Cooking and turtles! (But not cooking turtles…)
So, first off, I skipped class last week to rescue a turtle. I was driving to school and it was in the road, so I had to scoop it up and take it home… I’m 90% sure it came out of Lake Chapin (by UCF), which is very close to a busy road with no fencing or other protection, so I didn’t feel too comfortable about just tossing it back there. Ended up taking it over to Blanchard Park, but I snapped a couple pictures first.
Ze’s in my bathtub, lol.
It’s very difficult to see the markings in the photos, and ze didn’t seem too keen on posing for me, staying firmly in hir shell when I was around, but I’m 95% sure ze was a Florida Red-Belly Turtle.
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Anyways. Cooking! Today I’ve got two recipes I made from the Vegetarian Epicure Book Two. In the book they are not vegan recipes, but I adapted them to make them vegan, as I’ll explain below.
First is Sweet Potato Soup.
Here’s a pic of me stirring it so you can really see all the vegetable chunk.
This soup is good (and better once it sits in the fridge overnight) but it still needs a little something. I tried adding some extra paprika, but that was insufficient. I’m thinking maybe it could use some extra lemon juice and just a little black pepper.
The recipe calls for butter and heavy cream. Instead I used Smart Balance Light for the butter (make sure you get the right one; not all varieties of Smart Balance are vegan, or even vegetarian) and this recipe for vegan heavy cream. (Scroll to the very bottom of the page; there’s a recipe that uses sunflower oil. It’s excellent.)
For dessert is Castillian Hot Chocolate.
I had a little trouble with this one, mostly because I was trying to rush it. I need to try it again when I have much more time; it really needs time to slowly come to a gentle simmer. I ended up with a bit too much cocoa residue at the bottom (not to mention a bunch that bubbled over onto my stove :P ).
This was also a non-vegan recipe; I just had to substitute soy milk for the regular milk.
testing…