Curried Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup

Based on this recipe from epicurious.com.

With Claire away and a major math test a day away, Daniel was beginning to wander around with a shuffling, broken gait, wearing sweaters and staring for long moments at random items in the supermarket. And so, soup to the rescue!

Ingredients

1.5 c. tinned pumpkin (120)
2 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small chunks (640)
4 c. water with vegetable bullion or vegetable broth
1 c. skim milk (90)
seasonings, including sweet curry powder, red Thai curry paste, cumin, turmeric, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, and cinnamon. (100)

Methodology

1. Put sweet potatoes in a pot with water and vegetable bullion and bring to a boil. Add curry powder and stir occasionally until the potatoes are cooked.

2. Spoon potatoes and 1 cup of broth into a blender and blend until smooth.

3. Return blended potatoes to pot. Add milk and pumpkin and stir. Season to taste.

Makes approximately 10 servings (I think. Big servings), approximately 100 calories per serving. I recommend serving them with whole wheat pita bread; yoghurt is also a possibility, as is Parmesan cheese (Claire's innovation).

Notes

Something about the sweet potatoes and pumpkin means that it doesn't take spices very well; I added a lot of pepper before it started tasting spicy, and even then it was the sort of spicy that creeps up on you instead of being spicy all at once, which is nice for luring the faint of heart.

Normally when I make curry I add sugar, because I love things which are both sweet and spicy, but the sweet potatoes are sweet enough already that you don't need it.

I think the best part of this recipe is the way you can tweak it. For a more Thai flavour, add coconut milk instead of skim and leave out the curry powder (just use the paste). For a more Indian flavour, you can add butter and leave out the curry paste; you could even mix in some dal if you had some, that would be nice.

2/7 on the disaster index, mostly because of my own nervousness about spicing it. A liberal hand seems to be necessary. So go forth and curry (and don't forget to check out Em oi! while you're at it.)

Gingerbread Cake part two: The Pumpkin Variation

As before (in this post), with ingredients as follows:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 cup mild molasses mixed with 1 cup hot water

(I've highlighted the changes).

Methodology remains the same:
1. Preheat oven to 350* F. Mix wet ingredients (sugar, egg, margarine, pumpkin) in bowl with electric mixer/immersion blender type of frog.

2. Sift together flour, baking soda, spices, salt. Be careful if you don't want flour all over the kitchen (why you would object to this I cannot think.)

3. Alternate between adding molasses and flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Pour into a greased 9" baking pan (I used a round one with 2 inch sides I think). Bake in the middle of the oven until the knife comes out clean, approximately 40 minutes. You can then turn it out of the pan without much fuss.

Notes
This can totally be thrown together, Iron Chef style, in 30 minutes if you are really pressed for time. Since clean up takes about 15 minutes, figure about an hour and a quarter start to finish (I'm typing this up at the 52 minute mark). Today I had exactly 2.5 hours (from the time I left work to the time I have to leave for aikido) to devote to this project, and that included shopping time. It looks like I'm going to make it (er, touch wood or something).

With the pumpkin, the cake has 2510 calories per cake, or 168 calories per slice for 15 slices, so not too shabby. I compensated for the added liquid by adding an extra quarter cup of flour (the making of the cake was not assisted by the death of my quarter cup measure halfway through the process, grr.)

I don't expect the cake to come out especially pumpkin-y; to accomplish that I should have probably dropped the amount of molasses or something (it tends to be quite strong). Still, it should make a nice offering for tomorrow. We'll see how the audience reacts. Last week's preliminary test went well, but I feel like tomorrow's crowd is much tougher, especially as it includes both of my younger brothers...

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who happens to be out there, and don't forget to check out the Thanksgiving Em oi!

ETA: Audience reaction gave this one full marks. Total success.

Gingerbread Cake (part 1)

Based on a recipe from epicurious.com which I will hunt down and link to later.
ETA: here it is.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 banana, mushed up (approx 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup) plus 1/8 cup margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 cup mild molasses mixed with 1 cup hot water

Methodology

1. Preheat oven to 350* F. Mix wet ingredients (sugar, egg, margarine, banana) in bowl with electric mixer/immersion blender type of frog.

