Potato Leek Soup

Dinner made by two, sans stovetop, at home, together!

Gather your ingredients:

3 large leeks
5 largish red potatoes
5-6 cloves of garlic
Olive Oil, or other cooking oil of choice.
1 Qt Veggie Stock
2 tbsp nutritional yeast (or more if you like. I estimate)
Soy/Hemp/Rice Milk - approx 1 cup
Dried dill - about 1 tbsp? more to taste
Salt and Pepper to taste

*Makes a LOT! About 8 normal person servings, or 6 hungry-guy portions, or 4 high-energy-vegan-bottomless-pit-stomach snacks.

-Wash leeks, remove all dark green parts.


-Chop leeks into bits about the size of a postage stamp or two.

-Wash and chop chop taters


Enlisting help that can keep ingredients on the cutting board is not mandatory.


-Peel and chop garlic.
-Heat over-sized skillet to about 250 degrees, with a small amount of cooking oil of your choice.
-Throw in your garlic and sizzzzle for just a bit.
-Add chopped taters, leek bits, stir around unti everything is mixed well. Let sizzle a bit.
-Pour in enough water (slowly! hot oil and water do not good friends make) to cover the bottom half of your ingredients. Cover skillet and let everything simmer, until water is just about evaporated. This will only take a few minutes. This GREATLY decreases your cooking time, as the taters and leeks absorb much more water this way before actually adding your veggie stock.

-Add in Veggie Stock, Dill, Nutritional Yeast, Salt and Pepper.


-Cover and let slowly simmer.

This is the point where our humble chefs, exhausted from a full days work, sit back and let the magic happen. The tastes are merging...the smell is wafting through the warehouse...the dog sneaks into the room nose-first...
What to do while your delicious concoction concocts? I like to remember all the little guys in my life.
That's right, I'm talking about my compost worms again!
These tenacious little squirmers do a lot for me, so I like to make life easy on them. Barrett tends to the prep dishes, I get to mince our trimmings for them.


Now, once the soup is good and ready, and you'll know by tasting, not by timing, bring out the trusty blend-o-matic.
-Ladle it about halfway full, and add about 1/3 cup soy (or hemp, or rice) milk directly to ingredients in blender. Hold that lid for dear life and liquefy! Repeat until no soup remains in skillet.


Congrats! Once all the soup is made into a nice, smooth, wonderfully aromatic bowl of earthy yumminess, you can pat yourself and your helper on the back, throw together some salad and iced tea, and enjoy!!

Gutting 1970

Going through some old phone pics, I found these gems.




When we moved in here, the previous dwellers had left some pretty odd vintage furniture. It was all in really terrible, beaten-down shape. We had a few of the pieces set up outside our front door for a while, in true ghetto glory, but after a few rainstorms they became downright disgusting. We wanted to break them down as much as possible, to see if anything was salvageable, but the years, the wear, and the weather had taken its toll. At least we got a glimpse of the inner construction, for future projects!

"Food Inc" Trailer

From Spout.com, and HOMEGROWN.org,

"How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families? In FOOD, INC., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli--the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. Featuring Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation"), Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's Dilemma") along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms' Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, FOOD, INC. reveals surprising -- and often shocking truths -- about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here."



premieres in theatres June 19, 2009.