The 5 Minute Lentil Soup

I wish I could tell you I've been busy with exciting adventures. Something hedonistic and scandalous would be fun too but sadly - no. I've been editing our book. You know the painful and slow process of replacing commas and shortening paragraphs. I took a stab at doing my taxes but moving to another state, changing jobs, paying off debts, a book advance and a mountain of receipts that need sorting have put our taxes in a whole other league. You know that one where you can't rely on google to handle the tough questions. Then there is the constant battle with the new website. This dreamy oasis of easy to access recipes and a working "As Seen On" page has continued to allude me. Sigh.

And then of course there was the TV sizzle (promo reel) we shot last week. Yes. We were asked to make a promo reel to be shopped around on The Food Network and Cooking Channel. Who knows maybe you'll be able to visit with us in the comfort of your home once a week. I'm trying really hard to not get my hopes up. I'm just flattered we were asked.

I'm also kinda freaking out because our Facebook page Vegan Foods = Joy has almost 10,000 fans! I know several of you have had a hard time finding us on Facebook because the page isn't called Meet The Shannons. But see the before there was ever a blog, there was a Facebook page and Facebook won't let us change the name. 

When you're busy with nonsense it's easy to just put on some Doctor Who and G.I.Joe cartoons and get down to work. I'm a pretty focused person and I can let other things drop off if not careful. And well I'll also be honest when I say that the internet has been seriously upsetting and disappointing me lately.  This isn't where I vent so I'll save it for the next time I have too much wine but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who wishes that the world was kinder and that cruel people kept their opinions to themselves. 

Needless to say that even when I'm feeling a bit frustrated with the rudeness and ignorance of others and busy with the painful day to day of being a adult, I still eat. I'll admit that we ate a lot of lentils when we were in Greece and Turkey and you'd think I'd have enough of them but really I think that trip really just got me hooked. I've perfected a 5 Minute Lentil Soup that is so simple - well I feel weird calling it a recipe. It's just awesome.

So enough chatter... To the lentils!

Hot & Sour Soup with Sesame Garlic Tempeh

Tempeh not pictured... I ate it all too fast. 

Ever have a weekend you needed a weekend to recover from? This past weekend I had the pleasure of helping out at The Herbivore Clothing Company booth at The NYC Vegetarian Food Festival. It was a blur of friendly new and familiar faces, food and lots of fun. I know "fun" is kind of a lazy word to describe a day but I stand behind it. If you missed it - you can see the photos on our Facebook page by clicking on this sentence.

There's something kind of wonderful that happens when you're exhausted and busy though... with the right mindset you can look at the random collection of leftovers from meals past and see something new. This isn't a traditional Hot & Sour Soup - it's more a collection of wonderful that makes up a soup that is hot and sour but we loved it.

It might be March already but it's still cold out and that means soup season is still here! Enjoy it while we still can!

2011's Thanksgiving Parade begins with #7! Roasted Tomato & Fennel Bisque

OK. I admit we might be pushing it a little bit by adding this to the Month of Baking but you do use your oven to melt the vegan cheese. I've also noticed a lot of Tweets and Facebook Statuses about runny noses and sore throats so I thought it might be a good time to post a recipe that takes your mom's tomato soup a step further.

Original bisques are French soups made with crustaceans that were too beat up to be sold in the market but over the years the term has also been used to also describe cream-based vegetable soups. Sometimes the term means both. So not the most compassionate soups on the block. We used fennel, sea kelp and some vegan sour cream in ours to make it a bit nicer to both sea spiders and our bovine friends. We decided to add the toasted crouton (that you can't see) and melt the Daiya vegan cheddar on top as a little shout out to tomato soup's BFF grilled cheese sandwiches.

