Is Chicago. Is Not Chicago

As you might guess I was in Chicago last weekend for work. I survived the land of steak houses without even eating a veggie burger! Admittedly I was only there for 3 days.



I like to travel with lots of food in case I can't find anything decent to eat, which was the case at the beginning of this trip. I made three hummus and tofu sandwiches which got me through the flight and into the hotel. I also brought a trail mix (I didn't make it but did mix it myself. I simply bought an unsalted nut mix from the farmer's market and added a handful or more of a raisin medley I love.) I also had Lara bars, a tangerine, and some dried fruit. This all came in handy when I arrived with a splitting headache and discovered that my coworker I had planned to eat dinner with was actually in a different hotel.



Day 1: Wandering around aimlessly and ending up eating at a Mexican fast food joint. I got veggie tacos with corn tortillas as they seemed the least offensive. I also went to a grocery store and bought chips, hummus, and fig newtons. Snack accumulation: success.



Day 2 breakfast and lunch: The hotel served breakfast and while I think I was the only person who ate the oatmeal I went for it. They had fresh blueberries but after the first day I didn't bother. Note to self: If blueberries are not in season don't eat them. I also ate potatoes and a small scoop of scrambled eggs. For lunch I had more of a break so went for a long walk. I found a food court in a mall that I'd been to before and got a make-your-own salad. I included chickpeas, cranberries, and as much broccoli as I thought could fit.

Day 2 dinner: I went to the best restaurant I've been to in Chicago, at least for vegans or vegetarians: Green Zebra, a high end gourmet place serving tapas style veg food. I ordered a baby leaf salad with long thin slivers of raw vegetables like carrots and jicama. Then I had roasted shiitake mushrooms rolled up like sushi with crispy thinly sliced potatoes as the outside wrapper. Then my final dish was udon noodles in a spicy sweet and sour sauce. I also had to try the dark chocolate hazelnut brittle.









Day 3 Breakfast and Lunch: Breakfast was the same, though I got up later and felt like it wasn't as good. That's what I get for waiting til the end of the free food time period. Lunch that day was served in the exhibit hall so I ate a roasted veggie wrap with a spinach tortilla and feta cheese, plus a bag of potato chips and an apple.

Day 3 Dinner: I hit up the highly recommended Chicago Diner for another vegan meal. Sadly I chose the most boring thing on their menu. (I think I was craving brown rice.) It was brown rice with steamed veggies, fried tofu, and spicy black beans. When they asked if I wanted a sauce, I should have said yes.



Day 4 Breakfast: Same, same, same. Lunch? Not really. Or at least not until I made it to the airport at 3 in the afternoon. I celebrated by having a pizza and a beer. The pizza was only ok but it did come with broccoli on it which was what really mattered.

Pro

I was not thinking "pro" as in "professional". I was also not thinking "pro" as in "probiotic". (I'm actually tired of having living things in my food and that's saying a lot coming from the girl who drinks homemade kombucha and eats soy yogurt as a snack.) I was thinking "pro" as in "pro-active". This week I pro-actively prepared sauces and basic ingredients for a dinner that I would make the next night. The result: Mac and cheese! Pizza!

Monday I made broiled tofu, cheese sauce, roasted veggies, and polenta squares. The cheese sauce was used the next day for...



Mac and cheese! Pasta with crumbled tempeh, cheese sauce, and a side of greens. I can not reveal the secret ingredients in the cheese sauce except that it involved nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and mustard. The recipe is from Veganomicon.



And the next night was leftover mac and cheese! With a slightly different dish of side veggies.



Then we ate Thai food take out while I did laundry. BUT I proactively made pizza dough that we used tonight to make a pizza with caramelized onions and garlic, roasted broccoli, and navy beans.



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Recipe: Caramelized Onions

1 large onion, cut into thin slivers
2-3 cloves of garlic
olive oil
soy sauce
stock (or water)
Dash of sugar (optional)

Heat up a large cast iron pan with a little bit of olive oil. Add the onions and saute until brown. Add the garlic halfway to two-thirds of the way through. Add soy sauce and stock and a sprinkling of sugar if you want. Or you can use what we did which is sugared stock (because we had sugared tea for the kombucha and I thought it was stock and added more stock to it. It's great for collards or something like this.) Stir occasionally to keep the onions from sticking to the bottom of the pan. The heat should be high enough that they cook but low enough that they don't burn. The goal is melty juicy onion bits with lots of sauce. If you need to add more water or stock you can, just make sure you don't drown them in liquid. It needs only enough to cover the bottom of the pan. If you add more just turn up the heat or cook them longer.

38 and counting

No, it's not how old I am. It's how many cookbooks I have! I received a cookbook as a birthday present (Vegan Brunch which looks awesome) and am thinking of getting another (Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar). If I keep up at this rate I will always have more than my age. I'm sure someday however I will not have enough room to keep them all. I already have a whole shelf for them in the kitchen. If it spills over into other parts of the house then I will know I have a problem.

