Vegan Recipes to Die For Soup, Vegan, Vegetarian Black Bean Mushroom Carrot Soup I love making "pantry" soups with what I've got on hand plus whichever vegetables I have in the fridge. I thought I was making my old Black Bean Edamame soup until I saw that I was out of the frozen edamame. Cooking, like jazz, is all about improvisation! Read Recipe Entrees, Vegetarian, Gluten Free, Soup Chilled Minty Cucumber-Melon Soup The perfect and refreshing snack for a hot day! Read Recipe Soup, Vegetarian, Vegan, Entrees Spinach-Lentil Soup Need iron? This delicious soup will do the trick! Read Recipe Soup, Vegetarian, Vegan, Entrees Sweet Potato Black Bean Soup Add an avocado for garnish or sprinkle with a little cheese for the perfect dish! Read Recipe Soup, Vegetarian, Gluten Free, Entrees, Vegan Alene’s White Gazpacho She blended a white gazpacho and served it with homemade rolls for lunch, then let the kids lie in her bed watching... Read Recipe All Recipes Baking Breakfast Cakes, Pies, & Icing Cookies & Brownies Dips & Sauces Entrees Gluten-Free Muffins & Breads Soup Vegan Vegetarian Load More

< Back Songs by Honeybird Peter McDade May 31, 2022 In Songs by Honeybird , Peter McDade (Wampus Multimedia 2022) tells the story of Ben and Nina, two people who meet at a college outside of Atlanta. The chapters alternate between the voices of Ben and Nina, how they met and became a couple before unravelling and slowly moving on with their lives. Ben’s story focuses on his life as a graduate student and the research he does into a possible dissertation about an integrated band from the late 1960’s before two of its members died in a fire. Nina’s story involves her quest for meaning, philosophical discussions with her talking dog who is possibly an incarnation of the Buddha and facing the untimely death of her father when she was too young to understand. The author, a talented, working musician, wrote and recorded a soundtrack of original songs to accompany the novel. In addition to being about fathers, race, growing up, relationship, and understanding one’s history, this is a novel about seeking the truth. As a drummer (who started playing at eight-years-old) for the rock band Uncle Green, Peter McDade spent fifteen years traveling the highways of America in a series of Ford vans. While the band searched for fame and a safe place to eat before a gig, he began writing short stories and novels. Uncle Green went into semi-retirement after four labels, seven records, and one name change; Peter went to Georgia State University and majored in History and English, eventually earning an MA in History. His first novel, Weight of Sound, was published in the fall of 2017, and like Songs by Honeybird, has an accompanying soundtrack of original songs created with help from friends in the music world. He teaches history to college undergrads in Atlanta, plays drums for Paul Melançon & the New Insecurities, and spends time writing, making music, and with his family, trying to understand how to raise teenage girls. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Dreaming in Spanish Sara Alvarado June 6, 2023 In Dreaming in Spanish: An Unexpected Love Story In Puerto Vallarta (Little Creek Press, 2023), Sara Alvarado tells the story of growing up in Madison, studying Spanish, and escaping alcoholism, substance abuse, men, and sexual assault by moving to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. She’s honest about her struggle to overcome her weaknesses, her relationships, and her addictions at the age of twenty-four. In 1999, with $10,000 from her grandmother’s will, her goal is to live near a Mexican beach and get her act together. She commits to six months of celibacy and vows to avoid her previously reckless, party lifestyle in favor of reading, meditating, and getting healthy. Sara Alvarado is a writer, speaker, and fierce advocate for racial equity in real estate. She is the co-founder of OWN IT: Building Black Wealth, co-owner of Alvarado Real Estate Group, author of the Racial Justice Toolkit for Real Estate Professionals (2020), A Guide for Change Agents (2016), and creator of the Conversation Challenge: helping white people talk about race. Sara has also had numerous essays and articles published in Madison365, HuffPost, and Scary Mommy. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis with a BA in Spanish and feels most at home in Madison, WI. and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Sara is a lover of love, spirit, dance, and adventure (with the music turned up), and enjoys traveling, challenging the status quo, and writing. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Kantika Elizabeth Graver August 1, 2023 Rebecca Cohen and her family live in Istanbul, until they lose all their wealth and are forced to leave. It’s also no longer safe for Jews, and many are trying to find a place to go. Rebecca’s father, once a successful businessman, now cleans a synagogue in Barcelona. Rebecca finds work as a seamstress and marries a man who is barely at home. He later dies, leaving her with two young sons to raise on her own, but she’s already started her own business. A second marriage is arranged, but she has to get to Havana to meet her potential husband, and he has to lie to get back to the states faster than the usual bureaucracy allows. Finally, married and in her new home, she’s challenged with helping her disabled stepdaughter, learning yet another new language, and building a new life. Rebecca was a tenacious heroine whose story has been lovingly fictionalized by her granddaughter, author Elizabeth Graver. Elizabeth Graver’s fourth novel, The End of the Point , was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction and selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her other novels are Awake , The Honey Thief , and Unravelling . Her story collection, Have You Seen Me? , won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Anthology , and Best American Essays . She teaches at Boston College and tends to a field of rocking horses known to her and her family by a secret name but to the wider world as Ponyhenge. