Mark and I visited the parental homestead, that is, my parents’ house, this weekend. While I was there I photographed a bunch of recipes from my mother’s little-used recipe box, with hopes of veganizing a few old favorites. My mother doesn’t cook, so this isn’t a very big undertaking.* Many of the recipes I grabbed are things I’m sure my mother never actually made, either. Anyway, one of my favorite meals as a kid was baked ham, which my mother and my grandmother used to make topped with pineapples. I reinvented this as baked seitan today. It turned out fairly well, although the seitan – the UnHam from Simply Heavenly! – wasn’t very “hammy” and I plan to play around with the seitan in the future. I’ll give you the recipe I used tonight in the meantime, though.

First, here is the original version of the Pineapple-Glazed Baked Ham. I talked to my mother about this recipe and she’s not sure where it originally came from and doesn’t specifically remember it being my grandmother’s, however, I am quite sure my grandmother made ham like this. My mother actually uses this recipe as well, on those extremely rare instances she takes it upon herself to bake a ham. She says the recipe may be hers, but I’ve never known my mother to invent a recipe on her own. But maybe she did!

1 8-10 lb pre-cooked ham
1 T. butter
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
whole cloves
4-6 slices pineapple
1 scant cup vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 cup catsup
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground mixed spices

Remove rind from ham; rub with butter. Rub ham with 1/4 cup brown sugar. Score fat surface in squares and place whole clove in each square. Place ham, fat side up, on rack in roaster which has been lined with enough aluminum foil to completely enclose the ham. Place pineapple over top. Boil remaining ingredients including remaining brown sugar for 5 minutes. Pour sauce over ham. Close aluminum foil over top. Bake at 300 degree oven for 2 hours, 45 minutes to 3 hours. Occasionally baste ham with sauce. Thirty minutes before end of baking time, open foil and return to oven to brown. (Heat until 130 degrees F.)

And now my version:

Pineapple-Glazed Baked Seitan

2 pounds ham-flavored seitan (a recipe follows)
1 tsp vegan margarine
1/3 cup brown sugar, divided
whole cloves
3 slices pineapple
scant 1/4 cup vinegar
2 Tbsp water
1/4 cup catsup
pinch ground cloves
pinch allspice

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove 1 Tbsp of the brown sugar and set aside. Place catsup, vinegar, water, ground cloves, allspice, and remaining brown sugar into a small, heavy saucepan and heat over medium heat until bubbly, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, rub one teaspoon of margarine over seitan …

… then rub with the reserved tablespoon of brown sugar.

Score the seitan perpendicularly into diagonals, then stick a whole clove in the middle of each diamond.

Place the seitan onto a piece of aluminum foil that is large enough to completely cover it, and place the pineapple rings on top of the seitan.

Place the seitan-filled foil into a loaf pan …

… then pour the sauce over the seitan …

… and close the foil up.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove and open the foil up, then continue baking another 30 minutes.

Remove and reserve the pineapple rings.

Remove the cloves.

Slice the seitan as you would ham.
<img src="http://ineluctable.org/ieatfood/baked_ham_and_green_beans/baked%20ham%20and%20green%20beans%202-11.jpg"

Serve, topping with the leftover basting sauce if desired, with pineapple rings on the side.

(Recipe for the green bean dish – also from my mother’s collection – in the background coming up tomorrow!)

The verdict on this was somewhat mixed. As a “baked seitan”, it was successful, however, as “ham”, a bit less so. It tasted like seitan, not ham. I’m not sure how much I really want to mimic the flavor of ham – very real-tasting fake meat freaks me out – but I think I can come up with something more hammy than this. That said, all of the “un-meat” seitan recipes I’ve made from Simply Heavenly! are good and this was no exception. Mark said he really liked “the presentation”, and since this was my favorite meal when I was young, I liked it very much myself. Therefore I plan to make the “ham” taste a little more authentic in the future. If you go in having no hopes of ham, the following recipe is great!

UnHam
(lightly adapted from Simply Heavenly!)

(Tigger of course was right on the nutritional yeast. Also, check out the new salt pig my mom gave me – I love it!)

