A Charlie Trotter Christmas

I got a used copy of Charlie Trotter's Vegetables from amazon last week.  Most of the reviews say the recipes are for coffee table use only (there's a beautiful pic of each dish on the facing page), and they're too complicated, with ingredients that are too obscure, for any amateur to undertake.  But I couldn't help it!  I love spending an entire day in the kitchen, and that's what I did on Christmas Day.

 

(Cue some Schroeder piano music... :) )

 

The recipes are arranged by month, so I chose three dishes from the December chapter: "Baby Turnip and Beet Ragout with Scallion Sauce and Beet Oil" and "Roasted Matsutake and Cauliflower Mushrooms with Barley, Water Chestnuts, Sunchokes and Mushroom Broth," and for dessert the "Yam and Pistachio Custard Tart with Turmeric Anglaise Sauce." 

 

I Now, I did make several substitutions and a couple shortcuts, but I feel like that's totally within the philosophy of the book - he recommends experimenting in several recipes, and his wine notes always give a handful of possibilities and often never come up with a "correct" match.  So, since I only could find gold and red beets, I did without the candy-striped beets.  And I've never seen matsutake or cauliflower mushrooms anywhere, so I used shiitake and oyster.  Also in the mushroom dish, I couldn't find fresh water chestnuts so I just left them out.  And I only decided to do the yam tart the day of Christmas, so I had to make do with pecans and walnuts instead of pistachios and half and half instead of cream, and I just left out the turmeric altogether (have you ever seen fresh turmeric anywhere??).

So at about 11 am, I happily dragged out my old juicer for the first component of the beet dish and juiced 6 large beets, which then were reduced by 3/4 and mixed with a little oil.  The reduction took a good 2 hours.  I also started the mushroom broth, which was a pound and a half of button mushrooms simmered in water for 2 1/2 hours, then strained. In the meantime, I put together the scallion oil with blanched scallion tops and oil.

 

 

Then I began roasting things for each dish: the yam for dessert, each type of mushroom separately with a sprig of rosemary, and turnips and carrots for the beet dish. 

 

 

Then the beets were boiled (I would roast them alongside everything else next time), the scallion ends were braised, and the sunchokes sauteed. 

 

The plating doesn't come anywhere near the beautiful pics in the book, but it was fun.  I need something for drizzling the lovely sauces that take so much time - the beet dish looks more like globs of sauce than drizzles.  And this is why people like white plates instead of orange!

 

 

And here's a blurry pic of the Yam and Pecan/Almond Custard Tart with Anglaise Sauce.  They're supposed to be molded in three-inch rings, but all I have for that is a muffin tin!  Worked out fine, with a buttered and floured tin.  The crust is a barely-sweet pate brisee, one of several recipes-within-recipes to follow in this book.

 

 

I had a lot of fun making these dishes, and I plan to do a couple from every month this year.  The two main dishes were both vegan, and with no onion, which is a fun and interesting challenge.  The beets with beet sauce were wonderfully sweet, and the mushroom dish was subtle and earthy.

 

And, bonus, the next day I put together a couple more traditional dishes out of those components I worked so hard on: 

 

 

 

I made a spinach salad with blue cheese topped with the leftover beets and the rest of the nuts from the yam dish.  I used the beet reduction for the basis of an awesome dressing - I added balsamic vinegar, a little good olive oil, and salt and pepper.  I turned most of the components from the mushroom/barley dish into...mushroom barley soup - huge leap of creative energy there...  Started with slightly browned mire poix, which I deglazed with a little sherry.  Then I added the mushroom broth and some water, along with the rest of the roasted mushrooms - chopped, the sunchokes, and about a tablespoon of barley miso.  I simmered that for a half hour or so, then added the barley and warmed it back up. 

 

I did enjoy the leftovers more than the originals, but they were only such spectacular versions of these everyday dishes because of the refined and concentrated elements I started with.  I can't wait to try more Charlie Trotter recipes!

