Question & Answer

Hi there,

I’ll try to answer any questions you post here between now and when we go live tomorrow.  If you’ve seen the video tour, you can post comments here as well.  If you have NOT received an email invitation to view the tour, you can email me at shelley @ oneroastvegetable.com in the next 48 hours and I’ll send you the private link.

All best,
Shelley (Head Tomato)

Vegetarian Taco Video – Recipe Development

OK, I just finished loading up your full case study on recipe development …

If you want to know exactly how I go from recipe idea to having someone say “wow, did you make this?”, then you’ll want to click on the video link below.

(it’s a MEATY case study – no pun intended, it’s entirely vegetarian – but given its length, the video make take a few seconds to load…)

Go take a look now… this is the first time I’ve ever talked about the recipe development process and I think you’re going to like the ‘behind the scenes’ look at how a recipe comes about. And it’ll give you ideas on what to make for dinner tonight!

Also, near the end of the video, I talk a little bit more about “The Veggie Club” launch which is happening April 1st…

All best,

Shelley (Head Tomato)

PS/ I know you (and a lot of other people) have a bunch of questions about this whole private membership site thing. And I think this video will answer some of the questions about “The Veggie Club”, but tomorrow I’m going to get you a little video tour of the inside of the private members’ site and I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can before the doors open on Tuesday. So keep an eye out for an email tomorrow about the “site tour.” And meanwhile, go watch the Recipe Development video above.

Shelley’s menu plan for this week (March 24)

In my ongoing attempts to keep you entertained, excited, and inspired (OK, maybe it’s not that exciting to read what I’m eating this week, but you never know)… anyway, I have my meal plan ready. (See revolting picture that accompanies Tuesday night’s dinner.) If you see anything in my meal plan that you’d like developed as a recipe for the site, just let me know

MONDAY

Homemade white meat chicken fingers, coleslaw made with celeriac, steamed green beans. The celeriac slaw I’d made before, this was just a fine-tuning. The recipe will be ready for the site, soon.

TUESDAY

50/50 burgers (half ground beef, half beans) on whole wheat buns, served with revolting turnip gratin. The burgers were trial #3 in my attempts to come up with a homemade veggie burger that isn’t pasty. These burgers were quite OK, but not special. The revolting part was the turnip gratin. I found this recipe online (let that be a lesson to me that I can’t rely on other people’s blogs as reliable sources for recipes… some people just can’t cook!). There was much too much liquid and the lovely bitter taste of the turnips became overwhelming retched in this soup. That said, I ate my serving, André had two servings, then we threw out the rest. Grim. I’ll make one more attempt at turnip gratin using a more sophisticated recipe, and then I think I’ll just have to pass…

WEDNESDAY

A quick and easy freezer meal (this week it was spaghetti sauce).

THURSDAY

Baked fish with rice, and Roast Fennel on the side (this is Recipe 1.8 from the Private Members’ site).

FRIDAY

Broiled pork tenderloin with red pepper and snow peas in a soy/honey sauce (this will be trial #1 of this recipe).

If you have any recipes you’d like me to work on, or if you’d like to tell us what you’re eating this week, just post a comment below.

All best and happy veggies,

Shelley (Head Tomato)
www.OneRoastVegetable
“Eat more vegetables”

PS/ Only a few days until you can sign up for the private membership site “The Veggie Club.” Doors open on Tuesday April 1st (no fooling) and will remain open for 3 days only. More info to come this weekend, including a tour of the site, and a case study on recipe development.

Veggie Soup Video

Hey there, happy Easter. Hope you’re having a great day. We spent the weekend in very cold snow country (neither of us are skiers, I’m not exactly sure why were there, but the restaurants are great). Then we got busy this afternoon making up a video for you. You’ll get an inside view of the One Roast Vegetable test kitchen, plus you’ll see parts of André — well, his arms, anyway. It was lots of fun doing this video for you as we announce the launch of The Veggie Club, coming up April 1st. The doors will open for new members — but only for three days. Anyway, if you watch this quick video, you’ll pretty much get the entire recipe for Homemade Vegetable Soup, and you’ll get to check out the art on the walls in our kitchen.

And yes, I do have some goofs in this video, like chopping the veggies where you can’t see them, and trying to keep my hair out of my face … thankfully I wasn’t cooking for the Queen, just making dinner for my giant family of two.  Rest assured that when I’m cooking in the kitchen at Robin des Bois, I’m wearing a full head covering — it’s just not very flattering to wear when making a Sunday afternoon video for my cherry tomato friends

(click on video to start)

 

And here’s a picture of the soup once it’s finished:

All best,

Shelley (Head Tomato)

Shelley’s menu plan for the week…

One of the topics in the recent teleclass on meal planning was lack of imagination. [If you missed the call, the recording is posted on the blog > http://theveggieclub.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/meal-planning-motivation-audio/] So to help you with imagination, and to inspire your own ideas, I thought I’d share my meal plan with you for this week. It might give you some inspiration, or you might say “oh, gross, she’s eating that?”

MONDAY: Homemade veggie burgers and oven roasted sweet potato fries. This was trial #2 on homemade veggie burgers, with lentils and mushrooms. They were edible but given a thumbs-down by André. I thought they were OK, not great. The oven fries were too soft so I’ll make the slices thinner next time.