2. Sift together flour, baking soda, spices, salt. Be careful if you don't want flour all over the kitchen (why you would object to this I cannot think.)

3. Alternate between adding molasses and flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Pour into a greased 9" baking pan (I used a round one with 2 inch sides I think). Bake in the middle of the oven until the knife comes out clean, approximately 40 minutes. You can then turn it out of the pan without much fuss.

Recommend serving with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Notes

Cake has 2242 calories. If 10 pieces, 224.2 cal/piece. 15 pieces = 150 calories/slice.

It's not terribly sweet, but very dark and moist, so it makes a nice finish for people who don't have an all-consuming need to eat SUGAR all the time (er, and I liked it too.) Plus gingerbread feels healthier than chocolate.

Next time, I'm going to try it with pumpkin. Will keep you updated.

Curried Lentil and Spinach Stew

Based (very loosely) off this recipe from epicurious.com.

Ingredients:
2 tsp margarine
1 T garlic
1 onion
3 tsp curry powder
1 tsp Cayenne pepper
2.5 c. water
2 packets bullion
2 c. spinach (approx.)
1 c. lentils
1 tin chickpeas (approx. 2.5 cups)
1/2 T. brown sugar

Methodology:

1. Chop the onion thinly. Saute margarine and garlic in pan, add onion and mix until starting to look cooked. Add curry and pepper.
2. Add water and bullion and spinach. When the spinach is wilted and the water is beginning to simmer, add the chickpeas and lentils.
3. Cook until lentils are done, adding more water as necessary. Add brown sugar, salt, peper, etc.

Makes 5 1 cup servings, approximately 145.5 calories/serving.

Notes:

This was really good. Also it takes a while, and was probably the wrong recipe to choose after a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu work out that left me feeling like I'd been hit with rolling pins for 2 hours. I am covered with bruises, and I was ready to eat my own arm off by the time the cooking was done.

I threw in some mushrooms (the sad remains of pasta sauce experiments from last week) and used half red onion, half yellow. I also used spinach instead of Swiss Chard or Kale because I was bumming around the market after practice (looking, I'm sure, like I'd just been mugged in a back alley) and I didn't want to muck around trying to decide wtf Swiss Chard is.) It turned out well. 2/7 on the disaster index, only because of my own idiocy in choosing it tonight instead of some other, less hungry time. I suggest serving with pita or whole wheat bread.

Greek Salad Pita Sandwiches

Adapted from this recipe I found on Epicurious.com:

Ingredients:
1.5 T olive oil
1 T balsamic vinegar
1.25 c. tomatoes (chopped or canned. Let's face it, this is Wisconsin in winter, canned is the only thing that's not going to taste of cardboard.)
1.25 c. diced cucumbers (this was accidental. I chopped too much.)
1 c. chopped red onion (equally accidental.)
1 c. chopped green pepper
1/2 c. Italian parsley. Or whatever parsley. It's parsley, who cares.
1/2 c. feta (I used reduced fat feta, which I didn't know existed. Yay.)

Methodology:
1. mix olive oil and vinegar.
2. add the veggies. mix. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. put in a pita bread and serve.

Notes:
*There was a debate (in my head) as to what kind of pita bread to get: flat is more authentic, but more calorie-heavy. Eventually I went with the pre-cut whole wheat pitas, which are 80 calories/half.

*The raw onion was really strong, and probably my least favorite thing about this. For tomorrow I'm gonna try stir frying it with some garlic before I stuff the pitas, which should help a little with the eye-watering quality it has now.

*As made above, makes about 5.5 cups. I assume 1 c = 1 serving, so a serving (with pita) is about 200 calories. It's really hard to fit that much in half a pita, though, so you could experiment with stuffing them less and having 2. That would be daring.

*If I had fresh mint and/or basil, I'd put those in.

Disaster rating: 4/7; edible, but I'm not incredibly eager to try it again. Lots of leftovers though.

ETA (17 Nov 07): stir fried leftovers with garlic. Much improved.

