With winter weather pounding the South on Sunday, many of us decided to stay indoors and cook using just the ingredients at hand. I must admit that I had made a trip to the grocery store the day before, but that didn't make the "snowed-in" challenge any less fun.

Comfort foods made with fresh, light, and probably-not-in-season ingredients are what made the cut in my house. I became mildly obsessed with the supply of lemons and fresh herbs that I had and used them in just about everything. Baked tofu cutlets, potatoes, and asparagus were all cooked with either lemon juice or herbs or both.

Garlic-Lemon Roasted Asparagus

The simple recipe below is for roasted asparagus and calls for—can you guess?—lemon juice! It's only the first featured recipe in the "snowed-in" series, so stay tuned.

Remember yesterday, when I said that most of my meals last weekend contained herbs and lemon? I wasn't kidding. In addition to the Garlic-Lemon Asparagus that I featured yesterday, I also chowed down on Garlic-Parsley Mashed Potatoes and Herbed Lemon Tofu.

Herbed Lemon Tofu

The tofu was baked in a combination of oil, herbs, and acidic goodness such as lemon juice and apple cider vinegar. During the baking process, I became worried that the tofu was burning, as I saw it browning and bubbling in the oven. I opened the oven door too many times to check on the dish, which added an extra 10 minutes to the cooking time. Later, I realized that the "almost burning" part is necessary to achieve a chewy texture for the tofu. So, my tip for making this recipe work? Just leave the oven light off and the door closed.

Enjoy!

Pasta with marinara sauce is one meal that definitely qualifies as cheap and easy, but if you are looking to top your favorite pasta with a dairy-style sauce instead, you'll find that they're not as budget-friendly. Vegan cheeses and creams, like dairy versions, can be quite pricey, but the good news is that there's a cheap alternative—white beans.

White Bean Alfredo Sauce

White beans can be beaten and blended into a creamy Alfredo-style pasta sauce in no time. The recipe requires only six ingredients, many of which you can find in just about any vegan kitchen.

The recipe below can be enjoyed tossed with your favorite pasta. You can also add veggies to make it a complete meal. Enjoy!

Many people these days are skipping foods such as meat, cheese, and eggs in favor of healthier, more sustainable foods. Their reason for avoiding animal products isn't because of the cruelty involved but rather for health or environmental reasons, so they might not identify themselves as vegan or even vegetarian. Instead, they're accidentally vegan.

This is exactly how omnivorous chef Devra Gartenstein came to write the popular cookbook The Accidental Vegan. She's not vegan but avoids most animal products in order to keep her cholesterol down. In 2000, she compiled her healthy and diverse recipes—which feature simple instructions and no-fuss ingredients—for the original printing of The Accidental Vegan, but a new and improved edition has just been released.

We are giving away three copies of the new edition of The Accidental Vegan, which features more than 20 new recipes!

Just tell us why you're vegan or vegetarian by commenting (choose a reason from the list below), and three winners will be chosen at random.

a) Ethical reasons
b) Health reasons
c) Environmental reasons
d) All of the above
e) I'm not—but I love reading blogs about delicious vegan food!

The contest ends on March 30, and we'll contact the winners by April 3. Be sure to read our privacy policy and terms and conditions, as you're agreeing to both by commenting. Good luck!

Simple, healthy salads are at the top of my list for warm-weather eating. And after an entire weekend of weather in the 70's, I've been eating lots of them! Using greens as the base for salads can get boring, so I like to mix it up sometimes and use chilled noodles instead. My favorite? Soba noodles.

Sesame-Soba Noodle Salad

Soba, a Japanese buckwheat noodle, has more flavor than wheat-based noodles and holds up well under thick sauces and in soups. In addition to being good for your health, it's also good for your wallet. In my city, you can find packages of soba in the $2 to $3 range, and one package usually makes 4 to 5 servings.

The recipe below is for a simple soba salad that combines some very common Asian ingredients. Feel free to experiment by using more or less of each or by throwing new ingredients into the mix.

Enjoy!

When it comes to planning a St. Patty's Day menu, there are two main approaches that you can take. One is to choose recipes that are Irish-inspired or include well-known ingredients, like Irish stout. The other is to make your food match your clothes for the day by using green ingredients or food coloring!

I haven't quite decided which route I'll take, but stay tuned to find out. If you haven't decided either, browse through the "Irish-Inspired" and "Green Goodies" menus to help you decide. Any other ideas? Let us know!

