My favorite b & b suite ever

It wasn't just historical-looking, it had a little dining room complete with rustic chandelier! It's in what I think of as southern Indiana, 'way off the highway and down winding country roads, at a place called Artists Colony Inn in Nashville, Indiana, and it's their T.C. Steele "room." Their site is http://www.artistscolonyinn.com/ . Um, I should mention I really didn't enjoy the food there, though they were very friendly and nice to me, and I also wasn't able to sleep there because it was so bright -- but it still was an absolutely darling place to stay! I never saw such fun use of a space, and think the idea would be great for a New York-sized apartment (though truth be told this is a bit larger than my first apartment there!).
just as you enter the suite, looking through an interior window and a couple door-sized openings

a glimpse of the "dining room" and the balcony, and also a picture by the artist Steele

the "dining room" with curtains closed

looking from the dining room and toward the 2 bed rooms

Happy vegetarian week!

See more about this week at http://www.nationalvegetarianweek.org/ ...

Forgot to mention in my last post with lots of musing on delicious vegetarian recipe sources that France has a new vegetarian magazine! I was lucky to get its premiere issue; this is its 2nd:
available at http://www.journaux.fr/veg_cuisine-pratique_gastronomie-vins_223507.html . Bon appetit!

I'm reading a history of magazines in the UK; so far I haven't found a very old vegetarian periodical...Have any of you run across any?

A realization about tastes

Everyone has different tastes and preferences about food...and I finally realized I was making a mistake not paying attention to my (and my family's) tastes with some of my cookbook choices. I had been looking for more vegetarian options for dinnertime but was having trouble finding many recipes my family or I found tasty, though I'd invested in a lot of vegetarian cookbooks and food magazines.

I finally realized I was choosing very bland American vegetarian cookbooks and magazines almost exclusively, and for no reason whatsoever, because I really dislike that style of food (including its fake Mexican). I never choose such sources for our non-vegetarian dinners -- I always go for main courses full of fresh herbs and fascinating-to-me approaches, and am willing to take more time making a meal that turns out delicious to me. I've said before on this site how recipes that call for, say, 1/4 teaspoon of a dried herb or for watered-down garlic horrify me, though at the same time I am very turned off by a recipe that calls for unnecessary steps as if the cook did not know what they were doing.

For some reason I was only finding such sources, however, until I tacked on gourmet to a search for better ones. I found a couple by actual chefs. The first thing I made was from this cookbook whose author I recognized from her first cookbook which I had long loved:
I made an amazing dinner from it: a beautiful stack of
carrot-green onion-cilantro-ground coriander patties
some browned halloumi cheese
arugula
all topped with an extremely tasty lemon dressing,
and served with a whole grain on the side.
She has gorgeous pictures on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicehartcooks .

I'll also be trying Café Paradiso Seasons: Vegetarian Cooking Season-by-Season from Denis Cotter; you can see some of his recipes at his official site, http://www.deniscotter.com/...I also finally got a subscription to Jamie magazine -- his are definitely my #1 favorite recipes in the world, and are full of vegetables and include vegetarian...

More recently I also found some promising vegan magazines -- I'm not vegan, but I was looking for delicious vegetarian dinner recipes that did not feature cheese. The promising magazines are from the UK, whose food magazines I have for years found more balanced in their approach to food -- not preachy, but also not saying "here's a whole dinner for very few calories and very few pennies" when of course it was low in calories and didn't cost a huge amount, it had just a few leaves or something, almost no protein, no satisfying grains, etc. I was going to source them from my favorite UK magazine source, http://www.newsstand.co.uk/ , but my local Whole Foods actually had them in stock so I got my copies there. I'll be trying them asap as well...

Now I'm also hoping to find additional vegetarian daily menus I find inspiring even if I don't use them many days -- if I have an addiction, it definitely is to menus! I have collected many historical vegetarian menus...when I try them and like them, I'll share them! (In fairness to USA, I found what I tried in the UK vegetarian cookbook Meat-Free Monday Cookbook bland, though I adore that it has full menus for every week of the year and am keeping it for those, as well as probably trying more recipes...)

Beautifully Eating Beautiful

Wendy Rowe has a beautiful approach of not prescribing in her book Eat Beautiful, as she says in this month's Allure magazine:
It's not a diet. It's not a regimen....People should just take what they want from it. My Date Energy Bites and No-Cook Walnut Brownies are always popular.
I always enjoy old cookbooks for their historical value and just generally being fascinating, but I must admit I get tired of those that push a certain health approach.

Twenty Recipes that Men Like, 1949

I almost didn't post this sexist find, but it's interesting for historical reasons...