friday food round-up: sprouts of change

Hello everyone, and welcome to our first post-Republican food round-up! I've appreciated the comments and shared enthusiasm from people here in the U.S. and all over the world. Truly, it's a happy time.

Well, if the country is willing to try something new (FINALLY!) so am I. I had bought a sprouting jar 2 years ago, but had always been too chicken to actually try and sprout something. This past week, I finally took the plunge with mung beans. I had been warned that home-grown mung bean sprouts can never get as fat and crispy as the store-bought variety (grown in giant commercial vats and sprayed with gasses) but I'd say ours came pretty close:

Behold the "sprouts of change"!

I know people had been waiting patiently for this. When I saw Ben's recipe for the "Devilishly Yummy Kabocha Pumpkin Pancakes" I just knew I had to try them, because they looked oh-so-good, and I've been on a real pumpkin kick lately. Even though Ben called for fresh kabocha pumpkins, I couldn't find any, so I used canned pumpkin instead, and added a bit of extra water to the batter.

The result?

Deliciously spicy pancakes that we gobbled up with Earth Balance, maple syrup, and some toasted walnuts on top. (I think pecans would go exceptionally well with these, too.) So good, and SO filling. I love it when a hearty breakfast sees you through a whole day's activities (raking leaves, working on the yard and garden). Thanks, Ben!

Daiku and I loved the Bob's Red Mill bean and barley burgers from last week (you can see them in the previous food round up here ). We had some mix left over (the recipe makes 8 big burgers, but we only ate 4) and Daiku thought it would make a perfect hash. So that's what we made, by adding some potatoes, peas, and rosemary and roasting the whole thing in the oven.

This hash was awesome! I tell you, this recipe has possibilities- add some mashed potatoes to the top, and you have shepard's pie. We ate the hash doused with a liberal amount of malt vinegar and a couple of pints of lager. (I have previously mentioned my unwholesome, obsessive love of vinegar) So this turned into a pseudo-British meal.

This recipe double-play was so successful, that we ended up doing it again. On Sunday, as we were attending to the aforementioned leaves in the yard, our crock-pot was cooking us up another magnificent recipe from the Fatfree Vegan Blog, the Easy Crock-Pot Winter Stew. This recipe came as a life-saver for us, because we were pretty much all out of groceries, and especially produce, but happened to have everything to make this.

A warming, delicious, and unique mixture of tempeh, potatoes, carrots, and leeks in a sauce that mixed tomatoes, peanut butter, tamari, ginger, and a whole bunch of other goodies. Put this in the crock-pot in the morning. You'll thank yourself that night, trust me! For those of you who are undecided about tempeh, the long slow cooking really mellows it out, so give it a chance, you might be surprised.

The recipe made enough for copious left-overs. So once again we decided to make something entirely new out of them. I don't even know what to call this, but it was lovely. We toasted some mustard seeds, red pepper flakes and some curry powder, then added the stew, some crushed tomatoes, peas, black-eyed peas, and pumpkin! The result was so complex and satisfying served with long-grain brown rice.

I'd been eyeing Gaia's recipe for beets with Dijon-dill sauce for a long time. Too long, because they were magnificent, and made a great accompaniment to a meal, especially when you've run out of produce and can't make a regular salad! (Her photo is much prettier than mine, though)

The question at our house is not whether you had pasta, but just exactly what kind of pasta you had. This week, it was penne with a previously-made and frozen sun-dried tomato pesto, broccoli, and pine nuts. I made extra because I had a feeling that we would both go back for seconds, and we SO did.

You know how sometimes you're going about your business baking something, and all seems to be well, but then you realize you did something terribly wrong? Well, I had that kind of "d'oh!" moment this week when baking yet another batch of cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Both Daiku and I had been attracted to the chocolate stout cupcakes, and seeing Jess's yummy photos on her blog sealed the deal. Honestly, I'm going to try all the recipes in this book that don't call for buttercream frosting, because the amounts of sugar called for in the frosting recipes makes me a little faint!

So here I am measuring oh-so-carefully, mixing, folding... and it comes time to pour the batter into the cups. Instead of filling all 12 cups perfectly as other recipes from this book did, however, all I got was 9 filled and 1 more semi-filled.

