I really need to get to the grocery store today. I’ve been complaining for two days that there is no food in the house. Of course, that’s a ridiculous statement. There is a ton of food in the house. But, in a way that annoys a lot of people – in particular Mark and Fortinbras – all of my food takes the form of ingredients. I rarely have pre-packaged foods around. So if you are hungry, you actually have to make something. From scratch. Sometimes it even annoys me, honestly, though not usually. Anyway, I always have a ton of grains, tinned tomatoes, flour, dried beans, etc. You would not actually starve if trapped in my house for a month or two with no access to a grocery store. But it’s when I have no fresh vegetables around that I start saying I have no food. I’m kind of at a loss at what to do without fresh vegetables as a starting point. Mark kindly went out and got us some dinner from the Whole Foods salad bars last night as I was going out later and didn’t have time to contemplate how to deal with this situation, or just solve it by doing the shopping.

But this morning I was again confronted with the problem. What I did have on hand, though, was a bunch of leftover ingredients from meals earlier in the week. I had some pinto beans, nutritional yeast “cheese”, and half a tin of tomatoes. I got excited thinking, “tofu scramble!”, but alas, no tofu. So I started wondering what I could fry up in a skillet with those things instead of tofu. And concluded “rice”. So I put some rice in the rice cooker and started prepping. What resulted probably wasn’t anything most Americans would consider a very breakfasty food, but I’ve called it breakfast because I ate it as breakfast. It would really be appropriate and tasty any time of day. And anyway, the time of day I ate it was noon, so I guess it was more lunch or brunch. Whatever. I called it breakfast, I photographed it, I ate it, it was good, Mark liked it, I’m sharing it.

Mexican Breakfast

1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
1 or 2 pickled jalapenos, chopped
1 cup diced or crushed tomatoes
1 cup cooked pinto beans (black beans would also be good)
1 cup broth
1/2 – 1 cup Yeast Cheeze
3 or 4 cups cooked rice

diced avocado, optional
fresco sauce (this was some cilantro and serrano pepper sauce I got at Whole Foods), optional
Tabasco sauce, optional

In a large, preferably cast iron, skillet, heat some oil, then add the onions and fry for a few minutes, then add the bell pepper and fry another few minutes. Add the tomatoes, jalapenos, and pinto beans and saute a minute. Add the broth and cheeze, stirring to incorporate the two until they are smooth. Let the mixture become bubbly and thicken slightly. Stir in the rice. Top with avocado if you have it, and serve with fresco and/or Tabasco sauce.

In prior food news, I celebrated the new Vegan Pizza Day holiday on January 29 by making a new kind of pizza dough. I’m going to do a post on this crust very soon because it was gooooood.

Mark is sitting near me watching Mitch Hedberg videos and it’s making it very hard for me to concentrate on this post because I keep laughing. I will try to soldier on to bring you some kitten photos, though.

Gomez has a lot of nicknames. He’s Mez, Mezzie, Mezzikins, Mexicans. I mention this progression of names just because this post was about Mexican Breakfast. So here is Mexicans being extremely adorable.

His eyes are still both green and gold. I thought maybe the green would disappear as he got older, but he’s 11 months now and they still have the same depth of gorgeous colours as they did when he was a baby. They are really quite MEZmerizing. (I hilariate myself.)

Also, Torticia is often called Tortilla or Tortilla Chip. (As well as the more Italian-sounding Tortellini.)

And finally, my mother wanted me to share a picture of her tortoiseshell, commonly referred to as “the most beautiful cat in the world”. This is Casey, from 1995. Mom lost Casey a few years ago and hasn’t been able to replace her. Other than their colouring, Casey and Tortilla Chip have very little in common; their personalities were very different. But Casey was a big, soft, very sweet, quiet, and yes, very, very beautiful girl.

I made some Faux Pho for dinner last night and made way too many noodles. So today when I was rummaging in the refrigerator for something to make for lunch, it was obvious I should base it around the leftover rice noodles, and maybe it was the peanut butter sriracha cookie I was nibbling while I thought, but the first thing that came to mind was pad thai. Now, pad thai is really not a very time consuming dish to make to begin with, so there is little need to try to speed it up. And traditionally there is no peanut butter in pad thai. But for a nearly-instant lunch, this was really very tasty. If, like me, most of your at-work lunches are leftovers, this is something you can whip together in three minutes before you leave the house and warm gently in the microwave at the office. I’m afraid my measurements – loose at the best of times – are non-existent here. It’s really up to you to balance out the sweet, salty, and sour flavors the way you like it.

