i am a poor dog with no legs

things I made for christmas

Fragrant Indian Brittle from epicurious. For some reason that name sounds disgusting to me so I prefer to think of it as Cardamom Nut Brittle. The recipe says to cook the sugar to 350 degrees but everyone in the epicurious comments is complaining about that. The sugar temperature chart I looked at said that 310-320 is good for brittles, so I stopped at about 315 and it was fine. It is really fascinating how sugar changes as it goes through its stages. I want to try making vegan caramels. I don't even like candy that much, but it is so interesting. Anyway, the brittle might be more exciting with some black pepper or cayenne. I used the full amount of cardamom, I don't know what those epicurious commenters were complaining about there, waaah wah too much cardamom. I wish there was some kind of system for epicurious comments where you could tell who has a helpful comment and who is just a bad cook.


Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti from Veganomicon. Really good but yet again I had to add an extra huge amount of flour. What is wrong with me and my measuring cup???


Sugared almonds. I burnt the crap out of the first batch of these. The recipe is vague. You have to cook the sugar syrup for quite a while before adding the almonds, otherwise the almonds burn before the coating is done. If I had still had the candy thermometer out on the second batch of these, I could be more helpful right now. At first the sugar syrup boils in big bubbles, and then it starts to be more foamy. I added the almonds at that point, but they were on the verge of burning, so it might have still been a little early. It is very exciting when the sugar seizes up and dries out and then re-melts. It might be better to do in a skillet. And, it would be better to use twice as many almonds. When you pour them out with this ratio, there is a huge glob of goo and it's impossible to get the almonds unclumped. So it's finicky but they're very pretty and tasty at the end.


I feel inordinately guilty whenever I don't love something from Veganomicon. This is the mushroom walnut pate. It looks just like cat food and it is kind of bland. Maybe I didn't add enough salt. But it seems like it needs some porcini mushrooms or something.


My mom gave me a punch bowl so I had to make punch. This is ginger pomegranate punch and it is great. There was a massive pomegranate related shortage at the supermarket so I had to use "pomegranate cocktail" instead of pure pomegranate juice but I bet it would be even better with real pomegranate juice.

post-christmas

christmas pictures

merry christmas!

Merry Christmas, blog readers!

christmas eve

Ooooh, look what I got for christmas, a fancy flash. No more artistically blurry indoor photographs! Now I can terrorize everyone with my camera even more and they can whine even more. Waaah, that is so bright, are you the paparazzi, you are burning out our eyeballs, waaaah wah...


Oscar likes my grandpa.


Also, Oscar is crazy for Limburger cheese.


My cousin. Isn't the non-blurriness astounding?

cut outs

Today I decorated christmas cookies with my parents and somehow, probably due to the wine, the family togetherness degenerated into making unflattering cookie depictions of each other.

That's me with the fangs.

Ah, the holiday season.

ginger cookies

I don't know what it is about me and Vegan with a Vengeance, but it seems like my doughs are always way too sticky. It is odd because I measure my flour wrong anyway, by dipping the cup into the bag, instead of by sprinkling it into the cup grain by grain with a teaspoon or however you are supposed to do it, and that's supposed to give you too much flour. Well ANYWAY. I added an extra half cup or so of flour. I like these Sparkled Ginger Cookies a lot, they are not too sweet despite being covered in sugar. But I'm taking them to my lab holiday party and I don't know how they will go over there. They're great with a cup of tea but maybe they won't be good with a big cup of pop. Ick. I don't know how people can drink pop. It's not really like me to fret over the unrefined tastes of my cookie audience. It must be the benevolent spirit of the winter holidays.

I switched to saying "soda" a long time ago but I'm using "pop" here for the authentic Buffalo flavor.

a good use for a snowy day and a $4 thrift store sweater

oscar and yeast

Last night I had a dream that Oscar was being swallowed by a giant snake. I had a little knife and I was trying to decide how I should hack open the snake to get Oscar out. Luckily I was having this dream in the 7 minutes of snooze alarm time so I woke up before I had to do any cutting. I love Oscar. Look at his little tail!


I do not love nutritional yeast. One of my most disgusting memories of my vegan roommate from five years ago was the horrible boxed macaroni-and-yeast he ate all the time. But I thought maybe I was at a level of veganism where I might be able to try again with the pasta/nutritional yeast combo. It is like Level 8 or something. Right above the ability to actually enjoy soy ice cream. Anyway, I would probably like this better if I hadn't tasted the sauce beforehand. Or hadn't smelled it. There is some subtle tone in the smell of nutritional yeast that I cannot handle at all. Anyway, for one bite I would think this was the most delicious thing ever, and then the next bite would make me feel ill. Maybe it's that it looks cheesey and I forget it's not cheese. So, it was a very complex experience which I will attempt again in a year or two. (It's mac daddy from Veganomicon and I fully endorse the recipe, if you like nutritional yeast.)

crumby cranberry squares

Mmmm. Cranberries. Based on this recipe, except with earth balance instead of butter, and made in a 9x13 pan instead of 7x10 (7x10? wtf?) because otherwise they are too thick. And the baking times reduced a little bit.

backyard food chain

Do you see the lump on the fence? That's the hawk that eats the little birds that come to the bird feeder. Well, they used to come to the bird feeder.

variations on a theme

I figured out that if I open up my Emeril Brand Panini Press so it is flat, I can grill tofu without making it into a waffle fry. Italian-style-ish grilled tofu, Roasted Tomato Couscous with Capers from Veganomicon, brussels sprouts.


