Ethiopia

I ate Ethiopian food for dinner tonight. There's a restaurant on Haight street, really not very far from home, called Massawa. I think I went there once years ago with some friends, the same friends who treated me to it tonight. The time years ago I remember not being impressed. I didn't like the spongy fermented bread (injara) and I thought too many things had tomatoes in them. Tomatoes are usually avoided in macrobiotics because they are part of the nightshade family and therefore vaguely harmful. Apparently if you have arthritis you should avoid nightshades as well as they can exacerbate the condition. I don't have any real health problems that keep me from eating them, but my partner does, so we tend to strictly avoid them. We've been on tour for the last few weeks so I took the opportunity to overload on them. I had potatoes made up as cajun french fries a few weeks ago. And now this Ethiopian food, which really did have tomatoes in pretty much everything. I found I enjoyed the injara much more than in the past. I think my tolerance for fermented things has grown over the past few years what with our experiments with sauerkraut, amazake, and pickles. So this time I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed it greatly.

In other news, I am trying to harvest wild yeast. I am hoping to land some of the famous San Francisco sourdough yeast but since I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing I may be lucky to get anything at all. So far I have a small bowl with flour and water and raisins (for the sugar). I had read that you could use raisins or other dried fruit as a way to get it started but I don't know if you were supposed to take them out or not. Mine are still in. If nothing happens after a few days I guess I will compost this and try again, with perhaps more instructions.

House of Light

I recently spent some time in Austin, TX for the South by Southwest music festival and hence there has been a delay in writing this. The festival was great, if only because it was almost 90 degrees. I went swimming in a natural springs pool that was naturally about 60 degrees year round. It was heart-stoppingly cold, even on the blazingly hot day.
I also ate at a macrobiotic restaurant called Casa de Luz. Not only a beautiful calming environment but also an amazing restaurant and community.
The restaurant also runs a natural cooking school which was tempting enough to make me want to move to Austin. But really it was the food. We ate there for dinner and then lunch the next day. Each meal included soup, salad, raw veggies (like cut carrots, broccoli florets, etc.), brown rice, beans, root veggies, kale or other green leafy veggies, basically a huge amount of food. The best deal of course being lunch because you get the same amount of food for half the price of dinner. I also bought cookies each time (almond butter and ginger snap). The ginger snaps helped me survive my incredibly difficult and stressful flight back (weather canceled my first flight, the next day the airline canceled my flight!) This was all great inspiration to make it to my local (Oakland) macrobiotic restaurant, Manzanita. It was fabulous in the same way that Casa de Luz was. Now if only someone would open a place like this in SF. (Please!)

Rice Krispie Treats

Rice Krispie Treats were a favorite from my childhood. When I became vegan I thought I had lost the chance to enjoy ridiculous marshmallow-y sweetness. I mean, yes, there are vegan marshmallows. I've used them for making S'mores around a campfire, but I'm not sure they should really be used for anything else. They are a bit odd texture-wise, and god only knows what's actually in them. As a macro-vegan I'm much more concerned about what's actually in the substances I eat than I am about just eating a vegan version of something. I have since found the most amazing recipe for these kinds of things that will make even omnivores think they are eating the real thing (or at least ask for the recipe!) Plus these are super simple and easy to make which should be the point of rice krispie treats anyway. This recipe is from The Hip Chicks Guide to Macrobiotics, a truly wonderful book that everyone should read. It has some great suggestions if, like me, you are a sugar addict and some great ways to move into macrobiotics slowly and smoothly. It also has some women-specific advice which I found very helpful. In fact, I loaned my copy to a friend many moons ago and need to get it back!

Here's the recipe (pictures to follow later tonight):

1 cup brown rice syrup
2/3 cup almond butter
dash of vanilla
dash of umeboshi vinegar
Puffed cereal (I like this Puffed Kamut variety because it holds up much better than the rice ones do.)

Put all of the ingredients except the cereal into a small pan over low heat, stirring frequently. Once the almond butter and rice syrup have melted together and you start to see small bubbles, take it off the heat and pour into a large bowl. Add the cereal and stir until well coated. I also like to add chocolate chips (dark chocolate, so they're vegan) at this point. They mostly melt in the heat of the mixture but occasionally there is a whole one which is fine as well. This makes the treats even more of a treat, because, duh, chocolate! Pour the mixture into a greased pan and press it firmly to all the edges. Let cool for a while (or as long as you can wait). Then cut with a sharp knife.

I have taken these when traveling or camping because they hold up much better than cookies do (no crumbs!) and sort of work like little energy nuggets. I highly recommend them.

Under Pressure

Have I mentioned yet our new pressure cooker- "the Mercedes Benz of pressure cookers"? I was skeptical for a long time. I mean, really, how much difference can a pressure cooker really make? Yes, you can cook things faster but that's never seemed like a deal breaker before and damn, they're expensive! But now that I have one I am totally sold. It takes 15 minutes to cook garbanzo beans! Hummus is finally a reality for us without paying 5 dollars per container! (Damn you Wildwood for raising your prices! $4.99 for hummus is freaking ridiculous!) Not only does everything cook faster (which is so amazing- brown rice in 20 minutes!) but it tastes better too. I thought I was doing fine on the cooking front, especially as far as taste is concerned. Things tasted great to me, no complaints from friends or family either. SO what's the big deal? The pressure cooker makes them taste better. I can actually taste carrots and they taste great! Not boring and carrot like. They have life to them that is really exceptional and amazing that I've never had food taste like this before.

