part 2 of Eats Gone By ~ crepage, whizzed up avocado, and unseasonably warm pie

Wee!  So - I'm here drinking my mint & mushroom tea with large slices of ginger dropped into it because I was a little too brave this afternoon and added some (a lot of) questionable sauerkraut to my hummous wrap.  It was worth it at the time... but now I need the tea.  Yeah, white stuff in a sauerkraut jar is no good... 

Anyway.  More old pictures (I swear I'm getting through them, I do!)  I made crepes!  I made buckwheat versions of Veganomicon crepes, and stuffed them full of Columbian red beans with plantain (from Terry's Vegan Latina), some broccoli too, and an avocado-corn-cream sauce that is essentially this recipe that I'd had mentally bookmarked since I went vegan in high school.  Seriously that long ago. (*oouuuuuurrrrrgh.... waveof nauseau happening......RIGHT NOWurg*)  XPPP

cough.  ok better.

Anyway.  avocado cream sauce!  I ate in on pasta first, but it's way more economical to show it here, even if it does look a little like ralf.  tee hee.  I swear it was tasty.

And then I had leftover crepes with sauteed peaches, coarse raw sugar, cranberry jam, and some malted soy drink mixed with enough water to make a sweet cream.  Oh, frugal AND delicious, and even maybe healthy, how 'bout that?  I love dinners that revolve around fructose.

Speaking of which, I made a tiny sweet potato cashew cream pie with a lone spud, because it's just been so damned cold it seems not very weird to make food like this.  Plus, it has a pumpkin seed crust a la Extraveganza, which in my weird mind makes it kinda summery.  And when you pop it in the freezer and eat slices of it cold like spiced ice cream...... *drooooolz*.  Also gives me a chance to use the tiniest fork ever imaginable that I picked up at a garage sale for specific things just like this.  Fairy pie technique!

From now on I make my own thai green curry paste.  Has anyone tried the yellow variety?  I almost did but then I chickened out and returned it for a jar of the classic green, and while it resulted in a slurpily good skillet of hyper-spice, well... I'm still curious about the other variety.  Maybe next time I'll get the yellow (which boasts coriander and white pepper, yum) and just grind up lots of green chiles into it myself.  I ended up throwing like, 3-4 extra thai peppers into this one anyway, cause I kind of like my thai curries to practically send off sparks into the atmosphere.  Anything less and why bother, I say!

Speaking of skillets -- I made the Vcon leek & bean cassoulet finally.  That's how cold it's been around here!  It's mid-June and I'm still checking my bag for extra gloves, just in case... ack.  So on a particularly blustery and charcoal-grey day I decided snap it I'm just gonna make a big old comforting stew and I am SOOOOO glad I did.  It was the perfect antidote to my standard rut of cooking with loads of citrus & spice --- the cassoulet is all.... comfy like a big herbal pillow.  And far too easy to pleasantly spoon down while cuddled up in a blanket reading school work things.  Very very nice...

(oh, and peas/leeks/white beans were replaced with corn/extra onion/black&red beans to good effect)

Enough for now?  Probably... there's red velvet, kittee muffins, cold soba, successful souvlaki rice to come, though.  *phew* 

Oh, what the heck, one more -- I made Scotter Muffins, yay!  I don't remember what variety at all, probably apple and banana and cinnamon swirl.  Gosh, I love muffins, don't you?  They're so balanced, like the medium spectrum between the best of all baked goods.  Or maybe I'm just a fan. ^_^b

But that's life, and this is tofu

Summertime and some are slacking!  That is to say --- oh oh I'm sorry I dropped off the face of the blog-Earth!  I've been pretty busy, writing papers, painting spiders and lettuce leaves, taking t'ai chi, dating someone (yey), still cooking up a storm, and just not really feeling like there's been a good time to blog about it.  But really, it's getting ridiculous... I've lost count of how many photos I have.  Stacks.  And they're getting outdated, I'm forgetting if I used olives or capers in these stuffed tofus for example... at any rate I used Kittee's Method of the Stars to stuff them full of olive-oily spinach, red peppers, and raisins (I think).  Other good things, then breaded them in cornflakes, baked, and ate most of them all chewy-cold out of the fridge - like moment's notice hunger-killers, basically.

Sushi!  But with black rice this time, which is really more of a purple, and taste-wise isn't quite sushi bliss... but it sure is pretty.  I kinda feel like this is sushi with a silk tie on, or something.

