More Root Vegetables, Please!

It's that time of year. I long for the farmers' markets. Our box of (mostly local) produce comes and I haul turnips, rutabagas, potatoes, storage apples, carrots and so on into the kitchen....and then stare at the abundance for a while.

One of my standbys is The Winter Vegetarian by Darra Goldstein, which, beyond having fantastic easily veganised recipes suitable for a northern climate, is a wonderful read full of food history and stories. It's a cuddle up in the bleak weather treat.

However, looking for new inspiration and building on my experience with the best salad ever a couple of years ago (a strawberry and onion chutney at an Indian restaurant), lately I've found that one of the most delightful ways to face root vegetables is east. A lot of south asian cuisine actually lends itself really well to root vegetables other than the usual potatoes and carrots. Try turnips simmered in a tomato based sauce with Indian spices and you'll see what I mean. This might be obvious for a lot of people, but it was such a welcome discovery for me that I'm kicking myself for not being more adventurous with my rutabagas sooner :-)


So, I introduce to you my very own grated celery root and apple salad with black mustard seed dressing:

Combine:

1 smallish celery root, peeled and grated
4-5 medium apples, cored and thinly sliced
juice from half a lemon
1 or 2 green onions, chopped
about 1 teaspoon finely grated ginger

Toast a couple of teaspoons of black mustard seeds in a couple of tablespoons of oil (I used canola) until they start popping (remove before they explode all over your kitchen!) and pour the warm dressing on top on the salad. Mix well and salt to taste.

Ta-da!

Preparing for The Bump: Food

Our freezer, which was on a power bar (brilliant, I know), was turned off accidentally (I blame the cats, as they can't defend themselves). There was very little to rescue by the time we noticed what was going on. So, start all over again, right?

Thinking ahead to the very likely scenario of our family resorting to all-takeout-all-the-time when The Bump is born, and realising that in reality I prefer the taste (and cost!) of our homemade food, I've implemented a little planning that's actually been pretty easy so far.

Anything that I can make double batches of that freezes easily I'm doing now. This also has the added benefit of me not having to negotiate take-out ingredients, especially when I'll be tired with new baby and my defenses are down and I'm inclined to say "whatever, I don't care, I just need to eat something, damn the consequences!" :-)

Now, Mr. S. is a great cook, and I'll be able to rely on him to cook for us too, but some of this has to do with budget as well. I'm really really looking forward to the four months that he's taking in paternity leave, and wouldn't change that for the world. It also means that there will be a cut in funds to be creatively confronted for those four months, which is fine by me.

And it allows me to start playing in a small way with something I just learned from one of the new people who helps cook in our community kitchen for the free lunches on Tuesdays. We always prepare really good food with enough options so that no matter who walks in, there will be something to eat for them, carnivores and vegan celiac freaks like me alike. We do have budget and availability to consider, and we're trying to do what little we can to ease people into to the idea of eating seasonally and frugally. But then this new person (who is a phenomenal cook) comes in and starts asking if we have things like cream and cheese and sour cream! The decadence! The cost! :-) However, he made a really good point: Everyone deserves the best food we can possibly make, presented in a manner pleasing to the eye, because that's a way of feeding people too. So we've been making a little extra effort with presentation, which makes a bigger impact, even on me as a cook, than I imagined. We all know this, right? Any menu at a good restaurant teases you with the description and presentation of the food, not just what shows up on your plate. "Smoked chipotle chili" sounds better than just "chili". And that extra effort shows respect and consideration for the person eating the food.

So, after all that, what's the point? I guess when I look into my freezer, instead of trying to navigate unlabeled food of dubious origin dumped unceremoniously in a rush before it goes bad in the fridge, I think it'll be nicer to see things like this:


Even the cooks need to nourish their souls :-)

The Litterless Lunch and Food Fit for a...

King? Queen? Sultan? A hungry kid and her mom.

