No More Sad Geraniums

Doing Dresden

2010-06-13T20:36:00.002-04:00

In Dresden, I had the great pleasure of visiting the vegan behind Seitan is my motor. I got a great casual tour around the city and learned a lot about the history of it. Most of what I knew of Dresden was learned by reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 or tidbits from my German history classes in undergrad. It was great just to get another perspective.

Dresden has some great character in different areas. One of my favorite spots was this Kunsthofpassage (Art Courtyard Passage) that had various themes in the sections. I really loved the above water one.

Despite not being the most vegan friendly of places, there were still several places to eat vegan food in Dresden. My favorite was the meal at this Indian place. Sooo good. Only three of the main dishes are vegan, but the quality more than made up for the quantity of options.

Then of course, if I am delivering Frank's Hot Sauce, courtesy of bazu, the DEOTS infamous tempeh wingz need to be made. Perfect paired with oven roasted potatoes and sautéed veggies.

But what is the best, is nice little surprises like the one below. Who can be sure of the exact meaning, but you got to love the little things that make you smile.

Back to where it all started: Seevetal and Hamburg

2010-06-07T21:00:00.004-04:00

My appreciation of Germany began five years ago during a sister city cultural exchange stay in Seevetal, which is just outside of Hamburg. I had not visited for four years, so it was great to be back and see my former host parents, even though I had visited my host sister the previous two years while she was at University in another part of Germany.

I don't have a lot to say in terms of food during this part of the trip. My host family cooked a few meals for me, which consisted of a really nice curry and a potato wild garlic dish. However, I did visit a vegetarian buffet after a day in Hamburg with my host sister. Seasons is just a hop skip and a jump away from the Rathaus, which is rather convenient. Their vegan selection wasn't the most creative, as various lentils where in sooo many dishes. Overall, it wasn't bad, and the amazing stuffed grapes more than made up for things. Food is purchased by the plate, so you can get the amount you want based on hunger.

Something fun that I had was a carbonated rhubarb juice beverage. I love tart things, so this was perfect! Too bad it was windy and cloudy at the outdoor cafe where this was purchased.

My former host family was so great about the whole vegan thing, which was something that has changed since my last visit. They insisted on buying me a tomato spread for bread and my own tofu red bell pepper sausage slices! Both of which were rather tasty. This is the shot of the sandwich that I was made to take with me on the train as I traveled to the next part of my journey.

And last but not least, an action shot of me eating a Franzbrötchen. This is a Hamburg/Northern DE specialty. According to a friend, the ones at Kamps, a very common bakery chain, were vegan, so I could resist trying one. It was really good and reminded me of a cinnamon roll disguised as a croissant, if that makes any sense.

Tiny but quaint Trier

2010-06-04T14:37:00.002-04:00

So, in order to properly document my trip to Deutschland, I'll most likely do a post about each of the main cities that I visited. First up is Trier, but before I get carried away, check out the awesome sandwich I had at Strong Hearts in Syracuse before going to the airport.

I stayed in Trier for two days and enjoyed the rich history and ruins there, leftover from the Romans who were some of the earliest settlers. I saw great things like an amphitheater and the famous Porta Negra.

In terms of food, I ate pretty simply. A falafel that was nothing to write home about, or various small snacks. I did be a lazy vegan and make a sandwich with tomato herb spread and olive tofu. The amount of flavored tofus in DE is amazing, and this one was quite tasty.

I also had a great CouchSurfing experience the second night of my stay. My wonderful host prepared this simple meal for me, which was quite lovely.

All in all, I had a great time in Trier, along with having the best weather of my trip. Warm and sunny! (Complete with giving me a sunburn.) This is such a quaint little region, and I would love to be able to go back with a friend sometime to take advantage of the many wineries in the region.

I'll make it kurz

2010-05-27T04:45:00.002-04:00

Sooo theoretically, I would have had 'live' updates while on my travels, but there was a lack of wireless internet in Trier and Münster. I'm concluding my time in Hamburg this morning, and then off to Dresden. All the travel details will be shared once I get back (and with pictures to boot)! Due to a confusion on my part, I cannot use my SD card reader to transfer my photos from my new camera to my computer, thus I will have to wait until I return to the States to figure out how to transfer things, as I didn't bring my camera cable, thinking the card reader was sufficient. I could update in ernst now, buuuut I think it'll be better with pictures, no? Then I'll be in super blog update mode and do a week-long stint to chronicle my trip, most likely.

Bis dann!

Oh the choices and preparations

2010-05-15T20:24:00.002-04:00

I am still in disbelief that I leave for Deutschland in 5 days. Wow. There are so many things to do before I leave (one last final exam, proctoring, grading, etc) I'm also strongly considering getting a new camera before the trip as well. After a discussion with a friend last night, I realized that my current one is sadly outdated and lacking in megapixels, which is probably a result of having it for almost five years. As curious as I am about getting a SLR, they are more expensive in general, and it seems silly to me to get one when I don't know how to use it yet. If I stick to the same brand that I have now, but with a more updated version of mine, I'll still be able to play with colors and exposure settings like I already do and know how. Oh the decisions to make...

In regards to the trip, here are the cities/areas that I'll be visiting:

Frankfurt

Kassel

Hamburg/Seevetal

Dresden

Weimar

Berlin

I'm starting to get ridiculously excited. I've never been to Dresden or Weimar before, and it has been 4 years since my last visit to Seevetal and Hamburg. I've visited Steffi, my host sister (or rather, Gastschwester) the past two trips when she has been at university in Köln. This time, I'll get to visit her at home and see her wonderful parents! I can't wait for the sense of deja vu since my original exchange in Seevetal in 2005 is what inspired me to learn German.

I've been nerding out quite a bit the closer I get, such as watching several German films with a friend and reading books auf Deutsch before going to bed. It would be nice if I could manage to finish Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) before I leave, but I don't know if that is realistic or not. I keep having to restrain myself from surfing the internet for ideas on things to do during my trip, since I do have my Organometallics exam first thing Monday morning... excluding that, fun things are ahead indeed.

Where did the spring go?

2010-05-11T21:25:00.003-04:00

The weather recently has been driving me nuts. Snowing flurries on Monday, 80 (F) by Sat, and then snow flurries again a week later. Way to be confusing! This slip back into chilly and rainy weather has made me crave more warm comfort dishes and soups. A lot of pictures haven't been taken, because, well, most of these foods aren't exactly the most photogenic.

What have I been eating exactly? Things like Tomato, rice, garlic, and white bean soup from V'con, cauliflower pasta casserrole from 500 Vegan Recipes (which is way more addictive and labor intensive than I thought it would be), and these stuffed eggplants by Mihl (who I get to visit very soon!!).

Very tasty, even if I did wing it a little bit and use adzuki beans and a cube of pureed basil from the freezer. The sauce was especially great, and the leftovers were downright unstoppable used as a dip for a batch of spiced oven fries. I'm serious. The spiced ketchup was almost untouched!

Because I've got final exams and proctoring/grading to do before my trip, I'm going to stick with the comfort foods with pantry staples for now. Don't want to have a lot of fresh produce to use up before I leave, except for the 4 lbs of carrots that I somehow need to get through. Curried carrot dip for toast and soup variations anyone?

Cucumber me this

2010-05-04T19:37:00.002-04:00

While wasting time on the interwebs responding to emails and planning my trip (yes, it is a go!), I realized that I already had two meals uploaded to my flickr that I hadn't shared yet. Unintentional score! Now I don't have to feel so negligent and lazy...

First up is a salad, but don't groan on me here. Sometimes a salad really is the perfect thing to hit the spot. I have become rather fond of ones with locally baked tofu, cucumbers, and a quick tahini dressing (with olive oil, lemon, water, pepper, and loads of paprika). I might be tempted to make this a regular thing next week when I have to not create loads of leftovers before my trip.

And then, of course, there is bastardized sushi. I'm pretty sure that I've never had true sushi before, but the improv versions that I have made at home sure are good. This one is rather simple with quinoa instead of rice (I didn't want to wait for the brown stuff to cook and cool!), avocado, cucumber, and the required sweet chili dipping sauce. Simple and tasty is the way to go sometimes.

Things to get excited about!

2010-04-27T22:41:00.003-04:00

I'm ever so sorry about the lack of activity here recently. The end of the semester is approaching, and it seems as if I have been grading nonstop for my TA duties, not to mention my own classes. However, I have two exciting things to share.

First, I'm splitting a CSA share with a friend this season! I'm really excited. I've been eating seasonally and locally in the summer and fall anyway, but when my friend approached me about joining one, I couldn't help but say yes! Splitting the share means it'll come out to $10 a week for produce from June-November. Considering I could spend $20 a week at the farmers market, this will hopefully be a good thing. I'm also probably going to be joining a separate fruit/berry CSA, which only goes for two months but seems rather reasonable. Hopefully the new member shares open for the one that I have in mind soon.

Secondly, I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get to go to Germany for the last two weeks of May! I'm waiting for a few friends to get back to me about availability, but as soon as they do, I'm buying my ticket. The idea is to go to a few places that I love (Berlin), have friends (Köln), and haven't visited in a while but know some people I haven't seen in a while (Hamburg). No to mention going to a few yet undecided new destinations as well. I'm really hoping that this trip gets to take place because it would be the perfect break before I begin working in a chemistry lab this sumer!

(Tempeh) Bacon Brilliance

2010-04-11T09:44:00.002-04:00

Somewhat recently, I tried my hand at tempeh bacon again, and I found myself to be more successful the second time around. But, it wasn't the success that got me excited but what I thought to do with it once I made it. Behold an amazingly messy but delicious sandwich:

Tempeh bacon on homemade bread with sauerkraut, red onions, and the Vegan Brunch remoulade. Including the last ingredient was the stroke of brilliance on my part. Not to be outdone, I made an even better variation on this theme with pizza!

At the last minute, I realized that I only had enough yeast left to do a half batch of pizza dough, but it all worked out. Topped with some spicy tomato sauce from my freezer, I used up the last of the sauerkraut and sprinkled it liberally with tempeh and onions. Even better was drizzling the remaining remoulade on top!

I pretty much smelled like onions and kraut afterwards, but I didn't really care since I've been holed up studying as of late.

A belly of beans

2010-03-25T12:02:00.002-04:00

I've been trying to do more bean and altogether healthier meals lately. Unfortunately this doesn't always mean that said dishes are attractive. One of my creations from this week involved mole roasted cauliflower. Okay, not bad, but when you add it to wild rice, adzuki beans, and a tahini sauce drizzle it equals a play on various browns. Not so photogenic. However, last week I managed to make something both tasty and pretty.

Enter, my mexican inspired lunncher (well, it was really late for a lunch, and a bit early for a dinner). I had some avocado left over from making sushi which were getting a bit too ripe. I figured guacamole would be a good call, even if I used diced canned tomatoes since I didn't have any fresh. Much to my horror, all I had was various kinds of crushed tomatoes. To make up for it, I cooked up some millet with fire roasted crushed tomatoes instead of plain water, topped it with some overly dry refried beans I whipped up, and guac sans tomato. I'm really pleased as to how it turned out. I'm seeing this as a summer staple with homemade crushed roasted tomatoes perhaps...

A saucy state of mind

2010-03-13T10:59:00.002-05:00

Erm, I still to exist. Honestly. The last fews weeks have been insane. Loads of exams (mostly for me) and grading too. Not to mention a prospective grad student visitation weekend thrown in the middle as well. As a result, some of my meals haven't been very original or noteworthy, especially since I was eating leftovers from the fall stashed in my freezer for a while. (This did result in a beet juice accident when I had lunchbox leakage of the black bean beet soup from Vwav get over everything, including a batch of lab reports that I was grading. Whooops)

One mighty tasty meal was queso with broccoli and polenta. It was my first time making polenta, and wow was it easy!

