Cardamom Spice and Cooking Up a Storm

Did I mention how I've been cooking up a storm lately?

I have a few fabulous vegetarian recipe books and this week alone I've made a lentil loaf, apple sweet potato soup, beer bread, vegan pumpkin bars, cardamom bread (via cooks.com), peppermint brownies, and guacamole. It has been an epic week for doing my favorite thing (aka cooking) until classes start again and I've been enjoying it. Much better than being out in the cold weather (brrr). The two main cooking books I've been using this week is the Vegetarian Bible (a short hard cover cook book) and Vegan Now. Although garlic is in many vegan recipes (they have to eat something for flavor, and I don't blame them), I've found ways around it in my vegan cooking, choosing instead asafotedia, onion powder, onions, or shallots. Sorry to all of you garlic and onion allergic folks, I thankfully can survive on onions and even the garlic looking shallot.

I finally put some of the weird asafotedia (garlic-esque spice) into my cooking and it came out quite well! I used the asafotedia in my lentil loaf recipe from Vegan Now, I also make the loaf un-vegan by utilzing real eggs instead of the egg substitute (sorry vegans :-(). The soup is great. The beer bread is only so-so (a bit salty to me for some reason), pumpkin bars came out weird (not recommended). The beer bread was super easy, I would recommend the recipe to anyone (from Vegan Now) -- just self-rising flour, beer, salt, and sugar. So simple and great for soup, but too salty to eat on its own.

It was my first time making cardamom bread, but being a Swede I figured it was about time. Cardamom is a spice I like to have around, great for a unique flavor in so many dishes. I just love it, and it reminds me of my childhood spent in the church rec room for coffee hour post church. There was always cardamom bread, and now I've made my very own homemade version. Fabulous!

The lentil loaf is great and can be made vegan or non vegan.

That is my update for now! Peace!