Thursday 3/26: Many Colors of the Lasagna Rainbow

Whenever he works back-to-back 24 hour shifts, my dad comes to stay the night at my apartment. It's less of a drive, so that way he gets more sleep.

I like to cook when he's in town because it makes me seem more like a well-adjusted grown-up living on my own. There may be nights when dinner is a box of cereal and swigs of soymilk from the carton, but my dad doesn't have to know that.

I'm not sure why, but I had been craving lasagna. I found a really great tofu ricotta recipe a while back and am always looking for an excuse to make it. Plus, now armed with my trusty mandolin, I could add lots of layers of thinly sliced veggies.

Here's the ricotta recipe (a spin off the basic Tofu Ricotta recipe from the Veganomicon). I leave lasagna construction decisions up to you. I used San Giorgio no-boil lasagna noodles and Prego jar sauce (vegan!) for efficiency's sake, I tossed in a layer of mandolined yellow squash, a layer of orange peppers, a layer of the last of the pesto from last Friday and plenty of Galaxy Foods "faux-zerella" cheese.

Tofu Ricotta
(you may want to double this recipe [as I did] for a 9x13 pan of lasagna. The single recipe is enough for a loaf pan)

1 package of Mori-Nu tofu, extra firm
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
1 tablespoon of cheater garlic
2 or 3 turns of the pepper mill
a dozen or so fresh basil leaves, chopped well (about 1/2 cup or so)
a bunch of fresh parsley, chopped fine (about 1/2 cup or so)
2 teaspoons of olive oil
1/4 cup of nutritional yeast (if you don't have n.y., you can sub bread crumbs or parmesean shake cheese or a combination of all three)

Mush up the tofu with a fork until it's crumbly.
Add lemon juice, garlic, pepper, basil, and parsley. Mush using your hands now so the mixture gets very sticky. It can take up to 5 minutes.
Add the olive oil and mush with a fork because now it will be gooey.
Add the yeast (or breadcrumbs/cheese) and stir it up so everything is evenly distributed.
You can use this right away but it's much easier to handle if you refrigerate at least an hour before putting the lasagna together.

My dad says he wouldn't have known it was vegan if I hadn't told him. Success!

Tuesday 3/24: It Never Tastes As Good Coming Back Up

No cooking Monday night. I was taken out for birthday sushi at Restaurant Hama in Columbus. I could very probably eat seaweed salad every night and never get tired of it.

And I wasn’t really planning to cook Tuesday night either. It was my birthday so eating wasn’t really high on my list of things to do. But I had been invited over to a friend’s for a pre-bar chin-wag and it is the height of rudeness to arrive at someone’s house empty-handed.

My phone had been ringing and jingling all day with texts and calls wishing me well. Funny how the older I get the more technological my birthday greetings get. The first one of the day is invariably my mom. Since she gets up at 4am to workout, I can count on a 6am wakeup/birthday call. The last one is usually from my BFF HoneyBunny who lives in Alaska. The 4 hour time difference means that when he’s on his lunch break, I’m just getting off of work.

I wasn’t about to cut my HB-talk time short, so I had to figure out something I could cook quickly with a phone stuck between my ear and shoulder.

Couscous to the rescue!!!

Like noodles, couscous is fun to eat in part because it’s fun to say. Alliterative and assonant foods are almost always delicious. Green beens (more delicious if you change the spelling), cupcakes, pesto pasta, white wine, and so on. The exception being creamed corn. Blech.

But back to the cous. Since it only takes 5 minutes to cook once the water is boiled, couscous seemed the logical choice. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I opened, drained, and rinsed a can of garbanzo beans. I then put them in a bowl to marinate with the leftover cukedillgurt sauce from Saturday night. While the couscous was cooking, I mandolin-ed (I am so addicted to that thing now) a bit more than half an onion, a small zucchini, and a small green pepper. All the chopped veg plus a large handful of snap peas went into my giant Longaberger bowl I got for Christmas. Hot, fork-fluffed couscous went on top of that, and the garbanzo bean mixture on top of that. I gave it all a good stir and stuck it in the fridge while I showered.

For taking all of ten minutes to put together this was pretty good. My friend made lentils cooked with cumin seeds and a huge green salad with home grown sprouts, all of which we paired with “Royal Bitch” Chardonnay. A fine birthday dinner indeed. What wasn't so fine, perhaps, was that I chose to pair all of that with double fists of gin and tonic, a round of Lemondrop shots, a horrible shot with Lightning 101 in it, at least two shots I can't remember, two Hater-Ade shots, and two Bud Selects.

It wasn't the worst food I've ever thrown up (there's a tie for that fun distinction between zucchini brownies w/Jack Daniels and Popcorn w/2 bottles of riesling) but it was certainly better the first time around.

Happy 27 to me.

Sunday 3/22: Sunday Morning Raw

When I was still in school, Sundays used to be “Soup & Salad Dressing Day.” It was the day that I would whip together some food for the upcoming busy school week. It was usually soup, because soup it easy to re-heat for a fast and lazy dinner when there are still 30 pages of Derrida to read and you haven’t understood the first 10. And salad dressing because having 6 different kinds of salad dressing on hand keeps raw veggie-centric lunches interesting. And I don’t know the last time you priced vegan/organic salad dressings, but a girl could go broke eating Green Goddess.

This morning started out with a 9 mile run. I was a bit nervous as this was the longest I had run since hurting my ankle. But it went well. Half-marathon here I come!

Anyway, the best reward for a run well ran, is a creamy salad dressing. And this is one of the best I’ve found that doesn’t have a vegan mayo or soygurt base. It's a recipe from The Raw Food Detox Diet cookbook, but I altered some of the seasoning levels and juice types.

Tenth Mile Raw-nch

½ cup lemon juice
1 scant teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon dried chives
½ tablespoon dried rosemary
½ tablespoon dried oregano
½ tablespoon dried sage
1 cup whole, raw macadamia nuts
1/3 cup olive oil

Blend the juice, oil and half the nuts until semi-smooth. Put in the spices and the rest of nuts in and blend, blend, blend. You may need to scrape the sides a few times. Depending on your taste, feel free to add a little water to make this thinner or a few grinds of some black pepper for a little kick. I’ve also made this with half orange-half lemon juice which makes the Raw-nch a bit sweeter. You can also use half lemon juice-half water which makes for a more savory dressing.

Does this taste anything like ranch? Well, that depends on how long it has been since you’ve had ranch dressing. I’m approaching the 15 year mark (I gave up Ranch for Lent one time before I was vegan and never went back) so to me this is “just like the real thing! oh my gosh! you have to taste this!” More often than not this reaction is met with eye rolls. They agree that my concoctions are delicious but taste nothing like the "real" thing.

The last time I made this for my roommate, though, he actually said he preferred my dressing to dairy-based ranch. This is in part because he knows how ranch dressing is made. My roommate works at a local sandwich shop (which for discretion’s sake will remain nameless) that also sells salads. They make their ranch by mixing a gallon of buttermilk with a gallon of full-fat mayonnaise and a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning. This turns my stomach a little bit just thinking about it.

The soup was just a couple of tablespoons of store-bought red miso dissolved in some broth and tamari and then tossed into some veggies (celery, carrots, napa cabbage, the leftover bok choy and green onions from last night, a few mushrooms, some snow peas) I had sautéed briefly in sesame oil and then boiled in broth. Having my mandolin made this soup-er easy.

Yes. I totally went there.

It was pretty funny when I said it out loud to myself in my kitchen.

9 miles might be good for my heart and legs, but it plays heck with my sense of humor.