The polenta that I ate for dinner I just plopped on my plate, but I got fancy with the leftovers for my lunch the next day and molded it. It made me feel as if I wasn't eating the exact same meal as the previous day for some reason.

I also did some fridge and pantry cleaning out this week. Because of a storm dumping 18.5 inches of snow on the area, and me being a lazy arse and not attempting to dig out my car until the snow was impossible to remove as it was covered in a layer of ice from melting, I wasn't able to go grocery shopping for almost three weeks! Thank goodness I have a well stocked pantry and freezer. Near the end, my fresh produce was looking a bit worse for wear. Using three sorry potatoes and some crimini mushrooms that had seen better days, I whipped up this last dish that included a cashew miso gravy as well as Vwav tempeh sausage crumbles.

Bake the Bad Days Away

2010-02-22T21:46:00.002-05:00

A week or two, I was starting to get stressed with all the schoolwork and stuff that I had going on. (I'm still really stressed, but due to other things now.) Seeing as I had a banana in the freezer that had seen better days, it was only natural that I make banana bread! I used the recipe from Veganomicon, but I also subbed a portion of the whole wheat pastry flour out with spelt flour. (I'd like to say that I was inspired, but I was really just running out of wwpf and figured spelt would add more character to the crumb.) That, in combination with my bright idea to add a half cup of chocolate chips (both dark and white), produced one of the best loaves that I've ever had.

I've got some big cooking plans coming up too, so hopefully my posts won't be so sporadic. This Friday, I'm getting together with a bunch of ppkers for a meet-up split between Syracuse and Ithaca! If that wasn't enough, I also finally bought a bamboo mat to make sushi since I haven't made any since my Berlin days. Plus, I bought another bulk package of tempeh, so there might be a certain recipe in V'con that will be calling my name very soon...

Leftovers Inspire the Nonconventional

2010-02-17T16:43:00.002-05:00

Lately, I've been having some interesting food adventures. Realizing that I have 32 cookbooks (what... I can't help myself!), I feel obligated to try out more new things as opposed to my standard go-to recipes. Also, despite the winter cold and snow, I'm trying to still get a decent amount of vegetables while decreasing the fat or creamy based recipes. Plus, I've been trying to stretch things and switch up leftovers so that they don't get boring. Which brings me to the pound of mixed greens and spinach that I bought two weeks ago. Yes, you heard me right, for some reason I bought lots of greens for myself. I did the typical salad and sandwiches but I mixed things up a bit when the greens were losing their prime.

The first experiment doesn't include a picture, simply because the result wasn't very photogenic. Using some leftover silken tofu in my fridge as well as a few handfuls of greens, I improvised a variation on the vwav tahini sauce, which also included pulverized chili flakes, a nice addition if I do say so myself. This sauce was folded into quinoa with corn and peas. A quick yet tasty meal. But I had lots of sauce leftover, and inspiration struck...

Unconventional lasagna! I had a partial box of whole wheat lasagna noodles languishing in my cabinet, so I was able to whip up a mini one in my loaf pan. The layers consist of pesto, which used up the last of the greens, the aforementioned tahini sauce, and hummus instead of cashew ricotta, sour cream, and tomato sauce! The hummus was great, as it was homemade, and this most recent batch was better than normal for some reason. (I blame it on guessing some of the amounts instead of measuring.) With the greens and tahini overlap, the flavors complimented each other quite well, along with the added spiciness of the chilies. I would highly recommend this combination if you are in the mood for a non-tomato based lasagna!

A tempeh love affair

2010-02-03T18:50:00.003-05:00

When I first came back to school, I spontaneously grabbed a 2 lb package of bulk tempeh while at the co-op instead of the usual 8 oz package that I usually get. Why, you ask? Because the bulk one is only $7 or $8 while the small one is $3 a pop. Simple economics even a budding chemist can figure out. Most of it was used to make recipes that I already knew and loved (and will blog about, since I got creative), but tonight was different. I finally tried my hand at tempeh bacon from Vwav.

After letting it marinate all day while I was on campus, I decided to keep it simple. Above is the naked open faced sandwich with toasted homemade bread, greans, tempeh, red peppers, and avocado. On top, were a generous few dollops of Caesar dressing from Veganomicon. (For some reason I was mentally unhinged enough to buy a full pound of mixed greens/spinach earlier this week. So much salad has been consumed in the past 24 hours, and more creative methods may need to be devised soon...)

So much for self control

2010-01-24T12:45:00.002-05:00

The tempeh wingz from Don't Eat off the Sidewalk are dangerous. Case in point, this photo was taken during breakfast. That's right, breakfast. A double batch (aka a whole pound of tempeh) didn't even last 24 hours in my kitchen. I suppose that I could be doing worse...

And sneak peak for coming soon, a review for Ithaca's new veg cafe as well as my attempts at more simple meals.

Vegan Disney 2009

2010-01-16T17:00:00.004-05:00

At the end of December, my family had the yearly trek down to Disney World in Florida. This was my third year eating vegan at Disney, and I find myself learning more each time that I visit, even though I only visited the parks for one day this year. Following, is a brief summary of the places where I ate as well as an interesting new observation that I had, one that was a first for my yearly visit. (I apologize for the lack of pictures, but I somehow managed to leave my camera at home during this trip.)

Earl of Sandwich (Downtown Disney): Enjoyed a lunch of the roasted veggie sandwich. I'm rather fond of toasted sandwiches so this really hit the spot. The only small change that had to be made to the meal was to request the balsamic sauce instead of the usually used Mediterranean (which contains dairy).

Rainforest Cafe (Downtown Disney): The chef came out to talk to me after our rather large party arrived. I ended up with a veggie pasta with olive oil and garlic and bread on the side. Not the most imaginative dish, but it worked, and I had enough leftovers for another meal.

Backlot Express (MGM Hollywood Studios, technically sans MGM but I grew up saying it...): This is a counter service restaurant as opposed to a nicer sit down. The veggie sandwich was vegan, once requested without the cheese. I was surprised to find that the tomato pesto on it was vegan as well as the black bean salad that came on the side. Not too bad for a quick in the parks option.

Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe (Magic Kingdom): The veggie burger is now vegan! I was very excited to see this mentioned somewhere else, and it proved to be true. The only alteration that needed to be made was to have the tapioca bun, which is the gluten free and vegan bun option.

Bakery of sorts on Main Street in Magic Kingdom: Has packaged vegan chocolate chip cookies. (As well as caramel corn.) The cookies weren't too bad, as far as packaged cookies go. I was just glad to be able to have a chocolate/sweet snack along with the rest of my family.

Turf Club Bar and Grill (Saratoga Springs Resort): This was the nicer sit down restaurant at the resort where my family's time share is. I was skeptical about my dining options, even though Disney is always great with accommodations at sit down places, since the entire menu is very meat centered. I ended up having quite a nice meal. The chef came out to talk to me, and we figured out a dinner and desert for me right at the beginning of the meal. I got a portabello burger, but not to be boring, the burger also had roasted balsamic veggies on top. This sandwich ended up being huge, and I could hardly fit the whole thing in my mouth to take a bite. Along with a side of fries, this was a very filling meal. For dessert, he had a gluten free vegan spice cake. It was a little dry due to being storied in the freezer, but I was surprised to have a slice of cake with frosting that I could eat, and the frosting was perfect and not too cloyingly sweet. My dad could hardly tell that it was gluten free as well as vegan when he tried it.

All in all it was a great visit, though I did have an experience at the two counter service meals that I had never had before. Because I had to make an alteration to the meal (omitting cheese or switching the bun), the person at the register made a big deal about it and kept saying it was due to the allergy (even though I said I was vegan), and had to have the manager come and approve it and talk to me even though I had already checked the vegan friendliness in the ingredients book that each register has. It was a little obnoxious in how it took a lot longer and held up the line, but at least Disney is serious about getting this sort of thing right.

Cookie Sloppiness

2009-12-20T15:55:00.002-05:00

I tried my hand at gingerbread cookies last week. The recipe (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar) was aptly spiced, but I had a lot of issues with rolling out the dough. Chilled it for a few hours, but no matter how much I floured my counter, I still had issues with the dough sticking. Good thing I was only doing circles and nothing elaborate. To up the dorkiness, I even attempted to use the frosting to write different elements, since I was serving the cookies to chemists after all. Let's just say that writing with royal icing (or whatever cookie icing is technically called) is much harder than you'd think...

And now for a bonus snow shot on Cornell's campus:

Bread and Breakfast

2009-12-14T10:03:00.004-05:00

Somehow, in all of my German/European jaunts, the simple breakfast of toast with various spreads and fresh fruit has become my staple. Before becoming vegan, I was really big on cereal, but afterwards, I started eating it less and less. I think it was a combination of the cereal expense (when I lived on my own at school), and the soymilk in the cereal just wasn't doing it for me. In the deep of winter I'll switch to steel cut oats, but for most of the year, I'm a toast kind of gal.

I've even been experimenting with making my own jam (in small as needed batches), and you'll see a slice with cherry jam peeking at you from the back of the picture. My default has been two cups fruit with one cup sugar, and varying the cooking time. I still haven't found a good cook time as my first cherry jam was too much like soft candy (whoops! Had to mold it with my fingers instead of spreading with a knife), and the more recent didn't set up enough. I also made quince jam, which was my first experience with quinces! It was a lovely pink color and somewhat delicate tasting. I used the recipe found here.

I didn't want to talk about jam today, but rather my love of the sunflower seed spread that is so popular across the pond. If the states are lacking in the food department, it is a variety of spreads for bread or veggies. I brought back a myriad of several flavors, but my favorite was Apfel-Zwiebel (apple-onion). This sounds like a rather odd combination, but it is amazing. Since I no longer have my original jar, (it has long since succumbed to a mold invasion after residing in my fridge too long, as I kept putting off finishing the jar), I am not entirely sure if the taste of my homemade spread is exactly the same, but it sure is close. I based the recipe off of the one found on Mihl's awesome site and the ingredient list on my original jar:

Sonnenblumenkerne (sunflower seeds) 29%

Wasser (water)

Zwiebeln (onions) 19%

sonnenblumenöl (sunflower oil)

Apfelpüree (apple puree) 4%

Zitronensaft (lemon juice)

Meersaltz (salt)

Pfeffer (pepper)

Like the true science nerd that I am, I really did play around with the ingredient percentages to figure out the right balance of amounts. My tweaked recipe is below. It is really easy, and is not as liquid-y after a time in the fridge.

1/2 cup + ~1 Tbsp raw sunflower seeds

1/4 cup canola oil

1/3 cup water

4 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp salt

dash of pepper

1/3 cup white/yellow onion*

6 tsp apple sauce*

You basically throw everything together in the food processor, except the * denotes extra preparation. For the onions, I chop them up pretty small and saute them alone until they start to get glassy and soft. Don't cook them too long or they will get overly sweet. I usually do a whole small onion, which produces more than I need, and save the leftovers for some dinner dish later in the week. I add the onions to the food processor last, and puree half the amount rather well, then add the rest and just let them mix in slightly, since I try to make it authentic with small onion chunks in the finished product. For the apple, I take a decent sized one, not an overly sweet variety. Chop it up (skin intact), put it in a small pan with 1/3 cup of water, and let it boil and cook with the lid on for 15 minutes or so, until the apple is quite tender. I puree it in the food processor first, measuring out what I need, and eating the rest. (This very simple and satisfying applesauce of sorts was inspired by Mary.) Enjoy!