I got the idea to serve the soup in espresso cups from Martha Stewart's Wedding page. When I was planning my wedding, I remember seeing it and thinking that it was a really adorable idea for serving soup to a large group of people and I wanted to share it in time for Thanksgiving. Soup isn't generally thought of as being part of Thanksgiving but if you're looking for something different, these little buddies might make a good opening course. We got a lot of emails last year from folks who served our Macaroni & Sheese Cups as starters at their family get together and loved them. So the individual serving soups in espresso cups that you can sip like you're pretend British and eat with those adorably dainty coffee spoons seemed like it could possibly make for the most adorable starter for any dinner party ever.

You can also enjoy it in a bowl. Yawn.

Creole Spiced Butternut Squash & Sweet Potato Soup with Vegan Parmesan Croutons

This. Is. Creole Spiced Butternut Squash Soup!*
HAU HAU HAU! 

Let's make some.

Vegan Italian Sausage Chunky Minestrone & Easy Olive Oil Garlic Toast

I like these new purple plates but I'm not sure they look that great in photos.

Yesterday was a big day for the ol' Shannons. As many of you know, our kitchen in Norfolk was about the size of a bathtub. One of the selling points of our new place in Brooklyn was the bigger kitchen. There was room for a kitchen island to increase the counter space, and of course there was the coveted exposed brick. But even with all this upgrading, we were only half way to our dream kitchen. We needed something extra for all our pretty plates and schmancy wine glasses and all those random grains I like to experiment with and other random yumminess. That's why last weekend my handsome husband built me a Tardis!

Click on these photos to enlarge.

Now if you don't watch Doctor Who, you might not know what a Tardis is or what the hell I'm talking about. See, the infamous Tardis was created by the Time Lords to travel through time and space and is able to blend into it's surroundings using something called the 'chameleon circuit' while having the mystifying ability to be larger on the inside. Our new 'Tardis' not only matches all our kitchen gear but has pretty much doubled our cabinet space. This one addition to our kitchen is what I am calling a game changer and is pretty much one of the best things to ever happen to the Shannon kitchen since we starting making the vegan fried egg!

Check out how much it holds!

The only downside is that construction took up most of the kitchen Sunday but even without a kitchen... there is always the slow cooker. Minestrone is a thick soup that is as common on Italian dinner tables as pasta. It is also one of those soups that it is easy to take for granted because it is often already vegan but this one includes some vegan Italian sausage to make it a complete meal in a bowl. It's an easy dinner that pretty much makes itself. This soup is also kinda like The Doctor's Tardis ironically enough. It's full of way more vegetables and subtle savory flavors than you would think. We had ours with some Olive Oil Garlic Toast - a recipe I am sharing for those folks who love garlic bread but are trying to avoid the palm oil in most margarine. I actually think I might prefer the olive oil version but I'm a sucker for olives and olive oil and all things even a little related.

The downside to the slow cooker is pretty obvious. It's slow. This soup takes about a half hour to prep for and about 6 hours to make. So we should get started!

The Betty Crocker Project : Siesta Taco Soup

Oh. Steam on the lens. You are my nemesis today.

Some of you have been wondering where the frak we've been, and it's justified. I mean, seriously, it's been a week and we've been completely and unforgivably MIA. It really is a fair question to ask of bloggers who cook and post every day but who, without warning, disappear like magic. It's kind of nice to know that what you put out into the world would be missed.

Well, nothing scandalous happened. We weren't abducted by aliens or trapped under something heavy. We just went to a wedding. A charming and sublime DIY wedding at a breathtaking ranch in San Luis Obispo, CA. A wedding that I will gush about in another post, because last week I posted this photo of our Taco Soup in progress and there were so many messages and emails... well, I feel like you'd rather welcome September with a yummy soup recipe you can make in your slow cooker so you don't have to worry about heating up your home while fall is still more of an idea than an actual weather situation. I mean, I'd rather be eating this soup right now than pretty much doing anything else. So I get it.

