Yellow Tomato and Parsley Sauce over Cous Cous

Tomatoes are not as good this year as last, but the "fresh from the farmers market" kind are still wonderful. So is farmer's market parsley which to my mind has far more taste than supermarket produce.

I sliced up a bunch of yellow plum tomatoes and a huge yellow heirloom tomato that really had no taste and was kind of watery. No matter. It still is fresh and we do add olive oil.

Yellow Tomato and Parsley Sauce over Cous Cous
6 plum tomatoes -yellow
a big heirloom tomato -also yellow
1 onion chopped into small pieces.
1/4 cup olive oil
3 smashed garlic cloves
1 teaspoon of sugar...not too much.
two or three tablespoons of fresh fresh Italian flat leaf parsley. (The curly parsley will not work for this dish)
a little salt, a little pepper

2 cups of cous cous
2 cups of boiling water.

Chop up the tomatoes into bite sized pieces. For instance the plum tomato would be cut into sixths.
Chop up the onion.
Heat the oil in a pan and add the smashed garlic but do not brown.
Add the onion and lower heat to medium. Saute until translucent.
Add the tomato and cook for 10 minutes or more.
Add the parsley. Add some whole leaves to make it look pretty.

Boil up two cups of water and when boiled, turn off the heat. Add the cous cous, stir and cover.

In five minutes the yellow sauce will be done and the cous cous will be soaked.

Fluff up the cous cous with a fork.
Spoon it on a plate and add the sauce mixture.

This was really good and my first husband devoured it. So did my second offspring.

Vegan For A Day

It went very well. Blueberries for breakfast. Snacking on baby carrots, apples, nectarine. Cherry tomatoes and a teeny bag of peanuts for lunch. I made a sauce from farmers market tomatoes for dinner which I put over cous cous. I did a vegan day and it was all fresh and most of it was raw.

Also one thing I want to make clear about my rudeness to the nurse at the hospital yesterday. I did make nice. I confessed to her that I realize I am the patient from hell and then tried to be friendly.

We will see how tomorrow goes. As long as food is fresh and good, it is so easy being a vegan. But come the fall and winter when there is little local fresh food, there is not much incentive.

The Ol' Ticker

From 5 PM on August 18th to 6PM on August 19th, I was in a local emergency room with chest pains. The bottom line is that whatever caused the pain, was not related to my heart.
Good to know. But it got me thinking.

Actually, my vegan offspring got me thinking. Let us get one thing clear here, I will not become a vegan and have no desire to become a vegan. However I am thinking that on certain days, I can become vegan-ish. Or vegan-like.

When I returned home from the hospital, I did not eat the Locatelli cheese that usually accompanies my pasta. I did not put milk on my blueberries. I am thinking that maybe I should not have coffee today. I love my Dunkin Donuts with lots of skim milk, but maybe I will not drink it today. Maybe today, I will boil a potato and a zucchini and eat a tomato for lunch and have a nice salad with olive oil and balsamic for dinner. Maybe that will be good. I do not know what I will eat tomorrow, but that is what I will eat today. Or something like it.

So let me tell you what they offered me in the "Rapid Diagnostic Unit" (kind of like a hospital ward - where they give you a real bed, will feed you and attend to you and be right there for you, but is not officially a "room".) Would it shock you to learn that the patient with a suspected cardiac event gets the following for breakfast: two muffins, coffee, apple juice, cornflakes with whole milk? I called the nurse in. I pushed that buzzer and when she came I said, "I do not eat muffins." ( I neglected to say that I devour cake, but it is true, I do not eat muffins, especially muffins wrapped in celophane.) I handed her the muffins and she took them away. I didn't touch the other stuff either. I just starved.

I may be the patient from hell, but would you not also be angry that this is what they give to people who are sick? This stuff will make them sicker.

So, for the day - today only - I will see what I can do to make sure that food made wholly from plant material enters my body. And this does not include Oreo cookies or coke.

If I get stuck for a recipe, I can always come back to this blog. I will let you know how TODAY goes.

not about food

A colleague of mine came to see me today about something that made her wince.

