Orange food! Marigold, amber, sunset, mango, emberblush, citrus, tigerstripe, glow!

Oh, I am so procrastinating right now.  And isn't that *totally* the best time to blog, when it feels like a sneaky indulgent privilege to be able to write about all this stuff?  Hurray!  Southeast asian art, Foucault, and russian neoromantics be damned, all of them (at least for the time it takes me to write this, and then it's back to dandelion tea and the books.  which isn't so bad, nah....)

I didn't plan the colour scheme at all, but there it is.  Orange is a lovely colour to eat, cheery and usually sweet.  I may have mentioned the acquisition of my very first copy of Vegetarian Times in a past post - well, I made more than donuts.  The edamame and sweet potato collard wraps jumped WAY out at me when I saw them, basically 'cause I don't think I'd ever put those ingredients together in quite that way before.  There's even firm-soft tofu in here, and the only spice is cayenne.  In the end... they were good.  I enjoyed them a lot.  There was something odd about the texture I wondered about, but I think I was just getting used to edamame, which are way richer than frozen peas.  (I was an edamame virgin before this recipe you see - another reason to try them out!).  Ultimately I recommend it, although I liked the filling best of all over crunchy romaine leaves for added texture.  It froze really well, too.

Then I saw Smitten Kitchen's recent cornbread salad and deeply swooned over the concept of it all.  I think I saw it early in the afternoon and was eating it a few hours later for dinner, I was so jazzed about the thought.  So amazing this was!!  The tangy dressing soaks into some of the cornbread bites to make UbertasterBomsOfWow, and the rest stay crunchy and toasty and awesomely contrasty.  

Can we pause a moment to lament the atrocious photograph that I took of this salad?  

** moment of silence , snicker snicker **

delicious though.

I am a bit of urban harvester.  Just a bit, just here and there.  Kind of like Benjamin Bunny, and I spotted a green tomato peaking out from a trendy bar's front garden one Friday night while I was walking home and slightly drunk and I didn't figure it so bad to pop it off and dream of frying it up for dinner.  I see it as being a natural part of the city's ecology, you know.  And I plant things around.  Anyway, I fried it southern style and it was delicious!  Tangy and juicy and zestier than a red one.  Really good with egg salad beside it, too (ppk recipe, of course.  probably with extra mustard, if I was being myself that day).

Also from the Isa salad files, a very loose translation of the Prospect Park potato salad from the Vcon.  Loose, as in I had about 10 baby red potatoes and no desire to do any specific divisions of a recipe, so I just looked at the ingredients list and threw all of those things into the same bowl until it tasted good.  It tasted good!

These tasted okay.  I mean, the chocolate filling was the most intensely luscious sticky fudge sauce in the whole world and I was scraping it out of the pot like crazy to get the last smidge - THAT was amazing.  The cookies were only mehn, though.  Not so surprisingly, since they're just really fatty shortbreads that I didn't veganize well enough I guess, but anyway - Gale Gand's Orange Sandwich Cookies from Butter Sugar Flour Eggs if anyone's curious.  (Make that filling sauce, omg.).  And they sure are pretty looking.

And I tried to recreate one of the super hippy chunky crunchy veggie restaurant style cookie recipes.  You know the ones that are full of flax oil and/or spelt chunks and/or seeds and yet somehow are just incredible?  I kind of succeeded, kind of... okay, not really.  But I learned a lot about baking soda versus powder, and I have the beginnings of a fantastic sesame seed crust in my freezer right now... ha.   If anyone knows of a recipe that makes a big crunchy, browned around the edges cookie that tastes like a cross between a sesame snap and and oatmeal chocolate chip, do DO let me know.  I'll send Peppermint Ritter Sports, I promise.  :P

Liz cookified, plus family feasting (Greek, Brunch)

Hey guys, check it out - ancient cookbook envelopes!  You know the kind of cookbook that has the index with the illustrated alfalfa leaf and the recipes for brown rice pudding with apricot and kale and buckwheat egg-mash?  Yeah, the kind that wouldn't suffer much from being folded into something beautiful and useful, I think.  