Brussels Sprouts

Picked up a - what would you call it? I stick? A twig? A branch? - of brussels sprouts in Berrien Springs at a little roadside stand last weekend. Beautiful right?  It was sad, the farmer had a flier out at their honor-system stand asking for information about someone who had "taken $55 worth of produce and left $15." They had photos of the guy, too, so take warning, your farmer might be watching you!

 

I made a recipe from Herbivoracious the cookbook for Brussels Sprout and Apple Hash. Pretty good! I didn't get a picture of the final dish, and it doesn't seem to be on his blog, but here are some of the ingredients - sliced sprouts, onions, lots of butter, apples, chopped fresh rosemary, and thyme. 

Banh Mi Redux

Banh mi rearranged into appetizers for holiday party at work!

Banh Mi

So I decided to do a banh mi sandwich with the sourdough baguettes I was planning.  I didn't even realize banh mi are practically a scourge on New York City until I ran across this article...  They review other ethnic sandwiches they find around the city to try to find "the new bahn mi" but notice that they don't like any of them as much as this wild, delicious combination of Vietnam and France.

My favorite banh mi at the strip mall across from UC Irvine - way back in 2001, long before the hippest sandwich eaters in NYC grew tired of them :) - was brie and pate (nope, not vegan!).  I found the cafe on Yelp with 4 3/4 stars (still awesome, I guess!) -  Le Diplomate.  I don't see any banh mi with brie, though, anymore.

But that was when it was all I could do to keep weight on!  No longer....so I skipped the brie this time.  I used this vegan pate from Dr. Weil because I had an eggplant I needed to use up, and this recipe for the pickled daikon and carrot from a site called "Banh Mi Battle." So you know they have the best version...

Turned out really well, I think, though the bread was way too heavy for this.  It needs a more traditional baguette, with less whole wheat flour.  I'll write about my adventures with homemade bread one of these days, maybe (I'm trying to learn never to make promises on a blog...!)

Clockwise from sandwich: one finished sandwich, eggplant & walnut pate, pickled daikon & carrot, cilantro, sriracha hot sauce, and Vegenaise. 

Korean Pancakes from one of my favorite internet doctors

....Dr. Ben Kim.  I made these pancakes for brunch this morning, along with Dr. Kim's Pomegranate and Almond Salad.  Sadly, I didn't get a pic of the salad, it was beautiful, simple, and healthy, of course, as all of Dr. Kim's recipes are.

I did grab one shot of the lovely pancakes:

The sauce - with a few drops of fire oil - really made the dish.  My friend thought they were delicious, and they were, but I'd do them a little differently next time.  I found the flavor very delicate, which apparently isn't really my thing, though I do want to do them again.  I looked up Korean pancakes in my copy of Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, and she adds egg, sesame oil, and sauteed mushrooms and chiles - those are certainly great ideas.  She also starts with wheat flour and rice flour instead of mung beans and a little rice, but I think starting with the more whole grains is the way I prefer.  I would probably cut back on the mung bean mixture by about half - or double everything else - and add some sesame oil, mushrooms, and maybe a little more salt to the batter.

Just after the Korean pancake recipe in World Vegetarian is a one for Vietnamese pancakes, or Banh Xeo.  The pancake recipe itself is extremely similar, but the sauce has lime juice, crushed garlic, chile, and roasted peanuts in addition to soy sauce, and it calls for bean sprouts and fresh mint and basil as garnishes.  So maybe I'll try that next time instead...

Stuffed Acorn Squash

Two years??  Wow.  It's been a while since I posted here!  Funny that I've recently decided to try vegan again, if just for a cleanse - I've only been ovo-lacto vegetarian since around early 2011.  But here's something I made tonight that thrilled me, and my guest loved it too, so I wanted to put it somewhere, if just so I could repeat it myself.

I started from this post from We Are Not Martha, but I changed it up quite a bit.  It's pretty healthy, and vegan, but it has a lot of flavor.  I've been loving ancho chile pepper powder, and I used it here.  I suppose chili powder would work, if you like it (I've never found one that didn't have a stale, cardboard-y flavor), but I guess I would favor a slightly spicy paprika over that.

