Minestrone variations 3 June 2008 9:59 am
Posted by Tracy in : soup, vegan, sundance, recipes, vegetarian, cooking , add a commentSo some Thursdays ago I posted my my basic minestrone recipe but I cut it short because I felt like I’d been rambling on for far too long. Today I finally present you with the conclusion to my minestrone saga: suggestions for tasty ways to adapt this soup to almost any season or available vegetable-type ingredient. Here goes!
Recipe: Minestrone 22 May 2008 10:05 am
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, soup, recipes, vegetarian, cooking , 1 comment so farThere’s a minestrone special on at Morning Glory this week, and it’s all right, but I would’ve made it even better. (Sorry, Gail.) Turns out I have a pretty specific idea in my head about minestrone — brothy tomato-vegetable soup with Italian seasonings (by which I mostly mean herbs like basil and oregano), some kind of light-colored bean, and maybe pasta. We’re talking serious Tracy comfort food, the kind I associate so strongly with warm fuzzies that just the idea of it was enough to make me fall in love with this picture of Chiara (ok, the swooning was not hurt by the fact that Chiara is awesome and that picture is really cute, but I digress). Maybe my notion of minestrone is so non-traditional as to be heretical, in which case I’m really sorry, but it’s going to be a while before I can stop using the word, even if it does not mean what I think it means. But I digress. (more…)
Sunday surprise: Banana bread photo recipe 11 May 2008 7:53 pm
Posted by Tracy in : pictures, events, baking, dessert, recipes, cooking , add a commentHappy Sunday, all! Some of you (hi, Liz!) may remember this banana bread from this recipe here, which I posted sans illustrations because Liz asked nicely, just a few days before the announcement of Not Quite Nigella’s Banana Bread Bake-Off. Now, at long last, here’s the illustrated version I first alluded to more than a month ago. The finished product looks like this:
which is to say, pretty darn tasty. Now, here’s how to make it: (more…)
Recipe: Mushroom Miso Soup 15 April 2008 11:10 am
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, soup, recipes, vegetarian, cooking , 4 commentsTrue story: this recipe helped me get a job. I’ll explain in a bit. 
First, I should say that I originally published this recipe on Everything2 back in the day, so it’s an oldie but a goodie. Second, I’m posting it here in newly updated form in honor of the April No Croutons Required challenge (originally described here) from Lisa’s Kitchen and Tinned Tomatoes, which I learned about here at Is My Blog Burning? Finally, the story about that job. It was during my year in Laguna Beach, when I was finishing the very last requirements on my undergraduate degree, and applied for a job tutoring high school kids on the SAT. After turning a practice test inside out, I was invited for a group interview, for which all the candidates were asked to prepare a short instructional lecture of some kind. Mine was this recipe. (You think maybe I was in the wrong line of work and didn’t know it yet? Um…) Anyway, without further ado, here’s: (more…)
Recipe: Banana bread 8 April 2008 9:03 am
Posted by Tracy in : cheese, baking, breakfast, dessert, recipes, friends, books, vegetarian, cooking , 3 commentsI was going to save this recipe for later in the week, but Liz asked nicely, so there ya go. My banana bread recipe is adapted from the one in the original Moosewood Cookbook, which is actually a variation on their carrot cake recipe. Seriously — “Banana Bread” appears on the opposite page from “Carrot Cake” as a slightly-too-long list of substitutions which makes for really tricky recipe reading, especially considering the original recipe makes two loaves and we only have one loaf pan (a situation I hope to someday fix, but today is not that day, and anyway I much prefer having a base recipe that’s easy to double, instead of having to divide everything by two all the time). So. Without further ado, here’s Tracy and Peter’s take on banana bread, as copied into my beloved spiral-bound recipe notebook for convenience, because generally the way this gets made is me reading the recipe to Peter, who makes all the magic happen. (more…)
