Vegan Cream of Celery Soup

Soup for Springtime, or Anytime

Recipe by Robin

It’s early June but it’s been pretty chilly for Santa Cruz. I’m NOT complaining! In fact, the cool spring gives me hope for a cool summer. Year-round soup days—YES! Recently we received 2 large bunches of celery in our food share. Celery is a basic ingredient that adds subtle flavor base to soups, stews, and casseroles. Cooked on its own its flavor is neither shy nor overpowering. Combined with a couple potatoes and homemade cashew cream, it becomes a satisfying first course, light lunch with crackers or toast, or late night snack. Also good chilled.

Colcannon with Bacon

Serve with Bacon, Ham, Canadian Bacon or Sausage

Recipe by Robin

Colcannon! I’ve never made it and wasn’t planning on it. But our weekly food shares have delivered cabbage and potatoes for weeks. I’m not keeping up cooking-wise. Plus, St. Paddy’s day is right around the corner. I’m usually way to busy to coordinate an Irish treat on this holiday, but colcannon can be as simple as the two main ingredients plus butter and a few scallions. Proportions are forgiving, depending on quantities on hand. And yes! It’s perfect comfort food for chilly winter into spring weather!

Mom’s Potato Salad

Recipe by Mom

It’s been more years than I’ll admit since I helped my mom make potato salad. And yet, I’ve never made it at all since I left home decades ago—until now. The secret of Mom’s potato salad is that the potatoes themselves are highly flavored. This eliminates the need to flavor-compensate with seasonings like mustard, dill seed, and pickle relish.  The potatoes themselves are the stars of the salad, complimented by a large quantity of eggs, a variety of finely chopped crunchy veggies, and of course mayo.

Carbonada en Zapallo: Argentinian Beef Stew in a Pumpkin

Pumpkin and Beef Stew: A Delightful Combination

Adapted from an old Pumpkinnook.com Recipe

What is in an Argentinian beef stew? First, top quality beef: grass fed, organic, and humanely raised. Next, bell peppers, corn, sweet potato, and a sweet stone fruit. Add some typical US ingredients: onion, garlic, potatoes, and tomatoes. This masterpiece of flavors is stuffed inside a pumpkin and baked to perfection. It’s served by scooping out the stew along with some pumpkin. This is a wonderfully festive meal for a family gathering, or what my buddy Jon the Baker calls Friendsgiving celebrations.

Fish and Corn Chowder

Late Summer Veggies Compliment Fish

Recipe adapted from Everyday DASH

It's odd to take a recipe from a healthy cookbook and add potatoes, extra flour, extra bacon, and half and half. But whoever heard of fish chowder without potatoes or cream? And so I padded this light recipe with traditional flavors. Just a small amount of half and half kicks up flavor and texture. Potatoes, though not the healthiest veggies, contain potassium and other minerals. Their high glycemic index is mitigated when eaten with lean protein, like fish and lowfat milk. The extra bacon adds indispensable flavor, and the amount is still less than one strip per serving.

Parsley New Potatoes

Just Like Mom Used to Make

Recipe Inspired by Mom

My mom had a thing for parsley potatoes, especially parsley new potatoes. Back when I was growing up, most New Englanders simply boiled their potatoes, but Mom insisted that parsley improved both flavor and eye-appeal. At the time I didn’t appreciate her obsession, but now have grown nostalgic for those days and for my long-departed Mom. And she was right, parsley is the perfect enhancement for young potatoes. The flavor and aroma of this dish take me back in time. Or perhaps it brings Mom forward, since I can feel her looking over my shoulder as I work, and imagine her eyes widen with delight when the dish is completed.

Pennsylvania Dutch German Hot Potato Salad

Hot And Hearty Fare

Recipe adapted from Midwest Gardeners Cookbook

Back in the day, my longtime deceased aunties were cooks at a Pennsylvania convent. They liked making tasty foods on a budget. When the Mother Superior (nun in charge) declared that God had sent them, one quickly replied, “He didn’t have to work very hard to get us here.” Luckily, that Mother Superior could appreciate my aunt’s sense of humor, and good food. A favorite in the convent, and at home, was "German Potato Salad," made with vinegar and bacon and served hot.