Vegan Stuffed Acorn Squash
2-4 servings

1 acorn squash
2 tbl olive oil (divided)
1/2 cup brown rice
1 1/4 cup vegetable stock
1 small onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
4 oz mushrooms, diced
1/4 cup dry sherry
3 oz frozen vegan ground crumbles (or so, about a quarter package)
1/4 crunchy apple, diced (I used honey crisp)
1/2 tsp ancho chile pepper powder  (see note above)
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375F.  Split the squash and remove the seeds.  Place the halves cut side up in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with plenty of salt and pepper.  Place in oven and roast about 45 minutes, or until fork tender.

Combine the rice and stock in a pot, bring to a boil, and simmer, covered, for about 25 minutes, or until the liquid is absorbed.

In the meantime, heat the rest of the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat.  Add the onions and saute until translucent.  Add the garlic, bell pepper, and mushrooms and saute until all the vegetables are tender.  Add the sherry and cook for a minute or so, then add the cooked rice, ground crumbles, apple, and ancho chile powder.  Cook another three minutes or so until the ground crumbles are thawed.

Remove the squash from the oven.  Stir the walnuts and parsley into the rice mixture, add salt and pepper to taste, then spoon it, divided in two, into the hollows of the squash.  Return the squash to the oven for five minutes and heat until the stuffing begins to brown.  Serve with a little more chopped parsley as garnish.

Chickpea Salad Sandwiches

Are you one of those people who says, "Oh, I would like to be vegan, but I don't think I could do it" or "I don't think I could give up [this or that]"?  Well, if you haven't tried chickpea salad sandwiches, then you haven't even given yourself a fighting chance.

This is the Chickpea of the Sea sandwich from The Kitchn, with a couple changes.  I use Vegenaise (a mayo replacement so awesome I can eat it by the spoonful), of course, and I use red wine vinegar instead of the umeboshi with no problem (no umeboshi vinegar to be had around here right now, though I hope to try it one of these days).  I have also never added the cayenne, and I always throw in about a teaspoon of Kala Namak, or Indian black salt, which smells like you would never want to put it on food, but it tastes so much like egg, it's unbelievable.  I love that stuff in this sandwich, and in tofu scrambles.

I put onion sprouts and lettuce on this version of the sandwich.  And, for some reason, I made a handful of potato chips instead of the sandwich the focal point of the photo...

This sandwich is awesome.  I make it at least a couple times a month.  It's particularly easy with canned chickpeas, but if you make them from dried in the crockpot, you can get them plenty soft enough to mash easily.  TRY IT!

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I love planning the dishes, I love cooking and chopping and measuring and peeling and stirring all day with friends or family, and I love sitting down to a spectacular meal and being thankful for such a blessed life.  I do not love the clean up, but I am not above ignoring the mess until someone else takes care of it...

This year was my first vegan Thanksgiving.  I bought a Field Roast Hazelnut and Cranberry Stuffed Roast, and made mashed potatoes with Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese and soy milk, green beans with mustard sauce, the Mushroom Gravy from Veganomicon, and this chestnut soup from C'est la Vegan--we roasted the chestnuts in the oven and spent about half an hour peeling them...!  Mom made Cranberry Sauce Made Easy and Sweet Potatoes with Apples and Walnuts from vegweb.com and some sweet corn.  Mom of course made pies--a vegan pumpkin pie (it didn't make it into the pic above!) and a not vegan apple pie.  They were delicious, as usual, though I think the best vegan pumpkin pie recipe is still waiting to be discovered.

Mom, the pie expert:

Stand outs were the chestnut soup and the sweet potato bake.  The chestnut soup (I used a couple tablespoons of Earth Balance instead of the soy cream) was silky and rich and the sweet potatoes had a crunchy, sticky coating that was delicious.  All three of us loved both these dishes.  I also loved the Field Roast, though I want to make one myself next year.

(There's the pumpkin pie!)

It's been quite a while since I've had Thanksgiving with my parents, and we had a great time and a great meal.  It was really sweet of them to do a vegan meal with me, though they were a little disappointed, mostly, I think, because a couple of the dishes were too strongly flavored for them.  For instance, they liked the seitan part of the Field Roast, but not the stuffing in the middle. Though none of us were crazy about the Mushroom Gravy, which I felt was too bland.