Fastest Pad Thai Ever

cooked rice noodles (this is a great way to use up leftovers, which I tossed very lightly with sesame oil before storing)
peanut butter (smooth or crunchy is okay)
tamarind pulp or concentrate
soy sauce
jaggery (my favorite sugar, available in Indian groceries, and Wegmans is now carrying this product) or brown sugar
sriracha
protein, such as cubed tofu or shredded seitan (optional)
shredded or thinly sliced veggies (optional) – my Quick Pickled Carrots are perfect

Put the peanut butter, tamarind, soy sauce, jaggery or sugar, and sriracha in a blender in proportions that are pleasing to your palate and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust flavors. Thin with water and blend again. Heat for a minute or two in the microwave (or on the stovetop in a small saucepan), and then whisk. If your noodles are cold, warm them in the microwave for a minute or two. Toss everything together.

The pickled carrots are particularly brilliant here because the provide the extra tang that you usually get by squeezing a lime over your noodles, so if you don’t happen to have a lime on hand, you’re covered. For my protein, I used a handful of the shredded seitan chicken from Nature’s Soy, which I get at Super H. Top this with crushed peanuts, cilantro, and/or bean sprouts if you have them on hand, but if you don’t and you’re just going for super fast, this was quite tasty as is.

And today is a Torticia day. Torticia is a silly little animal. I think she’s getting a little pudgy, and although she and Gomez spend hours racing around the house all day, she’s been a bit lazy when I’m playing with her. Whereas Gomez leaps around like an Olympic gymnast trying to catch dangling toys, Torticia often rolls on her back and waits for the toy to come to her. She’s roly poly.

She’s lazy.

She takes naps to recover from naps.

She’s also an extremely cuddly, affectionate, friendly, tolerant, fuzzy, little ball of wonderfulness. This morning when I woke to her sleeping between my legs, as soon as she realized I awake, she snuggled up on my chest and purred and purred and purred and begged to be petted, and snuggled some more, and was basically so incredibly cute it brought tears to my eyes. She’s so loving and warm, and extremely soft and silky. It’s just a joy to touch her.

And then she goes and does something classy like this:

Although really she’s probably the most beautiful cat in the universe.

You may have noticed that I don’t feature dessert recipes very often. The reason is I simply don’t make them very often because I’m not much of a dessert person. I’d usually prefer a second helping of the main course instead of dessert. In fact, I make desserts so infrequently that when I do bake something like cookies, Mark is very surprised and confused. Because I don’t make that many desserts, I’m not particularly good at it. Although I rarely follow recipes when I’m doing regular cooking, I almost always follow recipes exactly, or close to it, when I’m baking (bread, too, although I am good at that and do it often), which is another reason I don’t have many dessert recipes here. Nonetheless, I came across a dessert recipe recently that I wanted to try and since it’s one I found on the internet, I can share it with you. I can take absolutely no credit for this one; it’s all The Sugar Pixie‘s. The only changes I made to her recipe were to veganize it.

And with that buildup, I introduce:

Peanut Butter Sriracha Cookies

Okay, now you know why I had to make them! You know we go through a bottle of sriracha a week, right? And peanut butter is one of the world’s most perfect foods. Why shouldn’t they go together in cookie form? The original recipe is here: http://www.thesugarpixie.net/2010/11/28/peanut-butter-sriracha-cookies/; all I did was make substitutions for the butter and eggs. I also halved the recipe since Mark and I don’t need to eat five dozen cookies between us.

1/2 cup soy margarine, softened (ordinarily I’d have used Earth Balance’s Buttery Sticks, but I was out and there was snow, so I just used the kind in the plastic tub)
3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 Tbsp sriracha
egg replacer for 1 egg (I used 1 scant Tbsp flax seeds, ground, blended with 3 Tbsp water)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups + 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour (a little more if necessary)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
extra white sugar

First I made my “egg”; I put a scant tablespoon of flax seeds in my spice grinder, …

… ground them to a powder, then added 3 tablespoons water and blended until smooth.

Put the white and brown sugars, peanut butter, and margarine into a mixing bowl …

… and cream.

Add the vanilla, sriracha, and egg replacer …

and mix until well blended.

In a separate large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Add the peanut butter mixture …

… and mix. After a few stirs, it’s easiest to just use your hands. I used a little too much flour; your dough should be slightly less dry than mine. I’ve adjusted the amount called for above (the original recipe was correct; I just added 1 1/2 cups right away and shouldn’t have).

