beer: it's what's for dinner.

i'm so in love with the beer brats i made yesterday, i worry all my meals might be centered around them. it's not unlikely, but i figure one day is too short a time for the honeymoon to be over, so i built a beerific dinner around them tonight. while drinking a beer (stone ruination IPA), i combined...

1 medium onion, sautéed in some canola oil,
3 beer brats, sliced thick and lightly browned with the onions,
1 mess of potatoes, cubed, and
half a small head of red cabbage, roughly chopped...

...with a cup or so of water and a cup or more of beer, to get the steaming going. chucked a lid on the pan and tried to distract myself so i wasn't watching the clock.

some time later, i got up and found everything was cooked just so. i chucked in a few caraway seeds for good measure and let things sit off the heat while i opened another beer. (credit where credit is due: i loosely based this on the kielbasa/potato/cabbage combination my mom used to make, though she forewent the beer and caraway.)

i served it with a little bit of beer mustard for the brats and a beer for drinking. i thought briefly it might have been a six-pack kind of dinner, with 6 beer appearances, but now i'm only finding five. i can't be bothered to do the maths on a dinner like this.

also, the picture is crappy and purple-y from nighttime and red cabbage and a geometry book. whatever.

eat your veggies, brats!

i tested joanna's beer brats tonight and they changed my life.
steamed seitan sausages, pioneered by julie hasson, is so incredible. combine the great texture with joanna's knack for flavoring (and a palate that sees eye-to-eye with mine - never mind the nonsensical nature of that metaphor) and you wind up with logs of straight genius. i tried one tonight, grilled for a few minutes on the stovetop and slathered with brown mustard, and it was phenomenal. rumor has it they're even better when cooled and reheated. i can't imagine.

i was hanging out with handsome william a couple weeks ago and he was eating some mixed veg for dinner. i have to admit i snuck a few bites (taking veggies from babies?!) and realized i haven't been including enough produce in my diet. so i sliced and steamed some carrots and quick-cooked some peas + corn to serve with my seitan and dare i say they rivaled the star of the plate. i will never understand people who claim to not like vegetables.

the final great thing about this dinner is that it will make my, indeed would make any, mother proud!

veganmofo #5: girlcrush.

i know keep saying it, but i feel like isa is not getting sufficiently jealous, so i must AGAIN point out that it seems terry hope romero taps right in to what fuels me, foodwise. okay, yeah, i know food is my fuel but i'm not talking strictly of nutritional sustenance here.

the onset of fall has made me long for hearty stews and soups. ever on the lookout for a reason to cook with beer, i decided to make a batch of the gumbo terry created for veganomicon tonight. never mind that i was in the late stages of a migraine and i have (yes, have...not done yet) a class's worth of tests to grade and 2 tests to make for tomorrow, on top of about eleventy billion other nuisance tasks. oh, wait, those aren't nuisance tasks. those are my job duties. i think i'm going to pursue national board certification, so i guess it might be a good idea to tend to them. but i need energy to do these things! and food = energy! what the hell do you think a calorie is, anyway? ugh, someone needs to go back and review their notes from high school health class.

anyway, terry's gumbo is no frigging joke. it's smoky and packed with veggies and has a stick-to-your-ribbedness that can't be beat. temperatures here in NYC are hovering around the 50s & 60s, so it's the perfect time for a meal like this. i'm sure i'll be repeating it time and again between now and april. ugh, so far away.

speaking of repeating, i cooked so late that it was way too dark to take a picture, so i'm just going to repost the gumbo shot i posted last year. (i feel kind of bad that i took 2 weeks off only to come back and rehash old dishes, but these are tried-and-true won't-let-you-downers. some things bear repeating!)

veganmofo #4: blugh.

i have been so uninspired to even cook anything for a couple weeks, likely due to a low-level cold or flu that i've been more or less successfully fighting off for the past two weeks. i'm tired as all get-out, but at least the only symptoms i've succumbed to thus far are a wee cough around bedtime, some minor stuffiness, and a couple of headaches. it's the being freaking EXHAUSTED that has been most prevalent, though.