Here's Dad, looking a little sad...I hadn't noticed he wore a Thanksgiving Day running t-shirt for the occasion...

The dogs were busy playing around most of the day, but begging at the table was a highlight...

I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely and you have a restful, long weekend!

Pumpkin Chili, Salad, and Garlic Bread

I love food.  All food.  I think that's why my veganism is going to last: who cares if I leave out a couple types of food, I've still got so much to try and I love it all.

Not that this is an unusual or exotic meal.  Just the opposite, it's simple and it was easy and cheap.  I usually only have one dish in a meal when it's just me--I love one-pot meals.  But I used a couple little time-saving strategies here so that I had a three course meal every day...though it was still the same meal for a week...any one else do that?  I tend to have the same thing for three days in a row.  This lasted five!

The Pumpkin Chili is from (never home)maker, a site I'd never visited before this review from seitan is my motor.  Seitan is my motor is a great German vegan blog (in English) that I read all the time but have never cooked from because her specialty is baking, and baking is not my thing, unfortunately.  But even when she isn't baking, the recipes look great.

I used my crockpot again here to make the kidney beans from dried, and I tried not even soaking them this time, which worked just fine.  I brought them to boil in water to cover, then cooked them in the crock on high for about 4 hours with a couple bay leaves, an onion cut in half, and a little thyme.  I used some of the cooking liquid in the Chili instead of the veggie broth (just remember you'll need to add a lot of extra salt).  I also roasted a pumpkin and used that instead of the puree from a can, and I sauteed some celery with the onions because I didn't have any corn to add.

The last change I made was I roasted the pumpkin seeds along side the pumpkin and used them to garnish.  It was a good, healthy chili--I have other favorites, but the pumpkin was fun.

I served the chili with a salad.  I tried something new here to make this easy and fast--on Sunday I washed and dried the lettuce, chopped it, and put it in a large plastic container with a tea towel.  I did the same for the other veggies (minus the tea towel): shredded a couple carrots, and chopped some sugar snap peas, green pepper, and celery.  Then I just had to assemble the salad each night, which went really quickly.  I also threw on some onion sprouts and chopped avocado.  I made the dressing in an almost empty Vegenaise jar with dried thyme, mustard, red wine vinegar, and evoo, and used that every evening, too.  I didn't go without a salad all week, because it was so easy.

Finally, I had a slice of garlic toast on the side.  I lightly toast a slice of whole wheat bread, rub it with a half-clove of garlic, butter it with Earth Balance, then throw it back in the toaster oven to get it good and bubbly and crunchy.

Layered Dip

So I don't know why I posted so much here during probably the busiest I've been since graduate school--the last couple weeks of October.  I'm chair of a local Democratic club, and we were canvassing, phone banking, and hosting events, as well as keeping an office open and running.  I was also working on a website, and doing design and layout work.  And going to two or three events and fundraisers a week.  And feeling like I could/should be doing so much more...

Then, I've never been busier at work.  I got promoted to a position I've been gunning for for years, and I'm excited about it, and trying to learn and start all these new things.  But...my old position hasn't been filled yet, so I'm doing that still, alongside trying to prove myself in the new job.

Nervous energy, maybe?

And then...the election happened...what did I do all that work for...???  Maybe the dividends are in the future...blah, blah, blah...

But either way (before or after demoralization), I haven't been doing my usual browsing of cookbooks and blogs, so my cooking is more based on the ingredients I have and what fits into my schedule, so I finally have some chances to post recipes of my own!


Not that you would actually call this recipe, "cooking," but I did manage to take a crappy picture (this is the best one!  what happened here?), and I'm writing up the ingredients.  I might bring this for our annual holiday potluck at work.  It's very rich, and there's nothing "hippie" about the taste, which--I don't know about you guys, but--everyone I know worries about a great deal...

Layered Dip

2/3 can vegetarian refried beans, heated
1/4 c salsa

1/3 c Vegenaise
2 T adobo spice mix (I had this in my pantry...YUM)

1 ripe avocado
juice of 1/4 lemon
plenty of unrefined seal salt to taste
a couple grinds of black pepper

Combine heated refried beans and salsa; set aside.