1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
4 tsp Kitchen Bouquet
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp rubbed sage
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp oregano
2 tsp garlic powder
2 1/2 tsp liquid smoke
2 tsp canola oil
2 tsp salt
4 cups water
1 box (about 2 1/4 cups) vital wheat gluten
1 cup chopped onion

Whisk together all ingredients except the vital wheat gluten and the chopped onions in a pressure cooker.

Place the vital wheat gluten into a medium bowl.

*Sigh*

Remove 2 cups of the liquid from the pressure cooker and mix with the vital wheat gluten,. I just use my hands.

Add the onions and an additional 4 cups of water to the pressure cooker and set over medium high heat on the stove.

Meanwhile, form the seitan into a log shape and wrap tightly in cheesecloth.

I didn’t have any kitchen twine, so I ripped two long, thin lengths of muslin and used those to tie the ends like a Tootsie roll.

Place the wrapped “log” into the broth in the pressure cooker.

I didn’t even realize what Tigger was doing until after snapping this picture.

He is so bad!

Don’t let your cats do this.

Put the lid on the pressure cooker and bring up to pressure, then reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 35 minutes. Run under cold water to bring pressure down quickly.

Remove seitan from cooker and allow to cool a little bit, then unwrap.

For lunch tomorrow, I intend to make a sandwich using several slices and some hot sauce my friend made using brown sugar that I think will go very well with the “unham”.

And finally, I’m sorry but I absolutely can not resist posting this picture.

But since you are subjected to a million pictures of Tigger “helping” me cook, here’s a glimpse at what goes on with the good cat while Tiggs and I slave away in the kitchen:

(Brachtune is also sitting on my lap as I work on this post; she helps with the reading and the computer work instead of the food.)

* By the statement that my mother does not cook, I do not mean to imply that we didn’t have a hot meal for dinner every night when I was growing up, because we did, and it was very rarely take-out from the sub shop, nor did we go to restaurants. It even regularly involved what I would term “cooking”.

I’m getting good at making tempeh! Tonight I was wondering what I should do with my latest successful batch and decided to throw together a casserole. My father was proudly observing German-American Day yesterday, so although it’s a day late, I decided to give the casserole a German flair by adding sauerkraut. I don’t know how fair it is to just add sauerkraut to something and call it “German”, but that’s what I’m going to do in order to impress my father. And hey, the mashed potato topping can honor my Irish heritage. It’s the casserole that represents all my ancestors!

Tempeh Sauerkraut Casserole

2 Russet potatoes, chunked
1 onion, sliced into half-moons
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 cups water
1 Tbsp vegan margarine
3 Tbsp prepared horseradish (or to taste)
1 1/2 cups sauerkraut
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
2 carrots, chopped
1 pound tempeh, cubed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the potatoes. Cook until tender.

Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, nutritional yeast, salt, and garlic powder in a medium small pot.

Add the water and heat over medium heat until thickened, whisking often.

While the potatoes and sauce are cooking, heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan. When I was in San Francisco, I mentioned that I had purchased a little oil brush that I like to use to coat my cast iron pan with a thin layer of oil. This is what it looks like:

It’s overexposed, so you can’t see that the brush retracts. Then you store it in a little container that holds the oil so it’s always ready.

Anyway, get a little oil onto your frying pan in some fashion. Then add the onions.

When the sauce is thickened, remove from heat and stir in the margarine and horseradish. I finished up the freshly prepared horseradish my friend gave me, which I think was a bit mild, so you may want to taste the sauce before dumping in a full 3 Tbsp.

By the way, the sauce is just the Yeast Cheeze from Simply Heavenly! (or perhaps more accurately New Farm), substituting horseradish for the mustard.

Check that your onions are reducing nicely…

Meanwhile, when the potatoes are very tender, drain and put in a large bowl.

‘
Mash the potatoes, adding salt, soy milk and/or Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream (my secret mashed potato ingredient) to gain the desired creamy consistency. I was fortunate enough that my husband wanted to help mash the potatoes.

While your husband is goofing off with the potatoes, check the the onions. When they are a deep golden color, remove them from the heat.

