Regarding Vampires

Well.

18 straight days of vacation. 2500 pages of vampire-related fiction. 1000 pages of fiction in general. 1500 miles travelled.

Lemme tell ya kids, it's been an interesting month.

Other than all the beach and all the traveling and all the eating, the biggest part of my life has been tearing through the 4 Twilight books on my birthday-present Kindle. I'll spare you all my rants and raves (it's a good thing I was reading it on my Kindle otherwise there would be book-shaped dents in my drywall) about why I disliked the books so much; those of you close to me have had to hear enough of it. What I'll say is this: how can you write a book about one of the most sexually charged characters/archetypes from history/literature/myth and NOT have any sex scenes? I don't want to live in a world where vampires care whether or not they have sex before marriage.

On the culinary front, I'm fully moved on from the raw-vegan madness that was late spring. Fun as it was, being a raw foodist, I don't think it's for me. Too much of a "lifestyle" and "lifestyle" is just a caftan and a new haircut away from being a cult so, no thank you ma'am. I still eat lots of raw veg and salads but now I throw in cooked pasta, jasmine rice, fresh bread, and cooked veg into the mix. And of course fresh fruit smoothies. If nothing else, raw foodism has made a smoothie addict out of me. (See previous post). Fun to make, fun to eat, fun to say: sm-ooooo-thie!

So before I hit the road once more (Athens to Marion, Marion to Cleveland, Cleveland to Ontario, Ontario to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to Marion, Marion to Athens...phew!) I'll leave you with another smoothie recipe.

Dr. M's Patented Anti-Vampire Fig 'n Grape Elixir (patent pending)

4 cups seedless black grapes

1 cup black mission figs (fresh are best, but if you use dried, cut off the hard stem parts)

1/2 cup cold water

1/2 tsp vanilla

pinch of cinnamon (optional)

2 cups ice cubes

In a high-speed blender, puree the grapes until smooth. Add the figs, water, vanilla, and cinnamon (if using). Blend until completely smooth. Add the ice and blend until the mixture has a slushy/smoothie consistency.

Notice how deepred and blood-like this drink looks. This will fool a vampire into drinking the smoothie. The resveratrol (in the grape skins) and the mucin (in the fig seeds) from the smoothy will begin to work against the vampire's internal systems, pulling out toxins and free-radicals. Since a vampire is entirely toxic, this should effectively kill him or her.

Should the vampires plaguing you be fictional in nature, drink the elixir quickly through a straw. This should give you a brief - but potent - brain freeze, allowing you to forget how freaking HORRIBLE!! sparkly vampires without fangs are. Use the temporary memory lapse to start another book (Ilium by Dan Simmons was effective for me), watch Nosferatu or True Blood, and/or listen to some Itzhak Perlman.

Repeat as necessary until all traces of the vampire scourge have been erased from your life.

Good luck.

Shore 'Nuff

Hello friends and enemies from sunny Hilton Head Island!

As is tradition, my family spends the first two weeks of July at the beach. We rent a giant house with a view of the ocean, run the annual Firecracker 5K, watch amateur fireworks displays, listen to kick-ass live jazz, build gigantic sand castles, and more or less seize each day beach-bum style.

This change of scenery was the perfect time/excuse to ratchet my raw foodism down a few notches. For those of you just tuning in, I've been attempting to re-balance the culinary part of my life after getting entirely too wrapped up in raw veganism. Even good habits can become bad if they start to take over one's life. I've always been able to convince myself to do and try different things when I'm on vacation because vacation is not "real life;" for two weeks out of the year I can completely re-invent myself, even if it is only temporarily. More often than not, though, the changes I make while living it up in the sand and sun end up following me back to Ohio and for better or worse, become "real life." Does this mean I am constantly living in a state of vacation? Possibly. I can think of worse fates.

Anyways. Though I made a few raw snacks before I hit the road (macaroons and grawnola and smoothies), I left my dehydrator at home. I brought my blender but so far it's only been used to make pina coladas. I've been raw before dinner the whole time, but I've also enjoyed grilled veggies over jasmine rice, pasta with steamed artichokes, pizza from the Mellow Mushroom, chips and salsa with my cousin's homemade guac, and Thai Red Curry & Summer Vegetables. Some days I eat all raw, others I don't. Mostly I'm eating and doing what I want, when I want.