Combine Vegenaise and adobo spice; set aside.  (I'm going to have to stop myself from just making the Vegenaise and adobe spice by itself next time...)

Mash avocado with a fork and add lemon, salt, and pepper to make simple guacamole; set aside.

Layer bean mix, Vegenaise mix, and guacamole.  Serve with corn chips.

And here's the summer memory of the day, my twin nieces coming to my house and seeing their birthday cake, and both wearing the same, hilarious smile-suppression look on their faces...

Vegan Chili in a Crock Pot

50-mile-per-hour winds?  25-foot waves in Lake Michigan?  It's time for chili!

Vegan Chili in a Crock Pot
 
1 c dry kidney beans
4 small laurel bay leaves
2 t dry thyme or a few sprigs fresh
2 onions, quartered

2 T evoo
1 medium onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1 c bean cooking liquid or veggie stock
2 T tomato paste
1 T cocoa powder
1 T chili powder
1 t cayenne pepper

1 t turmeric
1 t paprika
dash cinnamon
plenty of unrefined sea salt to taste

1 T evoo
1/3 package of Boca crumble

Soak kidney beans overnight or quick soak by bringing to a boil for one minute and letting them sit off the heat for 1 to 2 hours.  Change the water; add bay leaves, thyme, and onions.

Maybe it's just my crockpot, but I need to bring the water and beans to the boil on the stove first, then transfer to the crockpot, otherwise they just never get hot enough to start cooking.  I do this in the morning and leave them on at low until I get home from work.  This makes nice, well-cooked beans for me.  I've also had success leaving them on high for four hours--starting them when I'm home for lunch--and they're ready at 5pm.

When beans are tender, begin the rest of the chili ingredients.  Heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add onion, garlic, celery, carrot, and bell pepper.  Cook until tender.  Add tomatoes, bean cooking liquid, and tomato paste and bring to a low boil.  Add spices, drained beans (save that liquid for soup!), and salt, and return to the crockpot on high for an hour and a half (or low for two or three).

When the chili is almost done, cook Boca crumbles over medium heat in a tablespoon of oil for 12 minutes.  Add to chili.

Serve with a little minced onion and some Daiya shreds, if you like.

Makes 3 or 4 servings.

And here's a pic in memory of the summer...

Parsley lounging in the hammock.  Yes, I have to tie her out in my fenced-in back yard.  She jumps my 6-foot privacy fence and runs around the neighborhood, weaving in and out of yards, and jumping other fences for half an hour, when she gets tired and lets me (or a neighbor) catch her.  I would love to hear any ideas to stop fence jumping!

Some Delicious Brown Food

So I remember, as a kid, that a meal like this was frozen, and quite a treat...Stouffer Turkey Dinner or something.  But at some point, I think Mom made it herself.  We would smother pieces of buttered bread with shredded leftover turkey and lots of gravy...wow.  After Thanksgiving, but also after other workday meals, this was one of my favorite dinners.  I'm telling you, this lived up to my memory.  Try it.

Why, yes, that is the worst food photograph ever blogged.  But it was damn good food.  And, no animals were harmed in the making of this ugly food...

To start, that is homemade whole wheat bread at the bottom there.  I followed the basic recipe from The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown.  The "turkey" is a thick slice of Vegan Dad's Smoked Veggie Turkey Lunchmeat (not just good here--eat it thinly sliced on sandwiches or see just how much your dog loves it as a soft training treat...).  And the gravy is a riff off of a Seventh Day Adventist recipe from an awesome book called Cooking by the Book by Marcella Lynch.  I wish I had made notes, because I changed it a lot and I wanted to post it here, but I didn't.  :(  I know I started with some onion in Earth Balance and made a roux, added homemade veggie stock and a little soy milk, and I know I added some Marmite, some soy sauce..and some other stuff...    But I bet a mushroom gravy would be even better.  What's your favorite vegan gravy?