Refrigerate for an hour. Mine was actually refrigerated for two or more hours while I was out shoveling snow and because it was a little overly dry, I let it sit out and warm back up to room temperature before dealing with it. I probably could have just baked them without refrigerating the dough and it may have been easier.

Roll the dough into 1-inch balls. If you weren’t as aggressive with the flour as I was, you could use a small, 1-inch scoop but my dough was too stiff for that.

Dip each ball into a small bowl of sugar.

Place each ball on a cookie sheet. You’ll notice here my balls are flattened. Because my dough was so crumbly, I made disks instead of balls so they didn’t fall apart when I smooshed them later.

Flatten each cookie with the back of a fork in a criss-cross fashion. Again, because my dough was crumbly, I just did this lightly to get the traditional peanut butter cookie pattern.

Bake for 10 minutes in a pre-heated 375-degree (Fahrenheit) oven and remove to wire racks for cooling.

Mine didn’t turn out as pretty as Sugar Pixie’s because of the extra flour, but they tasted just great. I don’t know that I would have guessed they had sriracha in them. You don’t really taste it at first, then your tongue feels a bit warm, then you just feel like you would if you had just eaten a peanut butter cookie, which is happy! Actually, I baked one sheet of the cookies for a minute longer than the other, so they are crunchier, and that batch is noticeably hotter than the other, which is interesting considering it was the same dough. I’ll be making these again, and be more careful about the flour.

Also,

Who else is snowed in? We got a mess yesterday, beginning with rain and sleet all afternoon, a slushy mess that washed away all the salt that had been put down to pre-treat the roads, which then turned to a heavy snow, pretty much at the minute they predicted it would – 4 p.m., just in time for the afternoon rush hour – dumping about 5 inches. We’ve still been fortunate so far this year compared to the rest of the East Coast (even to the south!), so I shouldn’t complain, though I probably will because I hate this stuff! I have even less right to complain because from what I’m hearing, I think much of our county is without power right now, and though our lights flickered several times last night, they stayed on.

PLUS, working from home enabled me to bake bread, a treat I don’t usually get mid-week! My lunch today was the Barbecued Tempeh Sandwich Filling from Peter Berley’s The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen on fresh-from-the-oven multi-grain bread, smeared with Berley’s Spicy Sun-Dried Tomato Spread, topped with pickled carrots and a squirt of sriracha. Served with broccoli slaw.

When I sat down to begin this post, I was going to apologize for not having a recipe for you in this post. I have one coming later today, but because it might be photo-heavy, I thought I’d get some other pictures out of the way first. But then I realized I could tell you how I made the carrots and call that a recipe, so I’d feel better about making you look at a bunch of pictures. Berley suggested shredded carrots as a topping for the sandwich, but I’d read Jes‘s Spicy Noodles with Tofu recipe earlier in the day and had been intrigued by the quick pickled carrots it included. I’m looking forward to making that entire dish very soon, but for my sandwich, I decided to make slightly more involved pickled carrots, though they were nearly as quick. So here you go:

Quick Pickled Carrots

2 large carrots, shaved, shredded, julienned, spiralized, or very thinly sliced
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2-3 cloves garlic, pressed

Whisk together all ingredients except the carrots, then mix in the carrots, cover, and refrigerate for at least half an hour. I put mine in a pickle press just because I have one, but that’s completely unnecessary. I shaved my carrots into long, thin peels using a vegetable peeler, but since I was using them as a sandwich topping, I wish I had used the spiralizer, which would have made them easier to eat on the sandwich. The shavings are good for using as a little side pickle, though. These were even better the next day.

So. Snow. We’re trapped:

Okay, the Canadians are probably politely trying to refrain from laughing. After seeing Zoa‘s pictures of the snow at her house, it does feel a little pathetic to post that one and whine about it. But there’s a thick layer of ice under that snow that’s making it impossible for this Miata driver to even attempt to leave, especially considering I slid into a ditch after hitting an unexpected patch of ice a couple of weeks ago. (Mark, who was drugged up from his root canals, the Miata, and I were all fine; it was mostly just surprising.) I’m fortunate to have the ability to work from home when necessary, so there’s no point in joining the traffic fracas, with downed power lines and trees, unplowed streets, and numerous non-working traffic lights.

