crack the plates

On Sunday a bunch of Atlanta-area folks gathered at Sauced for the first Atlanta Vegan Drinks! Inspired by the success of NYC’s Vegan Drinks, @atlvegan Brett worked with chef-owner Ria Pell to develop a special menu and cocktail for the kick-off event. Brett’s hope for Atlanta Vegan Drinks is that, by bringing together a diverse group of people, we might expand and support our local vegan community. A little birdie told me he did some work on the next get-together today, so go ahead and follow @atlvegandrinks on Twitter for the most up-to-date information!

As anyone who was there would tell you, the first event was an unparalleled success. Ria & her partner Kiki welcomed us like guests in their home (their third home!). Our servers were delightful even as they managed a way-bigger-than-expected crowd. The back porch atmosphere was eclectic and inviting, with three sets of family-style tables that encouraged mingling as best as possible. And the food – yowzah! Just check out the menu:

Ticks/asterisks denote what we ordered – and believe me, we loved every bite! My only regret is not splurging for a signature cocktail… next time, next time!

Check out those big ol’ smiles! We honestly couldn’t have been happier. Thanks again to the Sauced/Bluebird team for such a memorable evening!

Last Wednesday I got a certain bee in my bonnet, an urge to cook everything in my Vegetable Husband CSA basket in a single night. It was inspired by the basket’s arrival, an already-full fridge, and the desire to cook a (pretty darn close) farm-to-table meal. Since the produce, from Serenbe and Jenny Jack Sun farms, was likely picked just before it got to me, I wanted to honor its perfection, and the dedication & ingenuity of those who procured it, by cooking it immediately.

Besides, there was like, nowhere to store it.

So what’d this crazy vegan do? She cooked her whole CSA in one night, of course!

this basket…

• head lettuce, Serenbe
• beets with greens, Serenbe
• broccoli, Serenbe
• collards, Serenbe
• sugar snap peas, Serenbe
• green garlic, Jenny Jack Sun
• mixed squashes, Jenny Jack Sun
• sweet yellow onions, Jenny Jack Sun

inspired this…

Vegetable Husband Tasting Menu

raw beet salad, local mulberries

lettuce-and-mint-braised sugar snap peas

summer squash with fennel, lemon zest, pepitas

broccoli and georgia peach with mango juice, black sesame seeds

summer squash mélange

southern-style collard, beet, and broccoli greens

Wow, y’all, have I been up to no good. Of course, like the good southerner that I am, by “no good” I mean EVERYTHING AWESOME. Let’s start with the little sign of summer I discovered on the back porch over the weekend:

Yup! That’s eggplant!

Ok, so honestly, this post should probably be about five separate ones. Over the course of around thirty pictures, I’m gonna tell you all about Sugar-Coated Radical, Atlanta’s only fair-trade chocolate shop; why (dairy) milk is whack; why all Atlanta vegans should eat at Ria’s Bluebird and/or Sauced; where to get vegan brunch in a pinch (and at a value); what’s up at Fernbank; why local raw food rocks (and where to get it) and finally, I’ll share two of my top ten foods of 2011 (thus far!).

I know, right? Intense. Hang on and enjoy the ride!

This post is brought to you by our friends the adjectives – as in, let’s see just how many modifiers I can fit into a single subject line!

Turns out, quite a few!

Last night’s dinner was boss. No two ways about it, just crispy deep-fried tempeh surrounding a bed of sweet and sour greens, topped with the now infamous greens-ribs relish:

It started easily enough – cubed two blocks of tempeh (I used a multi-grain variety) and threw it into some bubblin’ coconut oil. I recommend chopping the tempeh carefully, with a very sharp chef’s knife while cold for a clean cut. Tempeh can crumble, yanno, and nobody likes crumblies in the fry pot.

Cook til brown, turning every couple of minutes.

The greens came together rapidly since I had cleaned and chopped them the previous night. I offered my own (possibly confusing) annotated instructions for this recipe in the last post on kolhrabi, but just for reference, here is the original recipe from Eight Weeks to Optimum Health by Andrew Weil:

ingredients

• one pound of greens (I’ve used kale, collards, turnip, kohlrabi, bok choy…)
• 2 teaspoons of canola oil (I use coconut oil only!)
• 2 large cloves of garlic, minced (I use a lot more than that!)
• 1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes (ditto!)
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard powder (pretty much the only thing I don’t change!)
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar (or apple cider vinegar!)
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce (or wheat-free tamari!)
• 1 teaspoon light brown sugar (now you know I use more sugar than this!)