I should probably live in Europe

2009-12-12T08:44:00.002-05:00

Seriously. I get a total kick out of European/German things. Just last night, the German post-docs that I know introduced me to a few of their friends who were in town. Even got to speak a little auf Deutsch, and boy was I rusty (but still managed to get complimented on it?). Weird.

But back on topic, here is something that I should have shared a month and a half ago, but yeah... So, belatedly presenting my ppk care package exchange!

For anyone who has been over the pond and back a few times, you'll recognize the yellow postal service package and symbol on the box that is similar from to several different countries. I was lucky enough to have an exchange parter from Austria, which was great fun, and an excuse for me to send a card in German along with my mailed goodies.

One of the cutest things in my package, hands down, were the owl pretzels. Seriously. How can you not love those little guys? I found that dipped in the hazelnut spread that I also received, together they made a great sweet and salty afternoon snack. Mmm too bad those birdies went into my stomach a bit too quickly.

A gradual return

2009-11-25T14:26:00.002-05:00

I'm back to blogging, well, sort of. At least, I plan to resume in the next few days. Lots of things happened with school and I lost my passion for cooking for a bit. However, things have been on the upswing, sort of, and a two different friends who like to have cooking dates with me as well as another friend who wants me to give him cooking tips have helped me to love time in the kitchen again. Plus, with the semester winding down, I'll need to have some way to get rid of the stress of finals since most of my own TA duties are almost over. Not to mention that I just caved and bought Isa/Terry's new book as well as Celine/Joni's 500 vegan recipes. I'm pretty excited and just couldn't wait and only request them as holiday gifts...

Jumping Ship

2009-10-25T09:59:00.002-04:00

So, I am sad to inform that I may have to give up on VeganMoFo for this year. My posts ended up being sporadic because of all sorts of stressful things cropping up with school, and, now, it looks as if the method that I use to transfer my photos to my computer is not working. (Which is quite unfortunate, as I have a week's worth of posts on my camera at the moment.) So, to soften the blow, I'm going to put up a lovely picture that I took last Sunday when I went for an afternoon walk since the weather was so nice. I am in love with the fall colors that we have here at the moment. Things are turning a lot more yellow now, but the sheer amount of trees around making everything so breathtaking.

European Eats

2009-10-22T09:00:00.003-04:00

And by eats, I mean hazelnut spread. I was a great lover of Nutella in my pregan days, but now I've found something better: Chocoreale. I made sure to bring home the three varieties after my trip to Europe in June. Like that other brand, there is a hazelnut chocolate in addition to a dark chocolate, and a chocolate/white duo. Lately I've been a big fan of my duo, which was surprisingly tasty, as I was skeptical at first. (Plus, the jar that I brought home was my first taste of it, since I had overlooked it in favor of the other two on previous visits.) Luckily, my stash of the duo has been temporarily refilled as I received my ppk care package swap from Austria yesterday...

So, this ode to the duo Chocoreale spread will not be a farewell, but rather a renewing of acquaintances.

Vegan Food for the Masses

2009-10-20T08:32:00.002-04:00

Last week, I signed up for a vegan cooking class at my local co-op on a whim. I'd never taken a formal cooking class, let alone a vegan one, so I was intrigued. I'm glad that I took it as Tuesday was my most stressful day last week, and it was nice to escape things for 2 hours by being in this class. Overall, it was a very interesting experience.

One of the most curious facts of the evening was that, beside the instructor, I was the only vegan in the room. Most of the other people were omni or vegetarian, and wanted ideas of how to incorporate more vegan food in their diet for health reasons. The instructor kept this health slant for the most part, except when she went on a brief tangent about how horrible factory farms were, but it was used as an example of her philosophy that you don't want to be putting bad and negative food in your body since those animals were agitated and downtrodden when they were raised and killed.

As a whole, I thought the instructor was a sweet old lady. She shared a lot of her microbiotic philosophy even though half of the food that she cooked for us didn't really follow all of her 'rules.' The meal consisted of a mushroom seitan and pasta dish, a warm vegetable salad including tofu, sauteed Italian greens, and an almond butter pudding served with maple syrup and granola. The food itself gave me a few ideas, but the flavors were a little too subdued for me, except the greens, which were perfect as they were with salt and pepper. I guess on a whole that I like a little more umpf in my food. The other people in the class seemed very receptive of most of the dishes, and I even got to give an older couple sitting in front of me some tips as they were very much wanting to move towards a vegan diet.

Impressing the Omnis

2009-10-19T07:47:00.003-04:00

Over the weekend, two of my friends came over to my house to socialize and cook dinner with me. One friend was particularly excited because I had never had rutabaga before, and, being largely of Swedish decent, she knew her rutabaga well. Plus, she could not believe that she would be introducing a vegan to a new vegetable. Her enthusiasm was ever so cute and amusing. That would be her (or rather, her hands) preparing the rutabaga below.

All in all, a great time was had. Good friends and wine is a great way to spend a Saturday evening. (We were even more wholesome after dinner and played a modified version of Clue.) They were really impressed with how the Vegan Brunch quiche turned out. (I made the broccoli and onion one with mushrooms added.) Both of them were flipping through Isa's cookbooks and enjoying the humor as well as the variety of recipe (and photos, in the case of Vctotw). I think that I may have just created a few more Isa fans. Even better, they claimed that they need to make cooking dates with me a regular occurrence. That, and another friend proclaiming on Friday that she needs to organize a girls night in the upcoming weeks with me as the main cook, makes me blush at all the attention. At least I can show how easy vegan cooking is in the process even if I don't think that I'm that spectacular of a cook; I just enjoying cooking and sharing with others.

Produce Adventures: Watermelon Radish

2009-10-18T13:44:00.004-04:00

Okay, so this isn't the most attractive of photos, but isn't this watermelon radish absolutely adorable? I picked up three at the market last weekend because I had never heard of a watermelon radish before. (If I had, then I'd since forgotten.) All three were bigger than your average radish, but this particular one was quite a good size and comparable to a small apple. They tasted just like a regular radish, except perhaps with not quite as much bite. All sliced up, it was a great snack to be dipped in hummus. Once I make another batch of hummus, I'll have to buy some more.

VeganMo-What?

2009-10-17T22:58:00.004-04:00

So, I succeeded in falling off the MoFo wagon this week... whoops. I was really busy and stressed out with school things, but the week is over, and classes are going much better. A definite pick-me-up after one of my stressful days was the Vegan Brunch pumpkin pancakes with chocolate chips thrown in. A great way to cheer up and welcome fall. If you haven't tried them already, go on and do it! You won't regret it. Mine were extra special because I used a gluten free flour mix that I got from the co-op. Made me feel slightly less guilty about eating so many...

Local Eats: CTB

2009-10-12T19:31:00.003-04:00

CTB as it is fondly known, or Collegetown Bagels, is a local establishment here in Ithaca, also known as Ithaca Bakery. The particular location shown above is right near Cornell's campus in Collegetown (hmm, the name starts to make sense now...). Also, I live within 5 minutes walking distance, which is both a good and a bad thing. It doesn't seem like it in the picture (since it was taken on a Sunday evening, and during fall break), but this little shop can be quite hopping both during the week and weekends.

This is one of my favorite places to go for a quick meal or drink not only because of the closeness but also because of the vegan friendliness. Most of the bagels are vegan (unless they obviously contain cheese), and they carry both the plain and veggie Tofutti. There are several sandwiches on the menu that are vegan, usually one of the soups is vegan, and you can even get the breakfast scrambled wraps with tofu scramble! There are also a few baked goods in the front section that are usually vegan, but those have been a hit or miss for me.

I find that I end up here at least once a week. Sometimes I run out of bread and pick up a bagel on my way home for the next day's breakfast, other times I meet someone for my once a week soy latte, or a few friends meet up here for a pitcher or two for beer. Yep, they also serve beer at a small bar in the back. I've been getting my local brew, Roosterfish from Watkins Glen, fix at this place. Very convenient when you don't want to walk down the steep hill to get the classier beers at Chapter House...

If you ever find yourself in Ithaca, NY, one of the many locations of CTB should definitely be on the list for casual eats!

Produce Adventures: Brussel Sprouts

2009-10-11T18:23:00.003-04:00

If veganism has taught me anything, I have learned to be more adventuresome in regards to my foods. New to me (aka strange) spices, grains, or produce? Alrighty! But in all honesty, if it weren't for my turn to veganism, I would never have discovered that swiss chard is one of my favorite vegetables or quinoa a well enjoyed grain. Recently, I realized that I had not been as adventuresome in trying new foods as of late, so I figured MoFo was as good as an excuse as any.

So without any ado, let me present brussel sprouts. This vegetable seems to have a less than desired reputation of being served in school cafeterias and such to young kids. I don't know if this is still the case, but I was hardly ever exposed to it as a child. I got adventuresome last fall and prepared some with the cornmeal crusted Indian spiced recipe from Veganomicon. It was good, but all that oil made me not want to prepare it on a regular basis. Enter this recipe. After being bookmarked for ages, I finally decided to give it a try. The only alterations that I made to the meal was subbing apples for the pears and just sprinkling the baked stuff with marjoram and fennel instead of adding the tempeh mix. I was surprised by the simplicity of the meal and got to have fun with purple potatoes. (Not sure if I've ever had the pleasure before!) I have a feeling that variations on this meal will be making appearances in my meal rotations from now on.

Friday: A day for something other than the start of the weekend

2009-10-09T15:55:00.002-04:00

After a long week, I'm always glad when Friday comes, not only because I usually hang out with all my older chemistry friends in the evening, but also because it is the day that I plan my meals out for the next week!

It may sound sort of dorky, but I have found this habit to be quite useful. Above is a shot of the bulletin board in my kitchen, and, as you can see, I have my meals for the week listed out as well as an as-needed grocery list. Now, I don't always follow my plan exactly because I allow for some flexibility, and it has worked out quite nicely so far this school year.

I'm still getting used to making meals for one person on a regular basis (since last year I fed my other vegan roommate to a degree as well). But, my planning ahead has helped me from going totally crazy when buying produce and groceries on the weekends. Yes, I'll often have a little extra produce at the end of the week, but I haven't been overly wasteful either. Though, I will admit to having 5 zucchinis at the moment since I haven't taken the time to put them in the food processor to shred them for mid-winter zucchini bread... The planning has also helped make sure that I eat a variety of meals and don't just fall back on pasta or rice and beans all the time. Don't want to get myself in a food rut, after all.

My list for this week should be quite interesting because I plan on picking up some new-to-me produce at the market tomorrow. Fall is a great time to be adventuresome with produce. After all, it was how I discovered my love for raw red cabbage last year! A few that I am considering are kohlrabi, quinces, and rutabagas... so if you know of any good recipes, send them my way!

Being all saucy and hodgepodge

2009-10-07T15:21:00.002-04:00

Another thing that I've experimented with this fall has been making pasta sauce from scratch. Isa did a great tutorial on her ppk blog last year, but I've been a lot more inexact with my sauce making. Actually, both batches in my freezer have drastically different flavor profiles. The most recent being a bit of a hodgepodge of things lingering in my fridge from other meals that needed to get used up. Along with the usual tomatoes, my last batch also included mushrooms, a lonely sweet pepper, basil, and some red wine that was lingering past its prime.