TUESDAY: Thai curried chicken with carrots, potatoes, mushrooms. This is one of my favourite one-bowl dinners, and I try not to make it more than once every two weeks but sometimes I can’t resist.

WEDNESDAY: Baked trout with roasted vegetables (beet, celeriac, red onion, carrots). This will be trial #1 of this particular vegetable mix. I’ve roasted carrots in tinfoil successfully, and now I’m going to mix it up a bit. Hopefully the beet juice won’t colour everything purple…

THURSDAY: André is at art class, so we have leftovers, or sometimes I have popcorn for dinner… . Don’t tell anyone.

FRIDAY: Pasta with two kinds of mushrooms, onions, sundried tomatoes. This will be trial #1 where the goal is a great pasta dish that is low in fat, high in veggies, and isn’t tomato-sauce-based.

SATURDAY: Leftovers, sandwiches, or something from the cupboard (tuna-lemon penne, perhaps).

SUNDAY: Homemade vegetable soup with homemade cheese crackers. This soup recipe is the private members’ club, “The Veggie Club” (it’s recipe 1.6) and it’s one of my favourite quick dinners that is fabulous and wowie it’s even healthy, too.

If you’d like to see any of these recipe developed for “The Veggie Club”, just post your comments below. Or any other ideas you might have. Or you can share with us what you’re making this week.

All best, Shelley (Head Tomato)

Membership site now closed to new members …

Over the past nine weeks 1,660 people just like you have contacted me looking for information on how to get more vegetables into their diets.

It’s amazing that 64 people signed up for this mailing list yesterday. At that rate, there will be 23,360 additional people in our veggie community in a year. There’s no place like this on the internet … a club just for people like us.

If you’ve been on my list for a while, you know that I’ve been selling an ebook called “Veggies Made Simple” and that we have a private membership site (PMS?) club where there are illustrated recipes and other goodies.

Well, about two weeks ago…

I closed the door to the membership site…

and I took down the sales page for the ebook.

You see, I’ve been listening to my subscribers. You’re saying “we wanna be part of this eating more healthy thing, but it has to be easy. Please make the recipes step-by-step and foolproof. Please make the articles and info and teleclasses useful so that we can easily integrate new ideas into our already busy lives.”

And a whole bunch of you said: “Shelley, please make it affordable.”

So I closed the door to new members.

And I’m changing a few things. First, the private membership site (PMS) is getting a new name … now it’ll be called “The Veggie Club.” Check out the new logo:

The new site will be launched April 1st (no fooling), and in the meantime I’m keeping you entertained…

1. Have you checked out the audio of our recent teleclass on Meal Planning and Motivation? It’s posted on the blog.

2. Coming up, I’m working on a video tour of the One Roast Vegetable test kitchen. You’ll get to meet me (well, nearly) and see where your recipe suggestions get turned into meals, where recipes get made and photographed, and if you’re lucky you’ll meet André (or at least hear him speaking French in the background).

3. I’m writing a lengthy case study on recipe development — I’ll be taking a recipe from start to finish so you can follow along and see the process that every recipe goes through before it’s shared with the membership site. I’m going to show you the original recipe that I found in a magazine, and then I will go through the steps to the final product (and all the adventures along the way).

4. I get lots of questions about what actually happens inside the membership site, The Veggie Club. So I’m going to produce an animated tour of The Veggie Club website for you, where you can look over my shoulder while I navigate around and show you the highlights, the hidden corners, and my favourite bits.

Anything else you’d like to see? Just post your comments below. I’d love to hear your ideas.

All best, Shelley (Head Tomato)
OneRoastVegetable.com
“Eat more vegetables”

Meal Planning & Motivation Audio

Earlier this week, I held a free teleclass all about Meal Planning and Motivation. Getting dinner on the table every night can be challenging. Maybe you’re cooking for one and you don’t want tons of leftovers. Or you live in a remote area where fresh produce is hard to find. Or you’re trying to eat better, and all the meal plans you see involve ground beef three times a week. I’m so passionate about this subject, I just love giving calls like this one. We talked about the main reasons why we don’t cook (or plan) meals often enough… and I talked about the eight easy steps to plan your week so you can eat at home, save money, be healthy, and impress yourself!

Usually our audio calls are not shared with everyone, and I only make the recording available to people who registered for the class… but this subject is so important that I want to make sure that you can benefit from this info, and I want to invite you to “listen in” on our conversation … it’ll be just like you were there! So, if you missed this call, you can LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE. It’s an MP3 file, 60 minutes long give or take, and the HANDOUTS FOR THE CALL ARE HERE.

Be sure to post a comment afterwards and let us know what you think

All best, Shelley (Head Tomato)
One Roast Vegetable
“Eat more vegetables”

Bonus recipe for Roast Vegetable Salad

OK, I wasn’t going to do this.

But I’ve received so many emails from subscribers who are just dying to see one of the illustrated recipes on the One Roast Vegetable membership site: “The Veggie Club.”

Roast Vegetable Salad

This is my signature recipe for Roast Vegetable Salad (complete with homemade vinaigrette), and I think it’s pretty yummy and you’re going to love it. It has 20 full-colour photos and it’s step-by-step so you can follow along.

Have you received your copy yet? Tell me what you think. If you don’t have it yet, SIGN UP HERE and you’ll get the recipe for Roast Vegetable Salad along with a 3-part special report about eating more veggies

All best, Shelley (Head Tomato)
OneRoastVegetable.com
“Eat more vegetables”