Gaaaahhhhh!!!

So I made a recipe from VegWeb for a Mexican-style tempeh that called for a package of tempeh, onion, garlic, whatever veggies you want. I had leftover diced bell peppers (my boyfriend and I did a taco night Saturday) and some mushrooms. It also called for a teaspoon of chili powder and any other seasonings. Foolish girl that I am, I followed that direction, and added some Mexican seasoning and cinnamon. I heated up some leftover brown rice and served it up. Sadly, I could not take a bite without needing to flood my esophagus with water. Whoops! It is not easy to rectify a dish you've made too spicy except to maybe find someone who likes really spicy food and give it to him. I think next time, I'll just do a pinch of the chili powder and other seasonings. Whooo! And I'll see if I can't foist the leftovers on the boyfriend.

On a lighter note, spring is in the air. The weather today was just gorgeous, mild blue skies and while it was too warm for my coat, it wasn't quite warm enough to go without, especially because I was wearing a shirt with very short sleeves. Guess I'll break out the hoodie now for the mornings. I actually got out at lunch and ended up taking a short walk, which is something I should do every day, a walk around the block before I eat.

N.B. for the tacos, we used the Yves Mexican-style Ground Round that I sauteed in a pan with part of a chopped onion (the rest we threw on our tacos).

It's pastalicious

I had a small container of cherry tomatoes sitting around and a recipe for roasted cherry tomato pasta from La Dolce Vegan, so I tried it out. I probably needed more cherry tomatoes for the eight ounces (dry)pasta I made, but I can always make another tomato part and toss it into the pasta. I also "steamed" some spinach. The easiest thing to do is chop up a couple cloves of garlic, saute them until they begin browning a bit, turn off the heat, toss in a few handfuls of baby spinach, stir to mix with the garlic, cover, and let sit for about two minutes. It goes really, really well with the tomatoey pasta. I didn't have the vegan "cheese" the recipe calls for, but I will just have to find some and add to the recipe.

The calendar says spring, but it's been pretty chilly the past few days. After a gorgeous spring-like day a week-and-a-half ago, the weather has been getting colder. Supposedly there was snow in the area yesterday, but for maybe five minutes out in Fairfax County. This pasta, I think, is perfect for spring, but spring weather, not spring-on-the-calendar. I've done some other cooking this week, making my veggie ribs, the lemon-caper tofu that I've made before, and I am perfecting my Delightful Millet recipe. There's something about grains, fruits, and nuts that seems to be a perfect dish.

Adaptation

After I moved into my current apartment almost seven years ago, someone in my family sent me the American Heart Association cookbook. I never really used it for some reason--until I became vegan, I wasn't too keen on cooking for some reason. And once I did become vegan, I found numerous cookbooks and a Web site that provided me with tons of recipes. But today, I needed to use up some seitan, and the cookbooks didn't have a good recipe that clicked. So I decided to see what I could adapt from the AHA cookbook, which doesn't even have a tofu recipe, and if you say "seitan" to them, they'd probably respond, "Say what?" But the nice thing about cooking seitan (and tofu and tempeh) is that you don't have to worry about salmonella. I found a recipe for what they call coriander-coated chicken, cut my hunk of seitan into thin slices, and with a few tweaks here and there, and I had a nice dish. It's not my favorite thing I've made with seitan--that honor goes to the Tomato Walnut-Crusted Seitan--but any dish calling for boneless pieces of flesh I can likely sub with seitan. I have to wonder if pureeing silken tofu in a blender will make a good sub for cream. The next time I have a dish calling for it, I will give that a whirl (no pun intended)

I had a couple of leftover sides with it, and then cooked some new sides to eat for later in the week. I'm also wondering what to do with some leftover baby spinach in my fridge. I might lightly steam it with garlic. I'm weird about spinach. I don't want frozen, chopped-into-microscopic-bits spinach. I like my spinach lightly sauteed or steamed and still recognizable. I think I'm perfecting my millet recipe, but I want to give it a couple more tries before I share the recipe with anyone. Grains, nuts, and fruit--yummy!

Cooking again

Tonight, I cooked for the first time in over a week. I didn't cook last week because I had leftovers to use up before going out of town. So tonight, I made a soba noodle dish from The Garden of Vegan and a tofu picatta from the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook. My food wasn't quite hot enough when I got it plated, so I stuck it in the micro for a couple minutes, which improved the taste dramatically. The noodle dish has spinach, an absolute power veggie, and miso, a fermented soy paste which is said to have amazing health benefits. While miso is unfortunately high in sodium, a little goes a long way. Just put it in your dish toward the end of cooking to avoid diminishing its healthful properties. I may try a different noodle next time, such as linguine, but it's still a good side dish. Before I went veg, I used to love chicken piccata--something about lemons and capers--so a tofu version with mushrooms truly appealed to me. I didn't have wine, so I used vegetable broth, which worked just as well.

Well, the vernal equinox (first day of spring) is coming up. Oddly, the weather here in DC was said to be lovely this weekend while I was in Florida--which also had delightful weather--and when I came back to Washington, DC, Monday, the temps were around 80 degrees, and it was sunny and breezy and almost perfect. It got cooler as the week went by, and I hear we may get a dusting of snow this weekend. Snow. Just before the beginning of spring. It seems winter does not want to give up its grip. Luckily, I haven't gotten my change-of-season cold (yet).

Every year in March, is Meatout, once called the Great American Meatout. It was modeled on the Great American Smokeout with the idea that you give up meat for one day (or do Meatout Mondays and avoid animal products every Monday). There are events nationwide, and even internationally, so check the site out and find an event near you. I hope to do tabling Sunday, and a restaurant visit I have coordinated for the local vegetarian society is listed as an event. The times I've done it, it's been bitterly cold.

