crack the plates

Let’s get this embarrassing fact out of the way: my bf & I are the kind of saccharinely sweet couple that celebrates monthly anniversaries. Groan, right? Well, generally the “celebration” just means a slight uptick in cooing at each other & maybe a vegan chocolate or two, but every once in a while we mix it up & do something interesting. As in the case of tonight’s dinner:

or

that’s

• organic vegan mashed potatoes (unsweetened soymilk, earth balance, salt, & freshly cracked black pepper)
• bhindi masala: okra with cayenne, ground mango powder, turmeric & tomato
• kitchen-sink homemade barbeque sauce (a slight adjustment to Isa’s recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, featuring blackstrap molasses, peanut butter, liquid smoke, tabasco, maple syrup, vidalia onion, and tomato) simmered long & slow and poured over thrice-baked tofu

In return, he drew pictures for me of one of my most favorite things EVER! Goombas. Yanno, dese guys:

In other news, I used a paint-brush to line my eyes with some electric teal with blue sheen eyeshadow in an attempt to achieve this look. I actually did a pretty good job! Now we’re probably gonna go raid the free kids’ section of the movie gallery. Hurrah!

I had considered tacking on this report as a PPS to the cookie sammiches one, but these seitan wings were so (expletive! expletive!) good that they deserve their own post. The culinary high point of Mellukah was definitely chef Aaron’s savoury fried bundles of gluten goodness, drenched in bright flavors. See the master at work:

General Tso’s-flavored

I swiftly pronounced these wings “the best vegan eating anyone could have in a 60-mi-radius of Richmond, Indiana, that night”. It’s the perfect junk food/every-once-in-a-while-treat for vegans & non-vegans alike, and, beyond the usual difficulty of seitan-making, it’s not that hard to pull together! Aaron used Isa’s recipe for “simple seitan” (itself a more manageable version of the recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance) from Veganomicon. Cooked & cooled, he

• allowed the seitan to separate where it felt natural, into wing-size chunks
• battered the pieces in a mixture of flour, nutritional yeast, salt, and herbs
• and friiieed them in about an inch of oil til golden

Mmmmm!!

Since he had to make everything early, he simply re-crisped the fully-cooked-and-fried seitan wings in the oven for about 12 minutes (turning halfway) at 350 just before serving. Toss well in your favorite sauce and serve.

Note: this is, without a doubt, perfect fourth of july/summer al fresco food:

Aaron keeps a blog at http://blog.amhill.net/

NOTE: Read the comments section of the post for further instruction from Aaron

Saturday afternoon: in a blithe, baking, birthday mood, monogrammed peanut butter chocolate chip cookie sammiches were born! Saturday being my dad’s 54th birthday, Mellukah, and close to my dearest Monica’s big day, too, I was inspired to make some scrumptious sweets. It started off simply enough with Isa’s recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance for big gigantoid crunchy peanut-butter cookies, when halfway through baking I decided they’d be cuter with some carefully-placed chocolate chips. And having done that, I mused, why not just whip up some vegan chocolate buttercream & make gigantic cookie sandwiches? And then roll the sides of the cookies (where the buttercream hung out) in festive sprinklies to make it sparkle? Hell yeah that sounds like a happy birthday! Check ‘em out:

The first two batches rest sweetly by the Good Luck Cooking Witch.

Note: I have some big ol’ hands.

I couldn’t resist a close-up…

…or the fantasy of cookies for miles…

M is for cookie, for Moskowitz, for Monica, for Mel!

Detail on the sprinkle apocalypse…

These friends were as fun to make as they were to look at. Easy, too! First, follow the great recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance for the aforementioned cookies. Instead of using vanilla soymilk as Isa suggests, I tried So Delicious’ new vanilla coconut milk. (Richmond folks–Kroger has it on sale now and with a manufacturer’s coupon, so you can try a half gallon for $1.75, as I did.) Perfect substitution! Bake cookies for about 10 minutes, pull ‘em out, dot with chocolate chips (pointy side down, if I may), and bake another four minutes.

The cookies need a good amount of time to rest, so cool yer jets and whip up a frosting. I mixed 2 cups of sifted vegan powdered sugar with about, eh, 1/3-1/2 cup cocoa powder & a pinch of salt, set aside, and in a large mixing bowl creamed a couple tablespoons of room-temp eBal (earth balance). I added the sugar mixture back to the eBal bowl and used my hand-mixer to blend it along with another tablespoon of vanilla coconut milk & some vanilla extract. Note: since you’re using this as a filling, don’t let your frosting get too runny! Add liquids extremely slow & cautiously, & err on the side of stiffness.

My kitchen was blazing hot, so I had to let the cookies firm up in the fridge. Once they were ready I smeared one side with a generous amount of chocolate buttercream, mashed ‘em together, and rolled the sides in a handful of sprinkles. If you eschew AC too, pop ‘em in your fridge til you’re ready to make someone’s day!