And speaking of oceanic treats, my sister and I discovered some fantastic package of salty fried nori in her cupboards.  This stuff is gooooood.  For my money, beats the pants off of potato chips.

Sis thinks so too!

Then for a while I was all in love with med-firm tofu and it's magical ability to become some luxurious (yet low guilt) salad dressing at a moment's notice.  I played around with a few varieties - I tried the Vegan World Fusion Caesar (yum!), I made a kind of ranch, and my favourite was a curried apricot dressing that was very inspired by something from the Millenium cookbook, although I changed it entirely...  I even found the notepad file I wrote the recipe on!  So here it is ----

1/4 lb. med-firm tofu

1-2 dried apricots, soaked well and chopped

1 tsp rice vinegar

1/2 tsp curry powder

1/4 tsp garam masala

1/8 tsp cardamom

pinch of cayenne

1 tsp almond butter

1 tsp canola oil

enough water to thin

Blend!  Blend like yo salad depends on it!  

My favourite part of tofu dressings is putting on so much that you can eat the extra at the bottom with a spoon. :)

Isa's perfect chocolate chip cookies are, by the way, and if you hadn't heard - perfect.  Utterly perfect.  Me and this cookie had a bit of a moment... time stopped outside my window, cars drove softly past and I felt like all the sweet chewy vanill-y mass was just going straight into my heart (forget stomachs).  Good times.  Oh!  And this is only from batch number two.  I made them before, maybe not creaming quite enough so they spread a bit, but obviously still amazing enough to convince me to try again.

Not having ever tried a Madhur Jaffrey recipe I figured I would give it a go, finally.  Her dhal intrigued me in how it has a whole lemon sliced right into it, and it really works!  Totally makes it a different sort of creature than your regular lentil-mash.  I ate it up with --- oh oh oh oh!!  guess what!!!  I got a food processor!  Or at least, an attachment for my new stick blender that my mom got me (love moms!).  I turned veggies into confetti in like, 10 seconds, wow.  Anyway, yeah, I stuffed said veggies (sauted with garlic, mustard seeds, cider vinegar, bit of braggs, maybe a bit of tahini? possibly caraway seeds, too) into a paratha, and then ate the mountain of leftovers too, because it was pretty delicious stuff.  

I also think I'm finally getting the hang of cakes.  Getting the right ratio of textures, flavours, sizes, richnesses, bursts of things, etc.  This was so well-balanced, one of my favourites in recent memory!  It's a chocolate mint cake with minty vanilla buttercream sandwiched between, whipped ganache on top, and loads of little violets, to celebrate spring or some such twee sentiment that surprised me in actually tasting good as well as looking way pretty.  I ended up dipping the extra violet stems in the leftover ganache!  And the cake... was this joyous kind of refreshing melt-in-your-mouth confection that I had (Mwahahaha!) MOSTLY to myself.  Usually I'm the one giving away desserts too soon, but this one was totally mine.  Yum!

*ackdroolzzz*  don't you wish there was taste-o-vision?

east meets my belly

This is just the shot of the leftovers - stuff put into tupperware doesn't win any beauty points.  But the point of this lunch was that it was a bento-ish kind of meal that randomly came together after I poo-pooed the idea of a peanut butter sandwich and started to boil potatoes.  Which I never do, and made me feel festive enough to remember the wasabi tube I had in the fridge, thus wasabi mashed potatoes.  So obviously then I had to try those panko & daikon stuffed mushrooms from the Veganomicon.  Except... I didn't feel like firing up the oven for 6 mushrooms so I made them raw and used bulgur wheat instead of bread crumbs, and added some sweet peppers and Sambal Olek for fun.  

Clearly the asian tofu from Vcon was the third logical step!  Grill pans are great stuff.

It was special because I was taking it to an all-day drawing performance with rather zen-like properties, so it felt very appropriate (albeit not-even-slightly-traditional) to have a cute little themed lunch like this.

I even had one matcha & goji berry scone leftover from the night before!  Double cute.  Not to mention how it looks amazingly like an anatomical heart, which I only noticed after I uploaded the photo!

See?  Awwww.

lemons & the first day of spring!

