hotpotato

Chesapeake Pumpkin Seeds

2008-11-09T11:44:00.004-04:00

I like to roast winter squash, while the things remain in season, I roast a butternut or kabocha squash at least once weekly. And while separating seeds from strings can be a pain in the ass, I enjoy roasted pumpkin seeds enough to endure the process.

I bought, roasted, and pureed a huge cushaw squash this week, which left me with three to four cups of seeds. Looking through my parent's spice-less pantry (cinnamon, garlic salt and onion powder are the only spices my mother likes), I found a half-used tin of Old Bay. In Maryland, you can buy Old Bay potato chips - Old Bay on pumpkin seeds wasn't much of a stretch. But it does make for a tasty snack:

Chesapeake Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients:

Seeds from one pumpkin or winter squash, washed and patted dry with paper towels
1 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp Old Bay spice mix

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Line a roasting pan with foil. Pour the oil and Old Bay on the foil. Spread the seeds over the foil in an even layer, stirring them around in the oil and Old Bay with your fingertips. Put them in the oven, stirring them every 10 minutes for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the pumpkin seeds turn golden brown and crunchy.

Pumpkin Muhmarrah

2008-11-02T12:43:00.004-04:00

Last night, I hosted a Halloween potluck. I contributed this Pumpkin Muhammarah (along with homemade Twix and miniature caramel apples), which was tasty, but not very pumpkin-y. Next time I will perhaps omit the red bell peppers to let the roasted pumpkin shine, but this dip makes a yummy snack as-is:

Pumpkin Muhammarah

Ingredients:

1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 jar roasted red peppers
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs

In a food processor, add all of the ingredients in order, allowing them to throughly mix between additions. You will have to scrape down the sides a few times.

My Mom's Birthday Dinner!

2008-10-27T20:36:00.005-04:00

I cooked from cookbooks this time (odd for me, I know), so can't take credit for the delicious results. But I wanted to make something fancy for my mother's 40-somethingth, and my meals tend to err on the simple side. So I made the moussaka from Veganomicon (pictured above) and the spanokopita from Vegan with a Vengeance (pictured below), plus grape leaves stuffed, alternatively, with TVP and a pumpkin-cream cheese mixture.

The moussaka was a win in my book, though really, I'm going to enjoy anything with roasted potatoes in it. I didn't have pinenuts needed to make the called-for pinenut cream, so I made a walnut-cashew sauce that reminded me of a sauce I ate with gnocchi in Italy. Now that I remember it, I'll have to recreate the dish!

The spanokopita were delicious, but it was my first time working with phyllo, and I struggled to keep the dough moist. I used one bag of frozen spinach and one pound of tofu (the recipe calls for two), which worked well. But I can't help but wish there was a bit more flavor to the filling - next time I will play with the herbs in the recipe and perhaps add some extra spices.

Java Green

2008-10-26T20:05:00.007-04:00

Last Friday, my sister and I headed to Java Green for a pre-theater dinner. Java Green, which describes itself as an eco-friendly all-vegetarian cafe, is the sort of place you can take a non-vegetarian without scaring them. Or so I thought.

Ashley the Anemic: I don't want to eat anything fake.

Me: Soy chicken's not fake chicken. It's flavored wheat gluten that is taking chicken's place in that particular wrap.

Ashley the Anemic: Ewwww! They make vegetarian ham!?

Luckily, my sister likes tofu (though perhaps I should've insisted that she not get soy protein, something known to inhibit iron absorption). And though her first bite of the Avocado and Tofu Wrap was "too spicy," the heat was only in that first bite. Personally, I didn't think it was hot at all, but I was also eating Californian Gimbob (pictured) doused in hot sauce. I like spice.

Java Green serves food quickly - you don't have a waiter - and the food is consistently fresh and tasty. I find the salads a bit boring, though I like the black rice and hot peppers on the Bi-Bim Bob salad. My favorite dish is the Boolgogi Deluxe, a big serving of noodles, kimchi, mushrooms and soy beef. Like I said, I like spice.

Don't get plain, black coffee - it tastes old and is often lukewarm. Java Green's also pricey - prepare to spend eight dollars or up per entree. But the cafe's eclectic menu (vegan Korean, raw soups and salads, wraps and smoothies) appeals to all types and make Java Green worth visiting.

Bonus picture of Ashley the Anemic hiding from the camera:

Vegan MoFo Survey

2008-10-25T19:00:00.000-04:00

I promise that I haven't forgotten about MoFo – a sinus infection, an abruptly scheduled endocronologist appointment, and a play that kept me out of the house well past 12 a.m. have prevented me from posting the past few days. And while I have been cooking and eating and photographing, I traveled home for my mother's birthday without bringing along the equipment I need to upload images from my camera. So just to post, I'm answering a survey from the PPK:

1. What was the most recent tea you drank?
Trader Joe's peppermint tea. It is inexpensive and yummy.

2. What vegan forms do you post/lurk on? If so, what is your username? Spill!
Vegan-wise, I post on the post punk kitchen forum as KarynMC. Serious Eaters (very, very unvegan) also know me as KarynMC.

