Peas in a pod

Good luck for the new year! Is it black eyed peas or lentils? I always thought it was black eyed peas that brought good luck. You were supposed to eat them on new years day, in my family usually in a stew. I hated them as a child and only recently have been brave enough to try them out again. Dandelion the Bitter Green heard from his mother that it was lentils, which others have collaborated as a European tradition. I'm sure I ate enough lentils last year and will again this year to bring me the good luck.

I tried on New Years Eve to make black eyed pea croquettes. I was following a recipe and everything but it totally failed. They stuck together well (which is the common croquette problem) but didn't cook all the way through. Not the end of the world as everything inside was either cooked or edible raw but I'm not a big fan of raw onions and garlic and flour. The failed croquettes were served with roasted vegetables (brussel sprouts, cauliflower, carrots, rutabagas) and brown rice.



As proof that I refuse to give up on something (or throw anything out) I decided to try again the next night with the extra croquette ingredients. This time I made what I fondly call "hash," a mix of beans and rice with lots of onions and garlic fried in oil. That was the stuffing ingredient for a stuffed acorn squash which was then topped with the leftover roasted veggies and a nice tahini-miso sauce. (Note: the very awesome new display bowl, a Christmas present from the Cheerful Baker. Much thanks!)



Saturday night I made a simple meal of seitan and chard with some caramelized onions. We ate this with more brown rice. The seitan was some of the batch I made before Christmas. I was concerned about it going bad so I've frozen the rest. I'll report back later on how that turns out.



Sunday night we had such a big pancake brunch that we didn't eat again until the next morning.

Monday night I made a barley and white bean stew. I am so happy to have a pressure cooker because all of the root vegetables I used in the stew (celery root, rutabagas, parsnips, and carrots) were perfectly cooked by the pressure cooker. And the barley too, all in 22 minutes. Amazing!



Tuesday night was another rice and lentils night. Roasted veggies, sweet potato chips and the silly movie Julie & Julia. I had read the book. I like food. I thought I would like the movie. But I discovered that while I liked Julia Child for having a fabulous life and living it with zest, I was annoyed at Julie Powell for whining and complaining about her life. Plus in the book she actually does get fat from all the butter she uses. The thing that I remember the most from the book were the times she had to make aspics, essentially meat Jell-O (blech!) Not only does it not sound good but she had to make gelatin from a calf hoof. Another reminder that being vegan is actually much more pleasant. Not that I mind other people dealing with calf hooves, but I'm glad I don't have to.



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This week's recipe: Sweet Potato Chips

This is super easy and can hardly be called a recipe but here it is.
Heat oven to 450.
Cut a sweet potato into thin rounds. I like to use Japanese sweet potatoes because they're not as sweet as yams or traditional sweet potatoes but you can use whatever kind you want. Japanese ones are more purplish on the outside and have white insides.
Put a little olive oil on a cookie sheet and spread it around so that it's coated.
Place the sweet potato chips on the sheet in one layer. It's ok if they're touching but if you have so many that they are all on top of each other spread them out onto two sheets.
Drizzle with more oil and put in the oven.
Check them every 5 minutes or so until they are starting to brown.
Flip them over. Drizzle a little bit of soy sauce or tamari on them.
Cook for another 5-10 minutes until they are at your level of crunchiness/ burntness.
Take them off the sheet and let them sit on a paper towel to absorb some of the oil.
Try not to eat them all at once or as the only thing you eat for dinner.

Halfway point

I'm over halfway! I've hit the 25,000 word mark on the NaNoWriMo novel so that surely means I have time to write a blog post.

Last weekend when Dandelion the Bitter Green was out of town I think I ate nothing but Mexican food, or my version thereof.

Friday night was roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes served in a tortilla with leftover rice and kale and carrots dish and avocado.



Saturday night was pinto beans flavored with miso and broiled carrots and zucchini, served in a sprouted corn tortilla with more avocado.



Sunday was more pinto beans cooked with chard, kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) slices roasted in the oven, the leftover carrots and zucchini and some more tortillas.



Monday night Dandelion the Bitter Green made the entire meal. I think all I did was boil water. And everything he made was delicious.

We had rice and lentils with a salad of steamed broccoli and carrots, fried tempeh bacon, arame (a seaweed), and sunflower seeds.