I'm inspired again!! It happened very suddenly, I think a warm breeze passed through my kitchen and the walls turned sunny-orange in a way I hadn't seen in months, prompting a small whirlwind of culinary tinkering, and I haven't stopped since. I made raviolis, even, which I've always wanted to do! They're roasted beet with rosemary and toasted walnuts, made with wonton skins, so they're not pasta exactly, but I prefer the chewy dumplingness of the skins, actually. Because that way I'm allowed to eat them with my hands. They also coincided with a small disaster that resulted in something wonderful .......

-- my fridge has sucked for years. It's been replaced 3 or 4 times since I've lived here, and each one has been more small, old, fragile and smelly than the last. Have you ever seen a fridge where the freezer was INSIDE the box, and there was only one door? That was mine, until last week when it started to leak freon and smell rather horrifyingly chemical. I tried eating an apple from the crisper and my mouth started to tingle... I didn't repeat that. O_o

The building quickly replaced it, as usual, except that this time - it's a real fridge, white and sizeable, with a real freezer door! It makes a very satisfying sound, and my smoothies taste like ice cream now because the ice is so cold. Amazing! Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because while I rescuing things from the old icebox I pulled out a huge bag of peas and was like, "uh... I should eat these somehow", which led to a most delicious puree to go with my raviolis. I just threw the peas in a blender with some garlic, basil, mint, balsamic, oil, tamari and pepper and it was shmancy-perfect-face-stuffingly-delicious. woo!

I also made some sandwich bread last week, to celebrate the white flour purchase. I'd never made sandwich bread before! It's so useful, and tasty. This one was whole wheat rye, made with a bit of molasses and caraway and I had no trouble eating it up, especially shmeared with spicy homemade apple butter, yum! It inspired me to make a real salad. And it inspired me to have reubens for lunch all last week - holy batman that's a good sammich!


For the 'meat' part I made lentil patties with pickle juice and gluten flour, breaded them in breadcrumbs and baked for 30 minutes, flipping once. Then loaded on the sauerkraut and homemade 1000-island and munched happily away!

These are testers for Terry's new Vegan Latina book: black bean and plantain pupusas with a latin tomato sauce and a Salvadorean slaw, all delicioso.

And a great chard recipe with capers and raisins that's a new favourite around here. Sweet and salty and complex!

Finally - to celebrate the spring equinox, and in anticipation of finding good things in life, I baked a lemon poppy seed bread yesterday, studded with little treasures. Rings, crystals, little coins, it was so much fun to bring this to a potluck, cover it with fresh berries, and slice off little hunks with surprises inside! The bread itself is moist and more-ish, too - super citrusy, with a sparkly sugary crust, and soaked in a lemon syrup = win!

Springtime Lemon Poppyseed Bread

1 tablespoon lemon zest
juice of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons poppy seeds
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water (could use milk)
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

3 tablespoons raw sugar (for sprinkling on top)

optional: little metal trinkets

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 and grease a loaf pan.
2. Combine the wet ingredients in a large bowl, lemon zest through water.
3. Sift together the dry ingredients, then add that to the wet and stir just until combined.
4. Pour half the batter in the pan, dot the batter with metal trinkets (if using), then add the rest of the batter, sprinkle the top with raw sugar and bake for 45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean. Don't take it out of the pan yet though! While it's still warm, make....

Lemon Syrup

3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar

1. Mix lemon juice and sugar together in a bowl, microwave on high for about 45 seconds, stir to dissolve into a syrup.
2. Poke a bunch of holes in your lemon bread with a skewer or a toothpick, then pour the syrup over top and let it soak in for about 20 minutes. Then take it out of the pan and let it cool. Slice, warn people not to break their teeth on anything, and bask in the party game + dessert combined. :)

january meets the colours of the rainbow

Happy Chinese new year everyone! For once I actually got to celebrate it, in a way - and on the correct day as well! At least, this was my lunch on the 26th. What tickles me more than anything is that I was able to make vegan tofu potstickers with an empty fridge boasting only carrots, cabbage and tofu. Because that's all you really need! Admittedly they were wanting for some sprightly green onion inside, but otherwise they were purrrrrrfect. Chewy gyoza can be for lunch anytime it wants at my house. Oh, and the star of the meal was actually the Hot Mustard Dipping Sauce from Vegan Fire & Spice. Two minutes to make and so flavourful!