It seems that the 12 year old daughter of one of the clerks in her department came to the office on "take your daughter to work day". The girl then went back to school and wrote a very sweet essay about her experience and received an A+ on it, complete with a nice remark from the teacher. The mom was so proud, she showed the essay to my colleague today.

But this A+ was on a paper that was filled (my colleague repeated the word twice) with spelling and grammatical errors and incomplete or run-on sentences.

My colleague was astonished that any teacher would give this paper an A+. She offered that it might have been wise for the teacher to tell the child that the content of the paper was A+, but that she needed to fix the sentences and spelling in order to receive the A+.

She said that the teacher was doing a disservice to this child. When will the child begin to write and spell properly if not in 6th grade?

This is a case of LIBERALISM GONE WRONG!

It was very upsetting to me that this is allowed in inner city schools. Teachers think that they are shoring up the self esteem of kids by giving them good grades (and that is another story entirely-grades are a problem in and of themselves). But does this really boost their self esteem?

Do you know what boosts self esteem? Meeting a challenge. Being given something to do and getting it done. Knowing that you can meet expectations. Doing something hard. This is what boosts self esteem. Not being lied to.

Any thoughts?

Peas and Pasta

I made the peas and pasta dish last night and my first husband loved it. Here is how I made it. This recipe serves two with a light lunch for one left over. (but it never made it to lunch because I sneaked it later)

PEAS AND PASTA
1 onion chopped into small pieces
olive oil 2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup
chopped up parsley. a handful. not too much.
1 box frozen peas
2 teaspoons sugar
cooked pasta (I made it with fusilli, but I think a flat linguini would be better. (1/3 to 1/2 of a box)

Saute the onion until translucent.
add the parsley for a minute or two.
Add the peas and sugar then cook for about 5 minutes or more depending on how soft you like them.
add the cooked pasta
Add some pasta water to make sure you have a sauce-y consistency.
salt and fresh pepper finish it off.

Besides Pasta, What is There?

Pasta is so versatile that entire cookbooks have been written on the various ways to cook it. For instance, you can put the following on pasta for incredible eating experiences: (these are not recipes, but if you ask, I will provide. Most of these can be improvised if you have any cooking experience at all.)
1. Olive oil and garlic
2. Frozen peas and onion sauteed with a tiny bit of sugar
3. Basil and parsley pesto
4. Sauteed mushrooms with parsley
5. Sauteed Zucchini with onion and purchased pasta sauce (A&P Masters Choice of course)
6. Swiss chard and mushrooms

Now that you have some idea of the many things you can put ON pasta, know that another grain can be used, maybe without the satisfying quality of pasta, but good tasting in its own way: Polenta.

Polenta is simply cornmeal, but purchasing the box of Italian polenta is better because it tends to be sold as an "instant". The word, "instant" is a bit of a misnomer because it still takes 5 minutes of continuous stirring. Read the directions on the box carefully because Polenta can overcook and become hard in a flash. It can be cooked so that it is the consistency of mashed potatoes or using a TINY BIT more water, the consistency of cream of wheat. I prefer the consistency of mashed potatoes. That way, any of the juices from the veggies loosen up the polenta and it is really good.

I would not, under any circumstances, ever purchase the cooked polenta sold in the shape of a sausage preserved forever in a plastic casing sitting on the grocery shelf. I bought one once and threw it out at first taste.

ZUCCHINI AND ONION WITH A&P MARINARA SAUCE
olive oil-you can use from as little as 1 tablespoon to 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) if you use less, make sure the heat is low to give the moisture from the vegetables time seep out.
garlic 3 or 4 cloves smashed
1 onion sliced thin
4 fresh zucchini sliced into thin rounds
1 jar of marinara sauce
bay leaf

Heat a deep frying pan and put in the oil and the garlic. Heat for a bit, but do not let the garlic brown.
Add the onions and cook until wilted.
Add the zucchini and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add the marinara sauce with a bay leaf and cook for about 15 minutes until zucchini is completely wilted and translucent. The sauce will also be a little thicker.
Put over pasta or polenta or even brown rice.

Twenty Minute Tomato Sauce and Deceitfulness

Before I get into the tomato sauce I make, I want to warn people of an insidious and treacherously deceitful practice that I uncovered last weekend. You must be on the lookout for this whenever you shop.