In a medium large bowl, mix together the sauerkraut, caraway seeds, onions, and 2 cups of the sauce.

Now take your tempeh, …

(okay, okay, this is a completely gratuitous shot of yet another successful batch of homemade tempeh!)

… chop it, and add it and the carrots to the sauerkraut mixture.

Place the sauerkraut/tempeh mixture into a 2.3 liter casserole dish and smooth into a nice layer.

Smooth the mashed potatoes over the sauerkraut/tempeh layer.

Finish with a layer of the remaining sauce. Sprinkle with paprika, or Creole seasoning if you are like me and get distracted by the Creole seasoning when reaching for the paprika.

Cover and bake for half an hour. Remove cover and bake for 15 more minutes.

Remove from oven.

Serve!

Your Druid husband will love it!

Actually, he was worshipping it before he even tasted it, but after cleaning his plate, he announced it “excellent” and also “better than a lot of other things”.

I don’t have much of an intro for this one. I wanted vegetable barley soup so I made some. That’s about the long and short of it. I worked from home today so I was able to bake a loaf of bread, which I thought would be a good accompaniment to the soup, so that worked out well. And it provided enough leftovers for two or three lunches this week. There isn’t really much else to say about vegetable barley soup, except for the fact that I did use a secret ingredient: read the recipe for details!

Vegetable Barley Soup

1 large or three small shallots, diced
2 carrots, chopped into large bite-sized pieces
2 stalks celery, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
5 cups vegetable stock or vegan “beef” broth
1 14.5 pound can diced tomatoes
1 medium or 2 small potatoes, chopped
3/4 cup pearled barley
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen green beans
1 cup frozen pearl onions (I figured if I was using pearled barley, pearl onions were only appropriate)
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
3 Tbsp (or to taste) grated fresh horseradish (the secret ingredient!)
freshly ground pepper to taste

In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, heat a bit of oil and sauté the shallots, carrots, and celery for two minutes.

Add the garlic and sauté for another minute.

Add the broth, tomatoes, and potatoes. Bring to a boil.

Add the frozen veggies, bay leaves, thyme, and smoked paprika.

Return to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium low. Add the secret ingredient, horseradish, to taste. Horseradish wasn’t in the ingredients photo because I didn’t think to add it until after I’d already started making the soup. My culinarily-inclined friend gave me a jar of fresh horseradish that she had preserved last week and I’ve been wondering how I should use it. Then it dawned on me that it might be good in this soup. And it was: it added a nice pungent dimension.

Cover and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. After covering my soup pot, I turned around to find Tigger in his usual spot: sitting – very prim and proper – on the very edge of the kitchen island, half dozing off but retaining a modicum of alertness in case I walk near him (in which case he will stick his paw out, catch my arm in his claws, and pull me over to him).

Tigger is one of those cats who can actually smile. It’s one of the things I love most about him.

So I rewarded him for being so cute by giving him some nutritional yeast, for which he goes bonkers.

Anyway, when you’re finished playing with the cat and the soup is ready, season with freshly ground pepper and remove the bay leaves.

Serve with freshly baked crusty bread. This is a loaf of Jeffrey Hamelman’s Rustic Bread, which like every other loaf I’ve made from this book, came together and baked beautifully.

It was really good used to sop up the soup.

I don’t know why the soup caused this expression on Mark’s face:

He seemed a little disconcerted when he found out that barley was to be a big part of his dinner, so maybe that was the problem, although I’m not sure he was sure exactly what barley was before eating it. He wasn’t quite as rapturous about the soup as he has been about other meals (including Saturday’s Soon Tubu Jjigae), however, I thought it was really very good and I definitely intend to make it again. It’s very comforting.

Leftovers should be even better than the first day, however, barley absorbs a lot of water, so you’ll almost definitely have to thin it out. I find that this condensed version is all the easier to carry to work, though, and at lunch time I just add a bit of almost-boiling water from the hot water dispenser, which also reduces the reheat time necessary in the microwave to about a minute.

One of the best meals I had in San Francisco (and I had a lot of great meals) was the first one: tofu stew at a Korean tofu house in Japantown. As I promised at the time, I decided to replicate it tonight.