If you take a look at Betty's Taco Soup, you'll see we took a lot of liberties... and since we made ours in the slow cooker it only seemed right to throw the 'Siesta' in there - sleepy little soup that it is*. If you're following along in your own copy of Betty's Big Red, you'll notice a few 'Feistas' thrown about from time to time on the Mexican-themed recipes. Which I actually kinda like. Those 'Feistas' are just the prefect level of campy. They remind me of something Mad Men's Betty Draper would serve to her kids during a break in her chain smoking. I'm not sure why that appeals to me, but in a weird way it totally does.

Taco Soup might not sound that good at first, but much like its friend Pizza Soup, it's surprisingly delicious and awesome. You might have to look over the ingredients to be won over. Here's just a hint of how good this soup is - if you slice your onions thin enough, they'll melt in the broth, making an onion soup flavor and texture that I actually described as "gorgeous" like a tween with a crush. Yeah - that really happened.

 So - Here's your rain check for an 'update' blog post about LA, Fashion Week in NYC, and a bunch of other random thoughts, rants and obsessions. Let's get this Soup Party started.

Lentils... A Vegan's BFF

What is it about lentils that makes us love them so? Is it that they're a great source of protein and amino acids? Maybe it's their folate, iron, vitamin B and fiber. Perhaps it's that they're a cheap and delicious little buddy that you can use in shepherd's pie or chili... hard to say. But I can say with confidence that this post is dedicated to the vegan's best friend: The Loyal Little Lentil.

I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not, and try to wax intellectual about the nutritional requirements of being vegan and how we need to make sure we get enough B vitamins, iron and amino acids - three things lentils are eager to share. But I will tell you this recipe also has kale in it, which if you haven't heard, is like a wonder vegetable! I mean it has beta carotene, vitamin C, and calcium. Throw in the root vegetables and you've got a whole big bowl of buddies watching your back all week and making you feel a little better about indulging in some Vegan Cheesecake or Caramel Sticky Rolls.


This isn't normally the kind of recipe we post, because vegan food blogs are full of these kinda all-purpose/all-delicious lentil and vegetable recipes*. We like giving you recipes you might not find somewhere else, but people have said they want more lentils than just a few soup recipes. I actually love lentils. We eat lentils all the time! So here's a recipe for a big pot of delicious lentils that you can cook up Sunday night and enjoy for your lunch all week over rice or alone. I suggest eating it with some whole wheat toast, a glass of iced tea and a loved one because if you really loved them - you feed them lentils.

And We're Back... & this time we made Vegan Garlic Chicken Ramen featuring the Vegan Hard Boiled Egg

Not your dorm room's ramen...

So you may have noticed that we've been M.I.A. lately. For those of you who aren't my buddy on Facebook or Twitter, this might be some big news: we moved to Brooklyn. Not just Brooklyn, but into a brownstone on a tree-lined street in old-school Bed-Stuy. So the past week and then some has been full of the usual moving dramas. You know - the packing, cleaning, and moving of various beloved objects. The unexpected melt-down at the thought of leaving the first home you ever shared with your partner. You know, the one that has all those lovely ups and horrible downs that come with a new and important relationship*. Of course, there is also the realization that you might never again visit this town that at one point you thought was going to be your forever home. This is of course followed by the calm realization that your real forever home is with your old man, and so you pack up your car with kittens and head out into the night... with a few tears.

OK. Now add to that driving a stick shift car from Virginia to New York with only a few weeks of practice under your belt, a few trips to IKEA, and a new apartment that while very charming is notably smaller than your previous place**... and that should pretty much bring you up to date on what we've been doing.

So we thought we'd come back with something easy: Ramen. I've been thinking about making this for months. Like many of you, I too have lived off ramen during periods of my life, and with my life various experiences and earned wisdom have come to develop a respect for real Asian cuisine. I certainly mean no disrespect to their instant counterparts, but the more traditional Asian noodle dishes are pretty much heaven. I mean, noodles to begin with are pretty much divine... so really is it hard to imagine a Pho/Ramen/Lo Mein Heaven? Um - No. I also hope this isn't too braggy, but I'm pretty happy how this little champ turned out. I mean she might not be the prettiest bowl of ramen to ever grace the internet, but she sure was delicious and gave me an excuse to make vegan hard boiled eggs again. Which is always a treat for me.