And that, kids, is the true meaning of vacation.

It's A Bird...It's A Plane...

No! It's a superfood!! Able to cure cancer and diabetes in a single bound! Destroy fat! Improve moods! Orchestrate world peace!!

... ...


Ok, so that last one might not be so true; and to be honest, most of the other claims are suspect as well. Any time someone claims that a single anything (food, job, class, movie, drug) is able to change your life, it should raise some red flags. Or at least some questions.


Most lists of superfoods (Oprah's had one, Dr. Gupta had one, the AOL newsfeed had one) make me roll my eyes. "You mean whole grains are better than processed ones? No way!" "And you say that the darker the fruits and vegetables the more vitamins and minerals? Well, that's just crazy talk!" These lists invariably include blueberries and pomegranates (for their many antioxidants and phyto-whatevers); less-popular (but still delicious) grains like barley, kasha, and quinoa; dark, leafy greens like chard, spinach, and kale; and fermented foods like miso. Now, I'm not knocking the health benefits of including these foods in your diet, it's just that, as a vegan, these are the things I'm eating every day. To me a superfood should be something not necessarily available in the grocery store, maybe something you've never even heard of before, something, well, super.

Aparently, I'm not the only vegan/raw foodie who thinks like this either. Many of the magazines/websites I read distinguish between "mainstream" or "conventional" superfoods and capital-lettered, excalmation-pointed, SuperFoods!! Often I suspect this a way of maintaining exclusivity/exoticness within a lifestyle that is quickly becoming more common. A way to prove moreover one's committment to the diet. Anyone can pop into Kroger for a pint of blueberries or a bunch of chard. It takes real dedication to find a place/webstore that sells Camu or Lacuma or Yacon. Like I've said before, I'm not one to eat something just because it's good for me, but I do like to try new things.

One of the first SF's I tried was Goji Berries. Not necessarily because I believed the hype (someone living for 250 years solely based on his daily consumtion of goji berry tea is a little far-fetched, even for me); or the labels (the successful marketing campaign calling them "Himalayan" or "Tibetan" just goes to show how many hippies are still swayed by advertising - most Gojis come from China), but because I'm a sucker for dried fruit. Oh, how I love dried fruit. And the gojis do taste pretty good, though it's a difficult flavor to describe. Powdery-sweet sort of. Or like a stale (but not spoiled) cherry fruit-roll-up. If craisins taste glossy (and in my mind, they do), then goji berries taste matte. I am currently looking for my very excellent Lemon-Goji Berry Muffin recipe and I will post it as soon as I find it. From what I remember, though, it was a basic lemon muffin recipe (lemon juice, some zest, vanilla, etc.) with gojis thrown in as you would frozen blueberries. Those were pretty super muffins.

My latest SF is Maca. Like many SF's, maca comes from South America where it was cultivated by the Incas because of it's ability to grow at high altitudes. Plus, it aparently has aphrodisiacal properties. There's a legend about Incan warriors using maca to get themselves ready for battle and the townspeople having to hide all the maidens upon the warriors' return since they were still so virile and "pumped." It's like the Andean version of a baby boom. Disregarding the mythology and the hype, I really do like maca. Like the gojis, it has a difficult-to-describe taste. It's not bitter but it's not sweet either. It kind of has an earthy taste to it. Maybe like a carrot or a sweet potato - but also, nothing like either of those. Weird.

I have experimented with maca powder in several dishes (juice: blech, soups: indifferent) but have found it blends best with strong, fatty flavors. A tablespoon of maca powder with a banana-carob smoothie. A sprinkle of the powder on almond-butter-filled celery sticks. And so on.

But nothing, and I mean nothing compares to my new favorite post-workout drink. I could drink this every day for a week and not get tired of it. I found the original recipe at a SuperFoods webstore and have been tweaking it as I see fit. The closest thing I can compare it to is a Wendy's Frosty: airy, vaguely chocolately, cold and icy. Here's the basic recipe.

Macashew Frosty

1/4 - 1/2 cup raw cashews
1 heaping tablespoon maca powder
1/2 teaspoon (or more) vanilla
1 cup nutmilk/coconut water/filtered water
1/4 cup date paste or 4-5 whole dates soaked an hour or more
2 cups ice

In a blender, pulse the cashews until they are finely chopped.
Add the maca, vanilla, and half the liquid. Blend well.
Add the date paste and the remaining liquid and blend very well, scraping the sides if necessary.
Add the ice and blend on high until smooth and combined. Add a little more liquid if needed to facilitate blending.