Smokey tempeh, Lazy Person Baked Beans, Sauteed Collards, all from Veganomicon. In case you can't tell I am too lazy to go find the book so I just made up the names of the things. They might be right. Also mashed sweet potatoes.

cold weather kayaking

Today I went kayaking even though I usually do not kayak in winter because I am a sissy. At first we planned to go to Buckhorn, which is a swamp on Grand Island, but there was a problem.

Which is, that it was frozen solid.

So we went to Tonawanda Creek.



Here's two unrelated pictures of food so that I don't get kicked out of veganmofo.

Lentil soup, from this recipe, but with vegetable stock (duh) and some bay leaves and red wine added. In the background, pillsbury crescent rolls, the best accidentally vegan food ever. Overnight the soup thickened up so that now it is a big pot of lentils. I seem to generally have that problem with soup. And, portabella mushroom salad with spicy mustard dressing from Veganomicon. My mother declared this The Best Salad Ever. With sweet potato french fries.

thanksgiving recap

I hope you all had a nice thanksgiving.


My food photography skills buckled under the pressure of thanksgiving. Here's my dinner anyway. I made Veganomicon chickpea cutlets. My dad made gravy. And my mom and I brought little tiny containers of our own private butter-free squash and mashed potatoes and Earth Balance.


Dessert! Bryanna's pumpkin pie with Cook's Illustrated's pie crust with their ridiculous 1:2 fat:flour ratio. This pie was pretty good for a first attempt at a vegan pumpkin pie. But, it makes enough filling for only a shallow pie plate so next time I would double it. Shallow pies are for sissies. Also, the brown sugar makes it very BROWN. Which is not so attractive. So white sugar next year. When serving pie to non-vegans you don't want them to assume that vegan pies are brown. The texture was pretty good though. I used 3 tablespoons of cornstarch but I would do 4 next time. I went for the low end this time due to my residual trauma from the eraser pie. Oh, then there is apple pie, and a VCTOtW gingerbread cupcake.

Some more pictures.

And now, I have harnessed the power of YouTube to allow you to share in the Thanksgiving after dinner entertainments.

First, Oscar licks the roasting pan.

Don't worry. It gets better.

Next, we go outside and feed the leftovers to the chickens.

My uncle has three kinds of chickens now. The same old red ones from last year. Then some white ones that he rescued from some people who couldn't take care of them. You can see those white ones do not yet know how to eat from a spoon. And the ones all sitting together are Araucanas, the kind that lay blue eggs and have feathers on their legs and no tails. The Araucanas were sleepy for some reason.

Finally we retire indoors to torment Oscar with the model train.

Yay. I am glad my family is the type that finds it hilarious to make the dog bark for twenty solid minutes after dinner... some people might find that annoying. Anyways, happy thanksgiving!

the demanding lifestyle of a portly dog

Poor Oscar is forced to nap on a pile of pillows. Sometimes more than three times in a single day.

MMMMMMMM

In the background, my current favorite sandwich - a big slab of grilled tofu on a baguette with sauteed onions and red peppers and a lot of fake mayonnaise. I really like the tofu + baguette + mayo combination, it reminds me of that vietnamese sandwich at the restaurant in Berkeley. The one that costs like one dollar. Except that one was fried tofu and it had cilantro. And some other stuff. Hard to remember. Am old now.

Anyways, in the foreground are these really good eggplant things that our Georgian postdoc brought to our Thanksgiving potluck. I bartered her my extra cupcakes for them. They are big slices of eggplant fried and then wrapped in a little packet with some kind of ground up walnut sauce and pomegranate seeds. They are spicy and oily and great. My mother says they look like toads. She is cranky because she is on a diet.

Now I gotta make some pies.

gingerbread cupcakes with lemony cream cheese frosting

These are my favorites by far of all the vegan cupcakes that are taking over the world that I have made so far. This is a batch-and-a-half since it's for my lab potluck and my family thanksgiving. But I had to make four big ones since I ran out of little cupcake papers.

Tomorrow: two pies. I've never made a vegan pumpkin pie before. It is for the family so it needs to be as traditional as possible. I am planning on going the cornstarch route rather than the tofu route. Is this a horrible mistake? Discuss.

isa pizza. reduced sodium.

Yesterday I made Isa Pizza from VWaV but I forgot to take a picture of it until this morning. The other thing I forgot was to add salt to the dough. Which, in case you were wondering, is not a good idea... so that was sad.

tofu + cookie

Last night I used my Emeril brand panini press to make grilled tofu for my leftover veganomicon caesar. It is very easy but it comes out kind of like a waffle fry because the lid is so heavy. Maybe I should read the instructional booklet. Maybe I should also focus the camera before taking pictures. So many regrets.


Also I made these cookies. I'm still not 100% thrilled with earth balance for cookies. It's so dense and greasy. Maybe I need to put a fake egg in there.