Irish Inspired

•"Steak" and Stout Pie

•Colcannon

•Shepherd's Pie

•Irish Brown Bread

•Chocolate-Stout Cupcakes

Green Goodies

•Avocado Cream Pasta

•Garlic-Parsley Mashed Potatoes

•Creamy Lima Bean Soup

•Mint Chocolate Chip Vegan Ice Cream

•And of course, you can add green food coloring to just about any food!

Steamed or raw spring rolls filled with only fresh veggies are one of the lightest, healthiest spring-time meals that you can eat. If you've only tried the deep-fried version that comes as an appetizer at your favorite Thai or Chinese restaurant, then keep an open mind when trying these for the first time.

Sinless Spring Rolls

The vegetable spring rolls below are based on a Filipino recipe and call for a lettuce leaf to be layered inside the spring roll as a second wrapper. They are then filled with veggies, such as carrots, bamboo shoots, and turnips, but you can throw in anything that can be eaten raw. For a flavor boost, add a small spoonful of your favorite sauce--spicy or sweet--to the pile of veggies before rolling the spring roll up.

Enjoy!

Last week, I couldn't decide between having my St. Patrick's Day food consist of Irish dishes or just food that's green. Well, I chose the Irish recipes. Green tofu, tempeh, and seitan might scare somebody.

Irish Colcannon

To celebrate St. Paddy's (thanks, Paul), I made colcannon, which is a traditional Irish potatoes-and-greens dish, for the first time. Think mashed potatoes with extra ingredients such as greens—some recipes use cabbage while others use kale—and leeks. So not only is it very Irish, it's also naturally green.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

At SXSW, you'll find big-name CEOs, musicians, geek gods, and writers for some of the most well-known food blogs in the country. On the last day of the interactive portion of SXSW (aka spring break for geeks), I attended a panel titled, "The Secrets of Successful Food Blogging," moderated by Rachel Kramer Bussel of Cupcakes Take the Cake. The panelists were Zach Brooks of Midtown Lunch, Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out in New York,
Kalyn Denny of Kalyn's Kitchen, and Addie Broyles of Relish Austin.

I (and what seemed to be about 75 percent of the audience) was hoping to take away a few nuggets of invaluable wisdom that would make this blog much, much better than it is. For me, this didn't happen.

The diverse group of bloggers presented a very informative and fun look at how to start writing your own food blog. Kalyn stressed the importance of quality over quantity, saying that she never posts disaster recipes. Instead, she only posts the highest-quality recipes and pictures about three times per week. On the other hand, Cathy of Not Eating Out in New York said that, like me, she doesn't mind posting "disaster in the kitchen" recipes, and Zach of Midtown Lunch said that he posts five to six times per day!

The bloggers also covered the importance of SEO (search engine optimization) and expressed their differing opinions on how many ads are too many. If you've never written a food blog (or any blog, for that matter), these are very helpful hints to get you started. The problem is that I started writing this blog over a year and a half ago and was hoping for something a little more advanced.

Toward the end of the hour-long panel, I started to realize that the real secret to successful food blogging isn't to "use this lens" or "write about food news, not recipes!" There are no advanced tips that everyone except me knows. Instead, the real secret is something that every panelist mentioned and something that I already know: Practice makes perfect.

To learn more about the panelists, please visit:

• Cupcakes Take the Cake

• Not Eating Out in New York

• Midtown Lunch

• Kalyn's Kitchen

• Relish Austin

Restaurants opened by celebrities aren't exactly a rarity these days, and with the glamorization of the food-service industry, it's not surprising. Many chefs are now full-blown celebrities who have their own television shows, complete lines of merch, and obsessive fans. With the blurred lines between chef and superstar, it only makes sense that the door opens the other way, too, and that singers and actors have been able to dip into the restaurant business. Puffy, Usher, Ashton Kutcher, Bruce Willis, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake, just to name a few, have all dabbled in restaurant ownership. Sure, some have been less successful than others, but they have all tried.

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders is yet another musician to try her hand in the restaurant business. She recently opened the Italian-vegan eatery The VegiTerranean in Akron, Ohio, and I planned a recent road trip through the Buckeye State to include a stop at Chrissie's new restaurant (and a few other spots in the surprisingly vegan-friendly state, but more on those later).

Before you even walk in the door, you can tell that VegiTerranean isn't your stereotypical vegan restaurant. The floor-to-ceiling windows exposed a modern and sleek, yet comfortable, interior. And the food was just as impressive.

