Udon is a frequent meal when I’ve been working late. Not only is it very quick and easy, but in a lot of incarnations it is served at room temperature, which means I can run around feeding the cats and taking care of other chores while I’m making dinner, without worrying too much about timing. By the time I sit down to dinner, I like to be done with everything I have to do for the day and simply relax. This meal was very much improvised, so the measurements given are even more “suggestions only” than usual.

Easy Udon in a Ginger-Peanut Sauce

Those little round things are dried chickpeas but you are to pretend they are peanuts, okay? I’d already ground all the peanuts I had in the house when I decided to take this photo, so they are stand-ins.

2 bundles of udon (2 servings)
1/4 cup roasted peanuts
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
2 tsp chili garlic paste
1 2″ knob of fresh ginger, grated
1 small clove garlic minced or pressed, or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
water to thin as necessary

For garnish
1/2 half cucumber, julienned
black or white sesame seeds or lightly crushed peanuts
additional ginger
red chili flakes
chopped scallions
crispy fried onions

Prepare the udon as directed on the package. Drain and rinse under cold water.

Place the remaining ingredients (other than the garnish suggestions) into a food processor and process until smooth.

The garnishes are all optional, but if you have a cucumber, cut it in half, then cut one of the halves lengthwise.

Scoop out the seeds with a small spoon.

Cut the halves lengthwise again.

Chop into sticks.

Cut the sticks in half.

Mix some of the sauce with the noodles. You will probably have more sauce than you need; you just want a nice coating on the noodles.

Toss with the sesame seeds or crushed peanuts if using.

Top with cucumbers, extra ginger, and/or chili pepper flakes if using.

I remembered I had leftover fried onions from Thanksgiving and decided they’d be an interesting garnish as well.

Total time from beginning to boil the water to sitting down with a glass of wine and a book? 15 minutes, and that included making a batch of soy milk at the same time, dealing with the cats, raking in Christmas packages left by UPS, taking all those pictures, talking to Smucky via AIM, and being extremely tired.

I’m accustomed to going to Super H and finding unidentifiable vegetables, but generally I can identify everything at Whole Foods and Wegmans. (I’m constantly being asked by other customers to identify vegetables at Whole Foods, in fact, for some reason. I guess I look like a vegetable expert?) Wegmans actually stumped me a while ago with salsify though: a name that sounds like “salsa” and a note on its price tag that it tastes like oysters. I’ve been meaning to buy some and experiment with it for a while and tonight I finally got around to it.

First of all I should confess I’ve never had an oyster. I have no idea what they taste like. I suspect they taste of the sea, but that’s all I know. I think they might be slimy. Honestly I don’t think I’d particularly like oysters. So I had no idea what to do with a vegetable purported to taste like oysters and there aren’t many recipes on the internet. The best-sounding recipe I found was Light and Creamy Oyster Chowder with Salsify, which recommends substituting potatoes for the salsify if you can’t find it. Clever Renae decided to substitute potatoes for the salsify and salsify for the oysters. Ha hah! I looked at a bunch of other oyster chowder recipes, as I am wont to do when trying to replicate something I’ve never had, and they are all very similar: oysters, clam juice, white wine, cream, bacon, and some veggies. I’ve never had clams either, so I don’t know what clam juice tastes like, but again, I figured it tastes like the sea and therefore just dumped some kelp powder into the pot. I thought it smelled of the sea anyway. I doubt it tasted anything at all like either oysters or clams. Nonetheless, it was a fun recipe.

Salsify (Oyster Plant) Chowder

1 onion, diced
1 leek, thinly sliced (white parts only)
1 stalk celery, diced
2 medium carrots, cut into small rounds
1 cup white wine
2 cups veggie stock
1 lb salsify, peeled and chopped
1 lb potatoes, diced
1/2 cup corn
3 Tbsp vegan “bacon” bits
1 Tbsp kelp powder
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 cup vegan unsweetened cream (such as MimicCreme) *
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

When prepping the veggies, place the chopped salsify and potatoes in a bowl of water into which a little bit of lemon juice or vinegar has been stirred to prevent discoloring. I found it tricky to get all of the “bark” off the salsify; some roots were more rough and therefore more difficult to peel than others. Some bits of the peel came off when dunked in the water; you can see them floating in the bowl.

