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!
Curried Pea Soup in pictures. 16 January 2008 8:12 am
Posted by Tracy in : soup, vegan, pictures, sundance, recipes, eating, vegetarian, cooking , add a commentHere’s a little photo series that was my original plan for last Friday’s post before world news ate my brain. It would’ve followed right after the relevant recipe post and everything, but here it finally is.
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Split pea soup is fun and easy, so I decided it would be a good choice for my first ever shift training another cook at Sundance. (more…)
Recipe: Curried Split Pea Soup. 10 January 2008 2:49 pm
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, coconut, soup, sundance, vegetarian, recipes, cooking , 9 commentsWhen I adapted the Curried Spinach-Pea Soup from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics for the Sundance soup bar, the results were spectacular — and very expensive. Organic fresh spinach, frozen peas, and big cans of coconut milk are not cheap, so the soup turned out unprofitable, to put it mildly (we would have had to sell it for $8-$10 a quart to make money on it). If the soup hadn’t been such a hit, the story might have ended there, but I resolved to invent a cheaper version using frozen spinach and dried peas. The final recipe left out the greens altogether, but I never heard any complaints. In fact, based on the comments I got from Sundance staff and customers, this was one of my most frequently requested recipes. While I still recommend the soup that inspired it, especially in warmer weather, this recipe makes an equally intriguing blend of sweet and savory tastes, with a richer creaminess that makes it a great winter warmup. Enjoy! (more…)
Fotos before Friday: in which I sing the praises of Halloumi cheese 6 December 2007 9:10 pm
Posted by Tracy in : work, salad, tea, cheese, sundance, eating, vegetarian, cooking , add a commentThis post is dedicated to Jonathan, who was a little grossed out upon overhearing Peter’s half of tonight’s dinner plan phone conversation, but I won’t hold it against him; he takes mighty fine pictures. Anyway…
It’s been more than a year since I resigned from running the Sundance cheese department, and that was a few months after the last (and fortunately first and only) time the walk-in cooler broke down on my watch. When this happened (and it happened at least twice during my time at Sundance), the cheesehead (I did love my title, though I also went by cheesebeast) would recruit a helper or two, and a few shopping carts, which would be used to take all the back stock out of the cheese cooler to the walk-in fridge in the warehouse. If the cooler hadn’t been broken for too long, all the cheese in the displays could be moved as well. That was the case when the cooler went down on my watch (because we checked it obsessively and moved quickly when the temperature had been in “the danger zone” of above 40 degrees F for more than an hour). However, the other time I was present at Sundance for a deli walk-in failure, someone came into the deli in the morning and discovered that the cooler was at 50 degrees F — and had no way of knowing how long it had been too warm. In this case, to be on the safe side (and because doing otherwise would be a health code violation), none of the cheese that had been in that cooler overnight could be sold. The cheese worker that day spent it weighing all the cheese that was deemed no good, writing a long list of product lost, and filling the cooler’s free food shelf, over and over again. All the cheese eaters at Sundance that day made out like bandits.
What does this have to do with Halloumi cheese, you may ask? (more…)
Recipe: Fennelicious Potato-Leek Soup 13 November 2007 7:17 am
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, soup, sundance, recipes, vegetarian , 2 commentsFirst and foremost, happy birthday Penny! I wish this recipe were more festive and delicious or at least something you could stick candles in for wish-making blowing-out purposes, but that will have to wait for some other time (like whenever you next make delicious vegan cupcakes!)
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That important business aside, I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I got a shiny new Flickr Pro account to help me wrangling all the photos from my Nepal trip. I looove it, but I digress. In the process of said photo-wrangling, I rediscovered more than a few old pictures I’d forgotten all about. One of these was an old Sundance soup sign:
and coincidentally enough, I found many of the ingredients for this soup lying around in the fridge when I got home from my trip. Boo-yah! (more…)