3. You have to have tofu for dinner, and it has be
an Italian dish. What comes to mind first?
Polenta in a marinara sauce with tofu ricotta. That's my favorite meal at the restaurant Great Sage.

4. How many vegan blogs do you read on an average day?
I might check three to five over the course of the week. I was trying to keep up with MoFo, but I only have time to write or read, not both. Maybe I will spend November catching up!

5. Besides your own, what is the most recent one you’ve read?
Vegan Yum Yum.

6. If you could hang out with a vegan blogger that you haven’t met, who would it be, and what would you do?
Melisser from the Urban Housewife. I want her to make me candy corn! And she lives in San Francisco, and I want to spend more time in that city.

7. If you had to base your dinners for a week around one of the holy trilogy – tofu, seitan or tempeh, which would it be?
Tofu. It's the only one that works well in puddings and sweet pies, and I would happily eat pies for a week.

8. If you had to use one in a fight, which would it be?
If I covered the floor with silken tofu, you would fall and hurt yourself.

9. Name 3 meals you’d realistically make with that tough protein of choice!
Coconut cream pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate pie. I picked a good protein.

10. What’s a recipe in vegan blogland that you’ve been eyeing?
Avocado pie. And avocado frosting. Though right now I can't remember if those are blog recipes or PPK recipes or both.

11. Do you own any clothing with vegan messages/brands on them?
Nope. But I have a Threadless shirt of a cheese grater murdering a piece of cheese, and once people learn that I'm a vegetarian, they think it's some sort of pro-veg statement. But it's not.

12. Have you made your pilgrimage to the 'vegan mecca' yet? (Portland, duh)
1. Nope. It's not even on my "must visit" list - that honor goes to places like Barcelona and Vienna.

13. What age did you first go vegan? Did it stick?
No comment.

14. What is the worst vegan meal you’ve had? Who cooked it?
I really haven't made or tasted anything that disgusting.

15. What made you decide to blog?
101 Cookbooks, a blog that I love, posted several recipes very similar to dishes that I make all of the time, so I thought, "Hey! I can do this!" Plus, I wanted something to keep me writing while I was in-between jobs.

16. What are three of your favorite meals to make? Pie. I love rolling out the dough, I find it relaxing. I also like making chili in my crock pot and stirring risottos.

17. What dish would you bring to a vegan Thanksgiving-themed potluck?
I want to veganize my Grandma's cinnamon rolls, but I haven't gotten to that yet. Maybe I will if I get to go to a vegan Thanksgiving potluck!

18. Where is your favorite vegan meal at a restaurant? How many times have you ordered it?
I really couldn't tell you. I just don't think about meals as being "vegan," because so many wonderful foods fall into that spectrum. I love getting (and sharing!) big vegetarian platters at Ethiopian restaurants, I like vegan Thai and Indian meals. I just tried Burmese for the first time, I enjoyed that, too.

19. What do you think the best chain to dine as a vegan is?
Does Soul Veg count as a chain? I don't really eat at them.

20. My kitchen needs a………
Where to begin? I want a yogurt maker, a pressure cooker, a food processor ...

21. This vegetable is not allowed in my kitchen…..!
Not a vegetable, but lima beans.

22. What's for dinner tonight?
I made the Veganomicon moussaka, Vegan with a Vengeance spanokopita and dolmades.

23.Add a question here! What's my usual lunch?
I usually have a salad with roasted pumpkin on it and an 8 ounce cup of coffee with a teensy splash of cold soy milk.

Roasted Brussels

2008-10-21T22:20:00.003-04:00

As a child, I liked most vegetables. As an adult (haha, hahahah), I've reconciled with most of the vegetables I couldn't stand as a kid. Brussels sprouts are one case in point. My mother boiled them, then covered them in butter. My father adored them, I considered them soggy green balls of death.

Then, I discovered roasting. Slice some brussels, spray some oil, and a dash each of salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning (I use chicken grilling spices from Trader Joe's), then roast, and I am in crunchy, tender, vegetable Heaven. I now consider brussels sprouts one of my all time favorite vegetables.

Just, eh, don't expect me to stomach lima beans. I don't know what I'd have to do to make those palatable ..

French Onion Soup

2008-10-20T20:38:00.004-04:00

When I come home from work, I tend not to linger – tofu scrambles, salads and quick-cooking grains usually prove the order of the evening. I don't often make the sort of meals that benefit from long, slow simmers. Still, when I do plan ahead and make a soup, the results hit home.

French Onion soup is one of my favorites. The recipe's so simple I almost don't want to post it – the ingredients are all relative. But I promise that this simple meal will never disappoint:

French Onion Soup

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 tbsp Earth Balance
1 tsp kosher salt
black pepper, to taste
4 very large, sweet onions (Vidalia or Walla Walla), sliced into rings
4 cups vegetable broth

2 cups crusty, artisan-style bread, like sourdough or a baguette, chopped into large chunks
2 cups vegan cheese, optional (I used Follow Your Heart Montery Jack)

In a very large skillet, melt the butter on medium-low heat. Add the onions, the salt, and the pepper. Cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until they become translucent and very brown. This can take awhile, 15-20 minutes, so be patient. When the onions are cooked, pull out your crock pot. Pour in the vegetable broth, then add the cooked onions. Set the crockpot to its lowest setting, then let the soup sit for at least one hour. I tend to leave it all day.