PS. To my dad, Adjua, Benji & my little brother’s gorgeous future wife: I didn’t forget your birthdays, it’s just too hot to mail these cookies! Consider this note a baked goods IOU.

PPS. Oh, and this:

Okay, as promised: the first in a series of vacation posts! Siting here trying to think up an intro, I’m awed by the number of pictures currently downloading to my hard drive & the volume of info I’d like to share…and yet tormented by where to start! It could be that I’m (waaaay) out of practice typing public-facing blog posts, but the more likely cause for my delay is a gnawing sense that typing it all up is a way of closing the book, of admitting that it’s over.

Pathetically, I haven’t yet come to terms with this fact. Now it’s not like I’m wandering in some delusional haze towards a non-existent Richmond Caltrain station, but I am still majorly wistful. It was just such a serene, paradisiacal place, where all my nasty stereotypes about California livin’ (erm, i.e.) were swept away as I was loved & well-fed in the company of friends & kind-hearted strangers alike. When I wept secretly on the connecting flight back from San Jose to Phoenix, it wasn’t, for the first time, because I was afraid the plane would fall out of the sky–it was because I was overcome with sorrow at leaving.

But ssshhh, let’s keep that our secret. As the sweetly-sleeping cats nearby remind me, it’s okay to dream of the next visit–but taking time to document the trip now means I’ll have a great resource for the future. Photoblogging the first day, shall we?

Landing in San Jose after a nearly four hour flight from Minneapolis.

Thinking the faraway green bits were maybe cacti, and overly worried I wouldn’t see any more of it, I snapped this shot.

Vegan tofu & corn soup at Garden Fresh‘s Palo Alto location, with the delightfully muggy consistency of egg drop soup.

Our dear, beloved friend Ben–who made our trip (and this first meal) possible! We are forever indebted.

The lady at Garden Fresh loves Ben, and it’s clear the feeling is mutual–she jotted down his standard starter, scallion pancake, before he’d even mentioned it! New to my scallion pancake experience was the thick, savoury black sauce that wedded the crispy sections of fried dough. Not to be missed.

Another one of Ben’s favorites, number 35: Orange Veggie Beef: Pressed shiitake mushroom beef, sautéed with Chef’s special orange sauce, served with broccoli

The hostess smiled approvingly upon Ben’s choice, but when Nate & I attempted to order, she clucked her tongue and ordered for us. If you are honored by the same treatment when you visit, roll with it–she knows what she’s doing. Here’s number 29, the Veggie Duck: Pressed shiitake mushrooms, tofu skin, onions and assorted vegetables with Chef’s special light sauce.

Her choice for me, 37: Basil tempura, arrived in a foil packet accompanied by a carved vegetable rose.

Tempura-style soy protein, red peppers, chili peppers and basil in Chef’s special sauce. Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, in a coat of many flavors (dominant: spicy). Fulfilled my need for FRIED!

After lunch we drove to the heart of Stanford’s campus and bumbled around. We discovered part of a bike wedged in a tree.

I took a lot of pictures of trees. Here, detail on some interesting, never-before-seen conifer.

Ben & Nate made like monkeys.

We ambled into Stanford’s free Cantor Arts Center, where I fell in love with Wu Changshuo’s Drunken Zhong Kui (above). Part of the “Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Ink Painters in 20th-Century China” exhibit running now through July 4, his accompanying placard read as follows:

Wu Changshuo, 1844-1927; Drunken Zhong Kui (1921), Ink and color on paper; Zhejiang Provincial Museum

In Chinese folklore, Zhong Kui is a mortal turned deity who expels ghosts and devils. An impoverished student from Mount Zhongnan in the early Tang Dynasty (618-907), Zhong Kui was honest and talented, but his repulisve facial features provoked the judges to invalidate his outstanding scores in the civil service examinations. Crazed with anger, Zhong Kui committed suicide by smashing his head into a pillar. The emperor appointed him Exorcist God posthumously and buried him according to the rituals reserved for the first-placed winner of the highest imperial examination (zhuangyan).

Wu Changshuo’s fondenss for Zhong Kui is expressed in his inscriptions on portraits of Zhong Kui by artists friends, as well as in his own paintings of the subject. We might have felt an affinity with Zhong Kui’s anger and disappointment, but he also likely identified with the folk deity as a figure who sought to save the world.

I also enjoyed this one, of vultures.

The outrageous foyer of the museum.

A presiding Buddha with hundreds of miniatures, tucked into a nook beside the lobby.

Tree appreciation outside Cantor.

Further tree appreciation. Palm trees! They are as impossible-looking in person as they are in print!

What a way to end our visit: walking across Stanford’s ostentatious heart to the car, I spied a familiar figure. Is that… is that…Eboo Patel? Is that Eboo Patel? Oh my goodness, that’s Eboo Patel! Having overheard my hyperventilating, he stopped & introduced himself with a flummoxed “Do we know each other?” We’d only spoken twice before, the first time in the fall of 2008 at Candler School of Theology’s fall conference on leadership, and again at Interfaith Youth Core’s 2009 Annual Conference in Evanston, so I didn’t expect him to remember me. (I also looked extremely busted from the fifteen hours of travel, which is why I’ve cropped myself from the photo–I’d like to think he didn’t recognize me.)