Ok, no biggie, I'm thinking to myself. Maybe I poured too much batter. It happens to the best of us. I stuck the 10 cupcakes (with the yummy crumb topping) into the oven to bake. I turn around to wash the dishes when I realize to my horror that I've used the wrong measuring cup! Instead of a 1/2 cup measuring cup to measure flour and sugar, I've used a smaller cup! I start to freak out- all the other ingredients were measured correctly, so this could seriously screw things up. Oh gosh, oh gosh, what a waste, ack!

Ding! The timer went off 20 minutes later and what do I find but...

10 perfect cupcakes. Amazing! I seriously messed up and they still came out good. Better than good. The chocolate stout that we used added such a fragrance and depth to the flavor of these cupcakes. And since I had used proportionally more cocoa than the recipe called for, these babies were INTENSE. I highly recommend these cupcakes to any chocoholics out there.

And then I realized another thing, as I was biting into these moist, fluffy, insanely good chocolate confections.

Vegan baking has truly come of age. These cupcakes were airy, fluffy, had perfect texture and crumb, looked, smelled, baked, and tasted perfect. Even with a seriously incompetent chef! This just shows what a strong and sophisticated set of recipes we are now armed with! Truly, we will take over the world. Sigh.

Random food shot:

My aunt made me these "nabat" or sugar crystals infused with saffron. They are good with a cup of tea, they soothe an upset tummy, and they just look pretty cool against a black background.

FOOD FLASHBACK:

This summer, I was lucky enough to visit my previous home, Southern California, for 6 weeks to teach a class. I managed to eat pretty damn well while I was out there. (I have to give mad props to my dad, who, while not a vegan himself, made sure to stock the house with enough fresh and dried fruit, vegetables and nuts to feed a vegan for decades!)

Here is a photo of a lunch my friend Mary and I enjoyed at the Pain Quotidien cafe in Westwood.

It was July, we were going through a searing heat-wave (I'd never experienced L.A. so humid before! One day in the valley, it was 115 degrees- in the shade) and all I wanted was gazpacho. Well, they had 2 kinds of gazpacho on the menu: the regular tomato kind, and one made with... seaweed! I'd never seen such a thing before, so I just had to try it. And I'm so glad I did, because it was one of the most unique things I'd ever tasted.

A cool and cooling mixture of: 5 different kinds of seaweed (at least) in a miso broth, with parsley, avocado, cucumber, radish, and tomato. Along with these gorgeous carafes of iced green tea and mint lemonade (both freshly made and unsweetened), it helped lower my body temperature and gave me a taste sensation to remember! I'll definitely be going back there next time I'm in California. (They have wonderful fresh bread and vegan treats as well).

Have a great weekend, all! Can you smell the change in the air?

friday food round-up: sprouts of change

Bye, Rummy!

(Image courtesy of http://www.mlcsmith.com/graphics/warped/index.html )

HAIKU FOR DON:

Belligerent lies
Ideological war
Rummy's gone, rejoice

(image courtesy of http://www.dwcastillo.com/?cat=6)

Bye, Rummy!

too excited to blog...

I had to vote by absentee ballot, so I didn't get the thrill of going to an actual voting booth. But I'm too excited to blog, study, write, eat, anything! At the risk of looking silly tomorrow, I'm going to come out and say this election might actually go well... we might all somehow manage to send a message to the powers that be that, well, they suck. Are you with me? Have you voted yet?

**Image thanks to http://www.mixunit.com/voteordiekslay.html **

too excited to blog...

food round-up

Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's food round-up. This week included some seriously good eats. (Sorry, Alton) As always, remember to click on any image below if you want to enlarge it.

The week started off on a high note, as we had our friends Heather and Eric over for dinner Saturday night. It's always nice to be able to set a nice table and share food and conversation with great people such as them!

What did we have for dinner? Well, we were inspired the night before they came over by watching an episode of Delicious T.V. How great is it that we have a totally vegetarian (and mostly vegan) cooking show on PBS? Did you know that this show, hosted by chef Toni Fiore was actually going to be on the Food Network, but at the last minute the "evil ones" asked her if she wouldn't be willing to have just a few fish and chicken dishes, I guess to make her show more marketable. Well, fortunately, Toni wasn't willing to do that, and her show is on PBS instead. If your local affiliate does not carry this show, make sure to ask them to do that! Let them know there is an audience for this type of thing. (Show's URL: www.delicioustv.com)

But I digress. Daiku and I thought both the Polenta con Fungi Porcini (Polenta with Mushroom Ragu) and the Fennel with Tomatoes, Onion, and Raisins sounded fabulous so we decided to make those things.