I’m not such a curmudgeon I won’t even go outside, though, and the light was nice when I finished breakfast, so I grabbed my camera and looked for photo ops. My favorite was this tiny icicle dangling from a thin tree branch.

It’s shaped like a music note, which I found appropriate because all around me was a symphony of dripping, melting icicles, and weighty snow plopping to the ground from bowed trees. The music note icicle was only about an inch long. It can be difficult to photograph such small things when you are shooting into the air and it is blindingly bright all around you. I was using auto-focus, but a slight breeze was causing that tiny branch to sway, and at the huge aperture I using in order to blur the background, the tiniest movement by either the branch or the camera would cause the lens to focus at a drastically different distance. Would you believe that icicle is actually right smack in the middle of this photograph? It is that blurriness you can almost make out.

Moving on around the house, here is the patio, where you can also see the outside of my sunroom/library.

Here I am peeping into the sunroom from the backdoor. I’m meant to be in that chair, working!

Whilst I was peeping in, Torticia was peeping out:

Gomez has been looking out a lot, too. This is him watching the sleet yesterday:

And no, they aren’t always so placid. They’re actually quite bad. And they wrestle a lot.

In other news, I know I haven’t been posting much, even though I’ve been home quite a bit. The reason is I’ve been doing this really bizarre thing called sewing. If you’ve read the few craft posts I have sprinkled throughout this blog, you know that I hate and am terrible at sewing (although for some reason, I keep doing it). I think I mentioned a few posts ago that I finally broke down and bought a new sewing machine in December after almost having a meltdown while making gift bags this year. It turns out that I hate sewing much less when I have a machine that works. I’m still pretty terrible at it, but I am becoming more confident.

This is a common view from my seat at the sewing table:

He attacks and chews on the thread at the top. He’s very bad! (Both he and Torticia also try attacking the rotary blade when I’m cutting fabric and are thus banned from the sewing room whenever it’s out.) Anyway, my big project was making my mom a rag quilt for her birthday. She just received it in the mail yesterday, so I can post these pictures now. The kittens were very fond of the quilt.

Here’s what the quilt looked like; I couldn’t get any photos that didn’t involve a kitten.

Would you believe I actually free-motion quilted it? I barely can (believe it). I did tell Mom not to look at the quilting too closely, though, since I’m even worse at that than I am sewing in a straight line. It’s a very weird sensation at first, but it’s kind of fun. If there is any interest, I may be talked into writing up a tutorial on making rag quilts. You don’t have to free-motion quilt them, in fact, I haven’t seen any instructions that even recommend that you do (usually you just sew an X through each quilt sandwich). I’m just insane.

This is what happened when I tried to pack the quilt up to mail it. Sigh.

That’s it for now. Stayed tuned for a post with a real recipe later today. I promise no more snow pictures. I can’t promise no more kitten photos, though.

Feel sorry for Smark. The poor boy had two root canals yesterday. I made him some “Cream” of Asparagus Soup for dinner last night, and I thought maybe I’d have to change the name of this blog to I Eat Soup (which would be fine with me, I love soup), but today he said he was feeling up for something more substantial. I still didn’t think it would be a good idea to make, say, ddukbokki, so I peered into the cupboards and tried to think of things that are fairly soft to eat but don’t make you feel like an invalid. Pasta seemed like a good bet, but I’m inexplicably out of any shapes and didn’t feel like straight up spaghetti. I did, however, have lasagna noodles. I’m not sure what possessed me to make a Mexican lasagna, but that’s what I did.

This lasagna can be as easy or difficult to make as you’d like. You can either use pre-packaged foods for most of the layers or make everything from scratch. I was looking for a pretty easy meal tonight, but I did have to make what I didn’t have on hand from scratch, so mine was a hybrid. By the way, Trader Joe’s No-Boil lasagna noodles have transformed my life! Years ago, when I was first learning to cook, I hosted a dinner party. Even before I learned to cook, I had the terrible habit of trying new dishes for dinner parties, although I used far more actual recipes back then. For this particular party, I was making some sort of vegan lasagna thing and the recipe said I could use no-boil noodles, which I thought would be a real time-saver. Well, the dish was very tasty and was a big hit with my guests, but the noodle were a bit underdone and sort of ruined it. Since then I have hated no-boil noodles and stayed far, far away from them. Consequently, making lasagna always seemed a bit arduous. I’d do it – it’s one of Mark’s favorite foods and I’m quite fond of it myself – but cooking the noodles is sort of a pain; you never end up with a pan full of perfect noodles – half of them are always broken, and they stick together before you’re ready for them. Then a few months ago I saw no-boil noodles at Trader Joe’s and decided to take a chance on them. They worked perfectly! And they are a fun size: just right for an 8×8″ pan, which makes a great size lasagna for 2 to 4 people. In retrospect, I wonder if my failed dish so long ago simply didn’t have enough liquid in it to fully reconstitute the noodles, but I’ll never know because I’ve long since lost the recipe; all I remember is it involved pine nuts. So if you aren’t close to a Trader Joe’s, feel free to try different no-boil noodles, but just make sure your lasagna is brimming with liquid-y sauce. I can’t vouch for any other no-boil noodles, though.