Heat a soup pot over medium heat, then bring some olive oil up to temperature in it. Then add the onions, leeks, carrots, and celery.

Saute until soft and onions are translucent, deglazing the pot with a little of the wine if necessary.

Add the wine, broth, kelp, thyme, and bacon bits.

Add the salsify, potatoes, corn, and cream.

I forgot that MimicCreme sometimes separates when mixed with a hot liquid (it does that in coffee). Had I remembered, I’d probably have added the MimicCreme after the soup was cooked, and just gently heated it. It didn’t separate too badly, though, and mixed right back together when I stirred.

Cover and cook for 40 minutes or until salsify is soft and oystery. Okay, I have no idea what “oystery” means. Season with salt and pepper.

* To make without the cream, substitute one cup non-dairy milk. After cooking, puree about 1/4 of the soup and return to the pot.

Serve with oyster crackers or crusty bread. I made biscuits but it’s a test recipe for Peter Reinhart’s new book so I can’t share. (Mark’s response to the biscuits was, “Peter Reinhart is a genius,” so you might want to pick up the book when it comes out!) Garnish with additional bacon bits.

So how was it, you ask? I thought the chowder was pretty good, albeit a little sweet for my taste until I salted it a little heavier than I usually do. I simply don’t usually cook with cream. (I have the MimicCreme for making ice cream, for which, by the way, it is fantastic.) Next time I’ll probably use soy milk instead (or just more broth) and just puree a bit to thicken it instead of using the cream. I’m not sure salsify really tastes like oysters, or really much of anything, quite frankly. I didn’t enjoy peeling it (the non-knobby roots were fine, but the knobby ones were a pain), so I don’t know that I’d bother buying it again. And I think I still don’t know what oysters taste like, but I also think I’m glad.

Since I always get comments about missing the cats when they don’t help with the meal, I went looking for them before transferring the photos off my camera.

Ever wanted to know what a cat doing a line of coke looks like?

Kidding! It’s FLOUR! From the biscuits! Tigger most certainly does NOT weigh his Columbian contraband on my food scale!

See, he likes to stick his face in flour. He’s very odd.

Have I ever mentioned that I love this guy?

Ms Brachtune has been dividing her time between the pseudo-laptop I made for her in this post and the little nest she’s made for herself by the heater a few feet across the room.

That fluffy thing to the left of her is a pillow I made her out of this faux fur that I bought specifically because it looked like her fur. I had grand plans of using it to made a huge faux bearskin rug…that looks like Brachtune. Yeah, I don’t know where I come up with these insane ideas either. There is something wrong with me. Particularly considering my sewing skills pretty much start and end at snot rags. Needless to say I have a lot of faux Brachtune fur. (I have a lot of real Brachtune fur for that matter.)

As usual, as soon as I snapped the shutter, she was up and heading over to me for some loving.

And one final note: I don’t usually endorse stuff, but sometimes a product that I just love comes along and I want to share. I used to be a major lip balm fiend when I was younger. I don’t know that I bought so much as one tube of real lipstick between the ages of 18 and 25, but boy did I have a plethora of lip balm in every flavor imaginable. I was really addicted to the stuff. I fell on hard times when I went vegan, though, because it is very hard to find lip balm without beeswax. My life became complete once again when I discovered Crazy Rumors last year. This is by far the best of any vegan – or non-vegan – lip balm I’ve ever tried, and I’ve tried them all. I just got a shipment with a bunch of their brand-new flavors – trying out Pear & Peppermint now: yum! – and they all smell amazing. They’re moisturizing, feel great (not heavy) on your lips, last a long time between applications, and again, smell incredible. I’m not being paid to say that – I just figure that they are a small company so I’d do my part in spreading the word so they don’t disappear and leave me without my lip balm fix. I actually make the rest of my skincare products, but I was no good at making lip balm. Thank goodness Crazy Rumors is.