But who am I kidding. Eboo Patel, hero to thousands of interfaith youth activists, sees tons of bright young adult faces every day. He is my hero, and I unabashedly told him so–joking that a happenstance meeting, for me, is like the average person’s running into a major celebrity. (He cutely demurred to Nate & Ben, calling himself a “three”/ten.) But as founder & executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, he directly inspired my graduate work at Earlham, especially my 44,000-word magnum opus/Master’s thesis, ”From the full plate to the wide world: engaging young adult development through interfaith hospitality.” Indeed, an entire chapter is devoted to IFYC’s methodology. Since you’re probably not going to be checking out my thesis anytime soon, you must pick up his interfaith autobiography Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation–it’s splendid.

He was at Stanford a day early to check some things out–he’d be giving the University’s baccalaureate address the next day. Noting Nate’s google shirt, he mentioned he’d just given a talk there that morning. Fawning all around.

Only in California!

This past Monday night the lovely AL hosted a book club for Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. Appropriately, she prepared a veganized version of maqluba, the Palestinian national treasure, with brown rice, eggplant, onions, and spices. It was scrumptious.

I’m so grateful that the women of book club are remarkably, consistently accommodating & hospitable to vegans. The meal was, in fact, entirely vegan–from Hopi’s perfectly-cooked & seasoned green beans, to Karen’s savory chapatis and mind-blowing hummus (the secret is soy sauce!), Ellen’s salatat and Becky’s beautiful local salad with pecans, it was a joy to eat and share together.

For my part, I needed to use up some frozen local blueberries and half a bag of organic mixed berries from Kroger, so I threw together an old standby and friend, the so-called lazy woman’s cobbler. If you’re from the Southern US, or have ever seen Steel Magnolias, you may recognize it as “a cup-a cup-a cup/cuppa-cuppa-cup” recipe, so named because, apart from the fruit, it consists mostly of a cup of sugar, a cup of (soy)milk, and a cup of flour. It’s the easiest thing! As Truvy says:

(put on your Dolly Parton voice:)  “Oh hell, Clairee, you don’t need a recipe.  It’s just a cup of flour, a cup of sugar and a cup of fruit cocktail WITH the syrup, stir and bake in a hot oven ‘til golden brown and bubbly.  I serve it with ice cream to cut the sweetness.”

Feel free to try Truvy’s cuppa recipe, but I’ve preferred my own since I was a kid. (It’s actually the second recipe I learned by heart, after cornbread.) I’m pretty sure my mom passed it on to me after my little brother & I brought home some record-setting buckets of fruit from our field’s tangles of wild blackberry bushes. Here’s how I made it the other night:

cuppa-cuppa-cup or, lazy woman’s cobbler

Mix 1 cup of vegan white sugar with 1 cup of milk of choice (soy/rice/etc; I used the new So Delicious vanilla coconut milk); sift into this 1 cup of flour with 1 tbsp baking powder. Add some dashes of good-quality cinnamon and other warm spices–allspice & clove were on hand. Squeeze in some fresh lemon, or add a few tablespoons of lemon juice. Finally, gently fold in as many fresh or frozen black/blue/rasp/berries as you like. Gently now! Your batter may turn a bit pink-or-purplish depending on your berry, but that can hardly be avoided. Pour it all into a large greased glass pan and then dot with bits of Earth Balance (vegan margarine). Bake for 45min at 350!

A previous iteration of this (blackberry) cobbler, prepared from friends Jenna & Peter on the eve of their going-away:

The best part was getting to strap the casserole dish to my bike (with bathrobe belts):

Check out those sexy cleaned up handlebars, courtesy Mr. CC at Ike’s Bikes!

Sorry I’ve been away so long, my friends. I don’t mean to sound casual, but I can’t honestly express the depth of my regret in a blog post. I’ve missed blogging and I’ve missed you! Let me make it up to you by becoming a regular once more.

So much has happened since last we met here. I graduated with a Master of Arts in religion. I finished my 150-page, 43,000-word master’s thesis entitled “From the full plate to the wide world: engaging young adult development through interfaith hospitality.” It was excellent. I moved to a great new place, a little dilapidated, but full of sunlight and engulfed in verdancy (=much happier cats). I travelled to California (San Jose/Palo Alto/San Francisco) just last week and stayed with some amazing vegans who took me to all the best places. Other things happened too.

I also cooked a lot, though I’m trying to do more with less recently as I save up for whatever’s next. Richmond friends, don’t worry–no big ideas or plans yet, just dreams. Last night I made tempeh and sweet peas with broccoli in an authentic sweet Chinese bean sauce. It was, as Mr. Fox would say, superb. Look for pictures later. And of California…oh, oh, so many of those.

Be well!