Today is Wednesday, which means we have lunch at Sultan's after swimming lessons at the community centre. We are fortunate to have an amazing network of community centres in Toronto which provide an astonishing array of classes for large and small for very little money. We are also fortunate to have people like Tamara and Samer who provide the yummiest falafel ever, not to mention homemade lentil soup, vegetables with garlic sauce, and other delectable handmade Jordanian food (vegan and gluten-free not even on purpose!)....mmmmm.....it's only 8:45 in the morning and yet I crave already.....that's Tamara walking away in the picture below, protesting the picture :-)


Safiya has been taking classes at this particular community centre for a couple of years, so it is a ritual and delight to walk in at lunchtime. She orders "the usual" and has started being in charge of the money, and we chat with Tamara and Samer and watch Danforth Avenue life pass by, usually playing "I Spy" as we eat.


That white sauce on the vegetables is the garlic sauce. It's basically just garlic and oil blended together. Soooooo good.


This Wednesday ritual has also provided me with an opportunity to practice and perfect the litterless lunch. We try to eat mostly at home, but it would be foolish to pass up good Toronto food and the opportunity to support our small restauranteurs, so I always carry our water bottle and cutlery roll with us. And now, I've added a couple of tiffins (got them here, but I'm sure there are many places to get them) and, on Wednesdays, a lug-a-mug (Tamara makes Safiya a special sweet black tea with fresh mint that we savour on the way home). At Sultan's they gladly fill up the tiffens instead of the foam one-use dishes that are offered, as do most restaurants if you ask nicely and just emphasize that you're weird that way :-) Or, even better, with a smile say that you're trying out the first "R"; the reduce one. Most of the time no explanation is necessary, which is great.


The tiffins took a while to take, as with any new habit, but they're perfect for picnics, which we will be doing a lot more of as the weather gets warmer, and, also important, leftovers from restaurants, even ones that are sit-down with china (apparently if you have kids, you have left-overs :-) I don't know the energy input required to make these, but they're light, unbreakable, I can pass them down to Safiya, and they're better by leaps and bounds than recycling, which also requires high energy input and doesn't always happen as it's supposed to. Sometimes the recycling thing seems to me to be just a salve on the eco-conscious, kind of like buying indulgences were to the church in the Middle Ages.

So, if you're in Toronto, say hi to Tamara and Samer at Sultan's, which is at the north-east corner of Main Street and Danforth Avenue. And bring your tiffin :-)

Let's Start the Year with Crepes

Happy fifth day of the New Year! To start off the year right, I want to thank everyone who sent warm wishes through here recently; each of those was a wonderful gift, and I'm so fortunate to be surrounded by you lovely people.

Now, to dive right in. There is a reason why the empty plate in the mundane scene above is important. I ate a stack of crepes. And then I called Mr. S. at work to tell him that I'd eaten a stack of crepes.

Mr. S. is now used to me randomly calling him at work with news like this. That's because this past fall I'd finally figured out why I've had almost daily stomachaches since my early teens. Stomachaches sometimes so severe that when Mr. S. and I were first together he would insist that I needed to go the hospital and I would insist that I was fine and that it happened all the time and it was no big deal.

I've got celiac disease. (We're still testing, but it's pretty sure.) I haven't said anything about it here yet because I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to talk about the crying in the kitchen, the confidence shattered (if I can make vegan Mennonite food, I can bake anything, right?), the frustration over all the work done to eat local, over the fact that there is no way that rice is local to Toronto, and the throwing of the stupid cookbooks with their serious recommendations that I shouldn't try baking until at least 6 months after stopping eating gluten so that I wouldn't remember what bread really tastes like.


After the success with crepes this morning, I was ready, and more importantly, I felt moved to say something, just in case there's someone else out there throwing cookbooks and eating only naked salads at restaurants (gluten is in f-in' everything). In case there's just one other vegan-gluten intolerant-locavore out there, just to say that it will be o.k. (Bear with me here while I sound like a bad 80's self-help book....)

