Back to Basics: How to bake whole sweet potatoes in the oven. It's as easy as easy can be: just rub the sweet potatoes with a little oil and bake. (We're baking whole sweet potatoes here, no need for any knife work at all!) This is a great way to cook a lot of sweet potatoes at once, also my favorite way to cook just a couple of sweet potatoes for dinner or for later when the oven is already on. Wonderful for sweet potato meal prep. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". What To Do, What To Do Awhile back, I needed to cook a pile of sweet potatoes for a recipe calling for cooked sweet potatoes. So many choices! The cooking options were: STEAMING OR BOILING But all that added moisture would leave the sweet potatoes too wet, even soggy. MICROWAVE Cooking sweet potatoes in the microwave is a smart technique for one or two whole sweet potatoes, not so much for a lot of sweet potatoes. ROASTING But I didn't want the crispy caramelized edges that develop

We sure love our smoothies! We all know we should eat more vegetables. But how, how do we do that, really ? What real-life tips and ideas work? How can we build our lives around the healthiest of all foods, vegetables? Every Saturday, the 'veggie evangelist' shares practical tips and ideas from her own experience, her readers and other bloggers. And now for this week's tip, more submissions from readers, this time Kathleen H. from Gallup, NM and Shawna M. Thanks, guys! You so perfectly expressed our love for smoothies! UPDATE: After I posted these tips, Kathleen explained further exactly why smoothies are so important to her health. She wrote, "I really think that veggie smoothies have played a major role in my cancer survival. I ordered the Vita-Mix two days after my first lung cancer diagnosis in March of 1999. I've used it at almost every meal I've eaten at home since then -- fruit, seeds, whey protein powder for breakfast and veggies at lunch and di

Vegan Done REAL, it's this easy. Quick and Easy and Vegan Too: An easy vegan main dish, no processed food required, just the kind of recipe that inspired Vegan Done Real. Weight Watchers, 3 or 5 points. Vegan Done Real Some times you have to act. What follows is the reason I've conceived Vegan Done Real , a collection of 52 whole-food vegan recipes from myself and nine other vegan and omnivore bloggers. I hope you'll share it with your friends, real life and Facebook, because we just cannot afford to let the commercial food product companies co-opt the concept of a plant-based diet all in the guise of 'healthy'. As my friend Karen, one of the contributors, wrote on Twitter: "Oprah went processed vegan; these bloggers are keeping it real: 52 recipes." [ Note to Vegetarians ] The Background I'm a glass half full kind of gal. When something looks off, looks plain wrong, I might feel frustrated or even angry for a moment, but then, well, I shrug i

We all know we should eat more vegetables. But how, how do we do that, really ? What real-life tips and ideas work? How can we build our lives around the healthiest of all foods, vegetables? Every Saturday (oops, unless she's caught up in cooking for a Mardi Gras party, in which case, on Monday), the 'veggie evangelist' shares practical tips and ideas from her own experience, her readers and other bloggers.

Polish Dill Pickle Soup: It'll grab you! Today's soup recipe: A potato soup like you've never imagined, completely potato-y but also pickle-y, dill pickle-y to be exact. The creamy-sharp combination takes you by surprise. "Oh that's good," you just might say. We did. So yes, today there's a fun recipe but first, the reason why it's especially fun: it's featured in the weekly column that I'm writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the big local newspaper here in St. Louis. (Pinch me, yes, I'm really writing that!!! It's really true!) The column is called 'Special Request' and is the Post's popular restaurant recipe request column. On Wednesdays, it appears in print in the paper's food section and online at stltoday.com . Each week, a new restaurant and a new recipe is featured. (Pinch me again. Really. DO.) What does a proud home cook know about restaurant recipes? Well so far, the recipes that Post readers are

We all know we should eat more vegetables. But how, how do we do that, really ? What real-life tips and ideas work? How can we build our lives around the healthiest of all foods, vegetables? Every Saturday, the 'veggie evangelist' shares practical tips and ideas from her own experience, her readers and other bloggers. This week's tip:

Today's recipe: The classic Italian spinach gnocchi [pronounced NYOAK-ee, or, read on, there's a musical mnemonic too for my fellow Word Dancers], what you might call a dumpling but light and airy and slightly cheesy. Gnocchi are not difficult to make but do take some time. The results, however, are worthy of a special occasion or a relaxed weekend meal. Y'know, like Valentine's maybe? So I like to joke that there's an Unofficial Alanna Kellogg Fan Club and that it has exactly one member. That's our new friend Charlie and given his long-standing encouragement, I've appointed Charlie president. Laugh if you will but it's true. Some years back and long before we'd met, Charlie read and liked Kitchen Parade when it was published in the local newspaper. He's a volunteer poll worker too so one election, Charlie watched for me and put out his hand to introduce himself. Fast forward to 2011 and Charlie and and his wife Jan's introductions to