Comfort food at it's finest! Plus a book review

That's how Isa and Terry describe their leek and bean cassoulet with biscuits (when they say biscuits, being british I always think of what the Americans would call cookies or graham crackers, but we'd call them dumplings over here, lol) from Veganomicon anyway, and with the suggestion it was the perfect food to come home to from a long hard rainy day, I decided to make some for Jay's dinner since he was on his way home from a hard day at the office this rainy day!

I've seen mixed reviews for this posted online, with some folk suggesting they found it tasty if a little bland, and others raving about it. Now, I'm a spice fiend myself as you know, so I decided to tweak this a bit by quadrupling(x4!) the crushed garlic, upping my pinch of crushed black peppercorns to a heaped teaspoon, and putting a pinch of rosemary and thyme into the biscuits. I've also used black eyed beans instead of navy beans, and this turned out very nicely indeed!

Next up is the mushroom and sundried tomato risotta, also by Isa but from her previous cookbook, Vegan with a vengeance. I really liked this, and I also reckon it's something I could serve to a fussy omni guest since there aren't any "weird, vegan" ingredients in it like tofu, nooch, or even beans and lentils!

Last up is creamy mushroom sauce from the Low-carb vegetarian by Rose Elliot. Only this isn't low carb anymore since I've used it as a pasta sauce instead of as a topping for tofu cutlets.

I must say I was unimpressed by the low carb diet, while it may be possible to follow it as a vegan, in terms of weight loss I only lost 3lbs in a fortnight anyway, and it was pretty restricted, plus I felt hungry all the time. I much prefer sensible healthy eating to faddy diets, and this one's no exception. The book was vegetarian, and heavy on the eggs and dairy, although Elliot offered suggestions for vegan variations for many of the recipes. It gets 2/5, but thats just because some of the recipes were actually really nice, but I'd rather buy another of this author's vegan-only recipe books on the merit of that than recommend this particular one.