When you're ready to eat, preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Ladle the soup into individual, oven-safe bowls, like ramekins. I used a small pyrex. Put 1/2 cup of bread into each bowl. Put 1/2 cup of shredded cheese onto each bread. Cover the bowls with foil, then leave them in the oven until the soup is bubbling hot and the cheese has melted, about 30 minutes.

Mini Apple Turnovers

2008-10-19T18:35:00.004-04:00

My co-worker Genie is a class act and a real sweetie, who also just happens to have a free source of apples and the kindness to give them away to her hungry officemates. These apples have provided me more breakfasts than I can count, so I offered to make Genie a pie.

Sadly, I only ended up having enough apples to make one pie! So I am resisting the urge to dive head-first into the gorgeous pie I made this afternoon. Hopefully the pie will survive the night intact ...

... prompting Genie to give me more apples, so I can make an apple pie for me! (I did use the end pieces of dough to make myself some mini turnovers, pictured above).

The apple pie:

TVP and Two Veg (Hedgehog)

2008-10-17T20:40:00.007-04:00

I was sick today. Truly, miserably, undeniably ill. Too ill to drive to work, much less perform my daily tasks. So after a day of pulsing temples and vertigo spells, comfort food was the order of the day.

My Grandma used to make a dish called "Porcupine," part meatloaf, part casserole. Looking at the recipe, I wondered just why I loved the meal so much. It's a '50s-style culinary nightmare, calling for eggs, milk, beef and white rice. Oh, and a can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup.

Remarkably, I managed to leave most of that out and still enjoy a dish very much in the spirit of the original. So without further ado, I present my vegetarian "Porcupine" – I call it "Hedgehog":

Hedgehog

Serves 4.

Wet Ingredients:

1/2 cup TVP, measure dry, but reconstitute before using
1/4 cup rice, cooked
1/2 cup celery, finely chopped
1 medium onion (about 1/2 - 3/4 cup), finely chopped
1/2 cup fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
1/4 cup water
1 recipe mild BBQ sauce

Dry Ingredients:

1/4 cup vital wheat gluten
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper

Reconstitute the TVP by pouring boiling over it and letting it sit, or according to your package's directions. Mix the wet ingredients together. Add the dry ingredients. Knead everything together for about five minutes, then spoon the mixture into a loaf pan. Top with ketchup. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour, or until top becomes brown and crusty. Serve with German roasted brussel sprouts and a baked potato.

Mild BBQ Sauce

2 tbsp ketchup
2 tsp maple syrup
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp hot sauce

Whisk everything together with a fork.

Pie Crust Tips

2008-10-16T20:58:00.006-04:00

I wrote this last year for the Mini Pie Revolution Headquarters, but since it's fall (the season of apple and pumpkin pies), I thought this post was worth repeating:

Basic Pie Crust for Mini Pies

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2/3 cup plus 2 tbsp butter or other shortening
3-5 tbsp ice water
about 1 tsp salt

So you want to join the revolution, but you’re still clinging to your last box of cupcake mix. Why? Because cupcakes, you say, don’t bake in crusts. Store-bought crusts don’t appeal, and nothing seems scarier than recreating that dense, flour-dusted hockey-puck of a crust you made way back when. Never fear! Yes, pastry pie crust can prove temperamental. But a few simple tricks will have you turning out pie crusts so good, your friends will wonder just when you spent time on an Amish homestead.

Choose Your Fat Wisely

Pastry pie dough’s a simple creature. It contains flour, liquid, fat, and salt. The flour’s easy. Use all-purpose flour (some books will say to use half all-purpose flour, half pastry flour). If you’re feeling fancy, feel free to test out polenta or gluten-free flours, but when it comes to pie, simplicity never hurt anyone. I use ice water for the liquid, though you might find some recipes that call for chilled milk, cream, vinegar, or buttermilk. When it comes to pie dough, fat’s the key. Lard, shortening, or butter? That’s the question – and the answer depends on how you like your pie.

Lard’s what Grandma used. Lard, or rendered pork fat, makes for tender, flaky pie crusts. I don’t eat pigs, so I’ve yet to use lard. My mother claims she never liked lard crusts – she says they tasted too animal, too greasy. Professional food writers like lard pie crusts’ texture, but dislike it’s flavor.

Vegetable shortening’s what Mom uses. Like lard, it creates a flaky pie crust. Unlike lard, vegetable shortening won’t taste like animal product, so it works better in sweet pies. Vegetable shortening comes from hydrogenated oil, so be prepared to eat your trans fats and like them, too. Even if the label says there’s no trans fat, read the ingredient list: if the list says: “hydrogenated oil,” you’re consuming trans fat.