As for the year of the Ox:

"This year will no doubt bear fruit, but the motto is: "No work, no pay!" Time waits for no man; if we are too lazy to sow then we can blame no one if we have nothing to reap. We will find a great many things requiring our attention, and the list of what needs to be done will seem endless. The Spartan influence of the Ox will be a constantly cracking whip over our heads. Better to apply oneself diligently than waste time arguing with the authorities. They will prevail, as the year of the Ox favors discipline."
- Feng Shui index

You know what? I can get behind that. I've been drawing temples and mandalas lately and I will be completely honest - it is tedious as all get-out. But I really do feel it will pay off later on. And I don't mind working hard in other areas of life too right now, perhaps with no evident reward. It's almost... liberating. I forget myself a bit.

But that's enough about life! Onto the good stuff, the foodstuff! ----------->

Okay, so I couldn't even believe I was eating this soup while I was eating it. It was lavender, and it tasted cheesy. I mean, it was magical princess soup or something. I'd made the cauliflower bisque from Vegan World Fusion before (it is SO good and easy, it's in my permanent repertoire), but never with a purple cauliflower. I also added delicious chunkies to it this time, like corn niblets and extra bits of cauliflower and ate it with a tiny little henge of caraway & raisin whole wheat soda bread.


And would you believe I didn't plan the symmetrical photo-op? Or even the symmetrical dinner? I guess it's not surprising that I was going for blended soups and little toasted starchy things though, it's been a flurried-snow january and I've been nursing a flu for a while. This one is the mellow lentil sniffle soup from Eat Drink & Be Vegan and I think it's actually my favourite lentil soup ever so far. There's something just so... right about it. It doesn't try to be anything but nicely balanced and nutritious and slurpy, and with some squash biscuits alongside I couldn't ask for a better snowy day dinner.

Oh, do you remember when I asked if anyone had any advice for non-sugary cranberry recipes? I think someone mentioned a cranberry dhal, which totally piqued my interest and that inspiration led to this creamy sweet potato & romano bean concoction, served with lemon rice cooked with a whole lemon. I was really wanting sour that day, and this was perfection.

Just the other day I made vegan*core's snickerdoodles because I'd never had one before and it was on the mental list of cookies to try someday (and also I had a tarot party to go to and cinnamon-sugar just seemed like a good idea to bring with me). The photo is terrible, but the cookies are fantastic. They're a white flour and sugar-fest (I only bake like this when I know I can give them away!), with a perfect slight-chew texture and crispy edges, and oh, they're gorgeous too. Like shimmery brown stars.... mmmm.


Another bad photo of something very yummy - I made essentially a flatbread pizza the other day on a homemade chapati with basil chipotle hummous on the bottom and tomatoes and peppers on top. But the real special part was what I managed to make out of leftover pureed squash. I only added nutritional yeast, lemon, olive oil, garlic powder, salt & pepper, but once it was baked up it tasted so much like a cheezy thing. Something gooey to sink the teeth into! I was pleasantly surprised!



Finally - possibly my favourite chinatown find of late - Hopia Baboy. It's a Filipino wintermelon pastry flavoured with green onion!! Astoundingly good. You just pop it into a very hot oven for 5 minutes or so to get toasty and flaky and then oh my goodness, it's like an instant sugar pie with sesames and a haunting bit of onion that totally works. I think some of the time they're flavoured with pork fat, which is slightly horrifying, but these ones were clean and clear. And they last forever. I bought a little blue package of them months ago and I just pull one out of the fridge and bake it whenever I want something aromatic and sticky to nosh. Sooooo good!

a fresh start involving beans

Happy new year everyone! Did you get kissed last night? I got a hug! :)

Maybe it was due to eating those lucky black eyed peas everyone goes on about. I've got no problem with an excuse to them, though, being all mushy and sweet and darned adorable with that little black spot. I found out later that the collards they're traditionally eaten with in the south symbolize paper money, so I missed out on that part, but do you see those basil leaves? Looks leafy and green to me! I even ate this all on lettuce, I'm probably set on the symbolic moolah front. Oh, and the beans themselves were a vegan version of Jukut Murab - a Balinese salad with coconut, tamarind, chile and lime and very very delicious - it's going into bean salad rotation and will definitely be gracing the table of a potluck sometime in the future. It's exotic and wonderful on the tongue and easy and healthy and cheap = win!

And speaking of inconceivably delicious food being actually very healthy - stuffed zucchini globes, Isa-style definitely qualify. How had I not made these yet? The millet here is basically a delivery device for tomato-y, olive-y, caper-y superflavour, which doesn't get any further up my alley. I ate the leftover millet rolled up in steamed red cabbage with a squish of lemon, which forgive me, may have been even tastier than the squash, and um... I even put this stuff on crackers. Recommended!