So to celebrate our first day back to the internet - Let's make some noodles!

Fresh Lemon Asparagus Soup will make you happy... worked for me.

When professional chefs make soup, there are several steps. Fancy soup is judged by how uniformly cut all the vegetables are, and is expected to be strained through a china cap. So I feel like I'm showing my amateur status by posting this as a soup*. See, I could have strained this soup into a fine light broth, but then it would lose a lot of the actual asparagus... and isn't that really the star of asparagus soup? I thought about calling it a chowder, but that didn't sing to me. Also, this soup has shallots, which are my new favorite member of the onion family. Gotta love those shallots.

So soup it is. And what a soup! Good news - there's still a lot of great asparagus available at the stores these days to make this soup, and who can say they really enjoyed spring without enjoying this soup? Not you - because here it is!

The Betty Crocker Project : 5 Bean Chili & Spicy Southern Style Cheddar Corn Bread (all vegan of course)

Now if you're flipping through Betty, you won't find 5 Bean Chili and Spicy Southern Style Cheddar Corn Bread. What you will find is recipes titled : Family Favorite Chili and Cheesy Mexican Corn Bread made Southern Style. Why'd we change it?

Well, because this is the recipe for our family favorite chili and this corn bread (like many Betty recipes) is kinda more Mexican themed American food. I love Mexican themed things but I know that some of you are reading this actually in Mexico. So I figured I wouldn't confuse you with a claim that wasn't really spot on. See what we call Mexican corn bread in the US was actually invented in Texas by soldiers in the 1800s as a way to doll up a fairly cheap food. Corn bread was really popular during the Civil War in the South because it was so cheap to make, filling and didn't get stale as quickly as white or wheat breads. Since then it has earned a distinguished spot in Southern cuisine and reinvented numerous times into fritters, hushpuppies and what have you*.

Now the technique of baking your corn bread in a cast iron skillet is a Southern tradition and according to my copy of Betty's Big Red has not been through The Betty Crocker Test Kitchens. Also - we loved it. The crust it creates is actually my favorite part and the presentation is pretty cool too.

Question : Am I the only one out there that dreams of being invited to The Betty Crocker Test Kitchen - all Willy Wonka style? Like one day I'll open a box of Bisquick and find a red ticket! Dan will jump out of bed in his old timey nightshirt and dance around the room**. Then we'll head out to  Minneapolis, MN where Betty Gnomes are hard at work creating the American dishes that inspire our little project using 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple. 

SIGH. Well, a grrl can dream can't she? Until my ticket comes in, let's eat some chili! 

The Betty Crocker Project : Winter Vegetable Stew

The first thing I said when I took a bite of this stew was "OH! These beans melt in your mouth like butter!"

Yeah I really said that. Sometimes I say weird things but that doesn't mean it wasn't completely true. This stew might be ugly. I mean might is being kind. This is some ugly soup. But just like our Inner Beauty Patty Melt, this soup has a great personality that makes up for it. It has so much rich, unique and a kinda diverse flavor. Oh and of course it has parsnips! I think this might be our first Betty recipe with parsnips. It's always fun to kinda mix it up a little but with those vegetables and going with seasonal produce is a great way to keep it fresh - literally.

I know right now we're all ready for summer but before we pull out the ice cream makers and plug in those AC units - we should take a second and remember in a lot of places right now - It is freezing! This stew is perfect with some sourdough bread and a mug of almond chai and of course to share with friends because this recipe makes a lot... like lunch for a week a lot.

This stew is also extremely easy to make. So we had time to update our Nerdery Page and start putting The Meet The Shannons Family Album together. Over the past year we've been getting a lot of photos from readers who have made a Meet The Shannons recipe. So we're putting together an album that will live on our Family Tree Page. We're launching on March 1st - So if you have a photo that you haven't sent in yet please email it soon with your name and tell use what you made to shannons@meettheshannons.net.