I've been really into making envelopes the past day or two, it's pretty easy - just take an envelope you like, unfold it flat, trace the outline onto another paper and glue it up the same way - brilliant!  I'm going to use these for my Etsy orders from now on.  

Hmm, yes, speaking of crafts, I may have mentioned an art show I had a table at last weekend?  It went pretty well for a first time at active capitalism - I made 5$ (after table cost), got some buttons, met great people, and probably most importantly of all - got A LOT of insider information on how to make laser cutters, business cards, japanese sculpture-cards, postcards, felted fabric, etc.  That and............ a custom cookie portrait on a vegan cookie no less!  Yumm-me!  haha.  The woman next to me was also friends with Jae Steele and we went on about Get it Ripe and co-ops for a while and I got to try her awesome spelted blueberry muffins and banana-chocolate breads!

Yum, corn salad!  I have no idea what made this one so special, but it's what I brought for lunch with me to the sale.  I remember it was very acidic, with fresh dill, mayonnaise, perfect tomatoes, a bit of sugar (shhh don't tell), cayenne, cumin maybe?...  whatever, it was creamy and really good when the ubiquitous wasps weren't attracted by the sweet smell of it.  

I also brought these, and I can't even tell you how much of a wasp-attractor they were, but omg were they worth it in every way.  Donuts!  Like I hadn't tasted in years!  The chocolate-y ones I was especially pining for, and Lolo's donuts (via Vegetarian Times) are just the texture and richness I remember.  So fudgey, so so so very good.  The apple ones had about 3 different dimensions of apple in them, too, spicy and perfect for fall!  

It was good to have a box like this to pass around to fellow crafters when the rain started coming down. 

smile and the cashew cucumber dip will smile with you ;)

In other news, my mom and brother came up for a few days last week, and we had a really lovely time, during which it became obvious to me where I learned to sup and savour food like a real hedonist.  My family gets it!  

I'd had some cabbage rolls stuffed with cinnamon-tomato-lemon-millet left over from a previous lunch, so I decided to expand on that Greek-style and with my bro's help it was really fast and easy.  We ended up with the tomato & zucchini tofu fritters from Veganomicon, with the accompanying cashew cucumber dip, as well as some lime-broiled green beans, some artichokes, and olives.  We briefly bemoaned the lack of good thick greek pita to eat with all this, but then remembered there was a bottle of Riesling to be had (a good dry German one, haha) and anyway, that's all *I* needed.

Hi mom!  This is my second favourite park, but my #1 choice for picnics.

In the morning with a sleepy brother!  I couldn't really leave well enough alone when he said he wanted oatmeal.  If he really wanted oatmeal I would have made some afterwards, but I was so geared for brunch.  (I didn't hear any complaints in the end).  Just enough food for three people, it was Isa's basic fluffy pancakes, potato & sausage fry, steamed broccoli with cheesy sauce, and um... because I'm me, a firecracker-hot thai cucumber salad that I ended up just eating myself. I'm probably weird (no, I'm definitely weird), but I think eating a whole thai chili along with breakfast is a pretty good idea.  Kinda like coffee, but more burninating. 

Yummmmmm.  Those pancakes are so perfect.  Need I say more?

Oh, okay, just one more thing.  A quick bottomless apple pie made with the crust from Fran Costigan's More Great Good Desserts.  Amazing!  It's made with frozen oil and it's the flakiest darned thing I've ever managed to top a pie with!  Really easy, too, and stood up to my adaptations (mostly spelt flour, some whiskey added).  Makes me think I might master pies someday.  I'm still no expert, but this one was getting close... the apples were just kissed with 5-spice powder, ooh.  We drizzled it with coconut cream and it was very good.  

My sister, meanwhile, is at Burning Man.  :O