yellow cake with chocolate frosting

For a recent birthday, I made a yellow cake with chocolate icing. It needed to be dairy and soy free to accomodate food allergies, so I adapted this recipe, Moist Yellow Cake on epicurious.com. It turned out so good. I'm still thinking about it. Because I replaced butter and buttermilk with coconut milk, it has a slight coconut taste, but that's all to the good.

3 cups (330 g) cake flour
1 tablebspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 can coconut milk, thoroughly chilled in refrigerator
2 cups (454 g) granulated sugar
5 large eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
rice milk, or other milk
1 T. white vinegar or apple cider vinegar or lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease and line with parchment paper two 8x2-inch (20x5-cm) round cake pans. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. Open the can of coconut milk. Drain and reserve the watery liquid, and scoop the solid coconut oil into a measuring cup. You should have one cup of solid oil. With electric beater, beat the coconut oil until light and creamy in a large bowl. Stop and scrape the bowl. It will get very airy and light--even more so than butter. I was amazed at how well this worked.

4.Add the sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, beating 1 minute after each addition. Scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally. Add the eggs one at a time.

5. Measure your reserved coconut water, and add rice milk to equal one cup. Stir in vinegar and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Mix just until incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl and mix for 15 seconds longer.

6. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a knife. Lift up the pan with the batter, and let it drop onto the counter top to burst any air bubbles, allowing the batter to settle.

7.Center the pans onto the lower third of the oven and let bake 45 to 50 minutes or until the cake is lightly brown on top and comes away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Then, I iced it with frosting based on Billy's Chocolate Buttercream, from MarthaStewart.com, adapted to be dairy free and more chocolatey.

1 cup Earth Balance soy-free margarine (comes in a tub)
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled (I used Enjoy Life brand, which is dairy and soy free)
1.5 tablespoons rice milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2.5 cups confectioners' sugar
several tablespoons sifted cocoa powder, optional

In a big bowl with electric mixer, beat margarine until smooth and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add chocolate until just combined. Add milk, vanilla, and sugar; mix on medium until well combined. For extra chocolateyness, add cocoa powder by the tablespoonfull as desired.

My final frosting was a bit stiff--it didn't spread 100% smoothly. Probably the added cocoa powder, not in the original recipe, was to blame. It tasted terrific, though, and without it the icing was very light brown. I thought it needed extra chocolate punch.

This was enough icing for a double-layer cake, but you might want to make a bigger batch for a triple layer cake or if you want lavish icing.

Also decorated the cake with a quick chocolate ganache--3 tablespoons rice milk, boiled in microwave in glass measuring cup. Add 1/3 c. chocolate chips, mix until all melted, cool a few minutes, then place in ziploc bag with a sharp edge. You can then snip off the edge and use it like an icing bag.

Trio of orange vegetables soup

This soup that i threw together last night turned out so good I want to jot down the recipe before I forget it.

2 T. olive oil
1 large onion, roughly chopped
2 large leeks, cleaned and roughly chopped
4 large carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
4 stalks celery, roughly chopped
1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped into large pieces
1.5 cups pumpkin puree (1 small can)
2 sticks fresh rosemary, leaves stripped and chopped
salt and pepper to taste
6 cups water (or vegetable broth)
2 T. white balsamic vinegar
1/4 c. heavy cream, optional (or coconut milk, or 2 T. butter)

Heat olive oil in large soup pot over medium to medium high heat. Saute onion with a sprinkling of salt for a few minutes, then add leeks. Stir frequently until slightly softened and browned. Add carrots, rosemary, and celery and saute a few minutes more. Add sweet potato, 6 c. water, and pumpkin (or more water, if this doesn't seem like enough). Bring to boil, and simmer until vegetables are soft, about half an hour. Turn off heat and puree with an immersion blender until smooth, but not too smooth. There should be some texture and small pieces of vegetables in the soup. If too thick, add a bit more water. Add salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste. Stir in cream, coconut milk, or butter if desired.

I added the heavy cream as an experiment, since i have some left over from thanksgiving. Even a small amount of cream adds a lot of rich flavor. But the soup is very good without also. A little butter or coconut milk would have the same effect. A topping of sour cream or plain yogurt would be nice as well.

Thanksgiving

Here's what we had for Thanksgiving dinner this year:

Mushroom and Farro Pie

Smashed Potatoes with Roasted Garlic Gravy

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Rosemary and Sage

Galicky Kale

Pumpkin Tart with Anise-Seed Crust

Haagen-Daz Five Brown Sugar Ice Cream



Mostly the same menu we had at our Thanksgiving dinner last year.

Chickpea Tomato Soup

Made a simple soup from the Orangette blog last night:

Chickpea Tomato Soup with Fresh Rosemary

It's good. I knew it would be.

Coffee Couponing

Just to make sure anyone who accidentally reads this blog is bored to death, let me recount my recent forays into couponing.

#1, Dominick's.

3 12 oz. bags Caribou coffee regularly 9.99, on sale for 4.99. I use 3 coupons for $2 off 1 bag. So, coffee only 2.99/bag. I also bought a big container of yogurt and a pack of tofu for a total of $14.40.

#2, Jewel. A Catalina deal.

2 12.-oz. bags Dunkin Donuts coffee, regularly 8.79, on sale for 6.99. Two jars Smuckers jam, 2.95 on sale for 2.00. I used two "$4.00 off ground coffee" coupons that I snagged off some liquor bottles. In IL you don't have to purchase liquor to use the coupons.

Paid 10.38, plus got a $5 Catalina back. Regrets: 1) the Smuckers contains HFCS. 2) Using the $4.00 off coupons makes me feel like I'm cheating. Maybe taking coupons from the Bailey's Irish Cream display is wrong, although other couponers do it. (Of course that's not a justification for unethical behavior.) 3) Decaf Dunkin Doughnuts coffee was sold out, so I bought more regular coffee. What I really need is decaf. 4) DD coffee isn't fair trade or shade grown as far as I know, so it's probably harming the environment and screwing over the people who harvest it. Caribou coffee is a little better. It has a Rainforest Alliance medallion on the packaging.

#3, Jewel. Trying to find some decaf coffee.

3 DD decaf coffee bags, on sale for 6.99. Total 21.44. Paid with $5 Catalina from yesterday plus $16.44 out of pocket. Got a new $5 Catalina back.

I tried to use the $4 off coupons, but the checker wouldn't accept them. Oh well.

So we're well stocked in coffee for a while (although still need more decaf, since I drink a 3/4 decaf concoction). Will this type of active couponing pay off? I'm not sure. I've also bought tofu at Trader Joe's and produce at Stanley's and Tony's, so it's not like I'm spending no money.

It's a little bit fun.

Stir-fried Winter Squash and Tofu with Soba

Winter squash, tofu, and soba are all favorites of mine, so how excellent to find a dish combining all of them, right? But no, Stir-fried Winter Squash and Tofu with Soba is not a keeper. It's not terrible, but suffers from "would you like some starch with your starch?" syndrome. Like potato tacos, or the complete breakfast of cereal with milk, toast, and orange juice once recommended by cereal commercials. Or grain-based veggie burgers on a bun. Yuck. I would not like some starch with my starch.

Not that butternut squash isn't delicious and healthy, but I feel like the soba noodles need something more zingy. And the squash took forever to cook, so my dish wasn't all pretty and bright orange like the picture, but brownish and messy looking. It seemed sort of bland, too.

Couponing

There's been a lot about couponing in the media lately. After reading this article on slate.com, plus coming across Frugalista, a couponing blog associated with the Chicago Tribune, I was inspired to give it a try. I've curtailed our grocery spending a bit this year, but we still spend vastly more on groceries than the couponers I've been reading about. The Frugalista spends only $80 per week, and claims to buy organic fruits and vegetables! Plus she has two kids! It's amazing.

The problem is that most coupons are for the very most processed grocery products, which I don't usually buy. For my first couponing expedition, I found a deal on Kellogg's cereal at Target. The cereal was on sale, and if you also used Target coupons and manufacturer's coupons, you could get the cereal for practically nothing. I screwed up a little bit by handing the cashier the wrong coupon, but still, I got two boxes of corn flakes, a box of blueberry Special K, and a box of Smart Start for a little more than a dollar a box.

On arriving home, I discovered that the cereals contain high fructose corn syrup, plus other ingredients I find objectionable such as artificial coloring. Ugh. Mike said he was fine with eating Kellogg's cereal, and I've had some of the Smart Start, but overall I'm bummed out by it. Mike and I both like oatmeal, which is our standard cheap breakfast. According to my calculations, cheap quick oats cost about $.10 per serving. The 4 boxes of cereal have about 56 servings total, and cost maybe $5, so that's about $.09 per serving. Plus, I add stuff to my oatmeal, like raisins and chopped apple and maple syrup and milk. So yeah, the Kellogg's are a slight savings, but maybe not good enough to justify the crap ingredients. Not that cheap store-brand oats are exactly a high-quality ingredient, but at least they are plain.

