VeMoFo#3: Tragedy strikes the picture-taker

Second day of the Mofo, I'm at the Botanical Gardens here in Montreal for the Lantern Festival, taking pictures of the big pavilion in the Chinese garden transformed into a temple of tofu (they had displays everywhere, and soybean plants, and yuba and a girl playing the Erhu, it was great).  Upon getting home though........ absence.  BIG AWFUL GAP WHERE MY CAMERA SHOULD BE.  I think I even know when I lost it and that means somewhere in a field.  And it was raining.  This is so lame, second day of VeganMoFo, too....

I have a good number of backed up photos so I have a few posts worth of attractive things to show.  But for the sake of bringing home the tragedy (*sniff*), here's my lunch, as seen through the crystalline and gorgeous eye of the macbook camera.  Okay, that's sarcasm.  Actually, it still looks pretty good, but that's because I can still smell it.  I was mashing up cuisines and put the sweet potato & pear Vcon tzimmes with the chinese-ish sesame spinach soup from Martha Rose Shulman's Vegetarian Table book (with tahini instead of whole sesames).  Ringing in fall!  I loved it.

....

Ehhhnnnn who am I kidding, I'm gonna go buy a new one this afternoon.  *forehead smack*  

VeMoFo#2: What actually happens when I say I'll "eat out"...

Step 1: get distracted by one big surreal display of plastic crepes.  Can I eat them?  Oh absolutely not... but they sure are shiny.  It totally appeals on that japanese-restaurant-display level.  Incidentally I was with someone named "the Crepe" at the time... !

Some flavours are normal.  Banana Tiramisu, Mango Royale, Mango Supreme, okay, I get that.  

 

Spicy Beef Rolitos and Cheeseburger though... I dunno man... I guess it's good there are no animal products in there, ultimately.  And I seriously want to know who crafts these things, can you imagine that job?  

Then I went to a deli and ordered a boiled potato.  (delicious!)

This city needs a 2 AM vegan reuben like nobody's business....

VeMoFo#1: legomen and faulty wiring has EVERYTHING to do with food, probably

It's here, it's here, its finally here!  I should have been there at the crack of midnight to herald in the spooky awesome best-month-ever, Octember!  I mean, October!  Yes!

There was a blackout a few days ago, and the only thing running was some moody candles and yeah, enough dwindling battery power for me to sort through my old food photos.  Which isn't so terribly important to mention I guess, except for how perfectly it sums up my feelings about the mofo!  Blog to the end!  Wow, I'm really into this this year.  I don't even have time!!  But I feel like having fun, I guess.  Tell some stories.  Stretch my abilities a bit, maybe even go out for dinner or try vegan cheese, actually photograph some of my favourite veggie haunts, make an instructional post, make some food art, etc, it's all good.

Oh yeah, and after a photo like that I just have to use the alterna-Mofo-banner, letting one's inner freak fly..

Maybe I'll have a movie themed dinner!

Or finish this post with a picture of lego vikings as a really really incredibly roundabout way of celebrating the fact that THERE IS NOW A WAFFLE IRON IN THE HOUSE!

is good times ya ?

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

Vegan Vanilla Waffle Cones, finally in my belly

It's a thing of beauty, isn't it?  The "ice cream" is not the central player here, it is just frozen creamed banana with some almond butter.  No, no, the best part is the homemade waffle cone bowl.  Yes!  Homemade and still warm and about as thick as a crepe and snapping off into big crunchy pieces I could dip in the cold banana, dripping with bits of chocolate cherry sauce and toasted flaky almonds.... I love dinners like this (dinner indeed) and whatever inspires me to make them.  

I'm trying to remember what inspired me to make this....

Oh right!  It was watching Hubert Keller make a waffle cone something-or-other on Top Chef Masters (I think it was Keller, don't quote me on that).  And the fact that every time I pass an ice cream shop I basically just stop and drool at the buttery cone smell.  Thankfully Gale Gand had a recipe that's essentially vegan, so I whipped it up with a kind of MacGuyver-esque method of squishing the batter between a liberally lubed-up saucepan and a frypan.  'Cause I don't have a waffle iron (yet).

Check it out!  Method of champions!  Ha ha, well, its an interesting progression nonetheless.  The first one was floppy-doppy, not hard or thin enough at all.  The second was after I broke out the second pan for squishing, and it was much better, much more crisp.  Things just improved down the line... none of them were quite as thin as I'd like (I might make a slightly thinner batter next time), and they were lacking the little waffle pattern that I bet contributes to a high shatter-factor, but they were otherwise the real deal!

Leading ultimately to this glorious bowl of sweet sweet goo............ gone in 5 minutes, probably. :)

I'd like to try the others with a real ice cream, though, and I have a few cups of slightly-sweetened coconut milk in my freezer waiting for just a purpose such as this... does anyone have a favourite recipe?  It doesn't necessarily have to be coconut flavoured, but coconut-rum would be pretty cool.  

