The Joy of Cooking

Over the winter I made up a recipe for a vegan greens gratin that I just loved. I am not vegan (I was for about a year, back at a point when I was actually at my least healthy, not to say that vegans are unhealthy, but I was pretty much living on the chips part of fish and chips, without a thoughtful understanding of the fact that that oil had lots of non-vegan stuff fried in it) but I sort of think of myself as a vegan who eats animals and animal products, which is to say mostly veggies and fruits and nuts and tofu, but no stranger to the animal kingdom slipping in there to nourish me too. What a diversion. All I was trying to say is I invented a greens gratin recipe using a cashew based "ricotta" product at the food coop, that bakes up into a really nice creaminess, and now that the collards, tomatoes, basil, and garlic from my garden are all in full swing, I made one, and it is delicious, and from the moment I snapped the collard stems from the plant to the moment I took it out of the oven, I felt the joy of cooking.