While both Daiku and I have always been fond of raw fennel in salads and even put small amounts of it on pizza or in red sauce in the past, this dish of braised fennel was a revlation. (We replaced the raisins with olives) It was so sweet and mellow and awesome. And the mushrooms (a mixture of fresh and dried) went so well with the polenta. A very hearty, wintery meal.

For dessert, Heather and Eric brought us a vegan dessert! It was so cool of them.

It was a Moosewood cookbook recipe chocolate cake with a chocolate orange frosting that was unbelievable. Chocolate and orange is one of my favorite combinations of all time, and this cake really delivered on flavor as well as texture.

Thanks for hanging out with us and tempting our palates, Eric and Heather!

Here's a pasta dish Daiku created one night:

It was a red sauce with sun-dried tomatoes, peas, and a whole lot of other things. But the secret ingredient that made it hearty was... Vegemite! That's right, just a tiny smidge of Vegemite woke the flavors up and added a certain indescribable depth of flavor to the whole thing. We gobbled it up.

Another thing I have been gobbling up lately is breakfast ice cream. Thanks to Gaia for being the inspiration for this because I have it at least a few times a week. This week I tried several kinds, including this one with bananas, blackberries, cherry juice and soymilk.

Yum!

Here's a nutritional powerhouse that's often under-used (at least by me): blackstrap molasses. It is one of the best sources of calcium and iron, but the flavor can be too intense for me. But one way I can always incorporate it into my diet is with beans.

For this delicious and easy meal, open up a can or two or pinto beans and simmer them with cumin, corriander, black pepper, some chipotle peppers (I used the canned kind in adobo) and a bunch of blackstrap molasses.

Neither Daiku or I are "meat and potatoes" eaters (thankfully!) But sometimes we're "potatoes and potatoes" kinds of people- in other words, we often eat an entire meal comprised of sides. It is so satisfying. For example:

Here we had some southern butter beans, some guacamole, a mesclun salad with carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and almonds, and a delicious mash of roasted sweet potato, baby potatoes, and parsnip. The parsnip added such flavor to the mash, and the sweet potato added color and sweetness. So good- and not an entree in sight!

One of my favorite things to snack on is simple crudites. One thing we added to the rotation this week is raw fennel. Italians often eat raw fennel as an appetizer, and it really does open the appetite and aid digestion. Try it with your favorite dip! (We learned this both from Toni Fiore of Delicious T.V. and our supermarket check-out person, who was Italian, and was really excited that we were buying 3 pounds of fennel bulbs! We chatted for a while and she confirmed that the best way to eat it is raw with just a dash of salt and olive oil. Yum)

I received a mail-order catalog from Bob's Red Mill yesterday. This catalog was cool because it was so informative- it's like a mini primer for any kind of flour you might have and be wondering what to do with. It also featured a bunch of recipes, one of which we tried for dinner last night:

These veggie burgers held together really well- was it the barley or the adzuki beans?...

We had them in pita pockets with carrot slaw and a mayonnaise-Dijon mustard sauce. Try these burgers, they are good! I increased all the seasonings in the recipe, and added in some sauteed mushrooms. Another wintery combination to sink your teeth into.

Sometimes when someone encourages you strongly to make something, you just really have to make it. Such was the case with Candi when she made Susan's "Impossible Pumpkin Pie" from Fatfreevegan.com.

I love the idea of crustless pie, and this one seemed so exquisite yet simple. Crustless, dairy-free, gluten-free, egg-free? How could you go wrong?

So of course I had to bake it. Instead of the 1/2 cup of rice flour called for in the recipe, I tried some... fufu!! My advice? DON'T USE FUFU in this recipe!! (Some of you might remember my previous adventures in fufu land!) But the pie actually came out superbly, and by the second day was even better because it was less... fufu-esque, shall we say.

Here it was cooling:

You'll notice I used an 11 inch tart pan because I don't have any pie dishes, and the recipe called for a 9 inch deep-dish pie pan. But it came out beautifully anyway. Look how the sides pulled away to make a "crust"!