I tried to use a recipe the first time that I tried it, but making sauce isn't terribly difficult when you use the lazy (wo)man's method. I don't feel like spending a ton of time taking the skin off my tomatoes, so I just leave it on. It doesn't really matter too much since I'll be sticking my hand blender in the pot at the end anyway. I started out with chopping up some garlic and throwing it in the pan, then deglazing with wine or cooking sherry. Then I added the pepper and mushrooms and let them cook for a few minutes until adding the tomatoes. The timing wasn't exact, and I think that I let it cook for 45 minutes or so, or until I thought that the tomatoes had broken down enough. Then went in the basil as it cooked for 5-10 more minutes. Salt, pepper, and a tiny amount of oregano went in before I blended the heck out of it.

Not very exact, but the end product looked good enough, and it'll be refreshing to use later in the winter when fresh tomatoes are scarce. (Plus, I can impress friends with my saucy skills and all...)

The perfect surprising quickie food

2009-10-06T08:01:00.004-04:00

So, in my last post, I made a passing comment about how calzones are my new favorite quick meal, and today I'll talk allll about them. For some strange reason, I was intimidated by calzones, and I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps because they seemed more complicated to make or required more preparation time? Who knows, but I got it in my head a month ago to try my hand at making them since it seemed more freezer friendly than sticking a ball of pre-risen dough in there.

To my surprise, they were very easy to make and a great way to get rid of random leftover things! I had made the vodka pasta sauce a few days previously, and a batch of cashew tofu ricotta to stuff some lasagna rolls the day before. The only extra thing that I had to do was to whip up a batch of pesto since I had a bunch of basil that needed to get used up. Above is my assembly line of sorts. Other fillings that I used were fresh tomatoes, marinated baked tofu, and a raw spicy corn salad that had been taking up space in my fridge.

Using the dough recipe from VwaV, I divided it up into 8 pieces to get some decently sized calzones. (Excuse the poor quality of the above picture as it was late at night.) As long as I was mindful of only putting the filling halfway and making sure there was room to seal the edges, I never had a problem with filling squirting out. I went a little crazy with fork poking (for venting), as you see below, and I cooked them for 7 minutes (or so) at 500 F. Somewhere around the ppk I also learned the trick of putting them on parchment paper before putting them on my baking stone. This method worked really great, as I could only fit two on the stone at once, and I had no sticking mishaps! (As opposed to the last time that I used my new stone for pizza, which was an absolute disaster.)

These little dudes are awesome and have frozen quite well. If you can reheat them first in a microwave then crisping them up in a toaster oven works great. Since I made several filling varieties, I always feel like I'm playing some sort of game whenever I reheat them (since I didn't even label which kinds were which). It is quite nice to find myself pleasantly surprised by the tasty flavor combination of my dinner! And, just by writing this post, I have realized that another great filling would be leftover bbq pomegranate tofu (since I made some last night) paired with leftover sautéed greens... See, calzones are a great way to get spontaneous and creative!

Thinking ahead for the busy times

2009-10-04T23:23:00.004-04:00

I'm doing my contribution for tomorrow a bit early because I may be roped in to roasting a lot of pumpkins... (i.e. Two friends gave another friend 8 pumpkins with the deal that she'd make them pie and other goodies, and I've offered to help her complete the task!)

It isn't the most attractive of pictures, but I'd like to briefly say how much I've enjoyed stocking up my freezer. Since this is the first time that I've lived on my own with no roommates, I have been greatly enjoying the fact that I have a whole kitchen to myself as well as a fridge to fill up for all my own. No more worrying about the food of other roommate's going bad! (But, I digress...)

As a first year graduate student, I know that my life is going to be extremely busy at times, so I'm hoping to make those times easier by having a variety of meals stashed away in the freezer. Some things are simple and possible to do on a slow afternoon or evening, like cooking beans or chopping up bell peppers to freeze, but cooking extra meals isn't too hard either. During the times that I am able to cook, I often cook a recipe in its entirety even though I'll probably only eat 2 or so servings of it. The rest I can just toss in the freezer. By using this method, it has also allowed me to stock my freezer with meals made from fresh and local produce as I have been buying 95% of my fruits and veggies at the Farmer's Market on the weekend.

The contents of my freezer thus far:

latkes

pesto

basil and olive oil cubes

2 different batches of from scratch tomato sauce

savory bean dish from V'con (the name is escaping me)

corn, black bean, and chipotle soup

calzones

beet and rice soup

shredded zucchini

lots of pitted cherries (picked by me!)

raspberries (from my parent's garden!)

chopped bell peppers

bags of beans (chickpeas, white beans, black beans, and adzuki)

Whew! I like to think that I have a good mix of actual meals and saved up produce from when it is in season. Some of the meals have already come in handy, such as the calzones. I had a tough time this past week, and those things were my meal in less than 10 minutes. Pop it in the microwave to nuke it, then crisp it up nicely in the toaster oven. Once I run out, I will definitely be making more of those for sure!

Good-bye summer...

2009-10-03T13:59:00.003-04:00

So, I have come to realize that I've been in denial about the end of summer and the approaching fall. The weather has certainly been changing here, but today is the first beautiful day this whole week. If only it could stay 70 and partly cloudy for a little longer... Another indication of fall was a distinct drop off in the tomatoes available at the Farmer's Market this morning. There were some heirlooms, but no roma or cherry tomatoes to be found, which means that I'll be switching over to canned tomatoes very soon. So, here is a brief pictorial tribute to the tomatoes and summer produce that I've enjoyed in the past few weeks.

One good thing about fall is the varieties of apples, squash, and bell peppers! I love red bell peppers so much. I'm way excited because this morning I got an eight quart box for only $15! Those beauties are getting chopped up or roasted and stuck in the freezer for the winter. However, I may have to find a way to sneak one or two into a bell pepper centered dish later this week...

VeganMoFo: Reminiscing and plans!

2009-10-01T00:55:00.002-04:00

So, I apologize, but my first post for VeganMoFo is going to be a bit of a cop-out. My only excuse is that I just got back from trivia night and also took a 3 hour long Inorganic Exam this evening (yes, and it was as bad as it sounds). But, on to bigger and better things...

A friend of mine is currently in Germany, particularly Berlin, so I've been reflecting a lot on my time there and missing the place like none other. (Especially when he uploads pictures from Prenzlauerberg; my old stomping grounds.) Once I finish my exams for this week (another tomorrow evening...oh joy), I'm going to up the level of cooking since I have been so lazy this week. First on my list is to recreate my favorite Streich spread, which is the amazing sunflower seed based spread that can be found in most German health food stores ( Biomarkt or Bioladen). The flavor of apple and onion may seem quite strange, but it was the favorite of the ones that I brought back with me. (My supply is slowly dwindling, so I need to figure out how to recreate them fast!) Even though Germany may not seem like the most vegan-friendly place, I have found it to be quite accommodating, especially when one has a good enough grasp of the language. I've actually found it to be easier to get food there than in the middle of nowhere Illinois, believe it or not...

Another two things that should be getting more use this month are my two German vegan-friendly cookbooks that I brought back with me. I cook my own bread, so I'm going to experiment with a German cookbook about bread baking, and the other is 'Baking without milk and eggs'. Surprisingly, the book is not totally vegan (apparently goat milk is ok?), but it seems easily adaptable. I'm excited to see how they work and to exercise my German skills once more while reading them!

Sooo get ready for a month of a menagerie of posts, and happy MoFo-ing to all!

Walks, Vegans, and Fruits (oh my!)

2009-09-21T15:53:00.004-04:00

(Yes, I'm wearing a dress underneath, but you'd never guess, right?)

Goodness, it seems like things keep getting busier as the summer winds down. Tomorrow I've got my first batch of organic lab reports to grade, later this week I proctor my first exam and then help grade it, and next week is my first exam as a grad student. *cue apprehensive music* Despite these things, I've got plenty of things to look forward to in the upcoming weeks.

In early October (over my fall break, coincidentally), I'll be participating in Ithaca's segment of the Farm Sanctuary's Walk for Farm Animals. I'm really excited about this as hopefully I'll get to meet some great people with similar interests as well as to raise money for such a great cause. In undergrad, I was very active in several organizations, and I really would like to continue doing various forms of activism in grad school as well. Despite being so close, I still haven't made an actual visit to the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, but soon I should hopefully fix that. If you want to learn more or would like to contribute to my walk, go here.

Another upcoming activity is VeganMoFo (also known as Vegan Month of Food)! I participated in it last year and cannot wait as I am hoping it will help revive the lack of activity around here as of late (i.e. I've been cooking but not blogging...) It launches in October, and many of the participants can be seen listed on Kittee's blog.

And what is it about fruits that is making me excited? Several things, actually. This upcoming weekend is the Apple Harvest Festival in Ithaca. It is a three day event, and I've been told by the older grads that it is a lot of fun, so I can't wait to check it out! (And expect lots of pictures.) Tomatoes have still be in season (yes, they are a fruit, didn't you know?), and I've been subbing fresh tomatoes instead of canned in as many recipes as I can. Later this week I plan on making a huge batch of sauce to freeze, so that should be fun. (I'll probably be doing the lazy woman's version of not peeling them since who cares about a bit of extra fiber...) And lastly, I'm experimenting with making jam tonight. Sour cherry jam to be exact. So hopefully, I'll have full documentation of this foray later in the week...

I haven't disappeared, really

2009-09-14T17:01:00.003-04:00

So, grad school has started, and I realized today that I haven't updated this quite as frequently as I would have liked. No need to fear; I have not turned into a starved grad student just yet. I've been doing a fair amount of cooking, stocking my pantry and freezer, and visiting the Farmer's market religiously. Actually, I have to plan my meals out for the week since I get so much produce.

But really, the lack of activity is just due to the fact that I forget to take pictures or think that the food I'm making hasn't been too notable. I've been doing a lot of baking. The cupcakes above are ones I made for a birthday this past weekend (the photo isn't mine). Mint cookies and cream based on the cuppers in Vctotw. They were quite the hit, and I still have a bit of frosting lurking in my fridge that I am trying not to eat by the spoonful. (But it tastes so much like the ice cream I loved as a kid!) Hopefully I'll be making graham crackers later in the week to get rid of it.

One thing that I have continued, however, is baking my own bread. It is so easy to do; I can always manage to toss a few things in the bread machine no matter how little time I have. Got to love the throw it in, go away, come back to delicious smells method. Since moving, I've been experimenting with adding spelt flour to things, and now, along with sunflower and pumpkin seeds, have included it as a permanent addition to my usual bread recipe. The seeds really remind me of some of my favorite breads that I would eat in Germany. For those curious, I'll include the recipe:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup spelt flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

~ 1/4-1/3 cup raw sunflower and pumpkin seeds

2 tsp vital wheat gluten

1 1/4 cup water

2 Tbsp black-strap molasses

2 Tbsp canola oil

1 tsp sea salt

2 tsp yeast

Hopefully I'll have more interesting things to share soon since classes haven't started to be too crazy yet, though I do have a few good stories already since I'm a TA for undergrads in organic lab. They are silly sometimes, and I can't believe that I was in their place just three years ago. My does the time fly.

Produce Overload and Planning Ahead

2009-08-28T21:24:00.004-04:00

Oh my, if being here for almost two weeks has taught me anything (unrelated to chemistry), it is that I do enjoy a good Farmers Market. Until recently, I had not attended a good weekend market since the beginning of May! For me, this is an unbelievable oddity. Here, there is so much great produce that I almost don't know what to do with myself and I'm in danger of buying more than I can eat in a week. But there is a solution for that...