Saturday 3/21: I Hear the Sound of Mandolins....

So tonight I wasn’t going to be completely alone in the kitchen. Kev was planning to come over and watch movies. Despite the fact that he in no way requires impressing (or even for me to put more than pj’s on), a guest is a guest so the menu had to be something fun.

Random ethnic food is fun.

A quick survey of my fridge revealed a few cucumbers on their last legs. Also hiding in the back behind the leftover frosting and jars of homemade salad dressing was a carton of soygurt. I did the math and in this case 2 + 2 = falafel with cuke-dill-gurt sauce.

I scooped the yogurt into a wire mesh colander lined with a half dozen coffee filters. If you can find vegan Greek-style yogurt (and please let me know if you do!) you can skip this step.

I then began to chop up the cucumber, but stopped mid-slice with an epicurean epiphany. Somewhere, somewhere in my kitchen, was a hand-held mandolin. Considering I only have about 4 drawers in my entire kitchen, I’m not sure how I could forget I had this little time-saver. But until that moment, I had. After digging it out from the back of the measuring spoon drawer, it made short, neat, evenly sliced work of those two cucumbers. I placed the cukes in a paper towel-lined colander and placed a bowl weighted with a large jar of spaghetti sauce on top of the cukes to press out more of the water.

I left my yogurt and cucumbers draining their respective juices and went on a 15-mile bike ride. I haven’t found a much better bike riding environment than Athens in early spring. I was gone probably an hour.

Back in the kitchen, I put together my Gone Biking Cukedillgurt Sauce:

In the blender, coarsely pulse-chop about half the cukes and set them aside in a separate bowl.

Then blend very well the rest of the cucumbers with:

1 heaping teaspoon of dried dill
1 tablespoon of shortcut garlic
the drained yogurt

Add this to the first bowl of coarsely chopped cukes and stir well. Refrigerate for an hour if you can so the flavors can meld but if you’re in a pinch, you can eat it right away.

I prepared the falafels (using the Fantastic Foods from-a-box kind. Cheap, easy, and broil-able. More about that in a bit) and left the mix to sit while I boiled noodles and chopped veggies for Not-Peanut Soba Salad:

6 green onions, green parts only, chopped (but save those white bottoms for soup!!)
4 bunches of baby bok choy, leafy parts only, chopped thin (but save the tough white bottoms for soup!!)
1 ½ handfuls of cheater (read: store bought) matchstick carrots
1 red bell pepper, cut in fifths, and mandolined

Prepare the above veg and put into a large, large bowl while the water is boiling and the soba noodles are a-cooking. I love noodles. Even the word is awesome. Noodle. Noo-oo-oo-dle. Noodley, noodley, noodley. I love words that look like they taste.

I used Eden Foods soba noodles. They were very hearty. Prepare according to the package but do not rinse with cold water. Just drain and toss the hot noodles onto the chopped veggies. This heat will wilt the bok choy and carrots a bit and bring together the flavors. Top this mixture with a cup (or more to taste) of Not-Peanut Sauce.


1 cup almond butter
2 tablespoons of wet (or 1 tbs of dry) ginger
½ cup water
4 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons tamari
4 teaspoons sesame oil (you can replace up to two of these teaspoons with spicy chili sesame oil, depending on how much kick you like. I put in about ¼ tsp because I’m a wuss. I’d put in a whole tsp next time)
1 tablespoon shortcut garlic

Put everything in the blender and whip on high until smooth. I had this made ahead of time so it was cold when I put it on my noodles. Mixing it in at room/blender temperature would make it less salad-like and more main-dishy.

While the soba salad was sitting, I put together the falafels. I like using the Fantastic Food mix because they hold together very well without having to deep fry. My kitchen is just too small, my stove top burners not large enough to fry up something like falafels properly. Broiling falafels made from scratch (at least for me) leaves them crumbly and dry. So I use a mix. Note that falafels also taste better when you pluralize them.

Kev arrived in between the salad mixing the the falafels broiling, bearing two delicious bottles of wine. The first, an Argentinian Chardonnay "Clara Benegas" we drank while cooking. I like to cook with whites and eat with reds. The Benegas was really quite good for a Chard, many of which I find too one-dimensional. The red for dinner was the 2007 Layer Cake Malbec. This is one of my go-to reds. Argentinian malbecs were all the rage last year and the 2007's are pretty solid. It paired well with the slightly spicy falafels and cool soygurt sauce.

Random ethnic-type foods with 18 dollar bottles of wine taste best when accompanied by random David Bowie movies. Tonight was no exception. I’m sure my noodles and falafels would be delicious in any context, but there’s something about D.B. in a cod piece dancing around with Muppets that works up a gal’s appetite. I’m not sure if he had the same effect on Kev.

Friday 3/20: Rotini Verde

I came home from my weekly massage to a dark, empty apartment.

*sigh*

In my experience, few things combat dark emptiness like carbohydrates. And there ain't no better kind of carbohydrate than cheap, white pasta. Just seeing the Kroger ad putting the Creamette on sale "10 for 10" makes me giddy.

Also helpful is cranking up some Kelly Clarkson - the carbohydrate version of a pop singer if ever there was one.

So, Rotini Verde is basically pesto pasta with every green veggie in my fridge on the verge of spoiling. Note how my use of the Spanish/Italian for green really classes the recipe up. Nobody wants to eat, "Rotini with Mostly Spoiled Veggies."

To begin, I chopped up, then briefly sauteed (in a garlic-infused olive oil I got for Christmas) a bunch of asparagus (all but the toughest end parts), a green pepper, a zuchinni, a yellow squash, a handfull of snow peas, and 3 big shallots. A pet peeve of mine is overly oily, soggy sauteed veggies. So because they take the longest I cook the onion/shallot and peppers first for a few minutes - and only until the onions just start to turn translucent. The other veggies I toss in and only cook until the peas and asparagus are bright green. Remove from heat and cover while the pasta is cooking to keep warm and to steam just a bit more.

Boil a box of rotini (or any kind of non-long pasta) according to the box. I'm a sucker for al dente. The less done everything in this dish is, the verde-er it tastes. Drain pasta and return to the pot (or put in a big pasta bowl if company's coming. Though, any kind of company that can't serve themselves from a pot, doesn't usually get a second invite to my place). Mix in the veggies and then three or four rounded tablespoons of my Pointer-Thumb-Pinky Pesto (so named because this pesto is so easy, you could make it lacking all but the aforementioned digits):

2 ish cups of fresh basil
3 heaping tablespoons of pine nuts (My roomie "borrows" 'em from work for me! If money's too tight for pignoli, you can use walnuts or slivered almonds but I don't guarantee the results )
2 tablespoons faux parmesan (I use the Galaxy Foods kind)
2 heaping tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 heaping teaspoons of shortcut garlic
1/2 cup olive oil

Blend up all the basil and slowly add the other ingredients by thirds. Once everything is in the blender, hit the switch and blend continuously on high for 45 seconds or so.

If you use it immediately, this is a very smooth and creamy pesto - better for sauce than for dipping. An overnight stay in the fridge thickens things up a bit, giving it a more tapenade-like quality. Also - depending on how salty you like your pesto, you can adjust the parm-to-yeast ratio. The more parm, the saltier it will be.

This was creamy, filling, and comforting. My life might suck without my roommate around, but good pesto certainly helps.

Only The Lonely

Much to my consternation, my roommate was gone for the entirety of Spring Break. He's always gone over Spring Break. If it's not middle-of-nowhere South Carolina, then it's Austria by way of Ireland.