There aren’t many vegan recipes for soon tubu jjigae on the internet, in fact, I didn’t find any. Everyone seems to want to put clam juice, beef, and shrimp in it. And egg. But none of that stuff is necessary. The important features of soon tubu jjigage are 1) tofu and 2) spiciness, both of which I can produce in spades.

The first thing you need to consider is your tofu. I wouldn’t dream of making soon tubu jjigage with anything but homemade tofu. The tofu is just too big a part of the dish and I’m used to homemade. So I have to urge you to try making it yourself. I ordinarily make an extremely firm tofu, using as much coagulant as I can get away with without it turning bitter and pressing it under about 25 pounds. Because I wanted a much softer tofu for the stew, I cut back on the amount of coagulant I used (I used nigari as usual, but if I’d been thinking more clearly, I’d have used the calcium sulfate I have because it makes a softer tofu AND adds calcium), and I used just 1.5 pounds (a new bottle of agave nectar, to be precise) to press it.

If you simply can not be bothered to make your own tofu, buy fresh soft tofu from an Asian market if at all possible. If you can’t find fresh, buy the best soft tofu you can find at an Asian market. Sometimes it comes in tubes and it’s usually in the produce department. If you don’t live near an Asian market, you can resort to using silken tofu in a box.

Soon Tubu Jjigae

3 1/2 cups water
1 4″x4″ square kombu
1/4 cup dulse, snipped into bite-size pieces with kitchen shears (optional)
1 handful arame (optional)
2 tsp vegan chicken bouillon (or enough to flavor 4 cups of water at half-strength)
1 Tbsp Korean red pepper powder
6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1/2 cup cold water
3 Tbsp arrowroot
6 Tbsp gochujang (Korean chili pepper paste) (Susan V of Fat-Free Vegan has a substitute you can make if you don’t live near a Korean grocery store in this post, but get the real deal if at all possible.)
1 cup cabbage kimchi
2 carrots, julienned or shredded
1 pound soft tofu, preferably homemade
1/2 bunch scallions, chopped

Place the seaweed(s) in a soup pot with the 3 1/2 cups of water and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove the kombu. (You can chop it up into bite-sized pieces and put it back in if you wish.) Add the garlic, red pepper powder, soy sauce, sesame oil, and “chicken” bouillon. Simmer for five minutes.

Mix the cold water and arrowroot together in a small bowl, whisking to ensure there are no lumps, then add to the soup. Add the gochujang, whisking to make sure it is dissolved. Simmer for another five minutes.

Add the kimchi and carrots.

Chop the tofu into 8 large pieces.

Add the tofu to the stew.

Stir the tofu into the stew, allowing it to break up a little bit, but mostly maintaining the chunks.

Simmer for 5 more minutes, then add the scallions.

Raise the heat a little and cook for another couple of minutes. In restaurants, soon tubu jjigae arrives to your table very, very hot, so let it get very bubbly.

I served the soon tubu jjigae in individual-sized cast iron pots, which even have lids to keep the stew warm while I run around taking photographs. Here’s one of the pots:

Mark was fascinated by the “little cauldrons”.

Serve with several banchan.

The verdict on this one was very good. Mark commented that he tasted “several layers of flavor, followed by a nice spiciness.” He proceeded to clean his cauldron, then steal tofu from mine. Afterwards he told me to announce it had the Mark Seal of Approval.

Brachtune doesn’t care much for tofu, or stew for that matter, but she does love chopsticks.

Tigger prefers red pepper.

(His fur is wet because he took a little shower in the kitchen sink. He’s very weird.)

Possibly the best parts of a Korean meal are the banchan, or little side dishes, that almost always accompany it. They usually include kimchi and pickled vegetables (and often tiny little dead fish). I could make an entire meal of banchan. I like to make my own, although since I like to serve four or five different kinds at a time, I often supplement my homemade banchan with a few ready-made items from Super H; they always have several vegan varieties (you do have to watch out for fish sauce). Tonight I made a bean sprout “salad” and a cucumber “salad”. I’m putting salad in quotes because I don’t really know what to call them. I spend enough time at Super H that you’d think maybe I would have picked up Korean by osmosis by now, but it’s still Greek to me. (I hilariate myself. (“Hilariate” is a perfectly cromulent word.))