It will be o.k. mostly because of amazing people like Karina at Gluten-Free-Goddess. (Thank the heavens for the internet.) It will be o.k. because buckwheat, chickpea flour, and corn are local, and because quinoa and amaranth someday could be. It will be o.k. because right now rice is my medicine, and I'm pretty sure no-one's advocating local medicine (thank goodness!) And, very importantly, it will be o.k. because Pizza Pizza has a gluten free crust.

I was always so tired, fuzzy-headed, and worse, always always fighting that ball of irritability in my core. I had cramps, stomachaches, and Mr. S.'s favourite, gas that would gas a skunk out of an outhouse :-) For the first, oh, 16 days after starting to not eat gluten, I would call Mr. S. at work: "Guess what?" What? "I don't have a stomachache today!" and I'd gleefully hang up.

So, to finally share the celebration, here's the crepe recipe, adapted from Veganomicon (which is kind of ironic, because it was the hours of agony back in July after the chickpea cutlets, made from vital wheat gluten, that tipped me off):

the amazing incredible gluten free vegan buckwheat crepes

1 1/2 cups soy or rice milk
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup gluten-free flour (I keep a homemade blend of 1/2 brown rice flour, then arrowroot/sorghum/tapioca/quinoa flour to make up the other half - you generally need some starch and some protein when making a blend)
1/4 cup chickpea flour
1 Tablespoon arrowroot flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine everything, whisk/beat until smooth. Pour into an airtight container (I use a large jar for easy pouring) and let sit in the fridge, preferably overnight. When ready to cook the crepes, stir briefly (or shake the jar) if ingredients have separated.

This batter will be more viscous than usual wheat based batter. They say that when making crepes, the first crepe or two must be sacrificed, but we have a trick that works well (on our well-seasoned cast iron pan, anyway). When the pan is nice and hot (medium to medium-high heat, depending on your stove - a sprinkle of water should dance), add a little oil (a teaspoon) and coat the pan using a pastry brush. The bristles get sacrificed a bit, but the crepes will never stick and seem to always cook evenly, even on the first go.

Pour 1/4 to 1/3 cup in the pan, swirl around, then cook until there are bubbles showing and the top is mostly dry - the edges should be starting to lift. Flip, cook a little more, and voila! Perfect crepes!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And for a good laugh (mixed with a few tears) for all you proud food freaks out there (of any ilk), I just found this list. Enjoy, and happy eating!

A Golden International Breakfast

French toast, Turkish coffee, and Indian chickpea flour "crepes" with ginger, garlic and fennel seed potato filling - that is the perfect Saturday morning breakfast. And, don't forget the last of the homemade mango chutney so gratefully received from my friend Kat.


The French toast was mainly for Safiya and Mr. S.; it's a Saturday morning ritual. The rest was my indulgence - I've been playing around with a lot of different grains lately (and some not even grains!), making bread-like stuff. The chickpea flour crepes are to die for; savoury, silky on top and lightly crisp on the bottom, and you don't even have to flip them! I'm hoping to venture into bean-based flatbread territory soon, using one of my favourite cookbooks, Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Coooking.


Some plain leftover potatoes were transformed into a better version of homefries ;-) using one of my favourite recipes, sookhe aloo ("dry" potatoes with ginger and garlic), from Jaffrey's Indian Cooking, and voila, a golden warming breakfast on a chilly almost-winter day. They're so good (we find the fennel seeds essential and put extra in, and will also substitute anise seeds if there is a we-have-no-fennel-seeds emergency), that I'm trying to share the recipe here; if you can make it out, it's worth it!


For breakfast, lunch, or dinner.... :-)


Note: thank you, Google! Here's the (almost-identical) recipe for the potatoes. And here's the chickpea-flour pancakes (although in Jaffrey's cookbook there is much sprinkling of oil around and on top on the pancakes after they're poured :-) Enjoy!

A Project That Will Grow...

Ooooo, I've been sitting on this one for a while :-) Now that there's an official introduction out there, I finally get to show my excitement here! I just wanted to make sure that it was really going to happen, and not let anyone down, including myself ;-)

There are a couple of intersecting spheres of activity and ideas here, so I'll do an old-fashioned narrative to straighten things out. Sit down, grab a coffee.

