VegMoFo Post November 10 - Stoup

Rachael Ray is so cute. Many people can't stand her being so chipper all the time, but she reminds me so much of how I used to be before Chronic Fatigue Syndrome , menopause, and hypothyroidism took its toll. OK, so her idea of a "vegetarian" meal is load of pasta with cheese, so she rarely makes anything that I would personally eat, but I still watch her show now and then. I love her made-up words, like "Yummo" and, my all-time favorite, "stoup," for a soup so hardy it could also be a stew. So why not just call it a "stew" and be done with it?

Yesterday afternoon, while creeping half-blind along the apartment*, a yearning for soup came over me, and thanks to the new DVD from Dr. McDougall called McDougall Made Irresistable I knew the one I wanted to make. So I felt my way to the computer, realized that the light of the monitor was hurting my eyes, and called my slave, er, I mean husband, over and talked him through how to open my AZZ Cardfile program, point it to the McDougall recipe file, and copy the recipe. He then had to paste it into another program's blank page, greatly enlarge the font so I could read it, then print it out. For a mostly computer-illiterate person he did quite well. I could see well enough to open the container of chopped onions I always keep in the fridge, and opening cans I could do in my sleep. Hubby helped with what I couldn't see well enough to do.

The result was a delicious Festive Dal Soup that was so thick that Ray Ray herself would debate whether to call it a soup, stew, stoup, or even a casserole dish! Two weeks ago hubby declared the Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans soup from the Veganomicon as the best soup he ever ate in his life, but yesterday he said the same thing about this soup.

Thanks, Mary McDougall, for another winner!

You can find the recipe on my VeganMoFo 2007 Recipes Page.


* The half-blindness was the result of pupil-dilating eye drops given to me just an hour or so before at the opthamalogist's office. No increase in my inter-occular pressure so no glaucoma treatment is required - yet. Still no explanation for the flashes and twitches, but I'll just chalk all that up to the CFS and the weird things it does to people. The eyedrops make my eyes very sensitive to light (Think of Gizmo, the gremlin, creeping along yelling "Bright light! Bright light!" and seeing everything in a hazy grey with no sharp outline edges, just a big blur. That's how I am for at least 4 to 6 hours after those drops go in my eyes.

To keep this side-bar in the topic of veganism, the doc is an enlightened one who believes the lack of glaucoma progression or retinal detachment could possibly be the result of my low-fat vegan food plan, that eating this way certainly keeps those tiny capillaries in good shape.