Bean and Mushroom Soup

I still have lots of marinade left over from the portobello sandwiches and the marinated chicken, so I decided to take Isa's (from the PPK) advice and add it to a stew. I love bean soups; they are easy, versatile, and cheap. Normally when I make bean soup I toss in whatever I have on hand and play with the spices, so every batch of soup is a little different. To make things a bit more complicated, I never write down what I do for ingredients, so if a batch is super good I have no way to easily recreate it. This time I decided to live life on the wild side and actually wrote down what I tossed into the ol' crock pot!

The soup was really good, the marinade added a nice savory flavor and it reminded me of a beef stew (but without the meat!). The marinade added so much flavor I didn't have to add any spices, just a little bit of pepper and salt. I sliced up the mushroom stems from the portobello sandwiches and added them to the soup and they added a nice texture. It would probably be even better with sliced mushroom caps instead of stems, but that was all I had.

Just for my own curiosity, I decided to measure the water I added when the beans were soaking and measure it again in the morning to see how much they absorbed. The 2 cups of dried beans absorbed 2 cups of water, so I'm guessing you could just increase the water in the soup by 2 cups if you don't want to soak the beans overnight.

Bean and Mushroom Soup (inspired by PPK)

2 cups dried mixed beans
3 cups vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 cup “Perfect Grilled Portobellos” marinade from Veganomicon/The PPK
1 large carrot, chopped
2 ribs celery, sliced
1 ½ cups chopped kale or escarole
1 small onion, chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
1 ¼ cups mushrooms (I used the stems of the portobellos)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Soak beans overnight it warm water. In the morning, rinse beans thoroughly and add to crock pot. Add all ingredients except salt and cook on high for 4-6 hours or low for 8-10 hours (I usually cook on high for about 4-5 hours then switch the crock pot to low until dinner time). When beans are cooked, add salt, if desired. Note: If you forget to soak your beans, add an extra 2 cups hot water to the crock pot and cook on high for 8-10 hours.

Add some gluten-free drop biscuits (or regular if you aren't gf) and dinner is served!

Marinated Chicken and Mushrooms

In my last post I told you about the portobello mushroom sandwiches I made. Well, the marinade was so good, I just couldn't throw it out! So, I poured the remaining marinade into a jar and stuck it in the fridge. I looked through the comments of the post on the PPK to see if anyone posted any suggestions for other uses of the marinade and I found a few. One commenter said that they marinade chicken in it and, since I have a freezer full of chicken, I decided to give it a try.

Now my photography skills are not that great, but please don't let the terrible picture fool you. This chicken was delicious! Here is the recipe:

Marinated Chicken and Mushrooms (inspired by PPK)

2 chicken breasts
1 – 1 ½ cups mushrooms
1 – 2 cups leftover “Perfect Grilled Portobellos” marinade from Veganomicon/The PPK

Fillet each chicken breast in half lengthwise to make 4 thinner fillets. Place fillets in an oven-safe dish, add mushrooms and enough marinade to thoroughly coat everything. Let marinate for 1 hour, flipping chicken occasionally so both sides are marinated. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked all the way through.

Isa from the PPK also recommended marinating tofu and tempeh in the marinade or adding it to stews. I still have a lot of marinade in the fridge, so I think I will try a stew with the rest of it!

Delicious Portobello Sandwiches

There is a restaurant in my area that makes the best grilled portobello sandwiches, but since finding out I am gluten-intolerant, their sandwich is off-limits to me. Luckily, my sweet husband bought me Veganomicon for Christmas and it has a recipe for grilled portobellos (which can be found online at the PPK!) that taste almost identical to the restaurant's. And since the marinade is made from scratch, I can modify it easily by using gluten-free soy sauce!

To copy the restaurant's sandwich, I took the Veganomicon portobello and added roasted tomato aioli from Bobby Flay, caramelized red onions, grilled red peppers, and avocado, all on top of toasted gluten-free buns. The most time-consuming part was the aioli, but that could easily be omitted to make this a quick meal.

I meant to take a picture of this beautiful sandwich, but we ate them all before I could!

Experiments With Buttercream

Usually when I make cakes I just frost them, write a name on them, and call it good. Since joining the cake charity in October, however, I've been trying to learn how to make more visually appealing cakes. The cakes below are some of my experiments.

For this cake, I plopped on a bunch of buttercream and made random "S" shapes in it with a spoon. I thought it turned out pretty cute. And to give proper credit, I found the idea for this on Country Living's website, which can be found here.

For this one, I did the same as with the cake above, but did the "S" swirls in a pattern instead of randomly on the cake. I think I like the random look more.


I kept this one simple, I just piped stars all around. It's simple but still nice.


This cake didn't turn out how I had hoped. Those sad little piles of blue are suppose to be roses, but something went wrong. Maybe my frosting was too warm, maybe it's because I don't have a flower nail, or maybe it's just my lack of skill. Either way, I need to keep practicing.


Other than the stars being off-center, this one turned out pretty well. The stars at least look like stars!

Here is the frosting recipe that I love to use. I like how it has a nice buttery taste but stays creamy.

Almond Frosting

½ cup butter, at room temperature
½ cup shortening
1 ½ tsp vanilla
½ tsp almond extract
4 ½ cups powdered sugar
3 - 4 tbl almond milk

Variations: add 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa for chocolate frosting; omit almond extract and increase vanilla to 2 tsp for a classic vanilla buttercream

Cream together butter and shortening in mixer. Add vanilla, almond extract, and 1 tablespoon of milk, mix well. Add powdered sugar and remainder of milk, mix until smooth. If frosting is too thick, add extra milk, 1 teaspoon at a time.