Month: June 2015

This Brown Lentil Soup is the first lentil soup I ever made, and the first time I made it was over forty years ago. Lentils were made for Middle Eastern seasonings, lemon, garlic and cumin. I always like a little heat in my food, too, and I almost always use hot paprika for that. I keep this brown lentil soup somewhat milder, though, and just use enough paprika to make the soup interesting, though still comforting. Spinach is a traditional Middle Eastern addition to the basic soup, and it makes the soup a nice meal in a bowl.

BROWN LENTIL SOUP WITH SPINACH

Ingredients

• Brown lentils, dried, 1 lb. (about 3 scant cups)
• Extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup
• Spanish onion, 1
• Carrots, 3 or 4
• Celery, 3 or 4 stalks
• Garlic, 1-2 TB, minced (6-8 large cloves)
• Cumin, 1 TB
• Salt, 1 TB (then to taste)
• Hot paprika, 1 tsp.
• Water, 6-9 cups (note: always start with less water – it’s easy to add during cooking to get the consistency you want)
• Lemon, juice of 1.5-2 lemons
• Cilantro, 1/2 bunch, minced
• Spinach, 1/2 lb. – 1 lb., rough chopped
• Other veggies, opt. (see note below)

Directions 

1. Mince the garlic, and petite dice the carrots and celery.
2. Add extra virgin olive oil to cover the bottom of your soup pot. Add prepared veggies and garlic and saute until softened.
3. Add the lentils and four cups of water or veggie broth per cup of lentils (about 12 cups of water).
4. Add optional veggies, petite diced. I don’t usually do this, but if I happen to have something appropriate that I want to use up, this soup is a good place. For this batch, I had the cores of a lot of zucchini and summer squash that I had used for zucchini “pasta,” so I petite diced it and tossed it in.
5. Add the remaining seasonings: salt, cumin, hot paprika and lemon juice.
6. Cook covered, stirring occasionally, until the lentils soften and begin to blend. I prefer to see actual lentils in my soup, so I don’t want to over-cook.
7. With a potato ricer, mash the lentils a little to thicken the soup — again, not completely. It’s good to see those lentils!
8. Add the finely chopped cilantro and rough-chopped spinach. Sometimes I cut the spinach in ribbons.
9. Remove from heat. Serve with a little extra lemon and olive oil.

Lentils are a great food for vegetarians and vegans, and they can be used in so many ways. This Lentil Soup is just a good, basic recipe, and it’s quick and easy to make.

For more, visit my blog, vegetatingwithleslie.org, “Like” me on FaceBook/Vegetating with Leslie or follow me on Twitter, @vegwithleslie.

Last week, we shared a monthly Shabbat dinner in my shul. We call these evenings “Third Fridays” because that’s when we come together to enjoy one of the high points of the Sabbath, an extended communal dinner with learning and songs.

I like to prepare these meals. It’s a meaningful way for me to structure my week. I used to make elaborate meals every week and have guests in my West Rogers Park home. My week was oriented toward finishing the house cleaning, shopping and cooking by sundown on Friday, the beginning of Shabbat.

Then for 26 hours, I “rested,” that is, I visited with friends and family at dinners and midday meals during this weekly holiday, went to synagogue, read, walked and occasionally napped. At the end of the day, well after sunset, I lit the havdalah candle and recited the prayers that end the Sabbath. Then there was that sudden frenzy of activity with the Sabbath over when it was time to run out to a movie or some other Saturday evening activity.

Since cooking isn’t permitted on the Sabbath in a traditional community (cooking is defined as boiling liquid), all the cooking needs to happen before candle-lighting, or sunset, Friday evening. This means there’s something of a frenzy before the Sabbath begins as well.

One of the ways I like to think about that rush before Shabbat is that I am creating the experience for myself (and others) of being nurtured. With everything made before Shabbat begins, I am able to sit at the table with everyone else to enjoy the food and friendship and songs. I feel nurtured. I have bread without work in that moment.

It’s hard to describe this weekly experience to someone who has never enjoyed it, the special feelings associated with each hour of the day as the angle of the sun changes and the prayers and songs move successively through the themes of creation, revelation and redemption. There is a feeling of nostalgia and longing associated with those last rays of light slanting into a room at the close of the day toward havdalah and the end of this special time. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel calls the Sabbath, “a palace in time.”

Sometimes I miss living in a neighborhood that supports this way of living, a community where everything is walking distance, including people with whom I can share the occasion. I’ve really been happy to be able to prepare a Friday evening meal for my synagogue and share it with friends there.