I didn’t bother documenting my preparations for Thanksgiving because I didn’t do anything unique, unusual, creative, or different, so I figured I’d spare the world a boring post. But then it occurred to me that I might be interested to know what I did this year, next year. I only cooked for me and Mark. We went to the parental homestead, but my parents make a traditional meal and there’s no way I could ever convince them to eat vegan on Thanksgiving. Maybe some other day, but not Thanksgiving. My mother does make vegan portions of her dishes where possible, so I was saved from making a few things like mashed potatoes. It took me about three hours to knock out the following:

1 seitan “turkey”
stuffing
green beans
“turkey” gravy
cranberry sauce
1 loaf of bread

In the past, I’ve spent more than three hours simply trying to decide what to make, perusing my cookbooks and the internet, looking for recipes and ideas. I’ve found it’s so much easier to just go into the kitchen and make stuff up as I go along!

I cheated on the bread: I had frozen a loaf before the final proof on Sunday, and just popped it out of the freezer and into the refrigerator the night before, then proofed for longer than usual before baking. And it wasn’t for really for Thanksgiving as my mother had two different kinds of rolls. The bread was for leftover “turkey” sandwiches later. Mark was so excited about the “leftover” sandwiches he started eating them the night before!

Everything I made (other than the bread) was totally off the cuff, and since I wasn’t planning to post it, I didn’t even try to mind measurements. But here is approximately what I did:

Seitan “Turkey”

2 1/4 cups (1 box) vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup soy flour
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp white pepper
2 cups vegan “chicken” broth

Mix dry ingredients together. Add broth. Form into log, wrap in cheesecloth, tying off ends like a Tootsie Roll, then pressure cook for 45 minutes. Remove from pressure cooker, set in foil inside a baking pan, and baste with some sort of sauce (I used one from the Tofutti site: some apricot preserves, soy sauce, pepper, and water). Bake at 375 degrees for an hour, basting periodically.

Stuffing

10-12 slices whole grain bread, sliced and cubed
1/2 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1/2 half Granny Smith apple, chopped
1/2 tsp rubbed sage
1/2 tsp cracked rosemary
freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup vegan “chicken” broth

Because my bread was pretty fresh, I spread the cubes out on a baking sheet, then after baking another loaf, turned the oven off, let it cool for a few minutes (it had been at 430 degrees Fahrenheit), stuck the sheet in the oven and let the bread cubes dry out for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. Then in a cast iron pan, I sauted the onion and celery until soft, then added the apple, sage, rosemary, and pepper and stirred, then mixed in the bread cubes. Then I poured the broth over everything and combined until the cubes were mostly soft. I moved the mixture to a Pryex baking dish, patted it down, and baked at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour. Mark was obsessed with the stuffing and tried to eat it all before we even made it to my parents’.

“Turkey” Gravy

2 Tbsp Earth Balance
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
4 cups vegan “chicken” broth

In a heavy-bottomed pot, melt the Earth Balance. Whisk in the flour and other dry ingredients to form a roux. Slowly whisk in the broth, adding a little at a time to avoid lumps. Heat until thickened.

Non-Casserole Green Beans

1 pound green beans, trimmed
shallot salt (from Penzeys)
fried onions

I used to loooove green bean casserole, although my mother always made it with cream of celery soup instead of cream of mushroom because I hate mushrooms. Even as late as last year, I would make vegan versions of the traditional green bean casserole. But the idea of adulterating green beans that way sort of makes me ill these days, so I cooked the green beans for 5 to 7 minutes in boiling, salted water, then drained, tossed with shallot salt, and topped with fried onions. They were almost entirely cooked, but I left myself a little leeway for continued cooking when reheating them the next day. If I were serving them right away, I would have cooked for another minute or two.