His absence meant that, in addition to being terribly bored and terribly lonely, I had no one to cook for. Did I let this stop me? Of course not! When it comes to alleviating loneliness and boredom it's either working out or cooking and I can only run so many times a day. When he would call to check in, I'd regale him with tales of what he could be eating if only he was home. He didn't feel too bad though. He knows that I can't cook for only two people, let alone just for myself. He was sure there'd be plenty of leftovers.

The next few posts will be detailing my solitude-combatting kitchen adventures from the past week.

Stay tuned!

It's...It's...It's Alive!!

Now I know how those crazy, tapir-smackin' apes from "2001: A Space Odyssey" feel, for I too, have invented something. No one had to die in the process, but I make no promises that my kitchen won't eventually turn out a bone-bludgeoned corpse or two.

Like the rotten bananas before them, I had a science-project-like carton of strawberries growing soft, fluffy mold in my fridge. These babies were firmly in the "mash into a baked good" category of fresh produce.

So I pulled out my blender after this morning's 5 mile run (staying busy in the kitchen helps keep my post-run legs from cramping up) and pureed those strawberries, fuzzy spots and all. With all the vegan baking I've been doing lately, I am now looking for a way to avoid fake butter and egg substitute powders. Not only is the processed stuff not so great for general health, but it's a pain in the ass trying to get butter to soften in my sub-zero apartment. Fruit purees seem to be the way to go.

I found a recipe, which originally called for 1/2 cup of butter. So I blended up 1/2 cup worth of the dozen or so strawberries I had to the consistency of semi-chunky applesauce. The remaining 1/2-ish cup I blended a bit thinner (like regular applesauce) to be used later in the frosting.

I omitted the egg and instead added a bit more milk. Next time I might throw in some flax meal because this cake turned out very dense.

I also put a teaspoon of corn starch in the bottom of each cup of flour to make it a little lighter. I've seen recipes that call for as much as a tablespoon. Or you could just use cake flour. And mix it with your solid gold whisk, moneybags.

So here's the recipe for HOOKER-WITH-A-HEART-OF-GOLD CAKE (so named because the fruit was very bad, but very sweet)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup strawberry puree

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups soymilk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp of salt

2 1/2 tsp of baking powder

3 cups minus 3 tsp of all-purpose flour

3 tsp of corn starch

Instructions:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 and grease a 9x13 inch pan (or equivalent).

Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

Mix the milk and vanilla. Set aside.

With a hand mixer, cream together the strawberry puree and sugar.

Alternate adding the flour mixture and milk mixture to the strawberries and sugar, mixing well, and scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally with a spatula. After everything is mixed together, beat continuously for about a minute.

Put the mixture into the pan and give it a few bangs on the counter to get out the air bubbles (mine always still have air bubbles, no matter how hard I bang).

Bake for about 30 minutes.

Let cool for a few minutes in the pan and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely before frosting with (in keeping with the theme):

WHORES ROUGE, LADIES PINCH STRAWBERRY FROSTING

Ingredients:

1/2 cup veg marg, very soft

up to 4 cups powdered sugar

1/2 - 3/4 cups strawberry puree

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Cream the veg marg and two cups of the powdered sugar until smooth-ish.

Add half the puree and the vanilla and mix some more.

Alternate between adding half cups of powdered sugar and strawberry puree, tasting and scraping the sides of a bowl occasionally until it reaches the desired sweetness.

When the cake is completely cool, frost the heck out of it.

There was extra frosting since this wasn't a layer cake so next time I'll probably tweak the ratios to make a little less. Since I'm planning to make a small pan of dark chocolate brownies in the near future, I'll just frost those. Note, however, that if you do save the extra in the fridge, you will need to warm it back to room temperature (or defrost a bit in the microwave) to make it spreadable again.

This cake is dense and delicious; almost like a pound cake. I'd be interested to see what it tastes like without the delectable, almost tooth-rottingly sweet frosting. But I'll be honest with you kids, this frosting is amazing. It tastes like...something...something sweet from childhood that I can't quite place. Like Trix, maybe? Like Hostess Fruit Pies? Cheap strawberry soft serve?

I don't know but it's I'm-willing-to-pay-by-the-hour-for-another-slice good.

Bananas!

Well. Now that I have all that soap-boxing out of my system, let's get back to the fun stuff: recording in detail my kitchen antics and other funny, food-related tangents.

My sister stopped by the other day. She is like a raccoon. She only occasionally calls ahead, she never knocks, and she almost always leaves eating something.

(Obviously, I have limited experience with raccoons).

Unsurprisingly, she was hungry on this particular visit and grabbed a banana. I am unsure why as I have never seen my sister eat an entire banana in her life. She can be a very picky eater. As a kid eating at McDonalds, she would only order "chickenmcnuggetshoneyfriesandketchup." It was like her mantra. After dinner, she would proceed to lick the honey tubs clean and suck all the ketchup out of the little foil packets. There was a summer when all she would eat for days at a time was blocks of cheddar, virgin strawberry daiquiris, and vinegar & oil salads. And she always had a thing about mushy foods. Hence the inability to eat an entire banana.

So she starts to eat the banana from my kitchen, gets about two bites in and starts to make loud, lip-and-tongue-smacky noises. The following conversation ensues:

"This is so gross. Why am I eating this?" She opens her banana-ful mouth as if I need a visual aid to know what 'this' is.

"Cuz you wandered into my kitchen and it was the only thing you didn't have to pry the lid off a trashcan with your little raccoon hands to get?" I suggest.

"Suck it, bitch." She swallows dramatically, stopping just shy of massaging her trachea to get it down. "Why do you even have rotten bananas?"

"You suck it! I get them--" But I am cut off.

"Oh that's right, I forgot! You're a freak who eats spoiled food!" Jazz hands puncutuate the word 'freak.'

"What? Shut up!" I say with semi-mock indignance. "I buy them mostly to bake with; they have to be soft and--"

"I can see you in Kroger," she interupts again, "Holding a bunch of delicious yellow bananas like a dirty diaper and walking over to the produce guy..."Oh boy...you there! Grocery boy! (she has this thing where I become, like, Lady Stuckupington when she's making fun of me) Do you have any rotten fruit in the back I might have? These are simply too too fresh!"

Despite her mocking, my sister was right - I do have a thing for spoiled food. It's not so much that I like the taste but when you spend as much as I do on fresh fruits and vegetables, you learn to overlook a few brown spots. Most food falls into three categories for me: can-be-eaten-fresh, must-be-cooked-to-eat, and mash-it-up-into-a-muffin. Using this scale, I rarely have to throw food away. However, I do have a special place in my heart for moldy bread - something I inherited from my grandfather. Slightly stale, moldy bread makes the best PB&J sandwiches. I also like cookies slightly burnt and gummis, Twizzlers, and candy corn stale and hard.

My sister was also right about the bananas being pretty gross. I had 6 bananas in desperate need of baking. As my birthday is coming up, I was feeling in a cake-y sort of mood. I found this recipe at Allrecipes.com and veganized the heck out of it.

COCONUT-BANANA CAKE WITH PECAN COCONUT FROSTING

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 stick vegan margarine, very soft
2 tbs of flax meal
1 1/2 tsp of Ener-G egg
7 tbs warm water
3 ripe bananas, very mashed
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup of soymilk
1/4 tsp of apple cider vinegar (I use Bragg's)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup shredded coconut (I used a drier, unsweetened, organic kind but I'm sure the soft, sweetened, shreddy kind would be just as good.)