I've been trying to plan ahead and stock up my freezer with in season produce and quick meals, though the quick meals are still a little lacking. (I blame this on the fact that I've been eating rather simply while the produce is still in season and very fresh.) I got an extra two pounds of tomatoes last weekend and made some pasta sauce from scratch, blended together an olive oil and basil base for quick pestos or sauce additions, as well as chopped up and froze some hot peppers. As soon as I spot red bell peppers at the market, I am going to snatch them up to freeze as well. (The lack of sighting might be due to the fact that I visited the market rather late the past two weekends...)

Tonight, a batch of V'con vodka tomato sauce was thrown together, and I think that the block of tofu in my fridge is begging to be made into cashew ricotta for either pizza or calzones; I can't decide. Any leftover dough will be saved and frozen for later use. Once fall starts, not that I want the warm weather to go away any time soon, I'll make sure to make a bunch of fresh soups and freeze them as well. I want to be fully prepared for when the semester gets crazy and, heaven forbid, I don't have the time to spend an hour or two in the kitchen on a regular basis. It is bound to happen since I started mapping out the semester today to see when intense lab grading weeks fall at the same time as tests and other busy times for my own classes. Oh, the life of a first year grad student...

As a bonus, here is a lovely view from my excursion last Sunday to the state park in Watkins Glen!

Ithaca Beginnings

2009-08-17T20:48:00.002-04:00

Well, I've officially moved to Ithaca, NY. I'm excited that this is my place of residence for the next five years not only for the vegan friendly-ness but for the nature as well. My new apartment is so cute in a 1920's arts and crafts style house with the original wooden doorways and window frames! I've also got a very nice sized kitchen with lots of cabinet space, and a gas stove.

At least it is a self lighting gas stove, as opposed to the one I used in Berlin last summer. However, as someone who has used electric for most of her life, it takes some getting used to. I've managed to cook some simple meals as I am still getting used to how long it takes for things to heat up and such. My very first meal in the new kitchen wasn't even picture worthy as it was a thrown together curry of sorts with rice noodles. (Plus, I hadn't figured out that I could still have the burner on and not be on the high setting, silly me.)

So, my first real meal consisted of sauteed chard with tomatoes and fingerling potatoes with a spicy mustard/thyme/caper seasoning. My, my is the potato dish addicting. I meant to save half of it for my lunch the next day, but I couldn't help myself from eating it all. Apparently I have a new food addiction/craving once I get more potatoes. Plus, the meal was made from produce exclusively from the Saturday Farmer's Market!

In other news, I finally bought a copy of Vegan Brunch! I had received a gift card for my birthday and acquired it after a random trip to the bookstore on Saturday. I'm really excited to start trying out recipes. My first foray consisted of highly modifying the mushroom and tomato stuffing for the Poblano pepper recipe. Despite my tweaks and serving it over millet, it was quite the delicious meal.

And as a little extra on Ithaca; check out these photos that I took while walking/hiking the Cascadilla gorge. There are so many beautiful nature areas here, and I hope to take advantage of them before my study schedule gets super busy!

cherries, cherries everywhere

2009-08-06T21:02:00.004-04:00

Last weekend my family took a mini vacation in Door County, WI when picking up my younger brother from his jazz band camp. Located on the WI peninsula jutting out into lake Michigan, this county is also known for producing as much as 13 million pounds of cherries every year. Luckily, it was the peak of the growing season, and you could find multiple pick your own farms while driving along the highway.

I got to go picking twice. The first time was with my dad just south of the town Egg Harbor, where we were staying. Picking your own is great fun as you just get handed a bucket and told to have fun! It was such a great activity, and the loaded cherry trees were absolutely gorgeous. In an hour, we each had filled a bucket of our own. The buckets are a great deal as you get several pounds of cherries. At this stand we only paid $6 per bucket, which is almost a steal considering how much they are in the grocery store.

The next day we went picking with the entire family just south of Sturgeon Bay. Again, the whole family worked on two buckets, and this farm even had ladders for pickers to use to get the higher up fruit. The buckets here were $8, but averaging $7 isn't such a bad deal. One of those bags was left with my Aunt whom we visited on the way home.

Now, what is one to do with so many cherries? Well, if you are going to bake with them, then you have to pit them. I was too lazy to buy a cherry pitter, so I used the curved end of a bobby pin. It worked out really well, actually, as the curve was just the right size to grab the pit if you go in through the stem hole. Plus, the cherries look nicer since you only have a hole on one side (if you are good and don't rip them open in the process...). After several hours pitting, two buckets of cherries were frozen to be used later in the fall and winter. Those two buckets produced 10 quart sized bags, which is a lot of cherries.

The other bucket of cherries is being used this week in a variety of ways. Yesterday about two cups were combined with a half cup of sugar and two tablespoons of corn starch to make a compote for serving over french toast. It was my first time using the fronch toast recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, and I was pleased, especially after adding a little vanilla extract and cinnamon so that they tasted like the french toast of my childhood.

Even more cherries were used this evening in a cherry cobbler along with the addition of two peaches on one side. Served with some quick banana ice cream (frozen bananas and a little soy milk blended together) for myself, it was the perfect summer evening snack.

In the Interim

2009-07-29T12:09:00.004-04:00

My life is full of in-betweens at the moment, so I feel as if I have nothing of significance to share (other than an awesome dessert, which I'll get to momentarily). I was home for one week before driving 13 hours across the Eastern US to Cornell for my chemistry TA training program (TATP), which lasted three weeks. I had an amazing time getting to know the incoming first years as well as revisiting the older students that I had previously met. Ithaca, NY is such a beautiful and surprisingly vegan friendly place. Sadly, I did not take many pictures to document my time there, but you can be sure that I'll do a better job when I return there for good in two weeks.

I was able to do some vegan cooking while at TATP because some of us were being put up in a dorm which had a common kitchen area. Along with many of the other chemists there, I joined a dinner rotation that we formed to help make things less chaotic in the kitchen as well as to get to know people better by eating dinner together. It was a little sketchy in the beginning, but people really stepped up in being accommodating for me since I was the only vegan and respected the fact that the knives and pots I brought were not to be contaminated with non-vegan things. I couldn't help but feel proud one of the last nights when one of my new friends commented to me at how surprised he was at how much he was enjoying the meals without meat. Kudos to not only myself but the other cooks whose dinner skills shined without the meat or dairy (or in the least, far less of it).

As you can tell, I like being a good influence or a way for people to look at their meals differently. I get so much satisfaction when I cook vegan for my family while at home, and it makes me feel as if I am doing something to help them eat healthier. In the past two years since going vegan, I've noticed small ways in which my eating habits have rubbed off on them (switching to whole grain bread and pasta, eating more veggies) and hope that I can continue to be a good influence. Now, I've actually got two dishes to share that I made for my family a little bit ago. The first, seen above, is the pineapple quinoa stir-fry from Veganomicon. You know it is good when my teenage brother insists on seconds and tries to claim the entire leftovers for lunch the following day.

What you see here is a dessert that I insist people try. I modified a recipe that was posted on the veglicious blog for strawberry quinoa bars and used raspberries instead since my parents' bush was overflowing at the time. The only other alteration that I made to the recipe was that I subbed agave for maple syrup in the filling and raspberry layers. This dessert is addicting, as I have become quite the fan of the raspberry and lemon combination recently. Because there wasn't too much added sugar and it contained oats, almonds, and quinoa, I felt as if this was quite the healthy dessert in comparison to other chocolate laden things that could have been made.

Hopefully other relatively simple summer treats will be in the near future as well. This week, I've enjoyed my fair share of fresh watermelon and blueberries, and this weekend my family is going on a vacation where we will be acquiring fresh Michigan cherries. Got to love the fruits of summer.

Along the Necker

2009-07-22T16:34:00.002-04:00

(The back streets of Heidelberg)

Finally, here is the last installment about my Europe trip (finished, oddly enough, four weeks to the day since returning to the States). The last stop on my trip was Heidelberg, Germany, which has a special place in my heart. This is where I studied abroad for the first time after my freshman year in undergrad. I struggled with the German during my time there, but I learned a lot of other things that helped my language acquisition later on. I was only in Heidelberg for six weeks about three years ago, and going back makes me feel both as if I never left and that so much time has passed.

The strange time-feel paradox was especially felt when I spent time with my host family. I think that one reason that I remember my time spent there so fondly is because of my wonderful host family. My visit with them lasted four nights, and once again they welcomed me with open arms. I was given a key and bike and told to treat their home as my own. So much kindness in that house, and just as before, I found myself enjoying a relaxed breakfast with my host mum almost every morning.

(View of the Schloss and Alte Brücke from Philosophen Weg across the Necker)

Another great feeling during my stay was that I had a great time reveling in the German tendencies that I have picked up during my various stays. Since I was given a bike to use, that and walking were my only methods of public transportation while I was there. It felt great to bike to the health foods store as I stocked up on German goodies to take home or going to park near the Altstadt before walking or hiking somewhere. Plus, I was able so speak so much German with my host family. I struggled to string together a few sentences three years ago, and this time, like last summer, I was able to carry on long conversations about my future plans, my family, politics, or describe all the things that I did that day. Knowing that I have a decent grasp on the language is a wonderful feeling, even though I know that I still have lots of work to do before I become truely fluent. Another highlight of the visit consisted of briefly meeting the program director of my old study abroad program. She was just as energetic as I remembered her to be and so proud of my language improvements and impressed with my graduate study plans. The visit was great fun but almost embarrassing at times since she gushed over me so much, but that is why she is such a great director, I suppose.

(Directional stone on the trial while hiking Heiligenberg)

Eating vegan in Heidelberg wasn't any harder than eating vegan in any other part of Germany. I found a health foods store located between my host family and the Altstadt, and I visited there several times during my stay. I honestly didn't do much eating out because my host mum insisted that I join them for many of the evening meals and was amazing about accommodating my diet preferences. Even if dairy or meat were eaten at a meal, the other components were prepared separately so that I could eat a majority of the meal as well. Such great hospitality has been a trend that I have seen in most of the Germans that I know, and it makes me what to emulate that kindness for any future house guests of mine.

(View from the Königstuhl Bergbahn looking down on Heidelberg)

Another thing that I did plenty of in Heidelberg, if you haven't guessed yet from the pictures, is hiking. Until my Europe trip, I had not realized how much that I enjoy hiking. Cinque Terre was great, and Heidelberg was as well, but it held a different kind of beauty since I was already familiar with the area. Most people know of Heidelberg because of the Schloss and being the home of the oldest University in Germany, but not everyone realizes the great hiking that can be found in the area. With mountains on either side of the river, there are plenty of forests and trails. I had hiked parts of Heilingenberg three years ago, but this time I took a different way up and went even higher. The trails were great because not a lot of people were on them. It was great losing myself in the nature as I went without a map, only knowing that if I kept going up I would be fine. Hiking up to the Königstuhl was quite the feat as it 1436 feet above the town, and even my host family was quite impressed with me when I told them that I hiked up to the top.

(Monestary ruins at the top of Heiligenberg)

All in all, I had a wonderful trip. Visiting new and old places as well as getting to know both new and old friends better was a great way to reset my mind before graduate school. Even though I have no idea when I'll get to go back and miss it already, being on my own for a month has helped me relax enough so that I'm excited for what is to come in the next five years that I've got ahead of me.