however, yesterday i had a rare day of productivity. not only did i get up and do laundry and clean my kitchen before 11am, i also managed to go food shopping for critical ingredients to three of my favorite dishes from veganomicon. as it turned out, i only had energy to make two of them yesterday, but the third is on deck for sometime in the next couple of days.

terry's caesar salad is my most favorite way to eat raw greens EVER. the dressing is so simple it practically makes itself and when combined with some romaine lettuce and croutons, it makes for a salad that i not only want to eat but find myself craving. who'd have thunk it?!

and since autumn decided to make itself known this weekend, i figured it was time for one of my favorite fall dishes - pumpkin ziti with caramelized onions and sage breadcrumbs. (i don't know if that's the correct name, but i'm barely keeping my eyes open at this point, so it'll have to do.)

since i've been so lax about updating my mofo, i wanted to make sure to record my recent productivity. i'm not such a deadbeat flight-of-fancier, after all!

then i realized that i made both of these dishes during last year's mofo.
what can i say, like leek & bean cassoulet and gumbo, these two dishes make me think of jumping in fluffy piles of redorangeyellow leaves and wrapping a scarf 'round my head to run out to get a beer.

it's gonna have to do.

veganmofo #3: veganmofa

okay, so far not so good.

i started out the month on a high note, with that ice cream. but i've been really tired and uninspired the last couple of days, so not much cooking is going on. so i'm dedicating this veganmofo post to two awesome non-food items i've recently acquired. this is my Vegan Month of Fashion post. (ignore that only half of it's fashion-related.)

1. down alternative comforter

i've wanted to get one of these for a few years - at least since i moved back to the northeast. i finally broke down and snagged one from overstock.com and, MAN, am i happy i did. (note: dog also thrilled.) it's giving me all the weight and warmth of a down comforter with none of the bad karma hauntings that come with snuggling under a coat of feathers that were never intended for me. i'm stupid for having waited so long to get one. (for other reasons, surely, but this one is at my mind's forefront.)

2. faux leather jacket

again, been wanting this forevers. i keep my dad's old leather bomber jacket, but it's both beat up and sad, so i don't wear it very often. but i really love the look of a plain leather-like jacket. i found this one at urban outfitters online (go ahead, judge me) and took a chance. it really could have gone either way: totally sucky or freaking awesome. lucky for me, it was the latter. this jacket makes me feel hot. and not because i'm wearing it while snuggled under my new comforter, either.

veganmofo #2: my vegan achilles heel.

i'm sure i've gone years without eating a single marshmallow.
now that sweet & sara's are readily available, though, i'm helpless against my cravings for sweet little puffy pillows. so hooked am i that it seems perfectly reasonable that i had a marshmallow for breakfast today, then finished off what was left of the tiny $7 package of vanillas i bought only 24 hours ago.
washed down with a beer.
for...dinner?

had i the energy or inclination, i might strive to supplement the day's meals with foods that fall outside the realm of dessert ingredients.
had i another package of marshmallows, however, i'd be fast on my way to a killer stomachache.



is it just because regular marshmallows aren't vegan that these things have become so prized?

veganmofo #1: chocomint cookie ice cream.

i don't know that there's anything i can or need to say about this ice cream, but...

i'd like to first thank pandacookie, whose suggestion of using vitasoy peppermint chocolate soymilk to make ice cream during warm weather months has haunted me since january. i never got around to making it during the summer, but it hit the spot on this beautifully sunny first of october.

paula provided not only inspiration (it was one or both of us who decided that the addition of candy cane joe-joes was essential) but also constant reminding that this simply HAD to happen.

also, i don't know agnes but it was a recipe from her vegan ice cream paradise that i used to whip this up today.

making ice cream without an electric ice cream maker was simple as can be, required very little kitchen time, and resulted one of the tastiest vegan ice creams i've ever had. it was a little crystal-y, only because i had to leave to meet friends for dinner instead of staying home, dutifully blending.

i've been a little on the fence about winter's impending arrival, but this little enterprise helped me turn a corner today and i'm now looking forward to all the season brings. i love cooking in the colder months and really want to up my culinary ante. i hope that this month's challenge will get me geared up and inspired to be more creative and daring in the kitchen, even as i continue to learn about cooking's fundamentals.
i can't wait to see what other veganmofos have in store!