A few months back, I decided to make these Shabbat dinners vegan. My Sabbath experience is deeper and richer and more full of joy when my meals are plant-based, and I have enjoyed the opportunity to try out new dishes with my friends.

Here is the menu we enjoyed:

Vegan Spelt Challah & Wine for Kiddush
Salads: Muhammara, Tomatoes & Cucumbers, Navy Beans with Dill, Hummus, Red Cabbage Slaw, Babaganoush, Sweet Red Pepper Salad, Kalamata Olives
Soups: Choice of Red Lentil Soup or Ricey Spinach Soup
Entree: Black Bean and Zucchini Pasta with Ratatouille Topping (I also made sauces, Harif, Z’hug and a mild Salsa Verde)
Dessert: Vegan Chocolate Mousse, Strawberries, Toasted Almonds

Two of these salads were new to my Shabbat repertoire: Navy Beans with Dill and the Babaganoush. Well, the Babaganoush isn’t really new — it’s just that I used to use Labne, a thick Middle Eastern yogurt, to make mine. This version was vegan.

I shopped on Wednesday, made all the salads and the mousse on Thursday and made the soups and entrée on Friday. I make challah twice a week and freeze at least one loaf a week for these dinners, which at the present time require four challot. At 3 PM, we left for the synagogue so we could set the tables and plate the salads before Shabbat.

I always prepare a two-minute thought to share with our group, and this time, I asked everyone to think about the difference between habit and ritual. This is a question I worked with recently in preparation for a class I plan to teach next spring. So far I have five ideas about how they are different, but I shared just one: that ritual requires thought and intention while habits are, and are meant to be, thoughtless.

I was very happy to have Rabbi Maralee Gordon with us this week. That meant I could turn the evening over to her to lead Kiddush at the beginning of the evening and Birkat ha-Mazon and singing at the other end of the evening. Everybody helped with serving and cleanup, and I enjoyed a beautiful Shabbat evening with my friends!

For more, visit my blog, vegetatingwithleslie.org, “Like” me on FaceBook/Vegetating with Leslie or follow me on Twitter, @vegwithleslie.

Next spring, 2016, I will teach a class in the Retired Adult Program (RAP) at McHenry County College in Crystal Lake, Illinois. I’m working out a course outline and would like to share it with you, my followers, and invite your comments.

Eventually I hope to prepare videos to accompany sessions and perhaps combine theory with a little cooking practice. I envision the six sessions working together but would also like each session to stand more or less on its own:

WAYS TO THINK ABOUT FOOD: CONSCIOUS CHOICES

This six-session class will view food choices through different prisms. In the course of these six sessions, we will:

• discover how conscious and unconscious choices about food express worldview and values,
• learn to make conscious choices about foods we eat (and don’t eat),
• learn to create a stronger connection between what we eat and what we value,
• find out how to derive more satisfaction from the food we eat,
• see how this process can influence every aspect of how we live our lives, and
• learn how this process can contribute to greater health and fulfillment.

Sessions:

1. Eat to Live (Survival)
2. Meals in the Bible
3. Food Rituals (Kashrut, Tea Ceremonies, Begging Bowls, Sacrifice)
4. Ethics of Eating Pt. I (Vegetarian and Vegan)
5. Ethics of Eating Pt. II (Sustainability and Fair Food)
6. Food That Does Not Satisfy (Special and Fad Diets)

I’d like to hear from you! Please share your thoughts and ideas or any resources you think would contribute to this series.

For more, visit my blog, vegetatingwithleslie.org, “Like” me on FaceBook/Vegetating with Leslie or follow me on Twitter, @vegwithleslie.

Love ’em or hate ’em, that’s beets! It’s one of those veggies that inspires extreme reactions. Even people who came into the cafe and said they hated beets loved this Moroccan Beet Salad, though. With its deep color, it’s a beautiful and appetizing addition to any meal, and the natural sweetness of the beets combined with classical Middle Eastern seasonings makes this root vegetable into something very special.

MOROCCAN BEET SALAD
Ingredients

• Beets, 6 large
• Red onion, 1/4 large (3 oz.)
• Lemon, 2 lemons, juiced (about 4 TB)
• Extra virgin olive oil, 6 TB (if you must refrigerate before eating, use canola oil so it doesn’t solidify)
• Salt, 2 tsp. (to taste)
• Cumin, 2 tsp.
• Szeged Hot Paprika, 1-2 tsp. (to taste)
• Cilantro, 1/4-1/2 cup chopped

Directions

1. Place whole, unpeeled beets in water to cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, and cook until done. Don’t over-cook, but you should be able to pierce the beets easily with a fork.
2. Cool the beets in the cooking juices and rub off the skins.
3. Julienne the beets.
4. Add olive oil, lemon juice, spices.
5. Slice onions thinly into the bowl with the beets, 1″-2″ long slices.
6. Add chopped cilantro to the bowl.
7. Stir all together gently, adding lemon, salt and hot paprika to taste.