Although I don’t know what to call these little dishes, they are very fast, easy, and even cheap. Throw them together before embarking on the preparation of a Korean meal, let them marinate while you make the main dish, and then everything will be ready at the same time. Easy!

Bean Sprout Banchan

2 cups bean sprouts
2 tsp seasoned rice vinegar
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
4 drop stevia (or 1 tsp sugar)

Place the bean sprouts in a bowl. Bring a kettle to boil, then pour the boiling water over the bean sprouts to cover. Let sit for 2 minutes, then drain.

Mix the remaining ingredients together in a small bowl …

… then toss with the bean sprouts.

Cover and let marinate in the refrigerator for at least half an hour before serving. Sprinkle with sesame seeds if desired.

Verdict? At dinner, Mark said he particularly liked the bean sprouts and seemed impressed when I told him I made the recipe up. Not that it’s a particularly difficult or involved recipe, in fact, it seems a little silly to bother taking credit for it. But it went over very well!

Cucumber Banchan

Imagine 2 cucumbers in this photograph.

2 cucumbers
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
2 tsp Korean red pepper powder

Slice cucumbers as thinly as possible, on a mandolin if you have one. Toss with the salt and let sit for 15 minutes.

In a small bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients.

Squeeze the cucumbers dry, then toss with marinade.

Now, I’ve always just marinaded the cucumbers in the past, however, this time I decided to get fancy and use my new pickle press. If you don’t have one, just let the cucumbers sit in the marinade. But if you want to use a press, put the cucumber into the press and tighten it:

Then refrigerate for at least half an hour. Notice how the liquid has come up through the holes in the “presser foot” of the press:

Simply drain the liquid off before unclamping. Then serve!

Verdict? Nice and crisp, however, not spicy enough for my tastes. I might toss in some more red pepper after pressing next time. You could barely taste the pepper. But I like cucumbers, so it was good anyway.

No recipes tonight – we went to a friend’s house to watch Heroes and were treated to a delicious vegan dinner – but I did snap some pictures of my bento lunch yesterday. That’s not even exciting since it was just leftovers from the night before, but I thought I’d show off the bento box I got in Japantown.

Here’s the inside. The bottom layer is leftover sushi rice; yes, it’s best fresh, but it’s okay gently re-heated the next day. Up top is some ume plum paste and furikake (dry seasoning) to mix into the rice and cabbage pickle.

There’s a tight-fitting lid for the top layer …

… and a band to keep the two layers together. What I liked about this box is it is not “cute” like many of them are.

Upon hearing that I was interested in furoshiki, a friend brought me back several from a trip she took to Japan a couple of years ago:

I used one of them to wrap and carry the bento box.

This isn’t a very good bento lunch because it doesn’t contain a protein, but I was very pressed for time and just grabbed what was in the refrigerator!

I’d like to write up a much more informative and interesting post on bentos, but in the meantime, Maki of Just Hungry and Just Bento (both of which often feature vegan recipes) has a very good article on selecting a bento box. One of the things I find fascinating about them is that the number of milliliters the box holds is supposed to be an indicator (on a one-to-one scale) of the number of calories it contains when full (using traditional proportions of starch, vegetable, and protein).

I’ve been wanting a Japanese pickle press for a while, but all of the ones I’ve seen have been pretty big and I feared they’d take up too much room in my refrigerator and make far more pickles than two people could reasonably eat. I probably could never make too many traditional dill pickles for Mark to consume, but I generally intend tsukemono to accompany a single meal and only need two servings at a time. So when I saw a small press at Soko Hardware in San Francisco’s Japantown last weekend, I snatched it up. I also picked up a tsukemono recipe book, Easy Japanese Pickling in Five Minutes to One Day. This book is not completely vegan, but it is mostly so.