The first thing you need to make for the Mexican lasagna is nacho sauce.

Nacho Sauce
This uses the Yeast Cheeze recipe from the New Farm Cookbook/Simply Heavenly!. This has been a staple at my parties for years, and is gobbled up even by non-vegans. An ex-boyfriend once told me to bottle and sell it.

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 cups water
1 Tbsp soy margarine
1 tsp prepared mustard (I usually use Dijon)
2 cups salsa – use a thick, chunky, tomato-y kind

Whisk together the flour, nutritional yeast, salt, and garlic powder in a medium pot. Whisk in the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, whisking often, until it thickens. Remove from heat and whisk in the margarine and mustard.

Then whisk in the salsa.

I didn’t have any pre-made salsa so I did this:

I put 3 cloves of pressed garlic, 3 Tbsp minced onion, 1 minced jalapeno, two frozen cubes of cilantro (from Trader Joe’s), some salt, and 3 Tbsp tomato paste into a bowl:

I mixed that all together, then added a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes and mixed well.

And now the lasagna:

Mexican Lasagna

no-boil lasagna noodles (or cooked lasagna noodles)
1 batch Nacho Sauce, recipe above
1 can refried beans (or make your own from dried pintos)
1 1/2 cup veggie crumbles/mince, ground seitan, “beefy” TVP crumbles, or other “beef” substitute (I used 3 crumbled veggie burgers)
veggies of your choice, about 1 or 2 cups (I used corn, onions, and spinach)
taco or enchilada sauce
vegan cheddar “cheese”, optional

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Smear a thin layer of nacho sauce on the bottom of an 8×8″ pan.

Place a layer of noodles on top of it:

Smear the refried beans on the noodles:

Top with some nacho sauce:

Add a layer of noodles, then the “beef”.

Then some more sauce:

Another layer of noodles, then the veggies:

And the rest of the sauce:

Add the last layer of noodles and top with the taco or enchilada sauce, as well as the cheddar “cheese” if using. I used some taco sauce leftover from the other night, which I made simply by blending together a clove or two of garlic, a can of tomato sauce, some onion powder, and some pickled jalapenos and pickled jalapeno juice. I wish I’d had more of the taco sauce; it provided a nice tang but I only had maybe 1/4 cup left. I’d use more like 1/2-3/4 cup next time.

Unless you love cleaning your oven, put the lasagna pan on a cookie sheet. Cover and bake for 45 minutes, then uncover and bake 15 minutes more. Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes before eating. This was good, although I think Mark overestimated his chewing ability because when I asked him after his first bite how it tasted he replied, “painful”. Apparently he hadn’t eaten all day and had forgotten how to chew. He did manage to eat an entire piece, though, and I assure you, it’s not much a workout for your mouth. I think it worked well as a progression food.

This has been a photo-heavy post, so just one picture of my “helpers”:

I hope to be back soon; I haven’t been as busy as I have been the last few months, but I also haven’t been cooking much that’s new or interesting; I’ve been doing a lot of old favorites lately. But that will get boring soon!

Once again finding myself with leftover mashed potatoes, I was trying to find a use for them. Shepherd’s Pie fit the bill!

Shepherd’s Pie

1 large or 2 small onions, chopped
3 large carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 cups vegan “beef” broth
8 oz tomato sauce
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 14.5 oz can your choice of beans (I used pinto)
1 cup frozen peas
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup all purpose flour
TVP, optional
3-4 cups mashed potatoes
vegan cheddar “cheese”, optional

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the carrots, onions, celery, broth, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and thyme in a Dutch oven and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until carrots are just tender, about 5-8 minutes. Add the beans and frozen peas.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a small saucepan then whisk in the flour, forming a roux.

