Avocado Goodness

Credit goes to Claire, one of my fabulous vegan housemates, for wanting to make avocado quesadillas.

Avocado Quesadillas

• 8 corn tortillas
• 2 avocados
• “cheese” sauce (below)
• some of your favorite salsa

Put a large pan over medium heat. Gently mash the avocados into chunks. Spread one half avocado on a tortilla, top with a quarter of the cheese sauce, cover with second tortilla and place in pan. Let it heat up until the tortilla is crip but be careful not to burn it. Repeat with the remaining tortillas and serve with salsa. (makes 4 quesadillas)

“Cheese” Sauce

• 2 tbsp corn starch (also works with flour, but you have to use a little more of it)
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1-2 cups cold water
• 1/4 tsp red pepper powder (chili powder would work as well)
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp curry powder
• 2 cloves garlic, mashed
• 2 tsp braggs liquid aminos (or soy sauce)
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1 tbsp oil (optional)

Stir the cornstarch, nutritional yeast, and dry spices together in a sauce pan. Add one cup of the cold water and put over medium heat while stirring with a whisk. Add garlic, vinegar, and oil now. Keep stirring while the sauce thickens and bubbles adding more water if the sauce is too thick (will take at least 5 minutes, more if you used flour instead of cornstarch). Add braggs to taste. Turn off the heat when the sauce gets to desired consistency. Remember that it will get a little thicker when it cools down.

Feline Friday

I’ve been wanting to do this for months now.

Here is Joe The Curious, also known as Curious Jojo, Joseph, NO-JO!, or AwwWhatACuteKitty. His best friends are Claire and anyone allergic to cats. He has a peculiar fondness of warm laps and the kitchen counter. His favorite past-times are scaring visitors by sneezing up a fit, catching flies for a quick snack in the afternoon, and hissing at Amanda the dog that shares his fur color.

June Kitchen Frenzy

Beginning June I moved into a new place, and after not having access to a kitchen since March I find myself thinking I should put up camp in the kitchen because I practically live in it now. Back to food now. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to share my peanut sauce recipe. I use it for anything from salads and stirfries to dipping veggies.

Peanut Sauce

• Peanut Butter
• Something to thin it out
• Something Spicy
• Something Sour
• Something Salty
• Something Flavorful
• Something Sweet

My version:
• 1/2 cup natural crunchy peanut butter
• 1 cup coconut milk
• Soy sauce to taste
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 3 cloves garlic, mashed
• 2 tsp apricot jam
• 1 inch cube fresh ginger, grated
• juice of 1 large lime
• 1/3 tsp cayenne pepper

Stir until well combined. Keeps for quite a while in the fridge. However, the coconut milk tends to set solid, so straight out of the refrigerator this sauce is more of a paste.

In the picture above I cooked whole wheat spaghetti, and meanwhile sauteed some onion and spinach, which I then tossed with the spaghetti and the peanut sauce. I can imagine this would be good with toasted sesame seeds sprinkled on top, though I have had a slight infatuation with adding sesame seeds to my cooking lately.

Spicy Sour Radishes

Sandor Ellix Katz, the author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, spoke at our college last week during the annual Sustainable Living Conference. After sitting through one talk/workshop of his on fermentation, one book-signing presentation, and one speech on food activism, I was more than inspired. I had a bag of radishes from the Farmer’s Marked in my backpack during his fermentation talk and when I went home that day, I sliced my radishes, sprinkled them liberally with salt and cayenne, let them sit, and then squished them into a jar.

This is what it looks like one week later:

And I can’t even put into words how happy the taste makes me feel. They are slightly sour at the moment, and somewhat spicy. I can’t stop picking at them and eating them, which is unfortunate because I wanted to see how they do after another week of fermenting.

I challenge everyone reading this to try fermenting something TODAY! Cabbage and radishes work really well, but almost anything will do.

Traditions Fair Trade Café

I decided to make more out of this blog than just a place to ramble or a place to share vegan food concoctions. I will now share about Olympia as well. When I have the money I will get a new camera, or have my old one looked at, so that bland text will be interspersed with beautiful images of this waterfront capital.

Let me start with a mini-review. I doubt Traditions needs a review, I was already convinced they rock before I ever walked through their door. One morning, being up early and taking the first bus into town, I decided to have myself a treat: breakfast cooked by someone else. So I stopped by Traditions, where I had gotten myself colored pencils the week before.

I was greeted by two cheery women chatting away behind the counter. This was only half past nine in the morning and this was a pleasant surprise. I also noticed that the few people dropping by all knew these women well, hence my reasoning that this is a place people visit much more than just once.

Then there was the vegan panini. Oh heaven! Crispy sweet bread stuffed with mouthwatering sundried tomatoes, tempeh, and so many other things. I couldn’t even tell because I was so taken by the concert of tastes tingling my tongue. On the side was a pleasantly plain green salad with lemon tahini dressing. Yum! Watch out, Traditions, I will come again.

While I was sitting, trying not to gulp down the entire plate in one inhale, I noticed upbeat and african-sounding music trickling in the background. The smell of coffee lingered in the air and I felt comfortable surrounded by rich dark reds and brown.

All that for a little over 4 bucks. A plus for low-budget people like me.

When pears get cold…

I am famous for sitting down in a bookstore or library copying recipes out of magazines and never buying the magazine. It’s surprising I have never been kicked out. Because of this habit, for the past couple of years my cookbook has been adorned by little scrap papers and newspaper cut-outs with recipes on it that I want to try.