Vegan Couvres: Portuguese Kale Soup with Fresh Beans

Portuguese Kale Soup with a Difference (Soyrizo)

Recipe by Robin

Hot soup is the perfect cold weather food, warming up both body and spirit as we slide towards the shortest day of the year. With plenty of winter kale and potatoes around, I was inspired by a recipe for couvres, a type of Portuguese kale soup, from the 1972 community cookbook Cooking and Traveling the Cape Cod Way. Instead of the standard Portuguese sausage chourizo, I chose to use vegan Soyrizo, which acts quite differently than sausage in soup.  Luckily, this difference helps reduce the cooking time from almost 3 hours to less than 1. Using fresh cannellini beans (or precooked or canned ones) also helps trim the time.

Santa Cruz Mashed Potatoes

Potatoes Santa Cruz Style: with Peels & Herbs

Recipe by Robin

Usually I’m all for the change of seasons. When fall and winter edge out summer, I’m a cheerleader for change, relentlessly annoying to friends who prefer warm weather. But this year, after an unexpected career ending and sudden hard drive death, shorter days and cooler temps will take some getting used to. In the meantime, while recovering bits and pieces of the old hard drive, I came across some mashed potato recipes I’d written almost a decade ago and completely forgotten about. Nothing works faster than warm comfort food to make the darker time of year seem brighter. Well, almost nothing.

Scalloped Potatoes

Just Like Mom's, but with Green Onions & Gold Potatoes

Recipe inspired by Mom

My mom’s delicious cooking is one of my earliest and most persistent memories. When I was very young, she made the most tantalizing delights on her old electric stove, teaching me the various methods of preparation by osmosis: baking, broiling, boiling, and frying. This was before anyone in New England had heard of stir-frying or steaming (except for suet puddings), and before anyone I knew had an electric frying pan, if they were even invented yet. One of Mom’s old time recipes, often served with ham or beef, was scalloped potatoes. Although they weren’t my favorite back then, recent work stress brought on a craving for this classic comfort food. So I put together a recipe like hers…kind of.

Saffron Fish Stew

Saffron Adds  Golden Magic to Broth & Potatoes

Recipe adapted from Recipes from the Root Cellar

Hot fish stews and chilly winter nights, a match made in heaven for seaside dwellers? I’ve been planning to make traditional Provincetown Fish Chowder all month, but got hung up on the salt pork. My grandmother always kept it on hand during New England winters. But where to find it in Santa Cruz these days? What is it, exactly, for that matter? Luckily, our local library houses a copy of the quintessential winter cookbook, Recipes from the Root Cellar: 270 Fresh Ways to Enjoy Winter Vegetables. In it, there’s an unusual fish stew recipe. No salt pork, but enough saffron threads to make a subtle yet exotic golden broth.

Curried Pork and Pumpkin Stew

Sunshiny Color & Spicy Flavor

Recipe adapted from Sweet Onions and Sour Cherries

Happy 2013! Lest you think that I was dissing the humble pumpkin in our pumpkin vs. butternut squash pie smackdown on Christmas, I offer you this pumpkin-based winter stew. True that butternut is easier to make into pies than pumpkin, looks brighter, tastes sweeter, and is preferred by most diners in desserts. However, since pumpkin is more earthy and substantial, it’s perfect for savory dishes. Pumpkin compliments other vegetables and meats. Its flavor and texture marry well with curry ingredients to create a satisfying and spicy potage. Butternut is just too sweet and solid to perform the magic that creates this effect. Curried pumpkin stew is an antidote to cold and dark winter weather, warming both in degrees Celsius and Scoville heat units.

Harvest Vegetable Chowder

Instant Love!