Wash and drain greens, remove any tough stems, slice leaves into 1/2-inch shreds. If using bok choy or Chinese cabbage, trim off the end, slice stems 1/4 inch thick and leaves 1/2 inch thick.

Heat the oil in a skillet (or a large covered pot! Less messy this way) over medium. Add the garlic and red pepper flake and stir-fry 1 minutes.

Add the greens along with the mustard powder and stir to coat with spices.

Combine the rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar and add to skillet/pot. Stir thoroughly! Cover! Cook covered over medium heat til greens are tender, about five minutes (more for collards, etc, yaddayadda).

***

Okay, back to the tempeh.

Drain the cubes on paper towels, sprinkle with salt immediately (Bryant Terry tells me that you have a very short window of time for the cooked tempeh to absorb the salt – don’t challenge him on this!). Transfer to a big bowl. Add freshly-cracked black pepper and nutritional yeast to taste. Toss merrily! Ok, done.

To plate, make a pretty little bed of cooked greens in the middle. Surround with tempeh. Top with greens relish, if desired – recipe to come in a future post. This is a great recipe for a date at home or meal-in-lieu-of-dinner-out. Dressed to impress, it looks special, tastes delicious, and makes you feel all-around fancy.

Please let me know if you try the greens recipe, and especially if you fuss around with the measurements. Andrew Weil calls it “Hot and Sour Greens” — I have willed it into Sweet and Sour Greens. Which ingredient will you highlight? Do tell!

Last night Nate & celebrated month twenty-eight by making Spaghetti-Nos and watching Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. If I hadn’t been so tired, I probably would have cried a pond – Nausicaa and I have a lot in common, and movies about compassion towards strange things always get my little vegan heart tied up in knots. (Google images: ohmu. Can you love it?!)

The amazing Isa Chandra Moskowitz veganised the childhood favorite to many; I knew my sweetheart meant business when he actually printed out the recipe and brought it home from work. I surprised him by gathering up all the ingredients and cleaning the kitchen so we could cook when he got home from work. Alas, no anellini – but I did find some super cute (and super tiny) mini-bowties. A big salad with tempeh bacon bits and Sanctuary Dressing (from Isa’s Appetite for Reduction) accompanied.

Cook’s meatball notes: I used breadcrumbs made on-site at the Dekalb Farmer’s Market. In retrospect, I think Isa would include these with the “too-soft” variety. Or maybe I should have used a little bit more wheat gluten than was called for (and kneaded more vigorously) to achieve that dubious lunchroom meat texture. I have not actually ever had Spaghetti-Os, but I think they were supposed to have more a gummy, punchy texture. These were definitely quite soft.

Sigh. Following a post about fake chicken wings, I fear this blog is starting to look a bit like we live on vegan junk food. But hey, the salad is bigger than the main course!! (Not to mention the fact that veganised junk food is approximately infinity times healthier than the original.)

I turn 27 on Thursday.

My sweetheart & I have a thing for birthday parties – specifically, for throwing each other surprise themed parties with costumes, hand-made (or thrifted) decorations and treats, games and prizes. I caught the birthday bug from my best friend Jina and her birthday twin Rahul, who always threw fantastic fêtes before they moved away to Ann Arbor and San Francisco, respectively. The first party I threw for Nate was Hobbit themed, featuring Gandalf’s fireworks, awesome ales, themed food (lembas bread) and a fully-dressed Witch King of Angmar; more recently, he got a Mario party with live-action Kart races (on bikes, with banana peels, water balloons, and attackers), an underground level, and a Yoshi’s (vegan) egg hunt. My party last year was Wonka themed; this year… Alice in Wonderland.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped in the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’

So she was considering, in her own mind… whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think is so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself , ‘O dear! O dear! I shall be too late!’; but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and hurried on, Alice started to her feet…

…burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell slowly…

“Well!” thought Alice to herself. “After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of falling down stairs!”

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: ‘No room! No room!’ they cried out when they saw Alice coming. ‘There’s plenty of room!’ said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

…round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words ‘DRINK ME‘ beautifully printed on it in large letters.

