A Different Perspective - Dan's View of AVFOY

Ann's movement to a vegetarian diet for a year has made me a healthier eater. However, unlike Ann, I am not a strict vegetarian. I still enjoy fish and brats (I do love brats). So I guess I am a technically a Pescaterian-Bratatarian?

My primary concern about pure vegetarian diets is that they sometimes lack good protein. Although I love mock duck and tofu, Ann is not a huge fan.  She will eat tofu if I prepare it in a specific way, other than that we have to be creative.

One of my findings is that black beans are a great source of protein. We've also explored high-protein grains like Freekeh [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freekeh] and quinoa and played around with alternative vegetarian/vegan products with mixed success.

When it gets cold in November and December we like to make soups. Ann makes a fabulous Forest Mushroom soup. So I modified her Mushroom soup recipe based on things we had available. Something you should know about me is that I love onions and I hardly ever follow a recipe. I often lookup various recipes and look for patterns (yes, design patterns I'm an architect geek by trade), but I like every dish to be different.

We had a large amount of dried mushrooms in our pantry and I wanted to use them up. We get them at a local Oriental grocery store, and as Ann has mentioned, they are much less expensive then at the traditional grocery stores. I put them in the crock pot in the morning thinking they would be soft by suppertime. I was wrong! They were still hard as a rock and rubbery; especially the stems. I tried to cut the large parts up and put them back into the crock pot. Yet even the small parts were tough after another hour. So I finally had to put the mushrooms in our Ninja blender and grind them all up into very small parts.

I then added two large onions (sautéd in olive oil until golden) and a cup of Freekeh.  I put the Freekeh and ground mushroom on the stove and let them boil for about 1/2 hour.  Then I added two cans of black beans (high protein) and put everything back into the crock pot for another hour.  I added a bit of salt and pepper and some cumin and that was about it.  I like to serve the soup with a good artisan bread (from Costco) and a bit of cheese (Brie is my favorite).

Ann's one comment was that she thought the soup lacked color, which I totally agree with.  She suggested adding carrots, which most of my other soups do have. Next time I would grid the mushrooms stems up in the Ninja blender before soaking. Rubbery mushrooms really are not a good texture.

Thanks for supporting Ann's blog - and thanks to Ann for letting me guest post this week. 

- Dan