Tuesday night we had pizza from our local pizza place.

Wednesday night is pasta night. Tonight it's served with fresh walnuts (from the almond lady at the farmer's market!), fried tofu, and brussel sprouts and carrots with garlic.

Fast Food

We've been eating a lot of what I would call "fast food", things that can be made quickly and easily. Sometimes that means it's a very simple meal with only one or two ingredients. Sometimes that means we order out.

Thursday night was Thai food. We avoided the peanut sauce dish (which is always my stand-by) because it really is just a ton of sugar pretending to be peanut sauce.

Friday night we didn't want to waste any time cooking so that we would have more time to watch Buffy. We made rice and lentils in the pressure cooker (20 minutes!) and the awesome brussel sprouts dish that I've mentioned before. It was great and I highly recommend doing it in the broiler. Nothing caught on fire this time so I count that as a huge success.


Tonight Dandelion the Bitter Green has a show so I made some roasted veggies based on a recipe from a Vegetarian Times article: Sesame-Roasted Sweet Potato and Broccoli.

One pot meals

Ok, I know I've mentioned my obsession with sweet potatoes. Again last night I made sweet potato chips. They got fairly burnt but didn't stay super crispy (at least not in my lunch box today). I also made a all-in-one-pot meal (excluding the chips). I'm a big fan of cooking everything together- fewer dishes to clean up! On Sunday I made an extra huge batch of brown rice and lentils. I cooked 3 cups whereas usually we only do 1/2 or 2. This is enough rice and lentils to last through the millennium. Or almost. I've been running out of clever ways to use them. The first day I put it in the soup I was making. (Again one pot.) The second day, yesterday, I put it in the stir fry. Today? I might have to order take out. I'm planning on going to a book signing for Dale Pendell. Yes, of the Pharmako/poeia fame. He seems like a fascinating person so I am even skipping a show that D's band is playing to do this instead. I love getting books signed! I feel like a little kid about it.

I will report back on the take out options. It will probably be Samila Thai (I think that's what that place is called.) It's on Haight St. near Cole. They have pretty standard Thai food with a few vegan anomalies which are worth checking out. They make a fake fish dish which is pretty good if you like spicy. It's also better if you are sharing dishes with the whole table. On its own it's very much just the "fish". I think they have some other things that you can get with fake meat as well. I'm not a huge fan of the fake meat so after trying the "fish" (and determining that it was too damn spicy for me!) I've stayed away from them. I tend to go with the standard "tofu and veggies with peanut sauce". The one other thing that puts this Thai place above the rest is that they offer brown rice. Hooray! That's always the disappointment of ordering take out, especially Chinese or other Asian specialty. There's a mound of that crappy white rice that polishes your insides (in a bad way). I'll support almost any restaurant that serves brown rice. It's such a staple of my diet that it's hard to be without it, especially when white rice is the substitute. sigh.

Sweet potatoes

I've been obsessed with sweet potatoes lately. I just can't get enough of them. I haven't (yet) gone to the extreme of making sweet potato pie (which I have in the past). Mostly I've just been making sweet potato fries and sweet potatoes in with roasted veggies. Today I bought some Hannah sweet potatoes. Anyone know the difference between a Hannah sweet potato and your traditional variety? Me neither. But I do know that they are yellow-er and a bit more mellow than the standard variety. Not as non-sweet as the Japanese variety, but related it seems. Tonight I made the sweet potato fries as seen in Vegan with a Vengeance.

Sweet Potato Fries

2 large sweet potatoes, cut into a fry-like shape
1 Tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon of black pepper

Sounds great, right? I never have the spices she asks for though, so substitute I do.

My recipe:
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
salt and black pepper to taste

You mix all of whatever spices you choose with the oil and then add the potatoes. This method works much better than what I've done in the past- dump spices on the potatoes and hope they will mingle in the oven. Never works. Temp is 425F and then in theory it only takes 15 minutes each side. The book claims that you should use tongs to flip them. I've never had fries be so evenly distributed on a tray that I could use tongs, so I just take a metal pancake flipper and mix them all around. It's not perfect but if you do it often it keeps them evenly brown. And I don't know if it's my oven or what but everything takes longer. I did it for a good 45 minutes. But then again, I also like them to be crispy.

So go ahead and bust out the sweet potatoes. I'm telling you, they are amazing.