For my second foray into couponing this morning, I went for a Catalina deal. If you buy $30 worth of a certain array of products at Jewel/Osco, you get a $15 coupon good for any future order of groceries. The Catalina-eligible products include Progresso soups (no vegetarian varieties), Scott paper towels, Betty Crocker cake mixes, Hamburger Helper, instant Knorr noodle and rice boxes, Breyer ice cream, Yoplait yogurt, Chex Mix snacks, Ragu, Wish Bone salad dressing, etc. None of these I particularly wanted, but I came up with a list of things that might come in handy:

Yoplait Grande plain yogurt
Scott paper towels
Gold Medal flour
Yoplait Yo Plus
Breyers natural vanilla ice cream
Ragu
Kleenex

Since most of these items are also on sale, it could be a very sweet deal, or even a moneymaker with judiciously used manufacturer coupons. Here's how my deal played out.

4 Scott paper towels @ 1.99 ea
Helmann's mayonnaise 3.39
2 Breyer's ice cream @ 5.99 ea
Gold Medal flour 3.79
3 Kleenex @1.29

This totals 30.99. Minus 11.90 of "preferred savings" (i.e., the items were on sale if you had a Jewel card) and one manufacturer coupon for .50 off Kleenex, plus tax: a grand total of $19.67. And then, I got $15.00 in Catalina coupons, which I immediately used on groceries I actually wanted. So the bottom line is I got that stuff for $4.67; not bad. Absolutely none of it I would have bought today out of necessity, but it's all stuff we will use. In fact, we usually buy Veganaise, Whole Foods brand ice cream, recycled paper towels if any, and whole wheat flour, but those things are incompatible with Catalina couponing, of course.

I had planned to buy some Yoplait yogurt, but they didn't have the big tubs of plain yogurt, and the Yo Plus packs contain gelatin. I also couldn't bring myself to buy Ragu. It's so gross, very high in sodium, sugar, and soybean oil. At least the varieties that qualify for this spectacular deal. There is some organic Ragu that I didn't examine too closely, as it doesn't qualify for the deal.

So, $15 Catalinas in hand, I went to buy my real groceries. If I would have bought just $15 worth of stuff and got it free, this might seem impressive, but I bought a lot of stuff. Here's what I got:

huge cylinder of store brand oats
2 big cans Hunt diced tomato
Organic Valley soy milk 1/2 gallon
Org. Valley 2% milk 1/2 gallon
brown sugar
2.25 lb. 8 o' Clock Bean Coffee ($11.49)
2 packs whole wheat spaghetti
Mountain High plain yogurt quart
organic ketchup
Barefoot sauvignon blanc (to use for cooking wine, $5.99)
big jar Smuckers natural peanut butter ($4.55)
5 lb. granny smith apples
2 lb. mushrooms
collard greens

Using my $15 catalinas, plus a couple coupons, all said and done it cost $39.78. My grand total for the day's shopping, $59.45. Not too bad, considering the "big ticket" items I got -- coffee, wine, peanut butter.

I think the verb "couponing" is amusing.

sweet potatoes and special sauce

This is my favorite roasted sweet potato recipe. The spice combo sounds a little strange, but works. I take the lazy way out and don't grind the spices separately -- I used whole fennel seeds because that's what I have.

With these, I make a special secret sauce consisting of: two to three parts plain yogurt, one part hummus or Annie's Naturals Goddess dressing, hot sauce to taste. I use Louisiana hot sauce. Shhh, it's a secret.

These unlikely components, eaten together, are delicious.

Elusive White Pumpkin Grain Salad

Here's an online version of my favorite grain salad from Charlie Trotter's vegetables book (it's also by far the easiest recipe in the book). The white pumpkin has been elusive for several years, but they are delicious. The seeds are tenderer than regular pumpkin seeds, which really need to be shelled before eating.

Tonight I made a version of this with brown rice, roasted butternut squash, toasted pecans, and olive oil. I like this better with one of the recommended oils, or walnut oil. The olive oil has too distinctive a taste. Still delicious, though.

pasta with braised kale

Molly Wizenberg has a column in Bon Appetit now. Last night I made one of her recipes from the column. It was perfectly good, but very basic, and relied on Parmesan cheese for flavor. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just didn't learn anything new. Also, I used whole-wheat penne instead of regular spaghetti, and left my half-cooked kale sitting on the stove for three hours while I went to volunteer. These little alterations can make a big difference.

I'm jealous of Molly, can you tell? I relate to her and there are some similarities in our pasts, but she is vastly more successful.

spaghetti with braised kale

I've often made a pasta recipe like this with tons more stuff -- cannellini beans, chopped tomatoes, canned artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, etc. etc.

braised winter squash

I've made this recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a few times (link is to a PDF). It's a good one, especially for dryer squashes like delicata.

2 lbs. winter squash, peeled, halved and sliced into ½ inch rounds
2 tbs. butter
2 cups apple cider
1 tsp. salt
Rosemary and pepper to taste

Melt butter in skillet with rosemary, after a few minutes add the squash, salt, pepper, and cider. You may need to add some additional cider (or water), enough to cover the squash. Bring to a boil and braise for 20-35 minutes until tender. At this point the juice should be reduced to a glaze. If not, raise heat for a few minutes until excess liquid evaporates.

Butterscotch Pudding

I made this butterscotch pudding recipe last night, with mixed results. Taste is delicious; texture not ideal. A little bit lumpy or grainy. Maybe I didn't whisk it enthusiastically enough? I wonder if I would have better results by leaving out the eggs.

I didn't use any whisky and forgot to put in the vanilla extract, but didn't miss these flavorings. Instead of dark brown sugar or cassonade, I used light brown sugar plus a couple spoonfuls of molasses.

Gorgonzola, Fig, and Spinach Pizza

The pizza was based on this Vegetarian Times recipe. I didn't use a gluten-free crust.

• 4 oz. Gorgonzola cheese
  
• 1/4 cup milk
• whole-wheat bread dough
  
• 1-2 cups spinach leaves
• 6 fresh figs, quartered
• handful chopped toasted walnuts
• sprinkling of pitted black olives
  

Preheat oven to 500°F. Mash cheese and milk together with spoon or fork until smooth. Spread cheese mixture on a rolled-out round of pizza dough. Top with spinach, figs, nuts, and olives. Bake on pizza stone until crust is browned and cheese is melty.

This pizza was kind of eh. The Gorgonzola and walnuts are nice, but the fresh figs didn't seem to cook enough. I almost think a drizzle of fig jam would be better, or maybe dried figs would give a more intense flavor.The pizza does need a caramelized fruit of some sort, but the fresh figs didn't deliver. It was kind of exciting that the Gorgonzola spread melted. I wouldn't have guessed it would.

We also made a commonplace pizza, with red pizza sauce, spinach, green pepper, and a mixture of fresh and pregrated mozzarella cheese.

I used cornmeal to keep the pizza from sticking to the peel, and it made a big mess in the oven, as usual. Maybe I use too much cornmeal--it tends to accumulate on the peel, blacken, and give off clouds of sooty smoke. It's much tidier to roll out your pizza dough on parchment paper, then slide the pizza in still on the parchment. Less authentic, but tidier.

Mozzarella, 6 failures

After taking a cheesemaking class at the Angelic Organics in Caledonia, IL, I was highly motivated to make homemade mozzarella. Using the Angelic Organics recipe, the 30-Minute Mozzaralla recipe from cheesemaking.com, and Barbara Kingsolver's mozzarella recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I've now failed 6 times. Each time, the recipe seemed to be proceeding fine until the last step, when you heat and stretch the curds, and they become shiny, pliable mozzarella. Mine became incohesive, ricotta-like curds, or hard, cratered, nonstretchy curds.

I wrote to cheesemaking.com, where I bought my cheesemaking supplies, asking for advice, but no response.

Milk that is pasteurized at too high a temperature can cause curd failure. Is it possible that all the costly milks I've used were overpasteurized? Doubtful, but maybe. For the record, these are the failed milks and recipes:


1) Organic Valley Whole Milk, Barbara Kingsolver's mozzarella recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
2) Organic Valley Whole Milk, Angelic Organics Quick Mozzarella recipe
3) Oberweis Dairy Whole Milk, 30-Minute Mozzarella Recipe
4) Fair Oaks Whole Milk, 30-Minute Mozzarella Recipe
5) Milk made from Similac Nonfat Dry Milk Powder plus Dean Foods Light Cream, 30-Minute Mozzarella Recipe
6)Similac plus cream again.

Dried milk is supposed to work fine, according to the Cheese Queen Ricki. Also, I think the cheesemaking class at Angelic used Organic Valley milk. What, oh what, am I doing wrong?

Mike has acquired the highest quality possible milk--some Whole Foods offering billed as nonhomogenized, gently pasteurized, and local. Four dollars per half gallon. Dare we try again? I think I have to.

Ruined mozzarella is still edible. Once we made pizza with it. The cheese didn't melt, but still tasted good. I also used it to make ice cream (tasted like cheesecake) and crustless pumpkin pie.

Ruined Mozzarella Crustless Pumpkin Pie

1 1/2 c. pumpkin puree
3/4 c. sugar
1 t. ginger powder
1 t. cinnamon
3/4 t. freshly grated nutmeg
pinch cloves
3 eggs
1 1/3 c. milk or cream (I used a mixture of soy milk and light cream)
your ruined mozzarella

Preheat oven to 375°. Food process ingredients until smooth. Pour into buttered pie pan. I used a ceramic one. Bake for 40-45 minutes until custard is set. The result is a cheesecake-like pumpkin custard.