Cooking with Chemists

2009-07-17T08:54:00.004-04:00

Even though I cooked simple meals both by myself and with friends on the trip, my favorite kitchen time was spend with two chemists in Göttingen. Cooking itself is a sort of chemistry, but I often forget that when I am doing things other than baking. Outside of the kitchen, Göttingen itself was a quaint little place. It was most definitely a university town, so, if you don't happen to have any friends to visit there, you might not spend more than a day there. The altstadt was nice, and I managed to buy several books at used book stores which required me to mail them home at almost a higher price than the books themselves!

I was visiting fellow students, and of course we can be ever so resourceful when it comes to cooking on the cheap. My friend had only about six weeks left before he was to return to the States, so he was happy for suggestions on how to whittle down what was in his pantry. As soon as I saw the red lentils and curry powder, I knew we had to make a dahl. With eggplant, tomatoes, and the surprisingly tasty addition of carrots, we had the perfect simple meal to serve with rice and soy yoghurt.

The next night made use of his angel hair pasta. A very veggie filled pasta dish is easy to make and delicious. This one contained mushrooms, zucchini, tomatoes, and basil tofu. The secret to the great sauce was using white wine and some spicy flakes. (Don't you love the plates of my friend's friend? I thought they were absolutely adorable.)

Dorky moments can abound when you spend time with fellow chemists, and we had plenty of those. Above, was such a moment when we stood there for five minutes postulating why the salt in the pasta water left the marks at the bottom of the pan... Other moments included talking about Bier's Law when drinking beer (translation: the size of a container can effect how light reflects/travels through the container's contents), and the discovery that a gin and tonic faintly glows blue under a black light.

I'm going to look back fondly on my time in Göttingen. It was also pleasant rediscovering to realize that cooking with seldom seen friends can be great fun and give you some interesting memories to take with you after you leave.

Whirlwind Berlin Foods

2009-07-11T15:24:00.003-04:00

First of all, I realized today how behind I was about recapping various aspects of my Europe trip. Whoops. I'll blame it on the fact that I'm currently in my Teaching Assistant Training Program. One week down and two to go. Some of us are together in a dorm, and we have been doing some cooking together. (I was also smart enough to bring quite a bit basic cooking things.) Sometimes people have been accommodating about my veganism, other-times not. Monday I'll be making the Greek spinach pie from Vegan with a Vengeance, so that could be interesting.

Now on to the food of Berlin! Because I was there for such a short time, it was intense revisiting many of the vegan spots that I loved from the previous summer. Vöner was first on the list, though I got both the spicy and garlic sauces this time. I wasn't as impressed with the spicy sauce and very much preferred to only have the garlic as it was very tomato tasting and not spicy enough.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I had to stop by Carmello Eis to compliment my Vöner. Sadly, I discovered that the prices had gone up quite a bit since the previous year, but it was still very tasty. Lucky for me, the chocolate soy flavor was available that day because when I went back during my second visit there were no soy flavors. The huge cone pictured also contains blueberry and sour cherry, the latter of which turned out to be surprisingly delicious and a great companion to the chocolate.

Other highlights included stops by Hans Wurst and Maja's Deli for some quick sweet treats, but the best was from Cupcake. There I got to enjoy a chocolate cupcake with raspberry icing. I was very excited to get a cupcake because on several occasions last summer there were no vegan cupcakes to be had when I visited.

Even though I ate a lot of sweet things while in Berlin, I made an attempt to be healthy as well. After so much sugar, I decided on my last night there to improvise some sandwiches with things that I bought at the natural foods store. I had this great tofu product that contained lots of vegetable bits. Got to love the sheer number of specialty tofu products that you can find in German biomarkts. Sometimes the number of choices makes it hard to decide. I also am officially in love with the Streich spreads. Most are vegan, and I bought several of the smaller sample sizes so that I could try different flavors to see which ones I should take home. One of my favorites surprised me by being the apple and onion.

Other tales that I shall be recounting later this week include cooking with chemists in Göttingen and my return to Heidelberg, where I did a study abroad program 3 summers ago.

Berlin, Revisited

2009-06-28T14:49:00.003-04:00

Even though I greatly enjoyed discovering new places and visiting friends, the most surreal part of my trip was my split up visit to Berlin. Due to some reshuffling at the last minute, I had to make do with Berlin by using it to bookend my Copenhagen visit. This ended up working out rather well, luckily. During part one, I was at a hostel in Prenzlauer Berg, which is the neighborhood where I lived last summer. It felt so strange to be back so soon and to wander around the streets that I used on an almost daily basis. I was a big fan of El Bocho's Kalle and Bernd last summer, and I had a great time finding new appearances or old ones that I hadn't noticed before.

Since I was no longer a 'resident' or though of myself as one, albeit temporary, I had no qualms about doing something more touristy. The biggest tourist moment that I had was going up to the cuppola of the Reichstag at dusk. I feel as if not many people realize that security is open until 9, and they keep the observation deck open an hour or two after that. The views of Berlin were quite spectacular as the colors of the sky were changing. It made me wish that I had a better camera so as to capture the colors and lights in the lower light.

Even though much of my visit to Berlin consisted of trying to cram in visits to all of my favorite eating spots, I didn't want to make it all about the food. I made sure to visit Museum Island during free admission on Thursdays, though I was disappointed that the museum I visited did not have the rotunda or second floor galleries open. I can't wait to visit when the New museum finally reopens after a few years of extensive renovations. Also, I didn't pay attention to opening hours and missed out on climbing to the top of the Dom on museum island. Next time, I suppose.

Relaxing in Copenhagen

2009-06-23T15:05:00.003-04:00

Another stop during my trip was Copenhagen. This was exciting for me not only because I got to use a third currency (Danish Krones) but also because I got to meet Ditte of ppk fame and frequent vegan host! And what a great host she is!

On the evening of my arrival, we got set to make dinner right away, with a quick trip to the store halfway through to get new potatoes. We ended up having quite the feast with roasted veggies, crusty panko crusted tofu, and an amazing mustard sauce from Veganomicon in which to drench everything. The night did not only consist of cooking as we also walked around during dusk so that I could get my first glimpse of the city.

The next day involved lots of walking around, city exploring, popping into thrift stores, and vegan food eating (naturally). To fortify ourselves for this trip, we made pitas to take with us filled with veggies, fresh dried tomato hummus or yogurt dill sauce. So much good food was had that day and also included a trip to the infamous bakery with vegan chocolate croissants and cinnamon roll pastries. To top that all off, we even stopped at a fancy chocolate shop where there were two different kinds of filled chocolates which were vegan.

Even though we ate a lot of food, that wasn't the whole point of the trip. I enjoyed learning lots of things about the country of Denmark as well as getting to know my host better. While walking in Christiania, we even met up with one of her friends for a bit. Christiania itself is a really neat place in the middle of the city which was overtaken by squatters years ago and is a congregating place for the alternative lifestyle/hippie scene. What I found particularly amazing was all the green space that was crammed in the area and made if feel like you were anywhere else as opposed to the middle of Copenhagen.

Nothing about my trip to Copenhagen was strenuous, except for the large amounts of eating. Of course my wonderful host pointed out buildings or things of interest while on our walks, but it was nice to not be overly touristy. I cannot believe how much we walked around and ate in the short time that I was there, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I give full credit to my hostess, and I cannot wait until she makes her trip to the States next year! When she stops by my place, I can only hope to be as awesome and will return the favor of making her sandwiches when she leaves my place for the next stop on her adventures!

In der Schweiz: a land of many cultures

2009-06-21T16:02:00.003-04:00

After my time in Italy, I made two stops in Switzerland, in the south and north, respectively. My visit in Mendrisio was very interesting because it is located in Ticino (Tessin), which is the southernmost canton of Switzerland, and thus made it similar culturally to Italy. (For those that don't know, it is interesting to note that Switzerland has four official languages: Italian, French, German, and Romansh, the latter is a romance language that is derived from Latin and is being spoken less and less.) Because of its location, I ate a lot of pasta, pizza, and foccocia-like foods while in Mendrisio and the surrounding area.

To be honest, this is probably not an area where one would spend an entire weekend on a vacation, but I enjoyed being shown many of the surrounding villages both in the valleys and up in the mountains. My friend and I even braved the cold and rainy weather one afternoon to visit an UNESCO world heritage castle in Bellinzona.

My visit north was quite different because I was in a bigger city, though Basel is by far not the biggest city in Switzerland. The biggest shock to me in Basel was the language. Even though they speak German there, it is an entirely different dialect. I had learned about Schweizer Deutsch in the University, but hearing it was another thing entirely. Despite the fact that it was German, I could not understand very much of it at all. (Luckily, I can take comfort in the fact that native German speakers themselves have a hard time understanding the Swiss dialect until they themselves have lived there for some time.) I was still able to use my German (Hochdeutsch) to understand maps and menus in restaurants.

The food in Basel was a big change from the south because of obvious Germanic influences. (Also, the Turkish imbisss and restaurants were much more prevalent here.) After I saw much of the town by wandering around all morning and early afternoon, I had an early dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, which wasn't far from where I was staying. Tibits is an all-vegetarian buffet, which has vegan items clearly marked. I wasn't very impressed by the few hot vegan options available, but around half of the chilled grain and other salads were vegan. However, the highlight of my meal was the Sauerkirsch Tortchen (sour cherry mini tart) that I bought separately for dessert.

Since the food was decent, and there was a wide selection, I also visited for breakfast the next morning before I left. A morning brunch was advertised, but the vegan options were very slim. I wasn't too disappointed however since I chose to have a simple breakfast of a spelt croissant and an apple pocket that was available from the bar. Sandwiches to go were also available near the register, and I was not disappointed with the white asparagus (Spargel in German, which is a really fun word to say, by the way), bean sprout, and tomato with a mustard sauce one that I ate later on my train to Germany.

Cinque Terre: Beyond the Food

2009-06-16T04:08:00.003-04:00

Before I begin with my additional account of Cinque Terre (because I loved it that much), I wanted to put up a disclaimer that I thought I'd be updating more often than this. I have plenty of foods and places to share (especially since there are only 10 days left in my trip), but I feel guilty if I am on the internet too much. Here is a little something that I wrote up a while back, and hopefully I can prepare a few drafts on the flight back to Berlin tomorrow.

As I just alluded to, there was more to love in Cinque Terre than just the food; the views and character of the towns were amazing. Obviously, tourism brings in a lot of money to these quaint little towns, but somehow the locals have made sure that the tourists don't detract from the charm. If you are a hiker and enjoy ocean views, I would highly recommend Cinque Terre as a must-see place to visit. I enjoy a good hike on occasion, but I got more than my fair share while i was there. One of the main attractions is the trail along the coast that connects the five villages. Because it is now a state park, you have to buy a ticket to hike the extensive trails, but it is very reasonably priced, and you can get one, which includes the train and bus transportation between the villages. I paid around 14 or 15 Euros for a two-day pass.

Even though I had been exercising more at home before leaving for my trip, wow did I get a workout while on the trails. The paths connecting Riomaggiore to Manarola to Corniglia are pretty tame, with the first being quite easy and short. There are many other trains connecting to the other villages in the hills or towns quite a way away. I took one of the less used trails to Volastra from Manarola. It was quite the challenge going up those steep trails and stairs through the vineyards, but the views of the area made up for the shaking of my quads when I walked down the same way that I hiked up. On my second day of hiking, my legs were a little sore, so I only did one of the two harder trails, which are from Monterosso to Vernazza to Corniglia. I only did the first leg, but I also explored Monterosso a great deal and climbed up to the old monastery and cemetery that overlook the town. I would have continued the hike from Vernazza to Corniglia, but it was mid-afternoon and very sunny, so a 90 minute hike with little shade did not sound very appealing. Also, a guidebook that I had consulted stated that the views on the first, and harder, trail were much better.