Gorgeous with a cup of eggnog (spiked with rum, because we're naughty even when we're nice)

Ahh, eggnog. I'm one of those freakish types that actually likes all the traditionally hated foods (eggnog, fruitcake, brussels sproutes, bring 'em on!) And you know the holidays are starting when Vitasoy rolls out the Holly Nog!! (Hint a little bit of this stuff also gives a kick to breakfast ice cream...)

Enjoy!

food round-up

Happy (belated)...

I've been a bad, bad girl. It has been a busy and stressful few days, but that is no excuse to miss major milestones, right? So this post is a bit of catch-up.

• Happy (belated) birthday to one of my best friends, Sharon, who is living in Paris and studying at the Sorbonne. It has been rough not being close enough to visit for a couple of years, but she is living her dream of studying and living in Paris.

Here is the gift I sent her (belatedly) a framed picture of us (along with another dear friend, Dorota) on the beach in Florida back in 2002. When I lived in Florida, Sharon and Dorota came to visit me. This is a good picture because both Sharon and I could probably use a little bit of Florida sunshine right now. (L to R: Bazu, Dorota, Sharon)

• Happy (belated) Halloween! Is it weird that we have become attached to our little Pumpkin? We've named him Timmy, and now that he has a face, Daiku and I can't stand the thought of eating him!

• Happy (belated) World Vegan Day! This is especially for all my friends in the blogosphere who make veganism a fun adventure filled with the best food!

• Good luck to our friend the Midwest Vegan. She is going through a big move, and we all know the stress that that can cause, so send her good vibes, everyone. She was kind enough to send me Alex Jamieson's book "The Great American Detox." Daiku and I are going to take the detox plunge sometime in the next month or two, and I'll let you all know how it goes. Thank you, Midwest Vegan!

• And finally, happy (sort of) recovery from diabetes to Bijou, our beloved almost 11 year-old kitty. She was diagnosed with diabetes 6 months ago, and after many visits to the vet and tests, much anguish (on the part of the humans and the cat), a new diet and twice-daily insulin injections, Bijou is showing signs that her condition is under control. She has gained back a pound or so, and can walk correctly again. (The diabetes caused a condition called "neuropathy" in her legs, which caused her to not be able to walk very well for a few months. This was actually the symptom that made us realize she was ill.)

If your cat:

loses a lot of weight
walks funny
starts peeing more than usual

She might have feline diabetes, get her to a vet, quick! The quicker it's diagnosed, the less chance for complications.

Here are Bijou (sleeping in the background) and Marble (licking herself in the foreground).

Have a great week, everyone!

Happy (belated)...

VegFest Info. 3 of 3 and food round-up

Ok, Blogger and I have gotten over our issues and are friends again... for now.

So now I can bring you the last installment of my VegFest show-and-tell and also a few images of food from last week.

I know that the animal rights information in my first 2 VegFest posts were incredibly depressing, so I thought I'd conclude on a lighter note: cool foods.

Here are four of the most interesting things I tasted in Boston. (For more VegFest food snippets, visit Nikki's blog)

Soy Feta from the company Sunergia Soyfoods. I've never had soy feta, but the dairy version used to be one of my favorite things. There were 3 flavors to try, and both Daiku and I loved the mediterranean herb. This stuff had the tang, the texture, and the crumble of the real thing. If your market or co-op does not carry it, ask them to right now! You won't regret it. This and Cheezly were vegan cheese revelations at VegFest.

Ok, I might have thought the soy feta was pretty amazing, but May Wah blew me away! They make all sorts of faux meats, and their stuff was delicious. Hot dogs, steak, chicken, if there's any meat you miss, here's the chance to have a cruelty-free version of it. The flavors, and more importantly, the texture were right on. The best part? You can order any of their products on the web.

I know Wildwood for their soy yogurts, but I'd never tried their veggie burgers before, and we got a free 2-pack of their Tofu-vegie Burgers at VegFest. Usually I like my veggie burgers more veggie-packed, but this tofu was a tasty variation.

Here they are coming out of our toaster oven.

Here is the delicious Post Punk Kitchen recipe for Cranberry Chili Dipping Sauce that I promised you. Isa and Terry served this after their cooking demo to go along with their autumn rolls, and it was so so good. Make this sauce right now!