Basic, Relatively Healthy Pumpkin Bread

3 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 can pumpkin puree
1 cup milk (any kind: soy, cow's, etc.)
1/2 cup applesauce, unsweetened
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup pecans, toasted and chopped
whole pecans for decoration

Preheat oven to 400 F. Grease two loaf pans, six mini loaf pans, or two muffin tins.

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, milk, oils, applesauce, and molasses. Mix wet ingredients into dry along with chopped pecans until just combined. Decorate tops of loaves or muffins with whole pecans, if desired.

Bake for 18-20 minutes (muffins), 30-40 minutes (mini loaves), or 40-50 minutes (full size loaves) until golden brown at edges, and knife stuck into center comes out clean.

Quark

Quark is a fresh white Eastern European cheese, similar to French fromage blanc. I came across this recipe while looking for a fromage blanc recipe, and it's amazingly easy. Basically, I take buttermilk, let it sit in my dehydrator at 115° F for about 6 hours, and then drain it in cheesecloth. So good! If you like buttermilk, you'll like quark.

Quark recipe

Chocolate Chip Scones

This will sound ridiculous, but my very favorite food might be chocolate chip scones. They aren't as easy to find as they used to be. Chocolate chip scones were a coffee house staple of the mid-90s in Chicago, but I haven't seen any for sale lately. So I made my own.

This recipe is based on orangette's Scottish scone recipe.

• 1/2 c. milk
• 1 egg
• 1 t. vanilla extract
• 1 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 c. whole-wheat pastry flour
• 2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• 2 oz. unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
• 3 T. sugar
• 6 oz. chocolate chips. Or less. I like them chocolately. I used Enjoy Life Semisweet Chocolate Chips, which are a local brand according to signage at the Whole Foods. Believe it or not, they were the least expensive chips I could find (the 365 chips must have been out), and are vegan and allergen free.

In a bowl, mix together flours, baking powder, and salt. Add butter and work into the flour mixture with your hands, until you have butter lumps no bigger than the size of a pea. (Or do this in the food processor.) Whisk together egg, milk, and vanilla. Add chips to dry mixture. Mix wet mixture into dry until just combined. Knead a few times on a floured board, until cohesive, but handling as little as possible. To form scones, you can mound the dough into a disk and then slice like a pizza into wedges, or cut out like biscuits. I went the latter route using a drinking glass, and got 10 scones. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for about 12 minutes, until golden brown. Cool on rack.

Of course, scones don't have to contain egg or dairy. It's been years since I made non-vegan scones. One of my favorite vegan scone recipes is made with spelt flour and can be found in Alex Jamieson's The Great American Detox Diet.

Beet and Goat Cheese Bruschetta

I should have taken a picture--these were pretty. I was attempting to recreate a favorite dish from Cafe Lula.

• 4-5 small-to-medium-sized beets. We got these in the CSA this week; we had a couple candy cane beets, and the rest were golden
• 4 oz. goat cheese at room temperature
  
• one mini whole-wheat baguette
• garlic clove
  
• olive oil
• white wine vinegar
• salt and pepper
• lettuce of your choice -- something sharp like arugula is good
  

To roast the beets: Preheat oven to 375°. Peel beets and slice into thickish rounds--maybe a quarter of an inch or so. Toss with a drizzle of olive oil, a couple pinches of salt, a generous grind of pepper, and a little splash of white wine vinegar. Arrange a sheet of aluminum foil on a baking sheet with a rim. Spread beets out on sheet; top with another sheet and seal edges by rolling the aluminum sheets together and pinching closed. Bake for about half an hour. Check the beets a bit beforehand; you will want to cook them until fork tender and just browning on the edges. When done, toss in a bowl with a little more vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

For bruschetta, slice baguette into rounds on the bias, about 1/2- to 3/4-inch thick. Brush both sides with olive oil. Heat grill pan to medium-high heat. Grill rounds of bread on each side until golden brown with attractive char marks. (You can do this in a regular skillet also, or under the broiler.) Cut garlic clove in half and rub each side of each piece with the cut side of the clove. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

For salad, dress greens with a mixture of 3 T. olive oil to 1 T. balsamic vinegar, with salt and pepper to taste. Dress lightly.

To assemble, spread each bruschetta thickly with goat cheese. Top with two slices of roasted beet. Lightly mound salad over a plate with several bruschetta.

Ravinia picnic

Mike and I went to Ravinia last night. It's gotten too cold for Ravinia, really, but we haven't been all summer, and who knows if we'll ever have a chance to go again. We ended up leaving halfway through the performance; Mike hadn't brought a coat, and we were getting damp and chilled. Our picnic dinner was really good. We had

• grapes
• apples (the earliest local apples have appeared)
• Greco de Tufo wine, purchased at Whole Foods for the bargain price of $6, marked down from $28
• bruschetta toasts
• fresh mozzarella
• goat cheese
• tomato topping
• white bean topping
• roasted red peppers
• deviled eggs
• vegan cappuccino cupcakes with espresso pastry creme
• chocolate

The wine was amazing, and the best bargain ever. The cupcakes were pretty good but rubbery. I don't know if I would make them again. Overall, it was just about the perfect dinner.

Summer is over.

Chipotle Vegtable and Tempeh Stew

I threw together this stew, and it turned out really well, so I want to record what I did.

1 large white onion
5 or so small cloves garlic
2 canned chipotles, plus a few spoonfuls of adobo sauce from the can
1 tablespoon or more cumin
olive oil
a few small celery stalks
1 enormous zucchini squash
2 small eggplants
3 carrots
5-10 small tomatoes
2 cups broth
2 cups water
a few tablespoonfuls tomato paste
2 packages tempeh
quite a lot of fresh corn kernels (3-4 cups)
salt and pepper
juice of one lime
pinch cinnamon

Chop all vegetables into biggish pieces.

Saute chopped onion and garlic in a couple T. olive oil until soft and slightly browned. Midway through cooking, add cumin, chipotle, salt and pepper. Add celery, zucchini, carrot, eggplant and cook a few minutes. Add tomatoes, followed by broth and water. Add tomato paste and more adobo sauce if desired. Add diced tempeh and corn. Simmer for about half an hour, until all vegetables are well cooked. Add more salt and pepper to taste, then turn off heat and stir in lime juice and cinnamon.

I would've liked to have added some chili powder, but we seem to be out.

Corn pudding

We have been getting ear after ear of corn in our CSA box lately. It's okay, I guess, but not my favorite vegetable. In fact, it's not a vegetable, right? It's a GRAIN. But as far as corn goes, it's good and sweet, and Mike was kind enough to shuck and de-kernel all the accumulated ears. To use it up, I've made a variety of raw corn salads, none of which really hit the mark, and thrown it into soups and so forth. The one corn dish that we loved, though, was corn pudding, from the New York Times's "Temporary Vegetarian" column. This corn pudding is light, delicate, simple, and delicious. I made it with soy milk instead of regular milk.

Mike used to have a signature Thanksgiving dish that was similar, but then again utterly dissimilar. It consisted of, if I remember correctly, one box Jiffy cornbread mix, one can creamed corn, one can regular corn, one stick butter, one container sour cream (or cream cheese?), one bag grated cheddar cheese. If this sounds like a Paula Deen recipe, that's because it is!

So, this is like the anti-Paula Deen corn casserole. It would be a terrific Thanksgiving dish, although part of its charm is the completely fresh corn.

I've made a few things lately that were fine, but didn't wow me, so I won't bother to write very much about them. From Super Natural Cooking, a dip called Silik Pak that contains toasted pumpkin seeds and an habanero chili. It was pretty good, and I'd never cooked with habanero before, but my gringo stomach wasn't up to it. Mike liked it more than I did. Also, a roasted tomato and smoked paprika soup, that ended up way too oniony. Super Natural Cooking is among my favorite cookbooks, but you can't win them all.

I also made a crisp with little Italian plums, bananas, peaches, and apples, topped with a standard crisp topping (oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, some ground flax seed for Health, pinch salt, and olive oil--usually I use butter or coconut oil or nut oil). I liked it a lot; Mike wasn't wild about the texture of the banana. I'm going to try again at a later date. Both Orangette and the Chocolate and Zucchini author put bananas in their crumbles, so it must be good.

Date Cake

My version of a sticky date pudding isn't sticky at all because I skipped the toffee sauce. It's just sort of a regular cake. I based my recipe on Sticky Date Pudding with Toffee Sauce from epicurious.

• 1 3/4 cups packed pitted dates (about 10 ounces)
• 2 cups water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter and flour an 8-inch square baking pan (2 inches deep), knocking out excess flour.

Coarsely chop dates and in a 1 1/2- to 2-quart saucepan simmer dates in water, uncovered, 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and stir in baking soda. (Mixture will foam.) Let mixture stand 20 minutes.

While mixture is standing, combine flour, baking powder, ginger, and salt in a bowl and whisk until well mixed. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture and mix until until just combined. Add date mixture and with a wooden spoon stir batter until just combined.

Pour batter into baking pan and set pan in a larger baking pan. Add enough hot water to larger pan to reach halfway up sides of smaller pan and bake in middle of oven until a tester comes out clean, 35 minutes. Remove smaller pan from water bath and cool pudding to warm on a rack.

*****

A delicious cake, not too sweet. We ate it with vanilla ice cream, but no toffee sauce (which I'm sure would be delicious, but is just outrageously decadent.) In fact, I think a healthier version of this cake, with applesauce subbing for some of the butter and less sugar, would still be really good.