Thai-style Cabbage Noodles (annotated)

Another recipe from my days in Asia:

Thai-style Cabbage Noodles - a fusion cuisine experiment

Cabbage noodles are notable for being incredibly simple to make - basically you saute some cabbage, add it to noodles, salt and pepper it, and you're done. So what happens when we needlessly complicate the procedure by making instead a pad thai type dish with cabbage? Deliciousness.

[Cabbage noodles are a Hungarian recipe, for the record, and it has already been modified to be vegan (Hungarians traditionally put some sort of meat in it, I believe, but the friend I got it from was a vegan, so that's how I learned to make it. Also, I don't eat meat, so it's kind of a moot point. --E]

Stuff you need:
2 tomatoes
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
some mushrooms [I tended to use dried shitakes, since they are better than almost anything in the world. Straw mushrooms would also be good. --E]
a chili pepper or two [I have a heavy hand with the peppers. For the record. --E]
pad thai sauce or mushroom sauce or oyster sauce or hoysin sauce - mushroom/oyster is more authentic and harder to find/less vegetarian. I used pad thai sauce. [At the time I was looking for these things, I had spent the day trying to explain to a woman in a marketplace in Vietnamese that I wanted sauce from Thailand for noodles, which was of course confusing. These things can all be found at an Asian grocery in the US, and you don't have to speak Vietnamese/Chinese/Thai/whatever to get them. --E]
soy sauce mmmmm [At the time I wrote many of these recipes, I was living in a very warm climate, which means that I tended to put a lot of salt on my food, since I craved it like nothing else. You should be careful before you follow suit in more temperate climes. --E]
salt
about a quarter of a cabbage - more or less to taste [Either regular green or "napa" (白菜) will work. I believe I originally used a green cabbage. --E]
rice noodles [Medium to thin is best. --E]
1 cup of water

Methodology

1. Cut up the veggies, heat up some oil in a pan and drop in the garlic, the mushrooms, and the pepper. Let it saute until it smells delicious. Do not look away, they will burn. The Thai way of dealing with garlic is basically to smack it with the knife and then cut it up still in the wrapper and fry it also still in the wrapper, producing something a bit crunchier than normal. I kind of like it, and it saves the hassle of peeling garlic, but you can totally do it however you want.

2. Add in the onion and the cabbage. Cook them until the cabbage begins to wilt and take up less space. Add the tomatoes.

3. When everything is looking pretty good, or when you are tired of wrestling with the damn bottle of pad thai sauce (that stuff is worse than ketchup, to get it to come out) add about a tablespoon of pad thai sauce and about two tablespoons of soy sauce. Mix it in. Add salt if you want. You could also add brown sugar or chili paste if you had/wanted those things.

4. Add the rice noodles and dump in the water. It will bubble around for a while - keep it on medium-high heat and stir a lot. When you can cut the noodles with the edge of the spatula, it's done (alternatively, when they are not crunchy to taste). Add additional stuff (salt/chili/pepper/soy sauce/pad thai sauce/sugar) as you want. Serve.

Spicy Lentils and Tomatoes

Ho-hum. Not a fortnight after coming out against the combination of lentils and tomatoes, I find myself cooking them. But as this isn't lentil stew, I think I can let it slide. In fact, I'd call this a faux lentil curry.

Ingredients:
1 c. brown lentils
1 (small) tin (2.5 c, I think) diced tomatoes
1 small onion, chopped
1.25 c. mushrooms, chopped
margarine
garlic
spices (salt, pepper, curry powder, cumin, turmeric, hot pepper)

Method:
1. Put 1 c. lentils in a pan with 2 c. water and a bit of curry powder. Turn on and let it cook.

2. In a wok or other large pan, melt the margerine and the garlic. Add the mushrooms and onion and saute, adding spices until the veg are carmelized. You can add some juice from the tomatoes to deglaze the pan. When it's done, turn it off and wait for the lentils. They probably won't take long.

3. Add the lentils to the onions and mushrooms. Mix. Add the tomatoes. Cook until everything is warm. Season with curry, cumin, turmeric, etc. Serve with hot sauce and parmesan cheese.

Serves ~4, 100 calories/serving. Also has lots of protein. Yay.

