Fasting for Russian Orthodox Christians: Potato Soup

With the no-oil days home cooking can be a bit difficult. Today was cold and I decided I was in the mood for potato soup.

Yes, there's a whole lot of dill, parsley, and black pepper in there.

If you follow this blog, you will know that I already tried to make this once and ended up making mashed potatoes instead because the cashew milk split. I still don't know what caused that, but today's experiment went quite a bit better.

I cooked 4 hefty potatoes in the pressure cooker on a rack (5 minutes, natural release) and left the skins on because I like it that way. I drained out the water and put the potatoes back in, minus the rack, and filled the pot with cashew milk about halfway up the sides of the potatoes, put it on to boil, added dill, parsley, black pepper, and two bay leaves. Once the cashew milk was boiling I lightly mashed the potatoes for a little body to the soup, served, and finished with a sprinkle of salt. That made two heaping bowls of soup. Just what I needed on a cold day!

Fasting for Russian Orthodox Christians: Fruit compote

So I had a tiny amount of wine left in a box, and a freezer full of partially-opened frozen fruit of various sorts.

Pull out a pot, add some honey or your favorite vegan sweetener: sugar, brown sugar, agave syrup, brown rice syrup, stevia, monkfruit, etc.;, a cinnamon stick; a sprinkle of black pepper; and a tiny bit of mace; and voila! Fruit compote. Heat everything up until the wine reduces and thickens (most of the alcohol will boil off). Just make sure you have disabled your carbon monoxide detectors before you start, and you have plenty of ventilation.

I started this off in the pressure cooker, but then I had second thoughts and decided just to cook it in an open pot.

It got topped off with a dehydrated orange slice from last year's dehydration marathon, and it's quite delicious!

Fasting for Russian Orthodox Christians: Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Sorry, no picture this time. I was too hungry!

This started out as potato soup and was a failure, so I turned it into mashed potatoes. Delicious!

I used potatoes, cut into chunks, and added cashew milk, along with a little garlic and some black pepper and dill weed. I cooked all that in the pressure cooker, and the cashew milk "split." Not being inclined to waste food. I got out my trusty potato masher and mashed the potatoes, added a little salt, and it was delicious!

Next, I'll be trying potato soup with cashew milk again, but this time I will add the cashew milk after the potatoes are cooked. Live and learn!