So here's your to do list :

1. Send in Photos
2. Explore Your Inner Nerd
3. Eat a lot of stew!

OK - Go! Chop - Chop!

The Betty Crocker Project : Easy Vegan Shrimp Gumbo

I have always loved Creole and Cajun food. I have spent huge portions of my life dreaming up ways to veganize old school Louisiana favorites like Beighnets, Po'Boys, Hush Puppies, Hoppin' John, Red Beans and Rice and Jambalaya. Hell - we even deep fried a Tofurky. So I guess I don't need to rave about how excited I was to make Betty's Shrimp Gumbo. Here's the thing...

Have you ever been making something and you get to a step in the recipe that makes you pause. Everything in you says - This recipe is perfect the way it is. If I do this - will it really be better? That moment when your heart says it's time to stop but you can't help but continue. There were 2 moments in this recipe where I wish I had the ability to turn back time :

• I wish I had used May Wah's ridiculously yet awesomely named Shrimp Balls instead of their Large Vegan Prawns. The Shrimp Balls are just firmer and have more flavor. ( Is anyone else laughing right now?)
• I wish I had added 1/2 Cup of vegetable broth or tomato sauce or even some diced tomatoes rather than the tomato paste. Yes Gumbo can be tomato-y and more people apparently like it tomato-y than spicy and roux-y. It lost a lot of kick when I added the tomato paste and became more of a sweeter tomato sauce than the spicy chowder with rice dish I personally love. But if you're not sure what you like or maybe are not the kind of person who orders the 5 pepper dishes at Thai restaurants - a medium salsa type - I suggest adding the tomato paste a little at a time till you like the flavor and thickness. 

Enough chatter - Let's start making this dish that is still so good it will make you smack your mama*... I mean Betty always brings it.

The Betty Crocker Project : Whole Wheat Cheesy Pesto Biscuits (Crackers)

So last night it occurred to me that I might be watching too much Star Trek when on the drive home from dinner I started a sentence by saying "Well during The Klingon Civil Wars...".

Yeah I did that but in my defense I also baked these adorable vegan Cheesy Pesto Biscuits/Crackers for Dan to eat with the soup he brings to work for lunch. This recipe makes around 20 of these little fellows, are pretty easy and are tasty enough to make even my most ridiculous tangents seem charming... Hopefully.

The Betty Crocker Project : Vegan New England "Clam" Chowder made with Oyster Mushrooms & Artichoke Hearts

I recently discovered that my relationship with our cat Percy has developed to a point where he loves and trusts me enough to let me play air guitar on his tummy Bill & Ted style. I've been calling it Cat Guitar and it's awesome. You know what else is awesome? Vegan Clam Chowder!

We reused the classic vegan trick of using oyster mushrooms for clams - like we did when we veganized Betty's Linguine with Clams  in White Sauce & Rosemary Garlic Bread. But even though the "clams" are wonderful - the real star of this recipe is the artichokes and potatoes. The slight "fishy" flavor is really nice and reminds me of what I remember when I think of this wintery favorite. I must stress - that you will want some crackers or bread to get every last drop of this chowder. Yes - This is a clean your bowl situation.

Really - I could eat this chowder and play Cat Guitar all day... not at the same time. That seems dangerous.

If you don't have a cat to to strum - I recommend watching the long lost Galaxy Quest mockumentary "GalaxyQuest: 20th Anniversary The Journey Continues"... because it's also awesome!

Let's make some Chowda!

Did you know that January is Soup Month?

It might be too hot to eat yet - but a grrl's gotta try!