Butter (i.e. Earth Balance buttery sticks) is what I use. It creates a better flavored pie crust, but the flavor comes with some textural drawbacks. With butter, you’re more likely to create a soft pie crust. And if something goes horribly wrong, the crust could go greasy. Some bakers will mix butter with shortening for a flaky pie crust that tastes like butter. Personally, I just make an all-butter crust and use special fancy tricks to get a flaky texture.

You can also use chilled vegetable oil, but I have not used this myself yet - I use Earth Balance or nonhydrogenated shortening - so I can't vouch for it 100 percent. I have also heard that you can cut chilled nut butters into the flour - this idea intrigues me and I will be experimenting with it in the future.

Special Fancy Tricks

Special Fancy Trick Number One: whatever fat you choose, keep it cold. Keep the fat in the refrigerator or the freezer until you’re ready to make your dough.

I make pie crust by hand. To make pie crust, I use a metal mixing bowl, a knife, a fork or a pastry cutter, a tablespoon, and a rolling pin.

First, measure two cups of flour into the mixing bowl. Special Fancy Trick Number Two: use a new bag of flour. Older flour might have absorbed moisture, which will result in mini hockey pucks. Special Fancy Trick Number Three: don’t scoop the flour out of its bag or bowl with your measuring cup – this will pack the flour. Instead, use two measuring cups. Use one cup to remove the flour from the bag, then gently shake the flour into your second measuring cup. You want level cups, but do not pack the flour.

Put the measured flour in the mixing bowl. Pour a little salt into your palm – no more than a tablespoon, and throw it into the mixing bowl with the flour. Here, you can either sift the flour and the salt together (the proper method), or fluff the flour and salt together with a fork (the lazy cook’s method).

Chop up a stick and a half of cold butter into one-tablespoon measurements. Drop the cold butter into the mixing bowl. Using a pastry cutter or a fork, cut the butter into the flour. Really use your muscles. Work quickly - if the butter starts to melt, put the bowl straight into the freezer. Melting butter = bad pie dough. You know you’re finished when the mix looks dry and crumbly, and there are no more large pieces of butter in the bowl.

Take your ice water from the freezer or refrigerator. Measure three tablespoons of ice water into the into the middle of your mixing bowl. Now, using a rolling motion and the back of your hand, work the flour, butter, and ice water into a ball. If the ball forms easily, you’re done. If not, add another tablespoon of water. Knead the dough. If it still doesn’t come together, add another tablespoon of ice water. It should take between three and five tablespoons of ice water to make pie crust dough.

Put the mixing bowl with the dough inside in the refrigerator or freezer for ten to fifteen minutes. While the dough cools, pour a little flour onto a flat surface. Spread a little where you will roll out your dough. Lightly dust your rolling pin. Special Fancy Trick Number Four: do not over flour your rolling pin or your flat surface – too much flour will make inedible mini pies.

Take half of your dough from the mixing bowl. Plop it onto your floured surface. Starting in the middle of your dough ball, flatten out the dough. If your rolling pin picks up some pie dough, flour it again. Rotate the dough after every roll with the rolling pin. You want the dough to form a circle. If the dough becomes too thin to rotate, don’t pick it up again, but do continue rolling the dough. Special Fancy Trick Number Five: do not overwork the pie dough. Ideally, you should roll it out only once. Make the dough as thin as you can – this is especially important for mini pies.

Take a mug or a cup with a wide rim. Put it on the rolled-out pie dough. Using a knife, cut out a circle of pie dough. Put the pie dough circle in one cup of your cupcake pan's cups. Press it into the cup’s bottom. Using a fork, poke the dough at the bottom of your cup. Crimp the edges for an open-faced pie. For a double-crusted pie, scoop filling into the cup, top it with a second layer of pie dough (make sure the top crust has holes in it, too), and then crimp the mini pie’s edges. Continue filling the cupcake tin with mini pie crusts (the dough recipe I gave will make two nine inch pies and at least twelve mini pies, depending on the size of the pans used).

There, you have it. You can go on and fill cupcake tins, then the world, with mini pies!

Unless you don't trust me. Then, check out these pie dough resources:

The New York Times Recipe for All-Butter Pie Crust

Epicurious.com's Search Results for Pie Crust

I'll leave you with Special Fancy Trick Number Six: keep graham crackers in your pantry, just in case your pastry pie crust fails. No one hates a cookie crust.

Care package!

2008-10-15T18:55:00.007-04:00

I got an awesome care package in the mail today!

I was partnered with Kimber for the October PPK care package swap, and while technical difficulties (i.e. stupid post office hours), will prevent me from mailing my package until Saturday, Kimber's a bit more reliable. And let me tell you, I am psyched to dive into these goodies!

I'm having issues with blogger photo at the moment, but Kimber sent me:

1) "Just like Honey" syrup
2) Oatmeal Mint Handsoap
3) Sinner's Handwipes
4) Barley
5) Vitamin C gummy candies
6) Russian chocolate-fruit candies
7) A giant vegan cookie
8) A chocolate almond butter cup
9) dried Turkish apricots
10) spices (berbere, cardamon, gomasio, mint)
11) Maple stroopwaffles
12) Maple syrup candy
13) Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce
14) Nugo dark chocolate chocolate chip bar
15) Soy nuts
16) Patchouii matches
17) A funny card

I would say that she went above and beyond! I can only hope that my package measures up!