It was all very well to say ‘Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. ‘No, I’ll look first,’ she said, ‘and see whether it’s marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

However, this bottle was not marked ‘poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast tofurkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words ‘EAT ME‘ were beautifully marked in currants. ‘Well, I’ll eat it,’ said Alice, ‘and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I’ll get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens!’

‘And ever since that,’ the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, ‘he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.’

   'You are old, Father William,' the young man said,
    'And your hair has become very white;
   And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?'

   'In my youth,' Father William replied to his son,
    'I feared it might injure the brain;
   But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again.'

   'You are old,' said the youth, 'as I mentioned before,
    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
   Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
    Pray, what is the reason of that?'

 'Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
   Waiting in a hot tureen!
   Who for such dainties would not stoop?
   Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
   Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
     Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
     Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
   Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
     Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

…she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off. The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

‘Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. ‘Come, it’s pleased so far,’ thought Alice, and she went on. ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be done but start again. This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.

‘O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, ‘I wish you could talk!’

‘We can talk,’ said the Tiger-lily: ‘when there’s anybody worth talking to.’

…Alice didn’t like being criticised, so she began asking questions. ‘Aren’t you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?’

‘There’s the tree in the middle,’ said the Rose: ‘what else is it good for?’

‘But what could it do, if any danger came?’ Alice asked.

‘It says “Bough-wough!”‘ cried a Daisy: ‘that’s why its branches are called boughs!’

‘Didn’t you know that?’ cried another Daisy, and here they all began shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill voices.

‘Get to your places!’ shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began.

Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
      Long time the manxome foe he sought--
     So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
      And stood awhile in thought.

thanks, friends, for making this the best birthday ever! Miss Yuki, I am still living for your teapot flowerpots!

especially great gratitude to the two folks who pulled it all together:

Jacquie & Nate.

I hope you two enjoyed every ridiculously well-deserved bite.

Basically, this is the best soup. If you have the Grit cookbook already, you should make it now. If not, I am going to post the recipe anyway, so you can re-create this wonderfulness at home.

This is a (vegan) soup that will satisfy anyone – gourmands, unsophisticated gluttons, beer lovers, lumberjacks, linebackers, petite pastry chefs, children, the elderly, and, I would venture to say, even Gordon Ramsay himself. It won’t quite make a vegan weep at its deliciousness, but it will shut a smug, self-loathing meat enthusiast up in a heartbeat. It’s the kind of recipe you quadruple, put in a crock pot, and take to a family reunion or holiday dinner; sink into that armchair with your arms crossed and suppress a grin as Uncle Tony-Bob goes back for fourths. Make it. Make it now.

The Grit’s Scotch Broth (double recipe with some minor recipe changes & liberal commentary – you’ll thank me)

• 2 medium sized organic white or Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-in cubes
• 7 cups water
• 2/3 cups soy sauce (that’s a lot of soy sauce – use your cheap store-brand here, not that organic small-batch tamari you paid a fortune for)
• 2 teaspoons granulated onion OR onion powder (I’ve only used granulated)
• 1 3/4 – 2 cups dry light TVP pieces (like these or these)
• 2 tablespoons vegan margarine plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 small yellow onions, finely chopped
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2 leeks (white and pale green parts only), finely chopped
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast (NOT Brewer’s yeast; this stuff)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons good-quality dry mustard
• 1 teaspoon crushed sage
• 1/2 cup tomato puree (or canned tomato sauce; we used Kroger’s organic brand)
• 1 cup stout beer – I now swear by New Holland’s The Poet, but am also open to trying Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout or Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout (what we have on hand right now) For heaven’s sake, DON’T USE GUINNESS – IT’S NOT EVEN VEGETARIAN, LET ALONE VEGAN – has fish in it.
• 1 cup frozen peas

Finely chop the onion, carrot, and leek and put in a bowl.

Bring seven cups of water to a boil. Add potatoes, TVP, 2/3 cups soy sauce, and 1 tsp granulated onion; boil til tender. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Melt vegan margarine (Earth Balance), add olive oil in a large pot. Add onion, carrot, leek. It’ll look like a very crowded pan at first, but the veggies will cook down in time. Saute, stirring often, until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Can go 15-20, just keep an eye on the heat and add a little more oil if necessary.