Many pasta boxes are no longer 16 ounces! They are the same size box, but the label says 13.75 oz. DO NOT BUY THEM. Look for the DeCecco boxes instead. All of DeCecco brand pastas were 16 oz. at the supermarket, whereas other brands had a smattering of 13 oz boxes among the 16 oz boxes. TRICKERY!!!!!!.
(DeCecco is really one of the best brands out there. In fact, you should only buy DeCecco whole wheat pastas.)
We must be vigilant and insist that DeCecco not change their sizes as well. So copy the following letter and send it to DeCecco.
Send this to
customerservice@dececco.it

Dear De Cecco,
Many pasta manufacturers are downsizing their boxes of pasta. Please do not follow their lead. Please keep your pasta in boxes of 16 oz. or 453 grams.
Yours truly,

Avoid also Stop and Shop food stores. Their prices are outrageous and that is where I found most of the downsized pasta. Stop n Shop is owned by some huge international conglomerate. Don't shop there.

20 minute tomato sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
3 or 4 garlic cloves crushed or put through a press
1 medium onion finely chopped
1 can (28 oz.) of whole plum shaped tomatoes _put in a bowl first and chop coarsley
1 teaspoon of dried basil
2 teaspoons sugar
salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan
add the garlic DO NOT LET IT BROWN
Add the onion and let it wilt.
Then, add the tomatoes and all the juice
Add the sugar
Add the dried basil
Let it cook for about 20 minutes
season with salt and pepper.

Pour this over pasta or polenta. Polenta is so easy to make. Buy instant polenta in the supermarket and it cooks in 5 minutes. So good too. Do not forget to make some green thing like broccoli or spinach or kale or swiss chard. Corn does not have the protein of wheat so you have to get some more nutrients into your body.

Greening the Pot

My First Husband and I went out to dinner last night at a new Greek restaurant in town.I had three side dishes because they only had sauteed veggies for a non meat entree. (Was not in the mood for fish)
So I ordered from the side dish section of the menu and had the most delicious spinach and rice dish with tomato called spanakorizo. MMMM. I also had steamed chickory with olive oil poured over the top with lemon wedges. Along with stuffed grape leaves. Having eyes bigger than my stomach, I took half of it home. But I realized I had a whole bunch of greens for dinner. Spinach, chickory, grape leaves. Is that why I got up at 6 this morning, did a load of laundry and hand washed a buch of handwashables before sitting here?

The steamed chickory reminded me of using greens in any saute or soup. My mother used to do this:

Soup
3 cloves garlic
finely chopped onion - if you are in the mood for onion.
olive oil. My mom used a lot, I use less. I think 1/4 cup is good.
can of beans (white kidney, white navy, butter beans, cranberry beans, cannelinni, whatever)
water
bunch of greens, any type - escarole, chickory, kale, Swiss chard, spinach - washed and chopped
salt & pepper


Saute the garlic and onion (if you are in the mood) in the olive oil. Do not brown, just cook over medium low heat until it is really wilted.
Open a can of beans and rinse them if you want. Most times I do.
Put the can of beans in the garlic olive oil and (maybe) onion.
Let it heat up.
Add some water so that it is soupy...maybe a cup maybe more.
Add the greens.
Cook until tender.....depending on the greens. Just keep tasting and if seems done, it is.

It is important to eat leafy greens if you are a vegan. Did you know that whole grains limit the absorption of iron, calcium and zinc.? Not to say that you should not eat them. Just don't rely on them exclusively. Keep that diet really varied and take some supplements.

Trying Hard to Eat Well ......Not Succeeding

Eating well is hard. By eating well, I do not mean eating expensively. I mean eating foods that have real nutrition in them.
Convenience (so called) foods did not become the norm because making it yourself is so easy. In fact, in the 60's there was a famous cookbook called "The I Hate To Cook Cookbook" and the author, Peg Bracken, became famous for her easy recipes. She relied on using bullion cubes and canned things along with chopped onion or celery to give some sense of freshness to her dishes. Cooking has always been difficult and time consuming but now it is harder still because working full time and getting a proper meal on the table takes energy that may be depleted by 6 PM. Then again I am not a spring chicken. OOOPs-this is a vegan blog. Sorry about the chicken analogy.