Possible variations: 2 heaping tablespoons of raw honey instead of date paste. Use chocolate nutmilk for a more chocolately shake. Half the vanilla and add a 1/4 tsp of almond extract.

So the next time the Spanish invade your empire looking for gold and trying to convert you to Catholicism, drink up a belnderful of maca smoothie and march headfirst into the fray.

Just behave yourself around the townspeople when you return.

On Getting Lost

I recently finished The Terror, a fictionalized re-telling of the lost Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage in the mid-1800's. It was gripping and made me want to be a sailor in Her Majesty's Royal Navy.

I recently skimmed an article in this month's GQ discussing the pervasiveness of GPS systems and the decline in actual maps. I only skimmed because I can't stand the sort of scolding tone authors take when they are reminiscing about the "good old days;" the self-indulgence of placing themselves among a select and dying breed who "remember when."

And so, I've been thinking about being and getting lost.

A few times a week I go on Wandering Bike Rides. I just pick a direction and start pedaling, choosing roads and turns at random. These WBR's are much more interesting in Athens than they were in Marion where all the county roads are basically set up in a grid. That, and despite living in Athens for almost 3 years (and being a bi-monthly visitor for 2 years before that), I still don't have my internal compass configured for SE Ohio. It's like there's a giant magnet underneath Court Street that sets my needle spinning. Or maybe it's the fact that State Street runs parallel and perpendicular to Court, or that you have to go south to go north on the highway. Either way, unless I'm standing in front of my apartment or the sun is rising/setting on a clear day, I couldn't find north by northwest no matter how insistently James Mason asked.

When I set out on these bike rides it's usually just me, my water bottle, and occasionally the i-pod. Roomie and my parents are constantly admonishing me to take my cell phone but where's the fun in that? Chances are there wouldn't be any service as far out into the country as I ride anyway. And so I have little moments of discovery and adventure and occasional panic.

I have discovered New Marshfield and Fox Lake and an llama farm.

I have discovered (often when it's too late to hop off my bike and walk) some of the steepest, gravel-covered hills I've seen outside of Tibetan documentaries.

I have had dogs chase me, squirrels attempt to trip me, cows and horses and chickens and people on farm equipment watch me with indifferent and/or bemused eyes.

I have been caught in the rain; in the snow; having to walk two miles back to town with a flat.

I have gotten up close to 40MPH riding down hill only to realize later that people have died in car crashes at that speed and they're buckled into steel cages.

But I've never been really lost. Oh, there have been times that I didn't really know where I was; didn't know if turning left or right would lead me closer or farther from home, but turning around and backtracking was always a possibility. Sometimes I'll get to the top of a hill and be able to see for miles around me and I'll try to imagine what it must have felt like when there were no roads cutting through, no farmland breaks in the forest. I've ridden through some densely-wooded areas and I think it must have been awful and awe-ful and wonderful and terrible to be faced with miles and miles of the unknown and nothing but your own legs to move you forward and your own curiosity that keeps you from turning back.

I know it is for me.

BabyCakes

I have never been fond of babies; as the third oldest of 14 cousins there were plenty of babies around to be less than fond of. I adore all my cousins now that they are graduating from high school and old enough to joke and hang around and watch R-rated movies, but back in the day I'd just as soon pop my eye out with a spoon as play with a bunch of toddlers.

My youngest cousins, J and The Demon Baby, however, are the slight exceptions to the rule. Born when I was 21 and 24 respectively, J and TDB are major players in my life and I go out of my way to spend time with them. This isn't to say that I want to go out and start having dozens of my own (quite the contrary) but knowing babies as an adult is very different then meeting them as an adolescent.

In addition to spending the weekend with J and TDB (for the latter's third birthday party), I also attended my first baby shower. I spent 4 hours decorating onesies (fun) surrounded by women who all seemed to love and adore babies (strange and slightly alienating since I still can't really stand babies I'm not related to).


As I get older, I've been dreading the moment when I'll hear my biological clock ticking and suddenly desire a baby more than anything else in the world. It seems logical that it would happen at a 3-year-old's birthday party (watching a bunch of toddlers eat cake with their hands is pretty cute if you're not the one in charge of cleaning them up) or a baby shower (there's a lot of estrogen at a baby shower; it's why I've heretofore avoided them). So far, no clock.