For now I used my mad cookbook skills to make a casserole that I ate for an entire week. Yes, there's still one piece left and I was getting kind of tired of it, but it was the best thing for a week of late nights, eating out, and not home in time to make dinner. For example we ate at Millennium for my birthday:


And I ate at Samovar before my knitting class. So dinners were random and different but lunch was a delicious shepherd's pie every time.



On Sunday we made roasted root vegetables (carrots, rutabagas, celery root) with a side of almond greens and rice and lentils. The almond greens were easy and very tasty. (Recipe below.)





Monday night was the casserole night. It was based on a recipe from Veganomicon, which I highly recommend if you don't already have it. It was a version of a vegan shepherd's pie. I was going to include the recipe but it's pretty freaking complicated. It took almost 2 hours to make (compared to the 1 hour 20 minutes on the recipe. Liars!) We substituted Japanese sweet potatoes for the standard mashed potato top which I think really lightened the dish nicely. We also used fresh carrots and broccoli instead of frozen peas and corn. I know peas are traditional but I'm not into frozen veggies.



Saturday night I finally had time to cook again. I made stock and then made a Thai-style coconut-lemongrass soup. It was delicious though the internet had debates about whether to leave lemongrass in or take it out before eating. I left it in but didn't like it and ended up taking it out. I"d recommend either taking it out before serving (so leave in big pieces) or cut into small pieces and make sure they are cooked very thoroughly before eating.



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Recipe: Almond Greens

1 bunch greens (kale, chard, collards), washed and cut into pieces
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 spoonfuls of almond butter
soy sauce or tamari (to taste)
olive oil

Heat a pan with the oil and add the chopped garlic. Cook until the garlic is browned. Add the greens and a little bit of water or stock (just enough to cover the bottom of the pan). Let the greens cook for a while until they look wilted and almost done. Add a little bit more water or stock and 2-3 spoonfuls of almond butter. Mix the almond butter with the water in the pan and stir to coat all the greens. Add a dash or two of soy sauce to taste. Let the greens cook until most of the water is gone and the almond butter is coating everything and well mixed. If you wanted to be fancy you could even top this with toasted slivered almonds. But that's pretty fancy.

Teach your children well

I just watched this video of Jamie Oliver's TED talk. While I wouldn't necessarily want to eat the food he makes all the time, he has some valid points. Mostly it stems from teaching kids about food. One of the most powerful clips he shows is kids in a classroom being asked to identify various vegetables and they have no idea. They shout out pear when he holds up an eggplant. They don't even know what color the word they are saying should be.

One other point he makes is that if one person teaches 3 people how to cook and those 3 people teach 3 people, it will only take 25 times for this to cover the entire US population. That doesn't really sound so hard. Just teach someone, even one person, how to make something, your favorite dish, a special birthday cake, an easy soup. If everyone will teach someone, especially children, maybe we have a chance to reverse the obesity trends that we're falling into.

Watch the video (only 18 minutes long) and think about how you can teach.

A short week

I haven't cooked much this week because of late night activities. I did make a monstrously huge batch of curry early in the week. It worked nicely as a modern casserole when I didn't have time to cook (which was often this week).

Sunday night I made pinto beans with rice, sauted veggies, and avocado served on tortillas. I also made a chocolate pecan pie. It was kind of a combination of several recipes I found online so I've included it below.



Monday night I made the red lentil cauliflower curry that I've made before. You can see a similar recipe here. I also made homemade roti (whole wheat flatbread). Roti is simple to make with only four ingredients but still takes a long time to roll each one out (and then fold, and roll, and fold, and roll, and so on).



Then I ate that over and over again until Thursday night. Dandelion the Bitter Green made rice and I made a classic of roasted brussel sprouts, broccoli, and leeks.



Tonight I made a broccoli ginger soup with rice and navy beans. And tomorrow will be cupcakes!



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Chocolate pecan pie

2 Tblsp flax seed
6 Tblsp water
2 cups pecans
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
2 Tblsp molasses
pinch of salt
Pie crust

Pre-bake the pie crust at 400 degrees for 10 min.

Mix the flax seed with the water and let sit, whisk occasionally. Add the syrup and molasses and salt to the flax seed mixture and whisk. Pour over the pecans and chocolate chips. Stir it all together and pour into pie crust.
Bake at 350 for 45 min. Let cool. This was amazing warm but once cooled in the fridge it was rock solid. The chocolate had reformed into pie shape so let it come to room temperature before trying to cut into it again.

Lemon Lime

It's citrus season in California -- ok, technically it's citrus season everywhere but in California it's all local and fresh. I got a 3 lb bag of blood oranges at the farmer's market for $5. Someone at my workplace has a lemon tree and brought in a bag of lemons. And for the first time ever, we cooked with lemongrass.