Ironically, just before the Meatout events begin, dozens of Catholic bishops have given a special dispensation so Catholics can eat "traditional" food on St. Patrick's Day, such as corned beef and cabbage and briskets and all sort of other fatty, meaty foods--ick. Catholics who wish to eat meat are supposed to deny themselves something else instead for that Lenten Friday. I understand that one of the bishops who granted the dispensation is a vegan himself. I have to wonder why would he all but encourage consumption of meat. But then, how often do you see a vegan clergyman? I do know some vegans who practice the lifestyle because of their religion; one young woman I met said that because her religion required it roughly half the time, she may as well eat vegan the rest of the year. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians are prohibited from consuming meat and dairy products altogether during the Lenten period, which for them is 55 days before Easter.

I don't intend to wear green tomorrow either.

I'm baaack

I didn't do a whole lot of cooking last week because I was spending the weekend out in Tampa, Florida. My first cousin once removed (but we just say cousin because it's easier), Heather, was a bat mitzvah. At the Saturday luncheon, I ran into a cousin on my father's side who had Heather (who is a cousin on my mother's side) babysit, and she thought the world of Heather. She said that whenever Heather came over, she would bring activities for the kids.

I always get nervous when spending time with my family because of the vegan thing, but my family made an effort to have food I could eat. One thing I do miss about Florida is the strawberries; they are much better there than here in DC, and you get them earlier in the year. It's the same with green grapes. Give me berries and grapes and oranges and watermelon, and I will stuff my face. After Friday night services, my mom needed to pick up a few things at the grocery store, so I grabbed some peanut butter and crackers, which ended up being my breakfast this weekend. The Saturday night party was a pasta buffet and salad (and some fish, blech). Pasta (just make sure it has no eggs) with marinara sauce is always good to give a vegan in a pinch. Spinach or romaine lettuce salads with tons of vegetables and a vegan dressing are also good.

As a gift, I made a pair of earrings and a bracelet and helped chaperone a hotel slumber party with my cuz and her friends. Eventually, we split into two rooms, and I stayed with my cousin, her friends, and another cousin of mine, who is a little younger while her mom stayed with the other kids. In some ways, things haven't changed much--the girls all giggle and make prank calls. In some ways, they have, as they made the calls to people they knew and on their cell phones. But so long as they kept it quiet, I really didn't care. Eventually I did have to call an end to the proceedings. I needed my sleep!

On Sunday, my aunt had a brunch at her house with tons of food. I ate lots of fruit and veggies, a bagel and some hummus (another good option when a vegan's in the house). One of my cousins found these veggie chips that I really scarfed down. I'm also glad my family pushed me into taking some with me, as they were a great snack on the plane ride today. They're sort of like the Terra Chips, but unlike Terra, they had these dehydrated green beans that were really delicious. I also love sweet potato chips more than regular potato chips.

There's an interesting fast food place in Tampa, a three-location chain, called Evos, which is trying to improve fast food. Yes, they serve meat, but they serve three smoothies, all vegan, and they have a vegan burger and vegan sides. What's really cool are the "air fries" which are baked, but don't taste it. And they still have potato skins on. I absolutely love it when places serve fries that have the skins on; it seems more real to me. My sister would love a location in Orlando. I'd love a location in DC.

Fruit, veggies, peanut butter, crackers, hummus, bagels, pasta, salad. It does a body good.

We're number 6! We're number 6!

I just got a link that PETA considers Washington, DC, the sixth-most veg-friendly large city. Well, actually, it's the DC area, as they mention a couple of places in Maryland and one in Virginia. Someone should tell them, though, that The Vegetable Garden is in Rockville, not Bethesda. It's in an area some people call North Bethesda, but bite me, you're Rockville, a town sadly immortalized in an R.E.M. song. And I wonder if it's because "Germantown" wouldn't fit. Just kidding.

I'm very happy they gave props to my favorite lunch spot, Java Green, which is clearly a favorite of a lot of people because they're almost always crowded when I drop by. And thanks for mentioning Compassion Over Killing, a local vegan-advocacy group, also considered by VegNews magazine to be one of the worthiest places for your charity dollar.

Sometimes I need a little good news when life dole a whole bunch of bad...

"Chicken"-fried seitan.

I have probably said umpteen times that I almost never make a recipe exactly as written. While I haven't created many recipes of my own, I adapt recipes enough to make them my own. Of course, it's easy to throw seasonings in flour, coat tofu or seitan, and fry it up, and that's what I did tonight. It takes less time if it's seitan because you don't have to press it the way you do tofu.

I just threw a bunch of seasonings into flour, dunked seitan slices in soy milk, then the flour mixture and fried it in a fry pan, simple as that. I am going to tinker around with the flavorings a bit to come up with the right flavor, but this is still quite tasty. Oh, yeah, I pretty much never make a recipe the same way twice either. I had my seitan with a nuked potato and some salad. I know, not exciting, but such is life. I'll have to make more seitan this weekend--this is the second part of the batch I made--to store in my freezer.

Little trick I use: if a recipe calls for bell peppers, and they are out of season and outrageously expensive, buy bags of frozen bells. They work almost as nicely in a recipe, and for the most part, the measurements don't really matter. Besides, little strips of red, yellow, and green bells are so much nicer than just plain old green. And unless it's beans, I avoid most canned vegetables like the plague; I buy canned beans because I just don't want to take the time to soak dried beans. But the only canned products I buy are beans, lentils, tomato paste, chopped tomatoes (for stews), water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, the latter two being my faves for a stir fry. If you're concerned about salt, check the sodium content and find the ones with the fewest ingredients and the lowest sodium count.