Supper and the Single Girl

Vegan Meals and Random Thoughts

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Another delicious seitan recipe


It's been a while since I've made this, but this is a fabulous seitan recipe from La Dolce Vegan. It's Tomato-Walnut Crusted Mock Chicken, but I think you can use any type of seitan, really. You do have to let it marinate for about an hour in a tomato paste mix, but it is worth it. I put a potato in the micro for a few minutes with some leftover asparagus, brewed some Teavana Japanese Cherry Green tea, which I poured over ice, and had a wonderful dinner.

Teavana is a chain of tea shops that has various flavors and varieties of teas and tisanes (infusions). Green tea and rooibos (called red tea, but it's not really a tea) are loaded with antioxidants and have far less caffeine than coffee. In fact, Rooibos has zero caffeine, as do most non-tea infusions. The tea is loose, and while you can get a tea ball, Teavana makes these really cool brew cups where you put the tea/infusion in, pour the water in, let brew, and then place over a cup where it drains out. I also have Lemon Green Tea and Rooibos Lemon Twist, both of which are delicious. You can also mix flavors, but I have yet to try that. So kick the coffee habit and have a nice cuppa tea.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

State of emergency?!

According to the news, a state of emergency has been declared in Washington, DC, because of all the rain we've been getting. It's more for precautionary purposes than for anything else, in case things get worse, I suppose. In fact, it's been downright stormy here, with lightning and thunder a few nights, including an unnerving thunder-and-lightning show Sunday night. We got more rain in a few hours Sunday night than we did in the entire month of May. In fact, a couple of Metro stations have flooded, and somehow, that has totally screwed up traffic and my commute. I take a bus to work every day, and go nowhere near those stations. But getting on a bus lately has been difficult, as there are long waits for buses that end up packed with people. Tonight while trying to get home, I actually walked to the stop before mine after seeing two buses pass literally packed with people. A third passed by, and I finally got on the fourth--which promptly filled up at that stop.

I am okay, though. While some people have had to evacuate or endured flooded homes, I am high and dry (ha). Living at the top of a hill in a high-rise (well, sixth floor of nine) has its advantages. I stayed dry when Isabel came through in 2003. And for all the flaws and problems of my apartment building, I have never experienced a power outage except for a few blown fuses, most of them when my ancient electrical system decided to get cranky if I heat food in the micro while I have the TV on.

Another advantage of all the rain: the temperature is not 90 degrees, although the humidity is disgustingly high.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

A beautiful dinner


Don't ask me why I felt like cooking when it got up to 90-something degrees today and more humid than yesterday, too. Probably because I was out of leftovers. I found a lovely recipe called Pineapple Tempeh on VegWeb, but since I was very low on frozen pineapple, I tossed in some frozen mango. It has onions, scallions, carrots, orange juice, and soy sauce. To go with it, I made some fragrant rice from Garden of Vegan by Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard. The rice is incredibly easy to make--just brown rice, five spice powder, turmeric (which I call poor girl's saffron), and soy sauce. I rounded it off with some sesame asparagus from Vegan with a Vengeance. Asparagus is one of the few items I've discovered that don't taste as good as leftovers. In fact, I've discovered a lot of vegan foods are better the next day, especially baked goods.

Remember the quinoa-millet pilaf I made with the fennel seed? I brought some for lunch with leftover molasses-marinated seitan, and it was better than when it was fresh. I'll probably use different seasonings next time, but that's also the fun of making pilafs. Most pilafs and rice dishes you can start and then have the grains cook while you prepare your entree. Sadly with my tiny kitchen, getting everything done at once is just NOT happening, but I pick the quickest thing last to toss on my plate after the rest of the food is finished cooking. And if you want to give sauteed veggies a bit of an Asian flavor, try cooking in toasted sesame oil. It's expensive, but it's worth it.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Happy (?) Summer Solstice

Yes, at 8:26 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the sun hit its highest point at 23-1/2 degrees north latitude. Whee. I once read that if you stand anywhere on that imaginary line on June at noon, you will not see your shadow. Likewise, on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, if you stand on the equator at noon, the sun will not cast a shadow. I'm a little grumpy because it's supposed to be in the 90s for the next few days, and who wants to cook in such heat, especially in an un-air conditioned apartment? On the other hand, it'll be easy to find affordable organic berries. Nothing says summer like totally awesome organic fruit.

I bought tons of veggies at Whole Foods today, and I got a lovely berry mix that always hits the spot. I toss berries on my soy ice cream or eat them alone. I'm especially fond of blueberries, little purply globes of delight. I'm waiting for smaller containers of strawberries, as I can only eat so much at a time, but there were organic strawberries available. And maybe in a week or two, I'll get some peaches.

