The base: bulgur. What a nice little grain! It can be used interchangeably with couscous, but it’s got so much more going for it: B vitamins, iron, lots of fiber. Fewer calories and less fat than brown rice, and over four times the folate! What’s not to love? Oh, yeah, and then there’s the fact that cooking it really just entails adding hot water (an equal amount to the dry bulgur being prepared; I used a cup of each) and letting it stand for thirty minutes or so. (I added some vegan bouillon to my hot water.)

The veggies: in this case, chopped zucchini, carrots, fennel, and garlic, all sautéed in a tablespoon of olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Also present are a handful of sun-dried tomatoes, a can of artichoke hearts, and a can of kidney beans (rinsed). After sautéing the first vegetables, I combined them all and set them to chill in the fridge alongside the soaked bulgur.

The sauce: for this, we can thank Emily, who fired the shot heard ’round the food-blogging world. I may be a Johnny-Come-Lately to the party, but I’m glad I showed up in time to hit the refreshment table! For my ABU, I combined half a cup of chunky almond butter with a full cup of unsweetened vanilla Almond Breeze. I didn’t add any sweetener, since I felt that the vanilla in the almond milk was just enough sweetness to match the vegetables in the rest of the dish.

I made all the parts earlier this afternoon, so by the time I came back to them, everything was nice and cold in the refrigerator. I layered them into my bowl, took a bite…and melted. Or reconstituted, perhaps; this is a perfect meal for a warm summer day, or perhaps merely one where you’ve managed to work up a sweat with cleaning in preparation for a parental visit!

Serves 6. Per serving – Fat: 14g; Carbohydrates: 46g; Calories: 364; Protein: 15g.

(Can I just take a moment here to say that I am completely won over by this cookbook? If you had been debating getting it, do it. Whether you’re vegetarian, vegan, or omnivorous, understand that when it comes to delicious vegetable presentations, vegetarians and vegans have it going on!)

I yanked the mushrooms from their box, scrubbed and stemmed them, and got set to prepare. Into a pie plate, I mixed the marinade: half a cup of “cooking wine” (pshhht; I used a good cabernet sauvignon, under the rule that you should never, ever cook with a wine that you wouldn’t drink), a tablespoon of olive oil (man, I’m almost out!), two tablespoons each of balsamic vinegar and tamari soy sauce (yes, you can tell the difference), and two minced cloves of garlic.

Is that not pretty?

The mushrooms went into the marinade. I didn’t have the full-sized portobellos that the book suggested, so I used twelve baby mushrooms instead of the two large or 4 small ones in the actual recipe. They lay on their backs, and I filled each cavity with the marinade and let them drink it up for twenty minutes.

Then I covered the pie plate with foil and baked them for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. After that, the foil came off, they got flipped to their bellies, and they roasted like that for another 10 minutes.

Yeah, don’t even waste these guys on the kids. They just won’t appreciate them. (This is what you tell yourself repeatedly as you hoard every last one…maybe grudgingly letting your partner have a few. )

Made 12 mushrooms. Per mushroom, allowing for extra marinade on top – Fat: 1.2g; Carbohydrates: 1.5g; Calories:24.5; Protein: 0.7g.

Plop it into a greased square casserole pan, and put it in the fridge for an hour; it will get nice and firm. Then slice it into blocks, put it onto a baking sheet, and broil it for about 7-10 minutes until it’s brown on top. Voila!

It was delicious, especially with marinara sauce. Eric ate his with salt and a little olive oil, and Gabe actually took a few bites of his with mozzarella cheese (before he decided that he didn’t like it anymore, which I predicted). It gave me lots of ideas, too, about different things I could put into polenta like this: roasted red peppers, mushrooms, tart dried fruit – heck, I can get as creative as I want, since the kids (such Philistines!) won’t be eating it, anyway!

Serves 4. Per serving – Fat: 8.2g; Carbohydrates: 28.1g; Calories:194.7; Protein: 5.1g.

Oh, beans. I love you.

Ah, cast iron Dutch oven. There is no better destination for those lovely beans – not when they’re destined to become that wonderful, wonderful dish that is a perfect bean soup.

I didn’t do a step-by-step pictorial this time, largely because, well, I forgot. But it’s okay, really! You don’t need pictures of chopped vegetables, and you really don’t need pictures of a Dutch oven sitting on a stove, covered and emitting luscious aromas for several hours. If a picture is worth a thousand words, those smells are tomes, and the only way to share them would be to have you come to my house or to share the recipe. I’d love to do the former, but here’s the latter!

This is the first real recipe from The Veganomicon that I’ve tried, and I’ve been eager to do it, just as soon as we cleared the fridge and freezer of our other soup leftovers. I finished the last of Eric’s Tomato and Red Bean Tortilla soup this afternoon, so I dived into this immediately!

Soak a pound of black beaks, six hours or (as I did) overnight. There are tricks to shorten that, but from what I’ve heard, using big amounts baking soda and creating plumes of green foam might be dramatic but will also cut away swaths of the good stuff you want from your beans. Don’t be tempted by expedience. Take those soaked beans, rinse them, and put them into the cast iron pot with about six cups of water, two bay leaves, and one pinch (just one!) of baking soda. Simmer for about an hour and a half, until they’re tender.

While that’s happening, chop up a couple onions, four cloves of garlic, and a bell pepper (the book called for green, but I had a yellow going spare, and I liked the idea of more color). I was still lovin’ on my cast iron Dutch oven, so I decided to continue the theme by getting out the large cast iron frying pan; into that, I put three tablespoons of olive oil. Cook the garlic until it pops, and then add the onion and pepper; cook them about 15 minutes, until they’re soft.

In the meantime, chop a celery stalk and a peeled carrot. The book also calls for a seeded jalapeno, but since I was out, I chopped and subbed in two serranos. When the onions and peppers are soft, go ahead and add these veggies to the skillet and cook another ten minutes or so, until the carrots start softening.

Check the beans! They should be soft at this point, so take out the bay leaves and throw in the veggies, four cups of vegetable broth, and some Mexican seasonings: half a tablespoon of cumin, two teaspoons of oregano, and a teaspoon of thyme. If you wanted, and the family doesn’t mind, you could definitely toss in some red pepper, too, but I was still holding out hope that Sam might enjoy this one, so I held back. Bring it to a boil, tip the lid of the Dutch oven, and reduce it to a simmer for another half-hour.

Take it off the heat, let it cool a bit, and then add a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, along with some salt and fresh ground black pepper. Try not to salivate everywhere. Veganomicon: 1, hunger: 0.

Serves 8. Per serving, as written – Fat: 5.3g; Carbohydrates: 41.7g; Calories:183.2; Protein: 14.3g.