If I make this again, I'll probably ditch the water bath. It's unwieldy, and I'm not convinced it made a great deal of difference in my cake.

*****

Along with the date cake, we had chipotle black bean stew from Vegan with a Vengeance for dinner. I've made this many times, and it's always delicious and easy to put together. We used a bunch of corn on the cob from our CSA box.

Easiest Whole Wheat Bread

I like to make my own bread, but sometimes I want to put in very little time and effort. Thus, I've experimented with various "no-knead" methods. I have Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, and I've tried the "no knead" method popularized by Mark Bittman. To my mind, these methods work wonderfully well with white flour, but not so well with whole wheat or other whole grains. Artisan Bread contains a couple whole-grain bread recipes, but I don't recommend them. It's a useful book if you want to use white flour; otherwise I'd give it a pass.

Bittman's no-knead method involves mixing up your dough without kneading, letting it sit anywhere from four to eighteen hours, then shaping, rising, and baking. The original recipe uses white all-purpose or bread flour. Bittman reports that you can use the same method with whole wheat flour with equally good results, but this isn't my experience. When I make whole wheat bread and don't bake it within a few hours, I find that it develops an odd, sweet, chemical aroma, a bit like nail polish remover mixed with almond extract. Maybe 1) I am crazy and hallucinating this aroma or 2) I have a genetic variation allowing me to smell something many others can't smell. Mike says he can see what I'm talking about, but that the smell doesn't bother him.

Assuming I'm smelling something that others (just not Mark Bittman) can smell, I think it's "overfermentation." Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads uses a technique that, if I'm understanding it correctly, he developed expressly to avoid overfermentation while developing a complex flavor in whole-grain yeasted baked goods. (It's a rather complicated book, and he goes into extensive detail about the science of whole-grain baking.) His recipes are the gold standard, but they involve making two different doughs and a two-day baking process. If you want to make the best possible bread, follow his instructions to the letter. But sometimes I can't be bothered. Thus, I came up with my own lazy recipe.

6 2/3 c. whole-wheat flour (800 g.)
1/4 c. honey
3 c. water
2 T. instant dry yeast
2 T. canola oil
1-2 t. salt

In large container, mix ingredients together without kneading until homogeneous and smooth. Cover container, and let rise for about an hour and a half. Dough should at least double in size. Now, shape dough into smooth ovals, then put into two well-greased loaf pans. (I line the pans with parchment paper too.) Let loaves rise, covered, until about doubled in size. When loaves are almost fully risen, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake about 40 minutes, until you can thump bottom of loaf and get a hollow sound. Cool for 5 minutes, then remove loaves from pan and set on rack to cool.

You can also shape these into baguettes or boules or rolls and bake on a baking stone (for best results, some recipes call for a steam tray and slightly higher temperature, but I don't bother if I'm feeling lazy.)

Before baking, you can brush the tops of the loaves with oil or melted butter, and feel free to sprinkle with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, wheat bran, etc.

As for the science, as I understand it, one needs to develop the gluten in bread by either kneading or letting it sit and organize itself. My method doesn't really let it sit long enough, but it does avoid the offputting (to me) overfermented aroma. If you can muster the energy to knead, I highly recommend Orangette's whole wheat bread recipe. Is she being sarcastic when she calls her mother a genius? I honestly can't tell.

Useful Links

Mark Bittman's no-knead white bread
Mark Bittman's faster no-knead white bread
Mark Bittman's fast no-knead whole wheat bread
Mark Bittman's no-knead whole wheat sandwich bread (lighter and less bricklike)

Raspberry-Blueberry Pound Cake

I made Orangette's pound cake for a birthday last weekend. I didn't have any kirsch, but otherwise I followed her recipe, more or less. I was a tiny bit short of both sugar and butter, so made up the difference with confectioner's sugar and coconut oil, respectively. Used vanilla extract instead of kirsch. This turned out good, but didn't blow me away. I always want cake to blow me away. It's probably an unfair expectation.

I do recommend trying this with kirsch, or perhaps with lemon zest/extract, as the flavoring instead of vanilla. Orangette says in her comments that the kirsch really makes it, and I'm sure she's right.

Socca

I came across this recipe for socca on Mark Bittman's Minimalist blog this morning. I happened to have exactly a cup of chickpea flour needing to be used up, so it suited my purposes perfectly. It's as easy to make and good as he claims. I tried it without the onion and rosemary. I also made it with a full teaspoon of salt as the recipe specified. I wish I'd cut this in half. It tastes good, but that's just a damn lot of sodium.

Couscous Salad

A few years ago, I was really into this couscous salad with fruit and nuts. Now I'm a little weary of it, and think I'll put it out of rotation for a while. I've taken it to a couple potlucks in the past year or so, and it seems a little too bland and un-festive. But for posterity, here's the recipe.

Couscous Salad with Dried Fruit and Nuts

2 c. water
1/4 t. salt
1 1/2 c. instant whole-wheat couscous
2 T. olive oil
3 T. lemon juice
1 or more T. lemon zest
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. cardamom
2 c. chickpeas
3/4 cup chopped dried fruit, a mixture of dates, apricots, and golden raisins
1/2 c. toasted slivered almonds
1/2 c. chopped cilantro
1/4 c. chopped green onions

Boil water, add salt, then stir in dry couscous and cover. Let sit for at least 5 minutes, then fluff with fork.

Add remaining ingredients and mix well. You will almost surely want to add more salt at this point, and you may want more olive oil or lemon juice as well.

This is based on a recipe from epicurious.com.

Chocolates

On Friday I made a whole bunch of chocolates for a party on Saturday. I was inspired by orangette's Chocolate "Blocks" with Fruit and Nuts, but also wanted to try out some outlandish flavors.

row 1: dark chocolate pretzel, milk chocolate pretzel, dark chocolate salted almond, dark chocolate with candied ginger, cashew, and banana chip.
row 2: milk chocolate cherry, dark chocolate cherry, milk chocolate cashew with sea salt, spicy milk chocolate with dried fruit and nut.
row 3: milk chocolate chunk with fruit and nuts, dark chocolate curry cashew, dark chocolate banana chip, dark chocolate curry with banana chip, dried fruit, and cashew.

You can see the condensation that formed on the chocolates after I took them out of the refrigerator. It was really humid yesterday.

Following orangette's easy recipe, I didn't fuss with tempering or anything like that, but just melted the chocolate over a double boiler. For the cluster-type candies, I mixed in the nuts and stuff, and spooned it into mini muffin liners. For the others, I put the special ingredient (for instance, a few slivered almonds) in the liners first, then spooned in a little melted chocolate, smoothed it down, then topped it with a decorative almond or two, and sprinkled the chocolate with freshly ground sea salt or spice mixture, or both. Unless you're making very small chocolates, it's best to keep the liners in a mini muffin tin so that your candies don't spread out too much.

I recommend making very small chocolates, by the way. I started out making huge ones, but small ones are easier to eat and people like them more. This is my theory for occasions when there's a huge array of tempting food. People will be thrilled to take a bite-sized treat, but they might shy away from a big honking slab of treat.

For the spicy dark chocolates, I mixed curry powder into a batch of melted chocolate, and sprinkled the just-finished chocolates with curry powder. For the spicy milk chocolates, I used a mixture of cinnamon, cardamom, and curry powder. Both turned out really well, but I like the second mixture better. I can't tell you exactly how much spice to add to your mixture, but I suggest starting with a small amount, tasting, and going from there.

For the fruit mixture, I used chopped dried apricots and golden raisins, and also these cool banana chips I found at Trader Joe's. They contain only bananas and palm oil, and they are kind of like Cheetos in texture. I also got my chocolate at Trader Joe's. You can buy enormous pound-and-a-half bars of decent chocolate for $3.49.

I will leave you with a couple tips: Use salted nuts, and sprinkle the tops of the chocolates with sea salt. The salt makes the flavors pop. I got a sea salt grinder at Trader Joe's that makes pretty glittery crystals. Also, try to avoid eating too much chocolate as you work. It's easy to do, and will make you detest your lovely creation.

Terrific Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

I found a easy recipe for gluten-free peanut butter cookies on the much-loved Gluten-Free Girl blog. I've been hoping to make a gluten-free dessert for a party this weekend, and these are terrific. I'm so excited to have a gluten-free baked goods recipe that doesn't call for exotic ingredients--the rice flour, sorghum flour, xanthan gum, etcetera. Anyone can make these with ordinary pantry ingredients.

My recipe is similar to Gluten-Free Girl's, but I did a few things differently. Here's the recipe with my alterations.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

1 c. creamy unsalted natural peanut butter
1 c. white sugar
1 t. baking powder
1 egg
3/4 t. salt

for rolling: white sugar, brown sugar, course salt

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Cream the peanut butter and sugar in a bowl with a hand mixer, then beat in the baking powder, egg, and salt. Mix until it is all well combined. (If you are using salted peanut butter, you won't need to add as much additional salt.)

Make your rolling mixture: Combine equal amounts of brown sugar and white sugar, about 1/4 cup each. Add salt a pinch at a time, until it tastes pleasantly sweet-salty.

