My approach to cooking is respect for the beauty of the vegetable or ingredient. My recipes (or lack of, because I’m an improvisational cook) are about celebrating natures bounty with simple delicious meals. These meals stay simple and true to the vegetables used in the making. They are simple basic foods that anyone can make and the recipes are simple enough for anyone to master. 
You won’t find fake meats or cheese here. (Sorry, no fried mozzawhatever sticks, or impossible lab meats)

What you won’t find here are typical recipes that switch a plant based “meat product” for animal meat. That’s simple enough to do with any traditional recipe. These foods are based on my childhood and my love for my garden and everything in it.

Why not a lot of meat? Well… I’m not very good at making it. I don’t grow it. Honestly, there are so many sites that are better than me at making it. My strength is soup and vegetables, breads and yeast dough. Exactly the traditional foods I grew up with. I’m best at bringing out flavors, so I’ll just stick to that.

My genetic and cultural cuisine originates in Eastern Europe.  I am most physically comfortable with European cuisine. It sits well with me. While I enjoy food from all cultures, certain ingredients don’t like me, they may be too strong for my system. The older I get, the more I opt for the familiar. Some soups and foods my parents made were “medicine”. Caraway soup for a stomach ache, garlic soup for strength and to guard against colds and flu. Asparagus soup for the kidneys, walnuts for your brain. These were just part of our life. As I get older, I long for the tastes I grew up with. The meals were simple, satisfying, and 100% natural and fresh. I never appreciated just how fine our food was. I only realized how well my parents prepared things after I began to study the best chefs. Wait a minute! that’s how we do it! My Father learned from his Mother, and my Mother learned from her Grandmother and her Mother-in law. My Father sent his new wife home to his parents to learn how to cook “the right way”. I’m fortunate to have been exposed to two very different styles of cooking. The farm and city. Or “refined and peasant” according to my Mother.

I cannot cook without onions. They’re the backbone of everything I make. I love building flavor and nature provides countless flavors, spices and herbs, that it’s such a joy to work with so many choices, (sometimes too many) It’s like trying to paint with too many mediums to choose from. But, like everyone else, we tend to hark back to our childhoods and our memories of comfort food.

Today, because we need to make our own foods to eat well, I wish to share this simply delicious, and frugal way of making food for all those of you who wish to cook for themselves, their children and the elderly, in a healthy plant based manner, and to ignore the machine that adulterates, strips and distorts the very thing that can save our bodies and our lives.

My new plant based dishes are created in my mind and executed in my kitchen by me. They are from my imagination, and yes, I can run tastes in my mind. Some are based on my childhood memories. Both my parents were excellent cooks and gardeners, with generations before them who knew how to cook and grow good food, but today I put my own twist on my family’s traditional, basic recipes, as I am a global product, not a small town regional one.

Thanks for sharing my journey,
–Love Andie