So I've been posting a lot of soup recipes lately, and realized that I might have forgotten to tell you all that January is Soup Month. OK, I did forget. I do that sometimes. If you know me in person you know - I'm in my head a lot. Maybe too much. I'm shy is all. I'm one of those "socially awkward" people who's often 4 sentences too far into a conversation for some folks to really get how wonderful what I'm saying really is, or halfway through the joke before I start telling it. Sometimes I can't even type fast enough to keep up with myself. So I might have forgotten to mention that on the day I found out January was Soup Month, it seemed like destiny was winking at me from across the party. My handsome and wonderful Dan got me a big beautiful slow cooker for Christmas, and I want to use it everyday to make everything. We eat a lot of soup around here. Not just soup - we eat really good soup. I know I'm not being humble, but I have so few talents, I feel OK celebrating this one.

When I first went vegan, one of my only concerns was what would I do with only cans of tomato soup to keep me warm. But we live in a different world now. Now vegans can have any kind of soup you can dream of. So in celebration of Soup Month here is a list of soups in no particular order that you can enjoy before it's too late... It'll be February before you know it. I want to make a joke about "outlaw soups" here, but it's back to that 'I'm kinda a weirdo' thing and I might be the only one who thinks that would be funny.

• Pizza Soup
• White Chili
• Beef-Less Stew
• Beer & Daiya Cheddar Cheese Soup
• Beef-Less, Barley & Vegetable Soup
• Chicken & Wild Rice Soup
• Double Corn Chowder
• Matzo Ball Soup
• 16 Bean, Leek & Tofurky Kielbasa Soup
• Spicy Split Pea Soup
• Borscht

Happy Soup Month!

The Betty Crocker Project : 16 Bean, Leek & Tofurky Kielbasa Soup

This batch was made with Tofurky Kielbasa but I think Field Roast's Apple & Sage Sausages would be perfect!

Someone needs to say it. SyFy Channel's Vampire & Werewolf movie marathon this weekend was a little too heavy on the werewolves and had a significant lack of vampires. That's not to say it wasn't still completely wonderful! I mean, who doesn't love a good monster movie? But sometimes a gal needs more dialogue during the big bad death scene than most werewolf movies allow...  and less icky spine and muzzle faces.

So what do us Shannons make for dinner when there's this level of distraction? Pretty much what you would expect. We pull out the slow cooker and return to debating which movie has better werewolves; taking into account origin stories, transformation scenes, and CGI cheating, of course. But if werewolves aren't your thing, you might find yourself instead wondering: can I even name 16 different types of beans? And where would I even find them?

Fear not! They sell bags of 15 bean soup in the dry bean or soup aisles in most grocery stores, and that last bean is green beans. So relax. Pull out your largest stew pot or slow cooker, and let's make some soup!

The Betty Crocker Project : Beef-Less, Barley & Vegetable Soup

We're still figuring out this new camera... Sigh.

When I was a little eater, I loved Beef with Barley soup from a can. My dad would make it for meals he was left in charge of, and always served it with those cheddar goldfish crackers. I had this systematic way of eating it that took forever, but basically involved eating every little pea, barley, cheesy goldfish or whatever one at a time. Even then though, I skipped the few tiny meat bits. I wanted the soup to last as long as possible. So when I saw this recipe in Betty's Big Red, the 10 year old in me smiled and said, "You owe me this for all the spelling tests I worked so hard on, and since you discovered spell check, quickly forgot about."

This soup is much better than anything you could get from a can. It also includes an ingredient I'm pretty sure wasn't in my childhood favorite: Bell Peppers. I used to love bell peppers on sandwiches, especially red ones, but over the years we drifted away from them. Maybe it was the price, or maybe because they don't always last long in VA humidity even if you put them in the fridge. It's hard to say. But one of the many positive impacts The Betty Crocker Project has had on our lives is the reintroducing of bell peppers into our routine. She uses them a lot and I'm glad she does. Even after this project wraps, The Shannon household will still be a pro-peppers zone. Also don't forget to pick up some Eco-Planet Non-Dairy Cheddar Crackers. They're vegan and just as good as those cheddary cheesy goldfish. The recipe below has the Stew Pot and Slow Cooker versions... Viva la Pimienton Revolucion!