Cook for a couple of minutes, then transfer to the Dutch oven and whisk until it thickens to a gravy. I seemed to have a higher gravy-to-veggie ratio than I wanted, so I added in some TVP to soak up some of the liquid, which ended up being good because pinto beans are so creamy, the TVP gave the final dish some needed texture.

Spread the mashed potatoes on top.

I had an open package of Daiya cheddar, so I sprinkled that on top. That’s totally optional, though.

Bake for half an hour. The gravy bubbled up around my mashed potatoes. It’s definitely not the prettiest dish.

Although it’s impossible to make this shepherd’s pie look attractive in photographs, it was really tasty. I don’t think food gets more comforting than this. Mark literally licked his bowl clean. I will be making this again.

In craft news, after a particularly mighty battle with my sewing machine while making my fabric gift bags this year, I finally broke down and bought a new one. I’d resisted for a while because I didn’t want to spend money on a sewing machine when I hate sewing. Nonetheless, I do actually sew from time to time and I decided my sanity when doing so was worth $159 (which was the price I paid a few weeks ago). So far I’m really liking the new machine, although I haven’t done much more than make the gift bags so far. My dream sewing machine has long been an antique Singer, converted for electricity (honestly, I wasn’t even sure about the electricity) – I just assume they don’t make them like they used to – but I must say, this one seems pretty good and although I always thought it was silly for sewing machines to do all kinds of crazy stitches I’ll never need, some of these ARE pretty neat:

Anyway, does anyone have any favorite sewing projects for relative beginners? Since I’ve forked over the money for the machine, I might as well put it to use. I’ve already decided to make a rag quilt, but my ultimate goal is to be able to make my own clothes. If there are any sewers out there with suggestions for things to keep my interest without frustrating me too much right off the bat, let’s hear them!

And speaking of sewing, although I suck at it, my mother does not. She recently made the kittens a kitty bed. It contains a heating element, and with all this blustery, cold weather we’ve been having, the warm kitten bed is getting a lot of use. Often both kittens are snuggled up on it together. You can’t see much of Mom’s handiwork in this picture (just the blue edges sticking up from the cat tree I’ve set it in), but here is how you’ll usually find the kittens these days:

And with that, I wish everyone a very happy Hogmanay. (I just finished reading a Scottish book that takes place during this time of year, so New Year’s Eve is Hogmanay to me right now. Bring on the vegan haggis!) (The Crow Road, Zoa – don’t want you burning with curiosity!)

Will I ever be not busy? It doesn’t seem like it, but I think my life should calm down in January, so hopefully then I’ll be back to posting more regularly, with my normal obnoxious photographing-every-little-step posts. In the meantime, here is a quick post featuring some soup I made for dinner tonight. It’s really just this Cream of Asparagus Soup recipe on AllRecipes, veganized, though it is also very similar to the Creamless Cream of Asparagus Soup I made earlier this year.

“Cream” of Asparagus Soup

3 Tbsp oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups vegan broth
1 bundle asparagus, chopped
1 large or 2 small potatoes, chopped
2 Tbsp soy sauce
freshly ground pepper, to taste

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven, then add the onion and celery and saute until soft and golden. Stir in the flour, stirring until completely smooth to avoid lumps. Add the vegan broth – I like to heat water to a boil in my electric kettle, then pour it into the pot and add the bouillon – and stir until smooth and thickened. Add the asparagus, potatoes, and soy sauce and bring to a boil …

… then reduce heat and simmer for half an hour or until potatoes and asparagus are soft. Season with as much freshly ground pepper as you’d like. Remove from heat and puree using an immersion blender, or let cool for a while and transfer to a blender in batches and blend …

… then return to pot and bring back up to temperature if necessary before serving.

It doesn’t look all that exciting, but looks can be deceiving – this is really tasty. Mark informed me this was “completely awesome” and had two huge servings…then later while doing the dishes lamented the fact that he ate too much. Mark added rice to his for some texture; I ate mine plain and spooned barbecued beans over my portion of rice. Either way it’s quick, easy, healthy, and delicious.

LA is beginning to seem like so long ago, but I promised you a Cats of LA photo essay, so here you go:

My gosh doesn’t this look like Brachtune?!

Oh wait, that last cat isn’t of LA….yet ..?