As I said, eating well is hard. The cooking is the easy part. The tedious part is all the preparation. Take Gypsy Soup for instance. It only cooks in about 20 minutes. But it is 45 minutes of cutting stuff up. It also uses canned stock and canned tomatoes.

Let me just say something about canned vegetable stock vs. fresh.
Use the canned.
Making fresh vegetable stock is just too much work for so little outcome.

So in endeavoring to eat well, you are going to have to compromise somewhere or else spend the whole of your life cooking.

It is 10 PM and I am off to bed. I will post two recipes tomorrow or the next day. They will be Gypsy Soup and Lentil Soup. Both are scrumptious.

Health on a plate

Tabouleh
Lebanese "parsley on steroids" salad.

When I was in Lebanon I made tabouleh everyday. We ate it for breakfast lunch and dinner. And I believe to this day that that is why I was not sick during the time I was in Lebanon (December to last day of April) nor was I sick for two years after! Not only did I eat all that parsley, but everything else we ate was very fresh. Because I was there during Lent when the Lebanese eat no meat at all for 6 weeks, we ate vegetarian. But it wasn't the vegetarian part of the diet that was so healthy, it was the tabouleh. Or maybe it was both.

Let's think parsley.
It has tremendous amounts of vitamin C. Two tablespoons give you about 17% of your daily need for vitamin C. Those same two tablespoons give you over 150% of your daily need for vitamin K. (If you have any blood issues, this is a winner) Parsley also has lots of vitamin A. All this nutrition in a mere two tablespoons and a measley 2 calories! (well you do add olive oil to the recipe so calorie count is way over 2)

There was a time when I used to juice parsley and drink it. It has an extremely strong taste and it was hard to drink without something added to it. While parsley juice is good for you, it is tough on the palate. But tabouleh-now tabouleh you can eat everyday and you just get to love more and more. The trouble is that tabouleh is trouble to make. But in Lebanon it is made so often that it is nothing more than a routine daily chore.

here is a recipe for tabouleh. Real easy if you have a food processor for the parsley. Everything is cut up really tiny.

Put about 2 cups of water up to boil first.

2 fresh bunches of curly leaf parsley. Very green. Very stiff-not limp.
1/2 cup Bulgar wheat (I have seen this in regular supermarkets in the ethnic section,
would also look in Whole Foods or those so called nutrition type stores.)
3 or 4 scallions - maybe more depending on your taste. You could also use 1/2 of a small onion.
2 to 4 tomatoes - this also depends on your taste and strength of your cutting arm. I use 2.
1/4 cup olive oil - or less if you do not want to use so much.
1 heaping tablespoon of dried mint
1/2 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp cinnamon
juice from 2 fresh lemons if you do not have fresh lemons- do not make this recipe.
salt
pepper

Put the bulgar in a bowl and pour boiling water over it. Let it sit for 1/2 hour.
Get the sharpest knife you have and scrunch the well washed parsley in your hand so that only a bit is peeking out of your fist. Then make the smallest of slices so that the parsley is like tiny green confetti. Keep moving the parsley out of your fisted fingers so that a little bit shows and continue to make tiny slices. Or stick it in a food processor. Put it in a big bowl.
Now cut the tomatoes so that they have tiny pieces. Put it in the bowl.
Now cut up the scallions into tiny pieces. Put it in the bowl.
Add the olive oil, mint, allspice,cinnamon, salt, pepper and lemon juice.
Mix.
Eat it western style with a fork or get pita, place a good amount on top of the pita and tear away the sides of the pita to scoop up the tabouleh in the center. Or you can eat it scooped up with lettuce leaves.

Stay healthy. I love you.

Who put the dip in the dip de dip de dip?