Many Japanese pickles are made by extracting excess water from veggies by applying weights to them. The plastic pickle presses you can find in Japanese markets (or online) work by applying pressure in the form of a spring that clamps a lid down onto the pickles. A special press is not at all necessary, however. In fact, this particular book describes how not to use a press. Instead, it suggests placing the pickle ingredients into a bowl, covering with plastic wrap, and using cans or other weights to press the pickles.

I chose a simple pickle (most of them, in fact, are quite simple) last night, using my new press instead of the cans-in-a-dish method recommended by the book. The pickle press simply eliminates a little extra work (and plastic wrap, which I try to avoid) and also provides easy storage of leftovers.

Nakata-Style Cabbage Pickle

400 grams cabbage (check out that “baby” cabbage I got at Wegmans! It weighed 412 grams: perfect!)
2 tsp salt
2-3 Tbsp water
1/2 carrot, julienned
30 shiso leaves (I used fewer, but was very glad to be able to trim my rampant shiso plant, which for some reason is not only not dead, but thriving)

Core the cabbage.

In the words of the book, “Slice to fit a small rectangular container.” Their pickles ended up retaining layers, looking a bit like a cabbagy petit-four, but I made mine “scattered”, much like the sushi I served it with. So basically I just chopped the cabbage into bite-sized pieces:

Place the cabbage in a bowl and sprinkle with the salt and water. Mix together using your hands. Let sit for 15-20 minutes to soften.

Meanwhile, julienne the carrot and cut the shiso leaves into bit-sized pieces (I used kitchen shears). When the cabbage is ready, squeeze it dry, then layer in a pickle press (or a rectangular container), alternating with rows of shiso and carrot.

If using a pickle press, put the lid on and tighten the screw as much as possible:

If you don’t have a pickle press, cover the vegetables with plastic wrap, place a small plate or bowl over them, then put a can or other weight onto the plate or bowl.

Let the pickle stand for 30 minutes. Makes six servings.

This was a nice, light, “clean”-tasting accompaniment to our meal, even if it didn’t look as pretty as the picture in the book.

Mark requested “tofu and rice” for dinner last night and looking for inspiration, I flipped through Asian Vegan Kitchen. I decided to make Scattered Sushi from that book. Wegmans didn’t have the lotus root called for, so I substituted dry tofu (which also satisfied Mark’s tofu request). At the author’s suggestion, I substituted bamboo shoots for the shiitakes because as previously discussed, I hate mushrooms.

Scattered Sushi

Before running up to the grocery store, I stuck a piece of kombu into 4 cups of water. This gave me enough dashi when I got home to prepare the meal below and make 2 servings of miso soup.

4 ounces dry tofu, cubed (original calls for 3.5 ounces lotus root, soaked in vinegared water)
1/2 cup dashi
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp sugar or 6 drops stevia
pinch of salt
1 medium carrot, julienned
4 Tbsp dashi
1/2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sugar or 2 drops stevia
pinch of salt
1 8 oz can bamboo shoots, shredded (or 10 dried shiitake mushrooms)
2/3 cup dashi
3 Tbsp sugar or 18 drops stevia
2 Tbsp mirin
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 cup snow peas, strings removed, and chopped in half
sushi rice
1/2 cup white sesame seeds, toasted
pickled ginger for garnish
1 sheet toasted nori seawood, cut into strips, for garnish

Prepare sushi rice. I guess I should do a tutorial on this sometime, but all I do is cook it in a rice cooker, then cut in seasoned rice vinegar and salt with a rice paddle when it’s done. I don’t even measure those things, so it wouldn’t be much of a tutorial. Just follow the instructions on your package of sushi rice, then season with sushi vinegar and salt to taste.

Combine 1/2 cup dashi, 2 Tbsp rice vinegar, 1 Tbsp sugar or 6 drops stevia, and a pinch of salt in a small saucepan. Add the tofu or the soaked lotus root and cook for 3 to 4 minutes (until lotus root, if using, is tender). Drain and set aside.

Combine 4 Tbsp dashi, 1/2 tsp rice vinegar, 1 tsp sugar or 2 drops stevia, and a pinch of salt in the same small saucepan and cook for 2-3 minutes over medium heat, until the liquid is almost absorbed. Drain and set aside.