Mom's German Potato Salad

2008-10-13T05:43:00.000-04:00

I give my mother a lot of crap about her cooking, but the truth is that she's a more accomplished cook than I am. She knows how to can vegetables, makes a perfect fudge frosting (recent caramel experiments aside, I am afraid of candy-making) and her pastry pie crusts are always perfection.

Mom's recipes are the classic kinds, the ones that you take to family get-togethers and potlucks again and again. Hopefully you'll enjoy this German potato salad as much as my family always does.

Mom's German Potato Salad

Ingredients:

1 recipe or package tempeh bacon, optional

5 large potatoes, red or white
1 tbsp oil
1 large onion, sliced
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water

Chop up the potatoes into large but bite-able chunks, then boil them in salted water until they are tender, around 20 minutes. Drain the potatoes and put them aside.

Put the oil in a large skillet. Add the onion and a little course salt, and saute the onion in the oil until it becomes brown and translucent. Add the faux bacon. Mix together the flour, sugar, salt and black pepper. Lower the heat and add the flour mixture to the onions and bacon. Stir everything together until it looks like a brown mess, then add the apple cider vinegar and water. Increase the heat to bring the liquid to a boil, let it boil for one minute, or until it becomes very thick. Take it off the heat.

In a large bowl, combine the potatoes with the onion-bacon mixture. Stir everything together until the potatoes are well-coated in the sauce. Serve warm or cold. This makes enough salad for about five hungry people.

Vegan MoFo Seitan Smackdown #4 - Joanna's Beer Brats

2008-10-12T08:41:00.006-04:00

Sometimes pictures speak louder than words.

My friend, Omoleye, and I made these for an "Oktobeerfest" party last night, using Joanna's variation on Julie Hasson's recipe. I'm guessing that our beer (a pumpkin ale) simply wasn't stale enough, because the brats exploded during their half-hour steam bath. And, uh, hilariousness happened ...

The brats tasted well enough anyway. We even got compliments from the meat-eating quotient, after they finished laughing their asses off.

Verdict: They satisfied my once-a-year desire to eat a sausage-shaped thing covered with sauerkraut and mustard on a bun. If you do try these, let your beer sit out for a long time before mixing it with the dry ingredients.

Vegan Mofo Seitan Smackdown #3 - Julie Hasson's Seitan Sausage

2008-10-10T20:25:00.000-04:00

My friends, the hype is real.

When Julie Hasson first debuted her Spicy Italian Vegetarian Sausage, I watched the blogosphere catch on fire with a raised eyebrow. Fake meat? Yuck! Why the obsession?

Well, I have obviously come around on seitan, and Hasson's the best recipe that I've tried so far. The flavoring's wonderful (fennel seeds, mmm!), the texture's soft with a nice, chewy bite. Even better, these sausages steam up in just thirty minutes!

Verdict: *Love.*

Heinous Pictures of Awesome Folks

2008-10-09T05:14:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, some friends and I journeyed to D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood to dine at Vegetarian Soul. I'm not sure "dine" is the right word – you order in a cafeteria line, the food comes piled (and I do mean piled) in styrofoam containers. There's not much in the way of lighting or acoustics. And yet - the food is greasy, fatty, creamy goodness, exactly what your Southern Grandma used to make. Unless you didn't have a Southern Grandma. Then it's just plain diet-breaking goodness.

The spinach lasagna is nicely flavored with a very creamy, cheese-like filling. The macaroni salad is stellar. Sides, like collards and curried coleslaw, are flavorful despite their stay under the heat lamps. Choices are limited, the restaurant only serves two entrees per dinner session, and it makes its milkshakes on a rotating schedule. I have heard good things about the peanut butter milkshakes, but Saturday is mango and peach night, so I saved room for the oatmeal raisin cookie that Luciana brought me from Sticky Fingers.

Top picture: Luciana and Laura.

Below: Meghan, Macaroni and Cheese with Curried Cabbage and Collards, Laura, and Lasagna with Collards.

Why You Should Follow the Recipe (At Least Once In Awhile)

2008-10-08T05:00:00.001-04:00

My inability to follow a recipe is no big secret. Sure, I pour over cookbooks. But when it comes to making dinner, I tend to ignore the instructions on the page.

"Oh, so you put pomegranate with rice? Cool! But what if I use bulgur instead of rice and change all the spices and hey! I kinda feel like soup, so let's dump apricot tea over the bulgur and see what happens." That is the way I work, and for the most part, I don't regret it. I've come up with some pretty wonderful meals. Of course, I've also ended up with some clonkers. That is the price I pay.

But here's the thing - if you're going to write recipes, you better start reading them. Because instructions are hard to communicate. For example, let's say that a recipe calls for salsa, like Joni's Ortega Burgers (pictured above). The salsa you use – its consistency and intensity – can change the outcome. Joni was smart enough to tell me what to do with a thick salsa. I might not have been so kind to my readers.