Risotto Stuffed Banana Peppers

To start off our lunch, my husband and I ordered hot Italian banana peppers filled with fresh herb risotto and soy mozzarella, which is topped with a fresh basil lime sauce. They were the largest banana peppers I've ever seen and some of the spiciest.

Vegan Caesar Salad

For my entrée, I ordered the classic vegan Caesar salad topped with caper berries, smoked dulse, house-made croutons, and rawmesan, and I added grilled vegan chicken. The smoked dulse adds a depth that is normally lacking in vegan Caesar salads.

Eggplant and Spinach Muffuletta

Justin had a hard time choosing between the many delicious sandwiches but finally settled on the roasted eggplant and spinach muffuletta, which is served with a Tuscan cole slaw. I know these items sound like typical lunch fare, and in a way they are, but what sets The VegiTerranean apart is that it takes common Italian-inspired dishes and prepare them very, very well. Surprisingly well.

You may not see Chrissie at the restaurant—I didn't—but if you're ever in the Akron area, I suggest popping into The VegiTerranean for a delicious lunch or dinner.

I have long stalked the Dragonfly Neo-V Web site to read its seasonal menus and day dream about eating there. Almost immediately, the restaurant made its way onto my "places to eat" list, and unfortunately, it stayed there for many years. Last Friday, I was finally able to cross it off.

After a nine-hour trip from Atlanta to Columbus—a pit stop on our way to Youngstown, Ohio—Justin and I rolled into Columbus for our first meal at Dragonfly Neo-V. Upon walking in the door, we were immediately greeted by a friendly and attentive staff who made the previous hour we spent in traffic disappear from our memories immediately.

We selected our appetizer, hon shemeji mushrooms served calamari style, but before the plate arrived, we were surprised by an amuse-bouche from the chef—a bite of pasta that tasted of the sea and sesame.

The mushrooms arrived shortly after and were unlike any type I have tried before. They had a chewy texture that wasn't lost under the crunchy coating on the outside or the tomato stew that rested beneath the mushrooms. It's one of the most delicious appetizers I have ever tried.

As we do in many restaurants, Justin and I ordered two entrées to share. One was the poached French trumpet mushroom risotto, which had a rich and intense flavor.

The other was handmade gnocchi served with barnier olives, confit garlic, roasted pepper, and a lentil purée. I wasn't blown away by the first bite of the gnocchi alone, but I quickly realized that I was eating it all wrong. Each bite needed a piece of every element on the plate in order to fully enjoy the dish.

For dessert—because you can't skip dessert at a restaurant you've been waiting years to visit—we decided to share the apple empanadas, served with a side of apple sorbet and a lavender gimlet to wash it all down. The empanadas had one of the most perfect pastry crusts I have ever seen, and the tartness of the sorbet balanced out the cream sauce on the empanadas.

Every dish we enjoyed at Dragonfly was spot on. The chef doesn't serve fussy or fancy. Instead, the focus is on cooking natural ingredients (and seasoning them) perfectly and layering flavors to create a more complex dish. I now realize it's a shame that I've waited years to visit this restaurant, and I hope it won't be many years before I return.

If you won't be in the Columbus area any time soon, then check out DragonFlyNeoV.com to learn more about the restaurant's cookbook. According to the site, it will be out next year.

To wrap up my series on Ohio road-trip eats, I'll leave you with a delicious and adorable little dessert. The morning after eating at Dragonfly Neo-V in Columbus, I made a stop at another one of the city's vegan-food businesses, Pattycake Bakery. There, I found this raw, individual-size strawberry cheesecake that is as delicious as it is cute.

Mini Strawberry 'Cheesecakes'

If you're in the Columbus area, be sure to stop in for a cookie or muffin or one of Pattycake's other great desserts. And if you're not, no worries: According to the Pattycake Web site, online ordering is coming soon.

Tofu might seem unfamiliar to many new vegetarians and nonvegetarians, but the good news is that when properly prepared, tofu can be delicious. And by "properly," I mean cooking the tofu my favorite way—pan-frying it until it's golden and chewy.

Perfect Tofu

To achieve this, you can freeze your tofu overnight, and let it thaw before cooking it for a short amount of time. But if you're not one for planning ahead, then your tofu must be cooked for a long time to reach the chewy stage. There's simply no way around it. I often see recipes that call for tofu to be cooked for just a few minutes, but if you do that, you'll probably be left with a very soft texture.

The only other requirement for perfect tofu is to finish off the pan-fried soy protein with a splash of soy sauce. It's a great first layer of flavor that can easily be built upon.

Enjoy!