The Reluctant (Semi-)Vegan

Hello and goodbye

2011-12-28T16:54:00.003-05:00

Hello.

The end of the year always motivates me to reflect and take stock. In fact, I've tried to get into this blog a few times over the past year but some issue with Blogger had me locked out of it.

I am no longer trying to go vegan, and I'm happier with my eating habits than ever. This is not meant as an affront to vegans, whom I will always admire for their dedication to animal welfare. I find that about half of my meals just turn out to be vegan. I don't eat meat, but I eat fish 2-3 times a month. Increasing the protein in my diet has been one of the best changes I've made. Plain yogurt with fruit and nuts is my mainstay for breakfast, but the protein in other meals is more often from beans, tofu, eggs, or seitan than it is from dairy/fish sources.

In late 2009, I decided to try to drop some weight and started a good old-fashioned calorie-counting regimen. By late 2010 I'd lost 25% of my body weight, bringing me from 6 pounds "overweight" to near the bottom of my "healthy weight range." I lost 4 clothing sizes and half a shoe size. I've maintained all of that weight loss and a few pounds more since the end of my diet, 14.5 months ago. I joined the National Weight Control Registry, which is a research group of Big Losers.

I discovered that I love weightlifting. I also love yoga, running, and walking. However, my weight loss was 90% due to diet and 10% due to changes in my exercise routine (I've been exercising at least 4 days a week for the past 16 years now).

I've become pretty good at naturally balancing my intake and output. Contrary to what you might read in the popular media, weight loss is not that hard. Slow and steady is the key, not the starvation diets cited in the linked article and too many others like it. Also, I don't think any weight loss programs will succeed without frank and honest examination of emotions attached to food.

I'm nattering on about weight loss because it was more than an aesthetic undertaking for me. Seeing it through has transformed my relationship with myself, as well as sparked even more interest in health, food, and fitness.

It doesn't seem right to continue a vegan blog when I have decided not to commit to veganism. I've been logging regularly at the forums at leighpeele.com, which is a paid subscription site. I'm not sure whether I'll resume a public blog. I still dip into vegan blogs occasionally for recipe ideas and because I still like all of you!

Best wishes to everyone in 2012 and beyond.

Amy

Pasta with mushroom sauce

2009-06-06T11:26:00.004-04:00

Recipe by request.

3/4 lb dry pasta
1/4 cup crumbled dried wild mushrooms (you can use porcini or those assorted wild mushrooms blends)
1-1/4 cups boiling water
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
1 teaspoon oregano and 1 teaspoon basil, or about 1 tablespoon each of chopped fresh basil/oregano
dash of salt
2 tablespoons flour
2/3 cup red wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
black pepper to taste
chopped parsley and/or cheesey substance of your choice

Place the dried mushrooms in a bowl with the boiling water. While they soften, start sauteeing the onions. When they begin to soften, add the herbs, salt, and fresh mushrooms and continue cooking over medium heat. At this point, begin boiling the pasta water and cooking the pasta. When everything is soft in the saute pan, sprinkle in the flour, wine, and soy sauce. Stir and continue to simmer for a minute or two.

Place a coffee filter or paper towel in a strainer and drain the wild mushrooms, making sure to save the soaking liquid. Add the soaking liquid to the saute pan. Rinse the wild mushroom pieces, chop them finely, and add them to the pan. Simmer everything on low heat for about eight more minutes, until the sauce has thickened a bit.

Serve over the cooked pasta, topped with parsley or cheese.

In which I try to poison my husband

2009-06-03T15:39:00.005-04:00

I know my updates have been sporadic and incomplete lately. Many forces (work, social life, charity work, housework, The Wire) are in a tug-of-war for my time and updating my blog is not winning. I'll be updating when I can/ want to, but it probably won't be every week.

I've been trying a few new or so-old-they're-new recipes over the past few weeks. Last night we had pasta with mushroom sauce, which is deliciously rich and complex, but easy to make (and vegan). I think the secret is the generous amount of red wine. The alcohol burns off during cooking...or does it? If anyone wants the recipe, leave a comment.

I also made a broccoli-tofu stirfry with a hoisin-based sauce. Because I'm not sure if I like hoisin, I told the Mr. "I have to warn you that this sauce includes hoisin..." Before I could continue, he said, "POISON?? The sauce is POISON??" Heh heh.

Tonight I'm excited about going to see Bryant Terry, the author of Vegan Soul Kitchen, speak at our local library. Will they serve food in the library? I hope so but I'm skeptical. Does anyone have his cookbook? It's getting a lot of buzz around here.

I tend to be unduly hard on myself when I miss a workout or eat something that's not good for me. I got a dose of perspective when I was in a class last week. At the beginning of the class, they put out a plate of doughnuts, muffins, bagels, etc. People devoured them and got coke or coffee during the breaks. Then huge plates of cookies and brownies appeared each day after lunch, and people helped themselves to about 4 or 5 pieces each. At one time, I would have been carbo-loading right along with them. I'm not trying to sound judgmental, but watching their eating habits reinforced to me how far I've come in overhauling my diet. It feels good to be healthy.

PS: I'm now on Twitter.

Adieu, Starbucks

2009-05-20T22:14:00.004-04:00

I'm back, with a new hard drive. Man, you never realize how many preferences, plug-ins, etc. reside on your computer until you have to replace your hard drive.

I spent all evening at a bike maintenance class and am turning in soon, but I don't want to keep my two or three readers in suspense about the results of my allergy test for any longer.

I'm writing an essay about the two week break from wheat and dairy for a fine publication, so I'll keep it short here. I discovered that I am not gluten intolerant (oh, how relieved I was), but that I have a moderate intolerance to dairy. It's not a true allergy, but I realized that milk makes me congested and probably makes my skin break out. So I am bidding farewell to liquid milk, and ice cream, except for a very rare gelato. This is a change that I tried to make about two years ago, but I couldn't summon the will to just give up milk voluntarily. I think I like it so much because the protein in it helps to modulate my blood sugar. I know there are many evil sides to milk, though, and other things have the protein that I crave. I have switched to almond milk, which I find the most palatable of the non-dairy milks.

Yogurt does not seem to cause the intolerance symptoms, so I'll continue to have yogurt a few times a week. If I don't have it, I find that I'm a lot more susceptible to yeast infections (sorry if TMI).

My period of abstinence was grueling at times, but honestly, I felt so good that the cravings were generally easy to ignore. I credit the good spirits to my vitamin regimen, which I started about a month ago. I agree with my nutritionist, who thinks that vitamins shouldn't be used in place of food with nutrients. However, because I feel distinctly better, I must have been lacking some of the vitamins I'm now supplementing. I eat at least 2 servings of fruits and a minimum of 2 vegetable servings a day, but perhaps that was not adequate.

I have a few food pictures to post, but I'm not sure if the camera app is back on my computer yet. More next week!

Living without

2009-05-06T22:23:00.002-04:00

Sorry it's been a while. This will be short because it's late, plus my hard drive is dying and I'm afraid to use my computer too much at this point.

I'm on day 10 of a 14 day no wheat, no dairy diet. This is to determine whether I'm allergic to these foods. My nutritionist thinks I could be allergic to something because I've had recurring eczema and sinus issues, plus I retain a lot of water. We'll see. Personally, I don't think it's either of these foods. My symptoms have not improved since I started this diet. But, in general, I have been feeling great for the past few weeks. I credit it to my new vitamin program. I'm taking a multivitamin plus vitamins C, E, and B, as well as chromium, which has had a wonderfully stabilizing effect on my blood sugar. Also, since I started taking the vitamins, I am no longer cold all the time, and I've been sleeping like a log every night.

I'll write on the results of the allergy test next week, whenever my computer is back from the shop. More pictures then, too.

Man, I am really tired of brown rice at this point.

Getting biblical

2009-04-23T20:45:00.005-04:00

A day late because I'm briefly home between trips this week. I just finished the book The New Optimum Nutrition Bible by Patrick Holford. I highly recommend it. It's just so damn rational, for one thing. None of that "how to make a fat-free cupcake" shiz that I can't stand. Tofu is pretty much the most processed food that Holford endorses. But don't think that he's just telling you to eat more vegetables. The book is a very comprehensive guide to vitamins, minerals, and other supplements like Omega-3s. Holford's position is that it's pretty much impossible to achieve optimum nutrition without supplements. He includes a quiz that gives you the vitamins and minerals you need, and recommended dosages.

I never was a believer in vitamins, but his evidence is extremely convincing. Most significantly, he talks about an amino acid called homocysteine which is a very accurate predictor of how long you will live. Your homocysteine level can be lowered (which is desirable) by cutting down on caffeine, eating more greens and less meat, and by taking supplements like B vitamins, zinc, and folic acid.

I could go on for some time about all of the good info in this book. Here are a few changes I'm making after reading it:
1) Renewed dedication to a low glycemic load diet which keeps my blood sugar more stable
2) A 2-week regimen of no gluten or dairy (starting Monday!). I have a lot of symptoms of a low-level food allergy, according to the book.
3) Taking a multivitamin plus additional vitamin C, B vitamins, chromium (to stabilize blood sugar), and vitamin E.

I'm hoping that within a month I'll be free of sugar cravings and that the intermittent eczema on my hands clears up. I've already noticed a large drop in cravings and an increase in energy since I started following a low glycemic diet. Like the Katamari video game, a low glycemic diet builds on itself. By this I mean that when your blood sugar is more even, it's easier to resist bad foods. In Katamari, you're rolling a ball around and gradually picking up larger objects. In other words, the bigger you get, the fewer things stand in your way. How's that for a tortured analogy?

In other news, the cafeteria at my government office building put on one heck of an Earth Week celebration. I was dubious, because they put out layer cake as one of the breakfast offerings. Today at lunch, they had a bunch of vendors giving out samples of "green" foods. It was quite a lineup:
--Artist Michael Albert, who creates cool art and tasty natural juices
--Hormone-, antibiotic-, preservative-, and clone-free cheese from Andrew and Everett
--Green tea beverages from Steaz
--Various hummus and tofu-based products
--And the piece de resistance, One Stop Natural's smorgasbord of delicious vegan snacks and dishes. But there weren't just samples; they were giving away full size containers of everything! I snagged some BBQ tofu which has a delicious smoky flavor and some vegan dumplings.

In the elevator, someone commented on how good the food I had looked. I mentioned that they were giveaways from Earth Day. A guy on the elevator said "Oh, EARTH DAY" in the most scornful tone. What's your damage, dude?

Earth Day= Vegan Day?

2009-04-15T20:47:00.003-04:00

I saw a story yesterday on a very mainstream news broadcast advocating eating vegan on Earth Day. And I do mean advocating: it was an opinion-style piece rather than news reporting. They mentioned a cafe called Bread and Brew which is Green Restaurant Certified. On Earth Day, Bread and Brew will be serving a totally vegan menu. The piece also gave props to another very popular cafe, Java Green, which is vegetarian all the time. I hope that this "vegan for a day" idea catches on. The amount of animal products spared will be small, but I think it could be a great step in helping people overcome their fear of veganism. I do enjoy it when people think veganism is a weird cult but will sit down to a meal of spaghetti with a chunky veggie sauce and a green salad, unaware that they're eating vegan.

This article in today's Times also talks about veganism. Has anyone read Jeffrey Masson's new book? He's a sometime vegan, but probably more frequently than me.

What is everyone doing for Earth Day? I plan to eat vegan, even though I'll be en route back from vegan-unfriendly Texas on that day. Yup, I'm taking two round-trip flights the week of Earth Day, although I don't usually fly a lot.

I'm exhausted tonight so I'll keep this short. I've been to 3 concerts in 8 days recently, the biggest of which was the men who brought me my blog tag line.

Being mindful

2009-04-08T11:17:00.008-04:00

Before I get to the experiment I've been doing with mindful eating, I have an important question to resolve. Namely: Which is cuter, Tai Shan the baby panda or the new litter of clouded leopard cubs? Please vote in the comments, because I cannot decide.

Tai Shan:

Leopards, as yet unnamed:

I've been checking out a few books on mindful eating. I'm working through "Eat, Drink, and be Mindful," and on deck I have "Mindful Eating." I'm reading these on the advice of my nutritionist. See, I'm almost always multi-tasking when I'm eating. I eat breakfast and lunch at my desk most days during the work week. Mr. RV and I often eat dinner in front of the TV. I think these habits are pretty detrimental, since for me (and for most people, I would guess) they often lead to overeating and not feeling satisfied.

Experimenting with mindful eating has been a real eye-opener for me. For at least one meal a day, I've been:
--Focusing on the way the food smells, looks, and tastes instead of having most of my attention on something else
--Eating much more slowly and pausing between bites
--Trying to make the meal last 25 minutes (because your body only registers that it's full after 20 minutes, this technique makes it easier to stop eating if you're full before you finish your meal)
--Paying attention to the level of hunger or fullness that I'm feeling. I imagine my stomach as a gas tank gradually getting fuller when I'm eating.

I think I've been eating less in the week or two that I've been doing this. If I mindfully eat breakfast, I usually don't need a snack before lunch (but if I'm on my computer and scarfing down breakfast, I do). I also really enjoy the pleasure of tasting and eating more than I have in recent memory. I'm happy to have the 25 minutes to clear my mind and not worry about anything further than feeding myself.

It's been hard to find the time for this practice, though. I often work out at lunch, so I'm done with my allotted lunch break before I even eat. And I'm waiting to get busted when I disappear from my desk an hour after arriving to go eat breakfast. But it's worth it to enjoy food so much more. If you're a chronic multi-tasker like me, try this and let me know what you think. One downside is that it's harder to ignore bad food. Yesterday, the oatmeal in our cafeteria was watery and like something from Oliver Twist. I couldn't eat more than a few spoonfuls of it, so I had a Probar instead.

Consider the parsnip

2009-04-01T21:25:00.004-04:00

This evening on the news we saw a brief interview with Jamie Oliver, who is cooking for the G-20 summit. No pressure, huh? He was saying that if he had a private moment with Obama, he'd tell him to start taxing sugary foods, since Americans eat about 4x as much sugar as they should. I like that idea, but I highly doubt that I'll see a sugar tax in my lifetime. What they should do first is tax meat instead of subsidizing it.

Two cooking features this week:
1) Parsnip/pear/carrot soup
This was part of the first meal I ever made for the Mr. He recollects fondly that it sounded weird, but was good. I think I tried it on a whim, because I had never cooked with parsnips before. I really didn't even know what they were supposed to look like. Well, the picture is above, and they look like overgrown albino carrots. The flavor in this soup is really delicious and creamy, even though it's vegan and impeccably healthy. I think of parsnips as wild carrots flavor-wise. The flavor is sweet, but with an edge. Parsnips also have more nutrients than carrots and a heap of potassium. Here's the recipe:

1-1/2 cups each of chopped onions, pears, carrots, and parsnips ((peel the last three ingredients first)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, allspice or nutmeg, and salt
2 teaspoons (packed) brown sugar

Heat the oil over medium heat. Stir in the chopped things and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the spices and brown sugar and saute for another minute. Add 4 cups water and simmer about 15 minutes, or until everything is very tender. Puree the whole mess in a blender.

2) The cake I made for my mom's 60th birthday. This was about 10x more complicated to make than the soup above. It is also not vegan, not by a long shot. But it was freaking great. The cake is an orange cake, with the egg whites whipped separately to keep it light. The filling is a mixture of ricotta cheese with jam, dried fruit, and almonds. The glaze is simply chocolate with a bit of almond extract added. Has anyone ever noticed what a crowd pleaser almond extract is? People love the flavor, even if they can't quite put their finger on it.

That's all for now. Next week I'll probably write about mindful eating, which seems to be a hot topic lately.

When did having a garden become a radical act?

2009-03-25T10:01:00.004-04:00

The article in the Sunday NY Times titled "Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?" has been nagging at me. It describes the recent groundswell of support for organic gardening, improving the nutritional value of school lunches, and a move towards organic, nutritious, and sustainable food in general. Some of my favorite food-activists, like Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, are quoted. So why am I bothered?

I think it's because this "revolution" is not so new. Humans, of course, have grown, hunted, or foraged for their own food for almost the entire time we've been around. Organic gardening was the default for all but the last hundred or so years. If you didn't have a sustainable food system, sooner or later you'd run out of food.

Mostly, I worry that by labeling organic, sustainable food as a liberal or radical theme, we risk alienating more conservative people (who are usually the group most in need of adding more nutritious foods to their diet). They'll show us! They'll subsist on highly processed corn products!

Sometimes I think that blogs like mine are part of the problem, too. Food has become so politicized. There are good reasons for that, because the food system has inflicted great harm on animals and the planet. But nutritious, naturally produced food has an intrinsic appeal. It's much more delicious than the processed, packaged alternatives. You feel physically better after eating it. Food does not need to be so divisive.

Moving on...We planted a garden (mostly from seeds, so there's no pictures yet) last weekend for the sheer fun of playing in the dirt. I'm not sure our patio gets enough sunlight for everything to sprout, but we'll see. Truman enjoys the cat grass plant I picked up for him:

I'm sure most of you have read this article about new research on the risks of red meat. All of us vegetarians/vegans can hang out together in our old age.

