morsels & sauces

And here's how the Wellness Cleanse is going: Ground Zero: The hardest part was leafing through all of the cookbooks to find vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free recipes (alcohol and caffeine free recipes are pretty easy to come by).  I had stacks of cookbooks surrounding me, and I did make a list of 20 recipes or meals I could make. (The difference for me between a recipe and a meal is that for a recipe I needed a book (see the paella) but a meal I could just make myself (see Aloo Gobhi)).  Let the cooking begin. The trip to Target to replace our blender (which had recently cracked) so I can make smoothies and then to the Berkeley Bowl.  What a great grocery store that place is.  Brown rice flour?  Chia seeds?  Goji berries?  Raw cacao?  All check. I avoided all vegan substitutes, save the butter, and avoided the soy products as well.  I know, I know; soy can be really good for protein, but I have done a little reading on soy , and it has a bit of reputation for being

Oh, it's true:  I love this cookbook :  Plenty .  First of all, what a great name for a cookbook, and vegetarian one at that.  Such a sense of satisfaction right from the start.  Second, it came my way via a dear friend who knows my cookbook habit, so it has a special place in my heart.  Third, it is the source of the amazing eggplant noodle dish I made this summer--that dish alone made it worth its weight, in part for its sheer deliciousness and in part for its sheer ability to provide something wonderful for people who had become dear to me quite quickly.  My, what a cookbook it is. 
Yotam Ottolenghi, our chef and cookbook author, is an Israeli-born chef who has a little deli (actually four of them) in the heart(s) of London; one of them also doubles as a sit-down restaurant that has been earning rave reviews .  While Ottolenghi himself is not a vegetarian, he knows how to make great vegetarian dishes.  If you're a vegetarian and you do not yet own th