It started with a walk. Good things often do. Late last summer, that is, in 2007, on the way home from a visit to the park, my friend Katharine, the kids and I stopped to talk to a lady who had a very nice pear tree in her front yard. Not an astounding pear tree, but a very nice, abundant pear tree. We complimented (and by that I mean envied) her tree, she said that the landlord used to pick it but no longer did, and that maybe someone she knew was going to come by and pick it, but if not the pears would fall and. would. go. to. waste.

Arg! The Mennonite part of my heart contracted in pain at the thought of that food going to waste, and more and more I started to notice bags of apples and pears being brought to the curb on Tuesday mornings (garbage day) when Safiya and I would be walking to the East York farmers market to buy...apples and pears.

Surely someone could use these? A couple of years ago I had read about Fallen Fruit, an urban fruit foraging group in L.A. There had to be someone in Toronto doing this. At that time, and by this time it was winter, I couldn't find anyone. In spring I fell in with this wonderful group called the Shoelace Collective, a group dedicated to alleviating the symptoms of poverty in our neighbourhood. Practical stuff, like community lunches and dinners, a workers' referral system, and working with the food bank.

Went to a meeting, brought up the idea of a residential fruit harvest; something walkable/bikeable. Where we could share the harvest with our neighbours, with an emphasis on preserving the harvest so that we could use it for dinners or donate it to the food bank or have a bazaar and sell it or give it away...the list of ideas got big fast :-)

A late summer meeting saw us ready to go, with a name and kind of a plan. I'm really a "huh, I have feet and hands, you have a fruit tree, I know of a kitchen. Maybe people will join in. And...done." kind of gal. So, with a neighbourhood newsletter in the works, we were waiting to go and then I got a very interesting email from someone at Shoelace after the meeting about....duh duh duhnnnn:

not far from the tree

I emailed Laura, the (phenomenal) project coordinator, right away, hoping to talk to her about some tips for us, since clearly they had their act together :-) They looked to be about a year ahead of us in planning and experience. Perfect. She said, let's talk. We met in a coffee shop. The gleam in our eyes was the same kind of gleam, and Laura took a very large chance. And the rest is history, or actually, just the beginning.


We will be the Woodbine Heights Hub of not far from the tree. As each neighbourhood is unique, we retain a similar, but slightly different mandate (ward 21 donates fresh fruit, we'll have an emphasis on preserving) and our own not-for-profit affiliations (Shoelace, in our case), but are under the beautiful, caring, inspired umbrella of not far from the tree.

And I have to say, it gave me goose-bumps when I sat in that first meeting with Laura and we shared the vision of the entire City of Toronto covered; linked, with these hubs. "Can you imagine?" we kept saying...

But as for now, now it's just me and my neighbourhood. 'Cause that's where food security starts. And everything starts with food security.

peace and sweet, fruitful dreams to you, my friends...

Catching Up

This has been the view of our front stair for the past week. Safiya's offerings, her decorations, her busy-ness, there for the mail-lady, the neighbourhood kids, friends, and me and Mr. S. to step over in our comings and goings. A reminder of the other things that are important in daily life. Physically making us shift our focus.

It's been a good week, and a busy one. I was proud to pass two custom quilts into the hands of my friend-in-craft Leah. Making things for fellow crafters is nerve-wracking and, I think, could be ultimately unsatisfying because there's that part of me that decides "you could have done even better". I don't like that part of me very much anymore, and I don't let her talk very often these days, but she's sneaky and will slip me a mickey when I'm not being vigilant. I have yet to find the antidote, but I'm getting pretty good at bowing my head and forging on as I get older.

The quilts were a lot of fun to do, and I'm finishing up another one for a neighbour's daughter who has been patiently waiting for her special blanket. There aren't any craft shows on the forseeable horizon, so I've got a breather and can catch up on promised projects and things for the house. And indulge in some stocking up of, well, stock:


Along with the fishing sets I've got a whole stack of hoodies to finish...at my leisure ;-) Not sure if that's good business sense, but Mama's got a cold and is just going to poke along for a couple of days.