OH MY GOD I ate a lot of food in L.A.! By the last day I was starting to miss homecooked meals and swore I was going to eat nothing but salad for the next month to atone for my gluttony. Well, I could happily eat a salad every day for a month, but obviously I’m going to need more than that. I still want to keep things light this week though, so I decided to make soup and salad for dinner last night. Here is the soup I made:

Cabbage Barley Tomato Soup

1 small onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 large or 2 small carrots, chopped
5-6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
4 cups veggie broth
1 14.5 oz can crushed tomatoes (I used fire roasted)
1 14.5 oz can Great Northern (or other similar) beans
1/3 cup pearled barley
several leaves cabbage (I used savoy), chiffonaded or chopped
lots of freshly ground pepper

Heat some oil in a Dutch oven, then add the onions, celery, and carrots, and saute until onions are starting to brown. Add the garlic and saute another minute or two. Deglaze the pot with some sherry, wine, or broth, then add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer until barley is cooked and soup is slightly thickened, about 45 minutes. Serve with crusty bread.

This was pretty good; hearty enough to fill me up (accompanied by a salad) but light enough to not make me feel fat. It tasted even better for lunch today.

I don’t have anything else food related to tell you about L.A., so if you’re here only for the food, that wraps up today’s post. Those interested in a few travel photos can stick around, although I’ll have to warn you I didn’t take any photos at all that I consider particularly great. I don’t usually go for particularly touristy things and I don’t like celebrities, so I didn’t go on any tours or anything and most of what I did was what any resident of the city would do: eat, read, and shop. Of course, my shopping was limited to book and thrift stores, which is all the shopping I can tolerate – no Rodeo Drive for me, thanks. I’ve mentioned some of the bookstores already, but if you didn’t know, L.A. is a great town for thrifting. I went home with 2 or 3 times as many clothes as I arrived with and I think I spent a total of $50 on clothes.

Anyway, on with a pictorial representation of my visit. Here is where you can legally graffiti on Venice Beach:

Obligatory shots of the ubiquitous Hollywood sign:

From Runyon Canyon

From the Observatory

Close up

Foucault pendulum in the Griffith Observatory:

(By the way, I read Foucault’s Pendulum this year and hated it, but I still think the device is neat.)

One of Fortinbras’ favorite places is the Getty Villa and he was anxious to share it with us. It’s a beautiful museum devoted to Greek and Roman antiquity. Half of the beauty of this place is its serene setting; just walking around the grounds is nearly as exciting as looking at the art and artifacts and the architecture of the place itself is in fact true artwork. Here are some random photos:

This is an herb garden. It also contains citrus trees, from which Fortinbras says you can pluck fruit for free in season, however I wouldn’t take Fort’s word for it because he’s a known liar.

When we were reviewing my pics later, Fort wanted to make this one his desktop.

This is papyrus.

Fort’s favorite sculpture; he likes to pretend he is this drunk guy slurring his words at a party.

He also likes this one:

Mark, however, apparently prefers this one:

(This is a reproduction statue visitors are encouraged to touch by the way; Mark doesn’t molest real art.)

The Getty Villa apparently does this to me:

Stay tuned next time for The Cats of L.A., a photo essay by Renae.

I don’t know if I have mentioned before that the company I work for was founded by an Indian American and although we are very diverse, many employees are Indian and consequently a pretty high percentage of us are vegetarian (although I’m the only vegan I know of). What this means is I can generally eat a surprisingly high number of dishes at potlucks and other gatherings.

Today was our annual Thanksgiving potluck and once again I was instructed to bring a salad. When I found my week packed with extracurricular activities, though, including a late night the day before the potluck, I was alarmed. How was I going to put together something stunning – it’s important to me to take any chance I can get to make vegan food that appeals to omnivores and lacto-ovo vegetarians – that either required no time to prepare or would keep for a couple of days?

So earlier this week, I entered some panicky search terms into google and one of the first things that came back was this Strawberry Spinach Salad, which seemed quite promising. There was little prep work and I could do it all in advance except the final assembly. Tuesday night when I had a little extra time, I went shopping and bought the ingredients, then sliced the strawberries, candied the pecans, and pre-measured the dry ingredients for the dressing. Wednesday night I made the dressing in all of a minute, found a serving bowl, and set everything aside to remember in the morning. And this morning, I packed everything up in reusable grocery bag, stuck the strawberries in the fridge at work, and 5 minutes before I needed to, tossed the salad.

So here it is: my take on Strawberry Spinach Salad: a pretty, crowd-pleasing side dish that can be almost completely made in advance and in minimal time. I was told to scale this for 10 people, however, you could cut this in half for a single family.