Instructions:
Pre-heat the oven to 350 and grease up two 9 inch round cake pans.
Put the soymilk and the vinegar in a small bowl and set aside to curdle. This is essentially buttermilk.
In another small bowl, mix the flax meal, egg replacer, and warm water until the egg replacer is completely dissolved. Set aside. This is the equivalent of 3 eggs. The original recipe called for 2 eggs but I mis-read it. It did not seem to adversely affect the cakes. If you're using real eggs, I'd only use two.
In a big bowl, cream together the veg marg and sugar. I used the whisk attachment for my hand mixer for all the mixing in this recipe. I felt less like a pioneer, but my right forearm didn't go numb from all the beating.
Add the "egg" in small bits so it all mixes uniformly.
Add the bananas and moosh up a little with a fork before beating it smooth with the mixer.
In another bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda.
Alternate adding the "buttermilk" and flour mixture into the banana-sugar-butter bowl. Mix slowly so the flour doesn't fly up out of the bowl into your face.
After all the flour is incorporated, beat in the vanilla.
With a spatula, fold in the coconut until evenly distributed.
Split the batter between the two pans and cook for 40-50 minutes. My crazy oven only needed about 39 minutes and the cakes still got a little over-done on the bottom.

While the cakes are cooling completely (I put mine on a wire rack after about 5 minutes in the pans), whip up the PECAN-COCONUT FROSTING:

Ingredients:
1 stick of vegan margarine, very soft
4 cups of powdered sugar
1 ripe banana, mashed
1 cup of chopped pecans
1 cup of shredded coconut
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:
Cream together the veg marg and two cups of the powdered sugar.
Add the banana and mix well.
Taste the frosting and decide how much more powdered sugar you need. Using all four cups makes for a very frosting-y frosting.
While beating (I used my hand mixer for this too) slowly add the remaining two cups of sugar (or as much sugar as you want).
Add the vanilla and beat at a high speed until everything is smooth and looks like frosting.
With a spatula, fold in the pecans and coconut until evenly distributed.
When cakes are completely cool, frost the top of one with more than half of the frosting. Personally, I like it when layer cakes have more frosting in the middle than on top. Use the remaining frosting for the top of cake.

...and it was very, very good. It's soft and fluffy. The coconut and pecans give the whole thing a nice crunch. The over-browned bottoms balance out the super sweet frosting well too.

My sister hasn't tried this cake yet, but when she does, I have a feeling she'll be judging me out of the other side of her face. The side not full of delicious rotten banana cake.

The Egotistical Vegan

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a vegan - both in a global sense and to me personally. I've also been mulling over what and how I eat and drink in general; the wherefores of what I put in my mouth.

It started last week when I got the latest issues of "VegNews" and "Vegetarian Times" in the mail. These magazines are great recipe resources and often have interesting articles. "VN" in particular has a wonderful "I Can't Believe It's Vegan!" sidebar every month. Did you know Oreos, Papa John's Pizza (w/o the cheese) and Sour Patch Kids are all vegan? They are. "VegTimes" has a cool, "1 Food, 5 Ways" section which focuses on one food (grapefruit in January) and gives recipes from salad to dessert.


But for every delicious recipe or product review of a new veg ice cream or jar sauce, there's a whole lotta "save the whatsits!" and "go green...or else!" articles; reader-letters asking questions like, "am I truly a vegan if I don't feed my dog that way?" or "how can I follow an Ayurvedic diet to better nourish my dosha?"; columnists dishing out advice on how to "convert" a non-veg date or "wage the war" against pushy non-veg in-laws over the holidays. Convert? War? Since when did eating vegan become a religion? Or a battlefield?

**Flashback** I used to hate going out to eat. When I first started eating vegetarian it wasn't so bad. There was always some sort of pasta alfredo or fried cheese or something to eat. But when I went full vegan, it was close to impossible to find anything filling. And, silly me, I balk at paying $5.95 for a "house salad" which took no more effort than cutting open an industrial-sized bag of iceberg salad mix from GFS. I didn't like going out to eat; I felt insulted when there wasn't something for me to eat on the menu; I sulked through much of the meal; if I did order something and they brought it out wrong...well, that was tantamount to throwing me my food from the kitchen. It was not fun to go out to eat with me. At some point though, I realized that my self-defeatist, surly attitude wasn't really helping the problem. I started eating before I went out to dinner with friends and instead of complaining I just enjoyed the company. Nowadays, I usually pack my own veggies, buy a side salad (if the price is right), and crack a bottle of wine. Come to think of it, going out to eat has gotten far more tolerable now that I can drink. Correlation? Or causation? I guess we'll never know. Moral of the flashback, though, is that I made the decision to be a raw vegan for me and only me. Not to get Applebee's to change their corporate policy and certainly not to make my friends and family feel bad when the majority of diners want burgers and milkshakes. **End Flashback**


Where was I? Oh yes, veganism as religion or battle. I understand the difficulties of getting your family to understand/accept such a drastic lifestyle change. It's hard not to roll your eyes when your hostess says she prepared something just for you and then unveils a pot of steamed vegetables like it's Peking duck; hard to smile when a room full of people thinks it's hilarious to try and mash a hamburger into your mouth; hard to answer the question "where do you get your protein?" (or the flat-out statement: "there's no way you will get all the nutrients you need.") with an understanding answer/explanation. The easier thing to do is not go to the parties, bring your own food and eat it away from everyone else, ignore the questions or respond with something biting and sarcastic so they'll think twice about questioning you again, oh yes they will.


People are drawn together by what they eat (when was the last time you were at a party that didn't have food? Last time you didn't meet up with an old friend for some kind of meal/beverage? Every holiday has a traditional meal; we celebrate with cakes; we use food as a reward etc.), so any decision we make about what we eat has the potential to be alienating. This is why places like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers exist, right? Dieting is lonely. It helps to have someone in a similar situation to talk to. This is important because dieting can also be annoying. No one wants to hear all about how you're losing weight by cutting carbs and eating an ounce of dark chocolate before bed and do you know how many calories are in that bread you just ate?


Now add to all of this a pompous sense of moral superiority and self-righteous back-slapping. Even less than other people want to hear about your new diet regimen, do they want to hear (in gory detail) how the cow in their hamburger died or the horrible conditions their McNuggets came out of. Nobody wants to hear about how great you are because you eat so low on the food chain, or about how you pocket compost, or how your shoes used to be tires. So much of the rhetoric in the veg literature I read is about making the world a better place, being more compassionate, living more fully in a peaceful way etc. I just can't reconcile that with refusing to eat at the same table as someone with a chicken breast on their plate or calling into question someones fitness as a parent because they use white sugar to bake with (both true stories).


**Flashback #2** Last fall, during one of my weekly massages, my masseuse asked if I had read the Thursday issue of The Athens News. I had not; it was finals week and there was grading to be done. He told me that I had to find a copy and read the "First Person" article about the Vegan Thanksgiving held at UMC. He called it a "hilarious excuse for journalism." And indeed it is. Plenty of people wrote in in the following weeks lambasting the writer for her closed-mindedness among other things. I just kept laughing at the headline calling the writer "intrepid." I don't see anything intrepid about writing an article where you only observe the "facts" that already fit your assumptions. I mean, she didn't even try all the food!