One of them I found scribbled in millimeter font at the bottom of a note advertising a new blood pressure medication. I can’t remember where I got the piece of paper, and neither can I remember where I got the recipe. But last night, with three pears on the verge of going bad, I was paging through those notes and decided to give the pears some blankets and lay one of the mystery recipes to rest once and for all.

Pears in a Blanket

• 2 ripe pears
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1.5 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tbsp shortening
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 tbsp molasses

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Cut the shortening into the flour, then add salt, water, and molasses, and form a smooth dough. If the dough is too sticky, add more flour. If you seem to have a lot of dough for the pears, cut up more pears.
Cut the pears into 8 wedges each, sprinkling them with cinnamon and nutmeg and placing them in a pyrex baking dish. 
Roll out the dough as thin as you can and cut into 16 strips (or however many pear slices you end up with). Wrap each pear with a strip of dough.
Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, or brush with shortening if desired.

Bake the pears for 25 minutes. Mine took much longer but our oven is off. The thinner you roll the dough, the faster they will bake.

Despite my family’s advice to eat these with cheese, I say they should be eaten with non-dairy vanilla icecream.

Scone Prone

I have made them before, and I had to make them again. So simple, yet so good! I based the recipe on one from VegWeb, as usual. I made only a few adjustments, which the recipe takes very well.

Scones

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup plain soy yogurt
• 1/4 cup water (or more if needed)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
For the flavors:
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup shredded coconut
• 1 tbsp poppy seeds + 1 tbsp sugar
• 2-3 tbsp dried cranberries

Mix the first 5 ingredients in a bowl. Cut the shortening in until the mixture crumbles. Mix the soy yogurt, water, and vanilla extract in a separate bowl and add to the first bowl. If it is too thick to stir (it should be a little on the thick side), add a bit of water.

Break the dough into 5 equal parts. Mix each part with one of the flavors listed above. Shape each flavored dough into two little triangles on a cookie sheet and bake 8-10 minutes at 450°F.

Zero Waste – Tissues

It’s tough googling something like this (yes, I just made Google a verb. I’m not the first one).

Over the past couple of months (or maybe years) I’ve gradually cut down certain sources of my personal waste. Some of the choices are tougher than others. I now shop mostly at the local Food Co-op, filling my re-used glass jars with foods from the bulk section of the store, writing down the tear weight and PLUs. It’s not convenient but it does have immediate advantages beyond the fact that I just saved almost all the packaging waste of the product. I am not tempted by fancy boxes and wrappers telling me to buy the latest fad because it will make my life better. I buy only as much as I need. And I pay a lot less. Also, my food has never gone bad because all my containers are air-tight.

Now, I wasn’t going to talk about bulk food and re-using containers. What I really wanted to talk about was tissues, as in the Kleenex-kind. Every once in a while I will stumble upon something that fills up my garbage bin quicker than all other items and I start wondering if there are alternatives. Tissues, … oh so convenient and clean and safe and comforting and white. I never used to blow my nose, I just picked it. Now that I’m not 4 years old anymore, I don’t feel it’s socially acceptable for me to forgo the transfer agent altogether and use my fingers. Though what to do?

Cloth tissues? Do I do my laundry often enough to not blow my nose into 2 months of dried snot? Too much information?

Sometimes there are no easy answers.

Dill is good!

Unique Dill Salad

• 3 medium potatoes (cooked)
• 2 tofu hotdogs (sliced)
• 1/4 cup veganaise (approx.)
• 2 tbsp cider vinegar
• 2 tsp dried dill (or fresh if you can)
• dash cayenne pepper

Dice potatoes. Stir dill, cayenne, and vinegar into mayonaise in a bowl. Add potatoes and tofu hotdogs and stir to combine. Enjoy!

If you also want it to have salad temperature, cool the potatoes down before using or use leftover ones from the fridge.

Palatschinken

Despite the German word “Schinken” in its name, this has nothing to do with ham. Palatschinken is the Austrian name for crepes (though if you’re in Europe most people will tell you crepes are something else. I just refer to them as that to distinguish between flat pancakes and the American puffy pancakes).
I modified (= veganized) this recipe from a couple of crepe recipes on the web and assembled everything the way I remember my family doing it. It could probably do with a little less water next time I try it.

Palatschinken

• 3/4 cup unbleached white flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cornmeal
• 2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer whisked into 3 tbsp water
• 1 cup soymilk
• 1/4 cup water (or less, use sparkling water if you have it)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp canola oil (and more for frying)
For Kaiserschmarrn you also need:
• 1/4 cup raisins
• Powdered sugar

Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and cornmeal in a large bowl. Stir in the whisked egg replacer, adding soymilk in 1/4 cup increments until you get a smooth batter. Add water, canola oil, and vanilla extract and stir well. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes on your counter or in your fridge.

Heat a lightly oiled pan on medium-high heat. Add a ladle full of batter and turn the pan to spread it evenly. When you can’t see any moist spots anymore and the rim of the crepe is crisp, turn the crepe over (either by flipping the pan over onto a plate, using a spatula, or doing the skillful pan-flip).

If you are making Kaiserschmarrn, tear/cut the pancake into shreds with your spatula when one side is almost done, add some raisins, and finish frying until it turns a dark golden brown. Kaiserscharrn is served with powdered sugar.

It is helpful to keep a plate in a pre-warmed oven, so that you can stack the crepes on it to keep them warm until serving.
I usually eat these with cinnamon sugar in the center and apple sauce on the side. They are also good with chocolate syrup and banana slices, agave syrup, jam, preserves, soy yogurt, or whole fruit.