Today's salad recipe: A classic summer salad, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and romaine lettuce, all tossed in a lemon tahini dressing. Weight Watchers Friendly, WW 2 PointsPlus. Low Cal. Low Carb. Gluten Free. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". ~recipe & photo updated & republished 2013~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ 2008 Original: By the middle of August, there's simply no need to cook. We can if we want, but why? when we can just collect some vegetables, then wash, chop and devour. This easy salad made for a great light supper. What makes it special is the dressing: nutty with the sesame seeds in the tahini and bright with lemon. The recipe made far more dressing than needed for the salad, a real benefit at it turns out. When the dressing was puréed with a can of chickpeas, voila, a terrific hummus, one of my favorites in a long while. I slathered this onto flatbread (you must-must check my recipe for Quick Crisp Flatbread , it's the summer&#

Today's summer soup recipe: A cold soup made from fresh corn and 'creamed' with olive oil. Most refreshing. Soup recipes go on the backburner most of the summer. Except on rare 'chilly' days when the temperature drops to, I don't know, 70F?, summer just isn't the season for belly-warming foods. But cold soup -- now that's another story! When Lisa from the St. Louis food blog Show Me Vegan made a blender soup of Corn and Cashew Chowder , it moved to the top of my weekend cooking list. Sure enough, by Saturday it was hot-hot-hot outside and cold-cold-cold soup tasted wonderful. Better yet, since the soup is raw, no cooking required! Lisa's soup was inspired by a recipe from Food & Wine which called for six tablespoons of olive oil. Naturally, I wondered if the oil could be eliminated entirely. IT CAN'T -- in fact, without the oil, the soup is as blah as dusty corn husks. But still, I wanted to meter the oil, adding only what was needed for the

How to make zucchini relish, an almost-savory mix of grated zucchini, onion, peppers and carrots with spices, sugar (or honey) and vinegar. It's a great spread for sandwiches, hot dogs, a condiment on the side, spread on cream cheese and crackers, so much more. If you have baseball bat size zucchini, this just might be your recipe! An Annual Summer Tradition. Budget Friendly. Great for Food Gifts. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free. Rave Reviews.

Today's recipe: Beets cooked on a grill. Beans cooked on a grill on a bed of salted beet greens. "Necessity is the mother of invention" at work: imagine finding yourself with raw beets and beautiful romano beans - and no stove, no pot, no knives, just a grill. What happened next was pure experiment but it worked so beautifully, I share it here, not as a recipe but as a concept. The beets were small so would cook evenly and comparatively quickly. I tore off the greens but left the 'tails' on - it's important to not cut into the beets themselves, otherwise the juices pour out during cooking. A little olive rub would have been good, to keep the skins soft, but oh well, none at hand. A foil wrap would have contained the heat but also, I think, kept out that golden grill essence. Over indirect heat for about an hour, the beets emerged sweet and smoky, the texture light, the color dark, completely perfect. Very good! The bed of greens was intended solely as 'gra

Today's quick vegetable recipe: Wedges of radicchio (also called chicory) seared in a hot skillet, then dipped in syrupy vinegar. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 point. So earlier, when I mentioned feeling ho-hum about the Italian version of the Weight Watchers zero points soup , since radicchio is expensive, I also suggested skipping it entirely or substituting the less expensive red cabbage. I take it back! Cooked radicchio is completely gorgeous, an entirely different animal. It is also completely worth (to my taste) an occasional investment. And time-wise, it took all of ten minutes -- yes, ten -- from start to finish with maybe 5 minutes of hands-on time. Talk about quick! And I'm glad to add another good one to the collection of quick vegetable recipes . In its raw form, radicchio's red cabbage-looking leaves are slightly bitter. (There's a photo of radicchio here, if anyone's inclined.) In its cooked form, the chewiness and bitterness survive, but in a softer, s

Today's Weight Watchers recipe: The new Weight Watchers zero points soup recipe, this one the "Italian" soup. It's the mildest of the new Weight Watchers soups and is packed with Italian-style vegetables like fennel and radicchio. Like the other zero point soups, it's: Low Carb. Vegan. And of course, Weight Watchers 0 points. For many people who follow the Weight Watchers plan, the zero point soups are like the air we breathe: we don't want to be without! So it's no wonder that Weight Watchers UK developed three new recipes to give some variation to the granddaddy original zero point soup, the Garden Vegetable Zero Point Soup . I love the Weight Watchers Mexican Zero Point soup and the Asian Zero Point Soup stars Asian vegetables, so yes, it is a good variation too. This Italian-style soup, hmm, I'm not so sure. It has so many vegetables in it, it should be wonderful. Instead it's mild. No one vegetable really stands out and to my taste, they

Dear Charlotte, Alex and Freddie, Your new book The Great Big Veg Challenge is an absolute wonder! Yesterday, the postman handed it over just as I set off to walk the dog. Too curious to wait, I took what was supposed to be a quick peek. Thirty minutes later, I was still sitting in the shade in the front yard with a now-impatient dog, slowly paging through the book, smiling at the drawings and photographs, enjoying the sheer fun of watching you meander your way, A - Z, through the alphabet of vegetables. In Cabbage, Freddie, I laughed out loud when reminded that when you first ate potato, cabbage and rapini colcannon , you said "This is heaven," and asked, "Are you really sure there is cabbage in this?" This from you, Freddie, the boy who wanted to 'get the cabbage over with, quick'! In Celery and Fennel and Kohlrabi and Kale, I paused to check out particularly tasty-looking recipes (kale chips? gotta do that one!). Thanks for all the new kid-friend