While the veggies are sauteeing, put the flour, nutritional yeast, salt, black pepper, mustard, sage into a bowl together. Mix up. When ready, add this flour mixture to the veggie mixture. Incorporate thoroughly! For those of you who have made a roux before, this is kind of like the adding flour to the melted fat stage (and we’re about to add the potato-water liquid). Cook on LOW, stirring constantly and watching to make sure nothing starts burning, for a few minutes.

Get a friend! (Or just be really strong and patient.) Have you friend hoist the water-potato-TVP pot over the veggie-flour mixture pot. Have friend pour in about a quarter of the liquid. Whisk and thoroughly incorporate. Is it getting creamy and thick, like a roux should? GOOD! Now have friend pour in another quarter. Whisk again, thoroughly incorporating. Another quarter. Ditto. The final quarter. Whisk, whisk. At this point, it should be smooth and creamy like a soup, not thick like a sauce. It will thicken with time and heat.

Add tomato puree, beer, and peas. Simmer, stirring frequently, for 15-20 minutes. Serve immediately! I made it last night and it reheated beautifully today. A perfect spoonful:

Right now I’m most excited about all the Hanukkah goodies I’m going to make tonight and tomorrow, particularly the big Hanukkah Shabbat blow-out dinner at the JCC. I’m thinking sufganiyot, those wonderful fried doughnuts with creme or jelly fillings, dusted with powdered sugar…

Nate’s sister & brother-in-law came to visit last weekend. Like all my best friends, past & present beloveds, and intrepid family members, they got the culinary royal treatment. The weekend prior I went marketing at one of Richmond’s jewels, the Saturday morning farmer’s market, and came home with this bounty:

Highlights: Assortment of red, gold, & blue potatoes from David Reed, an elderly couple, & Earlham’s Miller Farm; onions from Preston; cabbage from a good-natured Polish woman who lived through the war (& has been farming since!); two peppers from the same, purple by way of green, with a slow-glow to red; heirloom garlic from Arden Hearth; heirloom tomatoes; squashes for a tempeh dish; eggplant for roasting; carrots from David for munching; jalepenos to give curries a kick.

Peppers after a luminous week-long vacation in the windowsill:

Incidentally, I mentioned this magic to David Reed on Saturday when I picked up a couple of big green bells from him. He had no idea! The ones he sold me for sixty cents apiece are slowly turning a lovely orange in the same spot.

Friday night I made baked tofu with sesame flavors, new potatoes in a wasabi creme gravy, peanut noodles, and edamame & fresh corn in radicchio. Tofu pressed for well over an hour + three days worth of marinating = intense saturation of flavor.

Saturday lunch was pineapple & onion burritos from La Mexicana, but that night was special. I had made fresh seitan a few days prior and whipped it out for a caribbean jerk recipe. Served with mashed roasted sweet potatoes (soymilk + earth balance + maple syrup + salt), and sweet-and-sour kale, a rhapsody in flavor:

Quite happily, this meal reminded me of one I shared with an aforementioned beloved at Calabash Vegetarian Kitchen in Atlanta. Success!

Lazy Sunday morning? Brunch! Doesn’t it look like these fluffy orange scones, studded with organic zest & dressed in a home-made citrus glaze, are about to levitate from the plate? Divinity!

The main course was asparagus & sun-dried tomato frittata, one of my favorite recipes from Vegan With a Vengeance (from whence the scone recipe comes, too!), and a sad attempt at hashbrowns. Clearly my line-cook days are too far behind me… I just couldn’t get ‘em crispy enough. Oh well, I’m not crying over one miss among so many successes! Especially when we just smothered ‘em ketchup.

Note: The scones also take a while (setting time for the glaze), but if you own Vegan With a Vengeance you’d be a fool not to try them. However! The recipe is wrong, wrong, wrong when it comes to the amount of flour you’ll need to use. Isa says 3 cups of all-purpose flour, but the dough didn’t reach the right consistency til I’d added around four cups. And when it says soy creme, you really can just use soymilk.

I hope Nate’s fam felt extra-special loved. As with Ayurvedic cooks, I deeply believe that one’s goodwill is transmitted through food during the cooking process. And while my kitchen certainly isn’t ritually clean, the intent is there. I’ve joked that cooking is the only thing I get “right”… not because of special skill or years of practice, but because from mincing to garnishing, I’m thinking about how much I like the person I’m feeding. May you be blessed with the same treatment!

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!