I greatly enjoyed my time in this little gem tucked away in Liguria between Genoa and La Spezia. I would definitely come back, though perhaps with a friend, so I can have someone motivating me to stop being a wimp when I stop to catch my breath on the trails. Hearing the waves of the ocean from my bedroom window was quite soothing, and there is something about the ocean that I love but can't quite describe. If you were expecting sandy beaches, then you would probably be disappointed. There are two smaller beaches in Monterosso and Vernazza, but I feel that they do not have as much character as the other rockier areas. I found a very charming pebbled beach close to Corniglia off the trail from Manarola, and there were several people there swimming and getting some sun. Manarola and Riomaggiore also have places to swim, but they are smaller and rockier, though they do have steps and ladders to make getting out of the water easier. You don't even need to actually get in the ocean (I didn't), and can appreciate the beauty just by soaking up the sun and view.

It's Amour

2009-06-08T02:13:00.002-04:00

If I ever had any doubts about my love of bread, let's just say that they were reaffirmed while in Italy. Don't get me wrong; I am usually of the whole grain always toast my bread variety, but in Cinque Terre I fell in love with fococcia. This stuff is amazingly addicting and the basic kind is vegan by default. What is it? Simply put; bread with olive oil and salt that was poked by the baker before it was baked to give it the characteristic dents. The plain version is decent, but there are so many variations (quite a few which are not vegan). But, there are plenty of them which are vegan. I tried ones with herbs, tomatoes, onions, mixed vegetables, green olives, and even potato slices. All were good, but my favorites were the potato and olive varieties. They are best eaten after being bought because the bakers will pop them in the oven to reheat them before handing them over to you.

What makes an excellent fococcia? My favorite was eaten in the town of Vernazza. The crust was crispy with just the right amount of flake so it could not be mistaken for being hard or chewy. Also, the topping did not overpower the hint of olive oil brushed on top, and the inside was nice and light. Can you tell that I ate several slices of this stuff every day?

Another quick bite found in many pizza or fococcia shops, which is vegan by default is farinata. This consists of chickpea flour, water, and pepper. It is either baked or lightly fried with olive oil brushed on it. When ordered, it is reheated in the same manner as the fococcia. I only ate it twice, but my initial taste was far better than the second (even though the second one is pictured). It was crispy on the outside with just enough oil left that it reminded me, in an abstract way of course, of the hash browns fromMcDonalds in my pre-vegan days. Due to the simplicity of it, I may be looking for recipes and experimenting with this after my travels are over.

A simple meal that I had first upon my arrival was Brusketta. This is an appetizer mainstay in many Italian restaurants in the States, but is considered to be a good snack or quick meal in Italy. Mine was served on a huge slice of very thin bread, which had been cut up to ease eating. With only bread, olive oil, tomatoes, and garlic, it is another one of those foods where the original version is vegan by default. Mine was especially enjoyable, not only because I had just traveled several hours by train, but also because it had just the right amount of garlic without being too overpowering. And, for me, my opinion of just the right amount of garlic is most likely far more than the average person's.

On the last night, I enjoyed a small glass of the special local wine called Sciacchetra. This is made from grapes that have already been used to produce wine and are practically raisins. Because of this, it is served as a sweet dessert wine. When I had it, it was served with little cookies, which I sadly could not eat, and in almost what looked like a mini champagne flute (to my untrained eye). The taste was initially sweet, like you would expect, and nothing like most white wines that I've had. Very much like what could be associated with a raisin. The aftertaste was where the alcohol could be felt, but it gave the impression of a combination of apple juice and rum. It may seem like an odd combination, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Too bad that I had no room in my suitcase to buy a bottle and take it back with me, even though it was rather pricey. I guess that means I will just have to come back to Cinque Terre with more room so that I can take one with me, right?

A few surprises in Madrid

2009-05-31T06:29:00.003-04:00

Not that my time in Madrid is over yet, but I wanted to share two little vegan-friendly places that I found. Despite this, I have found that being in a big city like this and not knowing the language is rather difficult. I'm glad that I'm here meeting a friend because not as many people speak English as you would think. (Much of which I learned in the trails and tribulations of putting more money on my German cell phone, which still has not been fully resolved, but I'll spare the details.)

First up is Yerbabuena. I went here for dinner on Friday when I was on my own because I was able to find it easily from my hostel. This is a small little place, but bright and cheerful inside. I thought it was strange that I was the only person eating there at 7:30 pm, but I suppose that I was eating dinner rather early compared to the late dining habits of most people in Spain.

The meal itself ended up being rather expensive, but I didn't mind because the food was really good. Even though my server spoke almost no English, and I speak no Spanish, it was easy to order because all of the vegan items are plainly marked on the English menu. The menu was rather extensive, and 1/3 of the dishes were vegan and another 1/3 had vegan options. I tried to order a soggy brown rice dish (really what it was called!) and got the blackened rice dish instead. I didn't mind because this one was probably better than the one that I originally wanted. It doesn't look like much, but it had a very savory and earthy flavor. I rather enjoyed it and ate almost all of it. The dish also came with a small salad.

For dessert, I got the vegan ice cream, which came with a cherry and corn flakes on top! It was well worth the price because this was some of the best homemade ice cream that I have ever had. It was so rich in creamy and definitely had the 'I can't believe it is vegan!' factor going for it.

Even though my bill ran about 22 euros, I would come back again. You can find Yerbabuena at Calle Bordadores 3, just North of Plaza Mayor on the Eastern side.

The next great vegan meal that I literally stumbled upon while walking around with my friend was at Viva la Vida! located at Calle Huertas 57.

This meal consisted of a vegetarian buffet in the middle of a very small biomarket. It was pay by weight, and the desserts were a different price than the foods but still by weight. The vegan items were plainly marked as vegana on the cards labeling the dishes. There was a good variety, as well as dessert, and my friend explained to me how much the Spanish love croquettes. The meal was quick and just what we were looking for in a quick mid-afternoon meal. Plus, the torte was very good and had a lot of chocolate, even if it was the only vegan dessert on display.

So far, I have had good luck with vegan food on my stay in Madrid. As a standby, I do have bread and jelly ready if need be, though I suspect that I will save that for the train ride from Spain to Italy, which I still have to get a ticket for...

The Adventure Begins

2009-05-29T06:55:00.002-04:00

Greetings from Madrid! The start of my travels has been interesting indeed. I started it off with Thai food in Chicago last night as well as a last visit to Trader Joe's (to get soy ice cream and snacks for the plane, of course). The connection from Chicago to Miami ended up being an hour delayed, so I got to Miami and trekked across the airport only to have ten minutes rest before boarding the second plane.

And how was the food on the plane? Not bad, though the breakfast was another complete miss. Dinner consisted of a salad with a balsamic/oil dressing, roll, cantaloupe slices, and a curry. The curry wasn't too bad and consisted of a tomato base with chickpeas, bell peppers, and a few slivers of tofu. Breakfast on the other hand, well, let's just say I'll be sending a letter to American Airlines when I get back. It was not very vegan friendly at all. I was served orange juice, yogurt, and a croissant just like everyone else. The yogurt, of course, was not vegan, and I suspect that the croissant wasn't either, but I ate it anyway because I was so hungry and didn't have any food on me.

I haven't done much in Madrid yet since I'm waiting for the jet lag to catch up with me! However, my friend that I'm visiting has already taken me to Maoz falafel. It wasn't too bad, though the falafel itself was a little salty.

It is supposed to be rather warm this weekend, so today I shall take a small nap before exploring on my own and hopefully finding a vegan friendly restaurant for dinner since I can't meet up with my friend again until much later. Here's to crossing my fingers and hoping for the best!

A quick review and things to come

2009-05-25T17:42:00.002-04:00

Over the weekend, I went on a road trip back to my former University in Indianapolis with a friend. The meal highlight of the weekend was Saturday morning's brunch at the Three Sisters Cafe in Broadripple. I love going to this place because they have many vegetarian dishes on the menu, and the vegan ones are plainly marked with a huge 'V'. On this occasion I opted to try something other than my usual bbq five grain sandwich and got the King of Siam.

This sandwich consisted of a pita slathered with tons of hummus and topped with spinach and a five grain mix that included some nut slivers, cranberries, and beans. I was apprehensive at first, but it turned out to be rather refreshing.

I have gone here for brunch or lunch on several occasions, and this has proved to be a favorite of both myself and the omnivores also in attendance. Check out this place if you find yourself in Indianapolis, but be mindful that it is rather small and there could be a wait to be seated if it is a peak dining time.

In other and more exciting news, I'm going back to Europe! I leave this week and will be gone for four weeks. This is a present of sorts to myself before the hard work of graduate school begins in August. There will be plenty of updates about my travels as I go along, though wireless access might be dodgy for a week or so. I can not wait to visit friends, some of whom I haven't seen in a while. The itinerary goes like this:

Madrid

Cinque Terre, Italy

Mendrisio, Switzerland

Basel, Switzerland

Dortmund, Deutschland

Kassel (DE)

Göttingen

Berlin (Part I)

Copenhagen

Berlin (Part II)

Köln

Heidelberg

Lots of places in a short amount of time, I know. But, I think that I have a good mix of new places to explore and the revisiting of some old favorites. Plus, I absolutely cannot wait for amazing fresh baked bread!

A Veg gem in Normal, IL

2009-05-22T08:40:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I found myself in Bloomington, IL and was able to meet up with an old friend. I only visit the town occasionally, and I suggested the Coffeehouse as the place of our lunch, since I had eaten there a few times before. This little cafe is nestled between Illinois State University and the Children's Museum and is entirely vegetarian, which is proudly stated on the menu. From experience, I know that vegetarian friendly may not always equate to vegan friendly, but this place does quite nicely.

The menu clearly has all vegan items marked as being such, and there is a variety even if the options are still somewhat limited. On previous visits, I had enjoyed chocolate chip pancakes and a southwestern style veggie burger, but this time I opted for the falafel.

I am such a sucker for falafel, but I ordered it anyway even though I'm leaving for Europe next week and will surely be eating a lot of it. While those balls of chickpeas and spices themselves were not the best stand-outs that I have eaten or the tahini sauce was lacking in just the right zing, the final product was still tasty. The pitas were surprisingly good and there were just enough other condiments, ie lettuce, cucumber, and hummus.

Combined with a side of oven fries, mint tea, and good conversation, it was a very pleasant lunch indeed. If you ever find yourself in Bloomington/Normal, IL, you can find the Coffeehouse at 114 E Beaufort St.

Teese me please

2009-05-14T21:11:00.004-04:00

So, I feel as if I am catching on to the Teese excitement, oh, several months late. I had the chance to taste Teese while I was in Seattle at Pizza Pi in March, and I enjoyed the experience (not to mention eating a medium pizza by myself in a span of 18 hours). This week I got to test out this vegan cheese myself.

On my very last visit to the local health food's store in Indianapolis (Good Earth), I was excited to see that they had Teese on display. Not just one, but four flavors! Naturally, I had to pick up the mozzarella style to try it for myself. Once I was moved back home again, my dad put in the request for pizza early in the afternoon. I obliged and whipped up some mostly whole wheat crust a la Vegan with a Vengeance. Two kinds of pizza were made. Up close above is the pesto one with chard pesto that I made on the spot. The key to the melting was shredding the Teese, which I learned from reading the blogs of so many others before me.