If using shiitakes, rinse and soak in water for 5 minutes, then remove hard stems. Place the mushrooms or the bamboo shoots in the small saucepan with 2/3 cup dashi, 3 Tbsp sugar or 18 drops stevia, mirin, and soy sauce and cook over medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes. The liquid may be nearly or completed absorbed if you are using mushrooms, however, it probably won’t be with the bamboo shoots. Drain if necessary and set aside.

Blanch the snow peas in salted boiling water. Drain and set aside.

The book didn’t suggest serving the scattered sushi with the typical soy sauce and wasabi you’d eat regular sushi with, but I wanted to try out the real wasabi I’d gotten from Penzey’s, so before assembling the sushi, I mixed some up so it could sit for a few minutes:

To assemble the dish, place sushi rice in a bowl, then “scatter” with sesame seeds, the prepared vegetables, pickled ginger, and nori slivers. Serve at room temperature.

Best served with miso soup and pickle!

Mark rated this meal as “simple but very good” and gobbled it up very quickly. Speaking of Mark, as much as I loved being in San Francisco, it was very good to be back in my own kitchen with my two favorite boys:

Today Mark and some friends and I attended the National Book Festival, where they served free vegan beverages!

Water! I also enjoyed a Clif bar while I was there, but I had to supply that. Really this is just about the lamest, most obvious ploy to make yet another non-food post. I just wanted to gloat about meeting Sir Salman Rushdie!!!

I stood in line to have a book signed by him after he did a Q & A, which was very crowded and therefore extremely difficult to get photos of, particularly as a somewhat height-challenged individual. This is the best I could do:

He was smart and funny!

Immediately after the Q & A, we rushed over to the book signing line, although he wasn’t scheduled to begin signing for another hour. While I stood in line, sweating profusely in the extremely humid DC heat, I gave Mark my camera and let him go wander around taking pictures. While he was out doing so, he ran into Rushdie being carted over to the signing tent!! He got to shake his hand and take this picture! How fair is that?!

Just before Sir Rushdie’s Q & A, Neil Gaiman did a reading from his new book, The Graveyard Book. I consider Neil Gaiman to the The Nicest Person In The World. It’s also always a pleasure to hear him read.

I’m surprised any of the pics of him turned out, since I could barely see him either.

OK, I am DONE with non-food posts, I swear! In fact, I’ll have TWO food posts for you tomorrow. The pictures are uploaded and everything; but it’s too late for me to write them up tonight. And I just remembered I need to go crack and soak some soybeans so I can make tofu tomorrow.

Today is my last day here in beautiful, wonderful San Francisco. I take a red-eye back home to Mark, Tigger, and Brachtune. My friend and I are hitting up the Haight today but although I think I am going to lug my camera with me, I won’t have a chance to post again until I’m home.

Last night we ate at an Indonesian restaurant. I had a “tempe” and tofu dish that looked like this:

Not a very good picture, I’m afraid, but I had to use the flash and I didn’t want to disturb our neighbors, who were pretty close to us, by taking more than one picture. As it is, they asked me twice if I am a food critic. They also suggested that posing as a food critic would be a way to get good service in restaurants. Anyway, after the meal I asked the waiter if they made the tempeh on the premises and he answered affirmatively. I could tell that it was homemade, though, without even asking. It just has a more lovely texture than store-bought. Theirs was even better than my homemade tempeh, but the somewhat unfortunate thing is that after eating their tempeh, and after making my own, and finding it so much better than store-bought, I’m not sure if I can buy it any more. The unfortunate part is I’m not that great at making it and sometimes fail. I am getting better though and I ordered more starter before I left, so hopefully soon I’ll be a tempeh master.

Yesterday I took a Victorian house walking tour because I love Victorian houses. That obviously has nothing to do with food, but I’ll share a couple of photos anyway since my posts have been so wordy lately.

This is a block in Lower Pacific Heights:

These are a couple of Queen Annes:

This is an Italianate house I thought was pretty:

Too bad the houses I saw on the tour ranged in price from 3 million to 30 million. Apartments in Victorians are 1 million. Oof.

Well, time to pack up and check out. I will surely be leaving my heart in San Francisco.