Two days ago I got such a craving for a tuna fish sandwich that I just up and made one: 1 can of light tuna in water, plus some Smart Balance mayonnaise, celery and green olives, all on my favorite bread, Brownberry (now Arnolds) Natural Wheat bread. It hit the spot. I’m not aiming for 100% vegan….more like 10% of my protein can be animal protein. Especially fish.

I liked Pacific Natural Foods Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Bisque (vegetarian) so much that I tried their Organic Creamy Butternut Squash soup (vegan). I didn’t like it. Funny mouth feel and flavor.

I also tried the miso soup recipe on the back of the Hancho Miso container and I really didn’t like it. I was tasting it for hours. Oddly strong and still oddly tasteless to me.

Then I made Creole Black Bean Soup, an irresistible triumph from an interesting new cookbook called The Ethnic Vegetarian. It was sent to me by the author, Angela Shelf Medearis, who has a cooking show on PBS called Kitchen Diva, which is how I discovered her. I’ve made three dynamite recipes from the K. Diva: The Creole Black Bean Soup (page 70…makes a half gallon of soup, which is not too much, even for just me)…a grapefruit-avocado salad (page 67) also delicious, and a corn/black bean salad (which hooked me on her TV show), which was so good I ate it all in 24 hours.