it broasts AND it bribles

Today I spent a million hours making Bryanna Clark Grogan's Soy & Seitan Turkey. (I had to go on an emergency trip to Kmart to get a tiny roaster, during which I could not stop thinking of the 8-in-1 Super Pan.)

The fake turkey looks kind of creepy or maybe I just think it looks creepy because yesterday I watched a creepy show on TLC about malformed conjoined twins.

Before baking. Like a giant toe! It is the roulade format so there is onion/apple/sage bread stuffing rolled up inside. Anyway now it is all baked and resting in the fridge, which is supposed to improve its texture for tomorrow.

I also recreated the tempeh salad with cranberry vinaigrette that I had at the Garden Cafe in Woodstock last weekend.

I shall tell you how to make it because it is really good.

8 oz package tempeh, cut into bite-size squares
3/4 c vegetable broth
Put in skillet, cover, and cook until broth is absorbed. Cool.

2/3 c fresh or frozen cranberries
1/4 c sugar
1/2 c apple cider vingar
Combine in small saucepan and cook on medium 5-10 minutes, until cranberry skins split. Cool slightly and puree in blender or food processor. Put in bowl and whisk in:

2 t dijon mustard
2 T canola oil

Add the tempeh and 3-4 cups of shredded raw cabbage. Then mix in a big scoop of Vegenaise and season with salt and pepper. Mmm. We ate it with roasted sweet potatoes and whole wheat couscous. The cafe served it with wild rice vegetable stew and steamed kale.

carcass-free thanksgiving #1

Welp I see from my helpful poll that my year of blog neglect has diminished my readership to four people, one of whom is a liar, so that frees me up to unselfconsciously ramble about crap just like back in the good old days.

This weekend I continued my trend of forcing Chris O to go on a 6+ hour road trip every five days (This Time With NonStop Christmas Music) and we went to Thanksliving at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary.


We stayed in a cute little cottage at Phoenicia Village which was very convenient and nice, although the Catskills region in general has a kind of Headless Horseman/Rip Van Winkle creepy feeling about it.


Woodstock Farm Sanctuary is very nice and it was pleasant to go to a vegan-centric event in the midst of the American carcass-mongering holiday season.

Poor turkeys. Well, not these ones in particular. These ones are having some squash.

There were lots of nice goats.

For appetizers they had little phyllo dough cups with mushroominess inside and pieces of baguette with Dr. Cow's Tree Nut Cheese, which was good and goat-cheese like. Then for dinner it was Celebration Roast which I had never had before. I don't think it's that much better than Tofurkey though. It has a stuffing-like center, but the center still has a meaty, seitany texture, which is a little weird.



Dessert was pumpkin cheesecake and chocolate cake with fluffy peanut butter frosting and it was so good that I ate it until my stomach was all gurgley.

On our way home we saw a little jack russell trotting along the road. We opened the car door and he jumped in.

Then we wasted a bunch of time driving him to his house where no one was home and then dropping him off at his vet. He was very cute but a little stinky.

Anyway there are some more pictures.

I think I will update my blog again.

Here is the news.

1. I am moving to northern Virginia next month because I have a new job.

2. I am taking this one and this one with me.

3. All of us are vegan, except one of us cheats by stealing butter off kitchen tables when he is out visiting.

easter

Easter is way too early/sneaky this year which precluded me from doing any glitter-based Martha Stewart craft projects. But these pussywillows in my grandpa's back field are almost ripe. Despite the concerns.

Oscar thinks that if he sits at the table like a person, someone will serve him a plate of food. He acts confused and dismayed when it does not happen.

I am obsessed with veganizing placek. (Placek is a Polish sweet bread, like a yeasted coffee cake, which normally has a pound of butter and eight eggs in it.) After making a couple gummy bricks, I finally made an edible one, except I burnt it and had to cut the bottom off. Also it does not taste unhealthy enough. Also the crumbs all fell off the top. I think I am two placeks away from making a perfect vegan placek but I am really sick of placek now, so.

When I got home there was a starling in my apartment. It is bad luck! Or else it means there will be an Important Message.

More Easter Pictures

drear.

I have really had enough of the weather but at least fog is interesting. Now it is back to snowing. I am completely tired of snow.

Oscar = never tired of snow.

¡enchiladas!

Potato Kale Enchiladas with Roasted Chile Sauce. Mine are not as pretty as the recipe photo ones. I think because I put them together the night before I baked them so they comingled overnight and it was hard to get them out of the pan looking pretty. It is not really a weeknight recipe. It tastes much fancier than anything I normally make.

Black beans like so, except from a can.

this is the best idea I have ever had.

A couple weeks ago I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and then I froze most of them instead of baking them. Now I have constant access to warm melty cookies. Of course, it is potentially not brilliant to heat up the whole oven to bake two cookies and potentially not brilliant to eat two cookies every night at 11pm. But still.

I slightly modified the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. I think this cures them of the creepy translucency they come down with on day two. Of course if you do it my way they will not survive more than ten minutes out of the oven anyway. I will post the recipe since the VWaV version is already on the internets in five frillion places. I made them partly whole wheat and you can kind of tell, but I like that because it makes me feel better about eating them every day late at night.