Roll some dough into a small ball, with a circumference about the size of a quarter. Roll the ball in the sugar-salt mixture. Line a baking sheet, covered in parchment paper, with sugary balls of dough. Gently flatten each ball twice with a fork, to create a crosshatch pattern.

Bake in the oven for about 12 minutes. The cookies will be slightly brown around the edges. Take the tray out of the oven and let the cookies rest for ten minutes. Resist handling them sooner--they need to firm up to prevent breakage. Then carefully transfer them to a cooling rack until fully cooled.

Squash Blossoms

Cooking with squash blossoms seems very fussy and restaurant-y, but we have oodles of squash blossoms in the garden this year. A lot of them, I've noticed, don't go on to become squashes, but just wither and fall off. I learned from Alice Walker's Chez Panisse Vegetables that "The male flowers, those without tiny squashes attached, are generally preferred for stuffing." Aha, only female squash blossoms turn into squashes. It's probably ignorant that I didn't know this already. I learned a bit more about squash pollination from wikipedia. We are growing four kinds of squash this year, yellow crookneck, butterstick (yellow zucchini), so-called Sweet Gourmet Hybrid (to me, they look just like the calabacita squashes that are common in Mexican grocery stores), and zucchini. We got our seeds from Burpee. The zucchini are crammed against the fence and rather crowded; maybe the bees can't get to them as well and they aren't getting effectively pollinated? We aren't getting nearly as many zucchini as the other sorts of squash.

So, I gathered my squash blossoms and made Summer Squash Blossoms Stuffed with Ricotta from the aforementioned Chez Panisse Vegetables, p. 311. Basically, you stuff the blossoms with a mixture of ricotta, egg, parmesan, butter, flour, and salt, and then poach them for 6 minutes. Drain, then serve with sage butter. The recipe urges you to use blossoms with tiny squashes attached as well as the male blossoms.



So here they are. It was a lot of work, and they were good, but a bit watery. There's another recipe where the squash blossoms are stuffed with mozzarella, dredged in corn flour and fried. Maybe I'll try that some time, but it sounds heavy, like squash blossom poppers.

I had a lot of filling left after stuffing my 8 blossoms. Maybe Alice Walker has bigger blossoms than I do. So, I stuffed some "sweet gourmet" squash halves with the filling, then baked them @ 425 for about 45 minutes, until cook through and nicely browned. That was pretty good also.

The best Alice Walker recipe I tried, and the one that I will surely make again, is a simple squash saute. You saute sliced squash in olive oil until tender and just starting to brown, then add garlic, fresh basil or marjoram, salt, and pepper. After a minute, turn off the heat, add a squeeze of lemon juice, and serve. (Actually, I would add the basil along with the lemon juice, because basil gets drab and flavorless if it cooks very much.)

Zucchini Frittata

I made the frittata from this Frittata and Tomato Sandwich recipe courtesy of Michael Chiarello. I was flipping past the Food Network channel, and he happened to be making it before my eyes. I almost never turn on the Food Channel and catch a chef making something that I would like to eat, but this time I got lucky.

I like the technique of broiling the zucchini. I'll be doing that again. It does cause the zucchini to get very soft, not "just tender" as the recipe says. I only had parmesan cheese, so that's what I used.

Another egg and zucchini recipe: I had some grated zucchini left over from making zucchini bread. Mix the grated zucchini with egg, salt, and pepper (herbs or garlic would be good too) and then fry in a pan as you would a pancake. The result is light and tender. You can mix just one egg with a pretty large amount of zucchini.

Green-packed Stir Fry

This dish is based on the "Green-packed Stir Fry" in Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson, but with completely different vegetables.

2 T. olive oil
1 block extra-firm tofu, sliced into 8 pieces
1 small bunch broccoli, separated into small florets
1 carrot, chopped into circles or semicircles
2 to 3 summer squashes, chopped into 1-inch chunks
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 jalapeno peppers, minced
a 1x2-inch cube of fresh ginger, minced
several cups of mild greens such as spinach or chard, roughly chopped*
3-4 T. hoisin sauce
juice and zest of 2 limes
large handful of fresh basil, chopped
large handful of fresh mint, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Heat 1 T. olive oil in a well-seasoned skillet over medium-high heat. When oil is hot, lay tofu in pan. Let brown for about 5 minutes, then turn and brown for a few more minutes, until golden and slightly crispy on both sides. Set tofu aside.

In wok, heat 1 T. olive oil over high heat. Add broccoli and stir frequently. After a couple minutes, add carrots. A few minutes later, add squash. When vegetables are turning golden brown at edges but still crisp, add garlic, jalapenos, and ginger. Stir for another minute. Add greens and stir until wilted. Then add 3 T. hoisin sauce, lime juice, zest, and tofu. (Cut the tofu into smaller pieces or strips, if you like.) Turn off heat, and add basil and mint. Stir until wilted and well combined. Add salt, pepper, or another T. of hoisin sauce to taste.

This would be good over rice or another cooked grain. I often eat it plain.

If you don't have hoisin sauce, use soy sauce instead, and feel free to use lemon juice instead of lime. (Start with 2 T. soy sauce, then add more as needed.) My favorite way to make this dish is with soy sauce and lemon juice; it is lighter and less dominated by sauce.

*I used mustard greens, which were a little too sharp tasting.

Rice with Tofu, Greens, Squash, Gravy

When Mike and I were in Santa Monica last year, we went to Real Food Daily, Ann Gentry's restaurant. I had a basic bowl of brown rice with tofu, greens, and house dressing. It's the best and most comforting meal in the world. Plus, Real Food Daily has amazing chocolate chip cookies. They are made with barley flour, which is unusual, but somehow adds to their sweet nuttiness.

I've gotten away from it lately, but I think it's good to have a Real Food Daily-type dinner often. Last night we had brown rice, yellow squash sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper, garlicky kale, sauteed tofu, and Golden Gravy from The Real Food Daily cookbook. It's an onion and nutritional yeast gravy, very delicious. The squash and kale were from our CSA box--we got gorgeous vegetables this week.




Apologies for the blurry picture. This is probably unusual, but I find photographs to be the most tedious part of blogging. I don't like finding the right light, fussing with the memory card, or taking the picture itself. My photos are usually mediocre at best, which I could blame on our camera, but I'm sure the fault is mine. Our previous digital camera was cheaper and simpler and inferior in every way, but I got better results with it. The current camera takes blurry pictures for me. I could use a tripod, but that sounds like even more work.

Mocha Kahlua Chocolate Chip Ice Cream (Dairy Free)

1 can light coconut milk*
1 1/2 cups almond milk (or any kind of milk you like)
3 T. cornstarch, mixed with 1/3 c. milk until lump-free
1/2 c. sugar
2 rounded t. instant espresso powder
1 block unsweetened baking chocolate
1/2 c. chocolate chips, chopped into small pieces
1/2 c. Kahlua liqueur

Put coconut milk, almond milk, and sugar in saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in cornstarch mixture, espresso powder, and baking chocolate. Whisk constantly (or at least every minute or so) until mixture simmers and thickens, about 10 minutes. Cool and chill in refrigerator until thoroughly cold.

Whisk in Kahlua liqueur and add chocolate pieces. Freeze in ice cream freezer according to manufacturer's instructions. You may want to store the final product in your freezer for a bit before eating.

*****

I wanted to try adding alcohol to homemade ice cream, because the alcohol is supposed to keep the ice cream from freezing into an icy block. I didn't notice a huge difference, so I probably won't bother in the future.

This ice cream is very good. It reminds me of certain dairy-free frozen desserts on the market--Rice Dream, Soy Delicious, etc.--in that it's a little too sweet and not quite creamy enough. The Kahlua added a ton of sweetness; if I make this again, I will dial down the sugar content and make the base more fatty. Almond milk is a very thin, watery milk and not the best choice. If made with full-fat dairy products or regular coconut milk, I think the final product would be more delicious yet.

*Trader Joe's sells only light coconut milk. Why?

Mexican-style Zucchini Tacos

A terrific recipe from Rick Bayless:

Tacos de Calabacitas a la Mexicana (Mexican-Style Zucchini Tacos)

I will be making these often. I left out the crema, and topped with avocado and feta sprinkles.

The End of Overeating Zucchini Bread

I just read The End of Overeating by David Kessler. It's been getting a lot of press. The gist is that many contemporary processed and restaurant foods are hyperpalatable--loaded and layered with sugar, fat, and salt. For many people, this type of food is addictive like crack, which explains the upsetting "can't stop eating" feeling that the foods provoke. As in, you're stuffed, but you keep reaching for more movie popcorn or cookies or Cheetos. The normal process of satiety gets disrupted because the pleasure centers in your brain are stimulated so strongly.

Kessler lists a few restaurant offenders who try to make their food as hyperpalatable as possible: Chili's, Cheesecake Factory, Cinnabon, most fast food restaurants. It's not news that these places load their food with fat, sugar, and salt, but the parallel he draws to an addiction model is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, it's hard to desensitize yourself from hyperpalatable food. The solution involves being regimented about eating, at least until your response to food cues diminishes.

The hyperpalatable foods that push my buttons the most are baked goods, hands down. Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite, but also scones, quick breads, and cakes. Also nuts, peanut butter, and chocolate.