The Betty Crocker Project : Spicy Split Pea Soup and a Side of Chatter

So we're taking a little detour from our chocolate suicide to enjoy soup season and talk about some updates we've made around here. We're also going to man up and answer some of the questions we're getting since I boasted yesterday that we might not need New Years Resolutions this year. Now, if you haven't checked out some of the changes we made to this site over the past few weeks, you really should. We've put in a Pantry page to help you locate recipes by ingredients, and we updated our Frequently Asked Questions, As Seen On and Nerdery pages. We're still working on The Family Tree, but keep checking back--I think you'll like what we're going to do.

Also, if you look on the right hand side of the page, you'll see a button to check out our Finding Vegan Page, as well as a link to Ecolissa. Meet The Shannons readers can get 20% on Ecolissa - eco friendly and vegan clothing by entering Vegan20 at checkout. If living a greener life is one of your New Years Resolutions, you should really check Ecolissa out.

We've had a few people ask me a wide range of questions about reusable shopping bags & totes*. I hope these tips answer your questions.

• Keep your shopping bags in your car, and if you're really forgetful, put a sticky note on your dash reminding you to bring them inside. I think you'll be surprised how fast you make this a good habit.
• Recently someone who loves large, uncompromising landfills went around the internet telling people that reusing shopping bags will lead to a pandemic of food born illnesses. Let's be honest here--like anything in life, if you are worried about getting sick... be cleaner. Wash your hands. Wash your bags regularly, and your food before you eat it. Soap don't hurt.
• If you feel like some weirdo using a tote in places outside the grocery stores and farmers market, get yourself one of these cute little ones that fit in your purse. There are a few that are more manly too for pockets.

Time for soup!

The Betty Crocker Project : Pizza Soup

Since we started our little project we've seen quite a few impressive pizzas - An Extraordinary League of Pizzas if you will. Some were pretty old school like the Margherita Pizza, some were a little schamncy like the White Pizza and others were just about as American as a pizza gets like the Meat Lovers and Stuffed Crust Pizzas. But recipes like Pizza Dip are just pure Betty gold.

When I first saw Pizza Soup - I admit we wrote it off as one of the recipes we were dreading. We were biased and unfair. We never even read the recipe and there we were making jokes about how bowls of melted cheese shouldn't really be called "soup"... that being said I would eat bowls of our vegan Mac & Cheez sauce if I could - so I shouldn't talk.

Also - this soup isn't anything like what we thought. The truth is this soup is actually a really flavorful and unique vegetable soup with some melted Daiya and toast on top. It's delicious. It's really pretty and colorful with the bell peppers, mushrooms and basil. I mean let's face it - it's kinda impressive looking. I'd bet this silly named soup would get some "ohs and ahs" at any dinner party.  I just might test this theory.

We knew going into this - we'd love Pizza Burgers but it's good to know Betty's streak is still strong. We loved Pizza Soup and I don't care who knows!

The Betty Crocker Project : Beef-Less Burgundy Stew with Herb Dumplings

As we head into the junk food-chocoholic-sweet tooth paradise known as Halloween - we thought it might be good to post a fall dish that has lots of flavor & vegetables to help with those candy and cupcake hangovers we're all going to have.

I have to admit my favorite part of this recipe is the Herb Dumplings because they are a lot like The Betty Crocker Project's Garlic Cheesy Biscuits (that are pretty much one of my very favorite recipes ever). Another thing I love is that this recipe only takes about an hour to make as compared to the 10 - no joke 10 hours the meaty version takes and has none of the fat you would find in the 2 pounds of beef the original recipes calls for. This is actually a pretty light stew and we tried to keep it as traditional as possible while staying in the spirit of Betty's original recipe. I know I'm bragging now - but I think we rocked this one.

Don't forget that Peta has a $1 off Gardein coupon on their Facebook Fan page right now! Just "like" and print! Easiest buck I ever saved - plus their Facebook page is a rockstar too.