Poking along today I made some veggie borscht with this:


That, my friends, is part of why I disappeared for a while there in August. My friend-in-insane-ideas Katharine and I, with the help of our unwitting husbands and children, put up over 100 litres of various incarnations of tomatoes. By the end of the two day saga, we were tired, happy, very proud, satisfied, and very tomato-y. Working beside a friend is one of the joys in life, and in this case produced some very yummy results, as the borscht will attest.

There has been other good work going on around here, a project about which I am very excited. It has to do with these:


It is fruitful work, and I'll be ready to tell you about it soon! :-) Now off to bed I go, with some sweet dreams, I hope, in tow...

Good Start

My new favourite breakfast is popped amaranth. It's so ridiculously good, nutritionally, but I've been having a hard time finding uses for it except plain, even though it's a bit gooey when cooked like a grain. It's yummy popped, though.

I burnt my first batch because the instructions I found said "highest heat possible". They obviously hadn't met my stove. So medium heat is just fine. When you pour the amaranth in, it should start popping almost right away. I found a little demo (halfway down, under "Amaranth Porridge"). It only takes a minute to make, so easy and quick, perfect for first thing in the morning.

Plain is good, or with milk, like teeny-tiny rice krispies. It's a silly way to start the day.

Especially if you forget to put the lid on when you're popping it.

The Vegan Mennonite

The vegetable dishes section in the revered cookbook above are heavy on cheese and half have meat in them. Butter and eggs are applied liberally throughout, and the idea of a vegetarian is an aberration of nature....

But these things must be understood within their context, surely. When asked to submit recipes years ago, these ladies would have submitted their most proud, their most delicious. Recipes that indicated bounty and celebration (think eggy paska), not thrift (bacon fat sandwiches, anyone?)

And it is within that frame that I remember the savoured foods of my childhood. Tummy-filling borscht (tomato based, not beet), flaky perishky with savory or sweet fillings, platz, hand-cut kielke, deep fried rollkuchen, and, of course, Mennonite sausage with cream gravy and wareniki - oh, and that staple of faspa (late afternoon lunch) - zweiback (double buns)...my grandmothers' food lavished well-being on us with its freshness and evidence of hand hard work. Although, the Mennonite Treasury of Recipes, like any good 50's cookbook, has it's share of ingredients such as condensed milk, soup-in-a-can, and jello. Why not? Thrift, although unspoken, was a virtue bred in the bone.

Today I did the unthinkable, and I may have created a new mission for myself. On a substituting roll, I veganised my Grammy's raisin cookies, the recipe for which is contained in the Mennonite cookbook. It's not a traditional Mennonite food, but for me it reminds me of Grammy's house, which is authentic enough for me. So here I proudly present my first vegan "Mennonite" recipe:

Raisin Cookies

1 cup raisins
1/2 cup boiling water
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp ground flax seeds
3 Tbsp boiling water
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup unbleached white pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine ground flax seed and the 3 Tbsp of boiling water and let sit while continuing with recipe. Combine raisins and 1/2 cup boiling water and also let sit (at least 10 minutes).

Mix dry ingredients, including sugar, in a large bowl. Drain the raisins and reserve liquid. Add oil, raisins, vanilla, and ground flax seed mixture to dry ingredients and mix until combined. Add a little of the reserved water until you get a sticky batter (don't overmix).

Drop by teaspoonfuls, bake for 10 minutes (they should rise and not spread too much, but they'll fall again when you take them out), remove from oven and cool on racks (they're a soft cookie).
..................

They turned out great, if not quite like Grammy's, then yummy in their own right. Now, the holy grail for me is zweiback, which, as Grammy told me this morning, "need butter...you really can't make them without butter." But you know what? I just found a recipe that doesn't use butter, and a really neat tutorial on how to make them, 'cause there would be shame in the room if I tried to do this at the side of Grandma or Grammy ;-)

And I'll end with my favourite part of this cookbook, the part that reminds me of the trinity of weddings, showers, and funerals in church basements, the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee - a relief organisation) sale, of youth Sunday suppers, of family reunions and church picnics.