Finally, the obligatory food picture, from taco nite. This is becoming a regular thing for us. This week's tacos were based on a mixture of black beans and fake hamburger meat, sauteed with tomato, garlic, onion, and chili powder. Of course avocados play a starring role, too.

I am nutty (but healthy)

2009-03-18T21:57:00.010-04:00

(I've noticed that the posts seem to get truncated in this new blog format. I think you can click on the title of the entry to see the whole thing. Anyway, this post ends with a mention of Morrissey.)

I didn't post last week because I was in the grip of the flu. 11 days later, I finally don't scare people when they hear my voice on the phone.

I've cooked a few things since last we spoke (I'm hardly ever too sick to cook):
--Lentil Soup. This was advertised as "Tibetan" but the spices are not especially exotic. Perhaps it's Tibetan because there are potatoes in it?

--Curried potato wraps. These are like samosa filling, but with tomatoes. Very tasty.

--Portobellos stuffed with a tofu/veggie/breadcrumb/walnut mixture. I've posted this before and it's one of my favorites. It reheats very well.

I'm excited today because I received my (huge) order from Nuts Online. I love our grocery store but their nut selection is spotty (probably because they only carry organic food and I imagine they're having supply problems with organic nuts). But I eat nuts every morning on oatmeal or yogurt, so I hate running out. The nuts I got in the mail are cheaper than the grocery store, and more importantly, they are large, beautiful, fresh, and so delicious. Yum. Nuts Online also sends an amusing email when your order has been delivered:

"Hip hip hooray! Hey there nutty Amy! According to the galactic delivery
powers that be (aka UPS), your order has been delivered. Yippee! We
certainly hope it deliciously smashes your expectations with enough force
to crack a macadamia nut in the shell!!!"

Moving on...has anyone read this month's issue of Mother Jones? It's food-themed and it's great. The article with Michael Pollan alone would have made me buy it. But my favorite article is about farmers' markets, and the sad trend towards overrunning them with soap makers and the like. It seems that not enough people will go to a farmers' market just to shop for produce. Sufficient crowds will come only if the market adopts a carnival-esque atmosphere, with a coffee stand and a candy maker. Also, some of the vendors can be large grocery store employees ("large" is modifying "store" here) and not actual farmers. I don't think it's wrong, on the face of it, to include non-food vendors in farmers' markets. But as the crowds swell, demand rises to a level that small farmers can't compete with. Then the grocery stores set up ersatz stands and the whole point of a farmers' market is lost. It's a complex problem without an easy answer, and I hope you'll read the article and let me know your thoughts. I feel fortunate that the (very small) farmers' market outside my office on Tuesdays only has two produce stands, but they're staffed by actual farmers who can answer any question about their produce, and tell you what they'll have next week. It should open for the season next month and I can't wait.

I roused myself from my sickbed on Saturday to see one of my favorite vegetarians ever, Morrissey. Peta had a stand at the concert and a postcard featuring Morrissey (and titled with Mr. RV's favorite Smiths album. Mine, if you are curious, is Strangeways. It's not usually as critically acclaimed, but it was the first album of theirs that I ever heard so I'll always have a sentimental attachment to it).

And miles to go before I sleep

2009-03-04T22:35:00.003-05:00

This is one of those weeks where blogging takes a backseat. We had a large snowstorm (for the area), and our heat pump is not nearly keeping up with the demands placed upon it. It does not help when the repair company fails to show up on the only day I can be home for them all week.

My main food-related concern this week has been how to keep my eczema in check. I was sick last week, and have still been feeling a bit weak and under the weather. I'm not sure if the illness and eczema are related (common thread=inflammation?), but I'm trying to consume as much Omega-3 as possible. This means a lot of fish and fish oil supplements. It does seem to provide some relief. I'm still trying to work out if these symptoms are all related to candida or not.

Obviously I need to get some sleep to be more coherent. See you next week!

Single Ladies

2009-02-25T19:00:00.013-05:00

Mr. RV is away for a few days. (He is sending me desparate text messages from the land of soft rock and bad Chinese food, otherwise known as a retirement community in Florida.) When I'm cooking for myself, I like to make delicate, light food. But you serve a guy a dainty salad and bruschetta for dinner and he's like, that was a good appetizer, but where is the main course?

Tonight I made sushi (and am working on tomato-chard-barley soup to go with it). Please do not laugh at my sushi. This is my first time ever making it. I highly doubt I used the proper Japanese technique, but it came out tasty regardless.

First, I julienned a bunch of stuff: scallions, carrots, baked tofu, and cream cheese (easily omitted, but I had some leftover from last week's blueberry tart).

Then I set out my mat with seaweed, brown rice seasoned with a little vinegar and sugar, and julienned stuff on top.

Next, I realized my seaweed was oriented wrong, and very carefully flipped it (and added the cream cheese).

Then, er, long story short, I huffed and puffed and rolled up the sushi, and cut it into slices.

Et voila! Next, I might try the spicy tempeh roll recipe from Veganomicon. I just didn't have the patience to steam the tempeh tonight.

I've just returned from a few days in Austin, where I stayed at at a great vegetarian B&B. Here are two breakfasts:

I loved the breakfast/diner culture in Austin, and the spicy southwestern food, like this homemade salsa sampler at the South Congress Cafe:

And you've gotta love a trailer repurposed as a cupcake stand! They even had vegan cupcakes!

I've gotta get back to the soup, but I'll close with a picture of an unexpected visitor to my office last week. In the past 6-ish months, we've had George W. Shrub, the pope, and this visitor come. Needless to say, they saved the best for last!

Gimme some sugar

2009-02-18T18:41:00.005-05:00

A new look for the blog, and time for the first Wednesday update. First, sweet things.

1. Blueberry-cream cheese tart

I made this for Valentine's Day. I've been trying my best to limit my sugar intake and the tart only has about 1/3 cup sugar in the whole thing. The recipe is from the Greens cookbook by Deborah Madison. Her recipes come out great, but boy, are they complicated. She has meticulous notes about technique, many of which I disregard. The base of this tart was a mixture of cream cheese and sour cream with lemon and a dash of sugar. I think you could use tofu cream cheese, maybe thinned with a little soy milk, as a good substitute.

2. Rice krispie treats

By the time I remembered to take a picture of these, only two were left. As I said before, they use no refined sugar, yet the texture is exactly like traditional RK treats. The flavor is also the same, with a hint of nut butter. Here is the recipe, via my awesome nutritionist:

1 box rice krispie cereal (brown rice krispies if you can find them)
1 1/3 cups brown rice syrup, or a mixture of rice syrup and barley malt syrup
½ Cup almond, peanut, or cashew butter
1/2 Cup coarsely chopped toasted almonds
1/2 Cup chopped dried fruit

Pour cereal into large bowl, add fruit and nuts. Bring rice syrup (or barley malt syrup) and nut butter to a boil. Cook for a few minutes. Pour over cereal mixture, mix, pour into a 9x13 inch pan lined with parchment paper. Moisten hands with cold water and pat to compact.

3. My dietary journey
I started going to a nutritionist a few months ago. My goal was to take a fresh look at my dietary habits, and hopefully drop a few pounds along the way. We discovered the problems I experience are probably due to fluctuating blood sugar. I had to face the fact that my system is very sensitive to caffeine and sugar. Along the way, I:
--read The Low GI Diet by Patrick Holford. It's a great eating plan that's easy enough to do over the long term. It's also quite vegetarian-friendly.
--gave up all sugar and caffeine for two weeks. This was hard but got easier after the first few days.
--started paying more attention to signs of fluctuating blood sugar, and planned five small meals a day.
--decided to eat sweets only on Saturday.

4. Candida
My nutritionist thinks I probably have a problem with high levels of candida albicans. I have many symptoms that point to this, such as lethargy, "brain fog," recurring fungal skin infections, a nose like a bloodhound (seriously, an acute sense of smell is one of the symptoms), and mood swings. Strangely, though, I don't have the problem you'd most associate with women and yeast.

I probably got my candida levels out of whack when I lived in Africa and took an antibiotic every day for two years as an anti-malarial. Broad-spectrum antibiotic use is the most common cause of candida problems. But the other medicine available made me feel like I was going crazy and has a few class action lawsuits against it, so there you go.

If you're interested in taking a candida diagnostic questionnaire, there's one here.

The treatment for candida is a very restrictive diet. As you might guess, it does not involve a lot of desserts. I'll write up my experience with that in the next post.

Also, I'll try to get the other recipes people requested up next week. But between now and then I'm going on a mini-vacation!

Hey na, hey na, my blog is back

2009-02-16T17:34:00.008-05:00

If you're like me, maybe you wonder briefly what happened to a blogger who's been off-air for a while. What's she up to? Is she okay? Doesn't she care about my blog-surfing fulfillment?

In my case, it was a matter of equal parts busy-ness and lazyness. I last wrote in early November. We bought a house around that time and moved in late November. A bunch of home projects (including blood-pressure-raising interactions with Ikea) and running a household of two people and one demanding cat has kept me busier than usual. I've been taking pictures and notes for blog entries, but keeping the blog current has been low on my priority list.

However, I enjoy blogging and I definitely enjoy reading other blogs. As I mentioned earlier, I came to the conclusion that being vegan isn't the right thing for me. About half my meals are vegan but I'm concentrating now on a low glycemic index diet. I have very delicate blood sugar and it seems to be helping. More on that later. Some of the recipes/pictures I'll be posting are not vegan, but if possible I'll include vegan substitutions.

Here is a montage, if you will, of food-related highlights of the past 3 months. I think from here on out I'll try to blog on Wednesdays, starting with this Wednesday.

1. Couscous and a minor celebrity
I'm a big fan of Couscous restaurant in Richmond. Pictured below is their amazing "mock chicken" tagine. I am weeping with longing for it now. (I live about 1.5 hours drive from Richmond.)

While we were there, the woman in the Room Store commercials walked in! This is probably only of interest to local people, but in the (oft-broadcast) commercials, she's pixielike and so perky you want to stuff her in a credenza. At Couscous, though, she looked hip and fun. I wanted to send her over a drink, but chickened out. (Our waitress confirmed that it was her, though.)

2. Another couscous dinner
Made this lovely vegan dish this week. Flanking the couscous are "tofu steaks" by Helen's Kitchen, which I highly recommend.

3. More new dishes
My nutritionist (another topic I'll revisit) came up with two great snack ideas for me. One is brown rice balls with umeboshi plums, wrapped in seaweed, and the other was rice krispie treats made without refined sugar. Believe it or not, they taste almost exactly the same as the sugar-packed ones. I'll post those recipes later if anyone's interested.

4. An offer you can't refuse
This is actually what prompted me to blog today: reading about an initiative by Anti records to donate money to an animal society for every blog who posts the video to a Neko Case song. Sadly, the offer expired February 3. But check out the details anyway. It's a great idea.

Barbara brings it

2008-11-09T20:14:00.004-05:00

We spent the day at the Green Festival, which I look forward to more keenly than Christmas. The festival was huge and mobbed; a good sign. This year, I was impressed by the growth of the home and building material sections. Some of my favorite booths were:
--Kallari chocolate (I have been a fan of this stuff since I discovered them at the Green Festival two years ago. With great difficulty, I tracked down a supplier and now I order this chocolate in bulk by mail. It is the best that I have ever had, and believe me, the sample size of my unscientific study is large!)
--Organic Comfort Zone, where we bought two pillows. I wish we could afford one of their beds, sigh.
--The Animal Welfare Approved booth. This nonprofit certifies that animal products originate from animals that have been raised humanely. It's kind of like the Organic certification, except that farmers do not have to pay for it. It's funded by an anonymous donor (here is my guess as to the donor's identity). That strikes me as a great idea because it seems to remove pressure to "pass" the farm. My feelings about this certification in general are mixed because it seems to condone eating meat as long as the animal was raised humanely. However, I know that most people eat meat, and this could be an important step in "humanizing" animals, which may lead to decreased animal product consumption. Your thoughts?

We saw two great speakers at the festival: Barbara Ehrenreich and Mr. RV's personal guru, Seth Goldman of Honest Tea. (One of our most contentious marital issues is Mr. RV's addiction to Honest Tea and my position that "You can make those for 15 cents each! Paying two bucks a bottle is ridiculous!") Barbara delivered a great speech, speaking about the need to remember green concerns in the midst of our economic upheaval. One point struck me in particular: she said that she notices a movement of "eco-puritanism," which tells people to give up pleasurable things, like car trips and hamburgers (to use her examples). She said that this is not going to work because few people will voluntarily deny themselves habitual pleasures. Instead, we should find a way to express that "less stuff does not have to equal less pleasure." Sometimes I scoff at the green movement for all of the hundreds of unnecessary products labeled as green. Basically, I think that instead of buying a new set of recycled glass dinnerware, you should just use the plates you already have, or pick up some at a thrift store. But I can see how green versions of certain luxuries can stop people from feeling deprived and encourage them to research "going green" a little more.

By the way, check out Barbara's hilarious blog post on the Socialist Conspiracy. An excerpt:

"So we decided to suspend our usual work of standing on street corners and hissing, "Hey, how'd you like to live in a workers' paradise?” Instead of building socialism, one worker at a time, we would focus on destroying capitalism, hedge fund by hedge fund.

First, we selected a cadre of crusty punks from the streets of Seattle, stripped off their Che t-shirts, suited them up in Armani's and wingtips, and introduced them to the concepts of derivatives and dental floss. Then we shipped them to Wall Street with firm instructions: Make as much money as you can, as fast as you can, and as soon as the money starts rolling in, send it out to make more money by whatever dodgy means you can find – subprime loans, credit default swaps, pyramid schemes – anything goes. And oh yes: Spend your own earnings in the most flamboyantly gross ways you can think of -- $10,000 martinis, fountains of champagne – so as to fan the flames of class resentment."

Victor(y) is sweet

2008-11-05T21:32:00.006-05:00

Time flies, huh? I'm sure I'm not the only blogger who was moved to write today after a long absence. I watched Obama win at a friend's house in DC last night. When we'd finished cheering, we heard a great noise coming from outside. Turns out the noise was the beginning of a massive street party. We actually didn't know where the core of it was, but we saw plenty of ecstatic, honkin', whoopin' and hollerin' people on our way home. I've never seen anything like it, except on New Year's Eve, but this went on for hours instead of minutes.

What's up with the pig? I saw it in the window of an antique shop a few weeks ago and have had my eye on it since. Mr. RV and I decided that if Obama won, the pig was coming home with us. Today I picked him up. His name? Victor, of course.

We're moving in a few weeks and I haven't had much time to blog these days. Also, while I still seek out vegan recipes, many things I make are not vegan. I'm working with a nutritionist to try and get my blood sugar issues under control and ruling out dairy, fish and eggs just makes it ten times harder for me. I'll probably only write about vegan food, which is still a great interest of mine, but I needed to say that in the interest of full disclosure. I'll also be going on a yeast-eradicating diet in January, which will be the topic of another post. Taking antibiotics every day for two years as an antimalarial really messed up my system in ways that I am just now beginning to grasp. Until my next post, here are a few pictures from our honeymoon in Bermuda:

Tofu strudel (delicious!)

The best Mussaman curry I've ever had. Yes, that is a whole cinnamon stick in there:

One of the locals:

Catching up

2008-09-26T18:40:00.005-04:00

Well, we're off to sail the high seas just hours from now. I'm sure cruise ship food will be an adventure in itself. One of our wedding presents was a new camera so I'm eager to put it to the test. I also gave Mr. RV a teeny video camera as a wedding present, so maybe some videos will eventually find their way onto this site. Meanwhile, here are a few dishes I photographed but didn't get a chance to blog about while the wedding planning was in high gear.

A tasty midsummer bulghur salad. I wanted to do something different from tabouli. This has grapes, pecans, cucumbers, red onions, and red peppers. I think the dressing was a simple lemon juice/olive oil vinaigrette.

Roasted vegetable napoleons. I made these for dinner with a friend after seeing their deliciousness on Vegan Yum Yum. They were very time-consuming to make, but came out very flavorful. The stuff sticking them together is a variation on baba ghanouj. The paste didn't turn out too great. I would make these again, but I'd slice the veggies more thickly and I'd probably use a silken tofu concoction between the layers. Don't they look like some kind of space colony in this picture?

I've got to get packing, literally!

My descent into respectability

2008-09-22T21:13:00.009-04:00

Readers, are you out there? I am back, at least for this week. Our wedding is a wrap and the honeymoon starts on Saturday. The wedding was truly perfect, despite being married in the second worst storm (the remnants of Hurricane Hanna) to hit this area in at least the past 6 years. I’ve put a few pictures of me and HS* up but will replace them with pictures of just me in a few days, since HS is a bit wary of Internet-posted photos. The quality of the pictures should improve when I replace them, since these are just snaps taken by tipsy people, not the real photos from our pro photog friend.

