crack the plates

In my last post I mentioned that I had helped cook for the Peace Form talk by Joy Ellison, former Earlham College turn Christian Peacemaker Teams nonviolence trainer and activist. She works alongside Palestinians in the West Bank village of at-Tuwani. Because of my involvement in a local oral history/storytelling project, I was able to borrow equipment to record Joy telling some of her stories in my own home today! As a thank you for participating in the Wayne County Girls Inc.-based What Is Your Story? project, I made her a delicious simple meal. The centerpiece: butternut squash soup, take II, creamy version.

To make this soup, I took my new food processor on its inaugural voyage! Nevermind the fact that we bought it almost a month ago and it has been sitting, neglected, since then. It’s in use now, and thank heavens, for it pureed beautifully. The soup was so thick and creamy that, upon describing it to a nonvegan friend, I had to remind her that no animal products were involved in its creation: just three beautiful garden butternut squashes slow-roasted for an hour + the power of the swank Cuisinart Prep 9. Behold!:

I used Isa’s recipe in Vegan With a Vengeance (that cookery-book stalwart) and added a maple-syrup drizzle on top. The only changes were a little more salt, a little less lime, and slightly different roasting measures.

Joy took one spoonful of it and sighed, remarking that while the soup yesterday was good, this was what she wanted in a butternut squash soup. If you’re able, check out her blog at http://inpalestine.blogspot.com to learn more about her amazing work among the people of at-Tuwani!

Today’s kitchen adventures began shortly after 9am (and an unsuccessful trip to the vet, sadly) at the ESR center dining room. Friend Bekah and I teamed up to make a butternut squash-fall harvesty-type soup for about 60 for Peace Forum. Today’s topic was entrancing–a woman from Christian Peacemaker Teams, who has been living in Palestine for some time now, shared stories of non-violent resistance in the tiny herding village of at-Tuwani.

The message was alternately hopeful and heart-breaking; the best part was how she described her Palestinian friends and fellow activists so clearly and penetratingly that I felt as though I got to know them through her. Appropriately, it persuaded me to take a look at my budget this month and see if there’s not a little cash there for her work, for these sisters and brothers who only seem so far away, but who, in reality, simply aren’t. You can read more at Joy’s blog, I Saw it in Palestine, here.

But this blog is about the food, so back to it! The recipe was a totally winged one. Here’s what we did, kinda, and you can, too, sorta:

• chop about: 6 lbs of organic carrots, 4lbs of onions, 10 organic sweet potatoes, a 5-lb bag of regular potatoes; a head of organic garlic; a bunch of organic parsley; a handful of garden-picked sage
• for a roasting pan, prep 10 huuuuuuge butternut squash
• use a box of no-chix vegan xGFx bouillon cubes
• spread everything but the butternut squash across two huge pots (I’m talking 50 servings in one pot, 30 in the other); season with organic marjoram, thyme, pepper, olive oil, and basically a shaker of salt; boil
• scrape the filling from the butternut squashes; process it quickly with some of the soup in a bowl with a hand mixer (no immersion blender, stand blender, or food processor required!) to get it sorta mushy, then return to pot and incorporate well
• season, serve, please 72 people (the final count) and put away the abundance of leftovers!

We served the soup with a gigantic salad (most of the ingredients donated by our local Kroger), some green beans and garlic, a fruit salad, and a soy-bean side of some kind. Miraculously, the entire freaking meal was both vegan and xGFx!

in the pot

Beautiful soup, so rich, and….orange?

For future reference, it would’ve been good to mix it up with a few tbps of good-quality curry powder, or with some maple syrup.

First, the most important news: our katze Unix seems to be doing much better today than she has since the fleabath incident Sunday night. (Worrisomely, she’d put her appetite on hold and would mew loudly every time we touched her). She’s in fine furry form tonight, though, and is currently sitting in my lap encumbering my typing. And oh, how soft and flea-free her tortoiseshell fur is! (Alas, we’ll still be heading to the V-E-T in the morning.)

Tonight’s dinner was generously provided by friends N & J in celebration of Nate’s upcoming birthday. As a special surprise, they prepared some sushi–Nate’s favorite–with avocado, carrot, and cucumber. (I brought over the materials to make a quick miso–red miso paste by Westbrae, cellophane noodles from Jungle Jim’s, japanese-style firm tofu, two cloves of garlic sliced thin and some kombu kelp.) Observe the taller N coach the shorter one on the wily ways of sushi:

Those are taller N’s in the foreground (second picture). Little N…well, let’s just say he could do with a little more larnin’:

But hey, who am I to judge? I didn’t even try! On that note…

In the interest of full disclosure (because this blog ought not be about my triumphs only, but about my royal struggles too), I will admit that I f-ed up not one but TWO desserts tonight. I fail so comprehensibly so infrequently that it is quite marvellous that I was able to do it twice in one evening. Still, I admit: I ruined some rice pudding by using short-grain BROWN rice and not cooking it through; mere minutes after wiping the apron of this masterpiece, I whipped up some chocolate pudding that didn’t set because my arrowroot was so expired it had completely lost its potency. Oops?

Le sigh.

Hope you’ll check out tomorrow’s update on cooking for Peace Forum: butternut squash soup that isn’t (DUN DUN DUN) …pureed!!! Better yet, just come have lunch! Tomorrow’s talk: “One Hill at a Time: Supporting Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance at Al Tuwani.”