The editor defended printing it, saying something about liking to see young journalists out "sowing their oats." I wonder how accepting he would have been had the writer gone to a Hillel meeting and made comments about accounting majors with big noses or to a sorority party and wrote about the whores in designer clothes. Ok, so lumping all vegans in as a bunch of spacey hippies probably isn't as offensive as my examples but they are all born from the same kind of mind set. I drafted an angry letter that I never ended up sending (probably for the best). My sister found the writer on Facebook, though, so I invited her over to my apartment to eat vegan food cooked by a Republican with a PC whose usual cooking soundtrack consists of monster ballads and Dean Martin. She never responded. **End Flashback**

Almost everyone I meet is surprised to find out I'm a vegan. Since it's not usually what I lead with when introducing myself, it's often weeks or even months before co-workers or classmates know that I eat any differently than they do. "You don't look like a vegan," they tell me. "A vegan? Really?" When I was a freshman at Kenyon, I had a fellow vegan say to me (with genuine surprise), "You're a vegan but you're not Buddhist?" I suppose that any large group of people with a common set of beliefs and practices is technically a religion, but I don't want any part of that kind of veganism. When I offer tastes of what I cook to non-veggies, it's because I think that what I've made tastes good and would like that opinion validated. I'm not interested in proselytizing, or converting, or showing you the error of your wicked, meaty ways. Good food should be shared.

I belong to a vegan personals site (don't judge - I'm there for the penpals...mostly) and under the "My Diet" section of the profiles, more and more people are using the phrase "ethical vegan." This is usually explained to mean someone who chooses to go veg out of respect for animals, out of a realization that the western way of eating (I'm pretty sure that means fast food and supermarkets) isn't good for the planet, out of a desire to help local growers, or some combination thereof. That's all well and good, but it just isn't me. I love shopping at the farmer's market, I really do, but I eat a metric ton of raw vegetables in any given week. This is not an exaggeration people. Money is just too tight for heirloom tomatoes and artisinal bread every week. They might be shipped in from Chile but I like the option of having fresh grapes in December.

Thus, I propose a new category of vegan, which, incidentally, is the title of this ridiculously long post. I am an Egotistical Vegan. I don't particularly want any harm to come to animals, but if I owned a chicken I would probably eat eggs. If I was stranded Paraguayan-Rugby-Team-style in the mountains, I'd certainly help myself to a half-rack of ribs. I think it's kind of creepy that humans are the only mammals to drink so much milk after infancy (and cross species to get it!) but hell, if it makes you feel good, drink up! I eat the way I do because it makes me feel good; because I like the way I feel when I eat this way. Me, me, me. I, I, I.


Coming soon to the self-help section of a book store near you.

Chocolate-Covered Freakin' Habit Forming

I rarely spend my Sundays resting. I mean, I sleep in a bit, and sometimes I wear my pyjamas all day, but I usually have a pretty full schedule. Since I'm not teaching this quarter, most of my business has been cooking- or pleasure-reading-related. This Sunday I finished reading a wonderfully fun book by Jasper Fforde, _The Eyre Affair_. It was wry and smart and a pretty good mystery to boot. I've read so many books that reference _Jane Eyre_ I'm starting to think if won't matter if I never actually read it. I am eager to start the next few books in Fforde's "Thursday Next" series.

Also this Sunday I decided I wanted to bake a cake. I had a lot of strawberries (Sam's Club is a dangerous place), a hankering for something chocolate-y, and a new soy whipped cream product to try. In my mind I envisioned a chocolate layer cake with cream and strawberries in the middle and a chocolate glaze/frosting on top. This vision was partly inspired by a recipe and picture from a cookbook called _Vegan_ (a snooty sort of cookbook - it calls canola oil "rapeseed oil" Ooh la la). Since my version would be far less snobbish, it shouldn't be too hard, right?

Well, right for the most part. I used a chocolate cake recipe from the _Vegan Handbook_ since I had tried their vanilla cake before with some success. _Vegan Handbook_ is another semi-dated cookbook/reference that was one of my first veg tools. It alternates recipes (organized by ingredient, as well a country [Ethiopia, Ireland, Spain] and holiday [Halloween, Easter]) with articles about vegetarian nutrition, alternatives to leather clothes etc. Though the advice can be a bit new-agey, and some of the recipes aren't truly vegan (Guiness technically uses isinglass, a fish by-product, to filter their beer), it's cookbook heart is in the right place. My only complaint with the chocolate cake recipe (pretty standard except for the lack of eggs) is the order in which it tells me to mix the ingredients. I should have creamed the butter with the sugar first. It would have made mixing easier since I don't have my stand mixer at the apartment with me, just a hand mixer.

Other than that the cakes baked nicely. No burning! (Thanks mostly to the nice shiny, silver Wilton pans my mom gave me for Valentine's Day) And now the apartment smelled most excellently of chocolate cake. It was time to make the filling and topping.

On a recent trip to Columbus, I stopped at Whole Foods, which, for all it's snobbishness, is really the only place I can consistently find the vegan convenience foods and random ingredients I sometimes need for my cooking. On this particular visit, though I wasn't looking for it, I found Soyatoo non-dairy whipping cream, which, according to the picture on the box, as well as some product reviews I had read, was supposed to whip up just like the real thing. So into the bowl I poured the box and began whipping....and whipping.....

....and whipping.

...and whipping.

The back of the box told me to "whip at the highest speed for 3 minutes or until it reaches my desired consistancy." I must have been standing there for ten minutes. I ate my lunch one-handed. I whipped that stuff until I could feel the mixer vibrating in my shoulder. And while it did thicken up a bit, it never got fluffy or peak-y like the box picture. It looked and tasted a bit like Cool-Whip left out on the counter. Not bad, neccesarily, but not what I was expecting. But was I daunted? Hells to the no.

While my cakes cooled and my not-quite-thick-enough whipped topping chilled in the fridge, I began to make my chocolate sauce/frosting. Here's where things got exciting. They always do when melty chocolate is involved. Here is the first step given in the cookbook (full recipe after the story):

"Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in a bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Do not let the bowl touch the water."

Do not let the bowl touch the water? What? So I am supposed to hold a bowl in my hands over boiling water while it gets hotter and hotter? I feel like this step might have been better served by the addition of the line "pull out your double-boiler." Fat lot of help that would have been, though, considering I don't have a double-boiler.

What I did have was a small sauce pan and a bigger sauce pan. And let me tell you, I am getting proficient - damn proficient - at cooking one-handed. I got my leftover Lindt (70%) chocolate (a Valentine's gift from Kev) and had my agave and soymilk ready on the counter. I had a spatula in my mouth. The chocolate is melting, I am stirring, stirring, stirring. Once the chocolate is melted (and I'll be honest, at that point I was feeling pretty self-righteous about the success of my jerry-rigged double-boiler...like how I imagine MacGuyver might've felt), I pour in the agave and stir stir stir and use the spatula I was storing in my mouth with my two free fingers. So far so good. The recipe then calls to slowly add 3/4 cup of milk. So I do. Add some. Stir stir stir. Add some. Stir stir stir. It smells good, it looks good, I'm not burning it (as I often do when I try and help my mom make candy at Christmas). I take that moment to say, outloud, to my empty kitchen, "Man, I am awesome! I am making chocolate!"

Ah, but pride cometh before the wreck of desserts (as well as the fall). The next little bit of soy milk I added was obviously too much because the chocolate stubbornly refused to re-thicken and be sauce. Instead it became hot chocolate. Really, really expensive hot chocolate. I put the remaining half-cup of milk in the pot, warmed it up and poured it into a mug. (My roomate came home shortly thereafter, drank it down in three big gulps, and told me I could make 5 dollar cups of hot chocolate any time I felt like it.) Before that though, I felt like a lot of a failure. Then I remembered I had some more chocolate, this time a big ole brick of Scharffen Berger 70%. I had to score it with a carving knife and then hit it with my rolling pin to break it. Hitting stuff with a big stick definitely helps with feelings of failure in the kitchen.