Comments:
It's good. I wanted something filling and low-calorie after my day of weird eating (I went home, so wound up grazing a lot. How do you count the calories in one piece of broccoli?) Still, it's not quite curry. If I were a better person, I would make up my own curry powder instead of using the stuff that I bought pre-mixed, and I would use butter instead of margarine. Also I would probably add a bit of brown sugar. Still, I like it.

Lentil Stew

I tried the lentil stew again, with a slightly different recipe:

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato
1 small onion
1/2 large green bell pepper
1/2 c. brown rice
1/2 c. lentils
1/3 c. orzo
garlic
~1/2 T. margarine
1 packet vegetable bullion
spices to taste (suggested: salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, chili powder)

The methodology is about the same as this version: put garlic and margerine in pan, add veg and bullion powder, add rice and lentils with 2 c. water and cook, add orzo, spice, eat. The major differences are that I put on hot sauce and cheddar cheese instead of parmesan and served it with whole wheat toast.

People are of two minds about tomatoes in lentil soup, with Dan and Claire coming down on the for side and myself on the against. I'd have added turmeric if I had any, though. Also possibly curry powder or its constituents (garam marsala, cinnamon, etc).

Yay. Makes about 6 servings, 150 calories each.

Khoai Lang voi sot ca ri cua Em

From the archives, another Vietnam-composed recipe. This makes a biiig pot of stew, and I have no idea how many calories. Add coconut milk (nuoc cot dua) in addition to water for a creamier product.


Ingredients:

3 cloves garlic
3 onions (note: all quantities are "to taste" - I certainly don't have a scale or anything, I just cup up as much as looks right. That said, the recipe as I made it serves at least 8, I think.)
4 yams, small-ish. Mine were kinda ropey. I dunno.
3 potatos, medium-sized.
2 carrots
6 bananas (very small - probably about 1.5 or 2 regular bananas)
peanuts
chili pepper

1. cut everything up into edible-sized pieces. Heat oil. Add garlic and chilli pepper. [if you have something like dried shitakes, you might add them now too. mm, that would be good.]
2. When garlic smells enticing, add onions and stir a while, until they begin to look cooked.
3. Add potatos and yams and carrots. Wait a few moments. Add bananas and peanuts.
4. Put in about 3 inches of water and cover it [add coconut milk at this point if you want]. Walk away and leave it cook, stirring about every 5-7 minutes or so to keep it from burning. When the veg is cooked, turn down the heat and add curry powder, paprika, cinnamon, salt, etc until it is spicy enough for whatever purposes you may have.
5. Serve with more peanuts on top, with soy sauce optional. Mmm, soy sauce.

That's it. It's really easy, probably requires about 40 minutes cooking time on a regular stove (ours is a small dragon and doesn't hold with that "cooking time" nonsense. This cooked in about 15 minutes total.

You may want to add more root vegetables if you can find them - turnips, parsnips, whatever. Or plantains. That might be fun. I think it might be nice with apple too, but apples here are expensive and not really great.

Bun Chay Hue

I wrote this recipe while I was visiting a friend in Vung Tau. I did not actually enjoy Vung Tau much, but it was nice to be able to cook.

It was originally supposed to be a Vietnamese dish called Bun Bo Hue, except vegetarian, "So I can't put bo (beef) in it," I told the woman in the market.

"Then it's not Bun Bo Hue," she said. But it is good. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 carrot
2 potatoes
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
2-3 spring onions (scallions? yes.)
hot pepper to taste
lemon grass
various herbs - basil, mint, cilantro, also banana flower stalks if you can get them (they're a lovely purple colour), turmuric, ginger
1 block tofu (firm/Chinese preferably, cut into smallish cubes and fried)
1 kg bun noodles (if you cannot get bun, rice noodles will probably work.)*

1. Cut up the tofu and (stir) fry it until it's crispy on the outside. Set aside.

2. Cut up the carrot, hot pepper, potatoes, spring onions, cilantro, basil and mint. Fill a big pot with water (about as much as you want to have soup - maybe 2/3 full? 1/3+1/4? I don't know.) Add the veg and the herbs and some salt. Bruise the lemon grass and stick it in. Leave it to become stock, stirring occasionally. You could use cabbage too I guess. Whatever floats your boat. Or you could cheat and use bullion. If I were making it again in the US I probably would.