What was ticking this weekend was my internal clock that tells me it's been too long since I made any cookies. Finding a cookie recipe that didn't require vegan butter or soymilk (both banished in the raw-ification of my kitchen) took a bit of doing, but I was able to cobble together a pretty delicious cake-like cookie with the ingredients I did have in my cupboards.



Double Chocolate Raspberry BabyCakes

1 container fresh raspberries (I think it was a pint)

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp almond extract

rounded 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 rounded tbs dark cocoa powder

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

In a large bowl, mix together the raspberries, sugar, oil, and extracts. Use a fork to really break up all the berries until it reaches a watery consistency.

In a seperate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add to the wet in three or four batches mixing well inbetween each batch. Don't use an electric mixer for this one. The dough gets pretty thick so a wooden spoon or large plastic fork (like I have) works best.

Roll the dough into half-dollar sized balls and then flatten them into 2-2 1/2 inch disks. Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet about 1/2 inch apart (they don't spread out at all). Bake for ten minutes. Do not overbake the cookies. Burny chocolate makes babies cry. Leave sit on the tray for about 5 minutes. While still warm on the tray, dust the tops with powdered sugar. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

These were quite a hit at the shower. They have a texture somewhere between cake and cookie, soft and chocolately. I could easily make these bite-sized for a more refined looking dessert or replace the powdered sugar with a drizzle of icing. Possible negative: the seeds from the fresh raspberries. I actually liked having the seeds in the cookies. I think it made them taste even fresher, kinda like a chocolate dipped raspberry or a Godiva truffle. I can see, though, how some people might not dig it.

Had I the time, I would have dyed the powdered sugar blue in honor of the soon-to-be-born Thatcher. And like all good moms know, nothin' says lovin' like colored powdered sugar.

Hmm. Perhaps it's for the best that I don't have any kids.

Sweets For the Sweet

For your entertainment, a diologue:

Imaginary Reader: Man! Enough already with the existential posts about the meaning of diet! They are bumming me out! What happened to all the delicious recipes? The kitchen hijinks? Too lazy to cook lately?

Me: Hey! I've still been in the kitchen turning out delicious foodstuffs...It's just that all this "why I eat the way I do" stuff has been weighing on my mind. I figured this was a relatively appropriate venue for working through it all.

I.R.: Yeah, well, you figured wrong. So how about you make with the cheese and leave the whine alone.

Me: You know, I don't think people who use awful puns like that have the right to judge someone else's writing...I'm just saying... But you are right. It is high time for some recipes.

***

For the past week's road trip to Philly, I made two different sweet snacks to munch on in the car. Fresh fruits and veggies are great to stay hydrated (something I have a problem with when I travel) but it's not advisable to tuck into a salad behind the wheel.

This first recipe (my version of the "Cranberry Maple Granola" from Raw Food, Real World) requires a little more prep and dehydration time but is definitely worth it. I may never eat cereal from a box again.

Grawnola

1/2 apple (any kind, but I've used Granny Smith the last two times), cored and chopped
3/4 cup date paste (see below for date paste recipe)
1/4 cup honey, maple syrup, or agave
1 tbs lemon juice
1/2 tbs vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp sea salt
1/4 sunflower seeds
1 cup almonds
1 1/2 pecans or walnuts
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

To make date paste, soak dates in water for at least 45 minutes. Drain the dates, saving about 1/2 cup of the soaking water to facilitate blending. Remove the pits from the dates and blend until smooth. Add water as needed. This paste will keep for at least a two weeks in the fridge and is a great sweetener.

Soak all the nuts in plenty of water for at least 4 hours. I usually let them sit overnight.

In a blender, process the apple, date paste, honey/syrup, lemon juice, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt until completely smooth and liquid-y. Add warm water by the tablespoon (or date-soak water if you have any left) if it seems to be too thick to blend. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.

In a food processor or dryblade blender, coarsely chop the nuts. Depending on how big your processor/blender you may need to do this in batches. Depending on how you like your cereal, you might want to do a batch finely chopped and one coarsely chopped, give it a little texture.