Last week, however, I really didn't eat much. Thursday we made the broccoli leek soup that was the recipe in the last post.



Friday and Saturday night we had more of this. Sunday I made a vegan risotto (with lemon zest!) topped with fried tofu squares.



Monday Dandelion the Bitter Green made roasted veggies with a miso sauce, brown rice, and fresh turmeric red lentils.



By Tuesday he had left for a recording gig at the Magic House in Montara so I had the best Asian fusion dish ever. Leftover lentils with leftover roasted veggies served on corn tortillas.



Wednesday night I had my first sock knitting class. It was great except that it was two hours long and I had failed to eat a proper dinner before I arrived. I ate a bagel with peanut butter and jelly at 9:30 at night and then went to bed.

Thursday night we ordered Thai food. Friday night we ate popcorn. Saturday night we finally felt like cooking again. Dandelion the Bitter Green handled the lemongrass in a stir fry with broccoli and carrots. I made broiled tofu with a lemon- tamari marinade.



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As a new feature for the blog I'm going to include some book reviews. I recently checked out Supermarket Vegan by Donna Klein. I haven't made anything from it yet and I'm not sure if I will. It's a cookbook designed to help people make simple vegan food using simple ingredients that you can find at any store. So no tofu, tempeh or seitan. I think this is a good idea in theory for people starting out with being vegan. She suggests meals that use cans of beans or jars of tomato sauce, packages of pasta or frozen vegetables. But seriously, people, did you really not think of using can of beans before? Is it that much of a revelation? Many recipes, to save time, encourage you to use frozen vegetables or the pre-cut ones from the produce section. Yes, this does save some time but you'll never be eating in season with frozen peas. And you'll be paying a lot more to have someone else cut your veggies for you. If your time is worth that, then this method might work for you. For me, it's still going to be easier to cut the veggies myself. If you really feel like you have no time, cut up the veggies when you get them so that they are ready to use throughout the week. Get good cans of beans (I'm definitely in favor of cans of beans, so long as they have no added salt) and use them to improvise quick dishes based on the tradition of your choice: Mexican, Italian, New England. Freeze your own veggies or fruit so that not only are you saving money but you have strawberries in February (if you like that kind of thing). Go to your favorite store and see if they have a slightly damaged produce bin. Make stock out of those veggies and then freeze the stock in ice cube trays. You'll have small amounts available to use for sauces or larger amounts for soup. You can also do this with lemons. Juice all those fresh lemons you got from your coworker's tree and freeze them in ice cube trays. Once frozen put them in a plastic bag in the freezer. Then you'll have just the right amount of lemon when you need it.

It's soup time!

Last Thursday I ate at Manzanita again. It was lovely as always and very inspiring. It's the kind of food you could actually make for yourself (if you had the time) as compared to Millennium which is the kind of food you could make for yourself if you had a crew of kitchen slaves and several blenders.





Friday night we had red lentils with fresh turmeric and roasted sweet potato- broccoli dish, served with brown rice.



Saturday night we had leftovers because Dandelion the Bitter Green had a show.



Sunday night I made a whole wheat walnut french bread. It's the first time I've ever made a bread without a loaf pan-- very exciting! It was hard to get the walnuts mixed in but it tasted good. This was a super fast and easy recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.



We ate the bread with a creamy cauliflower soup, garnished with tempeh bacon and greens.



Monday night we had Thai food from the local Thai food place.

Tuesday night was Taco Noche! We had refried pinto beans on corn tortillas topped with roasted brussel sprouts and carrots and garnished with sauted lemony greens.



Wednesday night was pasta night. Soba noodles served with tofu, carrots, and kale flavored with almond butter.



Thursday night we're having broccoli leek soup with rice.

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This week's recipe:
Broccoli Leek Soup

2 leeks
2 small broccoli heads
several cloves of garlic
white miso
1 can of adzuki beans, rinsed and drained
cooked rice

Wash very thoroughly the leeks and chop them. Cut the broccoli into florets. Dice or press the garlic. Heat a little bit of oil in the bottom of a soup pot. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until browned. Add the leeks and stir to coat with oil. Add a little bit of stock or water to just cover the bottom of the pan and a dash or two of soy sauce. Let the leeks and garlic simmer in this stock for a minute or two until wilted. Then add the broccoli and more stock, enough to cover the broccoli. Bring to a boil and then let simmer on low until the broccoli is easily pierced with a fork.

Take the pot off the heat and take out a small amount of the liquid. You'll use this to mix the miso. Blend the soup with an immersion hand blender. (Or blend in batches in a blender or don't blend at all.) Mix 3-4 scoops of miso with the soup liquid. Return the pot to the stove and add the miso and the can of beans. Add two to three scoops of rice. Taste and add more soy sauce or pepper as desired.