So tonight for dinner we had little time and motivation but felt the need to cook. Tomorrow night will be busy so we might end up eating out and twice in a row can be a bit much. Butternut squash with carrots (4 minutes), broccoli and kale (3 minutes), and brown rice and lentils (15 minutes). A miso-tahini-lemon sauce (mixed together in about 2 minutes). The squash was very well cooked as was the broccoli so maybe next time we'll go for an even shorted amount of cooking. It was fabulous- time-saving, tasty, and like a Mercedes Benz.

In the news

I'm sure some of you have seen this already but I found it rather fascinating. A NY Times op-ed piece by a farmer in Iowa, I think, talking about how hard it is for him to simply grow organic fruits and vegetables. Thanks to our subsidy of other commodity crops he actually had to pay a fine for growing food. Local, organic food! This is what people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for at their local Whole Foods, though admittedly Whole Foods may not be pushing actual locally grown produce. Instead the majority is grown by the Big Organic (as Michael Pollan calls them) companies in California. Even out here where the growing season is optimal and the hippie farmer markets ubiquitous it's hard to find actual local, organic produce. Thanks to our weird and twisted laws that help someone who is growing mono-cultures of something we put in our cars. Since when does gas count as food?

And did anyone else see this almost hysterical article about vegetarianism from a Russian newspaper? I think the title was "Vegetarianism proves to be perversion of nature". Wow! I knew I was perverted but didn't think it was because I ate vegetables. Reading this is like being transported back to the 1950s, when eating the roast after church on Sunday was just what you did and no one else did different. I mean, this article actually claims that vegetarians are wasting away with dystrophy, heart disease, and spindly weak legs and arms. If it weren't so ludicrous it would be funny. It's a little scary though that there are still places in the world where vegetarianism is not ok, let alone something out there like vegan-ism or macrobiotic-ism.

In other news, I made a split pea soup in our new pressure cooker. I'll have to post pictures of that soon. As well as steamed broccoli with a miso/ tahini/ lemon juice sauce and quinoa. I have learned the secret to making great quinoa. Take a skillet and heat up some oil and then brown some onions. Once the onions are on their way, add the amount of quinoa you want to use and saute it before you add any water. This cooks off the crazy toxic layer that surrounds the quinoa grains without subjecting you to many, many rinses. If you make quinoa the normal way (similar to how you might make rice) you have to wash it, and wash it, and wash it with a really fine mesh strainer to get rid of that waxy layer. This way you don't have to, i.e. faster, and it tastes great!

I scream, you scream

Today was a beautiful, sunny 70 degree spring day. We almost never get weather like this here in SF because of the fog issues. Basically if it's really warm in the central valley (which it is for most of the summer and other times of the year) that warmth will pull the cold air from over the ocean inland towards the East Bay and Central Valley. That causes fog leaving SF shivering and gray in the height of summer. So our good warm times of the year tend to be spring or fall, when it's not so hot in the central valley and we can build up our own warmth. Today was one of those days. Luckily today was also a Sunday so I got to spend the day with D. We made vegan sourdough pancakes for brunch and then went outside to test the weather. We determined that a bike ride was necessary but our usual destination, Ocean Beach, was bound to be chillier than where we are now. New destination: Maggie Mudd's Ice Cream in Bernal Heights. Maggie Mudd's is an amazing ice cream shop because they have the most delicious vegan ice creams you will ever find. They are not full of wacky weirdness and are satisfyingly fabulous. Examples of flavors that were on the board today (but that I did not try): Chocolate cardamom, black sesame, coconut pineapple, Memphis mud pie, and strawberry tequila. You can also get vegan ice cream sundaes, "milk" shakes, and banana splits. Heaven for vegans with an ice cream craving! I went with green tea and dark chocolate. Happiness!

Vegan with substitutions

I bought a new cookbook today. I'm a total cookbook addict so it's not a huge surprise. I spent the gift certificate that D. had given me for my birthday last week on "Vegan with a Vengeance" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. She's one of the authors of the vegan cupcake book I have that I used for my cupcake party. I debated for a long time between this one and her most recent one called "Veganomicon". It's essentially a Joy of Cooking for vegans. Looks great and has some nice coding of recipes so you can find ones that cook quickly or don't have soy or something. But I found that this one (Vegan with a Vengeance) has a more personal voice to it. I don't always like that but in this instance I think I like her personality so it works for me.

Once bought of course I felt the need to make something out of it. So tonight's dinner will be "Coconut Rice with Toasted Coconut", "Jerked Seitan", roasted root veggies, baked butternut squash, and sauted greens. Well, it won't be exactly that. Those are the names of the recipes I'm using but alas I've had to make some substitutions. I think substitutions are the nature of cooking and a sure sign that you've transformed your cooking into a higher art. I didn't actually have the jasmine rice the "Coconut rice" recipe called for so I'm using short-grain brown rice. There is a brown jasmine rice (and I thought I still had some left in the pantry) but this was not worth going back to the store. It also calls for finely grated lime zest. No limes, sorry. I don't even think I will put the toasted coconut on it at this point. Too much effort.

I also couldn't find seitan at my local market (even though they had some a mere few weeks ago! Damn you Real Foods!) So tofu it is, as a fine substitute. I didn't have enough dried thyme for the marinade either so I added oregano. And I'm going to omit the green pepper. So my real question is this: at what point does someone else's recipe become your own? Copyright people, can you let me know? I have to deal with a lot of permissions issues at my job. I'm curious about how it works for cookbooks. One ingredient different- is that enough? Different amounts? What about classic recipes, a la Joy of Cooking?