Here are some ecologically-friendly aspects of our wedding:
--We had it in a neighborhood that is extremely walkable and well-served by public transportation.
--The location for both the ceremony and the luncheon was America’s first certified organic restaurant. Of course, vegan alternatives were available for all courses!

(Non-vegan risotto; vegan version did not have parmesan thingy on top)

--About 90% of our wedding-related expenditures went to independent businesses.
--We did away with many of the wedding trappings that we didn’t care about. There was no wedding cake, nor special ceremonial wedding cake knife with its own corsage. I made the centerpieces for about $100 total. Needless to say, there was no bouquet toss or garter removal. There was a classical guitarist instead of a DJ, and the only dancing was a conga line to “White Wedding” for our exit.

(Classy friends, cheap centerpieces)

--I hope to be able to wear my wedding dress again, and I asked my two bridesmaids to buy any dress that they would wear again.
--We kept the guest list to 50 people (fewer guests=less travel and less emissions).
--We didn’t register, because we really have everything that we need for our new place.
--Our rings are recycled gold.
--No limousines were deployed. (I had hoped to make our exit on a tandem bicycle, but the rain definitely prevented that from happening.)

We knew we wanted to do things our way for the wedding, and not follow the path of “traditional” weddings. (I put that in quotes since I think the traditional American wedding is really cake and punch in a church rec room or the bride’s parents’ house, not the 40K affairs now called traditional.) It was difficult to swim against the Wedding Industrial Complex current at times, but we are both extremely happy we stuck to our guns and had the small, nonreligious, intimate wedding that we desired.

Hopefully I’ll have the chance to blog again before we leave for the honeymoon. I’ve got a few pictures and many health-related thoughts to share.

*HS will now be known as Mr. RV.

(At the afterparty)

Reflection

2008-09-04T17:42:00.007-04:00

It's not much of a lighthouse; it looks like a small farmhouse with a light instead of a chimney. The massive highway construction project that has spanned 10 years so far and cost 2.5 billion dollars turned all the land surrounding it into an asphalt wasteland but spared the small park around the lighthouse. I walked under the highway overpass in the blazing sun today to pay my respects.

The lighthouse was owned by Margaret Brent in the seventeenth century. The inscription reads, "An extraordinary woman, she spent most of her adult life fighting discrimination of her sex." She was a land baron as well as a litigator, and people were often stunned at her very unladylike ways.

Our rapidly approaching wedding has made me reflective. I am grateful to Margaret and everyone else who fought for gender equality so that I can marry the person I love, not the one who will support me or the one my family has chosen. I left Margaret flowers in gratitude.

Margaret must sometimes have been discouraged by the enormity of the fight towards gender equality. 400 years later, sexism still exists, and attitudes towards animal rights, resource consumption, and the environment frustrate me on at least a weekly basis. However, I told Margaret her work was worth it, and I hope that ours is too.

Time for a blog-cation

2008-08-07T21:28:00.003-04:00

Oh, how I wish I was in Fiji right now. But I am not. If it isn't already obvious, I haven't had much time to write or read blogs lately. I'm going to take a blog-cation until mid-September, when I'll be back in good form with lots of inspiration (hopefully). Enjoy the rest of your summer (or winter if you're part of the Southern Hemisphere contingent)!

Tagine and teeth

2008-07-11T22:16:00.004-04:00

This week I went to the dentist. My insurance plan allows me to go to what I think is the cheapest 10% of dentists in the area. This dentist is on the edge of a transitional neighborhood, in a basement office. He accepts walk-ins. My appointment was rescheduled because (I think) he forgot to pay the phone bill and the line was disconnected for a few days. But he is a character with lots of colorful stories and he swears like a sailor.

While he was examining me, he abruptly asked, "Are you a vegetarian?" When I asked how he knew, he said, "It's because your back teeth are worn down." He went on to say that cellulose (plant walls) wears down tooth enamel, but that steaming or sauteing vegetables will break down the cellulose enough for teeth to handle it. (So, this pointed to me eating a lot of raw vegetables, not necessarily to me being a vegetarian.)

Is this true or just another of my dentist's tall tales? All I've found is one article that says it probably isn't true, although eating citrus fruits isn't especially good for your teeth. I don't eat that much citrus, but I do eat a lot of raw vegetables. I like my veggies crunchy, and I think the nutrients I get from them are more important than some wear and tear on my teeth.

On a completely unrelated topic, I'm going to a potluck tomorrow where the theme is "Mediterranean Vegetarian." I'm bringing tofu tagine (pictured). This recipe is awesome. It won a Vegetarian Times reader recipe contest about 8 years ago and I've been making it ever since. It's somewhat time-consuming but totally worth it. Fried tofu is simmered in a sauce with savory spices, cinnamon, onions, garlic, lemon, and honey (I subbed maple syrup). It's served with couscous that also has a salty, lemony flavor, in addition to mint and dried fruit. Then the whole mess is sprinkled with toasted almonds. The flavor is complex and unusual. Let me know if you try it!

When natural isn't better

2008-07-06T21:59:00.001-04:00

I just got back from the vegetarian/vegan Mecca, NYC. We had great meals at Angelica Kitchen, Red Bamboo, and Two Boots Pizza. I can highly recommend all eateries. I'd wanted to try Angelica for several years and it did not disappoint. I had soup and a salad and HS had a seitan burrito. Red Bamboo has an extensive ecletic menu. This time we both had seitan; a sandwich and a skewer plate. Two Boots is my new favorite pizzeria, and they have a hearty vegan slice. They just need to put their jalapeno pesto on it (not really a pesto, more of a puree, and I'm sure it's vegan) and it would be perfect.

I have a letter to the editor in Natural Health magazine this month. My letter is in response to an article about sustainable sandalwood products. I say that sandalwood has been pushed to the verge of extinction due to the perfume industry, and that it's better to buy products with synthetic sandalwood, which smells exactly the same but uses only a fraction of the resources that sandalwood tree production (sustainable or not) does. It's important to replant sandalwood, of course, but I think it's a mistake to always prefer "natural" scents. In some cases it takes a ton of flowers, leaves, etc. to produce a gallon of essential oil. It just reminds me a bit too much of meat production in its resources in/ product out ratio.

Another way that I don't prefer natural is in regards to sweeteners. Actually, just one sweetener, agave. I figured out a few years ago (it involved tequila; don't ask) that I'm violently allergic to cactus derivatives. I can stay away from tequila but agave is more pernicious, often masquerading as a "natural sweetener." It rules out a lot of energy bars or vegan sweets for me. I'm writing about it because there is next to nothing on the 'net about agave allergies/reactions. (My reaction is horrendous stomach pains.) If you know anyone who's also allergic to agave, holla back so I know I'm not alone!

Taco time

2008-07-01T20:26:00.005-04:00

I am woefully late in posting about this yummy dinner. What can I say? I've been busy with work, more work, wedding stuff, and trying to determine which of these is the better rhyme:
1) abuse me/ muesli
2) on ya/ Apollonia
(if you have an opinion, let me know!)

Anyway, one of my favorite vegan (or vegan-friendly) meals for guests is make-your-own tacos. It sure uses a lot of bowls but seems to satisfy all tastes. The picture above shows chipotle brown rice, avocado-corn salsa, Yves fake meat with tomatoes, onions, and chili powder, as well as soy cheese, lettuce, beans, etc. Although I'm not particularly drawn to meat substitutes, Yves is my favorite of the type. It tastes good and is filling, yet is freakishly low in fat and high in protein.

I wish I had gotten some pictures of the actual tacos people made but that's a good reason to have Taco Nite again. For dessert, we had mango-strawberry cobbler. This picture came out terribly blurry but it's all I had. I only remembered to take it the next day when the cobbler was nearly gone.

This cobbler is no ordinary dessert, at least not to me. A friend once described it as one of the best desserts he'd ever had. The secret is cardamom. I know, a container of it costs 7 bucks or more, but it is essential in this recipe. If you omit it, all bets are off. (Note that the recipe requires ground cardamom. If you buy the kind in the pods, you'll have to grind the seeds first.) Here is the recipe, heavily adapted enough (one might say cobbled) that I don't feel bad about sharing it:

Mango-Strawberry Cobbler

Fruit Layer
2 mangoes
1-1/2 pints fresh strawberries (about 4 cups, chopped)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
3 tablespoons flour

Peel the mangoes and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Wash, remove the stems, and chop the strawberries into halves or quarters. In a bowl, mix together all fruit-layer dry ingredients. Add the fruit to the bowl and toss to coat.

Topping
1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons white sugar
1/4 cup oil
1 cup "milk"

Stir together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Add the oil and milk and stir together until just combined. Place the fruit-layer mixture in a 8" square pan (you want the fruit layer to be pretty thick, thicker than in my picture, ideally). Gently pat the topping mixture over the fruit layer. Use a light touch--the less it is messed with, the better the topping will rise. Bake at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes. Serve topped with your favorite vanilla ice cream alternative.

Overheard

2008-06-23T14:38:00.003-04:00

in the elevator today...

Woman #1: They made me eat some vegan cake at the party this weekend.
Woman #2: Vegan cake? What is that?
Woman #1: It's cake with, like, the meat products taken out.
Woman #2: It's been a long time since I made a cake, but I never heard of a cake with meat in it!

Believe it or not, meatcake actually exists. Now who is going to volunteer to make a vegan version of this--maybe with a smiling cow on top?

Tidbits

2008-06-17T22:35:00.004-04:00

Not too much going on this month. I'm having friends over for a vegan dinner this weekend; I'll post about that next week. My meals haven't been particularly inspiring lately otherwise. I've been eating things like pasta salad, stir-fries, and veggie burgers. I've also been using the yogurt maker I got for my birthday. I'm making dairy yogurt, but the instruction booklet includes less than enthusiastic directions for using soy milk to make soy-gurt. It does its best to warn you away from that option, since only certain types of soy milk can be used to make soy-gurt. I'm having enough trouble with regular yogurt as it is. It's delicious in flavor, but the consistency is still decidedly thin.

Anyway, I thought I'd write about a few of my favorite vegan spots in DC for anyone who might be visiting this summer. A Northern Virginia installment will follow!

Breakfast/Brunch
Asylum(Adams Morgan): As HS knows, I kind of hate this place. It's a biker bar by night, but they're locally famous for their vegan brunch on the weekends. Even though it's a favorite place for HS' friends to meet, I always think the food is mediocre at best, and the ambience...well, it's pretty clear that it's a bar. But apparently they have a new chef and things might improve. On the link, scroll down to see the vegan menu.

Dos Gringos (Mount Pleasant): Well, I like Dos Gringos much better. It's actually my favorite brunch place in DC. It is tiny and the most prominent menu is in Spanish. It's not primarily vegan/vegetarian, but there are plenty of options. The great thing about Dos Gringos is that everything is customized. You build a sandwich starting with the bread, and adding yummy things like bean mash or chipotle grilled tofu.

Lunch or Dinner
Java Green (Downtown NW): Guest blogger Hot Slice says: "Try the rice bowl with spicy vegan sausage." I never go to this place since it's out of the way for me (ironic because it's downtown), but I'm going to try to make it there soon. It's a vegetarian cafe where most things are vegan. Everything possible is organic, fair trade, and biodegradable, and it uses carbon offsets.

Tonic (Mount Pleasant): OK, so this place is fairly meat-centric, but what puts it on my heavy rotation list is the half-price burger special, which includes vegan black bean burgers. They're served with tater tots and the half price means your dinner can cost as much as a trip to Starbucks. The dining room is well laid out, with nice booths, and is rarely crowded.

Dessert
Sticky Fingers (Columbia Heights): This place is a freakin' national treasure. I am usually highly suspicious of ersatz foods such as tofu cheesecake. However, Sticky Fingers is an awesome bakery first and vegan second in my mind. All of the baked goods taste totally authentic. They've also branched out into savory foods. HS and I picked up lasagne and peanut noodles there last week. Everything is vegan. They also make wedding cakes (pictured above). We decided not to have a wedding cake because dessert is already included, but I am set on getting a cake from Sticky's for a special occasion in the future. They have a genius copywriter who uses words like "slathered" and "nestled" to describe their cakes. Mmmm!

Kill your television

2008-06-03T09:58:00.003-04:00

I don't watch much TV. Maybe 2 hours a week, plus a DVD about twice a month. My current TV is about 6 years old, and when I turned it on last week, it made a popping sound and a red light fluttered urgently for a few hours. The next morning, the light was gone and the thing was completely dead. (NB: I don't recommend Philips electronics. The companion DVD player died about 2 years ago.)

I was thinking of going without a TV until HS and I shack up in a few months, but HS, for one, was not too keen on the idea (something about the NBA finals, but also, we're really enjoying Flight of the Conchords on DVD).

I rummaged around in my parents' basement for an old TV to hook up in the interim. I unearthed my old TV, a Signature 2000 (two thousand!), which dates from the early 90s. It works fine, but seems to have no DVD hookup. Ah well.

I'm writing this because I've lived without a TV for years in the past, and I'd like to hear from people who have chosen not to have a TV. If you don't have one, are you glad? If you do have one, do you ever want to turn it off for good? I often notice that when the TV is on, all attention in the room is focused on it. I don't think this is good. I used to leave it on most of the evening for background noise, but now I much prefer quiet.

Happy belated World Vegetarian Week!

2008-06-01T20:27:00.003-04:00

OK, so I'm a little slow on the uptake re World Vegetarian Week. But I'm at least happy that my birthday fell during it, so I can say I celebrated. This article on Alternet is meant for non-vegetarians, but it still taught me a few things, most notably, that chickens can "worry about the future" and are at least as smart as cats and dogs. I mean, holy crap, if chickens get stressed out, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I have extra reason to celebrate WVW because my father, truly one of the most carnivorous people I know, has decided to cut down on his meat consumption. My mom says he read an article in the New Yorker that talked about all the bad stuff that's in meat and turned him off of it. I'm a little surprised that he is just now finding this out, but better late than never, I guess! If I find out which article he read, I'll link to it.

Probar testing

2008-05-26T20:58:00.004-04:00

I conscripted HS to help me test the new Probar flavors that I recently received as a freebie (thanks, guys!). HS is a big fan of Probar, but I don't believe I'd ever eaten one until our test. Here are some testing notes.

Overall: Probars are tasty and satisfying. I had 1.25 Probars for breakfast (1/4 bar of each of 5 flavors), and that kept me full and alert, with no blood sugar weirdness, for several hours, including an hour-long workout. Since that was about 500 calories, though, it makes sense. Probar is marketed as a meal replacement bar rather than a snack bar. Unless I'm going on a long flight, though, I prefer to eat meals that are in non-bar format. I generally have half a Larabar or Gnu bar before a workout, so I'm not ravenous when I finish. That amount of calories (just under 100) is about right for me in that situation. I wish that Probars came in an optional smaller size, to better match my caloric requirements. However, aside from being yummy, the Probar ingredient list is beyond reproach, containing lots of fiber and nutrients.

Favorites: I've listed them below, with my most favorite first.
Maple Pecan: The clear winner. I'm a sucker for maple flavor and this bar has it in abundance.
Sesame Goji: Goji berries are not very strongly flavored, but they are antioxidant powerhouses. The predominant flavor is sesame, so if you like that, you'll like this bar.
Cherry Pretzel: One of my favorite flavor pairings is cherries and chocolate. This bar has dark chocolate chips in addition to pretzels, so points for that. The cherry flavor was not strong enough for my liking, though. I think Probar should add some almond extract to complement the cherries.
Cocoa Pistachio: The dark chocolate in this bar is unsweetened (according to the label), so it's gorgeously intense. The pistachios looked green and fresh, but their flavor was just not strong enough for me. Pistachio ice cream is one of my favorite flavors, and I don't know what they do to amp up the flavor in the ice cream. But whatever that is, this bar would benefit from it.
Kettle Corn: I'm not a big fan of kettle corn (popcorn coated with a sugary, buttery hard shell) to begin with. I don't like the sweet varieties of popcorn much. This bar did taste like kettle corn, but the taste seemed artifical to me. This is probably the only bar I wouldn't try again.

If you've sampled these bars, let me know what you thought too!

That's how I roll

2008-05-18T20:53:00.002-04:00

It was a rainy, quiet Sunday here. I made one of my favorite recipes, whole wheat seed-y rolls, and took a nap while they were rising. This is a good recipe for people who are intimidated by yeast. The rolls contain yeast, but they are pretty much foolproof. I've never had them turn out badly. They're yummy with their sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and hint of garlic flavor, and just the right size for a veggie burger. I'll send the recipe to anyone who wants it!

Get happy

2008-05-14T14:47:00.006-04:00

Things that have rocked my week so far:

1. Manzana Chili Verde from Veganomicon. It's a white/green chili hybrid, containing unusual ingredients like apples, potatoes, tomatillos, and white beans. I was a bit dubious about how all this would taste as a savory chili, but it is damn good. The flavors are complex and the amount of heat is just right.