I made two vegan dips for my party the other night and the vegan in the family did not eat them in the amount that I thought they should have been eaten. Not to worry. Instead of eating them as a dip, I ate them with a spoon the next day. In fact, my first husband and I took turns eating them with our spoons while standing up next to the refrigerator. But the vegan in the family was too busy singing to do any eating.
Both were crudite dips - not for potato chips or tostitos.
I took a recipe from Jane Brody and changed it a bit so that it was vegan. I thought it was delicious.
3/4 cup of lentils (I used split red lentils)
3 cups water
olive oil
Big onion sliced thin
2 Tablespoons of pine nuts
salt
pepper

First, heat a frying pan and when hot, put in the oil. Next put in the sliced onions and turn the heat to LOW. Cook very slowly for at least 45 minutes until the onions are nice and limp and brown.
While the onions are cooking, put the water in a pot with the lentils and cook for 35 minutes over medium low heat. Drain.
Put the onions and lentils in a food processor with the pine nuts, salt and pepper. Pulse it a few times until it is all well blended.

I will return. Going to see Melinda Page Hamilton on a new show called Castle on ABC. Melinda is my favorite actress.

Ramblings

Is anyone reading my blog? I am feeling a bit lonely out here in cyberspace.
This week I made sofrito which is a Puerto Rican flavoring something like the Italian battuto. I also flavored some olive oil with achiote seeds and then cooked the world's most flavorfull rice. Oh how good it was, but it had 1/4 cup of achiote seed flavored olive oil in it. My first husband and I inhaled it.
(My first husband is actually my only husband and we are still married. But calling him that makes me feel modern and movie star-ish)

My first husband also devoured the beans cooked in the sofrito mixture. There is just something about cilantro and its stronger cousin, "culantro" or "recaito". It has a warm flavor that intoxicates me.

Sofrito
two onions cut in big chunks
whole head of garlic peeled
4 to 5 peppers - mix cubanelle and red peppers
whole bunch of cilantro washed thoroughly
4 leaves of culantro or sometimes called recaito
two fresh plum tomatoes

Blend it all together in a processor and put 1/2 cup portions into zip lock sandwhich bags. You can freeze them. When you need to use it, just rip open the bag and throw the frozen sofrito in the pot. It will melt quickly in whatever you are cooking.

Last night, I threw the frozen sofrito into a pot with two cans of vegetable stock and threw a big can of black beans into it. Heated it through and poured it over some rice. OMG!!! I thought it was too salty but my first husband did not. So it is a matter of taste. If you cannot find a big can of beans, use two smaller cans. or soak the beans overnight if you have time.

Quick Broccoli and Pasta

PASTA WITH BROCCOLI

There was a great article on cooking pasta in a small amount of water in the New York Times this week. I have been doing this since forever because I cannot wait for a big pot of water to boil and I never thought that my pasta was inferior to that cooked in the correct amount of water. So what if the water got paste-y? Never bothered me - or the family. Turns out that when restaurants cook pasta, they cook it in the same water over and over again and the water becomes very flavorful. That is why you add the pasta water to your dish in this recipe.

pot of water - maybe a three or four quart pot
1 huge bunch of broccoli.
salt
1/2 pound of any whole wheat pasta you like. We like penne or fusilli.
1/4 cup olive oil
three cloves garlic smashed or put through a garlic press

Bring a pot of water to the boil. Put some salt in. Throw in the broccoli and cook for 4 minutes. Take out the broccoli, set aside and while water is still boiling throw in the pasta. Cook according to package directions and if the directions say cook from 9 to 11 minutes, for instance, you cook to the least amount of time which would be 9 minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, Chop up the broccoli into small pieces. Put the oil and garlic in a big saute or frying pan over medium heat. Saute the garlic BUT DO NOT LET IT BROWN.
When the oil is hot and the garlic is just starting to sizzle, put in the broccoli and saute for a minute or two. Take the pasta out of the water with pasta tongs or a wire mesh skimmer (sold in Chinese or Asian stores) when done and put it into the frying pan with the broccoli. ADD a ladle full of pasta water so that the oil, water and tiny bits of broccoli act like a sauce for the pasta. Add a bit more water if you think it needs it, but not too much.

Non vegans can add grated Locatelli cheese.

This is a great quick and very tasty dish and if you add even more olive oil when cooking the garlic, it will be even better.

