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!

Inspiration

Last November I drove from Michigan to the West Coast and back, stopping to see friends along the way.  Going west, I took the shortest path, along I70, through the plains and Colorado.  On the way back, I stopped in Phoenix, so I took a more southerly route home.

The farms in the middle of the country are mostly corn, something I'm used to seeing in Michigan.  But Texas and Oklahoma are full of cows.  Brown cows, spotted cows, and black cows.  They didn't seem as unhappy as I had been expecting: stuffed together, standing in rivers of their own excrement.  Though maybe they keep some pretty by the freeways for the benefit of those driving by.

But those big, beautiful black cows with their sad, thoughtful brown eyes reminded me so much of my driving companion:

My Parsley is so sweet and innocent and trusting, I couldn't help but attribute those qualities to those pretty, calm cows.  And now I can't justify being a party to their inhumane treatment.  So no more burgers for me. 

Spicy Peanut and Eggplant Soup

Here's my second recipe from Veganomicon.  I picked it because the only ingredients I had to buy specially for it were the fresh veggies.

It was another unmitigated success.  Creamy and spicy and satisfying, with smoky, chewy chunks of eggplant and sweet carmelized shallots.  I don't know if it was the salting before cooking that they recommend or the long saute, but the eggplant had a particularly nice, rich flavor.  And I love eggplant, anyway.

Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls

I've decided to cook all the way through Veganomicon!  I'm so excited about this book.  Every single recipe sounded wonderful to me (with the exception of one casserole with a sauerkraut filling.....not a big fan of sauerkraut, anyway, but baked in the center of a casserole....???), so before I even made it to "Soups" on a read-through, I knew this would be my cook-through book!  I'll go recipe by recipe starting from the first page, with one recipe per pay period (twice a month).  But I'll use other recipes to fill in my menus as they work out seasonally or according to my whim...!

Recipe number one in the first chapter, "Snacks, Appetizers, Little Meals, Dips, and Spreads" is Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls.

This was a terrific first impression.  I was so surprised by how good the tempeh filling tasted.  It was just as savory and satisfying as spicy tuna, but without the slightly repulsive (though oddly refreshing) raw fish texture.  It was not as spicy as spicy tuna rolls I've had, so I could have added more chili oil (the recipe calls for "hot chile-sesame oil" which I don't have or know of, so I used equal parts "fire oil" chile oil and toasted sesame oil).  I ate it with a simple miso soup with scallions and sauteed mushrooms.

I've made sushi rolls twice before.  In Ann Arbor, my friend from Japan had me over for a sushi tutorial.  Our making of the rolls almost kept up with our eating them!  We made something like five different fillings, and they were wonderful and beautiful.  We even did inside-out rolls and hand rolls.

Then, more recently (though still quite a while ago!), in Manahattan Beach, my friend Heather and I attempted a big plate of sushi rolls for a party.  They were so ugly, everyone was afraid to eat them!  But those of us who did eat them had a treat, because they tasted excellent.  So there you scaredy cats...

So, I'm not exactly an expert, but I've had a little experience.  These turned out quite pretty as well as tasty.

Poor kitty

So my cat Milo had to have a third of his tail amputated this week, after I closed a door on it Sunday night.  *warning: gory details* He jumped up in a horrible twist that a 20-pound cat doesn't usually have the energy or grace to pull off.  I looked down and there was a two inch long clump of fur..and it had pulled the skin right off with it.  Blood splattered all over.  It was so awful.

I can't tell you how badly I feel about it--I went to work all puffy-eyed Monday.  But I paid my penance at the vet Monday.  Literally.  With a check.

Here he is in his outer compound, my bedroom, where he is confined during the day.  At night I close him up in those two crates (door to door) because I've been worried that Parsley would bother his tail--Parsley is a wound-licker.  I also like the crates because he is so incredibly messy with that collar.  It acts as a scoop for anything he's trying to get at or see--food...or litter.  Eww.

It's been pretty hard to get a cat to eat a pill.  What's worked best so far is to chop it into small pieces (not ground to a powder--he could taste the powder and he was so mad at me for ruining his favorite part of life) and put in his food.  [Update: It turns out he only ate a couple bites!  Back to shoving the pills down his throat...]

But it looks like Milo is going to pull through!  I might let him out of the bedroom tonight after the dogs calm down (I'm sitting for another young dog, Jelly Bean.)  He'll be so happy about that.

Vegetarian again

I've been considering it for a while, but I've quit eating meat, as of a few weeks ago. What really made me finally go ahead and do it was watching Food Inc.  Of course, it's nothing we all don't already know about how terrible factory farms are for both animal and farmer, but it felt like a call to action for me.

I rarely cooked with meat products, anyway, though I usually used chicken broth, and I occasionally used bacon or sausage.  But I almost always ordered something meaty when eating out, and I ate anything offered me by anyone!  I had been on a ham and cheese sandwich kick for a while, and I suppose that's what I'll feel nostalgic about for a while.

Speaking of cheese, I'm aspiring to eventually become vegan this time.  I will have to have in place a suitably decadent cheese substitute, since being without the real thing seems almost like an insurmountable challenge to me.  So I'll probably phase in veganism first by cooking vegan at home and only eating dairy and eggs socially--at restaurants and when it's offered me (I worked with a vegan once who said he only ate "free cheese"--hi, Ryan!).  I am also considering making exceptions for humanely acquired dairy and eggs.

I was a vegetarian for about five years in high school and college, but I'm certain I'll be better at it this time.  I subsisted mainly on different combinations of bread, pasta, cheese and tomato sauce back then!  My friend Heather recently reminded me, too, of my fondness for Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable Soup sprinkled with Kraft Parmesan--I actually did a homemade version of it the other day for old time's sake.  She's given up meat recently, too!

I'm excited about this new adventure.  I've only used vegetarian cookbooks for about 5 years, now, so I recently bought my first vegan cookbook, Veganomicon, and I'm sure you'll see some dishes from it here shortly!

In the meantime, here is a vegetarian "shepherd's" pie I made shortly before I made the big switch.  I used this recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Cheap Healthy Good. (Click on the picture to see a larger version--it actually looks tastier close up...)