mushroom barley soup

i don't think i could ever be sick of mushrooms. not only do they taste great, can be seasoned or spiced up a lot of different ways, but they are an excellent alternative to meat.

baked's aunt sassy cake [pistachio cake with vanilla honey buttercream]

remember last year when i made the mistake of buying a cupcake for my birthday and ended up recreating them myself? this year i decided to skip the middle man and make my own birthday cake.

i got about a half dozen cookbooks for christmas and had already bookmarked a bunch of "fancy cakes" waiting for an occasion to make one. me + layer cake on a regular, normal, any day, would not be good news for my pants. while last year's birthday was all about the peanuts, this year was a celebration of pistachios!

and let me tell you what, this cake is freakin delicious. light fluffy layers of pistachio cake layered with vanilla honey buttercream. i've got to find another use for that buttercream, it is so good. and surprisingly easy.

sure, it's a project. a labor of love, really. just like any other layer cake. but a project well worth my saturday afternoon.

quinoa pilaf

to be successful in my vegetarian quest, i knew the biggest challenge would be to find non-meat protein sources that would fill me up and keep me full all day. we've been eating our fair share of mushrooms and beans, but to be honest, we were both getting bored with them and needed something else. so last week, in the bulk section of my favorite supermarket, i scanned through the grains, looking for something different and settled on quinoa, not quite knowing what to expect. 

pasta e fagioli [pasta & beans]

this soup is fifteen years in the making.

i distinctly remember one winter in the mid '90s. the winter of bean soup. for whatever reason, my dad was all excited about beans. i'm sure my dad remembers it differently - and my teenage dramatics didn't help - but it was meal after meal of beans. which lead to my fifteen year avoidance of bean soup.

 

portobello mushroom fajitas

it's no surprise i've been eating a lot of mushrooms this month. i love mushrooms and am currently on the lookout for great meat substitutes. so i thought mushrooms would make great fajitas. i assumed this was a revelation many others (especially real, honest to goodness vegetarians, not just ones who try it for a month) would have thought of and already have an established, go to recipe for it. not so much.