Potato Kibbe

I was in Lebanon during Lent and one of the dishes that I most loved was a meatless variation of a national dish called Kibbe. Kibbe is usually made with lamb, but during Lent, my aunt made it using potatoes.
Last weekend, when my visiting cousin took me around to visit distant cousins that I did not know I had, living not more than 45 minutes from where I live, we started talking about Kibbe Batata (potato kibbe) and my mouth started to water. In Lebanon, in those days, women would sit in front of a large hollowed out marble slab, put all the
ingredients in the cavity and pound it to a fare-thee-well. I think a good food processor would get the same results.




In the interest of full disclosure, I have never made it but I do have a Lebanese cookbook and I have taken this recipe from there. This recipe is from a cookbook I own called, "Foods of the Lebanon" by Cassie Maroun-Paladin published in England by New Holland Press.

6 medium potatoes
11 oz. bulgar wheat (also called cracked wheat -you can find this anywhere now-usually in ethnic aisle of your food store.)
1 onion thinly sliced
4 ounces chopped fresh parsley
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of allspice (if you do not have allspice, you need to get it. Very important in this dish)
1 tbsp dried mint
1/4 cup flour (optional)
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Put the bulgar in a bowl and pour boiling water over it, then let sit for 1/2 hour.
Cook potatoes in their skins in salted water until soft. Peel and mash. Squeeze out water from the bulgar.
Add the bulgar to the mashed potatoes with onion, parsley, spices, mint and salt and pepper. Moisten hands with water and knead mixture well. If mixture is too soft, add flour. Keep kneading until misture is firm. Press mixture into a lightly greased baking tray and cut into diamond shapes. Pour oil over it and bake in 350 degree oven for 40 minutes until golden.

Italian-Arab Goulash

It is actually called, Pepperonata, which is an Italian vegetable stew. But I like to add cous cous to make it middle Mediterranean.

Recipe:

a big eggplant
4 peppers
a huge onion
garlic
olive oil
2 cups plum tomatoes
salt
pepper
sugar
1/3 cup wine
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
1 cup of cous cous

Eggplant One half hour before you are ready to cook, slice a one pound eggplant into four lenthwise sections and salt. Put this in a colander for half an hour. When done, scrape off all the salt and cut into cubes.

Cut up before you are ready to cook, the following veggies:
Onion one really big onion sliced into slivers or up to 3 smaller onions
Garlic two or three cloves of garlic smashed or crushed
Peppers- 2, red, 2 yellow or for those who do not like peppers, 4 cubanelle peppers. (They are the long light green peppers you may see in the supermarket. Their taste is less intense.)
Tomatoes 2 cups of Italian San Marzo tomatoes (from a big can and without the juice). Chop them up into big chunks.

Heat up a dutch oven or a deep frying pan. It has to be at least 12 inches across the bottom.

Olive oil -when the pan is hot, add the olive oil and then the garlic, onions and peppers and cook for about 5 minutes or until they get floppy.
Then add the eggplant. And after about 5 minutes-
Then add the tomatoes
Add some salt and put in some freshly ground pepper to your taste.
Stir it up. Put a lid on it. Lower the heat.
Cook for 15 minutes, stirring it every once in a while.

Wine Put about 1/3 cup of any kind of wine into a measuring cup. Add...
Balsamic Vinegar-about 1/4 cup and mix it up. Add a bit of
Sugar and mix it up some more. Pour it into the pot and stir.
Raise the heat to reduce the liquid. Cook til it is reduced a bit.

Now you can do one of two things. You can take the pot off the stove and serve the peperonata over a bed of cous cous that has been cooked to the package directions. OR
You can add instant cous cous (Near East brand) and stir it into the hot peperonata, cover and let stand for 5 minutes.

adapted from Romagnoli's Table

Immortal Peppers

My mom was Italian. Filetese to be exact. What? You do not know what a Filetese is? A Filetese is a person who comes from the great Italian metropolis of Fileto. Or Filetto. I can never remember. Current population: 300 or so families. But when I was growing up in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, and my family described OTHERS as either being Filetese or not Filetese, I believed Filete to be the capital of Italy.

Whatever. The Filetese were, at least, extremely good cooks and my mom and grandmother were among the best of those.