We have a lot of zucchini and summer squashes right now, so I made Heidi Swanson's excellent zucchini bread this morning. It's by no means an unhealthy recipe (for instance, Paula Deen's zucchini bread contains twice as much fat and sugar, and a third less zucchini). I calculated out the calorie count of the recipe (yield two loaves, 2375 calories per loaf, or 95 calories per ounce). I ate a slice, then one more. Then, almost against my will, I stood over the cut loaf and ate a few more slivers, all the while thinking that I didn't want any more zucchini bread. It was uncanny. My cerebral cortex didn't want the bread, but some lower brain center did, badly.

So, the zucchini bread may be hyperpalatable, but it sure is good. The curry powder and poppy seeds make it interesting. I might use less curry powder next time, and try adding a bit of cardamom.

Green Lentil Salad

1 1/2 c. green French lentils
a few bay leaves
1/2 t. salt
3 cloves garlic
3 T. olive oil
several glugs of white wine vinegar
dollop of Dijon mustard
handful of parsley, chopped
3 1/2 oz. feta cheese

Rinse lentils and put in large saucepan, covering with about an inch of water. Simmer with salt, bay leaves, and clove of garlic for half an hour or a little longer, or until tender but not falling apart. Drain.

For the dressing, put vinegar and mustard in a bowl with 2 cloves minced garlic. Whisk in olive oil, and add salt and pepper to taste (don't make it too salty, because the feta will add saltiness and the lentils already have some seasoning). Add more of any ingredient to your taste.

Mix lentils with dressing, parsley, and feta. Add more salt or pepper if needed. This would be good with chopped red peppers or other added vegetables.

*****

Tasty salad, high in protein. I like lentils but they upset my stomach. I'm in a pattern of: eat them, get upset stomach, avoid them for a couple months until I forget the bad effects, eat them again, repeat ad nauseum.

Feta is a nice touch but optional. Goat cheese would be very good as well. I've been eating more dairy products lately, mostly in the form of yogurt. Brown Cow plain cream top is delicious. But I'm getting pimply, just like PETA said I would. Sigh. I'm trying to use up our big block of feta, and then I will regretfully cut back on dairy products, yet again. There's a hole in my diet that needs to be filled with something white and creamy, and I already am eating too much soy.

Herbed Quinoa Summer Squash Salad

1 c. red quinoa, rinsed well
1/2 t. salt
1 sweet onion, chopped
2 T. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
a few sprigs rosemary, chopped
2 T. chopped fresh oregano
black pepper
4 small summer squash (zucchini, crookneck, butterstick, etc.), chopped into large pieces
a large handful fresh basil, roughly chopped
a few leaves of mustard greens or other greens, roughly chopped
zest and juice of 1 1/2 lemons
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Put quinoa and 2 cups water in large saucepan with 1/2 t. salt. Bring to boil and simmer until all water is absorbed, 15 to 20 minutes. Fluff with fork.

In cast iron skillet, heat olive oil and saute onion over medium heat. When onion is just becoming soft and fragrant, add garlic, rosemary, oregano, squash, lemon zest, and salt and pepper to taste. Saute until squash is softened and slightly golden brown around the edges. Turn off heat. Add greens and basil; stir until wilted. Combine vegetable mixture with quinoa, lemon juice, and chickpeas. Add additional salt or pepper if needed.

*****

Believe it or not, I made up this recipe. Actually, it was based on the Herbed Quinoa Salad in Alex Jamieson's Great American Detox Diet (she's the girlfriend of Morgan Spurlock appearing in Supersize Me) but I made a lot of changes. The mustard greens may sound strange, but they don't taste sharp if they are young. I have a renegade mustard plant growing in the garden, and I regularly hack off its leaves and add them to whatever I happen to be cooking. Within a few days, the plant has invariably regrown completely. Kale or spinach would be a good substitute, or it could be left out completely.

lemony chickpea stir fry

I love Heidi Swanson's recipes, and Lemony Chickpea Stir-fry is no exception. I left out the tofu and used extra chickpeas, but otherwise followed her recipe closely. Stir-frying the chickpeas really messed up our wok, which is an overpriced Calphalon disappointment made of anodized aluminum. Stuff always sticks and burns.

I love the idea of stir-frying chickpeas, to give a little variety from tofu. This was delicious and I'll definitely make it again. It would be nice to spice this up, too, with cayenne or fresh chiles or a cumin/smoked paprika mixture.

olive oil granola

The New York Times recently had a recipe for olive oil granola. Yum! I can't resist any recipe that is so easy to put together. You should try it too. The article describes is as "health-conscious crack," and this is completely accurate. It's sweet and salty and oily and crunchy, and has 600 calories per cup, per our calculations. I wouldn't exactly call it health-conscious, but whatever. I used cashews instead of pistachios, and left out the coconut chips.

mixed berry pie

On Saturday, I made a mixed berry pie. I usually make fruit into crisps or crumbles, which are amazingly easy to throw together and relatively light and healthy. But I wanted to make something more monumental with the raspberries and blackberries from our garden. We've been picking them for weeks, and mostly just eating them plain.

Mixed Berry Pie

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

for filling:
6 cups mixed blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries
1/4 c. sugar
2 T. cornstarch
dash cinnamon

Mix fruit with sugar, starch, and cinnamon, and let sit while you prepare the crust.

for crust:
1 1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1 stick salted butter, cut into small pieces
1 T. sugar
ice water

In food processor, pulse flour, butter, and sugar until the butter is in pieces the size of peas. Add spoonfuls of ice water and pulse until the dough forms big clumps. Remove dough and put onto floured cutting board. Roll dough out with rolling pin, adding extra flour as needed to prevent sticking. Line a pie pan with dough. Mound filling into pie pan. You'll probably have enough dough left for a top crust; I made a lattice. Decoratively crimp the edges. If you want, you can brush the edges of the crust with milk or cream or soymilk, for attractive browning.

Bake pie for about half an hour; crust should be golden brown. Lower heat to 350, and bake 15 more minutes until filling is bubbling.

A few caveats about this pie. Mike and I both loved it, but I would probably make some changes if serving it to guests. The whole wheat crust is not exactly light as a feather -- it's a bit dense and substantial. I don't mind this. It reminds me of Little House on the Prairie. The kids and Pa carried pies in their lunch pails, so they couldn't have been too delicate and airy or they would have been smashed to crumbs. I have a strange fascination with the foods in Little House on the Prairie.

Caveat #2 is that the pie could be a lot sweeter. A similar recipe on the Martha Stewart Living website uses a cup of sugar, and that wouldn't be inappropriate. We liked it really well with less sugar, though.

Caveat #3: The pie was runny. Next time I will add more cornstarch.

We ate it with homemade frozen yogurt, which was just whole milk yogurt mixed with honey and vanilla, frozen in the ice cream maker. This also wasn't very sweet. In fact, the entire dessert was so unsugary that we deemed it appropriate to eat for breakfast.

portland and seattle

I've been out of town, visiting Seattle and Portland. We only had one day in Seattle, so I don't think I've experienced it adequately. Downtown Seattle is seedy. The few neighborhoods I saw seem beautiful. Capitol Hill and Queen Anne, both near downtown, are pretty and expensive. We walked through a community garden in Capitol Hill that blew my mind, but Capitol Hill (I learn from Zillow) is the Lincoln Park of Seattle. I would have liked to see the neighborhoods, if any, where we could actually afford to live. We ate at Poppy, a restaurant in Capitol Hill that focuses on local foods. It was absolutely wonderful, and one of the best restaurant meals I've had. Part of the appeal is that you get a thali, a platter with 5-7 small dishes in tasting portions; they offer an ordinary thali with a couple meat dishes and also a vegetarian thali. The food was amazing, I loved trying a variety of dishes, and the vegetarian option wasn't just an afterthought as it is in many restaurants.

I didn't have any wine, just iced tea. It's sad, because I love wine, but I feel better if I drink no alcohol at all. Oh well. I wish I could have one drink and feel perfectly okay, but I can't. It only took me 15 years to accept this fact.

Beyond eating at Poppy, on our day in Seattle we went to Pike Place market and ate cherries and scones and coffee, walked around downtown, stopped at Whole Foods and got some lunch and other supplies, went to Washington Park Arboretum and did some walking and jogging, then went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. We had time to drive through the Queen Anne neighborhood before Poppy. That's it. We should have bagged the Washington Park Arboretum, which was nice but a time-consuming jaunt. On the way out of town the next morning, we stopped at the Columbia City Bakery and got some cookies and scones and walnut levain to take to Richard and Angie's house. (The cookies and scones were eaten quickly, but the walnut levain didn't reach its potential until yesterday, when I made it into bruschetta with a garlicky herbed white bean topping. The walnuts were explosions of wonderfulness. Yes, I brought it home with me in my suitcase.)

Here's what I love about Portland:

1) The neighborhoods are pretty, with adorable wood-framed houses and beautiful gardens. My brother's neighborhood in NE Portland is like this, and he swears that it's a modest and ordinary neighborhood. I'm not as familiar with other neighborhoods, but this seems true. Amazingly, other neighborhoods are just as beautiful, or even more so.

2) Laughing Planet restaurant. I could eat here every day.

3) Close to mountains, hiking, natural beauty.

4) Not cold in the winter.

5) A thousand other things.