2. My new Envirosax bag, purchased at Greater Goods. I've accumulated way too many bags from stopping at the market a block from my place on my way home. I'm coming from work so I don't think to carry a shopping bag with me. Enter Envirosax. The beauty is that it folds up small enough to easily fit in my (quite small) purse, so I always have it with me,

And it unfolds to a huge, sturdy shopping bag:

3. My hemp hoodie, made by Livity and purchased at the newly opened Capitol Hemp store. It's perfect for the chilly, rainy days we've had this week.

4. Finding that Probar did not forget about me, and made good on their promise several months ago to include me in a testing group for new Probar flavors. I received a package of 5 new flavors and will review them next week, since HS (one of Probar's biggest fans) has begged to be part of the review process.

Yahoos

2008-05-09T15:19:00.005-04:00

I've come across two rather mind-boggling articles on Yahoo recently:

1. Substituting chicken, fish, or vegetables for red meat can help combat climate change.

What the article says: It's not very clearly written, but I think the point is that it's better to eat non-red-meat foods than to eat locally grown red meat. The energy used to grow or to raise food is responsible for 83% of the resources used to get food on your plate, while the transportation part is only responsible for 11% of the resources.

Why it works my nerves: Learning about the environmental impact of eating meat was one of the reasons that I converted to vegetarianism...19 years ago now. This is not exactly news. Also, chicken is hardly the anti-red meat if we're talking about resources used to produce food. Vegetables, fruits, and grains are, of course, the best choice for resource-efficient food production. I wish the article had stated this instead of suggesting substituting meat for meat. Also, the article degrades the movement to buy food locally, saying the benefits to buying local are overblown. Maybe they are, if you don't care about supporting small farmers, but supporting Big Agriculture and some of its evil machinations is troubling to say the least.

2. Better weight loss through chemicals.

What the article says: Four ideas for 100-calorie snacks.

Why it works my nerves: Apart from the extremely annoying cutesy tone, this article gets to me because these snacks are mostly processed to the nth degree. Fat-free cool whip is not food and therefore not a snack. Peruse the ingredient list if you will:
WATER, CORN SYRUP, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL* (COCONUT AND PALM KERNEL OILS), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LESS THAN 2% OF SODIUM CASEINATE (FROM MILK), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, XANTHAN AND GUAR GUMS, POLYSORBATE 60, POLYSORBATE 65, SORBITAN MONOSTEARATE, SODIUM HYDROXIDE, BETA CAROTENE (COLOR).

I will admit that the last "snack," broccoli nachos, has 2 out of three components that are actually food (broccoli and the corn chips which are processed but with a lighter touch). But who knows what's in the broccoli's cheese sauce.

Hey, Hungry Girl, if you want a 100 calorie snack, how about an apple? Or 2 cups of carrot sticks or strawberries? Or a small handful of almonds? Oh, never mind, I guess you're too busy trying to make cupcakes containing ingredients such as diet hot cocoa mix and "jet-puffed marshmallow creme." No wonder you're hungry.

Be realistic. Demand the impossible.

2008-05-01T21:25:00.003-04:00

In honor of May Day, the above is a slogan from the May 68 uprising. When I was in Paris in March, there were all kinds of great new books about Mai 68 as the 40th anniversary approached. One that I purchased for HS had very thick cardboard pages and was in a block shape with sand pasted to the cover, so it looked like a paving stone.

This week, I've been enjoying a yellow split pea soup with Indian spices and spiced yogurt as a garnish. The yogurt is simply plain yogurt mixed with turmeric (which has all kinds of good medicinal properties), cumin, paprika, cayenne, and salt. What I like about this is that savory yogurt is much more unexpected than sweet yogurt. I like challenging my tastebuds with familiar foods used in unexpected ways. For example:
--salty, briny preserved lemons
--peaches in a chunky salsa with black beans
--chickpea flour used in sweet baked goods
--breakfast muffins with quinoa and black beans
--a few squares of dark chocolate added to bean-based chili

So, in the spirit of rebellion, how have you used familiar foods unconventionally?

Hemp-head

2008-04-23T21:04:00.002-04:00

At the request of HS, I've been taking a teaspoon or two of hempseed oil a day. He pointed out that it helps mitigate PMS symptoms. Now, why would he say a thing like that? I need you to tell me why (wail!).

Anyway. Too soon to tell if I'll enjoy that benefit yet, but it does have a yummy flavor and my skin has been breakout-free since I've started taking it.

HS is going for the fish oil, himself, and the chronically dry skin on his forehead has cleared right up. See, it's all about the Omega 3-s. There's, like, three different kinds. Two kinds are used pretty easily by the body, the other kind is not. Algae supplements and fish oil contain DHA. Fish oil also contains EPA. Flaxseed and walnuts contain ALA, the type that isn't as easily used. Hempseed oil is best for the ratio of Omega 6-s to Omega 3-s, a balance that is out of whack for people in most "developed" countries.

Why should you care? The list of Omega 3 benefits is long and contains short-terms (better skin, better mood) and long-terms (better...chance of staying cancer-free?). Especially pertinent to me is its calming effect on blood sugar wackiness. Anyway, I'll report back on the benefits of the hempseed oil in a month or two!

Transitions

2008-04-19T15:43:00.002-04:00

I'm having a little trouble adjusting to the fact that it has been 80 degrees here more than one day this month. This may be the new normal for our poor fevered planet, but my closet is still stocked with winter clothes and I'm still prone to making winter dishes. Last weekend, when I actually had to use the air conditioning, I made lentil soup. The picture shows my Good Mother Stallard beans from Rancho Gordo, soaking. I was thinking about making a bean and vegetable stew with them, but that doesn't seem seasonally appropriate. So my new plan is to make a taco salad-esque entree.

Today I went out and bought ingredients to make the Pineapple Cashew Quinoa stir-fry in Veganomicon. So now I've got a fresh pineapple sitting on my counter, ready to usher in spring. I also went to the farmer's market this morning (it ends at 10:30 am and you don't want to know what time it starts) and bought heaps of strawberries and two delicious filo dough creations from the Filo Dough Lady. She has at least half a dozen different varieties of little filo squares, and many are vegan. I passed up the mushroom and green lentil/bulghur varieties this week, but I bought black bean/rice/chipotle and apricot/ricotta.

What are your favorite spring dishes?

Oh, and I know I haven't been a very consistent blogger lately, but I hope to improve. The other transition in my life (the change in my tax filing status a few months hence) has been cutting into my blogging time, but that's OK.

Veggie Vacation

2008-04-09T08:44:00.009-04:00

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I went to Europe and then got the flu. The two events overlapped by about 2 days. I'm still recovering from the flu (1.5 weeks later) and have much less energy than I'm used to. I took about a week off from push-ups but am back to my regimen now.

We went to Amsterdam and Paris. I'm not going to lie and say I ate vegan all the time, but some of my favorite meals were vegan.

Fresh mint tea on our first day in Amsterdam helped wake me up:

Maoz makes amazing felafel, and they have branches in the US, including a DC branch coming soon! (Finding this out just made my day.) Every component of the felafel is great. The patties are light and crunchy, the bread is super-fresh, and the toppings are tangy and spicy.

Amsterdam's also famous for its fries, which we got topped with satay (peanut) sauce, due to my intense dislike for mayo.

Where does one get great fries? Why, the Chipsy King, of course!

One of the best meals we had on the trip was when we ordered rijsttafel, the Indonesian meal where they pull out all the stops. About half of the places we saw had a vegetarian rijsttafel. Check out this insane spread for just the two of us (not even showing the first course, a tomato vermicelli soup)! I imagine there was some honey involved but I don't think there was any dairy or egg in the meal. There were "shrimp chips," though. My favorite dishes were the coconut cabbage and the corn fritters.

Paris was not a vegan tour de force but I loved our street, Rue Mouffetard (we rented apartments in both cities rather than stay in hotels). Behold the glories of the street market!

One of the temptations in the farmer's market was morels. But at 80 euros for a kilo, I had to pass. I did see them this weekend at a farmer's market in DC, though, for about the same price, in case I change my mind!

2008: A Push-Up Odyssey

2008-03-20T11:52:00.005-04:00

I thought I'd say a little more about my push-up program since it seems to have caught the interest of a few people.

I'd been doing push-ups on my knees for years. Truthfully, I'd been doing most of my workout on auto-pilot, just like with those push-ups. 30 minutes on a cardio machine while I listened to music, read a magazine, or often did both simultaneously, followed by 20-ish minutes of weight machines. At the end of these workouts, I was never sore, and I often wasn't even sweaty. I had a mild amount of muscle tone and was a few pounds above where I wanted to be, but I thought I was exercising 5 days a week and doing all I could.

I don't buy into a lot of wedding hype, but around the time I got engaged (August 2007), I decided I needed to bust out of my fitness rut. Something I read a while back stuck in my head: the writer was saying he really loved to be truly sore the day or two after a workout. It had been a long time since I'd felt that and I craved it. I also wanted to figure out why my hours at the gym weren't showing real results. At the time I had a longer commute and going to the gym meant I got home around 8 pm. I didn't want to keep going if it wasn't worth it.

My gym was running a special on personal training sessions and I decided to buy a few with a trainer I'd observed. I'll call her Jane. Jane had a really muscular body that wasn't in female-weightlifter territory. She was slim but certainly not underweight. She looked strong and healthy, and seemed friendly. I bought 18 sessions in all with her. After each one, I was sore, sometimes painfully so for 2 full days. She re-introduced me to free weights, squats, pull-ups, and, yes, push-ups. We did them on my knees but at the end I told her I wanted to try real ones. My first set of push-ups was pretty wimpy but I made it through (and then collapsed in a puddle).

A few weeks later, I read something in Shape magazine about how doing push-ups on your knees is a very different exercise than full push-ups. They work different muscle groups (the magazine also has an amusing quote: "[Push-ups] seem punishing, but that's only because we spend so much time dreading them"). I decided I was not going to do knee push-ups again. I started doing 10 push-ups before and 10 after each workout. I got a few admiring comments from fellow gym-goers that increased my motivation and I decided to challenge myself to do 1,001 push-ups in a month. You know how that story goes. I've continued to do about 20 good push-ups each day, going down farther than I did during the push-up challenge. Once a week, I do 50 good ones, which definitely leaves me sore the next day.

I've come to see push-ups as emblamatic of the paradox of Americans spending lots of money and time on fitness but not being truly fit. As this excellent article says (and do watch the video too), "the push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness." So many people (my former self included) put in time at the gym but can't do a push-up, full sit-ups, or a pull-up with assistance of less than half their weight. (I've resigned myself to never being able to do an unassisted pull-up, unless I quit my desk job and work out as much as Madonna.) I'm grateful that I've pulled myself out of my fitness rut and am making my workout time really count.

Two from Veganomicon

2008-03-19T22:29:00.004-04:00

Sorry about the paucity of posts lately. The next two weeks won't be much better since I'm on vacation--but I'll be visiting two great food cities and will have lots to share upon my return.

I made two recipes from Veganomicon recently (HS gave me the cookbook as a Valentine's Day gift). The first, Quinoa with Black Beans and Mango, is shown below.

This was just a'ight. It needed more salt and the juice of a lime to perk up its somewhat bland flavor. I also threw some chopped up red cabbage in because, well, I had it. I'll make it again, but I'll also add avocado and a diced jalapeno.

I also made Seitan Piccata for a fancy dinner:

This was quite tasty and somewhat unusual. The sauce smelled a little funky in the pan but had a full, complex flavor. We used purple potatoes for the mashed potatoes--can you see the color? I'd defnitely make this again for company.

Get stuffed

2008-03-04T19:33:00.002-05:00

I think Theresa is right when she says most people rotate through the same 9 meals again and again. I would like to think my number is closer to 20, and this is one of them.

They are tofu stuffed mushrooms, and they will always have a place in my heart because:
--they reheat beautifully
--they're satisfying; low in carbs, high in protein
--they look impressive and so are great dinner party or special occasion fare
--they are deliciously more than the sum of their parts

They have even temporarily fooled my cat, who thinks there must be meat in there somewhere.

Tofu-stuffed portabellos
3 tablespoons oil (vegetable or olive)
1 cup diced onions
1/2 cup diced sweet red peppers
1/2 cup peeled and grated carrots
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried dill
1 cake (16 oz) firm tofu, pressed
1/3 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon tahini
1 tablespoon miso
1 tablespoon soy sauce
4 to 6 large portabellos

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan. Add the onions, pepper, oregano, basil, and dill and saute until veggies are tender. Set aside.

In a large bowl, crumble the pressed tofu. Stir in the nuts, bread crumbs, tahini, miso, and soy sauce. Add the sauteed veggies and mix well.

Clean the mushrooms and use a knife to remove the gills. Discard the stems. Brush the remaining 2 tablespoon oil over the mushrooms. Spoon the filling into the mushroom cavities. Place the mushrooms in a baking dish and bake for about 25 minutes, until the filling has slightly browned.

999...1000...1001!

2008-03-02T16:56:00.003-05:00

I made it to my goal of 1,001 pushups in February around 9pm on February 29. I did the last 10 pushups with Ceri. In February, I did between 20 and 40 "real" pushups every single day, even after I was in a minor car accident and had mild whiplash.

I did my first set of 10 "real" (not on my knees) pushups in recent memory in December or January. It was pretty tough at first but got easier quickly. I don't go far enough to have my chin touch the floor but that's something I'll continue to work on. I'm doing zero pushups for a few days to allow my muscles to rebuild themselves. Then I'll concentrate on quality rather than quantity during March. I can feel some new muscle tone in my arms but most importantly, I just feel more confident about my fitness level.

On another topic, shown above is our second meal of chickpea cutlets, with tomato sauce, parmesan, and basil on top. The yummy fried things are the best onion rings in the world. HS and I are seriously contemplating buying a Fry Daddy to try to replicate them--but that way lies madness (and sweatpants). The cutlets are flanked by two interesting salts we picked up. One is smoked and the other contains rosemary, sage, garlic, and pepper (can't find a web page for them but the brand name is Feast).

(Pushups completed: 1,001!)

A little fun

2008-02-25T22:16:00.002-05:00

...because I do get tired of writing about food & culture sometimes.

I like to think of funny names for meat/animal product substitutes. Some of these are real and some I have made up. Join me?

Salmon= Salm-un
Tuna= Tu-not
Meatballs= Neatballs
Chicken= Chick-un
Pate= Pat-yay
Veal= Heal
Liver= Live-er
Sausage= Soysage

(Pushups completed: 890)

Pollan & Pleasure

2008-02-20T22:07:00.002-05:00

Huh, do you think this guy is covering Miss Jackson? I wonder.

I recently read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I was pretty shocked to see that it was #1 on the bestseller list. Pollan draws some conclusions which are quite a radical departure from the Standard American Diet. His mantra, originally expressed in a seminal NY Times magazine article, is "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I love Pollan and could go on for some length about his new book, but I want to focus on one thing he says towards the end:

"What nutritionism sees when it looks at the French paradox is a lot of slender French people eating gobs of saturated fat washed down with wine. What it fails to see is a people with a completely different relationship to food than we have... They seldom snack...they spend considerably more time eating than we do. Taken together, these habits contribute to a food culture in which the French consume fewer calories than we do, yet manage to enjoy them far more."

I think this could be the next diet trend: it's not what you eat, it's how and where you're eating it. Mireille Giuliano has touched on this but it really deserves more attention. Americans as a whole eat in their cars, at their desks, in front of the TV, standing up--often as quickly as possible in order to attend to the next task. It takes the body 20 minutes to register full-ness, but I would bet most Americans rarely eat a meal outside of a restaurant that lasts that long. I, for one, have been focusing on
--buying high-quality food, even if it's more expensive
--savoring my food as much as possible
--if I must eat at my desk, I turn away from my computer and concentrate on my food
--consciously thinking about whether I want to finish a whole portion instead of just eating until there is no more food

Since I do eat most of my meals at work or alone, this is a challenge, but I think I've been eating less, experiencing more pleasure, and feeling more satisfied.

(Pushups completed: 720)

Chilling Out

2008-02-18T22:03:00.007-05:00

I spent a long holiday weekend at the Ananda Ashram in NY state. My friend J and I went there to do some yoga, catch up, and relax. The ashram grounds (shown above) are beautiful, but we were unprepared for the extreme cold (by the way, that is a lake frozen solid in the picture). We had to walk to different buildings for classes and meals, and the paths we were walking on were solid ice. We did see many deer (pictured in the distance below) enjoying the snow, though. Our taxi driver told us they like the ashram and are not afraid of the people there. I guess they know they are not in danger of ending up on the menu!

The food at Ananda is vegetarian, and about 75% vegan. Of the three ashrams I've been to over the years, Kripalu has the best food, but Ananada was nothing to sneeze at (and also, Ananda is about half as expensive as Kripalu). For the dinner shown below, we enjoyed seasoned tofu, collard greens, root vegetable stew, and pineapple-coconut cake. As much as I love cooking, I also love a break from it sometimes!

