The final weeks of 2011 were good ones for the meal delivery. I aimed to show my enthusiasm and gratitude for my loyal clientele by putting together some prettier-than-usual food. Serenbe Farms made this easier by providing a complimentary share of produce for the first delivery.
Note: authors’ names are included because I value giving credit. I didn’t go to culinary school; everything I know about cooking I learned from others (mostly their cookbooks). As a creative and competent cook I rarely follow a recipe to the letter, but the hard work of the individuals listed form the foundation of & inspiration for “my” variations.
Tuesday 6 December – primarily local, almost totally organic, & completely vegan
Mains
- pumpkin cream farfalle with double “peas” (chickpeas and petits pois), a variation on EA’s recipe
- red beans and seitan bourguignonne (Robin Robertson, variation)
- Serenbe sweet potato stew
- crimson cabbage borscht (Myra Kornfeld)
- sweet chili lime tofu over lime-scented collards and cardamom quinoa (VeganYumYum)
Sides
- shaved local fennel, organic satsuma, and pomegranate salad (Myra Kornfeld)
- maple-braised carrots with sea salt and maple sugar
- string beans and pickled onions in agave-lemon-dijon vinaigrette (Peter Berley)
- creamy kenyan curried cabbage with peas
- Hungarian cabbage with noodles (Robin Robertson)
Other
Serenbe sweet potato stew
seitan and red beans bourguignonne
sweet chili lime tofu with lime-scented collards and cardamom quinoa
fennel, satsuma, pomegranate salad dressed with five-year-aged balsamic
string beans with pickled onions
crimson cabbage borscht featuring local beets & their greens
cowboy cookies
Tuesday 13 December – locally-sourced vegetables, 85%+ organic ingredients, totally vegan
Mains
- seitan pot roast with local vegetables (Robin Robertson, variation)
- red thai tofu with bok choy
- shepherd’s pie with tofu
- ye’miser w’et – red lentils in a spicy gravy (Kittee Berns)
- tempeh & locally, hardwood-grown shiitake stew (Bryant Terry)
Sides
- roasted delicata squash
- nepalese green beans with coconut and mustard seeds (Bryanna Clark Grogan, World Vegan Feast)
- Christmas couscous: with dried cranberries and pepitas
- ethiopian cabbage, featuring handmade berbere and nitter kibbeh
- local beets with their greens in a five-year-aged balsamic reduction (Peter Berley)
Other
- chick’n noodle soup
- balsamic dressing
- chocolate chip cookies
locally log-grown shiitakes from organic Love is Love Farm; organic shallots, organic leeks
tempeh shiitake stew, a modification of Bryant Terry's recipe from Vegan Soul Kitchen
another view of this sumptuous stew.
ye-miser w'et: Kittee Berns' ethiopian lentils in a spicy red gravy. made with homemade nitter kibbeh (seasoned "butter") and berbere (wet spice mix)
red thai tofu with local bok choi
parting with these four bowls was slightly difficult, as the recipe was one of the best I've made all year.
prep for the beets: red onions, beets, beet greens; tarragon.
vegan pot roast, or, one of the most delicious things ever.
four sides: nepalese green beans, aged balsamic beets, nitter kibbeh cabbage, christmas couscous with pepitas "presents".
I’m looking forward to resuming cooking-for-my-friends again soon. Crack the Plates is a deeply fulfilling exercise, one that gives me purpose and the ability to work with some of the finest ingredients in Atlanta, in the service of truly delightful people. The last four months of 2011 were an experiment: a gamble on something new and wild and exciting. Pushing through made me a stronger, more creative cook and a more organized person. With this teaspoon of experience I welcome the challenges and joys of 2012.
more...
hello friends, another general living update. This has been a great week. Chattanooga treated us exceptionally well – Rock City was gorgeous and we had no problem finding tons of delicious vegan food (AKA Sluggo’s). Even the coffee shop had soymilk and stevia. But that’s all for another post. On Wednesday we celebrated our actual three year anniversary by trading homemade gifts, dining at Harmony Vegetarian for lunch, and putting up our Christmas tree in the evening.
I haven’t been collecting ornaments for too many years, but here are some I have/like:
glass cupcake, part of a set of four (also in white)
Little owls made of straw and wood.
A goomba, of course.
A peace dove picked up at my free sale.
A gourd owl from Nate last year.
A mushroom that clips to the branch.
Cheeky bumble tree topper.
Nate’s beer, a glass ornament found at a thrift store.
Owlie.
The most recent addition, from Nataleigh.