Recipe adapted from Healing Foods

Welcome to Fall! Sometimes we need a bit of comfort food to ground ourselves. Perhaps we’ve been betrayed by a trusted friend, perhaps we feel alone in our world, perhaps we’re just stressed and need some nurturing…and perhaps I’m just projecting. Perhaps the change of season has left us a little blue. In any case, comfort food doesn’t really help if it’s filled with unhealthy ingredients. That’s not taking best care of ourselves. So I present a milk-based vegetarian chowder filled with comforting whole ingredients like corn, potatoes, and winter squash. Worked for me, and hope it does for you too.

Vichyssoise: French Potato Leek Soup

Yukon Gold Potatoes = Mellow Yellow Color

Recipe by Robin

Neither my Santa Cruz style potato leek soup nor Sylvia Folkart’s no-milk potato leek soup seemed appropriate for a Bastille Day potluck last week. Both recipes minimize two ingredients that French chefs love: butter and cream! Also, my earlier recipes were for hot potato leek soup, whereas vichyssoise is always served chilled. And of course, since classic vichyssoise is very smooth, my usual unpeeled potatoes ne sont pas acceptables. A Facebook friend quipped, “I can’t even pronounce vichyssoise, much less make it!” Say “vee shee SWAZ” (hear pronunciation). The final s is pronounced, and accent is on last syllable.

Classic Potato Salad

Classic Classic: Served on Lettuce Leaf

Recipe by Mom

In most parts of the US, it’s rare to have a summer party without potato salad. Finding two or three varieties at a potluck isn’t unusual. Everyone seems to have a favorite recipe, and mine comes from my mom. She started training me in potato salad prep at age 10, not a bad tradition.

Rosemary Chicken with Fennel

Warm and Savory Winter Meal

Recipe by Yankee Magazine

Welcome to 2012! I like to believe that the first few days of the new year set the tone for the entire year, and intentionally create the kinds of experiences I like during those days. So today I finished up a bit of old business, spent cozy time with my husband, chatted with a friend, took a walk, and simplified my New Year’s Day dinner plan.

Mashed Potatoes Florentine

Recipe with Yellow Finn Potatoes

Recipe from Live Earth Farm, 1999

 We were perusing our CSA’s website to find recipes that use the maximum number of the veggies that we received this week. A bounty of yellow finn potatoes led us to this unusual mashed potato recipe, which also incorporated the large bunch of spinach we received. These potatoes were a perfect accompaniment to the exotic salmon sausages that our local natural foods store makes.

No-milk Potato Leek Soup

Potato Leek Soup

Recipe by S. Folkart from Community Gardens of Santa Cruz

One of the first recipes I learned to make when I moved to Santa Cruz in the late 1970s was potato leek soup. I had never seen, much less eaten, a leek before I came to California, but I had read plenty about them in various cookbooks. Although I’ve already published my recipe for Potato Leek Soup, I recently found this recipe in a 1979 local cookbook, The Vegetable Gardener’s Cookbook, published by Community Gardens of Santa Cruz, to which I belonged at the time. Although I did tweak a couple of things, credit goes to Community Gardens member S. Folkart for the original no-milk-or-cream recipe.

Herbed New Potatoes

Rosemary Herbed New Potatoes

Recipe from the San Jose Mercury c. 1997

This recipe was in a stack of newspaper clippings saved by a former roommate. I’m guessing that it came from the Mercury, her favorite paper, well over 10 years ago now. It’s become one of my favorite ways to prepare small potatoes. This recipe calls for aluminum foil, which I don’t like using, but have not figured out how to get the potatoes to both steam and fry in the oil without it.

Potato Leek Soup

Potato Leek Soup

Recipe by Robin

I came to Santa Cruz quite a few years ago as a braless young vegetarian idealist in search of good veggie camaraderie and foods, among other things. At the time, there were so many vegetarians here that none of the natural food stores carried meats as they all do now. I moved into a cooperative vegetarian household with the agreement that I would cook for the household once per week. I’ve always been an experimental cook, but because I was cooking for others and experiments can go very wrong, I started to consult cookbooks.