Following a recipe teaches you how others cook. For example, you must list the ingredients in the order that you use them. Maybe some people are smart enough to get their ingredients together before they start baking, but I tend to flit and flitter around the kitchen, grabbing bowls, spoons and spices as I go. "Oh, I need cornmeal? Where's the cornmeal? Oh, and cream of tartar, better add that now ..." If I'm supposed to put in the oil first, the ingredient list better start off with the word "oil." This might seem intuitive, but if you don't ever follow recipes, you might not write them in a way that anybody else can understand (I'm looking at you, GG McG).

Reading recipes teaches you to become a better cook and baker. Take the Chewy Oatmeal Cookies from the book Veganomicon. The first time I made them, I didn't have all the ingredients I needed, so I made substitutions, and I ended up with puffy cookies. I closely followed the recipe the second time. Better, but still puffy. Then I figured out the problem – I prefer my oatmeal cookies with quick, not rolled oats. A simple adjustment, but one that made all of the difference. Tinkering with the Veganomicon recipe taught me how to approach all oatmeal cookie recipes from this point forward.

So to lamely sum up this post: I like writing and testing my own recipes, but following recipes is important, too. Plus, you get to eat stuff like Joni's Agave Mustard Balsamic Vinaigrette Marinated Grilled Portobello Burgers. The recipe's a mouthful in more ways than one!

Why I Don't Mind Kitchen Mistakes (Gluten-Free Autumn Blondies)

2008-10-07T05:00:00.000-04:00

It has been less than a week into MoFo, and I have already posted twice about mistakes. My first attempt at recreating my great-grandmother's cookies didn't quite work, my gluten-free blondies came out like goop. But I'm not crying over spilled milk, or whatever. Food mistakes aren't mistakes, but part of a tasty, tasty process.

After a batch of baked goods, I decide what I do and don't like about the results, then adjust to make cookies softer or puffier, brownies lower-fat. And if that means that I constantly have extra baked goods lying around, that just means that my friends and family will have to suffer.

After making goopy blondies, I tried again. I also wanted to make the blondies less expensive, so I used canola oil instead of Earth Balance. The results? Well, I think the texture must improved. But I'm not crazy about the taste of the flour itself. If you make these and don't mind gluten in your blondies, I would just just use all-purpose flour. My next attempt (which will wait until I get another can of pumpkin) will combine the two recipes I made - hopefully, by the end of this process, I will have terrific pumpkin blondies to show for it.

Gluten-Free Autumn Blondies

Ingredients for the blondies:

1/4 cup canola oil
2 tbsp blackstrap molasses
2 tbsp brown rice syrup
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 flax egg (1 tbsp ground flax seeds, 3 tbsp water)
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour
2/3 cup dried cranberries, plumped up in hot water
1/3 cup sliced almonds

Ingredients for the cinnamon glaze:

1/4 cup Earth Balance buttery sticks
1 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1-2 tbsp soy milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the Earth Balance, brown rice syrup, molasses and brown sugar together. Add the flax egg, pumpkin, vanilla, spices and salt and throughly combine. Slowly beat in the flour, then fold in the cranberries and almonds. Line a pan with foil, spray it with canola oil, and spoon the batter into the pan. Bake for twenty minutes, or until the top begins to crack. Remove the blondies from the oven and let them cool.

For the frosting, pour the powdered sugar into a bowl. Add maple syrup, vanilla, and cinnamon, then add the soy milk, a teaspoon at a time, until the icing becomes spreadable. Drizzle it over the cooled blondies.

Vegan MoFo Seitan Smackdown #2 - Lachesis' Seitan of Greatness

2008-10-06T04:00:00.000-04:00

When I looked at the recipe for Lachesis' Seitan of Greatness, I felt certain that this would be my favorite of the bunch. I dump cinnamon and allspice in everything, so I was happy to see those spices show up in seitan.

Until I tasted the finished seitan. The texture's fine, a bit denser than the recipes I tried earlier, and the seitan comes together easily enough, but the flavoring just didn't work for me. It tasted a little ... sweet? Just not what I was expecting, or, it turns out, what I wanted in a seitan.

Verdict: Liked the texture, not the flavor. I could tinker with the spices a bit, omitting the cinnamon and switching out the cayenne pepper for chili pepper, but I've found enough other recipes that I like as-is that I probably won't make this recipe again.

Vegan Mofo Iron Chef Challenge (Candied Ginger Apples)

2008-10-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

When Katie at Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk proposed an Iron Chef Challenge for Vegan MoFo, I knew that she was looking to give cooks a chance to be creative and bold, to prove that exciting dishes don't require foie gras or roe. When she challenged MoFoers to create a dish using apples and ginger, she also challenged us to aspire beyond the boiled tofu on which all vegetarians live.

Except that I wanted to make the most obvious combination possible. My first thought was to mix apple cider and ginger ale, but I didn't have any ginger ale and had already finished my shopping for the week.

This was the next most obvious idea that came to mind - dumping ginger on top of apples. You could say that I suck. I am going to say that I work in a minimalist aesthetic that focuses on elemental essences, albeit with added sugar.