In the 1960's when I was a student at Penn State University, my mom would send me food during finals week. She would put the hot food in a styrofoam ice bucket, wrapped in layers and layers of newspaper and surrounded that with aluminum foil. Then she would take it to the Martz bus company in Scranton in the morning and eight hours later, I would get a call from the bus station in State College telling me my package had arrived. I would then get in a taxi and pick it up and bring it back to Lyons Hall. It was still very warm!

So many of the girls on my floor loved the food, that I would only get a few bites at best. She would make rigatoni in her special sauce with grated romano on top and send it with a side of peppers sauteed in olive oil. These peppers are the most divine things in the world. Sweet, savory, and never - never enough. They are eaten with fresh Italian bread - torn from the loaf, not cut. They are good hot and they are good cold.

Here is an approximation of my mom's recipe.

At least six peppers and if you have time and a big enough saute pan, you can add more.
Slice them lengthwise in about 6 slices to a pepper.
a clove of garlic
olive oil enough to coat the bottom of the pan very well. Do not be stingy.
Heat the garlic in the oil over medium heat. DO NOT BROWN THE GARLIC. If you do you will have to throw out the garlic and the oil and start over. This, my nephew TJ taught me. In fact, TJ should be writing these recipes, not me.

When the oil is hot, add the peppers. Keep adding peppers as they get smaller and start to wilt. Cook them down until they are completely wilted, browned and fragrant with the escaping sugars. Don't be surprised if this takes about an hour. Keep watching it, making sure that the peppers do not burn, but are nice and brown nevertheless.

When done, pour out the peppers and the oil that is left into a serving plate and then eat the whole thing before anyone has a chance to see you. Sop up all oil with the best Italian bread you can find.

Pastafazoole

One of the very best Italian dishes is Pasta e Fagiloe. We always called it Pastafazoole.
This is the world's tastiest and fastest decently nutritious meal. Recipe serves 4 hungry people or 6 New Yorkers.

Ingredients:
A&P Master's Choice Marinara Tomato Sauce. large size.***
1 can of chick peas
1 box of Whole Wheat pasta. (elbows, penne, or any smallish pasta you like)
pot of water - 4 quarts or larger
salt.

Put the pot of water on the stove. Turn on the heat and add some salt to the water. When the water boils, add the pasta. Cook according to package directions.
When done, drain the pasta reserving 1 cup of pasta water. Return the pasta to the pot.
Pour the whole jar of sauce into the pot.
Heat it up for a minute or two to get the flavors immersed in the pasta.
Serve.

For the non vegans in your life, you can add grated Locatelli Romano cheese. Not Parmesan, please.

Eat this with a small salad and it is a wonderful meal. Garlic bread would also be delicious too.


*** (no other will do-if you cannot find it, do another recipe. Why? Because for my money Master's Choice is the best tomato sauce there is that is not made with meat. It has tomatoes, fresh onion, garlic olive oil and spices. That's it - and you can taste the freshness)

Howdy Everyone

I am not the vegan. I am only the mom of the vegan. Just as the Hockey Mom does not play hockey or the Soccer Mom may not play soccer, this vegan mom supports her offspring by trying to cook good food untarnished by over-processed fake food-like ingredients. I will just take the recipes that were naturally vegan to begin with and post them here.

This is a dish my family likes. I learned it from my aunt who learned it from my Lebanese Grandmother (who died before I was born).

Mmmmm'judra (Lentils, rice and onion)

1 cup of lentils washed and picked over
1 cup of brown rice ( If you can, use sweet brown rice but short grain brown rice is good or just
supermarket brown rice will do nicely too.)
6 cups of water
1 big onion sliced lengthwise and paper thin
Olive oil a few tablespoons or enough to cover the bottom of a saute pan.
pinch of cumin
salt

Put the lentils and the rice in a pot with the water, put the lid on. Turn the heat to med high heat til it starts to boil. Then lower the heat. Set your timer to 45 minutes from this point.

In the meantime, slice the onion and add to hot oil in the saute pan. Cook on med. low heat until it is all wilted. When onion is wilted, pour all the oil and the onions into the cooking lentils and rice. Add salt, a pinch of cumin and put the lid back on the pot.

The M'judra will be thick and porridge-like when done. For non-vegans, it can be served with plain whole milk yogurt.

Variations:
We also like to make this with red lentils. Dark green French lentils also are delicious in this dish.