I got some corn and some grape tomatoes, perfect for making a raw salad. I've made it before, and it's pretty good, but I used too much onion (or not enough corn and tomato). All you need to do is scrape kernels of cobs of corn, cut up some tomatoes, toss in some chopped onions, some fresh basil, and some fresh mint, then let it sit for about an hour. Next week, I'm going to a raw foods demo at Whole Foods and will hopefully get a few easy recipes that don't need more than a knife and a food processor. I also heard of a raw foods "cookbook" that's supposed to be easy recipes for one or two, and I absolutely want that. It's on my Amazon wish list so if anyone wants to get it for my birthday next month...just kidding.

By the way, if you're concerned about pesticides--and you should be--the Environmental Working Group has compiled a list of which fruits and veggies have the most pesticide residue and which ones have the least. Unfortunatly, the link no longer works, but when my newspaper printed the information a couple of years ago, I clipped it and I carry it in my purse. Here's a list of which ones you absolutely should buy organic:

Apples
Bell peppers
Celery
Cherries
Imported grapes
Nectarines
Peaches
Pears
Potatoes
Red Raspberries
Spinach
Strawberries

These foods have the least residue:

Asparagus
Avocados
Bananas
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Sweet corn
Kiwi
Mangoes
Onions
Papaya
Pineapples
Sweet peas

But buy organic bananas anyway because the workers who pick nonorganic bananas have severe pesticide exposure. If it's not availble fresh (say five or six months from now), frozen is okay. Those luscious fruit bars I made a few weeks ago call for frozen fruit. And even if you do eat conventional produce from the first list, they still have far less pesticide residue than meat or dairy.

Monday, June 19, 2006

I'm such a slacker

I just haven't felt like cooking, and I've been pretty busy lately, but I finally made some stuff tonight. Sadly, the pictures did not come out. But I made the molasses-marinated seitan (yum!), and the millet-quinoa pilaf from Dreena Burton's Vive Le Vegan. I'm always experimenting with recipes, and this time, I made the mistake of dashing a little dried fennel into the pilaf. It does not work in a grain pilaf. Next time use coriander or nutritional yeast or something savory. I chopped up 1/4 of a purple onion that I had left over from prior recipes, and some green onions. The green onions were an improvisation that's a maybe. I like mine a little crisper than in a pilaf.

Cooking is experimentation. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. Being vegan has sort of unleashed my creativity, and there's the serendipitous feeling of trying something that works--like adapting the molasses-marinated meat recipe for seitan--and the disappointment with things that flop--such as trying to bread tofu that isn't quite defrosted that happened last week. Hey, if everything you cook turns out, please tell me your secret.

It's gotten rather hot here lately. It was near 90 degrees over the weekend, and supposed to get near 90 today. But when I left work today, it was storming something fierce. Ever been out in one of those storms where the only thing that an umbrella keeps dry is your head and shoulders? This was one of those storms. I experienced storms like this growing up in Orlando, Florida, but it's advantage DC, as afternoon storms here actually help cool things off. In Orlando, the storms typically came mid-afternoon, and for the rest of the day, it felt like walking in a steamy soup. The humidity here is also a few percentage points lower, it seems, and that makes 90-degree days more bearable--not to mention we have fewer of them. I will take the once-every-few-years snowstorm and the bitter cold of winter if it means not living more than half the year in a giant steam room.

Next Thursday, the 29th, my local Whole Foods is having a class on raw foods, and I'm looking forward to it. If it's one less thing I have to turn on the stove for, that will certainly help over the summer.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

My millet recipe has been perfected!


A few months ago, I created a millet recipe with pine nuts, chopped dried apricots, dried cherries, coriander, and nutritional yeast. I think I got my inspiration from a Joanne Stepaniak recipe and just threw things into the millet until it seemed right. I made my favorite tofu recipe--I'm still looking for quick, easy tofu cutlet-type recipes, so if you have any or know where to find any, point me in that direction, please. I didn't have capers this time, and I added the green onions later than the recipe calls for--I am having fun playing with this recipe--and used balsamic vinegar instead of apple cider. Every time I've made this recipe, I've loved, loved, loved it.

But now, I'm feeling a little blue. I had to take my little kitty in to have her teeth cleaned. The vet recommended I take her in the night before her appointment to be put on fluids because her kidney values are not good. She's almost 15 years old, so I shouldn't be terribly surprised. I've started giving her better canned food than she had been getting before. She really loves the stinky canned stuff, but she always has her crunchies, too, for her teeth.

She's a gorgeous little tabby:


And a playful, too. When I got back from New York, after I had unpacked, I left my suitcase on my bed, and, well, she had to see where I had been and what I was doing while I was gone:


I get to pick her up tomorrow, and no doubt she'll be unhappy and feeling kind of crappy, but I'll give her lots of love. But it feels really strange to be sitting here at my computer, look over to my sofa, and not see my little kitty curled up there on her blanky. And it's going to be really weird when I go to bed and I don't have a kitty climbing up on my chest to cuddle me.