Vegan Vanilla Waffle Cones

(adapted from Gale Gand)

1 cup heavy soy cream

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp cinnamon

pinch of ground nutmeg

1 tbsp cornstarch

oil for the iron

In a bowl, briskly whip together the cream with the vanilla.  Sift together the dry ingredients, then add them to the wet and stir just to mix smooth the biggest lumps.  Let the batter sit for 30 minutes.

Heat up a waffle cone iron (I don't know!  Maybe waffle irons come with attachments!) and brush with a little oil.  Pour in some batter and close to lid to bake and brown.  Open the iron and remove the browned batter and shape it while it's still warm.  You can wrap it around a cone shape to make a classic cone, fold it over a ramekin to make a deep bowl, turn it into a taco - whatever possibility you like, as long as you're fast and use oven mitts to protect your hands from burning!  

Let them cool, devour with ice cream.

Eating the last of the perfume'd tomatoes, and other summer habits

Mmm... it's one of those mornings I grab a sweater and a coffee and just start working on stuff, in this case blogging.  To me that's so evocative of autumn, which has begun to be noticed in the air.  I'm supposed to be selling postcards at an outdoor craft show/sidewalk sale today and the sky is a dark dark grey, with a snappy chill and a risk of rain... So I'm enjoying the indoor lamplight while I can, and getting the most out of every second I can hang out in my plushy pajama pants.  (pajama pants being the best invention ever, probably).

It seems appropriate to blog about the last of the summer meals, in this case.  Cold refreshing food I might not be as interested in in just a few days... zarusoba being an iconic example.  Despite owning a package of soba noodles the size of my head, I only just recently made up the appropriate dipping sauce to go with it so I could eat it summer style, cold with nori shavings on top.  If it's still warm where you are, I recommend it so much!  And I insist that you slurp it, sucking up air in a perfect satisfying hoover as you eat, because it really does improve the flavour about 50% - I think it has to do with almost smelling it as you eat.

Perfect technique, so demure, and yet loads of delicious delicious air in every bite!  Now I kinda want fat soft udon, yumm......

This is a vegetable curry Pomme and I made using a lot of inspiration from this book, a seafood curry to be exact.  So it was a mix of turmeric, basil, mint, cayenne, paprika, pepper and lemon, which I thought was really novel (and very delicious).  Eaten with wheat berries for carbohydrates (defrosted from the freezer because you can do that), and a cucumber salad I made with chunks of ruby red cactus pear.  The seeds of cactus pears are hard like little BBs, but the melon taste and beautiful colour is worth it, like a poor man's watermelon maybe.

Of those occasional small-batch cookies I make sometimes after meal, these mint chocolate brownie bites were knee-meltingly good!!  I wish I'd written things down, but there's ground almonds in there, plus vanilla, mint, pockets of chocolate chips, and the texture was like 2-bite brownies, amazing.  Biting into them was a world-stopping experience, which probably means I added enough cocoa powder to the mix. ;P

Sometimes hash, just straight up hash is perfect.  Smoky sausages, in season tomatoes, little baby basil leaves, and enough salt and pepper to tie it together = wish I had more sausages so I could make this for lunch right now!

Finally, I'd had a tomato tart on the brain all summer.  Every week went by and I wondered when I would do it, if I would remember, if all the ambrosial blushing tomatoes would disappear from the markets en masse before I got the chance to make that pie.  But I did remember!  Luck would have it that I came upon a huge package of gorgeous organic tomatoes for a steal, and I hopped on the chance to bake them oh-so briefly in hardly more than their own juices.

I used a cornmeal pizza crust recipe from here, replaced most of the cornmeal with masa harina, spread the bottom with grainy mustard, thyme leaves, and drizzled it with olive oil before baking.  

And while I folded up the edges to make it more like a tart, I quickly found out that hand-to-mouth was the ideal method of eating this - it was a pizza at heart, and a robust and juicy one, too.  I still can't think of any way I'd rather eat tomatoes right now!

Oh right!  That wasn't the last thing, this is ^  Celine's peanut butter granola!  oooooooooooh!

I replaced the PB with a Peanut-hazelnut blend, used hazelnut oil instead of canola, and left out the chocolate and it's absolutely fantastic.  I hardly need to rave about how it melts away on the tongue and is just kissed with sweet and is full of toasty flax and is easy to make... because most of you have made this I'm sure, or at least if you haven't you should and you can have a batch of oven-fresh granola in less time than it takes to run out and buy some.  

Kind of makes me wish I had some milk or yogurt around ever, but a jar of this in the fridge will disappear from nibbling fingers soon enough anyway, I assure you. ;)

Next post: an adventure in ninja-vegan waffle cones!