Refried Beans Two Ways

Refried beans are among my very favorite foods, but these ones, eaten this way,  were magical...  Um...magical...?  Why not?  The ones I made here were "Rosario Guillermo's Frijoles Refritos" from World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey (beautiful and useful book - get it).  But it was a very simple recipe, and the key, I think, is to cook your beans originally to a very soft consistency, then to make sure to add enough liquid when re-frying to make them nice and creamy.

Above, I had them with a baked potato with a dollop of Vegenaise and a handful of snipped chives from my kitchen garden, as well as a scoop of homemade guacamole, just simply done with avocado, lemon juice, and salt.  Yum.

And here they are with some homemade whole grain tortillas, cut up, brushed with oil and sprinkled with salt, and baked until crisp, as well as a salad with romaine, jicama, radish, avocado, and salsa.

The moral of this story is: make your own refried beans and eat them often.  You will be rewarded with perfect health and taste buds that sing your praises...;)

Vegan Spinach Salad

Here is some more proof that vegans don't sacrifice taste and in fact eat as well as anyone else (and much better than those people who hate spices, avocados, beets, or anything new).  I heartily enjoyed this salad for four days in a row; having prepared the vegan bacon and the dressing ahead of time, I just threw them together with some spinach and sliced up a few mushrooms.  Rich, complex flavors, and all those fresh greens.  Yum.  Really.

(That's an awesome picture, huh?  Pure luck.  And look how a few of those mushrooms with a little yellow-ish dressing look like hard boiled eggs...a little freaky, actually.)

I started with the Tempeh Bacon.  It needs to marinate for at least a couple hours, then it's fried.  The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance...which I don't own...but someone has posted it, and I'll link to it here.  (I do plan to buy the book one of these days.)  The person who posted it doesn't like it much, and, no, you're not going to fool anyone into thinking this is pork, but why would you want to?  It's a really savory, slightly crispy, slightly chewy, rich treat.  It's exactly what I was looking for.  The next component to put together is this Spinach Salad Dressing from Toby Jermain on food.com.  It's so thick, it's more like an onion relish.  But, with all the onion already in the dressing, that's one less component for the leftovers' prep work.  Add the bacon and the dressing over some spinach and thickly sliced mushrooms, and there you go.

Beefless Vegetable Soup

It's the season for comfort food!  This soup reminds me of Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable, which I ate too much of in college, only fresh and tasty!  The tomato sauce gives some thickness--it's not just brothy.  Marmite is a yeast extract that adds a savory, umami flavor.  Really simple, it's also cheap, pantry food without the Gardein.  But I had some Beefless Tips in my freezer for a month and this seemed like a good use for them.  Well, they blew me away.  Great texture, beefy flavor.  If you're used to cooking with meat, I really think you'll find lots of ways to eat those. Add them to this delicious soup to make it heartier.

Beefless Vegetable Soup

2 T evoo
2 onions, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 quarts vegetable stock or bean cooking liquid
14 oz. tomato sauce + water to rinse out can
2 small yukon gold potatoes, in 1/2 inch dice
1 T turmeric (protects your liver, as well as is anti-carcinogenic)
1 t dried thyme
1/2 t cayenne
1/2 t Marmite
plenty of unrefined sea salt to taste
1 pkg Gardein Beefless Tips (optional)

Heat oil over medium heat, and add onions, celery, carrots, and garlic.  Saute until a little softened.  Add stock and tomato sauce (and water to rinse out can) and bring to a boil.  Add potatoes and flavorings, reduce heat to simmer, cover, and cook until potatoes are soft, about 15 minutes.

While potatoes are cooking, saute Gardein according to package directions, if you plan on using it.  Add at the last minute, and season with salt.  If you expect leftovers, consider cooking just enough Gardein for each serving, storing the soup itself separately.

If I hadn't had the Gardein, I would have considered sprinkling veggie parmesan or Dragonfly's Bulk Uncheese on the soup, instead.

Vegan at Papa Vino's?

Well, it can be done, at least.  It's no better than what you get when you eat omni at Papa Vino's...but you can eat a couple reasonably substantive meals at this midwestern Italian chain.  I go to the one on Hilltop in St. Joseph, Michigan. 