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Lost Book of Adana Moreau Michael Zapata February 13, 2020 In 1916, Adana Moreau’s parents are killed by American Marines. She flees to Santo Domingo and then to New Orleans. There, she marries a pirate, Titus Moreau, and gives birth to their son, Maxwell. While Maxwell wonders the streets, Adana spends hours at the library. She writes a book, Lost City , and it becomes a science fiction hit. Then she writes a follow-up book, which she and Maxwell definitely destroy, just before she dies. The story of how that book ends up decades later in Chicago is interwoven with train-jumping, alternate universes, and the heartbreaking tales of displaced people. Michael Zapata is the author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau (Hanover Square Press, 2020). He is also a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine . He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Fiction, the City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program award, and a Pushcart nomination. As an educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing dropout students. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and, as an ardent wanderer, he's lived and traveled extensively through the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. The place he reveres most on the Earth is the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in Ecuador. Currently, he's catching up on the extraordinary sci-fi show 'The Expanse' and lives with his family in his hometown Chicago. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Escape Route Elan Barnehama June 21, 2022 In Elan Barnehama’s new novel, Escape Route (Running Wild Press 2022), it’s 1968 and 13-year-old Zach is about to become a bar mitzvah. That’s when his sister changes his life by switching his radio from AM to FM. Zach’s family lives in Queens, and he’s comfortable roaming the New York City subways, heading to the public library, the Metropolitan Museum, and all kinds of diners. Zach is in accelerated classes, smart but confused. He worries about his older sister at Columbia, the war in Vietnam, his grandparents, and how his parents escaped Europe during the Holocaust. He meets a cute girl and is beyond relieved to have his first girlfriend, his first kiss. He thinks about music, math, religion, drugs, and more than anything else, baseball. He doesn’t know when to stop asking annoying questions or irritating the people around him with his goofiness. And just in case there’s another Holocaust and they have to leave the country; he joins the AAA auto club and figures out an “Escape Route.” Elan Barnehama grew up in Queens, NYC, has lived in several places on both coasts, and currently lives in Boston. He earned an MFA from UMass, Amherst, and a BA from Binghamton University. He writes literary fiction, flash fiction, and creative non-fiction, which has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Entropy, Rough Cut Press, Boston Accent, Jewish Fiction, RedFez, HuffPost, the New York Journal of Books, Public Radio, and elsewhere. Barnehama was a Writer-In-Residence at Wildacres NC, and Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts in Fairhope, AL. He’s the fiction editor at Forth Magazine LA, and at different times has taught college writing-currently at American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, worked with at-risk youth, had a gig as a radio news guy, coached high school baseball, and did a mediocre job as a short-order cook. When he’s not reading or writing, Barnehama likes running and walking urban landscapes, travelling to see friends, seeing new places, coffee shops, diners, libraries, and public spaces. He remains a Mets fan. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Prospects of a Woman Wendy Voorsanger March 23, 2021 When Elisabeth Parker and her husband leave Massachusetts and arrive in California to join her father, she quickly learns that her father is not who she thought he was. It’s 1849, and she also realizes that her new husband is also not who she thought. She’s forced to confront her preconceived notions of family, love, and opportunity, and finds comfort in corresponding with her childhood friend back home, writer Louisa May Alcott. She also spends time with a mysterious and handsome native Californian. Armed with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance , she sets out to determine her role in building the West, even as she comes to terms with the sacrifices she must make to achieve independence and happiness. A gripping and illuminating window into life in the Old West, Prospects of a Woman (She Writes Press, 2020) is the story of one woman’s passionate quest to carve out a place for herself in the liberal and bewildering society that emerged during the California gold rush frenzy. Born and raised on the American River in Sacramento, Wendy Voorsanger has long held an intense interest in the historical women of California. Her debut historical novel—Prospects of a Woman—tells the story of one woman’s passionate quest to carve out a place for herself in the liberal and bewildering society that emerged during the California gold rush frenzy, and is included in 2 BuzzFeed Books must read lists. Voorsanger currently manages SheIsCalifornia.net, a blog dedicated to chronicling the accomplishments of California women throughout history. She earned a BA in journalism from Cal Poly SLO and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has attended Hedgebrook, the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, and Lit Camp. She is a member of the Castro Writers' Cooperative, the Lit Camp Advisory Board, the Historical Novel Society, and the San Mateo Public Library Literary Society. She lives in northern California with her husband and 2 boys. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next