(Pushups completed: 640)

Happy Heart Day

2008-02-10T19:32:00.001-05:00

I didn't mean to be alarmist in that last post. I would describe myself more accurately as "hypoglycemic" rather than "diabetic." I have had one test that confirmed that a few years ago, but since then my blood sugar tests have been normal. I'm definitely going to try to focus on vegetables rather than animal products as I try to lower the amount of carbs in my diet. Of course, the most important thing for me is to cut out/severely limit sugar and white carbs. Progress has been slow but mostly steady on that front.

In any case, we had a delicious, healthy vegan meal for Valentine's Day. We went to Sunflower vegetarian restaurant, which was packed with people of all different ages and backgrounds. I always love to see a vegetarian restaurant full!

We started with miso soup and "sushi" as appetizers:

and moved on to a veggie & tofu sandwich and "Orange Imagination," a delicious plate of seitan, broccoli, carrots, orange slices, pine nuts, and goji berries all coated with a tangy orange sauce.

It was a very satisfying and special meal. And to top it off, a copy of Veganomicon was one of my Valentine's presents!

(Pushups completed: 370)

The lament of the diabetic would-be vegan

2008-02-05T14:56:00.000-05:00

I've been tweaking my diet a bit recently. I'd been having pretty strong cravings and unstable blood sugar. I did a lot of thinking and realized that in the past the only type of diet to successfully keep these things at bay has been a lower-carb, higher-protein diet.

For the past 3 or 4 weeks, I've been restricting carby foods to lunch only. I've been eating some eggs, cheese, and fish--more than I have in a while, but not huge nasty quantities. I try to make the carbs I eat at lunch have some redeeming value (whole grains, sweet potatoes, etc.).

The difference in the way I feel has really been striking. I no longer walk in the door after work ready to eat anything in sight. I don't have to have a mid-morning and a mid-afternoon snack. I feel more alert and have more energy. After I eat carbs, I feel markedly sluggish and I can feel my heart rate increase. (This happens even if they're healthy carbs, but is most pronounced when I have sugar.)

My grandmother is diabetic and I've always thought I am borderline. I don't know yet how much I can cut down on my intake of animal foods without getting the blood sugar swings I know so well. I feel best after a meal with fish or eggs as the main course. I have been eating a lot of vegan, vegetable-based meals, though, and I try not to have two animal-based meals in a row.

Being a semi-diabetic vegan seems pretty daunting. Especially when I come across sample diabetic vegan menus like this one, with pretzels, white rice, and sugar substitutes. Bleck! I hope I can find more non-animal meals that satisfy me and aren't heavily processed. So far I like beans, tofu, stir-fries and salads, avocadoes, and--anyone have other suggestions?

(Pushups completed: 190)

Headlines I never wanted to see

2008-02-03T22:24:00.000-05:00

or, Reason #512 to stay away from meat:

"Inhaling Pig Brains May be Cause of New Illness"

If you think the headline is gross, you should (or maybe you shouldn't) read the rest of the article.

(Pushups completed: 120)

Fit in February

2008-02-01T08:10:00.000-05:00

I've decided to set a fitness goal for myself this month. See the picture above? It's a push-up counter. You hit it with your chin on the way down. As shown, it counts up to 999 pushups. Well, that's not enough for me, because in February, I'm going to do 1,001 pushups.

I'm not talking about on-your-knees pseudo-pushups, either. I've been doing about 20 "real" pushups a day for the past several weeks. To make this goal, I need to do 34.5 pushups a day. I'm going to aim for 40 a day in case I need to take a day off. I won't do them in one long set, but probably 2 sets of 10 in the morning and in the evening. Does anyone want to join me?

Give a hand to Hannaford

2008-01-30T17:29:00.000-05:00

I read about Hannaford Supermarkets' Guiding Stars program in Adbusters.

The gist of it is that Hannaford is marking products with stars that signify healthiness. Between zero (least healthy) and three stars (healthiest) are awarded.

"Almost eighty percent of the products rated did not receive any stars."

This correlates with my opinion of the modern supermarket. I buy lots of food in the produce section, usually some beans, pasta, oil, canned tomatoes or nuts in the middle aisles, eggs or some cheese every few visits, and sometimes frozen fruit or vegetables. In other words, I skip the bulk of the middle aisles with their food-imposter substances.

Hannaford won't disclose the formula they used to award the stars, but it looks pretty sound to me. This page indicates that "pluses" are fiber and certain vitamins, while "negatives" are saturated fat, cholestrol, and sugar. Here are some other interesting ratings.

High scores: pasta, cereals, seafood, fruits and vegetables (100% of fruits and veggies received three stars!)
Low scores: canned soup, meat, soft drinks, bakery items, flavored yogurts, eggs, butter

I'm impressed that Hannaford pulled this off without a huge corporate outcry. Hooray to them for standing up to highly processed foods that masquerade as health foods. They also don't seem to be biased towards animal products.

"The team also took into account less-than-healthy foods and beverages that are fortified with added vitamins, minerals or fiber to help overcome their nutritional shortcomings.

'We didn't give points for over-fortifying,' said Jeffrey Blumberg, a professor of nutrition at Tufts and a member of the scientific team." (More here.)

My new favorite ingredient

2008-01-27T21:26:00.000-05:00

is "vital wheat gluten," which was very instrumental in making the yummy dinner shown above. We tried the chickpea cutlet recipe which has been floating around. (If you google "chickpea cutlets," you'll see lots of other reviews.) I've always been dubious of fake meat; I really hate processed foods and there are some scary ingredients in some of those. But I can get behind the chickpea cutlets as a tasty and satisfying main course. The only change I would make in the future is to replace the thyme and sage with black pepper. I just don't care for the taste of those spices, and I think the recipe calls for too much thyme.

We served them chicken-parmesan style, topped with a spicy mushroom spagetti sauce and parmesan. Yes, that is real parmesan. As I've said before, I can greatly reduce my cheese consumption, but I can't give it up entirely.

Leave a comment if you've tried the cutlet recipe!

PS: The most interesting thing I ate this weekend was probably ginger-eggplant chutney at an Indian restaurant in DC. Strangely, it was red and did not taste strongly of eggplant or ginger. But it was slightly sweet and intriguing. I want to have a chutney-making day before the weather turns warm. Let me know if you have any good recipes!

A Sublime evening

2008-01-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! I'm back and ready to rock in 08.

Things have finally settled down a bit--I sold my condo and moved to a rental while we wait for the housing market to stabilize. However, I'm on a business trip all week and haven't fully unpacked in my new place. I look forward to returning and settling in.

I was waiting for this picture (thanks, Tracy!) to write about our fabulous meal at Sublime, an upscale vegan restaurant in Florida. Oh my Buddha*, was it good. I have been eating pretty lightly for the past month or two and I overdid it at Sublime. I had that "I'll never eat again" feeling for at least 12 hours afterwards. But it was worth it.

We started with the Yin and Yang and Florasian "sushi" (I'm going to stop putting things in quotes to denote vegan-ness). For mains, two of us had the Portabello Tenderloin (shown above with its tower of onion rings), one had the Piccata, and HS had the grilled seitan steak. My portabello was absolutely delicious. The sauce was rich and pepper-y. We shared a piece of coconut cake and a brownie for dessert. HS goes to Sublime every year when he's in Florida and I hope to continue the tradition!

*This is a great expression that Thai people use.

I'm a dip

2007-12-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

for not posting in so long. I've been with my family and HS' family over the holidays and, in general, I have been eating someone else's cooking rather than my own. I'm looking forward to getting back into the kitchen when I move into my new place this week!

HS and I are planning a simple New Year's Eve dinner of ravioli, salad, and berries for dessert. We'll start things off with this kickin' dip recipe, which will be served on brown rice crackers.

Green olive and artichoke tapenade
14-oz can of artichoke hearts, drained
1 cup chopped toasted walnuts
1 cup pitted green or Spanish olives
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
black pepper to taste

Put the following in a food processor and mix for a few seconds: artichoke hearts, walnuts, olives, garlic, parsley, lemon peel. Scrape down the sides and add lemon juice and olive oil. Process for a few more seconds. You'll have a rough paste. Add black pepper to taste. Serve at room temperature with crackers.

Food for thought

2007-12-18T10:55:00.000-05:00

I'll get back to blogging about food, rather than just about food-related issues, in a week or two. I moved last weekend and real estate transactions are on the horizon; I'm just a little superstitious about them until all's said and done. Those things, combined with not having a stove for nearly 3 weeks, and having a really bad bout of bronchitis, have made it hard to cook much.

This book is on my wish list. The author photographed 30 families from around the world surrounded by the food they ate during a week.

I found this contrast especially interesting.
1. Here is a family from North Carolina who spent $341.98 on food that week:

2. And a family from Chad who spent $1.23 on food that week:

David Blaine: Visionary or Wacko?

2007-12-08T17:11:00.000-05:00

(I started writing this post many days ago, hence the back-date.)

In keeping with the topic from my last post, I was intrigued by this news item about David Blaine's next stunt.

He plans to stay awake for at least 11.5 days. Standing up, even. Now, I've read about keeping people awake and on their feet for 36 hours plus: as a torture technique. How is DB going to come through with his faculties intact? It all comes down to diet.

"I'm on a raw diet that includes brown rice. No red meat. No animal products besides cooked fish...we already know dietary restriction is a retardation of aging and disease. When you overeat your body must work and it gets tired. If I eat medicinally, my body will be entire."

David Blaine: proof that a mostly-vegan diet gives you superpowers. (But is he going to eat that brown rice raw?)

Tingle all over!

2007-12-04T09:13:00.000-05:00

We caught a great documentary last night: Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox. It was part of a film festival; I don't know when/if it will come to theatres. I'd bought Dr. Bronner soap in the past and attempted to read the bottle, but I learned a lot from the documentary, namely:
--Dr. B was admitted to a mental hospital, underwent shock therapy, then escaped
--He basically abandoned his 3 children (they were raised in orphanages or foster homes) in order to work on "saving Spaceship Earth"
--He claims to be Einstein's nephew
--He called the FBI almost daily for months and his file was put in the "nut cabinet"
--He is Jewish and the original peppermint soap label is blue and white to match the Israeli flag
--Eldridge Cleaver is a fan
--His descendants run the company now and have capped the top salary at 5x the lowest salary
--The company was the first to use 100% post-consumer recycled plastic for their bottles
--The company is the U.S.' largest buyer of industrial hemp

Also, Dr. Bronner credited his longevity (he lived to be 89) in part to his diet. In one passage from the documentary, he talks about his magic food: raw avocado mixed with raw garlic, onion, and lemon juice. Sounds like a garlicky guacamole. I, on the other hand, am eagerly awaiting my new stove tomorrow and am sick of eating raw! Snow is expected for tomorrow and I'd just like to have a baked potato or bowl of pasta. Is that so wrong?

A crock?

2007-11-29T08:36:00.000-05:00

My stove died last Saturday. I've got a new one coming in 6 days. It's definitely strange not to be able to make, say, pasta, or stir-fries. I've been eating salads and frozen meals, mostly. I still have a microwave, toaster oven, and crock pot.

Does anyone have good vegetarian/vegan crock pot recipes? The ones I've found online by searching for "vegetarian crock pot recipes" are either shudder-inducing (Applesauce Sauerkraut), unclear on the concept (Vegetable and Beef stew) or just plain weird (Carrot Pudding, Turnip Custard).

I'm not sure if any good veg crockpot recipes exist besides bean and vegetable stews, but if you know some, please pass them along!

No Tofurkeys were harmed

2007-11-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

for my Thanksgiving dinner.

I must have a mental block against taking pictures of my food, because it seems like I always forget these days. Above is a picture of the last slice of our Thanksgiving entree, a tofu-leek-mushroom pie with a whole wheat/cashew crust. Yum! It was tasty and very filling. The recipe is from The Voluptuous Vegan if you want to try it.

I neglected to take a picture of the other pie, a dessert cranberry/blueberry pie, and the leftovers are at my parents' house.

We also brought garlic dip, I mean, sundried tomato/white bean dip that contains a load of raw garlic, as well as a bottle of wine that I've been saving for a special occasion.

I'm glad we avoided getting a Tofurkey because they're pretty nasty from what I hear. Has anyone else tried them?

Today HS and I observed Buy Nothing Day. We were going to do it last year but couldn't pass up a going-out-of-business sale at a music store. Since we didn't do much today, it wasn't hard to Buy Nothing. However, I thought about going to the corner to buy the paper this morning, then realized I couldn't.

Here are some Buy Nothing Day-related links. I really want to see the movie What Would Jesus Buy. The trailer is here. It's Shopocalypse Now!

--NYT article
--The ad MTV found too sensitive to air (whaaat?)
--What Would Jesus Buy?

The RV recommends: A mall-free holiday

2007-11-21T09:24:00.000-05:00

I abide by a personal rule not to go inside a shopping mall between Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I have to break it (not very often), I only go on a weekday. Mall culture gets to me at the best of times.

Here are 5 suggestions that don't require you to set foot inside a mall. (Oh, and don't forget about Buy Nothing Day, November 23/24, depending on your part of the world.)

1. A photograph from Equivoque's collection. I love her blue-tinted photos, which were taken with now-defunct Polaroid Time-Zero film. (The prints for sale are reprints from scans of those originals.) More Time-Zero photos can be found here.

2. Jewelry from Anne Holman's Etsy shop. Her many cool designs include custom antique map pendants, and you know how I feel about maps. The one pictured is the one she made for me, but you can ask for a custom pendant showing literally any location on earth. Vegans note that the cord is leather, but I'm sure she would have a vegan replacement.

3. Tea from Upton's. This store offers the highest-quality tea I've seen in North America. Their sample sizes are a great idea and allow you to try a bit of that special small-estate Darjeeling that's $30/bag. (Most of their teas are very reasonably priced, though!) They also have customer-submitted reviews of each tea and a detailed picture of each tea leaf.

4. A cosy knitted item from Heyday Fashion, such as this adorable toy

for the over-3-years kid in your life or this cute hat for a friend. (This hat is vegan but some of the other ones are made with wool.)

5. Don't forget charitable contributions. Seva will let you restore sight to one person in an underdeveloped country who is blind from cataracts. The cost of sight? $50.

(Oh, and if you want to send some of the best brownies in the world that are decidedly not vegan, go here. And I'm not saying this just because I've known the brownie-makers since I was 3!)

Stairway to...fitness

2007-11-19T12:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the long absence. Holiday busy-ness and a cold put me out of the blogging mindset for a while.

Here's what's been going on with me lately:

1. We cooked a meal this weekend that was all vegan and consisted of
--Red lentil soup
--Roasted cauliflower and tomatoes
--Garlic bread on my homemade bread

This meal contained about an entire head of garlic so it should beat my cold into remission!

2. I'll do another entry about our Thanksgiving, but we plan to bring:
--White bean & sundried tomato dip
--A savory tart with leek filling and mushroom sauce
--Berry pie

3. This weekend, HS and I were talking about how both our workplaces forbid us from using the stairs. Elevators are the only option. I don't understand why this is--allegedly it's for security but that doesn't logically add up. Once you get through the front door, you have access to the whole building, it's not a floor-by-floor basis.

I don't think this policy was designed to thwart my fitness efforts, but it seems like employers are reluctant to do easy things which would promote better health and fitness among their employees. Maybe this is more prevalent in the US than abroad.

Have you noticed any fitness opportunities that could be available to you at work, but aren't? Or, does your employer offer fitness incentives and opportunities?

Sunflower: a love story

2007-11-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

I was in Atlanta for business this week. At the end of the day on business trips, I generally just want to have a casual, simple dinner and watch cable TV from my bed, a treat for non-cabled me.

However, I'd been lured by the Cafe Sunflower website and promised myself that I'd try to make it out there. It took about an hour on a very chilly evening, but boy, was it ever worth it. The food is amazing and the atmosphere is warm and comfortable. I ate
--butternut squash soup
--peppercorn-crusted tempeh with grilled hearts of romaine and garlic-rosemary mashed potatoes.

I would have liked to try their vegan desserts but I was truly stuffed by that point. The flavors and presentation were exquisite. If I'd been able to go there twice, I would have tried the smoked seitan with BBQ sauce special entree.

You can try one of their recipes at home: this page includes a stuffed acorn squash entree recipe that I think would be great for Thanksgiving.

Got chard?

2007-11-07T08:28:00.000-05:00

My diet guru Dr. Fuhrman sings the praises of leafy greens of all types. Ideally, he says, you should have leafy greens at every meal. (For breakfast, he recommends a small amount of spinach in a fruit smoothie, in case you were wondering.)

Eating greens is a sizable hurdle for me. Most of the problem has to do with going grocery shopping once a week, cooking for one most of the time, and my utter revulsion for limp, floppy greens. In other words, when I make salads for a week's lunch, the lettuce/spinach/etc. is looking pretty limp by the end of the week, and (shudder) a salad of greens past their prime pretty much turns me off greens for a good while.

I can live with chard at the end of the week, though. I put chard in the veggie chili that I made this week. Because it is such a substantial green, it likes being cooked and retains a good tough chewiness when being microwaved several days later.