Cranberry Sauce

12 oz fresh cranberries
1/3 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup orange juice

Heat all ingredients in heavy-bottomed pot until cranberries have all burst and mixture is somewhat thickened (it will thicken more upon cooling). Refrigerate for at least an hour.

My mother made a vegan dessert! Look!

It’s wacky cake! Here’s the recipe:

Classic Wacky Cake

Serves 6 to 8

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
5 T. vegetable oil
1 T. white vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup water
confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.

Whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in the prepared pan. Make 1 large and 2 small craters in the dry ingredients. Add the oil to the large crater and the vinegar and vanilla separately to the small craters. Pour the water into the pan and mix until just a few streaks of flour remain (but break up lumps). Immediately put the pan in the oven.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, about 30 minutes. Cool in the pan, then dust with confectioners’ sugar. (The cake can be stored at room temperature for up to 3 days).

Mum’s tip: don’t dust with the confectioners’ sugar until just before serving because the moisture in the cake will soak it up, causing it to “disappear”.

From “America’s Best Lost Recipes,” by the editors of Cook’s Country.

Per serving (based on 8 servings): 238 calories, 3 grams protein, 9 grams fat, 1 gram saturated fat, 37 grams carbohydrate, 2 grams fiber, 0 milligrams cholesterol, 264 milligrams sodium.

After we humans ate dinner, my parents’ silly dogs got some dog treats. This is Shannon scarfing them down:

This is him smiling about it:

Those treats were lip-smacking good!

Sophie Mae didn’t want to be photographed eating, but here she is being wary of me:

And that’s it for today! I hope all my American friends had a great Thanksgiving yesterday (or last month for the Canadians), even if the Australian Muck accidentally wished me a Happy Independence Day instead.

Will I ever get tired of posting pictures of my tempeh?! Probably not; I’m always so shocked when it turns out. This was my best batch yet. I therefore wanted to show it off in a tempeh-intensive dish: one that showcased how well the tempeh turned out. I decided to simply braise it.

Broth-Braised Tempeh

1 lb tempeh, chopped into 3/4″ cubes
1/2 cup white wine
5 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1/2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
3 Tbsp capers
1 cup vegan broth of some sort
1 tsp dried tarragon

Heat some olive oil in a large, hot frying pan. Add the tempeh.

Fry until golden.

Add the wine and then the garlic, mustard seeds, and capers. Saute for 2 minutes.

Add the broth and tarragon.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, loosely covered, for 20 minutes or until broth is almost completely dissipated.

Serve! I chose sauerkraut and baked carnival squash as accompaniments.

I started making my own sauerkraut tonight! Here’s a sneak preview:

What follows is not a very exciting recipe, but it was either get around to making a post, even if it’s boring, or wait around waiting for an exciting one and since it’s been a week, I figured I’d better make a post or you’d all forget about me. My life became very, very hectic last week, culminating in a business trip to Austin earlier this week, hence my internet silence. Today’s been the first day I’ve had to really do any cooking. I made use of some more of my dried beans. So here you go. It’s basically from Simply Heavenly!, again.

Mexican Beans

1 1/2 cups dried pinto beans, soaked (either overnight in cold water, or in hot water for one hour, after boiling for one minute)
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1/2 bell pepper, diced
1 package soy chorizo
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper

After soaking, drain the beans.

Cook the beans, either in a pressure cooker for 4 to 6 minutes or in a pot for however long it takes for them to get soft (an hour, maybe?).

Meanwhile, dice the onion and bell pepper, mince or press the garlic, and remove the soy chorizo from its casing.

After the beans have cooked, drain them. Heat some oil in a large pot (using the bean cooking pot cuts down on dishes), then add the onions, garlic, bell pepper, and soy chorizo and saute for 10 minutes.

Add the spices and tomatoes and cook for a minute.

Add enough water, about 1/2 cup, to make it a little soupy so it doesn’t dry out while cooking.

Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and cook for an hour. I removed the lid after half an hour so it would thicken up.

Serve over rice or pasta.

I also made split pea soup.