Candied Ginger Apples

Ingredients:

1/4 cup soy cream
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/8 cup water
2 tbsp Earth Balance buttery sticks
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
1 tsp 100 percent vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup candied ginger, minced
6 small apples

Put the cornstarch in the cream, then whisk them together with a fork. Set aside.

In a sauce pan on the lowest heat setting, melt the Earth Balance with the brown sugar, brown rice syrup and water. Let the sugar come to a boil, then stir it constantly for four minutes. Remove the sugar from the heat. Add the cornstarch slurry, salt and the vanilla extract. Put the mixture back on the heat and let it boil until it starts to become a little thicker. Stir in the candied ginger.

Line a dish with parchment paper. Put the apples on the parchment paper. Spoon the melted sugar over the apples, making sure to pile candied ginger on top. Let cool. Give the apples to your friends. Or eat them yourself. Sugar highs are both legal and fun.

Super, Super Gooey Gluten-Free Blondies

2008-10-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you fail. Sometimes you think you want something, achieve it, and then realize it's not what you really wanted. And that's a whole 'nother type of failure.

I didn't get these blondies quite right. By that, I mean that I made exactly what I wanted to create – sweet, super gooey blondies. Except that I made them too gooey. There just aren't enough solid ingredients in these things. They are pure sugar with a fragile, baked good shell.

My own impatience didn't help - I think they might have held together much better if I had let them cool. But I wanted super, super gooey blondies with a cinnamon glaze, and I wanted them right there and then. So I ended up with super, super gooey lumps covered with warm, melty cinnamon glaze. I am complaining, but maybe I shouldn't be.

Next time, however, I think I will add another half-cup to one-cup flour to make a stiffer dough, and see if that works better. These are for a gluten-free friend, so I want them perfect. Or y'know, cooked. Nevertheless, I will share the recipe ... maybe you can do better with them?

Super, Super Gooey Gluten-Free Blondies

Ingredients for the blondies:

1/4 cup Earth Balance sticks
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp ground flax seeds
1 cup pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour
2/3 cup dried cranberries, plumped up in hot water

Ingredients for the cinnamon glaze:

1/4 cup Earth Balance buttery sticks
1 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1-2 tbsp soy milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the Earth Balance, brown rice syrup, maple syrup and brown sugar together. Add the flax seeds, pumpkin, vanilla, spices and salt and throughly combine. Slowly beat in the flour, then fold in the cranberries. Line a pan with foil, spray it with canola oil, and spoon the batter into the pan. Bake for forty minutes to an hour, or until the top begins to crack. Remove the blondies from the oven and let them cool.

For the frosting, cream the Earth Balance with the maple syrup and vanilla. Add the powdered sugar and the cinnamon, then add the soy milk, a teaspoon at a time, until the icing becomes spreadable. Put it over the cooled blondies if you want frosting, put it over the warm blondies if you want a thin glaze. Put the blondies in the fridge to cool.

Vegan MoFo Seitan Smackdown #1 - Joni's Baked Seitan

2008-10-03T22:00:00.000-04:00

Up until two days ago, I had never made seitan (sei-TAN, not Satan) in my life. I had tasted it before, I think, in some restaurants around D.C. – Vegetate sells some mean sliders, Java Green's vegan bulgogi's worth one or two late-night trips to the fridge – but making seitan seemed like too much work. Washing the starch out of flour? Kneading? No way!

Even cheater's seitan, the type made from vital wheat gluten, takes one hour to 90 minutes in the oven or on the stove. I'm a busy girl. Quick-cooking quinoa's more my style, thank you very much.

Except that I started testing for Joni's upcoming book, Just the Burgers: 101 Ho'made Veggie Burgers. I noticed that Joni was testing a seitan slider recipe. I love all things miniature – seitan or no, I was making sliders!

And Joni's seitan – at least the two recipes I have tried so far – is tasty and savory and very flavorful, yummy both in burgers and on top of salads. It is safe to say that I am a convert – and that I now feel compelled to try out every seitan recipe I can find. Okay, by that I mean at least two other seitan recipes. I will try Lachesis' Seitan of Greatness, and the seitan from the cookbook Vegan with a Vengeance. I might also attempt a sausage or two, but we'll see if I get to that. If you have an awesome recipe to share, let me know and I will try that, too.

Caveats:

- I am quartering each recipe. I just can't eat that much seitan!
- I will announce substitutions.

I made two of Joni's seitan recipes for her upcoming book, the seitan from her stuffed seitan burger recipes (pictured above) and for her seitan sliders (skipped the called-for cayenne pepper, bad photo that I will not share). The two recipes came out similar. Both seitans had a bread-like quality, which came out more with additional simmering. Granted, these were my first seitans, so it's possible that I made a mistake that changed their texture.

Both were equally simple to prepare.I liked the flavor of each, so it's hard to decide which one I preferred. On a whim, I will say that I preferred the seitan from the seitan sliders. But it is only a whim.

Verdict: Tasty seitan. Great over roasted winter squash on salads and (doh!) in burgers. Softer texture, easy to prepare if you have time to run your oven. You probably have most of the ingredients in your pantry already. I would make either recipe again.