I've also had luck putting bok choy or napa cabbage in stir-fries.

Does anyone have green recipes or suggestions for me?

Stick-to-your-ribs muffins

2007-10-31T10:19:00.001-04:00

I love muffins, but they usually contain a lot of white flour, sugar, and fat. Is it possible to bake a healthy muffin that's also tasty? I think so. I tried a recipe for muffins that contain barley, cashews, and sesame seeds. Barley is a whole grain and a fiber champ! 1/4 cup of dry barley has 8 grams of fiber. In these muffins, barley lends a good chewy texture. The muffins are indeed tasty, and make a filling breakfast or snack.

Next time I make these muffins, I'll add fruit--maybe cranberries, blueberries, or dried fruit. I've included the fruit in the recipe below. Keep in mind that you have to cook the barley before you can begin making the muffins.

Hearty Barley Muffins
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons (packed) brown sugar
1-1/2 cups cooked barley
1/4 cup sesame seeds (I used a mix of white and black)
1/4 cup chopped cashews or other nuts
3/4 cup soymilk
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg replacer
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup fresh fruit, such as blueberries, or 1/4 cup dried fruit

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and brown sugar together. Stir until mixed. Add the barley and use a fork to separate the grains and stir it in. Add the sesame seeds and cashews.

In a small bowl, combine the soymilk, maple syrup, egg replacer, oil, and vanilla. Stir together and add to the dry ingredients, along with the fruit. Mix until just moistened.

Pour into muffin cups. This makes about 10 muffins. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Oh, and...Happy Halloween!

Michael Pollan, American Hero

2007-10-25T08:27:00.000-04:00

I hope that Michael Pollan is the one who will bring sense back to Americans' eating habits. He's doing a good job so far.

Five great Pollan moments:

1. His article in the NY Times magazine laid out a plan for successful eating in 7 words:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. "Food" is defined as only those foodstuffs that your great-grandmother would recognize.

In the same article, he notes "Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness."

2. The guy actually grew his own yeast in order to make a self-produced meal in The Omnivore's Dilemma. (You might want to skip the part where he kills the wild boar, though.)

3. He smacks down Whole Foods for talking the talk but not walking the walk; specifically, for publicizing the importance of choosing local food while not offering their customers many local foods at all.

4. In an interview about his new book, he hits the nail on the head regarding our fast food nation:

"I think that there's some brainwashing going on with this idea that we don't have time to cook anymore. We have made cooking seem much more complicated than it is, and part of that comes from watching cooking shows on television -- we've turned cooking into a spectator sport."

5. He explains why the Congressional farm bill is so important, despite its low profile. Long story short, it encourages overproduction of crops such as corn and soy that become added sugars and fat in our lowest-priced foods and in the school cafeteria:

"The farm bill essentially treats our children as a human Disposall for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce."

HS already has Pollan's new book on pre-order: we'll have to arm-wrestle to decide who gets to read it first.

End vegetable discrimination now!

2007-10-19T08:44:00.000-04:00

I've been reading about a book by Jerry Seinfeld's wife that's on the bestseller list. It's called Deceptively Delicious and it's about how to disguise vegetables so that your kids will eat them without fussing. Most of the method involves pureeing vegetables and adding them to things like mac & cheese and cakes. So, the kids don't see the vegetables, they eat their favorite foods, they're healthy and the parents are happy.

Right?

HS reminded me that this seems a lot like the apples disguised as french fries story. Again I cry: why must we disguise fruits and vegetables so that people will eat them? And why is the book called Deceptively Delicious? Because if vegetables are starring as themselves, people could never think a dish was delicious?

I know kids are fussier than adults, but parents are probably the biggest influence on people's eating habits, even in adulthood. Jessica Seinfeld's kids will grow up in a rarefied social strata with personal chefs and trainers likely at their disposal. However, I imagine other kids whose parents were fans of this cookbook going to college and continuing to eat mac & cheese and cupcakes, only this time there is no cauliflower puree in the cheese sauce or beet puree in the cupcakes. They might never develop the habit of eating fruits and vegetables.

So, how do we help people, especially kids, increase their fruit/veggie intake and increase the allure of the naked vegetable? Here are a few ideas:
--Buy the best quality produce that you can. The difference in taste is amazing.
--Bring kids to "pick your own" farms every year.
--Provide fruit and carrot & celery sticks as after-school snacks.
--Try to introduce soups and stir-fries as comfort foods rather than white-carb-heavy foods.

Any thoughts?

Entering the season of sugar

2007-10-17T09:36:00.000-04:00

With Halloween coming up, I know I'm going to encounter more sweets than usual over the next few months. However, I will prevail, armed with a high-fiber veggiecentric diet.

To make matters a bit worse, I've been put in charge of the Halloween charity bake sale at work. People go crazy for the bake sale, scarfing down chocolate cake at 9 am. My plan is to bring healthy, breakfast-suitable alternatives, such as these pumpkin muffins (and Monika, it's the recipe you've been waiting for!).

Pumpkin Oat Muffins

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup white flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup rolled oats (old-fashioned style)
1 egg (or replace with 2 tablespoons flaxseed plus 1 tablespoon water)
1 egg white
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
3/4 cup soymilk
1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup apricot preserves
1/2 cup chopped nuts (pecans are best)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Whirl the oats in a blender or food processor until they reach the consistency of cornmeal and then add them to the flour mixture. In another bowl, lightly beat the egg and egg white together (or mix the flaxseed and water). Stir in the pumpkin puree, soymilk, pineapple juice, oil, and brown sugar. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined.

Spoon the batter into muffin cups and dot the center of each muffin with a small spot of apricot preserves. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Yoga food

2007-10-14T21:45:00.000-04:00

I found a great new source of recipes: the recipe section of Kripalu's website.

Kripalu is a yoga center in the Berkshire mountains in Massachusetts. I've been there twice. I actually prefer Yogaville, which is a lot closer to me, because Kripalu can (but certainly does not always) attract a lot of people who seem to have what I call the Yoga Journal lifestyle. That's where people become caught up in acquiring things like diamond OM necklaces and $500 meditation chairs, which is more than a bit ironic. I don't mean to malign Yoga Journal subscribers nor Kripalu fans. I enjoyed my time at Kripalu very much, I just think Yogaville is a little simpler and I prefer that style of yoga retreat.

One of the best things about going to either yoga retreat is that vegetarian/vegan food is varied, abundant, and I don't have to expend any effort to make it or clean up afterwards! Both places have good food, but Kripalu has the edge in food, I think. So I was very happy to see Kripalu recipes online.

I'm intrigued by the Brazil Nut Bars, and I think I could make a fine meal out of
maple ginger tofu,
pecan wild rice pilaf, some kind of vegetable (HS, want to chop some more broccoli?), and
cinnamon soymilk pudding. The temperature has recently dropped here and that sounds like a great fall meal, no?

Barbecue at the beach

2007-10-13T09:49:00.000-04:00

We stayed in cozy little cottages on Cape Cod that were equipped with kitchens. I appreciated this as otherwise I would probably have ended up eating less healthy foods, and more cheese.

Our finest meal was undoubtedly barbecue tempeh with brown rice and broccoli. There is no actual BBQ grill involved, but there is one heckuva BBQ sauce. The recipe below is adapted from the "Barbecued Tempeh and Peppers" sandwich recipe in Moosewood Cooks at Home. I think it is better over brown rice than as a sandwich. My sister said, "There are a lot of bad tempeh recipes. This is a good tempeh recipe."

Barbecued Tempeh and Peppers
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups of chopped onions
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 red bell peppers, in bite-size slices
2 packages of tempeh (about 1 pound total)
1 tablespoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground fennel
A few shakes of hot sauce or a diced jalapeno

Sauce
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1/3 cup tomato paste
2 tablespoons brown sugar or molasses
1 1/3 cups water

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and saute the onions for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic and red peppers (and jalapeno if using that instead of hot sauce). Continue to cook for about 5 minutes longer. Cube the tempeh, add it to the pan, and saute for about 5 minutes. If necessary, add a bit more oil to prevent sticking. While the tempeh browns, mix together the sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. Add the coriander and fennel to the saucepan and cook for a minute. Add the sauce and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add hot sauce if using, and more salt to taste. Serve over brown rice.

Loaves of glory

2007-10-10T17:01:00.000-04:00

I'm excited to have successfully made bread today. The active part of the bread-making was about 15 minutes--perfect for my work-at-home day.

My sister gave me this recipe when I last saw her. I like it because it is packed with whole grains, but has an un-doorstop-like consistency. She makes it regularly and I would like to as well. There is NOTHING like the smell and taste of warm, fresh bread, don't you agree?

Here is the loaf sliced:

and here it is as my lunch, with black olive spread, avocado, and sprouts:

Finally, here is the recipe. It contains 2 eggs and I am not sure how to substitute for them (flaxseed?). The first time, I wanted to make the recipe as written.

7-grain whole wheat bread
1 cup 7 grain hot cereal (I used Bob's red mill)
1- 1/2 cups boiling water
2 packages or 4 teaspoons dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (when you pour it on your wrist, it should feel neither hot nor cold)
2 tablespoons canola oil
1/4 cup honey, plus an extra spoonful
2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs, beaten
3 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour

Pour boiling water over 7 grain cereal in a large mixing bowl and add the salt. Wait 30 minutes while the cereal cools to lukewarm. In the meantime, dissolve the yeast in the warm water and add the extra spoonful of honey. Stir and then wait for the yeast to foam a little. When the cereal is lukewarm, add yeast and all remaining ingredients except for the white flour. Beat vigorously by hand or with a mixer for 2 minutes. Work in the remaining flour. Separate the dough into 2 equal parts. Knead each part thoroughly and place in a greased loaf pan (i.e. you will have 2 loaves).

Cover the loaves with a clean towel, place in a warm place, and let rise until about double in size (this takes about an hour). Preheat oven to 350. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Something old, something new

2007-10-09T21:28:00.001-04:00

As promised, I am back. I spent a few days in a beach cottage with my better half--a welcome break after the workathon to get my condo ready to sell. There was no internet access and that was probably a good thing!

I'll post a writeup of one of our beachy meals once I find the camera USB cord. (A side effect of clearing all the clutter from my condo is that now I can't find anything.)

In the meantime, I thought I'd do something different and pass along some music recommendations. I've been listening to some older music lately and found that these have stood the test of time:

--Remember this dance? Actually, HS and I saw MC Hammer perform a few short weeks ago. For free! He brought it, that's for sure.
--A new wave classic
--There will always be a special place in my heart for britpop.

I also wanted to share the video pictured because I am massively impressed with the Pipettes' debut. It's just too bad that the CD didn't come out during the summer, since it could have been the record of summer '07 for me.

I'll be back!

2007-09-30T08:39:00.001-04:00

I'm still alive, just working every waking minute to get my condo ready for sale. Entries will be sparse for the next week or two, but I'll be back!

Tidbits from Texas

2007-09-26T21:23:00.000-04:00

I'm on the road again, in a state (Texas) not known for its vegan-friendliness, and a city (Houston) not known for its global warming consciousness. I had booked a mid-size car at the airport, but they said they didn't have any in stock, and tried to give me a Dodge Caravan (minivan). When I said no, I had to wait for 10 minutes and was told I'd been given a free upgrade to an SUV. At that point, I just didn't care and went out to get the car. It turned out to be a Dodge Durango, with a handy MPG calculator built in. The highest MPG I saw was 13.3 and the lowest was 12.5! Even worse, the mid-size car I'd requested was in the space next to the Durango.

I ate pretty well during my time in Houston, surprisingly. I went to good Vietnamese, Thai, and Mexican places. The lunches supplied at the event I was attending were a grilled vegetable sandwich on wheat bread with no cheese, and then a very nice salad wrap that had beans, corn, and a tiny bit of parmesan.

So, being in Texas wasn't so bad. Today I had a conversation with someone about a very intriguing event: the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup. It contains elements of rodeo, state fair, and...beauty pageant. Now, I'd want to have at least one time zone between me and "over 123 tons of Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes," but apparently it's quite popular. It would be a nice community event, if it didn't involve killing so many animals.

I also visited the Lucy exhibit. I have very mixed feelings about Lucy being put on display, especially since only a replica was displayed in her native country. But I couldn't miss the chance to see her, and the exhibit had some great artifacts from Ethiopia as well. After 3.2 million years, Lucy still has some teeth--so why is it that we can rot our teeth in a decade or two from eating too much sugar?

Where is my mind?

2007-09-23T12:08:00.000-04:00

I had friends over for dinner last night. Our dinner was entirely vegan and I think it turned out very well. However, I totally forgot to take a picture of the feast and by the time I remembered, all that was left was about a cup of rice pilaf. As the Pixies said, where is my mind?

Here is what we had:

Portabello mushrooms stuffed with a mixture of tofu, carrots, onions, red peppers, bread crumbs, walnuts, and seasonings including tahini and miso. These puppies are good! They make a great Thanksgiving entree.

Wild and brown rice pilaf

Steamed broccoli

For dessert: soy ice cream with homemade blueberry peach sauce on top.

It was a great evening.

Quick soups--what more could you ask for?

2007-09-19T17:23:00.000-04:00

Soup has turned out to be the best way for me to increase my veggie intake. I also like stir-fries, but a 3 minute (microwave) preparation time for soup is better for me at dinner than a 10-15 minute stir-fry time.

One of the many reasons I love the Simple Suppers cookbook is because there's a section on soups whose total preparation time is in the 15-20 minute range. This week's winner is Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea soup. It doesn't look too good in photographs, but it tastes great, especially considering how healthy it is. In fact, cauliflower even has a special website singing its praises, with a section about "cauliflower ear!"

Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea Soup (adapted from Simple Suppers):
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 1/2 tablespoons grated peeled ginger root
1 tablespoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
15 oz can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 cups water
1 small head of cauliflower (yields about 4 cups of chopped cauliflower
15 oz can of diced tomatoes
Your favorite chutney

In a soup pot on medium heat, cook the onions in the oil for a few minutes. Add the ginger, curry powder, and salt, and saute for a minute, stirring constantly. Add the chickpeas and the water, cover, and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, cut the cauliflower into bite-sized pieces. When the water boils, stir in the cauliflower and tomatoes, reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the cauliflower is tender (5-10 minutes).

When the cauliflower is tender, remove the pot from the heat. Puree about half of the soup in a blender and stir it back into the pot. Top each bowl of soup with a spoonful of chutney.

Me-me

2007-09-17T20:16:00.000-04:00

Tropical Theresa tagged me for a meme. Here it is:

Players must list one fact, word, or tidbit that is somehow relevant to their life for each letter of your first or middle name.

When you are tagged you need to write your own post containing your first or middle name game facts, word, or tidbit.

Doing my middle name (Robinson) would be a bit of an undertaking, so I'll do Amy.

A is for Activist. Injustice bothers me mightily, and I hope that never changes. The biggest mystery that I contemplate isn't about God, it's about why I can order shoes online from my comfy sofa while so many good people are sleeping on a dirt floor trying to ward off malnutrition or malaria. My 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in a country with a per capita income of $129 per year helped form this viewpoint, of course.

I'm especially proud of my parents here, who were great activist role models. In fact, my dad went on the anti-war protest march here this past weekend. (I was out of town.) At the march, a guy approached him and said he works for the Smithsonian and would like to add my dad's protest sign to their protest art collection! Apparently it has a drawing of Bush about to be crushed by a tree he's just cut down. The caption is Bush saying "I don't cut and run." Yay Dad!

M is for Maps. Don't ever come with me to an antique map store unless you have a few hours to spare. I can stare at old or modern maps for hours, fascinated by the way people used to perceive the world, or plotting imaginary journeys. I'm a geographer and I think I chose the right profession! I can't wait to design the map of our wedding site to put in the invitations. I am going to put sea monsters on it! Sea monsters really need to make a comeback in the mapping world.

Y is for Young-at-heart. I still enjoy going out--to concerts, parties, obscure movies, and events around town. My daily schedule usually leaves me pretty tired on the weekend, but I don't think I ever want to "settle down" if it means making every Saturday a Blockbuster night. Call me naive, but I think I can keep this up indefinitely.

This meme has been around for a while now, but any readers are welcome to try it!

You want apples with that?

2007-09-13T12:06:00.000-04:00

I foresee problems for the current generation of children. Apart from dealing with the effects of global warming and other man-made disasters, they will grow up being confused about the difference between a french fry and an apple.

The blame will rest with Burger King, which is

"developing what it calls BK Fresh Apple Fries. The red apples are cut to resemble french fries and are served in the same containers as fries, but they are not fried and are served skinless and cold."

This is part of Burger King's plan to create healthier kids' meals. The meals will contain items such as broiled chicken and low-fat milk. It is not clear to me whether the apple fries are destined for kids' meals only or as a regular menu item. In order to prevent the apples from turning brown, BK will treat the apples with a "pre-wash that contains lemon to keep them from turning brown." (I'd like to know what else the pre-wash contains.)