In other food news, we had our annual company potluck Thanksgiving today at work and I’d like to announce how great it is to work for an Indian-American-owned company. Many of the employees of my company, including the owner, are Hindu and vegetarian, and at our potlucks the vegetarian dishes vastly outnumber the meat dishes. In fact, I only saw three meat dishes out of about 30 today, and they were segregated away from the veggie dishes. How awesome is that?!

I don’t want to whine at you, but I’ve been having a somewhat stressful week at work. Don’t be alarmed, on the stress scale, my job is usually pretty low, so it’s no big deal, but I got home late tonight and was a little cranky and not feeling that great. So I put SPAM Week on a hiatus and decided I was craving good ole non-experimental, quick and easy pasta. I put a pot on to boil and set about gathering ingredients for my go-to last-minute pasta dish, when I was suddenly confronted with the startling and upsetting news that I have no tomatoes.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I use a lot of canned tomatoes. Mark recently informed me that all of my meals are very “red”. I probably don’t have a big following of people with nightshade allergies. I buy tins of tomatoes nearly every time I’m at the grocery store, and to come home and stare in my cupboard and see NO tomatoes…well, I was flabbergasted. Pasta with no tomatoes? HOW IS IT POSSIBLE?

I soon decided that some sort of garlicky sauce was in order. Only to be confronted with equally astonishing fact that I was down to a mere three cloves of garlic. WHAT IS MY WORLD COMING TO?!

Follows is the story of how I overcame these obstacles. I didn’t take any preparatory photos because all I wanted to do was make dinner as quick as possible and cuddle up with The Toonse (aka Brachtune) and a book, plus I’ve already told you how I usually throw together pasta. But after deeming my experiment a success, I decided to post the recipe after all, if for no other reason for myself to refer back to if ever I am ever unfortunate enough to find myself in this devastating situation again.

You may find it disingenuous that the recipe below includes tomato paste when I’ve just complained about having no tomatoes. I didn’t say I had no tomato-y products, though, I just said I had no tomatoes. What kind of household do you think I’m running here?! Not having tomato paste?! Impossible! (Oh yeah, I also had sun-dried tomatoes.)

Renae Desperately Needs to Go to the Grocery Store Pasta

8 oz dried pasta of any sort (I used multi-colored spirals)
1-2 Tbsp roasted garlic olive oil (or herbed olive oil, or regular old plain extra virgin olive oil)
all the garlic you can muster up (I had just 3 pathetic cloves)
1/4 cup capers
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 can artichoke hearts
1 can chickpeas
3 Tbsp tomato paste
3 Tbsp Dragonfly’s Bulk, Dry Uncheese Mix
1 cup vegan “chicken” broth
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp red chili pepper flakes
freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

Cook the pasta as directed on the package and drain. In a wok or large pan, heat the oil. Add the garlic and fry for 30 seconds. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and capers and fry for 1 minute. Add the artichoke hearts and chickpeas and fry for 2 minutes. Add the tomato paste and stir to distribute evenly, then add the Uncheese mix and stir. Pour in the broth and stir until evenly mixed in, stirring as it thickens. Season with oregano, chili flakes, and pepper. When the sauce thickens, mix in the pasta.

Maybe not the most exciting meal on the planet, but surprisingly good despite all the obstacles. A word on that Uncheese Mix by Dragonfly: you’ll want to make a batch of this and keep it around for just such emergencies as this. Also sprinkle it on popcorn, on pizza, on pasta: anything that start with a “p”, really. And based on how yummy those artichokes tasted in my pasta tonight, I’m thinking UNCHEESY ARTICHOKE DIP in my immediate future. Stay tuned.

As I warned, it’s SPAM week here at I Eat Food. Tonight’s recipe is another direct from the SPAM® website, and like the Spam Musubi, completely vegan other than the SPAM. It’s the exotic-sounding Polynesian Bake!

Polynesian Bake

1/2 – 2/3 recipe vegan Spam
1 can sliced pineapple
1/4 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup apricot preserves
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
freshly ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice up your vegan Spam. I cut seven slices, because that’s what fit into my baking dish, but it happens to be how many the original recipe calls for so it’s even more authentic.