"Quantity Servings". For 100. Now, when we get a vegan cookbook with that section, that will be a real cookbook. All else is mere child's play ;-)

It All Started with the Maple Syrup

A couple of days ago I was picking up emergency maple syrup from the grocery store close to us (emergency as in, we're going to have pancakes for breakfast tomorrow :-) and I gasped (yes, out loud) when I saw the price.

It had been $8.99 for 500mL. It was now $10.99. That's in the space of a month or so. I asked the clerk about it and she said "Yeah, it's gone up, eh? They said there was a reason - I can't remember what it was, but they said there was a good reason." Yes, it's called high oil prices.

Food price rises only happen to other people, right? Like a lot (most?) people we kind of keep a watch on how much we spend on food, and we kind of have some debt, not including the mortgage. What happens when the money that needs to go to that debt now has to be diverted to food? We're not there yet, but it's not hard for me to see that path, and I can imagine that some people (especially our neighbours to the south) are already there.

And I'd like to introduce you to our $9.50 bowl of peas:


Please note, I am not complaining, because sweet freshly shelled peas straight from the farmer is foods for the gods. We live literally in the middle of the largest city in Canada, and this farmer travels about 100km to bring fresh food to the market. I am not going to begrudge her/him $9.50 for a four quart of peas (which yielded about 4 cups shelled - hard to tell, we ate as we went along :-). My grandmother would be shocked, and I grew up on a farm, so it hurts a little, but did I grow my own peas? no.

But what happens when the cost for that farmer to get here keeps rising? My confession is that a lot of this creates for me some anxiety and a vague sense of unease. Hence the very cheery food posts lately glossing over all that ;-) Actually, it is exactly why there's been a bit more food posts around here. Lately my focus has been my fledgling business, planning to sew more for us, and really buckling down and learning to plan ahead with food and trying to make everything at home. Instead of ordering pizza on a day when Mama and Mr. S. ain't got the energy, I'd like to be able to take something out of the freezer or shelf. That requires planning and budgeting; more than I realised.

So, we made our own jam because not only does it taste waaaaay better, but it costs (and will cost if you figure what jam might cost in a year - ha!) slightly less than buying it. And I love having jam....for the year. And learning skills. Because that's what's important, right Napoleon Dynamite? Skills?


She started off really enthusiastic and then that predictably waned. Safiya's almost four and it makes me glad to see that she doesn't view anything (yet) as a chore. We'll see when she gets older.

I wonder what food will cost then.

Chickpea Cutlet Love

That may not look particularly appetizing, but it represents a breakthrough in food at our house. Safiya has never eaten a sandwich before. She loved Veganomicon's chickpea cutlets so much that not only did she eat this schnitzel-ish food item, but she suggested the bun and then insisted I take pictures of her eating this crazy food.

Having never worked with vital wheat gluten before, gotta say, it's easy-peasy. The recipe (you can find it and a slightly ribald review at Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit) calls for liquid smoke (eeeew), which does not live at our house, so I omitted the chili flakes and subbed just a tiiiiny bit of this phenomenal stuff:


I'm on the chickpea cutlet bandwagon, and it is a yummy ride :-)

There are No Pictures of the Cookies...

...because we ate them all in one 24-hour period. And by we I mean me.

The chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies, that is. Sub 1/3 cup oil for the 1/2 cup butter. Bake for 8 minutes so they don't get crispy. They'll be a little flatter than usual, but it doesn't matter. I'm telling you, it doesn't matter.

Heaven.

Vegan Martha

In case anybody missed it, baked goods are a vital part of life around these parts. Most of the time, we go for good. As in, it may not have eggs, or dairy, or even vegan margarine (there's someone, a friend, who is trying to take me over to the dark side with Earth Balance margarine and shortening, and oh boy, does the margarine make a tasty buttercream icing, so yes, I confess to trying it, and yes, it still continues to freak me out and will not be part of our fridge family except for weddings, which I don't see coming around again anytime soon...anyway...)