What is wrong with our culture when we can't feed people fruit without disguising it as junk food?

Kudos to Miriam Pappo, a clinical nutrition manager, who says "It's a good trend. The actual ultimate solution is still to eat less fast food."

A related but older article about the fight against fast food can be found here. It details how the head of the Cleveland Clinic attempted to kick fast food chains out of the clinic food court.

The Reluctant Vegan recommends

2007-09-12T13:46:00.000-04:00

This is the first in an infrequent series of things (vegan or not) that I like and recommend.

The RV recommends: Saying "I understand."

I'm not gonna get all pop-psychology here, but it's amazing what saying this phrase can do. It tends to bring out the best in people.

The cashier can't give you a refund because you don't have your receipt? You understand. (And you'd be surprised how often rules can be bent.)

Someone is upset with you? You understand. Watch the situation start to get better from that point.

My UPS man wouldn't leave packages at my door because of the risk of theft. It was a major inconvenience because the UPS pickup location is 30 minutes away, but the next time I saw him in person, I said I understood. Since then, he's left packages on my balcony without being asked to.

It's important to be sincere, and not to say "I understand" in the hopes of the other person giving you what you want.

Happy vegan-versary to me

2007-09-10T21:23:00.000-04:00

Is that a cute cake or what?

It was a year ago that I read a few books (this one and this one) that convinced me, against my will, I should try to go vegan.

When I became a vegetarian, I took about a year to fully transition (between the ages of 16 and 17). After that year had passed, my vegetarianism was pretty entrenched until I started eating fish on rare occasions again when I was about 28.

It has not been as easy to go vegan. First of all, I freely admit I don't want to be 100% vegan. My goal is to limit animal products to 2 meals a week, which is 10% of my meals. I deeply admire people who are 100% vegan in diet and lifestyle. I also know myself well enough to know that if I am too restrictive in my diet, I can rebound by losing control (I'm not talking true binge eating, just something on the order of a large piece of cake or several slices of pizza). If there is a time that I can kiss cheese, tangy, rich, satisfying cheese, good-bye forever, that time has not yet come. My 2 dairy meals a week are a concession to this realization.

The problem has been that I've done a lot of traveling and socializing this summer. (Since late May, Montreal, NYC, San Diego, Guatemala, and Oklahoma City, each for about a week.) Some places have posed a real challenge to eat vegan. But in others, I let myself be lax because I'm away from home and can't prepare my own food, or because the most tempting thing on the menu is vegetarian but not vegan.

I also just cannot stomach soy cheese. Long-time vegans, do you really like soy cheese? It reminds me of eating fish in a restaurant with one of HS's friends who is a meat eater. I remarked that the fish really tasted like chicken. He took a bite and said that I just thought that because I hadn't eaten chicken in so long. I mean, do you really think soy cheese tastes like dairy cheese?

During the second year of my reluctant vegan-hood, I'd like to stick hard and fast to the 2 dairy meals a week rule. I know there are plenty of vegans who travel a lot, or who live in an unfriendly state and stick to it. I'm also going to re-read Eat to Live to boost my motivation.

As a side note, I think we have found a place that will provide vegan food--really good vegan food--for our wedding!

An ethical dilemma

2007-09-06T12:46:00.000-04:00

I am not proud of this picture, which shows the contents of my kitchen and pantry. I have so much kitchen stuff. You see why I was talking about simplifying a few posts back!

Why has my kitchen relocated to my guest room futon? I've had roaches for a few months and it's really been wearing me down. There's nothing like walking in the door at 8:00 (the time I get home if I work out) and dealing with roaches on the floor and counter. Hence my dilemma. I believe in animal rights but I don't consider roaches animals. Still, I dislike killing things and a roach bloodbath lowers my spirits. What does an aspiring vegan with a roach problem do?

Reader, I chose annihilation. Yesterday I bought a $500 roach extermination package which includes an initial sweep, a follow-up visit, and monthly visits for a year. I almost consider that cheap for my peace of mind. Before the first "treatment," I had to clean out my entire kitchen so the exterminator could access the deepest crevices of my cabinets. It took over an hour to move everything out, and that was even with the help of HS and my future mother-in-law (thanks, guys!).

Animal-rights-inclined readers, what do you do when you have an insect infestation?

Back to soups

2007-09-05T15:37:00.001-04:00

Sorry about the leisurely pace of my blogging lately. The holiday weekend flew by as HS and I were wined and dined by his visiting family. The dust has settled and I've found a bit of time to cook.

Since Labor Day is traditionally the end of summer, I decided to make a soup. This one is adapted from the Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers. It's unusual, nutritious, and filling. I think the challenge with squash soups is to make one that doesn't remind you of baby food. This one definitely succeeds by that measure.

Thai Butternut Squash Soup
1 cup light coconut milk
1 teaspoon Thai red curry paste
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups vegetable broth
24 oz of frozen cooked winter squash (I found this in the second grocery store I tried. You could peel and cut your own fresh winter squash but it will take a lot longer)
1 lime
3 cups fresh baby spinach
Chopped fresh cilantro

Pan-friend tofu:
1/2 cake firm tofu (or the extra-firm kind that is already cubed, if you have that)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon red curry paste
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 can of corn, rinsed and drained

In a soup pot, stir together the coco milk, sugar, curry paste, salt, and broth. Add the frozen squash, cover, and bring to a simmer. Cook about 15 minutes. (If you are using fresh squash, cook longer until it is very tender.)

Meanwhile, prepare the pan-fried tofu. Place the soy sauce and curry paste in a bowl and mix together. Add the cubed tofu and stir to coat. Warm the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the marinated tofu and pan-fry for about 5 minutes.

When the soup is done simmering, let it cool a bit and then puree it in batches in a blender. Return it to the pot and add the juice and grated peel of the lime. Stir in the tofu, corn, and spinach and warm the soup over medium-low heat until the spinach has wilted. Serve topped with cilantro.

Everything's gone green

2007-08-30T12:03:00.000-04:00

Hot Slice and I decided my dowry was finally big enough* to get engaged. We officially became engaged a few weeks ago. I try to keep my personal life out of this blog, but suffice to say that I've been accused of being radiantly happy more than once lately.

It was a priority for us to wear rings that had a low impact on the environment. Mining is incredibly destructive environmentally, not to mention the questionable labor practices for the workers. We found three companies that use recycled gold and either fair-trade or synthetic gems:

GreenKarat
Leber Jeweler
Brilliant Earth

We decided to purchase our rings from Brilliant Earth. Shown above are my sapphire engagement ring and HS' engagement/wedding band (he is already wearing it). We were very happy with Brilliant Earth's service and the quality of the rings. My sapphire is more sparkly in real life than in the picture. I knew I didn't want a diamond and so I was happy to see the wide variety of non-diamond engagement rings available.

I hope that the "green" jewelry industry grows, because researching mining has been a real eye-opener for me.

*Just kidding, of course. I still need to add 5 cattle to it.

Simplicity

2007-08-28T21:20:00.000-04:00

My dinner is pictured above. It has probably been my dinner on 50% of the nights I've been home: vegetables and tempeh or tofu stir-fried with low-sodium tamari sauce and a few squirts of Ginger Jerk sauce. I'd like to serve it over rice but I'm trying hard to limit starches to lunch only. I make a large portion of the stirfry (it's pictured in a bowl that you'd serve a large salad in, or chips...mmm, chips...) and it's definitely filling.

I don't really get tired of the endless procession of stirfrys. They don't take long to prepare, they're hot and fresh tasting, and they are obviously packed with nutrients and fiber.

I feel like since I've started going semi-vegan and overhauling my diet, my attitude towards non-food things has changed as well. I've been thinking about all the stuff in my condo and the amount of time I spend shopping for stuff, carting it home, and returning it when it isn't right. Apart from the money, I resent stuff taking up my time. I've definitely made some major purchases in the past months, like a new bed, but I haven't been making as many minor purchases or shopping recreationally as much.

I do buy into the idea of voluntary simplicity, and consider myself very lucky that I can choose not to buy things; in other words, that I have the means to buy them if I wanted. I realize that I cherish one or two special objects more than if I buy the same object several times. For example, I really love the three antique map prints that I have. If my condo was bedecked with them, each one wouldn't be as special to me. In practice, I'm finding that buying a new shirt or pair of shoes doesn't perk me up as much as it used to. I consider this a good thing.

I've been doing some reading on materialism & spending, and the following have been good resources:

Affluenza
Adbusters
The Overspent American
Your Money or Your Life
Nickel and Dimed (not about simplicity but it made me realize how ridiculously much I have)

I'm curious to know if other vegans have found themselves rejecting stuff while changing their diets. Non-vegans, please also chime in about any voluntary simplicity changes you may have made.

Out of my element

2007-08-26T19:48:00.000-04:00

I spent last week in Oklahoma City taking a training course. I don't think I generally move in rarefied circles, but OKC posed a challenge to stay vegan, let alone vegetarian.
--I could see several steakhouses from my hotel window. The best-named was the Rib Crib.
--As I walked into the training room after a break, the instructor asked me, "You ever hunt rabbit?"
--The only vegetarian meal you could get in the airport was...salad and french fries. Is that a meal? No? Well, how about a cinnamon bun, then? That's as close as you are going to get. Luckily I had packed several Larabars.
--The local Wendy's had a sign out front that said "Order the Baconator before it orders you." (Hot Slice's response: "Orders you a triple bypass!") And no, there was no vegan alternative called the BaconNOTer or the Fakin'ator.

I even checked Happycow.net for inspiration on where to eat. There are 4 listings: 3 Indian restaurants and a coffeehouse.

I ended up eating at a good Mexican restaurant, Panera, and an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. The last was the most vegan-friendly, though Panera makes some good vegan soups. I ended up eating cheese more than I wanted to, which always seems to happen when I'm travelling.

I'm happy to be back in my Baconator-free kitchen.

The company you keep

2007-08-20T20:57:00.000-04:00

Many of you have probably read the results of the study that found people tend to have similar weight ranges(fat, thin) as their friends and family. This is not a big surprise and I've witnessed it in many circumstances myself. For example, one branch of my family is all overweight and food is the center of any social activity. The fact is, it is really hard to resist junk food or too much food when you are hanging out with unhealthy eaters or overeaters. That is one of the more minor reason why I am happy to be with Hot Slice. He is very dedicated to a healthy diet and lifestyle and I know it's good for my health to be around him.

When I was growing up, my parents were pretty alternative in food choices. They weren't vegetarians--I'm still the only one in my family who is. However, they joined a food co-op, only let me drink the aforementioned 100% juice, and even made my teething biscuits from scratch because the commercial brand had too much sugar.

Here's a list of the good and bad food habits my parents instilled in me.

Good:
--taught me to cook at a very early age
--almost never had processed foods around
--limited my sweet consumption
--got me in the habit of bringing my lunch (much cheaper, and almost always lower in calories and fat)
--never had soda around, so I never developed a taste for it
--not directly a food habit, but taught me the joys of exercising, even if it was just a walk

Bad:
--as I got older, I noticed that Mom saw junk food as a reward. I still see it as a "treat" and that has been a very hard habit to break. Our special nights when Dad was travelling always involved a bag of cheese puffs or other unhealthy food
--encouraged me to drink milk, a habit I only recently broke
--that is really all the bad stuff. I am lucky!

I'm curious to hear the good and bad food habits that were a part of your upbringing.

Not so juicy

2007-08-16T22:47:00.000-04:00

Sorry my blogging has been sparse recently. Hot Slice and I went to the beach for a few days, and I'm off on a business trip all next week. In between, I have a good friend coming to visit on her way to Central America for 2 years!

I had a traumatic experience last week, when I was trapped on a jam-packed elevator for 20 minutes. I am somewhat claustrophobic, and it took all my yoga training to stay calm. Anyway, that brought to mind another bad experience which falls under the category of Packaged Food Horror Stories.

Perhaps it's a mistake to share this, and I will lose my 2 or 3 regular readers. You have been warned.

My parents only bought me real (100%) fruit juices when I was growing up. One of the easiest to find was Juicy Juice. I remember being at my grandmother's house and drinking a glass of grape Juicy Juice. I felt something strange in my mouth, which I spit out. It was...a dead cockroach. Of course I'll never go near Juicy Juice again, and I was surprised to find it's still available.

I'll bet you have some Packaged Food Horror Stories. Care to share them?

Some days I feel like Sisyphus

2007-08-07T17:04:00.000-04:00

struggling under a huge boulder of nutrition misinformation.

Our free daily, the Express, published an article today on how men can stay healthy. It's excerpted from Men's Health. HS subscribes to Men's Health and has taught me many things from it, but this article is dismaying, to say the least.

Two of its tips are to eat meat and to eat more dairy!

It says that substituting lean red meat for white starchy carbs can lead to a small drop in blood pressure. Details of the study are not given, but since study after study has shown that a diet high in animal fat and animal products raises heart disease risk (of which blood pressure is one indicator), I have my suspicions about this study. I think it can be explained by the fact that high-carb diets lead to high blood pressure, and the body is reacting to the subtraction of unhealthy white-flour carbs, which contain no fiber and which the body digests as sugar. To suggest that white carbs be replaced with meat is going from worse to bad. I mean, you could probably substitute a venti mocha for white carbs and see the same small drop in blood pressure.

With regards to dairy, the article says that consuming 3 or more servings of dairy a day can decrease the risk of heart disease. Since blood pressure is related to heart disease, many of the things above apply here. But I'd like to give a bit of detail from a study conducted by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn in 1985. Eighteen volunteers with severe heart disease agreed to follow a diet that was very low-fat and which omitted almost all animal products. (Five years into the study, Dr. Esselstyn cut out animal products entirely.)

Before the study, the 18 volunteers had had 49 "coronary events" among them. In the first eleven years of the study, only one coronary event occurred--and that happened to someone who went off the diet for two years! Also, 70% of the subjects experienced their arteries un-clogging and re-opening.

I don't know if there's much more to say here, except that
--the false claims of the dairy industry are really pissing me off,
--people don't want to hear the simple truth, which is: stop eating sugar, refined carbs, and animal products, and start eating more fruits, veggies, and whole grains!

Grüb

2007-08-03T18:31:00.000-04:00

I've had the book Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen for a few months, but I just cracked it open this week. (I think the name looks better with an umlaut, don't you? Groo-ooob.)

This book relates closely to thoughts I've had recently. Since I've embarked on my semi-vegan adventure, I've been trying to stay away from super-processed vegan (or any other) foods. In other words, instead of using soy cheese that has 20 ingredients listed, I'm trying to lose my cheese habit altogether. And instead of bingeing on vegan sweets, I'm trying to eat just dark chocolate and one dessert on the weekend. Progress on this is very slow sometimes, with lots of relapses. But generally 75% of the things in my grocery cart are produce or unprocessed foods like beans.

The picture shows the current state of my fruit bowl, which is packed with peaches, tomatoes, garlic, and lemons. This is one of the reasons that I love summer. Peaches this year are fantastic and I've been eating at least one a day.

The authors define Grub as "real food" that is organically and sustainably raised, and which is good for the body, the community, and the environment.

The foreword to Grub is written by Eric Schlosser, who expressed some of my ideas better than I can:

"[People] may worry about calories and carbs, and yet miss the real point. What we eat has changed more during the past thirty years than in the previous thirty thousand. Trans fats, genetically engineered soybeans, livestock pumped with growth hormones and fed slaughterhouse waste, Chicken McNuggets--nobody's ever eaten this stuff before. We've become a nation of guinea pigs, the subjects in a vast scientific experiment, waiting to see what happens when human beings eat too much industrialized food."

More about "grub" as I progress further in the book. What do you think about the value of processed foods?

Living it up in Guatemala

2007-08-01T09:29:00.001-04:00

It's a little late, but I'm finally getting around to posting about my vegan adventures in Guatemala. As I've said below, I loved the place and hope to return. The picture above shows one of the most charming places in Antigua, Guatemala. It's an old-fashioned dolce shop. (I think it's called Dona Maria.) Gorgeous little cookies and pastries are sold by women in immaculate white costumes. The sweets in the display cases are the only things for sale; the rest is just bric-a-brac.

I didn't follow a completely vegan diet there, but it was quite easy to find vegan food almost everywhere. Our hotel in Antigua had a yummy breakfast consisting of a fruit plate and a basket of warm bread:

We went on a hike up the Pacaya volcano. After several hours of somewhat difficult hiking, our guide produced from his backpack a whole pineapple and supplies for pita sandwiches with beans, avocado, tomatoes, onions, red peppers, and cucumbers. Here are members of our group enjoying lunch in the rain:

The afternoon we arrived at our second destination, Lake Atitlan, I was felled by a bad sandwich. The next day, when my appetite had returned, we went to the Bombay cafe. The food was tasty but the service was pretty slow. However, their homemade ginger ale was just what the doctor ordered:

I followed it with another pita sandwich, this one stuffed with marinated tofu, spinach, and peanut sauce.