This time around I used the following recipe:

4-5 ounces of good dark chocolate, melted in a double-boiler (or, if you're cool, two pots and some dexterous fingers)

when the chocolate is melted add 2 scant tablespoons of agave and stir until well mixed.

Add about a quarter cup of soy milk, one teaspoon or tablespoon at a time, mixing it very well until it reaches your desired consistency. (The original recipe also calls for a tablespoon or so of Kirsch or Cointreau. I would probably use less soymilk if you choose to add liquour.)

And voila! Success! A very nice chocolate sauce. 

After chopping up about a pound of strawberries it was time to put my cake

 together. The cream didn't get any thicker in the fridge but I used it anyway. I spread about half a cup on the first layer and then a layer of strawberries. I put another quarter- or half-cup of cream on top of that and then, with my big-handed roommate's assistance (he eagerly helps when there are chocolately knives and spoons to lick), flipped the other cake on top. I then spread on my chocolate topping, added a few strawberry slices and...

Huzzah! Cake! And might I say, this was one tasty dessert. The mooshy sweetness of the strawberries and cream middle was well balanced by the dark shell of chocolate on top. Next time I would definitely put more cream in the center. Because it was so thin, it soaked in a bit. Still delicious, but we ended up putting more cream on top of the individual slices. Maybe even more strawberries. 

In any event, my "Breaking Even Chocolate Strawberry Cake" (named as such because of my 3:3 success to failure ratio this time around) is already half gone. 

Mock-Soto!!

I hate the nights that I just can't seem to figure out what I want to eat/cook. Or even if I want to eat/cook. These are the nights that, 9 times out of 10, I end up just eating popcorn or nuts (I have some fairly eccentric eating habits [beyond my veganism] which I may or may not go into here at some point).

But last night my indecision was coupled by crankiness and boredom. That fun combo usually results in my eating an entire loaf of bread and half a tub of veg margarine. I was determined not to let that happen, so I poured myself a stiff gin and tonic (Tanqueray Rangpur elevates the drink of African colonizers to new heights) and opened the cupboards.

Despite the amount of foodstuffs I have crammed into them, I still couldn't decide. Finally my roommate says, "RICE! MAKE RICE!" When my culinary conundrums (and the noisy cupboard rummaging and the theatrical sighing) interupt his naps decisions get made much quicker. And to be fair we haven't had rice in a while. And come to think of it, we hadn't had tofu in a while either. Tofu is one of those foods that, while delicious, I try and stay away from eating too often. Too much soy isn't good for a gal and it is usually pretty processed.

"What!?" you might cry, "A veggie who eschews tofu?!" Yup. But it still holds a place in heart since _Tofu Cookery_ was the first veg cookbook I ever got and tofu was the first veg dish I tried to make myself. It turned out terribly - I used the silken vacuum packed kind instead of the refrigerated extra firm kind to try and make a peanut satay barbecue thing. It was slimy and undercooked and I felt like crying because it was the first summer cookout of my vegetarianism and I really wanted to be successful. This was back when people still said things to me like, "Mmmmm....this steak is sooo good. Sure you don't want some?" while waving a forkfull of filet mignon at me.

But back to the now (when no one waves forkfulls of anything at me anymore). I cracked open _Tofu Cookery_ and began looking for a rice recipe. My one complaint about _TC_ is that many of the recipes seem to assume that you will be making your own tofu. This is all well and good for the tree-huggin' hippies out there with large kitchens and time to spare, but those of us getting our tofu from the grocery store have a hard time using 12 and 18 oz packages in recipes that call for 1/4 and 1/2 and 3/4 pounds. Also, many of the recipes have a distinctly 80's feel about them. A sort of "dinner party for the boss and his trophy wife" or "key party with the neighbors" kind of vibe. Maybe it's just the use of the word "cookery" that conjures up women in hostess pyjamas and sockless men in loafers lounging on some penthouse balcony. "Really? Toe-foo, you call it? Bruce? Did you hear that? There's absolutely no meat in this! Really!" But using these recipes as a guide, I've had some pretty good luck so in the kitchen library it remains.

While waiting for the rice and water to boil, I read the back of the bag which told me that short-grain brown rice was "ideal for creamy recipes such as risottos, gratins, and puddings." As luck would have it, there was a _TC_ recipe for "Risotto Verde" for which I happened to have all the ingredients. Below is my version of that recipe.

Have ready:

3 cups of cooked short-grain brown rice

at least a 10 oz pkg of frozen spinach, thawed, liquid reserved (I used a whole pound of frozen spinach)

Blend until very smooth, almost liquid:

1 Mori-Nu pkg (12.3 oz) of sliken firm tofu

2 tbs of oil (I used Enova this time)

3 tbs of the spinach water

1/2 tsp of salt (I am very sensitive to salt so I rarely use as much as is recommended unless I'm baking. The original called for 1 1/2 tsp.)

1/8 tsp of black pepper

Saute in a large frying pan:

At least a medium sized onion, diced

one heaping tablespoon of diced garlic (you know, the kind you buy pre-chopped in a jar at the store. Haute cuisine-heresy or not, it's one hell of a time saver.)

1/8 tsp of nutmeg

Once the onions are done to your liking and the garlic and nutmeg are fragrant, remove from heat and stir in the cooked rice, the thawed spinach, and the blended tofu mixture. Mix the rice in one cup at a time. Depending on how large a frying pan you have you may need to move the mixture to the oiled 3 or 4 quart glass baking dish before mixing in all the rice.

Bake in the dish at 325-50ish degrees for about a half an hour.

Now, if you've made risotto before, you might be shaking your fist at the screen shouting, "Imposter!" or cursing, or other similar things. Perhaps in Italian, if you're that kind of risotto-lover. While waiting for my dish to cook, I looked through my other cookbooks for risotto recipes. The few that I found all prefaced the instructions with warnings of the time involved and the work needed for sucessful risotto. One book even advised not to serve it as a side dish since anything that requires you to devote almost 20 minutes of your life stirring should be center plate. Huh? My dish took, literally, 10 minutes to prepare (not counting rice cooking time). A quick trip to wikipedia shed some light on the subject. Aparently, risotto is not completely synonymous with "creamy rice." And indeed, the preparation method outlined in the wiki article seemed daunting. When I told this to my roommate as we were eating our second (or third) helping of dinner, he replied, "So it's not technically risotto. We can call it...(thinking for a moment)... Mock-soto!" To get the full effect, imagine that you are a hapless Tokyo citizen who has just noticed a large lizard stomping toward your city. "Aieee! Mock-soto!! Run!!"

We both considered this dish tasty and filling enough to be given such a giant monster of a name and so it was christened. This version was "Spinach Mock-soto" but I have plans to terrorize future dinnertimes with an asparagus version, a mushroom and italian herb version, and a carrot and corn version.

Mothra beware.

My Secret Weapon

When it comes to making dinner, my one, indespensible tool is the Google searchbar at the top of my web browser. Don't get me wrong, I love my cookbooks (if I buy too many more, the microwave will have to move to the laundry room); but sometimes those cookbook indexes (or is it indicies?) don't have exactly what I'm looking for. When that happens, I just type in whatever produce I have that's been sitting in the fridge for more than a week, whatever spice or flavor I'm in the mood for and randomly choose from the lists Google provides. This recipe roulette has yet to let me down in cooking or baking. I've found excellent vegan recipes for Pear-Cardamom Muffins and Banana-Chocolate Chip Cookies this way as well as some I've de-milked and un-egged with varying success.