Oh Extraveganza, shall you be in all my posts and will I never mind? Yes. :)
Especially when you offer recipes like pear and cardamom pudding, zomg. I doubled the cardamom and I shouldn't have done that, because it became somewhat impossible to NOT have perfumed vanilla sweetness for dinner two night in a row. I am considering making more...

Finally, eek, I made saucy asian takeout style food! I can see why people do this now... It's kind of a Gyudon (japanese beef and rice bowl) made with eggplant, as per Vegan Ronin's excellent adaptation, and somewhere between adding a splash of requisite sriracha and licking my bowl clean this was dreamy good eating. Even the rice happened to be purple in aubergine agreement! Goodness, I think now I'm gonna have to make General Tao's tofu and cross that dish off my lifetime list now that I'm all hooked on sweet thickened sauces. YUM!


Bonus picture >>>>>>>>>>>>>
My favourite salad these days involves green apple and crushed up organic Wheat Thins, which was inspired by fatoush, if you can believe it. The crackers are sweeter than the apples, and with a noochy citrus dressing it's a perfect snack.

(can you believe I got organic crackers at the dollar store? madness! I'm not complaining though)

chard and green beans, I like 'em.

Lunchtime: wake up leisurely and construct (reheat) some stuffed butternut squash from last night, with black rice, chard, walnuts, cranberries and red peppers inside (much inspired by jessy), with lemon sauteed green beans and a lovely white bean garlic sauce done pretty close to how Atxvegn made hers. Boomshakka, that plus coffee and then off to school.

Dinner: swung by chinatown on my way home to replenish my Sriracha and of course picked up some extra goodies to play with. Fried gluten balls, a strange turnip-like thing with lavender insides (anyone know what that might be?), dried kumquats (ew), salted black beans (yay! mapo tofu!), and dried black fungus. The fungus ended up in my tummy tonight! It's so weird and I'm hooked, it's all crrrrunchy in a mushroom way. I used this recipe, and threw some stir-fried chard with fermented bean curd along side, and ate it with ............. wheat berries. OH, it was good!

homecoming (or, "Spot the Tomato!")

So I'm writing this from the comfy green rocking recliner in my mother's living room, covered in flour and crossing recipes off of the veganomicon index faster than I can decide on the next thing I want to make, and that is to say - life (or at least my pseudo-vacation before school starts full throttle again in september) is good.

I even got to make a pie - a birthday peach and blueberry pie at my mother's request, using the vcon pastry instead of my usual. It's definitely easier to use, like those pie crusts you see on television that people just sort of toss into the pan... but I think next time I'll stick with my madness-inducing-yet-extraordinarily-tender crust I usually use. Because personally I'd rather my pie disintegrate into buttery flakes at the touch of a fork than look pretty and pert, but that's just me.... and I'm just a pie-obsesso who so rarely gets to make them... :p

Mmm... and I'm mentioning here that in an awesome and unplanned way, there is a tomato in just about everything in this post. Which makes sense! It being the season and all. But I'm mentioning it so you can play along and find them. Like in the vcon midsummer corn chowder, which is SOOO good, you have to make it! With rosemary focaccia it was perfect, and there was a big paprika'd mountain of hummus on the table, too.

My old old old old cats say hi! They're still doing their thing where they act like mirrors or parallels of eachother. Haha, cute.

Went out for dinner at Corners on Bank. Not much to say... I mean, it was crazy delicious, but it was just a Boca burger. I guess to people who never ever eat those things it's a special treat, though. And they very happily let me pick my own toppings off of the menu options, so I got chipotle salsa, caramelized onions and guacamole, and the calabrese bun was teeth-sinking yeasty and notably fresh, so really, who's complaining at all?

Okay me, for forgetting to ask for my salad sans dressing. :p

I'm in love with hoecakes now, too. So easy to make and really surprisingly good. I made mine like...

1 cup cornmeal
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup almond milk
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp chopped pickled jalapenos
1/4 cup sauteed onions
pinch of sugar
pepper

Fry them up, eat with salsa, say yum yum yum and think why didn't I make DOUBLE that amount because now I have to give my lunch to my sister who just came in the door with hoecake longing in her eyes. Alas, alas.....