For more, visit my blog, vegetatingwithleslie.org, “Like” me on FaceBook/Vegetating with Leslie or follow me on Twitter, @vegwithleslie.

Muhammara (Arabic for “reddened”) wasn’t one of my original group of salads. I have a customer to thank for this delicious suggestion. Although it’s a classic Middle Eastern combination of ingredients, I hadn’t heard of it until someone asked for it when we catered their wedding. I tried a few different versions and finally settled on this one. Muhammara became a great favorite in my Cafe!

Muhammara is originally from Syria but is enjoyed throughout the Middle East and Turkey.

MUHAMMARA (makes about 2 cups)
Ingredients

• Walnuts, 2 cups
• Pomegranate molasses, 4 TB
• Red Bell Peppers, 4 large, roasted
• Garlic, 2 cloves
• Extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 cup
• Pita crumbs, dried/toasted, 1/2 cup
• Cumin, 2 tsp.
• Crushed red pepper, 2 tsp.
• Tomato paste, 2 TB
• Salt, 1 tsp.

Procedure

1. Roast the peppers under a broiler until the skin is dark brown/blackish all the way around. Set aside to cool.
2. Bread crumbs will work for this. I prefer to use my whole wheat Lebanese pita croutons (that I make for Fatoush). Sometimes I just put a whole piece of Lebanese pita into a low oven until it is thoroughly dry, then break off what I need for the Muhammara and save the rest for when I make Fatoush.
3. Add all ingredients except the peppers to a food processor.
4. When the peppers are sufficiently cooled, peel and remove the stems. The skins should slip off easily if they are well-roasted.
5. Grind until smooth, or at least just slightly grainy from the walnuts.
6. Garnish with additional pomegranate molasses/syrup and walnuts.

Enjoy as a dip with Pita or veggies. This unusual (although classic in the Middle East) blend of flavors will delight you, your family and your friends.

For more, visit my blog, vegetatingwithleslie.org, “Like” me on FaceBook/Vegetating with Leslie or follow me on Twitter, @vegwithleslie.

Rituals and Habits: 5 Ways They’re Different

Recently I had a reason to contemplate the difference between ritual and habit. Actually, I suspect the assignment intended that I would understand the words synonymously, because that’s how many of us view them. I believe these practices are very different, though, and one of them is life-enhancing while the other diminishes our lives.

• Rituals define a system. Habits are isolated practices and may even be out of synch with a system.
• Rituals are purposeful and are performed with intention. Habits have no purpose other than to make certain an action happens without thought. They may have been intentional on the first performance, but the goal of a habit is that it become thoughtless, intentionless and well, just a habit.
• Rituals communicate. Habits communicate nothing since they are thoughtless and intention-less beyond the intention that they happen without thought.
• Rituals are an aid to focus. Habits are an indication of lack of focus or are at least not focused on the habitual action.
• Rituals create meaning. Habits have no meaning.

Food Rituals and Habits

Since I like to write about food, I thought I might explain these differences between ritual and habit through the prism of food.

1) Rituals define a system, and habits are isolated practices. More than the words of liturgies, which are debated and interpreted, rituals define the boundaries of a religious system, the relative value of the parts within those  boundaries and how people are required to behave within that world.  Often those definitions include what one can and cannot eat.

Something that a person habitually eats may or may not express a worldview. Initially perhaps a choice was made about an entire diet, and that diet expressed a worldview, for example that good health is important. If that initial choice becomes a habit, though, it no longer expresses anything. Not only is that habit carried out without thought, it is carried out in isolation and not as part of a systematic worldview. If information changes about what constitutes good health, a habit will continue even if it contradicts the new information.

2) Rituals are purposeful and are performed with intention. Habits have no purpose other than to make certain an action happens without thought.

I can always tell when one of my own actions is a ritual and when it is a thought. I require meaning in my life, and it is hard for me to motivate myself to do all the things involved in living a life if I have no sense of meaning. When I experience a sense of meaning, I feel joyful and energetic. When I don’t experience that sense, I feel tired and unmotivated.