3. Cut up the onion, garlic, turmeric, and ginger. Put a smallish (omelet-type pan) on the stove and add oil. Put in some spices (I've no idea what they were, since they were mostly unlabeled. Lets pretend one was anatto. Another one was cinnamon (that's not pretend, that one I know.) Stir them around in the oil a bit, then add the onion/garlic/turmeric/ginger. Stir fry that until it smells very nice and then scoop it out (with a slotted spoon) and plop it into the soup (which should be coming to a boil around now) leaving the oil behind.

4. Put the tofu in the omelet pan and mix it around. You may wish to salt it. And don't forget to keep stirring the soup!

5. Add some salt and soy sauce to the soup, it's getting lonely. Take out the lemon grass, it has done its task (this is why you BRUISED it instead of chopping it up, right?)

6. Turn off the omelet pan. If you are using rice noodles, add them to the soup. If you have fresh (pre-cooked) bun, put a handful in each bowl that you are going to serve.

7. When noodles are ready, add the tofu, salt, pepper, soy sauce, etc. to the broth.

8. Serve in a bowl with chopped up greens on it (basil, mint, banana stems, sprouts if you want, etc) and hot sauce and soy sauce as desired. Yay.

I think it's quite good, though if I had some vegetable bullion that would be slightly better - make a richer broth. Try not to eat the bits of hot pepper, they're quite hot.

*Note on bun: these are thin, soft Vietnamese noodles sold pre-cooked in the markets here. They're typically translated as "rice vermicelli", so that would be the most obvious substitution to make. Japanese noodles like udon or soba would probably also be interesting - less authentic, but the dish isn't terribly authentic to start with. It's important to remember when using them that they absorb water like nothing else, so don't just plop them all in the soup, as you'll wind up with a pot of slightly salty noodles and nothing else.

Rice Lentil Pilaf

Ingredients:

1 medium-sized sweet potato
1/2 c. brown rice
1/2 c. lentils
1/3 c. orzo
garlic
~2 tsp. margarine
spices to taste

1. Wash lentils and rice, wash and chop sweet potato. Put rice, lentils, garlic, margarine, and sweet potato in a pot with 2 c. water. Bring it to a boil, then turn it down and cover, stirring occasionally.
2. After about 10 minutes, add the orzo and more water.
3. Leave it alone until it's cooked, about another 10 minutes. BUT BE CAREFUL: if you are using a thin bottomed sauce pan (as I was) it is likely to burn as the water cooks off, so be careful and keep an eye on it (like I didn't).
4. Season with salt, pepper, Cayenne pepper, paprika. Serve with Parmesan cheese.

Yay. Makes about 5 servings, 150 calories each.

Pad Thai

I am in a hurry, but here is Pad Thai for Daniel and Claire:

Ingrediants:
half a block of tofu
7 oz of rice noodles
oil
garlic
about 1/3 c. green onions, cut up into appetizing lengths
1/2 T. brown sugar
2 T. soy sauce
3 T. mushroom sauce (or veg stir fry sauce is what I think the bottle calls it. It's still mushroom sauce.)
1 egg, beaten
some bean sprouts
3 T. water

1. Put oil in pan and heat with garlic until it smells nice (you can use vegetable oil, canola oil, sesame oil, it doesn't much matter). Slice the tofu into small, thinnish slices and stirfry until it turns brown.
2. This is where you'd add meat if you were using meat. But I don't.
3. Mix in a bowl the water, soy sauce, sugar, and mushroom sauce. Set aside.
4. When the tofu is cooked, put in the egg and scramble it around.
5. Add the soy sauce-sugar mixture.
6. Put in the noodles. Add some water and cover until cooked. You may need to add more water, so keep it on hand.
7. When noodles are cooked, readjust the seasoning; I recommend adding more sugar, soy sauce, and probably some hot pepper too. You may also want salt.
8. Add bean sprouts and onions and turn off heat. Garnish with ground peanuts, chilli powder, brown sugar, more bean sprouts, and lime juice to taste.