6) Angie and Richard and Sabine, who are happy to see me, and nice and kind and funny, and live full and worthwhile lives. Sabine, age 21 mos., is jolly and will laugh at any joke because she loves to laugh.

the new Whole Foods

There's a shiny new Whole Foods at North Avenue and Kingsbury. Because the old Whole Foods had so many problems (limited selection, rats, etc.) I was looking forward to the new one opening. Now I've been there a few times, and I find the shopping experience to be exceedingly unpleasant. I'm sure this is the exact opposite of what the store's designers were going for. Why do I hate this shiny, enormous Whole Foods packed with an unprecedented selection of upscale groceries?

1) It has a huge bank of refrigerator cases. It is freezing cold if you are anywhere near them. Seriously, don't go in wearing a sundress unless you want to suffer.
2) It takes forever to get in the store. Naturally, there's no street parking, and the store is a fair walk from North Ave. There's a big, complicated parking garage with arrows pointing every which way, and the store has at least 5 entrances. Once you navigate the parking garage, you have to go down a long series of escalators, or wind through a labyrinth of seating area and down some stairs. There's an elevator, too. It reminds me of the big Harold Washington library downtown, which I never go to because it takes about twenty minutes to reach any books. You enter, go through a long hallway, go up an outer escalator, go through security, go up an inner escalator, etc.
3) It's crowded and poorly laid out. Rather than straight aisles running the length of the store, there are some short aisles and many islands that impede traffic. The entire south end of the store is about 8 different mini-restaurants, little islands surrounded by stools. When the store is crowded, which is always, you can barely work your way through this carnival. If the store was thinly populated, it might seem exciting and fun to explore the bath-salt island, the make-your-own-granola island, the gourmet olive island, etc. I might wander around, spending excessively. But when the store is crowded, it makes me want to flee. Besides, it's no fun to wander around because it's so freezing. Also, the "island of delights" layout makes it hard to find anything.
4) They discontinued the one staple that I loved: White Wave Extra Firm Tofu. This tofu is so firm that you can cook it without draining and pressing. It doesn't stick to my cast-iron skillet. I depended on it. Now, there's little besides Whole Foods brand tofu, which sucks. It sticks to my skillet every time.

As a customer who was eager to be pleased, I think they really missed the boat with this new store.

Cabbage and White Beans

Another favorite dish recently is a cabbage and white bean stew, along these lines. Often I leave out the potatoes and skip the stock--just using enough water to keep things moist. Once I added red beets and a fair amount of vinegar, for a borschlike soup. (Apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, or balsamic vinegar are all good choices.)

I never realized how delicious cabbage is until recently. I can see why it's a staple of so many cuisines. It's especially good roughly chopped, tossed in olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and roasted in a hot oven until tender and crispy around the edges.

Otsu: best soba noodle dish ever

In the past few months, I've been making this soba noodle dish often. It's possibly my favorite recipe from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Food. Fortunately the recipe is posted on Heidi's site for easy reference. I leave the olive oil out of the sauce and use more cucumber, but otherwise this recipe is perfect.

Annie Chun brand soba noodles are good. I had ordered six boxes from amazon, and was pleased with them. Having used them up, I now have some Roland brand soba noodles, which are thinner and don't seem to soak up the sauce as well. I've also gotten soba noodles from the big Korean grocery store at Belmont and Kimball. They are cheap there. I would go there more often but it's such an unpleasant walk. I hate walking under the freeway overpass through the pigeon shit, and Kimball is a depressing street.

The noodles from the Korean grocery are not as good as Annie Chun, and not pure buckwheat, unfortunately. I've yet to try pure buckwheat soba noodles--you can get them at Whole Foods--because they are at least twice as expensive as the wheat/buckwheat mixture.

Breakfast Cookies

It's been a while since I posted. I've had other preoccupations, and doing a nice post with a photo and well-considered text is a fair amount of work. But I would like a record of what I've been cooking and an online place to store recipes for future reference, so I'm going to lower my standards.

Even Healthier Breakfast Cookies
June 14, June 17, 2009

First I made a batch of Ellie Krieger's breakfast cookies, following her recipe fairly closely. I made a double recipe, used 2 c. all-purpose flour and 1/2 c. whole wheat flour instead of her mixture of whole-wheat pastry flour and all-purpose flour, used applesauce instead of carrot baby food, and added chocolate chips. They turned out great. Commenters on Krieger's recipe page fault the cookies for being too healthy tasting, but I disagree. In fact Mike, who has been on a big health kick lately, thought they were not light and healthy enough, so I tried making them healthier yet. The result was tasty but not especially cookielike. Probably Ellie Krieger has already pushed the envelope on how healthy you can make a cookie without changing its essential nature. Mine reminded me more of flat muffins, or extremely healthy scones. Still, they are big and yummy and a reasonable 227 calories each. I got only 13 cookies from this batch, but they were pretty big.


1 c. whole-wheat flour
1 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. bran flakes
1 t. baking soda
2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. ground nutmeg, or a few good grates of fresh nutmeg
2 T. canola oil
2 T. butter
3/4 c. loosely packed brown sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 c. applesauce
1/2 c. walnuts
1 c. Raisin Bran cereal
1/2 c. raisins
1 c. rolled oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Whisk together flours, bran flakes, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Combine butter, oil and sugar and mix with electric mixer until sugars have dissolved and mixture is light in color. Add eggs, applesauce, and vanilla and beat an additional 30 seconds. Add flour mixture and beat an additional 30 seconds. Add oats, cereal, raisins, and walnuts and stir to combine. Dough will be slightly sticky and less cohesive than traditional cookie dough. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. Using about 4 tablespoons of batter, form a ball and place on cookie sheet. Repeat with remaining batter. Flatten cookies with a piece of waxed paper until about 1/4-inch thick. Bake for 12-14 minutes, until cookies are fragrant and golden brown on the bottom. Let cookies cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cost-effective pantry staples

There's an interesting article on Slate this week. Jennifer Reese makes bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, jam, and granola from scratch to see if they are cheaper than their store-bought counterparts. The results: bagels and yogurt, cheaper and tastier; cream cheese, more expensive and less tasty; jam, tastier, cost varies; granola, more expensive, tastier. For the most part, she's using the cheapest possible raw ingredients (generic sugar, not organic dried cane juice) and comparing her results to the cheapest grocery store products.

More often than not, I've been cooking and baking with high-quality ingredients lately (organic whole-grain flour and vegetables, local honey, etc., etc.). Not exclusively, but I try to avoid the "dirty dozen" and refined flour. I'm pretty sure that my homemade foods are more expensive than cheap grocery store versions, but less expensive than upscale grocery store versions. It's a dilemma. Ingredients like maple syrup and organic flour are extraordinarily expensive, and I'm finding it hard to cut my grocery budget down really low. But we're eating better than ever. The sad truth is that upscale grocery store items are sometimes kind of mediocre, or stale, or oily. (Whole Foods deli counter, I'm looking at you.) That's the worst bummer, spending big bucks on so-so upscale chow. And I'm exceedingly happy to avoid vegetarian freezer items—Morningstar Farms veggie burgers and the like. They are expensive, high in sodium, and have ingredient lists as long as your arm.

I've never made homemade bagels, but I'm going to try this soon.

chocolate cake number two

The second chocolate cake I made is from Nigella Lawson's Feast. I'm on the lookout not only for the perfect plain cake, but also for the ultimate fancy cake. My ultimate cake must include chocolate and coffee, and perhaps caramel or hazelnut. I haven't found it yet, although tiramisu isn't too far off. Nigella's Chocolate Espresso Cake with Caffe Latte Cream (p. 292) sounded like a candidate, so I wanted to try it before returning Feast to the library. I didn't make the Caffe Latte Cream, since this was just a test run.

Another motive for all these chocolate cakes is my friend John's upcoming birthday. I kind of want to make a cake, although I'm not sure yet if a cake will be called for by the festivities at hand, or if this is the cake. He's visiting from out of town. Sigh, it's been a long time since John and I have lived in the same place, and I no longer remember what his favorite type of cake is. I wish that I knew everyone's favorite cake, and had happy dinner parties with loved ones, the sort of dinner parties that Nigella has. Or Orangette. I love the fantasy of bonding over food. It doesn't happen often enough in my particular social circumstances. Still, I'd like to make a nice cake for John.

I do have one memory of an idyllic food get-together: Thankgiving 1997. My friend Joanna and her husband Ed lived in our neighborhood in Chicago, and they came over, along with some other friends. There was a lot of wine, beer, and hard cider involved. We thawed a frozen turkey in the bathtub, and Joanna and I made pies. One guy brought over some red bell peppers cooked in olive oil over low heat until melted down to nothing. So delicious with crusty bread. The turkey, despite great ignorance and drunken preparation, came out perfectly. I drank so much that I had to go lie in bed for a while, but then I rallied, returned to the group, and thus avoided shame.

But back to Nigella's fancy cake. It turned out good. It's an eggy cake with only a little flour, and it puffed up gorgeously while baking, then deflated as it cooled. It's a rather delicate cake, not at all dense or heavy, and would probably be a good choice to impress guests. I don't know. It was pretty and lavish, and but perhaps not my heart's desire. Clearly I'm looking for more than just cake here. But don't let that stop you.

Chocolate Espresso Cake
adapted from Feast by Nigella Lawson, p. 292.

