Thanks for reading Vego Zest. From now on you can find me at Blissful Travel, where I share up-do-date travel news, tips and information as well as food & drink related topics.
Are you running out of dinner ideas? Look no further.
Quick, easy and healthy veggie dinner suggestions:
- Soy sausage with mashed potatoes and a small bean salad.
- Thai terrine with coconut milk, green curry and your favorite vegetables served with rice.
- Vegetable wok with sweet chili sauce and rice.
- Tortilla bread with fresh spinach, avocado, pesto and sundried tomatoes.
- Spaghetti and vegetarian minced meat sauce.
- Couscous salad with haricots verts, tomatoes, spinach, olives and beans.
- Vegetable mince with mushrooms, onion, and soy cream, served with potatoes.
- Fried tofu with potato wedges.
- Veggie burger with potato wedges, garlic butter and green salad.
- Oven grilled vegetables with cold veggie dip (herb-spiced egg free mayonnaise, hummus or guacamole) and bread.
- Sandwich with vegetarian pâté, pepper, tomato, mashed avocado, sundried tomates and salad.
- Noodles with fried vegetables, coconut sauce, peanuts and chili.
- Baked potatoes, boiled broccoli and bean salad.
- Wholemeal pasta with crushed tomatoes, onion, chili sauce and lots of spices!
- Quinoa and a sauce of tomatoes, cannelini beans, oregano, thyme and herb salt.
07
Apr
How To Boil Water
In case you’re a complete novice on cooking, boiling water is the first thing to learn.
HOW TO CHOOSE A KNIFE
When chopping vegetables, bread and other foods, it’s important to have a good knife. Watch this video from Howcast to learn how to make the ultimate choice.
HOW TO CHOP AN ONION
23
Mar
Top 10 Age Defying Foods
According to nutritionist Suzanne Laurie at Fushi Holistic Health & Beauty Solutions, the top 10 age defying foods are blueberries, carrots, curry, soya, green tea, dark chocolate, water, red wine, garlic and nuts & seeds.
Ever wondered how to properly pour a bottle of wine? Then, watch this video from Howcast.
Aloe Vera
I can highly recommend Stargate Nutrition, a company that wishes to “…contribute to the overall healing of what causes disease, which is malnutrition.” and “…address that by supplying consumers with proper bone fide nutrients, in a form that their bodies can recognise, absorb and utilise.”
On their site you can buy quality products and vitamins, read articles, and subscribe to their free bi-monthly newsletter about health, mind, body, spirit and nutrition.
My favourites vitamins and nutritions so far are wheat germs, spirulina, red chili pepper, green tea, gingko leaf, ginger and aloe vera. Definitely worth a try.
BREAK INTO COOKBOOKS: ADVICE FROM A COOKBOOK WRITER AND EDITOR
Interview by Pamela White
Laura S. Wharton is a food writer, cookbook writer and editor, and is currently working on a cookbook of North Carolina waterfront restaurants. She was kind enough to consent to an interview and her answers offer insight into the spirit that drives food writers.
Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. First, could you share with us about your beginnings as a food writer?
LW: My experience as a freelance writer of magazine articles and CD-ROM’s on historic cities often involves food, restaurant reviews, and travel. I’ve met so many wonderful people in the restaurant business who were excited to share their special dishes with visitors, so writing about food has become a natural part of every trip. Cookbooks evolved from that experience.
FW: We’re interested in how cookbook writing and editing hopefuls can break into this area of food writing?
LW: Getting into print only takes persistence. The easiest way is to start with a small local newspaper. Offer to review a restaurant (do it positively), or suggest a column that includes recipes from local restaurants. Not only is this a good public relations ploy for a newspaper, but restaurants love to get their name in print. When I was a “lifestyles section” editor for a medium-sized newspaper, I started a feature that included a short piece each week on a local eatery. Comments from readers were favorable on this project, and it gave my young freelance writers experience they needed for bigger stories I assigned them later on. From this experience, writing for magazines is a small leap. Do this first to build clips, then head
toward cookbook publishers to show them you can do the work they need done. Building a name in writing is important, but what’s better is to build proof of your abilities. Rather than submitting a traditional resume, create a simple flyer that shows writing accomplishments. It’s a trick that will help writers stand out among competition. The other option is to create a cookbook and publish it yourself, but that’s another story altogether.
I love freelance writing, and truly enjoy working on cookbooks. Typesetting can be tedious, but since someone else does that for me, I get the fun of taste-testing recipes, interviewing chefs who are far better at cooking then me, and the occasional free meal - now that’s a perk not all writers can claim.
FW: Any other advice you have for food writers?
LW: Write about what you love, what you know. If you love to cook, or love to eat, then food writing may be the way to go. If you are considering self-publishing your own cookbook, you need to learn everything you can before you start, so learn from the master: Dan Poynter, Parapublishing. He has an informative website for anyone interested in this route.