You can have pasta: the fettucine and spaghetti are vegan, though not the ravioli dough (but then again, none of the ravioli filling is vegan, either) or the spinach fettucine, which both have egg.  The pizza crust is also vegan.  Then you have your choice of toppings: the primavera veggies or the mixed mushroom (as comes on the Mushroom Fettucine dish).  But if you're going to have a sauce, you're going to have to make it marinara--it's the only vegan sauce.

I had the Mushroom Fettucine with marinara instead of the garlic cream sauce.  It was decent, if a little oily.  And it could have used some Veggie Italian Sausage...I've been taking these to all the barbeques to eat with hot dog fixings (I made them a little thick for this purpose--they're very filling--next time I'll make them more hot-dog-sized) and dicing them up and frying them to add to pizza and pasta, and last night to an excellent lentil salad.

Vegan in St. Joseph, Michigan

Well, it's been a long time since I posted, huh...?  I guess my excuse is that I'm a new vegan--I'm experimenting, figuring out what I'm doing.  I'll tell you, though, I have been eating really, really well.  As in, delicious food, and lots of it.  And spending too much money to do it.  I want to try everything out there.  The vegan pizza, cheeze, fauxsage, Vegenaise (which is basically the greatest food ever found in a jar)--everything I can find in this small town.  Thank god for Apple Valley.

I wanted to write, though, about my experiences eating out.  I am starting to leave behind my initial crutch of relaxing my cheese avoidance at restaurants, and I've had a couple good vegan meals, right here in the middle of meat-and-potatoes Berrien County, Michigan.

Cassava is a new Latin American restaurant in the old Elks Club building in downtown St. Joseph.  Unfortunately, the ambiance is still pretty Elks-Club-ish...but they're just getting started, I'm sure.  I had the Vegetarian Paella, which I confirmed was also vegan.  It was shockingly rich and full of nicely cooked veggies.  I had it with a very good mojito--it was Thursday, $4 mojito night!  I took half the paella home and ate it two mornings in a row for breakfast, and it lived up to my memory both times.

The other meal I'd highly recommend is a sandwich at Clancey's Deli on Niles, also in St. Joseph.  I ordered the Turkey Tabbouleh with "no turkey, salami, provolone or mayo."  The server looked at me like I'd asked her to poke me in the eye with a fork, but shrugged her shoulders and made an excellent sandwich, anyway.  I asked for extra tabbouleh and some other veggies they don't usually add.  I can't wait to eat that again.  I should mention that I don't know the ingredients in the bread.  It was a french bread roll.  I haven't really found a guaranteed, no-question-about-it vegan bread in the supermarkets here, though, either...

The other restaurant at which I've tried to eat vegan is Silver Beach Pizza.  I tried the Margherita Pizza, no cheese, and it was pretty boring--it comes with fresh tomatoes instead of sauce, so it was sort of just tomatoes on bread.  God, I miss Silver Beach Pizza.  I'm pretty sure the crust is vegan (I plan to ask one more time), though, and the marinara sauce is vegan, so next time I will try to come up with something else.  They even serve a "Vegan Lentil Sauce" as a pasta option--now that's a word you don't see often on a menu around here.  I'm sure they can do better than a cheese-less Margherita.

Happy eating.  I'll post again, hopefully sooner than four months from now...

Happier Mother's Days for Elephants!

In the wild, male elephants stay with their mothers until adolescence (age 13--elephants live to 50 years old!) and females never leave.  But Ringling Bros. takes babies away from their mothers at 18 months, before "training" them with physically and psychically painful methods.  PETA has a very sweet Mother's Day card you can print out and mail to the USDA asking for regulations to stop these cruel practices.  Imagine a deluge of pink cards with cartoon elephants at the USDA! 

Circuses are cruel institutions that belong in the history books as outrageous examples of the exploitation of fellow animals for money.  Let's all resolve to find more humane ways to entertain our children.

