Rich vegetables and vegetarian gravy baked under a golden garlic mashed potato blanket, this dish warms both tummy and soul. Vegan shepherd’s pie with savory mushroom gravy is stick-to-your-ribs hearty comfort food at its finest.

Like a cross between a pie and a casserole, shepherd’s pie was first an economical way to use up leftovers–simply dibs and dabs of meat mixed with gravy, topped with mashed potatoes, and baked  until the potato “crust” turns golden.

In this meatless rendition, cook an entire bulb of garlic with the potatoes, either in a steamer or Instant Pot pressure cooker. The potatoes and garlic practically fall apart and the garlic mellows so its presence is practically undetectable. With olive oil, salt, and some of the cooking water, they easily mash into smooth, creamy potatoes. Continue Reading…

From bloggers around the world,  for America’s third favorite holiday, here’s a spooky bunch–16 healthy vegetarian Halloween picks and treats, a tempting mix of ghost and goblin real food, some savory, some sweet!

The thing is, I don’t even like Halloween. What a strange holiday. What are we celebrating? Free candy?

There, now you know.

Except I can’t resist Halloween theme food. Here are 16 healthy recipes that caught my eye. Continue Reading…

This post shows how to cook black beans in a pressure cooker or Instant Pot. In about 15 minutes, you can have toothy tender, rich, earthy, meaty, ready-to-enjoy beans, all soupy in a nutritious cooking broth.

Cooked from scratch, dried beans become pot beans, frijoles de olla, with delicious pot “liquor.” Canned beans in salty liquid don’t even come close to freshly cooked beans and their broth. And it happens fast in the Instant Pot or stovetop pressure cooker.

If you wish, when the dried beans go in the pot, season them with a mild dried chile, garlic cloves, and/or chopped onions. If you have less than perky parsley or cilantro, throw that in the pot too. Mexican cooks add epazote to their beans. Epazote is a pungent green herb with “gas-relieving” properties.

Speaking of farts, we are sometimes advised to soak dried beans before cooking, to make them more digestible.

• Which brings up the back and forth question—do we soak the beans before cooking or do we not? And there’s the why soak the beans if you use a pressure cooker?
• Another question: With a pressure cooker, do we turn off the heat and let the pressure come down naturally, and for how much time, or should we “quick-release?” Both work, with slightly different cooking times.
• Oh, and when are we supposed to add salt before or after cooking? You’ll find plenty of discussion about that too…

Continue Reading…