it might not be one that I repeat for some time, as I didn't really enjoy the texture/taste.  So, all in all, it worked, but I wasn't thrilled with it, so I might still label this as a recipe fail.  Ah well, that's what experimenting is all about.  

And now some photos of cat-acrobatics...

...also known as the cat-pretzel.

Peace.  :)