Strawberry Spinach Salad

1 lb baby spinach
2 lbs strawberries, hulled and sliced
3 cups candied pecans (recipe follows)

Dressing:
1/4 cup red onion, minced
2 Tbsp sesame seeds
1 1/2 Tbsp poppy seeds
1 – 2 Tbsp white sugar (depending on the type of vinegar you use; use less for sweet balsamics)
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup vinegar – I used a fig balsamic, but regular balsamic would be fantastic, as would any wine vinegar. This is the salad for those fancy vinegars you never know what to do with!

For the candied pecans:
3 cups pecans
1/2 cup white sugar
oil
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
pinch of salt

First candy the pecans: Heat some oil in a cast iron skillet over medium low heat, then add the rest of the ingredients and push them around for a while, until the sugar has caramelized and the nuts are crunchy and delicious. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. You may want to make extra of these because they are addictive. I made a ton and almost didn’t have enough to take to work because someone – whose name rhymes with “Mark” – ate them all.

To make the dressing, whisk all of the ingredients together until emulsified. Let the flavors blend for at least an hour; store in the refrigerator if it will be longer than that.

Lastly, to assemble the salad, just toss everything together. Most of the commenters on the original recipe said it will get soggy, so don’t add the dressing until the very last minute. I served the dressing on the side.

All my advanced preparation nearly backfired when our power was out for 15 hours on Wednesday, but fortunately my refrigerated items all seem to have survived. Try mandarin orange slices if strawberries are out of season. I’m horrible locavore in the winter, and was lucky to find pretty delicious strawberries at Wegmans.

This got rave reviews from my co-workers, including from the CEO. Everyone was calling it “Renae’s Special Salad”, but really it’s just something I found on the internet and copied. Yes, I’m one of those crazy cooks who makes untested recipes for dinner parties and potlucks. But come on, how could I possibly go wrong with this recipe? It’s spinach, strawberries, candied pecans, and a balsamic vinaigrette – how is that not a perfect salad? Mark said he usually hates fruit in salads but he really liked this.

I’m incredibly shy, even though I’ve worked at the same place for 6 years and everyone is super friendly, but I can be lured from the safety of my cubicle for Indian food, of which there is always an abundance at our potlucks, much of it vegetarian. I raved so much about the rasam – one of my all-time favorite soups – a co-worker brought in that he gave me all the leftovers! Yay!! Even the Indian food-wary Smark loves rasam! It’s delicious!

Torticia liked it too!

And finally, we’re heading to LA on Thanksgiving. I know there are a gazillion vegan options there, but what should I definitely not miss? What bookstores do I need to go to? Thrift stores? Any other attractions?! It’ll be my first time there and although I’m going to miss these kittens something terrible, I can’t wait. Did I mention I’m seeing both Grinderman AND Einstürzende Neubauten while I’m there? Oh, and my dear Fortinbras. And the vibrant V. I’m so excited I can barely contain myself!

Ugh, still really busy! Tonight’s meal was yet another “throw a bunch of stuff together and hope for the best” meal. When Mark asked what it was, I answered, “some cabbage thing” and he glommed onto that, jabbering and even singing about his favorite meal “cabbage thing”. So here is Cabbage Thing in all its glory:

Cabbage Thing

1/2 large or 1 small onion, sliced
1/2 tsp caraway seeds, if you like them
12 oz tempeh, chopped
2 small or 1 medium potato, chopped
4 cups vegan stock or broth (I used “beef” flavored)
8 oz tomato sauce
1/2 green cabbage, shredded
2 cups cooked rice
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
paprika

Heat some oil in a Dutch oven or large pot, then add the onion and saute until translucent. Add the tempeh and the caraway seeds (if you’re a fan) and saute a few more minutes, then add the potato, broth, tomato sauce, and cabbage. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until potatoes are soft, 20-30 minutes. Stir in the rice and season with salt, pepper, and paprika.

The ambitious can add a lesser amount of uncooked rice and cook it in the pot with the potatoes and cabbage.

It ain’t pretty to photograph, but it’s tasty to eat.

Mark said he especially loved Cabbage Thing with cabbage on the side, which I thought was a great idea, so I ate mine with a side of sauerkraut.

This has been a super quick post, and I’m sorry – maybe one day soon I’ll have time for a proper post – but I only have time for a single quick kitten photo. Guess who loves nutritional yeast just like his predecessor?!

It’s Gomezian! Torticia, on the other hand, doesn’t understand the appeal.