Add the nuts to the mixing bowl and stir well to coat all the nuts with the apple mixture. Spread the grawnola mix onto parchment-paper-lined dehydrator trays and dehydrate overnight. Remove the grawnola from the paper and dehydrate for another 8-12 hours. Break into small pieces and store in the fridge for a couple of hours to really crisp up the grawnola. Serve with nutmilk (it stays really crunchy!) or, like I do, eat it straight from the box.

For dessert on the road and in the hotel, I made chocolate macaroons. In the past, I've made "blondie" versions of this cookie by replacing the cocoa powder with a heaping 1 1/2 cup of almond flour. Both delicious, both deadly.

Raw Macaroons

3 cups dried, unsweetened coconut flakes
1 1/2 cups cocoa powder (or almond flour)
1 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup coconut butter (make sure it's at room temp to make mixing easier)
1 tbs vanilla
1/2 tsp sea salt

Put all the ingredients in a very big bowl and stir until well combined.

Using a mini ice cream scoop, melon baller, tablespoon measuring spoon, or your hands, scoop out the batter onto dehydrator trays (no need to line them unless you really want to). These need about 24 hours in the dehydrator. They are done when the outside is crisp and the middle is still a little chewy.

These are really delicious, versatile cookies (Pap ate them with milk, Mom ate them with wine, Roomie crumbled them over ice cream), the recipe is super easy (one bowl clean up!), and any cookie that doesn't require me to turn the oven on in my non-AC apartment in the summer is aces in my book.

When I get back from this weekend's excursions, I'm going to experiment with making my own walnut flour, omitting the coconut butter in favor of flavored oils or pureed fruit (strawberries, maybe?), honey instead of maple syrup etc.

So there you go, Imaginary Reader. A couple of summer-ready, road-trip-friendly raw desserts. If that doesn't make you happy, stick your face inside the chocolate macaroon bowl and lick it clean.

If that doesn't help, perhaps you can stick other things other places and stop bringing me down, Frowny McCrankerson. Geez.

The Weekend of Living Cooked-ly

Following yet another trip to Philadelphia (this time to drop roomie off for a summer-long elite rowing camp at Penn AC ), I spent a weekend at home, visiting family and attending graduation parties.

A couple of observations therefrom:

- Large family gatherings are far more enjoyable with a beer in your hand.
- My cousins, all of whom I remember being born and ripping into Christmas presents like over-caffienated wolverines, are graduating from high school. My cuz kept introducing me to all her just-graduated friends as her "cousin who teaches college" and they all look at me like I've got the secrets of the acadmic universe in my back pocket. This is one of those moments where I realize I'm really 27; and even if I don't feel like a grown-up-with-a-career, that's what I look like to the rest of the world.
- My youngest set of cousins, though, won't graduate from high school for another 12 years. I will be 40. I can only imagine how they will be introducing me at that point. Ri-to-the-diculous.

I was able to be raw the whole time in Philly, but following the All-Raw Breakdown, I wanted to eat some cooked foods, see if that had any effect on my mood/mindset. I started with some cooked veggies and then had cooked pasta for dinner Saturday night and cooked rice on Sunday. They were both good (I used raw sauces and put plenty of raw veg on both), but I could definitely tell the difference in my digestion. It didn't make me sick (the way eating real dairy products and eggs does) but it was a different kind of full. I felt full quicker and longer, but I was not really any more sated. And because the cooked food was conveniently made by my mom in large quantities, I found myself eating more and longer. But was I any less breakdown-y? Not really. Well, I was but I think it had more to do with finally getting Roomie moved out/in and being done with grading, knowing for sure I'm teaching in the fall, the sunny weather, getting to love up on my dog for a few days, the new season of True Blood etc. than it did with what I was eating.

Now I'm back in Athens. My little apartment seems huge with just me rattling around in it. I don't have the fundage to be running my AC 24/7 so I have a fan that keeps things cool and breezy. And what I find myself craving - literally ravenous at the thought of - is fresh, raw foods. After eating cooked foods for two nights, I can't even remember why I thought I needed it. I just want cold salads and smoothies, lots of green lemonade and raw iced tea. It helps that even boiling water on the stovetop jacks up the temperature in my teeny kitchen to 80 degrees or higher.

So after a two-meal lapse, I'm back to 100% raw. I don't even want to call it a lapse because that sounds like something negative and I'm trying to avoid slipping back into that mentality. It was a break. A little vacation from being all raw.

And suddenly going back to everyday life doesn't seem so daunting.