Easy peasy, right? Serves about 4, roughly 250 calories/serving.

When readjusting for more people, remember to cut the tofu thin. Cooking the rice noodles seperately may be necessary.

I'm off to work.

(This morning when I tried to post this, blogger said, "Do you mean DELORT?" and ate it, but now I find it exists again in whole form. Weird.)

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm transferring some older posts over here before I shut down my other blog, because I don't want to lose them (and I like the utility of having recipes online so I can access them from other people's houses, which seems to be where I do most of my cooking.

So, this recipe was adapted from Cook's online.

1 c. margerine. Suppose butter would also work. Room temp or fridge temp, not frozen.
3/4 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
(cinnamon and nutmeg to taste)
1 1/2 c. flour
2 c. oatmeal
lots of chocolate chips. The recipe called for "12 oz. semi-sweet" but I pretty much threw in handfuls of whatever was lying about until it was about the right ratio of cookie dough to chips.

Preheat oven to 375* F. Mix everything in order (whisk is good, pastry cutter also would be useful for the initial mixing of the butter). Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheet, cook for 10 minutes.

Notes: I made them rather large - scooped with a teaspoon but I couldn't really make them small, and I got 45 cookies. I cut the salt a bit because of the margerine, but in retrospect I wouldn't do that again. Use a biggish bowl if you're mixing them by hand, because it comes out to be quite a lot to mix. A mix of milk and semi-sweet chocolate is nice if you're not vegan (I will try this without eggs next time maybe). I can't think of any more notes at the moment.

They were quite tasty and well received, except by my youngest brother who claimed I had adulterated good chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal. I told him he was free to stop eating them, and he said, "Right," and kept on. I'm not giving much weight to his critique under the circumstances.

(originally posted 8/8/07)

We're all recipe blogging now

Except for me, because I am recipe-comicing.

I will eventually post some more stuff, but not now, because I've been sitting down for too long today.

FAQ

I wasn't ever ever ever going to do this, but then one day I realized that I enjoy reading a little background information about the people behind blogs I often visit. And as I do get a fair number of random hits from those who don't know me, I thought it might be worthwhile to kludge something together.

Who are you?

Em is fine. I'm a writer and freelance philosopher currently living in Wisconsin, where I do a lot of things including cooking, running, karate, writing, over-thinking things, and drawing comics.

That's not a picture of you at the top, is it?

Well spotted. That's a picture I took in Singapore.

You don't talk much about yourself on here. Why is that?

Like many writers I have the distinct sense that, as Stephen King put it, when I open my mouth, my guts fall out. Add that to the feeling that my life wouldn't be of particular interest to anyone else, and you get one tongue-tied blogger. I'm not saying my life isn't interesting, mind, but do you really want to read about the time my cat threw up on top of the refrigerator? I didn't even want to have lived through that, let alone have to relive it here.

Are you really a writer?

Why yes, yes I am. I have written three and a half novels, and I do freelance work. If you are an agent or publisher interested in my novel, please email me at ehlupton(AT)gmail(DOT)com.

I am strangely intrigued by your writing here. Where can I find more of it?

I write and draw a comic, called "Em oi!", which can be found here. I also occasionally post book reviews to GoodReads.com.

My goodness me, this is exciting. I wish to communicate with you!

Well, feel free to leave a comment here on the blog, or email me at the address above.

Do you care to say a few words about your recipes?

I look at a recipe as a framework to improvise around, much the way a jazz musician might view a scale. I often cook while exceedingly hungry (i.e., post-workout) or with limited ingredients, so I tend to make changes and/or cut corners.

My recipes are all vegetarian (some are vegan, or can be easily veganized), and tend to be low fat and low calorie. I don't like cooking with eggs all that much, and I don't use a ton of oil. My diet is primarily fruits and vegetables, with some whole grains and dairy thrown in. I've been a vegetarian for nearly twelve years now, and I think the way I eat is pretty awesome. I also tend to cook Asian or "pan-Asian" dishes, since I've spent a lot of time living in and traveling around the area and I like the food a lot. Also, I tend to like things spicy. Fair warning.

If you have any comments about recipes, feel free to post them or email me.