Where was I? Oh yes, none of the above right? But it still has to make me weak in the knees, or else what's the point? But besides perusing the vegan blogs and reading "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" like it's some kind of food bible/porn, the baking daring has remained for others.

But what to do about Martha? Because it's sad, so sad, to leaf through my "Cookie" magazines and know that there's nary a vegan cookie in there and that Martha's arteries, which by now must be made of butter, are so much stronger than mine, which are merely human.

I couldn't take it anymore. Knowing that my ultimate goal was Chewy Chocolate Ginger Cookies (which will be my undoing someday in a spectacular they-found-her-on-an-apartment-rooftop-naked-covered
-in-nothing-but-crumbs-from-a-batch-of-these-cookies kind of way), I started with another recipe, the Classic Oatmeal Cookie recipe, so that if it was a disaster it wouldn't be too hard to bear.

(See those? That's my cookie nirvana. And that's from the Martha website - my cookies never look like that)

Subbed 2/3 cup canola oil for the 1 cup butter. Subbed 2 Tbsp flax meal + 3 Tbsp hot water (mix and let sit a couple minutes until gooey) for every egg. Subbed chocolate chips for whatever they thought would be a good idea to add, obviously. Found that the dough wasn't sticky enough to make cookies (unless packing them into shape like little flat snowballs or something), so instead spread the dough between two pans to make bar cookies. Baked for 18 minutes.

Dear-goodness-on-what-the? Oh, they were good. Very, very good. I am now a brazen substituting queen and no recipe is safe, now (except maybe shortbread).

And yes, I realise that this post could have been written: made cookies. substituted these items. turned out good. ug.

Except that baked goods make me swoon. And the idea of vegan chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies may, in fact, inspire an entire novel...

Vignettes from a Wedding: I Remember Early Mornings

The wedding was on summer solstice, which is a lovely way to celebrate, I think. However, these pictures are not from the actual wedding morning because of course, there were other things to do besides take pictures, like watch in awe as Mr. S. packed what certainly looked like two trips worth of stuff into the van so it could make but one. So these pictures are of the early morning, my favourite part of the day, the day before solstice.


The stillness is what thrills me. A couple of birds, everyone else asleep, the air still fresh from it's night's rest. I didn't get very much sleep the past week, but those early early mornings were certainly worth it. And all the stuff that got done.

In keeping with an entirely different mood, I have a confession to make. Coffee. So, so much coffee. Double, triple espressos. People bringing it for me, me making it. It didn't matter. Somehow it got to me.

And it was good.

So now I know how you all get everything done, and don't pretend it's not true. I have found you out.

Vignettes from a Wedding: In Praise of Machinery

Being a Luddite with respect to certain aspects of everyday living has its advantages most of the time. Except when preparing food for a wedding, albeit a small one, by one's self. (Which is not entirely true, as the bride's family generously took care of the meat (obviously), and I had a lot of help with many different wedding prep tasks.) However, most of the food was made (in excess, Mr. S. notes) by myself. Hence, here is my ode to modern-day machinery:

Oh food processor,
How I love thy swirling blades.
Thy carbon footprint may be
a giant amongst small counter-top appliances,
But thy usefulness endears you
Deeply to my heart.

Your raucous caw
Will never compare
to the sweet zen of the grater.
And yet,
When your siren call fills the kitchen air,
It gives me shivers of delight.


I don't think that one will end up on a quilt.....tea towel maybe? ;-)

And a Good Time Was Had by All

The ceremony was short, sweet, and endearing. The couple was gorgeous. The smiles were so plentiful that it brought cheer to passers-by at the park. Oh, and Safiya got special flower girl shoes from her "new" auntie :-)


It doesn't seem like just yesterday that my littlest brother was, well, little. I can remember in detail a lot of out life together, and like in any good relationship, it's been a journey worth walking. The wedding on Saturday was fun, as family weddings should be, and I hope that they drink from that kind of happiness often and deeply.


Congratulations, you two.