I wanted to get my tree up in time for the first dinner co-op of December. Every first and third Thursday I get together with a group of pals to have dinner at someone’s house. December 1 was my night. I made salad dressing (creamy Sea Czar from Professional Vegetarian (actually vegan) Cooking), chick’n noodle soup, roasted vegetables, crispy battered deep-fried tofu smothered in shiitake & portabella gravy, and baked apples with a poured-over homemade caramel sauce.
It’s just a soup and salad.
I love this soup! So easy! So warming! Onions, shallots, celery; carrots; broth; marjoram, thyme, sage, rosemary, a little shaved nutmeg; Soy Curls reconstituted, drained, and sauteed in a cast iron skillet with aromatics, shoyu, nutritional yeast. Combine. Simmer. Add noodles. Eat four bowls without blinking.
Roasted vegetables and smothered tofu.
Easy apple dessert: cored, stuffed with a brown sugar/flour/oil/spices/oats/nuts combo, baked in a pan of water infused with vanilla and cinnamon for 45 min; covered with a homemade caramel sauce. Recipe in the Modern Vegetarian (mostly vegan) Kitchen by Peter Berley.
Sarah & Nate
Elizabeth, Jacquie, and Aden
I love having friends over.
Today I met my new farmer-friend from Serenbe to pick up the beautiful order of vegetables they donated to this week’s meal delivery in return, basically, for mentioning that they have a CSA. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and refers to the system wherein subscribers pay farmers in advance for a share of the next year’s harvest, which is then delivered to a central pick-up point on a weekly basis. Serenbe in particular is worried that folks in our parts (AKA L5P, Candler Park, Inman Park, Reynoldstown, etc) don’t know that they offer a CSA. Well, folks – be aware! Serenbe offers a gorgeous CSA!
Subscribers have three options: the full season share, the Spring/Summer share, and the fall share. The full season share runs 30 weeks from late April to late November. It’s $770, or almost $26 per week. A week looks basically like what’s above. The Spring/Summer share is twenty weeks from late April til September. It’s $600. Finally, the fall share runs 10 weeks from mid-September til late November at a cost of $300.
You might feel a sense of sticker shock if you’ve never seen CSA prices before. It seems like a lot up front, but consider how much you put in the mega-corp pockets of Wal-Mart/Kroger/Publix/etc getting produce shipped from Mexico, California, or god-knows-where? $26 per week for gorgeous, locally-grown, responsible vegetables is a bargain. Further, Serenbe’s prices are competitive. Vegetable Husband, another CSA I like, is $35 per week for approximately the same amount of food. They’re the high-end luxury CSA in my opinion because they include delivery To Your Residence. In contrast, Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture offers another similar program for about $17 per week. So Serenbe is a mid-range choice. I am looking forward to trying everything – look for another update with recipes next week!
The fun continued today with a visit to Criminal Records to help my lovely friend Lillian cozy up the store with Christmas decor. Apparently I can’t take a fuzz-free picture to save my life these days, but here’s what we finished:
Unpacking, assembling, fluffing, and decorating two artificial Christmas trees; wrapping a lot of boxes; making it look festive. We focussed on the back stage area since that’s where A**hole Santa will be on Sunday.
While decorating, an Ars Gratis secret agent came in to drop off a piece for Free Art for Free Art Friday Atlanta. From the official site: “Free Art Friday is an art scavenger hunt that happens on the first Friday of every month. Participants make art and place it around town for others to find and take home.” Plus, it’s totally ‘organized’ (to the extent that it is organized) by an awesome vegan artist, Kenn Twofour.
A handmade George bill with an ancient White Christmas album.
I helped him nestle it in the tree. Within minutes of texting the clues to Twitter with the appropriate Free Art Friday hashtag etc, someone had come to claim it.
I guess I was maybe a teensy bit disappointed that I was in Criminal to decorate and not to get free art, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I totally would have snagged the Ars Gratis piece. But I got over myself… and wouldn’t you know, just an hour or so later I was walking into my favorite vegan barbeque joint, Burnt Fork… and as I approached, I noticed and casually grabbed an Evereman zombie sitting in the window!
It was like the most natural thing in the world to do. Ambling up to my favorite restaurant – oh, there’s an Evereman. Free Art Friday. Yoink.
Such is the beauty of Free Art Friday. Anyone inclined to make something and share it with the world is welcome to do so. If you’re famous (ahem, Catlanta), people will refresh your Twitter feed and hunt ravenously. But even if you’re less so, whoever comes across your art is totally delighted to take it home. Evereman is definitely one of the more famous street artists, and while I’m not too into zombies, I’m really thrilled to have a piece.
If you’d like to keep up with Free Art Friday, you should totally follow them on Twitter and like them on facebook. Here’s the full run-down if you’re still not totally sure what FAFATL is all about.
Now, if you’ll excuse me… I need to go rescue my baby girl Unix.
more...