The original recipe calls for a fresh pineapple, which you cut lengthwise and then bake the “loaf” right in the rind. Although I was really tempted to do this for the cute factor, and although I love pineapple and rarely use canned anything when I could use fresh, canned pineapple is much easier and actually the perfect size for the vegan Spam. For a baking dish, I used a 1 1/2 pint Pyrex refrigerator dish. Alternating slices of Spam and pineapple, assemble a “loaf” in a suitably-sized baking dish.

Juice your lemon. One medium lemon should provide you just about exactly the 1/4 cup juice you need.

Combine the lemon juice, apricot preserves, mustard, and black pepper in a small bowl.

Whisk together.

Pour the sauce over the “loaf”.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, basting half-way through.

Remove from oven and serve.

I accompanied the Polynesian Bake with green beans. I googled “Polynesian green bean recipe” wondering if I’d find anything good to go with the Spam and found this recipe alleging to be from Disney. I didn’t photograph the whole process because I wasn’t intending to post it, but they went so well with the Spam dish, I figure I might as well.

Polynesian Green Beans

1 lb green beans, trimmed
1/2 red onion or 3 shallots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 Tbsp dark soy sauce (or 2 Tbsp regular soy sauce + 2 Tbsp sugar) (I don’t quite get why the original recipe calls for low-sodium soy sauce AND additional salt…)
freshly-ground black pepper to taste
2 Tbsp vegan “bacon” bits

Blanch the green beans in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain. Heat a wok or large frying pan over medium-high heat, add a bit of oil and bring to temperature, then add onion or shallots and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and fry for another minute. Add the green beans and fry for 10 minutes. I deglazed the wok with a bit of pineapple juice instead of water or wine because I’m crazy like that. Also, the juice from my pineapple was sitting nearby and was handy.

Add the soy sauce and pepper and stir-fry for two minutes, allowing it to glaze the green beans. Add the “bacon” bits and stir-fry for one minute.

Serve!

Verdict? I much preferred the texture of the vegan Spam when it was fried. Baked it was a little bit like a sort of Spammy polenta, if you can imagine that. It wasn’t bad and it grew on me as the meal progressed, but I think next time I’ll lightly fry the Spam slices, then top with the pineapple and sauce and broil for a couple of minutes. Ooh, or maybe grill it. I would like to revisit this recipe because the sauce was good and I have always loved pineapple and hammy things. I’m not sure of Mark’s opinion because he is downstairs obsessively watching Hell Boy 2, but when I went down there to collect Brachtune from his lap in order to pill and feed her, I noticed his plate had been cleaned, so he must have liked it to some degree!

I suddenly found myself making vegan SPAM on Sunday. Trust me, I was as surprised as anyone. But then I had to figure out what to do with it. The only dish I have ever heard of that uses Spam is Spam musubi, that bizarre Japanese/Hawaiian hybrid of weirdness. So I did what any normal person would do: I visited the Spam website (Warning! Clicking on that link with your speakers on is…interesting.) There I found many, many Spam recipes, including one for, yes, Spam musubi. So, that, my friends, is exactly how I used up the first of what turned out to be more vegan Spam than I can handle. I was going to come up with my own recipe, but then I decided it would be funny to use the official SPAM recipe, which other than the SPAM itself, is vegan.

Vegan Spam Musubi

3 cups prepared sushi rice
1/3 – 1/2 recipe vegan Spam
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
olive oil for frying
1 -2 sheets sushi nori

Get the sushi rice cooking. (If you are not familiar with cooking sushi rice, see Maki’s tutorial on the excellent Just Hungry.)

Mix the soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, and ginger together in a small, shallow pan.

Cut four slices of vegan Spam (for a total of eight pieces of musubi). I found a serrated knife worked best.

Cut each slice in half, then cut off outermost part of the arc of each (save the small arc-shaped piece for another use):

Place the eight pieces of vegan Spam into the marinade and marinate for half an hour, turning over after 15 minutes.