Veganomicon mistakes

I had a less-than-stellar couple weeks in my Veganomicon cook-through, though that streak is broken with the Butternut Squash Rice Paper Rolls I will blog about shortly.  Here are some notes about Double Pea Soup, Chickpea Cutlets, and the Grilled Yuca Tortillas.

I'm not sure why I try to make split pea soup as often as I do.  I don't really like it.  But I guess I have a feeling that there is a way to cook anything to make it taste good, so I just keep trying!  So the odds were against Double Pea Soup with Roasted Red Peppers from the beginning.  To be fair, it is the best split pea soup I've ever eaten...the tarragon, sweet peas and red peppers lent it a freshness it doesn't usually have.

On the other hand, the wheatberry dish I had on the side was awesome.  I don't remember what I did exactly, but I had cooked wheatberries in the freezer and I heated those and added them to lots of sauteed mushrooms.  It was flavored with red miso paste stirred into some hot veggie broth and probably a little fire oil.

Chickpea Cutlets are one of the signature recipes in Veganomicon, which is why I wanted to make them right away!   There are many reasons I should have loved them...

...but I did not.  It's possible I had the heat on too high while pan-frying them, because I didn't leave them on as long as the recipe recommended--they were getting too dark.  But the texture in the middle was unpleasant to me--sort of gooey and stringy.  I have used vital wheat gluten before to much better success (Vegan Dad's excellent Tempeh Burgers), though, and I think I will give this recipe another chance.  I also made the Mustard Sauce from Veganomicon (I would thin it out more next time), and served it with green beans from the freezer.

I was also a little disappointed in the Grilled Yuca Tortillas, cheese-less quesadillas with root vegetable and garlic filling.  I'm glad to know of a new-to-me vegetable, though--the yuca--but next time will take very seriously the warning to remove the fibrous core.  My yuca was very thin, and I couldn't see it (I'm guessing it's more obvious in the thicker, older yuca), so I didn't worry about it, but I had to remove a piece from almost every bite...blech.  That was my fault.  But I also found them a little bland and dry, especially as leftovers, though they were pretty satisfying the first day.

On day 3 of the leftovers, I gave up on the yuca-dillas and made soup from the yuca mixture and salsa, and it was wonderful (though I was still removing those inedible fibers...).  I had it for three more days!

Quest Cigarettes discontinued!

Today is the second anniversary of the day I quit smoking!  One of the best things I've ever done.  Without that extra $150 a month, I doubt I'd be able to afford Parsley and Milo, and I'm not so sure about my ongoing bathroom renovation, either.

I quit - believe it or not - the easy way: with Quest Cigarettes.  Haven't heard of them?  Of course not, no one else has, either, and now they're gone for lack of demand.  I blame several groups of people with varying degrees of vehemence:

• People who think that smoking cigarettes while you're quitting is cheating!  Seriously.  A friend of mine wanted to quit right away, for all the right reasons, so she rushed through the steps, against my advice.  And now (do I need to say it?)...she's still smoking.  I spent two weeks at Level 1, Low Nicotine, two weeks at Level 2, Ultra-Low Nicotine, and two weeks at Level 3, Nicotine Free.  I noticed each decrease for the first day--I felt like I wanted to pull harder.  But I just got used it.  Then, eventually, I smoked the last pack of Level 3, and I was done.  None of those panicky cravings, no rationalizations for buying one more pack rattling around in my head all day; it was practically a non-event.
• Ligget Vector Brands, the manufacturer of Quest Cigarettes, for an extremely poor naming choice.  Do an internet search for "quit smoking with quest cigarettes" and you get one million blog posts named "My quest to quit smoking."  There is literally no way to get any information about using Quest to quit.  Why isn't there anything on the subject on the Ligget Vector website?  That brings me to the group of people for whom I reserve my greatest ire...
• Big Pharma.  Yes, their lobbyists prevented Ligget from advertising Quest as a stop smoking aid.  They wouldn't want anyone getting the impression that anything other than more drugs could be the solution to anything.  Need to wean yourself off drugs?  Don't try less drugs, try more drugs!

Ligget, please bring back Quest cigarettes (preferably with a new name).  More people need to be smoking cigarettes while they're quitting cigarettes!