I wanted to make some leek and potato soup but the dumpster did not bless me with potatoes so I had to do a little research. I found this recipe on vegweb.com, one of my favorite vegan recipe sites ever. Back in the day it was pretty simple, but now they have thousands of recipes and lots of tasty looking user-submitted photos. Sometimes I go there just to look at all the food photos.

• 2 cups lentils
• 1/2 head of cabbage (or lettuce in this case), roughly chopped
• 3-4 leeks
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• carrots
• 2 tomatoes
• 2 tsp basil
• 2 tsp oregano
• salt & pepper
• olive or vegetable oil
• water or broth

Boil the water or broth and add the lentils, cabbage/lettuce, a little salt, and some leek tops (you’ll take those out later). Reduce heat, cover, and simmer while you chop more veggies.

Slice the leeks in half lengthwise then chop them up.

Chop up the carrots and onions. I used about 1/3 of a bag of baby carrots and a few pearl onions that I dumpstered.

Saute the veggies in a couple Tbsp oil and add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Add the sauteed veggies and tomatoes to the lentils. You can also remove the leek tops now. Add the basil, oregano, and more salt & pepper to taste. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Check it out: Another way to use up dumpstered bagels (or any other bread).

Delicious vegan stuffing with colcannon and a side of totally canned green beans from my moms.

Yeah, girl. This stuff is good. Let’s see if I can remember how I made it. This was supposed to be posted a couple months ago, but then I became a bad mother and started neglecting Trashy Gourmet.

Ingredients:

• lots of old bagels or bread
• celery
• carrots
• mushrooms
• onion (about one cup of each veggie give or take)
• garlic
• veggie broth (I don’t know, 3-5 cups?)
• oil
• s&p

Cut the bagels up real nice like. It seems like we always dumpster quite a few cranberry bagels which I don’t really like. This is a perfect time to get rid of those suckers. Plus, they’re more moist because of the fruit and tend to get moldy faster than the other bagels. Slice and dice the veggies up real nice like too. Bring the veggie broth to a boil and throw in the veggies. If you don’t have broth you could just use some water with a little olive oil, salt, and herbs. Cook for a couple minutes then combine with the bagels in a lightly greased casserole dish. Bake at 400 degrees uncovered for about half an hour depending on how moist or dry you want the stuffing to be.

Sorry about the lame pictures. All I have right now is a camera phone. That isn’t even mine. Some day Trashy will have clear, focused photos with all kinds of megapixels…

Happy Super Belated St. Patty’s Day! I actually started a draft of this post in March. And now it’s May. Awesome!

In honor of the holiday and since I dumpstered a beautiful head of cabbage I made some colcannon. Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish. It’s incredibly economical and simple as well as a tasty way to use up leftover mashed potatoes.

Ingredients:

• potatoes (or leftover mashed potatoes)
• cabbage (or kale)
• soymilk
• margarine
• garlic, minced
• s&p

If you’re not using leftover mashed potatoes then peel (if you want), dice, and boil potatoes until tender. Reserve the water from the potatoes to boil the cabbage with. Quarter the cabbage and slice into about 1″ thick slices. Mash the potatoes with the remaining ingredients while the cabbage boils. Mix in cabbage and adjust seasonings to taste.

You don’t really need exact measurements. Just start small and keep adding until, you know, it tastes good. Like I said, this is a really simple dish and pretty hard to mess up.

Variations:

• Add vegan bacon, sausage, or cheese.
• Roll into balls or make patties and fry. (Add flour if not thick enough.)
• Put fried colcannon on bread or pita with favorite sandwich toppings.
• Add veggie or mock chicken broth and soymilk to make a creamy soup.