Meanwhile cut the nori into 8 strips 1/2 to 1″ wide. My nori is perforated for 1″ strips.

When the rice is done, let it cool enough to handle.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add some olive oil and bring up to temperature. The Spam seemed to want to stick to my cast iron pot, which is well-seasoned and usually very stick-resistant, so I had to use a bit more oil than usual. (I still didn’t use the 2 tablespoons the SPAM website called for.) Brown the vegan Spam on both sides.

When the rice has cooled a bit, wet both of your hands and grab a handful, smooshing it into a log-ish shape about the length and width of your Spam pieces. (Don’t try to do this with dry hands.)

Place a piece of fried vegan Spam atop each rice log.

Wrap a strip of nori around each Spam/rice pile, moistening the nori slightly at the end to seal it.

Repeat for each piece of vegan Spam.

I steamed some broccoli and carrots, then tossed them in some of the leftover marinade. The SPAM site also suggests dipping the Spam musubi in the leftover marinade. I prepared some wasabi and soy sauce for dipping because Mark loves wasabi.

When the vegan Spam was frying, Mark announced it smelled like real SPAM. “I have no idea what SPAM smells like,” I responded, “but I’m guessing it does not smell good.” Then he picked a piece out of the frying pan and said it tasted like real Spam, to which I responded, “I have no idea what SPAM tastes like, but I’m guessing it’s not good either.”

Despite – or maybe due to – the fact that I doubt very much vegan Spam tastes (or smells) like real SPAM, this turned out well! Mark really liked it, and despite the fact that he’s a complete rice fiend, when I couldn’t eat my fourth musubi and asked him if he wanted it, he only wanted the Spam from it. He also said he may make a Spam sandwich for lunch tomorrow. This was definitely a fun experiment!

And I have so much more Spam left to work with! Prepare yourselves for a very spammy week.

Why, it’s Mr Cluckers! What is he doing?!

He seems to be at the theatre. How droll! What might Mr Cluckers be seeing this evening?

It’s Spamalot! Mr Cluckers, Smark, and I took it in on the West End last year and until today it was the closest I ever got to anything related to SPAM™ in any way. As I mentioned other day, I was inspired by the dried bean section of Simply Heavenly! to start incorporating more dried beans into my diet, and to that end, I bookmarked several of the recipes in that book. I can imagine the result of most recipes I read very well, so well that I usually trust myself to make adjustments to it the first time around instead of abiding by the rule of “make it exactly as written the first time, experiment the next”, however, I found myself flummoxed by the recipe for “Soyteena”. Ground-up dry soybeans, tomato juice, peanut butter, cornmeal…what? But adventure is my middle name, so I decided I was going to try it out. Halfway through the steaming process it dawned on me: I was making vegan SPAM! And now by following these easy instructions, you can too!

Soyteena (Vegan SPAM)

1 cup dried soybeans
2 cups water
1 cup tomato juice
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup finely chopped celery
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 cup cornmeal

Chop the celery …

… and onion.

Place the soybean in a blender and pulse several times until they are pulverized to a powder. Add all other ingredients except the cornmeal.

Blend until smooth.

Place in a bowl and stir in cornmeal until completely mixed.

Oil two cans (the size 14.5 ounces of tomatoes come in; normal can size). Put half of the mixture into each.

Cover each can with foil and secure with a rubber band.

Place the cans into a Dutch oven or large pot and fill with water so they are 1/3 of the way submerged.

Bring the water to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer, steaming the SPAM for two hours (or longer). Remove cans from pot and allow to cool, then remove SPAM from cans. If you have an IQ as high as mine, it may take you only half an hour to realize that the easiest way to do this is to remove the bottom of the can and push the SPAM through.

Behold your can-shaped, slightly frightening vegan SPAM.

Tune in later for the first in my series What the Heck One Can Do With Vegan Spam!

