Welcome to My Kitchen

…where you’ll find dozens of vegetarian and vegan recipes, cooking and nutrition tips, info for vegetarian and vegan kids and teens, reviews, news, and much more!

Those of you familiar with my books know that I love to share my passion for great vegetarian and vegan cooking with easy, healthy recipes, from simple family meals to festive fare for holidays and entertaining. Seasonal produce, vegan baking, and kid- and teen-friendly food are all on the menu.

Aside from simple and delicious recipes, Healthy Cooking Tips will help you set up a healthy pantry, make your kitchen more earth-friendly, plan meals, and much more. Vegetarian Nutrition provides info on protein, fiber, fats, calcium, and lots more need-to know topics to live a healthy veg lifestyle.

Finally, I invite you to subscribe to the monthly Vegetarian Kitchen newsletter, featuring seasonal recipes, book and product reviews, travel tips, and vegetarian/vegan news. I hope you will enjoy your visit to my kitchen. Stay awhile, and come back often!

Monthly Message

Eating With The Seasons, Starting With Spring

In your mind, visualize the supermarket you frequent. Put yourself in the produce department. Think summer. Now think winter. Does it look much different? Any different? Now imagine yourself in the restaurants you frequent. It’s fall, and you are studying the menu. Now shift gears—it’s spring. Have the menus changed very much? Have they changed at all?

Finally, place yourself in your own kitchen. It’s a summer evening. Do you have a basket of ripe tomatoes on the counter and a pot of basil in the garden (or on the windowsill)? Is there a bowl of berries in the refrigerator, along with lettuces and other fresh, local farm market produce? Fast forward to fall. Have the tomatoes in the basket been replaced with colorful squashes for making soups, stews, and sweet pies? Have you started to prepare jars of whole grains and dried beans, lentils and peas for the cool season’s hearty dishes?

If you get the picture, that means you are officially a seasonal eater, already tuned into the foods and cooking styles that nourish body and sprit throughout the year. If not, having you visualize the supermarket and restaurant menus, as well as your own kitchen, will serve to demonstrate what short shrift seasonal eating receives in an increasingly bland and homogenous food culture.

Spring is a good time for fresh beginnings, and a perfect opportunity to start thinking more seasonally in the kitchen. Use plenty of asparagus, sprouts, and tender greens. Other spring flavors to look forward to include spring onions, peas, radishes, rhubarb, and strawberries. Focus on early leafy greens like spinach and Asian greens. Parsley and chives add a fresh flavor to spring dishes. Spring dishes to savor include light spring vegetable soups; green salads containing spinach, watercress, and sprouts; dishes made with chives, scallions, and other spring onions; pasta primavera, and strawberry desserts

As soon as they reopen in your area, make visits to farm markets a part of your weekly food shopping. You’re not only buying produce that’s fresher and riper that anything mass-produced, but also casting a vote for small farms and sustainable agriculture. Shopping at farm markets is a sure way wake up your senses, and is a wonderful outing to take with children, who enjoy meeting and talking to the people who produce their food. Unlike your trip to the supermarket, a weekly outing to a farm market can become an enjoyable ritual rather than a necessary chore!

Another way to make food gathering into a great ritual is to join a Community Supported Agriculture farm. Ask around out about CSAs in your area that you might join. Believe it or not, CSA groups are available in urban areas, not just in the countryside. CSAs are a wonderful source of community—the one I belong to holds regular potlucks at the farm to connect with one another, honor the growers and interns, and encourages its members to share food and ideas made from the produce harvested at the farm.

Using seasonal (and ideally, organic and local) produce and ingredients, you can create meals that are dazzling to the eyes and palate that are incredibly simple to prepare. When we eat seasonally, locally, and organically, we support sustainable agriculture. This in turn reduces our dependence on imported produce, and in effect, the energy required to transport it and the pesticides used to grow it. Eating seasonally is a sensible habit that’s good for the earth, as well as a healthy, sensory pleasure that’s good for you and your family.