For the cake:
5 oz semisweet chocolate chips
1 stick plus 3 T. unsalted butter
6 eggs
1 1/4 c. granulated sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
5 t. Medaglio d'Oro instant espresso, or other espresso powder
1/4 c. Frangelico or other coffee liqueur

Take all ingredients out of the refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature. The most important thing is that the eggs be room temperature. If, like me, you can't be bothered to take everything out ahead of time, set the eggs in warm water for 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°. Butter and line a 9-inch springform pan.

Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave in 30-second increments, stirring in between heatings to prevent scorching. Set aside. Beat eggs, sugar, and vanilla with hand mixer until thick, pale, and doubled or tripled in volume. Nigella does this in a standing mixer (I want one of those). It took me close to ten minutes of beating for the mixture to reach this state.

Gently fold in flour and espresso powder, and then chocolate-butter mixture, taking care not to lose volume. Pour into prepared pan and cook for 35-40 minutes. The top of the cake should be firm. Immediately pour the coffee liqueur over the top and let the cake cool completely before releasing it from the pan.

This was perfectly delicious without the Caffe Latte cream, but maybe it would be even better with. Here is another blogger's account of making this cake that includes the cream recipe. The liqueur flavor was rather pronounced. If you don't like that, you might want to leave it off. I wonder if the cake would not deflate if you nixed the liqueur. Any readers out there, let me know if you try these variations.

chocolate cake #1

There's a certain yin and yang to my cooking habits. When last I wrote, I was making salads, brown rice, and chard, but since then I've been all about chocolate cake. I've baked not one but two chocolate cakes in the last week.

I love cake but I'm not crazy about frosting, so I'm always on the lookout for cakes that are complete unto themselves and don't require buttercream. French yogurt cake is a good example. I'd been reading More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, which I checked out of the library after reading a scathing review of Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte on amazon.com that, among other things, complained that Hesser is no Laurie Colwin. I'm not so sure. I enjoyed Cooking for Mr. Latte at least as much as I did More Home Cooking. To Colwin's credit, upon reading this chocolate cake recipe, I went immediately to the kitchen and started making it.

Buttermilk Cocoa Cake
Adapted from More Home Cooking, p. 161.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and butter and flour a 9- by 2-inch round cake pan.

2. Mix together the following:

1 3/4 cups flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

3. To these ingredients add:

1 c. buttermilk (I used 2/3 c. plain yogurt mixed with 1/3 c. rice milk)
1/2 cup vegetable oil or melted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix.

4. Turn the batter into the pan, bake the cake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean, and let it cool for 5 minutes before turning it out of the pan.

Here's what Colwin says about the cake:

It is hard to encapsulate the virtuosities of this cake. It is fast, easy, and scrumptious. It has a velvety, powdery feel—the result of all that cocoa. It is not so horribly bad for you, because you use buttermilk, which is relatively low in fat, and cocoa powder is defatted anyway. Furthermore, it keeps like a dream and tastes even better after a few days. If you want to be lavish you can dress this cake up by serving it with ice cream or crème fraîche. This mitigates its purist, minimalist virtues, but that is the way of chocolate cakes. They are good in themselves but sometimes call out for window dressing. You can eat them gussied up with all sorts of rich and fattening things or you can leave them quite alone and serve them in pristine, solitary splendor on a nice white plate.

Right after making it, I found the cake disappointing. It isn't very moist, and the texture is crumbly. This is common for eggless baked goods, and I may have caused yet more crumbliness by using whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour. The batter, too, is very thick; it seems more like muffin batter than cake batter. The next day, though, the cake was unbelievably delicious. I found myself standing over the pan, cutting myself little slivers and picking up the crumbs with my index finger. It also has the virtue of being easy to veganize. You could use nondairy yogurt instead of buttermilk, or add a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to soy milk.










Next I'll write about chocolate cake #2.

detox and the beauty of salads

I've been cooking plenty lately, but haven't been taking pictures. Dinner is usually my main cooking project, and it's hard to snap good food pics when there's no natural light. Excuses, excuses. In the evenings, I've made soup regularly, and also tofu/greens/brown rice/sauce–type dinners. When my mood is not good, as it hasn't been lately, I try to eat ultra-healthy. It seems to help. I find things like cake, cookies, and bread more irresistible than usual if I'm feeling low. I think it's a grasping for pleasure. Apparently carb-loading boosts your serotonin levels, but I think it's a faster feedback loop than that: Eating something tasty is the most instantaneous pleasure I can think of. Of course, eating carbohydrates to self-medicate backfires. You feel worse soon enough. But fortunately the world is full of good things to eat that won't give you a carb hangover.

Sometimes I loosely follow a three-day "detox diet" that I clipped from Body + Soul magazine a couple years ago. It's nothing like the hard-core detoxes where you consume only lemonade for ten days. I deviate from it a lot, too. I drink coffee in the morning and whenever I feel like it, and usually skip the tea and lemon water. I eat more rice and oatmeal than allowed, and I sauté my greens with garlic in olive oil and salt them. Steamed beets are horrible, so I often substitute some other vegetable. And since the dinner's so small, I add tofu and tahini sauce, and I have a bedtime snack, too. Even though I play fast and loose with the rules, I feel some sort of refreshment after a day or two.

Do-It-Yourself Detox
from Body + Soul magazine

For a week leading up to this simplified, moderate three-day cleanse, created by Cathy Wong, ND, gradually reduce your intake of sugar and artificial sweeteners, white flour, dairy, alcohol, salt, and caffeine while increasing your intake of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Throughout each day of the cleanse, aim to drink at least 8 cups of water and do moderate exercise. Alleviate digestive stress by chewing your food thoroughly and stopping before you're full.

THREE-DAY CLEANSE

Upon waking: A cup of hot water with lemon; meditate for 10 minutes
Breakfast: Smoothie (1 cup berries, 1 cup rice or almond milk, 1 scoop protein powder) or 3/4 c oatmeal and 1 cup berries; green or black tea with lemon
Snack: One small organic apple or pear and 10 unsalted raw almonds
Lunch: 3 oz. organic chicken or turkey, or 1 cup legumes; 1/2 cup brown rice or quinoa; 1 cup boiled swiss chard
Snack: Celery and carrot sticks with 2 tablespoons hummus
Dinner: 1 cup steamed beets over 3/4 cup brown rice; 1 cup boiled kale; 1 cup green, black, or herbal tea with lemon
Before bed: 1 cup hot water with lemon

So, last week I halfway followed the detox for a couple days, and felt a bit less like yuck. Mike then went out of town, and I made a few good salads. Salads are nice for low times because they are quick to put together and energizing. We had a lot of oranges and grapefruits on hand, and I love citrus in salads. (The detox diet has something against citrus fruit, but I'm not sure what, especially since it's in love with lemon water.) I also just discovered raw fennel. I knew about braised or roasted fennel, but it's amazing raw, too.

Here's a simple orange and shaved fennel salad, dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, and some Hawaiian black sea salt that I got at Trader Joe's a while ago. This beautiful salad reminds me that life is good, and that summer will come eventually even though it's Indian Winter in Chicago.



Here's a salad with butter lettuce, orange, raw almonds, sunflower seeds, and raisins. I ate it with some tahini dressing.

decadent muffins

I frequently make healthy vegan muffins. There's a pumpkin muffin recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance that tolerates my fiddling, so I cut the sugar by half or more, use whole wheat pastry flour and wheat bran instead of all-purpose flour, and substitute applesauce for some of the oil. The muffins when made as directed are very tasty. My healthified versions are pretty good too, so long as I don't go overboard with the substitutions. I also make healthy banana or carrot or raisin bran muffins. When working, I would take one or two with me to the office each day, and eat them at my desk.

Lately I've been feeling irritated by healthy muffins. I made some bran muffins (the source of the recipe I will cloak in anonymity) that were really, really dense and really, really healthy. They were utterly dreary. I eventually chopped them up and resurrected them as bread pudding, so it wasn't all for naught. Is it better to make a fattening, delicious paradigmatic version of whatever you're making than a less-tasty healthy or thrifty version? In the case of granola, the answer is yes. I've messed around making granola out of okara (soy bean pulp) or almond pulp, the residue left over after making soy milk or almond milk. It's doesn't get nicely browned and carmelized like regular granola. I've also tried a granola recipe that contains applesauce, ostenstibly to lower the fat content, and it was similarly mediocre. Never again. I'm going to throw out the okara and almond pulp, waste be damned, and make granola that tastes as good as possible. (I will post my granola recipe soon, but here's a good basic recipe from a blog I like.) For that matter, I'll also stop making homemade soy or almond milk. Mine isn't as as good as store bought.

But back to muffins. I'm in the middle of a love affair with my new cookbook, Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson. The recipes all contain whole foods or natural ingredients, but are often quite rich. I've had my eye on the Espresso Banana Muffin recipe (p. 38) for weeks now. It's the real deal, with butter, eggs, sugar, lots of walnuts. The addition of espresso powder to the batter is the touch of brilliance. It adds a mysterious caramel-like and bitter something.

I've greedily eaten a few Espresso Banana Muffins, and I would definitely serve them to guests. But as an everyday muffin, I'm unsure. I think they are too fulsome, and would put me in a decadent and devil-may-care mood. I might lie on the couch reading all day, because that's more pleasurable than working or leaving the house. Maybe something a bit more bracing. I wonder what would happen if I subbed applesauce for the butter, and cut the sugar down a bit . . . ?

Muffin with Primrose