1 cup whole fresh cranberries
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
2 large serano-type red chilies, seeded and finely minced
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
Curls of lime zest for garnish, optional

In a heavy medium saucepan combine cranberries, water and sugar. Cover and bring to a boil. When cranberries start to pop, reduce heat to medium and simmer partially covered for about 5 minutes. Add minced chilies and lime juice, bring to a boil again and then reduce heat to medium-low. Stir sauce occasionally, using the back of a wooden spoon to mash some of the cranberries on the sides of the pot. Simmer sauce, uncovered, for an additional 10-12 minutes till sauce has reduced a little and looks syrupy. Sauce will thicken up more as it cools. Makes approximately 1 1/2 cups sauce.

* * *

Some food from the past week:

"Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink salad"

I'm often on my own for lunch, and I use the opportunity to throw every imaginable thing into a bowl for a huge salad. In this case, I had kidney beans, canned green beans, shredded cabbage, celery, carrots, onions, toasted walnuts and pine nuts, dried cranberries, and balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Here's a stirfry we made one night:

Broccoli, peppers, onion, carrots, and zucchini sauteed with black bean paste, tamari, chili oil, sesame oil and some other spices, served with brown rice. I ate this with my favorite chopsticks. (Notice the crunchy things in the background- daikon and cucumber- that I have to have with every single meal.)

We were forward-thinking enough to plant some of our vegetables in containers that we were able to move inside once the weather got cold. Our pepper plants have kept producing a bit and this yellow pepper inspired us to have a taco night. (But then again, do you really need a reason for taco night?)

We cooked up a mess of black beans with canned chipotle peppers, cumin, and other spices and had them with these fixins':

Tofutti sour cream, salsa, chopped cilantro, the yellow pepper, and a tomato that we had picked green and had ripened on the windowsill.

Here is the table. There are some organic blue corn chips to add crunch. We toasted the corn tortillas using the flames of the gas range (a trick I learned as a kid from a friend of the family who is from Mexico and a great cook), which gave them a charred flavor that complemented the smoky chipotle peppers really well.

See?

Daiku made up this stuffed acorn squash one night:

Baked, then stuffed with a mixture of whole wheat couscous, raisins, slivered almonds, pine nuts, and cinnamon. Then baked some more. Yum!

Finally, brownies!

Tania blogged about these brownies from, yes, the Post Punk Kitchen. They looked really good, and I just happened to have all the ingredients, so I made a half batch and they were great! I love my brownies fudge-y, not cake-y, and these delivered. The method was pretty unique (blending silken tofu, water, and flour first and heating them up, almost like a pudding base), but simple. Totally worth it.

In the background you can see my beloved box of Droste cocoa, a high-quality Dutch cocoa powder. Recently, they were bought out, their factory in the Netherlands closed down, and their iconic box design changed. I'm hanging on to this classic box even though it's several years old, because it's going to be a nostalgic collector's item, for sure!

I might not be posting too frequently this week (deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!) but I'll be looking at all of your blogs. Have a great week, everyone!

VegFest Info. 3 of 3 and food round-up

cupcakes!

Grrrr! In this week's food round-up, I *wanted* to bring you some cupcake pictures, some of the food that we made this week, and some information about foods I encountered for the first time at VegFest last week, thus concluding the 3-part series.

HOWEVER, blogger is not letting me upload images. I'm not going to rant about the myriad problems with blogger beta, but ... I will bring you the full food round-up with all the photos later this weekend. For now, all I have for you is...

CUPCAKES!

These are the first cupcakes I made from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cakes.

There is a very specific reason I wanted to make these first. Boston Cream Pie was Daiku's favorite pre-vegan dessert. I wanted to make these for him to thank him for being such a good sport about veganism. I figured, how cool that I can make a vegan version of his favorite dairy dessert and surprise him with it!

So here they are:

Coming out of the oven



Cooling



Being filled with pastry crème



And finally, topped with chocolate ganache.



The verdict? Daiku gave these 4.5 out of 5 stars- he ate 5 in just one day! I need to figure out how to use a pastry bag better and fill them with more pastry crème, but otherwise, they were a great addition to our dessert repertoire. We both noticed how moist and tasty these cupcakes were, even without the filling and the ganache.

Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone!

cupcakes!