Cooking by keyword ("CbK," acronym patent pending) is also extremely useful for me since I have a bad habit of buying delicious ingredients simply to have them on hand or because they are on sale. This is a by-product from growing up in and around homes with multiple refrigerators and/or freezers and "fruit bins." Did anyone else have a fruit bin? This is not to be confused with a pantry. In my lexicon, pantries are closets or very large cupboards full of food located in the kitchen proper. A fruit bin is a larger closet - in some cases walk-in or room-sized - located most often in the basement. In addition to the difference in size and location, pantries are used to store food used on a daily basis. Fruit bins were for stockpiling and the storing of odd incidentals. "Mom! Are we out of oatmeal?" "Check the pantry honey!" "Mom! Do we have any cocktail olives?" "Check the fruit bin dear!" You get the idea.

Having lived the five previous years in a house with a fruit bin in the basement, a gourmet-sized fridge and a pantry in the kitchen, and two regular-sized fridges and a deep freezer in the garage, I often forget that my little apartment has but one small fridge, one small freezer, and barely enough shelf space for my pots and pans let alone all the food. I'm currently using casserole dishes as bookends on the shelves in my living room.

Anyhoos, last night's dinner keywords were "snap peas" and "capers." I can't even remember why I bought either of those things. I think the peas were for an ambitious vietnamese hot pot recipe that I later discovered I lacked the ambition to attempt. As for the capers, my roommate insists they elevate grilled cheese sandwiches to new heights. As for me, I just want to live in the kind of apartment where there are always capers on hand. Capers are a classy kind of condiment.

So, Google gave me several caper/pea options but I veganized the following recipe (which originally called for salmon and plain or greek yogurt):

1 tbs (or more) olive oil

4 shallots, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

4-5 white mushrooms, sliced thin

an overflowing 1/4 cup of capers (no brine)

2 big handfulls of snap peas

6 oz of plain soy yogurt (leave it sit out on the counter while you are prepping everything else so it's not fridge-cold when you go to use it)

1 box of not-long pasta (I used penne, but spirals or wagon wheels would have been good too)

While the water for the pasta is boiling, saute the shallots and peppers until they start to soften. Toss in the mushrooms and the capers and saute for another few minutes. Stir in the peas and cook until they are just starting to turn bright green (don't over cook the peas or they get slimy) then remove from heat and cover while the pasta cooks.

**Side Note: In my tiny kitchen, there is a tiny stove. And on this tiny stove there is only one full sized burner. Trying to boil a full pot of water on one of the little burners takes several hours. Thus I have to start the pot boiling on a small burner while I use the large one to saute. Then, like a culinary contortionist I move the pot of semi-boiling water to the larger burner to finish boiling while holding the hot frying pan until the small burner cools down enough for me to set it down. I have parboiled my feet on more than one occasion. End Note**

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. Drain well and put back in the pot (or get one of those cool pasta pots that has the sieve for a lid like I have). Stir in the yogurt until all the pasta is coated. Stir in the shallot/pea mixture and serve immediately.

I am usually a little wary about cooking with soy milk or yogurt in what is supposed to be a savory dish. Soy milk has a sweet aftertaste not really suitable for gravies and cream soups. The yogurt I used, "Whole Soy & Co.," was a very nice surprise. I'm sure it tastes nothing like plain milk-based yogurt (it's been over a decade since I had any dairy products) but it was great. This dinner got rave reviews from my roommate and there weren't any left overs...that's successful roulette in my book.

Muffins + Beer = Good

Thursday morning of last week dawned clear, sunny, and warm. I tossed on my ipod (something I never ran with before, but I spent so much time on a treadmill over the winter, I've become a bit addicted to being able to use the Ting Tings and Andrew WK to get me through the last few miles and the delightful Athens hills), and hit the road. The gorgeous weather worked against my better judgment and I ran about 5-5 1/2 miles, halfway out to Strouds Run and back. My mostly-healed ankle ligaments didn't mind, but the rest of my leg muscles were a little surprised to be back in action. For the last mile, all I could think about was the Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout on the door of my fridge. Nothing finishes a long, hard run like a deep, dark beer. Since muffin making was the only thing on my agenda for the day, beer for breafast ("B4B" acronym patent pending) seemed an excellent idea.

It was. More than excellent it was glorious. This was one of the better stouts I've had. I'm not always a fan of the chocolate notes brewed in to make a beer seem deeper, but this was good. Combined with a long hamstring stretch, it was close to transcendent. It's a seasonal though so get it while you can.

Additionally, nothing compliments baking like beer. I started with Banana-Split Muffins (adapted from a recipe in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of VegNews)

3 very ripe bananas, mashed (the riper the better)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbs vanilla
2 eggs worth of Ener-G egg replacer
2 cups all-purpose whole wheat (apww) flour
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup of vegan chocolate chips
1 cup of dried cherries
1 cup of walnuts, chopped

In a large bowl, whisk together the first five ingredients. In a smaller bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix the dry into the wet, then fold in the chocolate, cherries, and nuts. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

These suckers were awesome. Seriously. They initially taste like a banana muffin; wheaty, hearty....then, BAM! The aftertaste is completely cheap, sticky, old-school, Dairy-Queen-like, banana split. I swear, I tasted vanilla soft-serve. The muffins are pretty chunky, but the whole wheat/olive oil combination held up well and kept these moist enough to eat without (soy)milk. The vegan chocolate chips did not melt like the Toll House commercial cookies but reading Zillions magazine (the consumer reports magazine for children) as a kid taught me that the food in pictures and on tv are all lies. Glue for milk to keep the Cheerios floating, steak coated with shellac for juiciness... Those melty chips were probably part caulk and part hair-dye. The vegan ones most certainly are not.

Banana-Split Muffins: 5 out of 5 stars and a "please make these again" from my dad.

Now, wouldn't you know it, but B4B and "beer with baking" turned into B4L when my friend Kevin called, fresh from a stressful week of midterms and day of presentations, with an invitation to BW's. There isn't a lot for a vegan at a wing joint, so I stuck with the Mich Ultra tall boys.

Upon returning from my liquid lunch I tackled two more muffin recipes and cracked open a Stiegl . Stiegl is a fabulously delicious Austrian beer the praises of which my roomie came back from his quarter in Salzburg singing. Due to some persistant nagging from me, my roomie, and Kevin, the liquor store in Athens now carries it. $15.99ish for a 6-pack of pint bottles and totally worth it.

But back to the muffins. The first recipe, Fruitcake Muffins, is also from the Nov/Dec 2008 VegNews. I was hesitant to try these muffins. My only experience with fruitcake was the ones for sale in little celophane-wrapped bricks on the counter at the bank at Christmas. They were horrendous to look at. What are those green and red shiny things anyway? How can you have fruit in a cake that needs no refrigeration? But I had a can of crushed pineapple in the cupboard, so those questions would have to wait.

1/2 cup almond milk
1/4 cup crushed pineapple and juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup maple syrup

Mix together the above ingredients in a big bowl. Set aside.

1 cup oat flour
1 cup apww flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg, cloves, allspice

Sift the dry ingredients together in a smaller bowl and then mix with the wet. Fold in the following:

1 cup dried cherries
1 cup of raisins
1 cup of chopped nuts (I used pecans and walnuts, but almonds or macadamias would have also worked well)

Bake for about 26 minutes at 350. Word of advice: try and keep the dried fruit covered with batter. The dry cherry pieces don't burn per se, but they smell like they are burning. I think it took 26 minutes to bake these because I kept opening the oven to check on the carmelizing fruits.

These muffins went a long way in redeeming the fund-raiser slabs of bank cake in my memory. They are very spicy, very dense, but not brick-like at all. I ran out of tupperware so these sat out on the counter over night and were still soft in the morning. The oat flour was a delicious addition. It cut the wheatiness without sacrificing stability the way white flour can. I might use vanilla almond milk next time and cut back a little on the maple syrup. The fruit makes these sweet enough for me.

Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars but these are definitely cold-weather muffins so now that it's getting nice and sunny I probably won't make these again til winter.

Next on the docket, a delicious Great Lakes Blackout Stout and Carrot Sunshine Muffins. The GL was good, less faceted than the Brooklyn, but tasty. Plus it reminds me of sitting in my garage on an old, land-line phone, talking to my best friend (who was in basic training at Ft. Benning), and eating about 3 pints of Rice Dream so they wouldn't go to waste in the blackout.

But I digress. The Sunshine muffins are adapted from a recipe from The Veganomicon. I do not have the proper tool for zesting so I try to creatively omit zest when I can. Also, this recipe inconveniently calls for half a cup of yogurt. Most yogurt cups (even the soy ones) are 6 oz. (or 3/4 cup) tubs. I just put the entire tub in, made 1/2 cup of soymillk a scant one, and used more wheat flour than white to thicken things up. You could always use the 1/2 cup and eat the rest of the yogurt outright. Yogurt is delicious.

1/2 cup (or a whole little tub) vanilla or plain or orange soy yogurt
1/2 cup (scant) plain soymilk
1 tbs of ground flax seeds (flax seed meal)
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup dark brown sugar

Mix the above ingredients well in a large bowl. Then mix in,

1/2 cup crushed pineapple, very well drained (really, get as much juice out of it as you can)
1/3 cup orange juice (instead of pnap juice and a tsp of orange zest)
1/2 cup golden raisins (they look prettier than the dark raisins and have a lighter flavor)

In a seperate bowl sift together

1 1/3 cups of a combination apww and white flours
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger (if using the wet, refrigerated kind, mix this in with the wet stuff)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Mix the dry into the wet. Scoop into muffin tins. Definitely fill the cups to the very top or a little over. They don't rise much at all. Bake at 350 for about 26 minutes. Let them get a little brown on top and let them cool almost all the way in the pan. Depending on how much white flour you use, this'll help them retain their shape.

End result: Delicious. Period. End of sentence. Despite the carrots, these are not a carrot cake type muffin. Fluffy and wonderful. Good cold too.

I ended the night with a Pomegranate-Raspberry Mich Ultra I found in the back of the fridge. Not a bad girly beer, better on the beach or next to a pool, but by 10pm I was less than discerning about what I was drinking.

Thus endeth Muffin-Beer-a-Palooza. Moral of the story? The world would be a better place if everyone had a dozen muffins and a 6 pack of cold ones.

Yeast Bread is for Lovers

If I was a pioneer, I would be dead. My children and oxen might have survived a river crossing in a caulked wagon, but they would have starved waiting for me to make bread.

The story:

After having some measure of success with muffins and cakes and cookies, I decided I was ready to tackle yeast bread. Monday morning dawned full of promise. I had a packet of yeast. I had what seemed to be a fairly simple recipe from last month's Vegetarian Times.

3/4 c. of honey (I'm not the kind of vegan that eschews honey; I don't like bees)
1 pkg. of yeast
1 stick of butter
2 tbs. of salt
6 cups of whole-wheat flour
1 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

More importantly, I had hope. Foolish hope :)

Failure #1: It is aparently too cold in my apartment to properly make bread. Though I mixed the yeast and honey with warm water, the mixture never foamed meaning the yeast never fully activated. It is best to bake bread in a warm kitchen (80-85 degrees). My apartment averages a balmy 55 most of the time. Money's too tight for heat.

Failure #2: In my excitement to begin kneading the dough (for me, the most attractive part of making yeast bread is the zen-like massaging of the dough), I forgot to add the butter and the salt. My error only dawned on me after the kneading, while I was waiting for the dough to rise. This made me quite sad. I was failing my first attempt at making bread! I would therefore never be able to make bread and thus must be lacking in some important female hardware or hardwiring.

Thankfully "them internets" was around to partly assuage those fears. Salt and butter are non-essential parts of the bread making process. They simply add flavor and shelf-life. I wasn't failing at bread-making; I was succeeding at making flavorless bread that would soon go rotten!

Failure #3: The dough never really rose. Again this was probably due to the low temperature of my apartment - though I did move the dough ball (and later the loaves) to the top of the dryer in the laundry room. I remember my mom and gramma making bread for Easter. A little ball at the bottom of a towel-covered tupper-ware popcorn bowl would rise and bulge into the towel. My dough, not so much.

Failure #4: Burnination! Despite the set-backs, I formed two little loaves and stuck the first in the oven, my mom's IM, "sometimes bread rises while it bakes" giving me a glimmer of hope. The recipe called for baking in an oven at 400 degrees for an hour. Because of my finicky oven, I bake everything at 350 no matter what. Even so, 40 minutes later, a burnt-brown, slightly smoking, un-risen loaf is my reward.

All was not lost though. The inside of the bread was actually quite good. A little bland but some vegan butter and a side of garbage-barley soup fixed that. The second loaf only baked for half an hour and turned out far better. Still dry and dense, but I expected that from my inactive yeast. At least the crust wasn't black.

So am I deterred by my 4:1 failure to success ratio? Hell no! If anything I am eager to try my hand at yeast bread again soon. My roommate says we should just buy a bread machine. I say bread machines are for people without a sense of adventure.

Numero Uno

Wow. So I guess I have a blog now. Perhaps some context and an introduction are in order.

During the past few months I have found myself with an abundance of free time. This is mostly due to the fact that OU was in need of far fewer adjunct instructors than originally anticipated. I only work at the liquor store a few days a week, and two- or three-a-day workouts only take up so much time (and my knees aren't getting any younger).

Oddly enough, I have turned to cooking and baking to fill my days. Why is this odd? Some backstory might help.

I used to be afraid of the oven. Phobically afraid of the oven. I burned myself trying to help my mom make Christmas cookies when I was in the 3rd grade. I refused to put anything into or take anything out of the oven until I was a freshman in high school. Seriously, I would watch a tray of cookies start to scorch through the window of the oven and do nothing. "Mom! Mom! Your cookies are burning!" as the smoke alarm blared. The stove was equally out of the question. In my mind, if I accidentally set my hand on a hot burner, it would begin to melt and stick there. Like I said, phobically afraid.

In addition to this crippling fear was my mom's fame as a master baker. People have forgone wedding cakes entirely in favor of her cookies. They're like little works of art. Her cheesecakes have sold for $50 a pop. Diocesan meetings are regularly held at the school where she's the administrative assistant simply because most of the board members would step over their own mothers for a slice of her Special Occasion Coconut Cake.

When I became a vegetarian (1996) and again when I decided to be a full vegan (1998-ish), I had to get over this fear pretty quick if I wanted homecooked meals. This is not to say my mom wasn't accomodating, but you can only live for so long on pasta and steamed veggies. When I decided to try my hand at raw foodism two springs ago, being a slacker in the kitchen was no longer an option.

This blog, then, is a record of my various (mis)adventures in the kitchen. My current kitchen is smaller than my childhood bathroom. Almost all my pots and pans are hand-me-downs or Kroger specials. My oven wouldn't heat evenly if I started a fire in it. But I almost always manage to have a good time.

Read along for a while as I try my hand at vegan-izing some of my mom's recipes, attempt to make haute vegan cuisine on a three-student-loan budget, and see just how raw I can get.

Coming Soon: Actual recipes! Maybe pictures (if I can figure out how to load them)! My first crack at making a yeast bread!

Until then...eat your veggies!