Of course we all need a habit here and there, especially in a world that requires multi-tasking. We can’t give all our energy to every little thing and need to do some things on automatic. It’s all about balance, though, and when my life becomes too automatic, too filled with habit, I am likely to become depressed. Conversely, when I make a conscious choice to do something familiar that has a particular meaning in my universe, I feel purposeful, satisfied and even joyful.

I put together a breakfast bowl for myself each morning. I looked up each item in my bowl to make certain it fulfills a particular purpose for my health and my ethical consciousness. Then I evolved a series of steps which remain the same each day so that I can put my bowl together fairly quickly and easily. It may look like a habit, but it isn’t. It is definitely a ritual. I am aware of the purpose of each item in my bowl, and each ritual step I take to fill my bowl generates a sense of happiness, comfort, meaning and satisfaction — a satisfaction that is every bit as important as the mere physical satisfaction of eating what’s in the bowl.

3) Rituals communicate. Habits communicate nothing since they are thoughtless and intention-less beyond the intention that they happen without thought.

The best way I know to say, “I love you” to someone I care about is to prepare and serve them a delicious and beautiful meal that I know represents good health as we know it today. If it also represents a set of ethical values that I know I share with that person, it deepens our relationship.  Although I’m a long-time vegetarian, becoming vegan, those values don’t necessarily have to be vegetarianism or veganism. It can be values like kindness to all creatures or sharing our resources,  talents and abilities.

Similarly, religious rituals communicate a worldview.  There are reasons that certain foods are prized and others are taboo or forbidden. Food laws and rituals are a theology and an anthropology, stated without words.

4) Rituals are an aid to focus. Habits are an indication of lack of focus or are at least not focused on the habitual action.

Again, it’s easy to tell the difference between a ritual or a habitual action. As I’ve mentioned before, my knife skills are unfortunate, odd as that may be for a former restaurant owner and cook to say. I have sliced my fingers on many occasions. It’s easy to predict when I will cut my fingers.

I make a salad every day called an Israeli or Jerusalem salad. It involves quite a bit of cutting since each vegetable is petitely diced. I’m told that’s called brunoise. If I follow a little ritual I created before I start to cut, my fingers remain intact. The ritual is to (calmly and with attention) clean my counter, put down a clean cutting board, get out my knife, sharpen it, and work my way through each of the veggies, tomatoes first, then cucumbers, then red bell peppers, then red onion, then cilantro. I add each to my large bowl as I finish it. When I’m finished, I mix the salad and clean up.

If I just grab my knife and cutting board and start cutting away at my veggies in a rush with 10 other things happening around me that also require attention, I will cut my fingers.

5) Rituals create meaning. Habits have no meaning.

One of the most spiritually awesome moments I ever had was about twenty years ago when I went camping over a Sabbath. In traditional Judaism, no cooking is allowed on the Sabbath. When I went camping every weekend along the Mississippi, I left early enough on Friday that I could set up camp, make my fire and prepare my Sabbath meals before sunset.

Of course there are Jewish rituals involved in the meal, but I had rituals of my own that I added, most of them involved in the food preparation. By the time I sat down to my vegetarian Sabbath feast on a Friday evening out in the woods, I felt like I was in harmony with the natural world around me and that I could fully enjoy a beautiful meal that harmed no creature. The results of my ritual preparations spoke to me of a meaningful, loving universe, even if it was just my reality, one I created, for a space in time.

I would have missed those oportunities for awesome moments if I had been in an automatic, mindless mode, performing habitual tasks.

How can I make my life more meaning-filled?

Can habits be elevated to rituals? Can rituals become routinized into habit? Yes, both can happen!

Take a look at the things you repeat in your daily life. If a habit no longer fills it purpose, to allow  you to do something that is important for you to do without investing a great deal of thoughtful energy in remembering and completing the task, get rid of the habit.

Or you could convert the task to a ritual, a series of steps that involve thought and intention and that express something meaningful.

Kids thrive on meaningful rituals. My own sons used to love to get out special holiday dishes for a meal with family and friends each year. When my grandson was born, I said, “We need a ritual” and suggested Sunday breakfast.  It was a statement that would have sounded odd to anyone who didn’t know me, but my grandson’s parents accommodated me, and 11 years later, we still get together every single Sunday for a meal that we all share in cooking. The meal has evolved over the years but remains essentially the same as when we started. It is meaningful to each of us in different ways at different times — but it is meaningful to each of us including my grandson.

Fill your life with meaningful rituals.

For more, visit my blog, vegetatingwithleslie.org, “Like” me on FaceBook/Vegetating with Leslie or follow me on Twitter, @vegwithleslie.