My mom sent me a package of fun via my aunt by way of my grandmother’s house this weekend. Most of the fun was for the cats unless you consider mustard pots fun, which I do. My aunt’s cat Stormy donated some of her extra toys to my cats (which makes my cats sound like unfortunate needy cats, which I’m sure you can tell is definitely the case), and my mom made them some catnip toys. Brachtune was playing with one while I was making dinner. Brachtune is extraordinarily cute when she plays, but I can never catch her on camera because whenever she sees me so much as look in her direction, she drops everything she’s doing and literally RUNS to me. So this is the best I could get; trust me, she had JUST been batting that blue thing around like crazy:

Of course, once I start taking pictures, Tigger becomes alerted to the fact that Bracthtune is playing, so he has to put an end to that.

It’s hard to get action shots of my cats playing, but it proved strangely easy to get them of my grandmother’s cat on Saturday! Here’s Muffin:

On some nights, I have a brilliant idea for dinner. Other nights – I’d venture to say most nights – I whine “what do you want for dinner?” to Mark and stare blankly into the refrigerator assessing the vegetable situation. Tonight was one of the latter nights. Bizarrely, I think I ended up making vegan Spam, but you’ll hear more about that tomorrow. I had to put it in the refrigerator to constrict. Yeah, I know that doesn’t make any sense, but welcome to my world. Anyway, foraging around in the crisper drawers of the refrigerator, I found a head of a cabbage, celery root, and carrots. All of which I decided was going into a soup to accompany some barbeque beans suggested by my friend Abbott George.

Creamy Potato Carrot Soup

My apologies for the photograph you are about to be subjected to. Apparently I forgot how to focus. I usually take a couple of shots of the ingredients to make sure at least one turns out, but apparently not tonight.

4-5 large shallots, or 1 large onion, chopped
1/2 celery root, grated, or 1 stalk celery, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
4-5 red potatoes, diced
4 leaves cabbage, chopped (I used savoy)
6 cups vegan broth or stock
2 Tbsp vegan “bacon” bits
1 bay leaf
freshly ground pepper to taste

In a soup pot or Dutch oven, heat some olive oil, then add the shallots or onions and saute for a couple of minutes.

Add the carrots (my carrot was yellow, don’t be confused!), celery root or celery, and garlic; saute for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the potatoes and cabbage.

Add the broth or stock, potatoes, cabbage, bay leaf, and bacon bits. Season with pepper to taste.

Bring to a boil, cover, lower heat, and simmer for half an hour or until vegetables are soft.

Remove the bay leaf and puree, either using an immersion blender or in batches in a regular blender, as smooth or chunky as you like.

Serve. I sprinkled a little parsley in the middle for the photo because I’m classy.

Mark’s assessment of the soup: “It may look like puke, but it tastes like happy.” It’s like I said: we’re classy.

Here are the barbeque beans. It was essentially just soy beans in homemade barbecue sauce.

I complained last time about Brachtune (who is currently sitting on my right arm – making typing extremely difficult – and purring loudly) sitting on my laptop, which has been her new favorite thing to do. When she signed me out of Ubuntu and then left my user name a cryptic “while you were out” message (which, again, I didn’t even know you could do), I decided it was the last straw and I set her up her own little pseudo-laptop. Here it is:

I took a heated cat pad that my mother gave me a while ago (I believe to combat the problem of Tigger sleeping on our laptops) and stuck it into a hooded cat bed that I bought Brachtune as a get-well present when her leg was broken earlier this year. She’s been practically living in it since.

This freed up my reading chair for Tigger.

In other news, I scored an awesome antique seltzer bottle at the antique store today, although I was sad to realize at home that it’s missing a part that holds the charger. Fortunately I found one on the cheap on eBay, although it’s coming from the UK so it may take a little while to get here. If you don’t hear from me after a week or so, it’s quite possible Ive managed to blow myself up in a horrible CO2/exploding bottle accident. Honestly, “seltzer bottle” seems like one of those things, like “kitchen torch”, that I shouldn’t be allowed to have, but fortunately for me you don’t have to pass a klutz test to buy one. Let the fizzy drinks begin!