Cookies = Fail

2008-10-02T18:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the world conspires against you. Today (or yesterday, maybe, for who knows when the power will come back on) has been one of those days.

Headache, check. Writing about sex enhancers at work, check. Getting stuck in the rain, check. Getting on the wrong train, missing my stop, getting home late, overeating, having the power go out? Check plus plus.

And yet here I am, diligently typing out an entry for Vegan MoFo. It’s been a failure of a day, so it seems fitting to discuss a failure of a cookie.

These are not my great-grandmother’s molasses cookies. I tried to get close. I really did. But no one told Great-Grandma McGinty how to write a decent recipe. For example, pick one list of ingredient measurements. Don’t give me two lists with an “or” between them.

This was the start of the cookie recipe:

2 cups sugar or 1 cup sugar
1 cup molasses 2 cups molasses

WTF, GG McG? Look, I get variable measurements when you’re discussing fruit pie, because berry bushes can produce tarter or sweeter fruit than their neighbors. But one cup or two cups of molasses? Last time I checked, molasses is liquid. That means that the rest of the recipe will be different depending on the option you choose. Especially since you want me to use the same amount of flour either way.

And let me tell you kids, the directions only got crazier from there. I could choose between two eggs or one cup of shortening. Salt or ginger? How to decide!? Following the recipe made me feel like I was reading one of those “you determine the ending!” stories. Make the right decision, you bake soft, pillow-y molasses cookies. Choose wrongly, and a dragon eats your ass.

Oh, and the recipe also calls for bona fide illegal ingredients! Raw sour milk? Not worth the criminal record, thank you very much.

So I guessed my way towards a vegan molasses cookie. The verdict? They are okay. Tasty even. But they are not GG McG’s cookies.

I think I’ve gotten closer since I originally tried out the recipe, but until I recreate my favorite molasses cookies (and get my mother, who better remembers what the cookies are supposed to taste like, to confirm their righteousness), I’ll share these pictures of the cookies that broke this girl’s heart.

Once perfected, I will put the recipe in the mini-zine I want to give as a Christmas gift to the friends and fam. But knowing my own work ethic, I'll probably never finish the damn thing!

Next: GG McG’s brown bread. Anyone have any idea how many cups of graham flour it takes to turn six cups of sour milk into a stiff dough?

Mofo #1 - Preview of Coming Attractions!

2008-10-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

Thirty-one posts about vegan food! In thirty-one days! Excuse my overuse of exclamation points!

Contrary to often-expressed opinion, thirty-one posts about vegan food doesn't mean thirty-one posts about tofu (though the white stuff is versatile enough). Since I moved to Arlington, VA (a mere 6 miles from downtown Washington D.C.), I have found it easy – beyond easy – to eat vegan by accident. So I'm craving a Little Devil? Well, there's Sticky Fingers Bakery, where I can get a fabulous, from-scratch version. I want vegan sushi? Vegan soul food? Vegan bulgogi, brunch, or chocolate lava cake? Lazy as I am, I'm sick of typing in links, but surely you get the idea. Vegan food in D.C.. There's lots of it. It's tasty.

Anywhoo, here's just a few of the things I am planning to post about this month. I might not get to everything, but whatev.

- Recipes for the mini zine I may or may not be trying to write by the holidays!
- Vegan Halloween treats!
- Sexy shots of the burgers I'm testing for Joni!
- Potlucks and meet-ups galore!
- Yoga-talk!
- The fabulous birthday dinner I will make for my mother!
- Seitan smackdown!
- "Ask a vegetarian" column. If I don't get any real questions, I will just write in satirical fun!
- Apologies for not having anything interesting to write about!

Hope you're as excited for MoFo as I am!

Food for Political Thought

2008-09-28T21:21:00.000-04:00

I snapped this shot at D.C.'s Crafty Bastards arts and crafts fair in Adam's Morgan.

So many crafty bastards showed up, selling everything from screen-printed totes (I bought a bright yellow one with a monkey on it. I couldn't resist) to cat-print vests to plush cupcakes and moldy toast.

I especially enjoyed the "tofu for obama" toys, though as far as I know, Obama's yet to take a firm pro-tofu stance in the Senate. I guess "arugula for Obama" sounded too elitist?

More photos:

Today was a great day, since I managed to fit in yoga class, vegan huevos rancheros at Asylum, Crafty Bastards and some recipe testing for Joni's upcoming veggie burger book. But you'll hear more about that in October, when I am desperate for posting material!

Vegan MoFo

2008-09-20T10:16:00.000-04:00

I have been neglecting the blog lately, so maybe committing to posting once a day, everyday through October wasn't my brightest idea. I have a feeling you guys won't see a recipe every day, but one-paragraph posts about the weather and digestive issues until my blog degenerates into a collection of random photographs and personal anecdotes.

Anywhoo, if you are interested in the Vegan Month of Food (also known as Vegan Mofo) drop a line at the Post Punk Kitchen Blog.

Oh, and here's a random photograph of a recipe-in-progress (caramel mocha mini pies):