© Pamela White, 2006
About the author: Pamela White published Food Writing, the free ezine for food writers from her website: http://www.food-writing.com/ She teaches food writing classes, and her book, Make Money as a Food Writer in Six Lessons, is available at Amazon.com .
10
Feb
Childhood Aspirations
I have to admit, one of my childhood aspirations was to become a chef. I loved cooking, baking and tasting new good food… at home or at different restaurants. One of the best things with travelling abroad was all the new food dishes we could try. Each week, I watched food shows on TV, and I even had my favourite chef, Anders Dahlbom, who became Sweden’s Chef of the Year in 1993. This phase lasted from 92-95 I think. I was very into Jamie Oliver a few years ago and still like cooking, but not as much as before. Anyway, it’s quite fun to think back on all your childhood aspirations and how much your goals and dreams have changed since you were a kid.
05
Feb
Wanna Be A Food Writer?
SIX WAYS TO BREAK INTO FOOD WRITING By Pamela White
These are the times that try writers’ souls.
Publishers post guidelines for writers that require published clips to be sent with query letters. Writers cannot get published clips unless they’ve been published. The logic is just as perplexing when writers try to break into new niches. Food editors ask for food-related writing samples prior to assigning stories to new writers. Never fear, there are ways to conquer that old “Catch 22.”
Here are six ways writers and chefs can break into food writing. Some are sneaky roundabout ways; others make use of editors’ needs for new writers to pen essays and travel pieces. Combining food with another writing niche is yet a third way to acquire those valuable food writing clips.
One: Try a sneaky way to get a food writing clip. Look at your professional expertise. How does it connect with food? If you are an architect or you’ve worked with one to design a kitchen, use that to write an article for a handy man magazine. Include tips on how to lay out a kitchen so that food lovers or amateur chefs will be delighted with the results. Do you know a professional party planner or are you known for your gatherings? Write up a holiday event, including recipes, for your local newspaper or a regional magazine. Love the outdoors? Write about building a barbecue for a do it yourself magazine, or share tips on fileting fish for the weekend fisherman.
Two: Write a personal essay about food. It’s not only professional food writers that are writing essays about food memories, favorite meals and picky eaters. Everyone has a tale to share about summer fruit, Fourth of July cookouts or first bites of TV dinners. Who is going to buy these essays? Read the food magazines. Saveur runs expressive essays on everything from bread soaked in milk to a first experience with a mango. “The Square Table,” an online, non-paying market, accepts essays on dining. “Woman’s Day” and “Family Circle” publish essays on food and its impact on family, life and relationships. “Parents,” “Parenting” and “Child” publish advice regularly on getting picky eaters to try new foods.
Three: Report on your vacation. But instead of writing something as banal as “what I did on my summer vacation,” write a travelogue, including short reviews of restaurant meals. Oh, you didn’t travel to Provence last June? Write about traditions at your family reunion. Why not do a round up of five or six small barbecue joints in Kansas City? Stayed close to home? Write about the food at the water, amusement, or theme park - what was good, bad, or healthy. If you did travel abroad, I hope you took plenty of notes and photographs. Once you have your idea for a travel and food piece in mind, start looking for markets. Local newspapers in both the place you visited and where you live are possible markets. Frugal-themed newsletters and websites use articles on traveling and eating on the cheap. An article about how to dine well at amusement parks and fairs would interest readers of parenting and women’s magazines.
Four: Teach a cooking class; take a cooking class. Write it up as a publicity piece for the cooking school. Alternatively, write up how to teach a cooking class as a home-based business for women’s magazines or entrepreneur publications. Maybe you live in a city that has food events, like Taste of…, wine tastings, chili cook-offs, or baking competitions? Alternative newspapers, weekly newspapers and regional magazines are possible markets for articles on how to put on a baking, or cooking, contest, the best in local wines, or which restaurants offered the best bites at a large gathering.
Five: Combine food writing with another niche. Write about kitchen gardens, herbs grown in window boxes, winter gardens, starting seeds. Interview organic gardeners, local farmers, and who’s selling at the farmer’s market. Combine camping, RV’s and fishing with recipes and quick snacks to pack that are easy to transport yet tasty. Think further - sports-minded magazines (don’t forget dance and cheerleading publications) can use recipes that provide quick energy with minimal fuss. Health writers can write articles on diets that help chronic conditions: pain, yeast infections, migraines, arthritis.
Six: Pick a lesser known holiday and write it up for fun. St. Swithin’s Day is an ongoing joke at our household. It falls on July 15, so we claim St. Swithin to be the patron saint of barbecue. You can pick an actual holiday — something that isn’t done to death — or write about a special holiday your family has created.
These ideas are also starters for established food writers looking to expand into other markets. Pick one, or mix and match for your food writing success.
© Pamela White, 2006
About the author: Pamela White publishes Food Writing, the free ezine for food writers from her website: http://www.food-writing.com/ She teaches food writing classes, and her book, Make Money as a Food Writer in Six Lessons, is available at Amazon.com.