Like an Old Lover....

Admittedly, I don't know what having an old lover is like (oh, wait, Mr. S. is old - does that count? hee hee - hi honey), but I imagine that this is what it's like. Apart for so long, and really you shouldn't start again because it's bad for you; it does strange and crazy things to your heart. But oh, so good. Really......so, so good......

Cinnamon Goodness

A couple of weeks ago my friend Katharine, she of the newborn third child, returned a baking pan of mine. It was, of course, full of goodness. Because she's that kind of new mom. She's got her priorities straight, man. Me? After Safiya was born I don't remember wearing anything but a housecoat for a while, and for the first six weeks, if I did go out (thank goodness for midwives - they visit you at home), the best I could do was pyjamas. Yes. New mother padding down to the corner store, downtown Toronto, in slippers and pyjamas. My mother was horrified. I argued that since we lived in a condo, technically the street was my backyard...

Anyway, back to Katharine's awesomeness. She had made these cinnamon buns (veganised: Earth Balance margarine for butter, soymilk for cow's) from The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I think the other things in the picture are popcorn and some homemade applesauce that I finally got around to making from the hoard of apples. We had that for lunch....and then just cinnamon buns for dinner....and then first thing the next morning, Safiya came thumping down the stairs with these words:

"Mama, can I have some more of that awesome cinnamon goodness for breakfast?"

Yes.

And for other food awesomeness (even if there's not a vegan bone in your body :-), check out:

• Fatfree Vegan Kitchen (the title doesn't do justice to the true awesomeness of these recipes, and it's a prettty blog - very well done, well organised)
• The Post Punk Kitchen (she of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, seriously wicked recipes that don't rely on margarine for light, sinfully delicious cupcakes...)
• A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise (how I love thee, internet)
• The Vegan Chef (good list of recipes)
• shmooed food / the vegan lunchbox (of course)
• Two Vegan Sisters (serious food documentation and good feedback on recipes)
  
• Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit (writing makes me smile, and awesome list of food blogs on the sidebar)

Drooling yet?

Antidote for a Tuesday Afternoon

Seriously? Because this is not what I signed up for. More snow...ish. And poor Mr. S. is on his third day of some wicked virus-induced fever-sinus thingy. Not the best prescription for a Tuesday in March, eh? And so, bemoaning my fate and listlessly picking at chores this afternoon, and worrying a little bit about the list of things to do growing in my head, suddenly it dawned on me that life doesn't need to be this way.....And so I said to myself and Safiya: "If it's determined to be this blah outside, then we must have treats to eat!" To which she replied, "What treats, Mama? Are they chocolate treats?" Ha! Well, of course!



"Tasty Snack Ball Things" or, vegan truffles, I suppose. Oh so easy and yummy. I can't really objectively tell if they look good in the pictures I took (my picture success with food is pretty low), but boy are they good! That and a whack-load of apple chips drying in the oven (we still have apples left from my adventures at the farmers' market last fall), more than make up for a pile of laundry that is leering at me this very minute from across the living room and a mountain of dishes lurking in the kitchen. Oh, and a stack of quilts neglected downstairs.

Life's too short to be complaining and not eating truffles :-)

Mon Petit Chou....

There are basic ways to make food: soup, fry, bake, salad, wrap-it-up....and cabbage is good at all of it. It keeps forever, it can be sweet and hearty or fresh and crisp. So when there's a dearth of fresh greens in the middle of February, we turn to a little slaw to brighten a meal up!

Seedy Slaw (adapted from one of those Company's Coming books...)

4 tsp sugar
6 tsp water
6 tsp oil
6 tsp vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
pinch ground mustard
celery seed to taste (we use about 3/4 tsp)

Mix up, pour over grated cabbage - done! This is particularly good with some walnut oil and plain vinegar or canola oil and rice vinegar.

In passing I mentioned something to Mr. S. about making our own sauerkraut - ha! The look on his face was not encouraging....apparently Nana used to make that at her house when he was a child and the smell.....

A girl can dream though, right? :-)