1 cup Earth Balance buttery sticks, at room temperature
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp molasses
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp ground flax seeds whisked with 3 Tbsp water
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (check ingredients for vegan-worthy chips)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Cream together the margarine and sugar until fluffy.
Add the molasses, vanilla, and flax glop. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix well. Fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts. The dough will make you concerned with its unnatural stiffness. Form the dough into cookie-like discs. They will not be spreading out much at all so flatten them a little. Place onto ungreased cookie sheet. Put cookie sheet in freezer until solid then dump into ziploc bag for storage. Put straight from freezer to oven to bake (remove from ziploc). If you bake them in a hot oven (400ish) the outside browns while the inside is still gushy. GENIUS!

rainbow pox

I finally got a 1M tip but I am not so good at it. I thought adding some nonpareils (why NONpareils? Where are the pareils?) would draw attention away from the subpar piping but now they look like they have come down with a disease. Oh well.

in-like-a-lion cake

March is only somewhat coming in like a lion. It's sort of a wimpy lion. Definitely not a lamb though, so I went with the lion cake even though I felt more like making a lamb cake.

It's banana cake with chocolate mousse and sliced bananas inside, then covered in ganache. All the recipes are from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World - the cake is the banana split cupcakes, 1.5x, baked in a jelly roll pan and cut into squares. I could have done a nicer job on the ganache but my theme lately is "impatience."

dreary & not dreary

Cross-country skiing at Sprague Brook. Egregiously, this is the only time I have gone all winter. Good thing it is not a problem to wait until March.

Maybe this should be a secret surprise, but I am not so good at maintaining motivation on long-term secret projects. In fact I never finish knitting anything other than hats and dog sweaters, but this time I will...

It is SO freaky how the yarn sucks the dye out of the kool aid. Drinking kool aid really cannot be good for your insides.

Orange, lemonade, and tropical fruit punch or something like that. Boiling kool aid is not my air freshener of choice. It is maybe not AS bright as it looks in the photo, but it is pretty bright.

snow & cupcakes

Everyone at my workplace has a disgusting illness that makes them cough constantly like we are a tuberculosis sanitarium. I think I am resisting its advances through the use of 2000% RDA of vitamin C and a million Cold-Eezes which makes me proud of myself because normally I catch every illness I come into contact with. It is because I have weak tonsils. So in the interest of tempting fate I took Oscar snowshoeing today.



There were lots of nice striped shadows.


Then I made vanilla and agave nectar cupcakes with vegan chocolate buttercream. I think my oven is too hot because they came out a little dark, agave nectar is fussy. But Jennifer showed me the error of my ways in regard to vegan fluffy buttercream, which is that Spectrum shortening is much, much better than Earth Balance shortening for vegan fluffy buttercream. In fact while I was checking out at Wegmans the woman ahead of me asked whether it was better than Earth Balance, and I had to say yes. Sorry Earth Balance shortening. You are just too plasticky.

dogs

Sable, my mom's friend Peggy's sheltie.


My aunt's lab/poodle-but-somehow-not-quite-looking-like-a-labradoodle Larry and Peggy's lab, Clarabelle.

More pictures.

back to regular life

Eighteen degrees and no more vegan hollandaise. :(

I Am Sore in My Hams

Today Jennifer and I hiked 9.4 miles which is highly impressive for us because Jennifer's uterus is the size of a cantaloupe, and I am lazy. We did the Tomales Point trail at Point Reyes National Seashore.


We went all the way to the end because we are impressive.


There are many magnificent elks along the trail.


Also, many lovely sceneries.

Afterwards we went to dinner at the fruitiest restaurant in all of Berkeley. It is vegan and 90% raw. I think the way most people feel about vegan food is the way I feel about raw food. Like the revulsion they feel when they hear a dessert is made without butter is the revulsion I feel when I hear that a "burrito" is wrapped in a raw collard green instead of a tortilla.

Besides the communal tables which I very much never appreciate, all of the menu items are affirmations. Then the waiter repeats them back to you. You are wonderful! I got a warm grain bowl but I guess in raw-food-land "warm" just means "not cold" and does not mean "body temperature or above" which is how I normally think of warm. Anyway, it was pretty good once I got over my shock at being freed from the tyranny of heat. Also, I have a newfound appreciation for fake cheese-ish items made of cashew. Jennifer had some cashew glop on her I am Prosperous which was sort of like creme fraiche.


I got this juice called I am Succulent because I wanted the boyishly handsome yet unfortunately spiritually-journeying waiter to tell me I was succulent. It is grapefruit and celery or something and I think it stripped a layer of skin off of my tongue.


I got a piece of lemon meringue pie ("you are amazing!") to go because I was intrigued by vegan meringue but it is pretty amazingly gross. I guess I forgot the crust would be raw. There are severe textural issues in all three components and the meringue is just like a dense cold paste. I am Amazing(ly not impressed).

There are some more pictures in the Visiting Jennifer's Belly set.

belly visit

In case you did not notice, I am in Berkeley visiting Jemnifer and her fetus. I have not been back here since I quit grad school in 2003 but I used to live upstairs.


Her uterus is as big as a cantaloupe!

The weather is delightful.

Experience our adventures (which mostly entail eating food) here.
Or read Jenmifer's perspective here.

jennifer belly need pancake

choc choc chip