One day, we went to a huge market day in Solola, a small-ish town in the hills above Lake Atitlan. Among the thousands of items for sale were these roosters. Let's hope they were purchased by a vegan (yeah, right!).

Eight random facts

2007-07-28T15:38:00.000-04:00

Kate tagged me with a meme. I'm supposed to list 8 unusual facts about myself. Here ya go!

1. The food I dislike most in the world is pickles. Second place is a close race between mustard and ketchup.
2. I have never had cable TV in any place I've lived (and plan to keep it that way).
3. I was a Nielsen household for a year.
4. One of my baby teeth is exhibited at a dental school somewhere. I had a siamese twin-tooth.
5. The closest I've come to being arrested was for the offense of urinating in public (behind a palm tree in Africa; I was probably the 20th person that day to use the tree as a rest stop).
6. I've been about 50 feet away from an avalanche.
7. I cannot stand still while brushing my teeth. This has led to me inadvertently dropping my toothbrush in a toilet (yes, I threw it out).
8. I narrowly avoided running over Martha Stewart's dogs with my car a few years ago. They weren't on a leash!

Flowers courtesy of Hot Slice.

...And some have veganism thrust upon them

2007-07-25T09:14:00.000-04:00

This is my favorite picture from my recent Guatemala trip. It was taken by my lovely and talented travelling companion, Kate. Someone's having guacamole for dinner!

Guatemala exceeded my expectations. The land is beautiful, the people are gracious, and the climate was perfect in the highlands (except for intermittent rain). The only blemish is the food poisoning I got on our 3rd night. I was definitely not feeling chipper for a few days and I still have to eat cautiously (6 days later).

I've spent a lot of time in undeveloped countries and am well used to food-related sickness. My usual way of dealing is to eat nothing (just drink liquids) for a day or two. That usually kills off the bad guys and when I resume eating, I'm OK. I only fasted for half a day in Guatemala because I wanted to stick to our scheduled activities. I've found that (as is usually the case for me) dairy is the worst thing for my digestive tract while I'm recovering. So that has been added incentive to eat vegan, and hopefully this will continue even after I'm back to 100%.

It was quite easy to eat vegan in the Guatemalan towns we visited. My next entry will give a full rundown.

Walking on the wild (grain) side

2007-07-16T15:40:00.000-04:00

I am pretty unimaginative with my grains. Steady dates include brown rice, whole wheat pasta, flour of course, bulghur, and oatmeal. I know a few gluten-intolerant people, but I've always thought they were the only ones who ate the more exotic grains, like spelt. (Also, I'm not very interested in any food that can only be bought at Whole Foods, since it requires a special trip.) But my sister passed along the following recipe which is tasty and different. I've got some spelt flour now and who knows what grain madness will ensue next.

I found that spelt is "naturally high in fiber, and contains significantly more protein than wheat. Spelt is also higher in B complex vitamins, and both simple and complex carbohydrates. Another important benefit is that some gluten-sensitive people have been able to include spelt-based foods in their diets." (Link here.) Since the pancakes have scallions and regular flour in them, I didn't get a totally clear sense of the true flavor of spelt, but the pancakes were good and had a nice nutty flavor.

As an aside, I leave tomorrow for a short vacation in Guatemala. We'll see what the vegetarian/vegan offerings look like there. I'm bringing some Lara bars and mixed nuts just in case...

Recipe: Tofu & Bok Choi with Spelt-Scallion Pancakes
Pancakes (makes 4-5)
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
1/2 c. vegetable broth + 1/2 c. water
2/3 c. spelt flour
2/3 c. white or whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
6 thinly sliced green onions
Sesame or black sesame seeds

Whisk all ingredients except scallions together in a bowl. Heat a
small amount of veg. oil in 9 or 10" pan over med-hi heat. Pour 1/4 to 1/5 of
the batter into the pan, spreading it to cover the bottom of the pan.
Scatter scallions and sesame seeds over the top. When the top looks dry (about
2 mins), flip pancake and cook for 1-2 min on other side. Repeat with
remaining batter and onions. Keep warm while making tofu & bok choi.

8 oz firm tofu, rinsed, drained, & pressed, cut in bite-size pieces
8 oz baby bok choi, cut in bite-sized pieces
2 tablespoons veg broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil

Heat veg oil over medium heat. Add bok choi and cook, covered,
stirring once (about 5 min). Push to one side and add tofu & broth;
cover & cook for 4 mins. Meanwhile, stir together soy sauce, rice
vinegar, and sesame oil. Add soy sauce mixture to pan and heat
through. Serve with pancakes, tearing off pieces to pick up tofu-bok
choi mixture.

The Chicken and the Egg

2007-07-09T21:22:00.000-04:00

Edited to add a picture of the eggs. Aren't they gorgeous? The blue ones come from Ameraucana hens.

Tomorrow I'm going to see a man about some eggs. As I've mentioned, a farmers' market comes to my office once a week. (My office contains over 5,000 people, so this is not as strange as it seems.) I'm not 100% vegan, but most of my lacto-ovo transgressions occur during the weekend. I love eggs for Sunday brunch and the energy they give me for the rest of the day.

One of the farmers at the market brings a limited amount of eggs to sell; you have to put your name on a list beforehand to have a chance at getting some. I'm first on the list this week but there is no guarantee of eggs. "The girls" (as the farmer calls the hens) can be cantankerous when the weather is hot. If they don't feel like laying eggs, no eggs will be sold. Obviously, these are truly free-range hens and they live something close to a natural chicken-life. I am an aspiring vegan for two reasons: health and animal welfare. I am willing to accept the health risk of 2 eggs a week. My talks with this farmer reassure me that the animals are well-treated. Other vegans reading this, would you buy eggs in this circumstance? Why or why not?

(Non-vegans are welcome to comment as well, of course. I'm not looking for support for my decision; I've already made it. Just curious about whether other people see a difference between buying eggs at the grocery store and buying eggs from the person who collected them.)

Root Beer & Me

2007-07-05T17:05:00.000-04:00

(No, that is not me. I was trying to photoshop Michael Moore in "Roger & Me" but since I don't have photoshop, it's been tough going and is one of the reasons I haven't posted in a while.)
The only sodas I'll drink these days are root beer and some kinds of ginger ale. I love the more expensive brands of root beer but drink them rarely, due to the high sugar content.

There are quite a few root beer resources on the Web:
--Root beer's history
--Root Beer World, a great site with reviews of hundreds of root beers
--Detailed directions for making root beer, which is quite an ambitious project

Not all root beers are vegan, since some contain honey. Here are brief reviews of root beers I have known.

Barq's: Decent flavor but overly carbonated. Root beer should not have big Coke-style bubbles. It should be more like an amber beer, with small, tingly bubbles. Also, I think root beer should be in a bottle, not a can.
Dominion: Nice carbonation and flavor. A tad too sweet. Contains honey.
IBC: Now this is root beer. Complex and good touch of wintergreen. Good availability as well.
Jones: Nice looking bottle, but disappointing taste and too much carbonation. See, the great root beers use a blend of herbs, extracts, & spices for their flavor. It's obvious that Jones is using pre-packaged "root beer extract" and no brewing is occurring.
Stewart's: I've had this but I can't accurately remember the flavor. Chime in if you've had it.
Virgil's: A masterpiece. It's usually pretty expensive, but it's obvious this root beer is handmade by someone who knows what they're doing. The anise is pronounced so you may not like it if you don't like licorice. Best of all, it's available in kegs!

Ginger love

2007-06-29T09:11:00.000-04:00

No, not that Ginger Spice. This one: Gracie's Gotcha Ginger. This family-run company based in Baltimore has a stand at my farmer's market, which is at my workplace every Tuesday. Yes, it's wonderful to have the farmers/ family food stands come to me. Great discoveries at the farmer's market include:
--the Strawberry Lady
--the Mushroom stand (mushroom pita sandwiches, fritters, or vegan chili)
--the Spanakopita stand (with about 12 variations, including vegan fillings)
--the Herb guy, who sells every dried herb you can think of and goodies like concord grapes and japanese plums
--the Italian Panini stand, with many non-vegan offerings but also with the sweetest fresh-squeezed oj you've ever had
--Grace's Pastries, makers of the Awesome Bread (whole wheat crunch bread, light as a feather. I bought 4 loaves at the last market of the season and froze them for the winter), not related to
--Gracie's Gotcha Ginger

I've bought two things from Gracie's and they've both been amazing. The Ginger Lemon drink mix is smooth but has a kick. It's in concentrated form and I mix it with lemon/lime seltzer. The Jerk Sauce is an important ingredient in my stir-frys. I only use a few drops but it adds incredible flavor. Ginger, where would I be without you?

Hic... Hic...

2007-06-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

My grandmother taught me a very simple cure for hiccups. I thought it was common knowledge, but the existence of a product called Hiccups Away at $3 a pop makes me think that it's not. I'm also not a fan of the "scare" technique, which doesn't seem too effective.

So, here's what you do. Pour half a small glass of cold water. Add about 2 teaspoons of sugar--enough so it's distinctly sweet but not sickeningly so. Drink the sugar water slowly. See? Hiccups gone. Works every time for me.

Peachy

2007-06-25T20:13:00.000-04:00

By popular request, here is the recipe for a delicious yet moderately healthy peach shake which is just right for the humid DC summer.

Guess where it's from?

Yes, the Teany cookbook, perhaps the most underrated vegan cookbook of the past 5 years.

Mix equal parts of the following:
Iced chai tea (I used a rooibos blend which is caffeine-free)
Peach nectar or peach juice
Vanilla soy milk (if you must use cow's milk, add some sweetener)

Put all that in a blender with some ice and mix it up. For one serving, I used 1/2 cup of each ingredient.

Breakfast of Champions

2007-06-25T14:52:00.000-04:00

Sunday brunch is usually not vegan for me. I generally have eggs, but if we're out for brunch, I'm always tempted by the pancake/waffle/french toast offerings. I've always found that if I have a starchy or sweet breakfast, it sets me up for cravings the rest of the day. It's not surprising that happens, but I do like a change from eggs once in a while.

My sister, who also has to watch her blood sugar, recommended Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Pancake Mix. I made it for the first time Sunday. We made the waffle version, and I had one waffle with homemade blueberry sauce (blueberries cooked down with a bit of water, maple syrup, and lemon peel). I was very surprised to find that 5 hours later, I wasn't even hungry. Apart from making very tasty waffles, this mix has staying power! The only thing is, it's not vegan. The 7-grain organic mix is vegan, but not the 10-grain one.

I was in San Diego on "business travel" last week, and although I didn't eat that badly by most standards, I probably ate many more calories, fat, and dairy than I usually do. It's nice to be home and able to make what I want to eat. I had fruit and nuts for breakfast, lentil salad for lunch, and am looking forward to stir-fried veggies and brown rice for dinner.

Vegan paradise, thy name is NYC

2007-06-16T09:17:00.000-04:00

I have been bone tired for the past several days. I worry that I'm coming down with something, which would be very inconvenient since I'm on a business trip to California all next week. I most likely won't be able to blog, so here's a brief account of our food adventures in NYC to last until I get back.

Our train food for this leg wasn't nearly as good as for the DC-Montreal one. We'd packed a motley assortment of trail mix, Lara bars, and oatmeal cookies. The train trip ended up lasting about 4 hours longer than it should have, necessitating a trip to the dining car. The good news: Amtrak has a vegan selection! The bad news: Here it is...

Yes, it's a "vegan gardenburger." It would have been OK if there had been any toppings available, and if the whole thing didn't have to be microwaved. But hey, it tasted good and kept me going.

Some vegan-friendly restaurants we visited in NYC:
--Quantum Leap (We ate lunch and brunch there. Highlights were the vegan bento box and fake meat club sandwich shown below, and the green tea waffles.)

--Peanut Butter & Co. (We didn't eat here, but HS bought me a jar of dark chocolate peanut butter that I have only been able to eat one way: with a spoon.)
--Zen Palate (amazing orange seitan)

The most gourmet meal we at was at Blossom, which is an all-vegan restaurant. It's upscale and gourmet. We started with the black eyed pea and potato cake with chipotle aioli

and then moved on to (foreground) savory seitan, herb potatoes, and green beans, and (background) marinated grilled tempeh, yucca fritters, and rainbow chard.

Yes, it was even better than it looked.

However, we agreed that our favorite meal on the whole trip was not vegan. There is just no substitute for real coal-oven New York pizza:

Wait, HS, didn't you order anything?

The urge to bake

2007-06-13T21:03:00.001-04:00

I telecommute most Wednesdays, and I find I'm often stricken with an urge to bake. Bread is a perfect project because it just needs a few minutes of attention over several hours. I'm not a great bread baker, though. Today I was craving something buttery and nutty, yet vegan and somewhat healthy. And I didn't want to go to the store since I was working, after all, and had to head out immediately after my work day was over.

I found my answer in Dreena's blog, with Raspberry-Coconut squares from The Everyday Vegan. They are delicious! Here is a list of their virtues:
--they don't call for any butter or margarine, yet they taste buttery
--omnivores should note that they call for no "weird" ingredients, and you could use cow milk in place of soy milk
--I used coconut that I had serious doubts about, since it had been sitting in my freezer for at least a year, but they tasted fine (OK, that's my issue)

I modified the recipe by substituting 1/4 cup of pecans for 1/4 cup of the coconut in the base layer. I also sprinkled pecans on top and used 2 T ground flaxseed and 2T flour for the topping instead of the 1/4 cup flour the recipe called for. And yes, I had coconut extract in my pantry. I have a library of extracts.

I should get around to posting our vegan adventures in NYC soon.

Vegging in Montreal

2007-06-08T21:54:00.000-04:00

After spending a full day en route, we stumbled zombie-like out of our hotel, ignoring the concierge's unimaginative suggestions of going to a Japanese or to an Italian restaurant. We walked down to a major commercial street, Rue St. Catherine, where I gasped and pointed to our Mecca: Commensal vegetarian buffet. I'd seen this place on previous trips to Montreal but had never eaten there before. This time was going to be different.

We ended up going to Commensal twice and gorging ourselves each time. It was the best buffet I've ever eaten at. Everything was fresh, flavorful, and interesting. The vegan choices were clearly marked. Some favorites were the seitan bourgignon, fresh sprouts of many unusual varieties, and the lemony quinoa salad. They also had an entire separate dessert buffet! I won't forget the maple syrup pie anytime soon.

The picture at the top shows our feast at Aux Vivres vegan restaurant. The first time we went it was closed, but we made it a priority to return. I had a salad with tofu and cornbread; HS had a grilled vegetable and "tofu whip" sandwich on homemade naan, and we both had smoothies. The decor is nice and so was the wait staff.

Also of note are ChuChai vegetarian Thai restaurant (though I'm a little pissed off at them because they made us repeat customers order food before being allowed to use the rest room) and St. Viateur bagelry. Some Montrealers claim their bagels surpass New York's, but I was not sold. They are tasty and different though: much smaller and denser than NY bagels. They had lots of whole grain varieties, including flaxseed. Flaxseed (lin) seems to be big in Montreal: many flaxseed bread products were available.

We didn't try poutine (I know it's not vegan; at least, it shouldn't be), but we got the T-shirt:

Train food

2007-06-05T20:48:00.000-04:00

We took the train from DC to Montreal, which meant leaving before dawn and arriving just before sunset. This may come as a surprise to HS, but I sometimes get a wee bit cranky when my blood sugar drops. Therefore, I wanted to make sure we had ample provisions for the long day. Breakfast was my mom's pumpkin-walnut bread, and lunch was Pan Bagna. This is another great recipe from the Teany cookbook, and one of my favorite sandwiches ever (have you not bought the cookbook yet? Come on, it's only $4.99!). It is perfect for travel because it is meant to be smushed. It provided a totally satisfying lunch and kept things rosy through a train derailment and subsequently being rushed to the Canadian border by a Hell's Angel who passed every car on the road...in a tour bus.

Pan Bagna (makes 2 colossal sandwiches)
Ingredients
1 baguette or ciabatta bread
black olive spread/ tapenade
1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
2 tomatoes, sliced
1 jar roasted red peppers, rinsed and cut into manageable strips
a few good handfuls of spinach or arugula, rinsed and dried
1 bunch of basil (don't leave this out), leaves taken off the stems, rinsed and dried
2 or 3 tablespoons balsalmic vinegar
olive oil
salt and pepper

Slice the bread the long way. Spread the olive tapenade on the bottom slice of bread. Layer the following on the bottom slice, in this order: chopped red onion, basil, sliced tomatoes, salt and pepper (be generous with the salt), roasted red pepper, and spinach/arugula. Drizzle the vinegar on the top of the spinach and drizzle olive oil on the underside of the other slice of bread. Put the oiled bread on top of the other piece and press down firmly. Wrap that puppy in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to a day.

I'm back

2007-06-04T21:58:00.000-04:00

from a much-needed vacation. When things settle down, I'll write up our vegan adventures in Montreal and NYC. For now, here's a teaser...a potato and black-eyed pea cake with chipotle aioli!