I'm really lucky to have such a lovely, affectionate kitty.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Pictures!

The first thing I did Sunday was go to see the Liberty Bell. As a lifelong feminist, I felt I had to get a picture of the declaration for a Women's Liberty Bell, even though it's barely visible in the photo. A guard told me that I could take photos everywhere but the security room (which I assumed was where they scanned the bags and had you walk through a metal detector).



The Philly Phlash runs from the waterfront, through downtown, to the Museum of Art. On one of the trips I took, it had a layover at the waterfront, so I enjoyed the cool breeze. A fellow tourist kindly took my picture:



Sorry I didn't get that many pictures, but I was only there over the weekend.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

It's been too darn hot to cook, and then I went to Philly

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the temperature shot up ridiculously. I think it got into the 90s on Sunday and Monday, and it stayed in the upper 80s all week. I just couldn't bear to even think about cooking, so I ended up eating a lot of leftovers.

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I visited Philadelphia for the Wizard World convention. Now, I'm not much of a comic book fan, but Kevin Smith was appearing, and we had to get there early to get tickets for his appearance.

So we left on Friday evening, ate at Great Sage restaurant in Clarksville, Maryland, where there is a little shopping center called Conscious Corner. They have a natural pet foods store, where we picked up some canned food for my kitty, a natural foods grocery store, and a gift shop. It's a wonderful veg-friendly oasis in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, for much of our drive to Philly, it was incredibly stormy, which unnerved me, even though I was not the one driving.

We got to our hotel out by the airport fairly late. It's eight miles or so outside of town, but we did get a good rate. We had to get up early to get to the convention center early--as I said, for Kevin Smith's appearance, one needed one of 1,000 tickets to get in. After we got our tickets for that, my boyfriend wanted to get some books autographed by an artist he admires. We grabbed lunch at a local vegetarian restaurant called Singapore Vegetarian, then went back and wandered around the exhibit hall. There were other panels the boyfriend wanted to see, so I waited in line so we could be sure of getting a good seat for Kevin Smith and the clip from "Clerks II." I have never seen him speak publicly before, and he was absolutely vulgar and hilarious, as was the clip we saw.

After he spoke, we drove over to the Historical Waterfront and South Street area, struggled to find parking--and if you can avoid driving in that area, I suggest it, as the streets are incredibly narrow. Plus, parking is very difficult to find, but we found a lot near Horizons Cafe, where we had reservations that evening. However, we had time to kill before our reservation time, so we walked along South Street, which has an eclectic collection of little shops, some nice, some grungy.

About 15 minutes before our reservation, we headed over and were seated quickly. For appetizers, I had a Portabello Carpaccio and Boyfriend had an Exotic Olive Tasting. The "carpaccio" was not only beautiful, but delicious. I don't care for olives, but Boyfriend loved them. For dinner, I had the Pan-Seared Tofu, which was very yummy and filling, and Boyfriend had the Pecan and Sage Baked Seitan, which was nice. For dessert, I had the Saffron Creme Brulee (and "creme brulee" is French for flan, it seems), and Boyfriend had a deliciously rich Hot Chocolate Tart. Horizons is a cozy little restaurant, and even as late as 10:00, it was still crowded in the upstairs dining room. I absolutely recommend Horizons to anyone visiting Philly.

On Sunday, my boyfriend still had tickets to the convention. My pass was one-day only, so I was on my own. I went to the Liberty Bell Center first to catch a bit of history. Luckily, one can take pictures anywhere in the center except the security room, which I suppose is where they have you have your bags scanned and you walk through a scanner--sort of like going through airport security, except you don't hae to take off your shoes. I got some nice pictures of the exhibit area, but my photo posting thing is acting up again--snarl! And I got a really nice picture of the Bell.

After that, I found something called Philly Phlash, a circulator bus that goes through the downtown area, up to the Museum of Art (which I didn't get to see), and near the waterfront. It's $1 per ride or $4 per day unlimited rides, which if I have a whole day for sightseeing, I may just do. I remembered a place called Govinda's on South Street at Broad Street, but they have a very limited menu during the day. I had veggie nuggets, which were very tasty, but you can't serve sandwiches and nuggets without chips! And they do. Sob! I'd like to try them in the evening the next time I'm in Philly.

I hopped back on the Phlash, and rode it around. It stopped for a few minutes at the waterfront, so I had a picture taken of me and took some pictures of the Delaware River and some buildings in New Jersey. I did a little more shopping until Boyfriend decided it was time to meet for an early dinner at Cherry Street Chinese Vegetarian. It wasn't my favorite--I much preferred Singapore Vegetarian--but it was filling and reasonably priced.

After that, we walked back to our car near the convention center, and drove home. I promise, I will try to cook this week. And I will try to post some pictures from my trip.