(recipe heavily adapted from here!)
3 c vitasoy chocolate peppermint soymilk
2 T arrowroot powder
1 c crushed candy cane joe-joes

set soymilk to boil, reserving a bit to mix with the arrowroot. (agnes says 1/4 cup. i didn't bother measuring...)
thoroughly mix the reserved soymilk and arrowroot.
when the soymilk comes to a boil, remove it from the heat and add the arrowroot slurry. it should start to thicken a little, noticeable by the way it coats a spoon. (it won't get thick, though. just thicker.)

since i don't have an ice cream maker, here's the freezing method i used:
after your soymilk & arrowroot are mixed, pour the mixture into an 8x8 pyrex dish. (i'd put mine in the freezer a little earlier, so it was already frosty.) place the dish in the freezer.
every half hour or so, remove the mixture and mix it up to prevent it from freezing solid. i used a fork and an immersion blender, but i guess you can also run it through a food processor or just fork it.
when the ice cream is starting to set sufficiently, after a couple of hours, mix in the crushed cookies.

enjoy!

lipstick-wearers for mccain/palin?

i know this is kind of beside the point of this blog, but...

i promised the masters of this website i would pass on info about their ridiculous and infuriating policy of donating $1 to the mccain/palin campaign for every one of these hideous lipsticks sold, so here is my passing on of said info.

i know it's small potatoes, but these people present themselves as environmentalists, yet intend to make donations to that campaign based on sales of "power pink" lipstick, which is apparently perfect for sarah palin while it also "celebrates the many faces of women as girlfriends, wives, mothers, entrepreneurs, corporate executives and even vice presidents."

if you should feel so inclined (as i did), please contact them and let them know how paradoxical it is that they purport to be concerned environmentalists yet are supporting candidates who are anything but.

for reference, the league of conservation voters' most recent scorecard gives john mccain a ZERO percent on environmental voting. couple that with palin's views that global warming is not the result of human activity, polar bears should be removed from the endangered species list, and her gung-ho attitude towards drilling in ANWR and there's pretty clear evidence that these two do not "offer a very balanced policy on the safety of our environment, both for now and for the changes that need to be made in the future," which harry maddox (i'm assuming the husband of pamela cronan-maddox, who runs the alchemist's apprentice website) said they had concluded after doing "a great deal of research."

sorry to go on. it just really pisses me off.
thanks for reading...and for writing to them, should you so choose.

about using cookbooks.

a reason to read the recipe fully and carefully before you start making food:
if you don't, you will finish prepping everything before you realize it takes 75 minutes to cook.

a reason not to read the recipe fully and carefully before you start making food:
you will not realize it takes 75 minutes to cook and therefore not be swayed away from making maple-mustard-glazed potatoes and string beans (VwaV). holy tuesday, batman!

crappy picture, but that's what happens when your dinner has to cook until ~9PM.

using cookbooks.

katie said we need to use our cookbooks more and i think that's a right-on idea. i've really only made select dishes from any of my cookbooks and i know there are some gems within that remain hidden to me. time to start digging.

recipes to try in the next couple weeks, all from vegan with a vengeance:

1. baking powder biscuits and white bean gravy.
2. potato-asparagus soup
3. mango summer rolls
4. tempeh-mango salad sammiches
5. brooklyn pad thai
6. strawberry-rhubarb-peach pie

i'll do a few here, during my last week of vacation in florida, and a couple when i get back to NYC.