....at least I got the vcon mexican millet all to myself! It wasn't gonna happen like that - I was making it for everybody, but everybody went to bed, and then a forkful of it went in my mouth and any plans to eat anything else went ~poof~ and I had half the pot all for me, and it was so good. I love millet! Especially when it's buttery and nutty and crisp/creamy, and eaten out of a dainty little rice bowl.

And then vcon blintzes, with dill-tahini sauce, applesauce and pickled red cabbage. A lot of work for something that tasted pretty perogi-like, but delicious nonetheless. Especially when all the toppings glooped together to form SUPER GLOOP of the potato-y sauce-y goodness.

Slice of Pie! Look at that structural integrity! ^.^

And lunch today - vcon creamy tomato soup (+ broccoli) with celine's cheezy crackers (YUM!) and vcon mushroom-walnut pate with more lentils and less walnuts because that's what I had.

(in conclusion: I love tomatoes! <------- ze obvious) :D

turnips and cabbage ARE sexy! no, really.

Anyone who knew me in my omni days knows that I practically lived off of chicken shawarmas. Being from Ottawa, that's not too surprising -- we have a billion shawarma shops and most of them are mind-blowingly good. There's even a (sadly defunct) blog devoted to reviewing them all! Basically, it's a middle eastern wrap sandwich on chewy, paper thin flatbread layers, with slow grilled chicken, hummous, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, yogurt sauce, garlic mayonnaise, and most importantly - pickled pink turnips.

I wouldn't be surprised if I've waxed poetic about those turnips before. Actually I'm almost positive I have. So holy cow was I over the moon to find out how EASY they are to make!! It goes like so:

Pickled Pink Turnips for Pitas (or Torshi Left)

Ingredients:
- 1 cup white vinegar
- 1 cup water
- 2 tbsp salt
- 3-4 cloves garlic, sliced thin
- 2 lb. of turnip (I used one a little bigger than a softball)
- 1 small beet
- celery leaves (optional)

What You Do:

1. Cut the ends off of the beet and turnips and boil for 3-4 minutes, then remove from the water and peel.

2. Slice the beet and cut the turnip into french fry sticks, and put those in a big clean jar with the garlic and celery leaves.

3. Bring the water, vinegar and salt to a boil to dissolve, then pour it over the vegetables. Seal and leave it on the counter for ten days, then refridgerate. (*ahem* - I tore through half of them in the first night, soooooo...... :D)

4. Load up a big fat sandwich with garlic mayo, falafel, vegetables fixins' and some of those beautiful pickles and enjoy! I swear it's worth the three minutes of effort - it takes falafel to the moon and back, they're so awesome.

And look at that! Cabbage rolls, but would you believe that they were probably the most delicate and refreshing thing I've had all summer? I went from this recipe, made a few minor adjustments, and was sooooo happy with the results, it was worth every bit of wrestling with a boiling hot cabbage and more than a few dirty pots and pans.

Orphaned Greek Cabbage Rolls with Fresh Herbs (or Lahanodolmathes Orphana)

Ingredients:
- 30 cabbage leaves (one huge head cabbage)
- 3 cups of cooked rice
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 3 ripe medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped (I used 1 tomato and 2 tbsps of tomato paste)
- 2/3 cup finely chopped zucchini
- 1 rounded tbsp finely chopped fresh mint
- 1 rounded tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
- 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 cup vegetable broth
- 1-2 tbsp Earth Balance
- juice of one lemon

What To Do:

1. Combine onion, rice, tomatoes, zucchini, dill, mint, parsley, salt, pepper, cumin, and olive oil in a bowl.

2. Remove the core of the cabbage, and stick a large fork into the center. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and immerse the cabbage, leaving the fork in. When the outer leaves turn bright green, remove using the fork and remove softened leaves. Return to pot and repeat until all cabbage leaves have been removed.

3. Use a sharp knife to trim the thick part of the stem off of the leaves (this will make it easier to roll). For large rolls, place a 3-4 tablespoons of filling 1 inch from the thick end of the cabbage leaf. Fold the bottom over the filling, fold the sides in, and roll up. Place in a large baking dish. Repeat with all the leaves and filling.

4. Dot with margarine, and bake covered at 375 for 1 hour. Pour the lemon juice over the rolls 20 minutes before they're done baking. Serve warm, room temperature, or - best of all - cold from the fridge.