Sadly, the Teese on the second pizza didn't melt as well. This one was made with the leftover soy curls in Veganomicon bbq sauce that I had served my family earlier in the week. My was it tasty.

Now I just have to figure out what I'll be doing with the rest of my Teese. I'm thinking a spinach and artichoke dip might be good. However, I better decide soon because I jet off to Europe in 14 days!

Stereotypical Student Suppers

2009-05-08T10:43:00.003-04:00

I'm going to share some semi-recent meals because they seem like the kind of meals that a typical university student would quickly throw together. (Plus, I feel like I've been neglectful even though it has only been a few days. Wow, this week before graduation has been going by so quickly!)

The first meal is going to sound like an odd combination, but it was surprisingly delicious. I had a little bit of pearled barley to finish, so I combined it with pesto, beets, and carrots. The pesto is a variation on the recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance, except with Swiss chard and cashews. (I prefer the pesto with walnuts, but I didn't have any.) Since basil isn't in season, I love using Swiss chard for pesto because it helps me finish off whatever is left in my fridge, and I just love Swiss chard. Seriously. Even though I'm moving on Monday, I almost want to get a bag just so that I can have green smoothies for breakfast, even though I'll probably have other leftovers that need to get eaten.

Here, is what seems like a simple stir-fry over couscous, but looks are deceiving. I used some soy chorizo in addition to the tofu, and... stinky tofu! I received a jar in one of the ppk care package swaps, and this was my first experimentation with it. I only used two cubes, and I'm not sure if I can even describe the flavor that it lent the dish. There was a discussion about how to use stinky tofu on the ppk, and I have other ideas that I'll hopefully be able to try at home (and get my omnivore family to eat). I also have plenty of other asian grocery goodies that could be making an appearance sometime soon as well!

I don't have any good pictures of them, but if you have a lot of Kahlua to get rid of (for me, leftover from a recent tiramisu cake), then I have a recipe for you! I made peanut butter Kahlua cookies, and they were absolutely wonderful. The recipe is from have cake, will travel and is great if you have friends who aren't huge peanut butter lovers like me. The Kahlua tones down on the peanut butter taste just enough but allows it to still be addictive to peanut butter lovers. I'd highly recommend them.

Cleaning the Cupboards

2009-05-04T14:24:00.003-04:00

Because I move out in a week, I'm rather torn about what to do with my pantry. I'm only going to be home sporadically during the summer (yay for a Europe excursion and grad school TA training), but I do not have as much access to wonderful things like whole wheat pastry flour, and basically anything in bulk while at home. Obviously, I am going to try to use up all of my frozen items and most refridgerator things. But I start to wonder if I should let myself run out of stables such as flours and grains or get more while I can. (Oh quinoa, I wish that you were back home.) Decisions, decisions...

The first farmers' market was on Saturday, and I got up early with two friends to make a trip. It was our little 'hippie date' as we then went to a very vegan friendly local cafe afterwards. The delicious finds that I got at the market consisted of some fresh pasta (whole wheat, tomato, chipotle, and porcini mushroom), tomatoes, and asparagus. The asparagus along with some frozen peas were used in an improvised pesto of sorts. It wasn't as chunky as I would have liked it, so I'll have to play with it a bit since adding more walnuts didn't help.

Hopefully, I'll be getting some good cooking done this week, and I plan on making a rather nice spread for my parents on Friday when they arrive for graduation. Bbq soy curls with beer bread rolls, chipotle pasta salad with corn, peppers, tomatoes in a lime sauce, and homemade chocolate raspberry ice cream. Hopefully it all works out.

And now, because I feel obligated to include a picture, here are some nice vegan nachos that I made during finals last week. It contained black beans, kidney beans, soyrizo, bell peppers, corn, and tomatoes. The sour cream is from Yellow Rose Recipes, and I had homemade guacamole as well. Very messy and very delicious

Candles Everywhere

2009-04-27T20:49:00.003-04:00

Final exams start this week, and I've got a big Inorganic lab to finish for tomorrow, but first I wanted to share the two cakes that I made for friends' birthdays in the past two weeks.

First up, is a take that I had on cookies and cream cake. My friend originally requested a different kind of cake, but I couldn't find all of the ingredients, so I picked up some vanilla and chocolate cream filled Trader Jo-Jo's and went from there! I didn't feel like making the chocolate cake with cookies mixed in, as per Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, so I made a simple white cake instead.

The filling between the layers is ground up chocolate filled cookies with just enough vanilla buttercream frosting to hold it together. It was actually easier to apply it with my fingers than with a knife. The frosting has the recommended amount of vanilla filled cookies folded in as suggested by Vctotw. Needless to say, my friend loved her cake. Bonus picture: We took the cake to the restaurant where her birthday dinner was, and they gave me a gigantic knife to cut it with!

Next up is the tiramisu cake that I made on Thursday. This friend was so excited for her cake that she had put in the request over a month ago! Again, I used the recipe from Vctotw because that book is amazing and has only failed me once.I have found that there is a trick when making this as a whole cake as opposed to cupcakes. In order to get the soaking effect with the coffee and Kaluha just right, you need to cut off the top crusty bit of the cake so that it is able to absorb the liquid better. (Funny side note: my vegan roommate was munching on the top crusty scraps and thought that it tasted like cornbread!) Since it is a cake, I also try to be a little bit more liberal with the amounts of coffee and liquor that I use. Cutting off the top does make the frosting job a little tricky, so take it slow. I don't like to frost all the way down the sides so that you can see the middle layer peeking through. In this case, I used a half batch of the Vctotw fudge frosting to hold it together. I think that it worked really well.

As you can see, cutting it can get a little messy since the soaking softens the top portion, but it was still good, and the cake was practically gone by the time that I left the party! My friend returned the plate today and was raving about how much she enjoyed it.

It is sort of fun to be known as the awesome birthday cake person among my circle of friends, if I so say so myself. Score for veganism!

A quick word

2009-04-21T00:35:00.002-04:00

I'm going to be brief because I'm so busy that I shouldn't be updating at all, however, this page was looking a little forlorn, and I couldn't resist. This week is the last full week of classes before final exams, and I have so many things due that I have no idea how I'll get them all done. So much for taking it easy my last semester. Speaking of which, my mind is blow every time that I look at the countdown on my apartment's fridge, which lists the days until graduation.

I've got a few countdowns of my own going as well. Two to be exact. Days until I go to Europe for four weeks (just bought my ticket over the weekend!): 37. Days until I relocate to Cornell: 76. Wow.

I've got several food things to share, but instead, I'm going to show what can currently describe my life at the moment. After several things going wrong today, I had to make myself some chocolate chocolate chips peanut butter cookies. Such a good standby from eat, drink and be vegan.

And yes, that is a rough draft of my undergraduate thesis sitting underneath. Actually, break time is over, and I'm back to work. (Story of my life for the rest of the week...)

A few admissions

2009-04-09T12:41:00.003-04:00

I can be a very boring person when it comes to breakfast. Honestly. More often than not, my staple consists of a slice of homemade bread slathered with crunchy peanut butter and a banana on top. Certainly not very photogenic or much of a variety. On rare occasions, I do get a hankering for something different.

Last weekend I diverged from habit and made whole grain pancakes with raspberries.

Okay, these might not be the most photogenic either, but they were very tasty. I used a recipe from a cookbook that I hardly use, but I was pleasantly surprised. With no granulated sugar in the recipe and made up with whole grains like cornmeal and whole wheat pastry flour, I didn't feel like I was consuming something which would give me a sugar high thirty minutes later. (Well, maybe I got it because of the real maple syrup...)

Another experiment that I had in baking recently were these:

Yes, in case you were wondering, I really did eat them for breakfast. I'm in love with Isa's peanut butter oatmeal cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance, but the oil and sugar content makes me cringe when I consume too many at once. This was my attempt to remedy that, but making cookies healthier doesn't always mean making them as tasty. Because of the lessened amount of sugar and oil, they didn't get as crispy as Isa's version, sadly. Also, I must not have added enough syrup or agave, because the peanut butter flavor was off and not as strong as I would have liked it to be. Oh well. It tasted like a healthy cookie more than anything else, so I spread microwave reheated frozen raspberries on top of a few and declared it a breakfast item...

In other news, I'm officially going to Cornell for graduate school, but you could probably figure that out after my last post. I'm really excited about it and the opportunity to start this next part of my education. (Yeah, okay, I'll stop being corny.) I'm also planning a month-long trip to Europe for June to celebrate and because I don't know when I'll be able to go back. Though, I have hit a few snags during the planning process this week. Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with some awesome vegans, but I'm not so sure how it will all work out at this point. I am excited about meeting up with old friends though that is for sure.

A quick trip to Ithaca, NY

2009-03-29T20:08:00.003-04:00

Due to my forgetfulness (and the fact that I had to wake up at 4:30 am to get ready for my early flight), I unfortunately didn't take my camera with me for my trip to Cornell. My visit with the chemistry department was amazing, and I'll probably reveal my graduate school decision later this week. (I'm very much leaning towards a place right now, but I shall see if I feel the same way in a few days.)

Even though Ithaca is pretty small, I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of vegan options there. My first day, my grad student host took me to a bagel shop to get a snack, and I was pleased to see Tofutti cream cheese as a topping option! The shop also had an all vegan wrap. What was rather cute was the vegan cookies by the cash register, which were plainly marked with a bright green sticker saying "VEGAN!" I loved the exclamation point for some reason. Another great option is the pizza place that we went to for lunch on Saturday. Apparently, there is always at least 1 vegan option already made (for those getting it by the slice), and they now have vegan cheese if you want to make your own! How exciting, even if it wasn't Teese.

On the whole, the chemistry department did a reasonably good job at feeding me while I was there. My host was pretty awesome in checking up on things for me since he was vegetarian himself. During the smorgasbord of offerings Friday night, there was one dish that was vegan: a fruit curry with tofu. It was very good, albeit on the spicy side (even for me). I was informed that the Thai restaurants are pretty good about vegan dishes in general.

Saturday morning, on the other hand, was a little less than stellar. I had to bypass the various doughnuts, quiche, and muffins for a plain bagel and fruit salad. It made me think wistfully of my yummy Might-O experience in Seattle.

Saturday night was a pleasant surprise. A nicer buffet was offered, and I started off with fruits, veggies, and some hummus with chips. But, thinking this would not be enough for me, a separate dish was specially made for me. When it was brought out, I got not one wrap, but two! (So much food, that I had to pawn the second wrap off on other people.) It was warmed and contained broccoli, green peppers, onion, cauliflower, and possibly a little cabbage. Although a little on the dry side, generous portions of guacamole made it better, because, after all, guacamole makes just about anything more awesome.

Overall, I discovered that Ithaca has quite a few vegan options for such a small town, which was a very pleasant surprise. And, Syracuse is only an hour away, which has some awesome vegan options, I have been told. A day trip would probably be a fun experience to have sometime if I end up going to Cornell.

A Prelude to Summer

2009-03-24T19:34:00.007-04:00

For some reason, the things that remind me of the start of summer (besides fresh produce) are barbecues and ice cream. Now, summer may be a ways off, but some of the things that I've been fixing lately would say otherwise.

My parents gave me an ice cream maker for christmas, but I hadn't used it much because of the cold weather. It has been very nice lately, so I decided to give it a second try. I used the cookies and cream recipe from here. In the process of making this, I learned two very import things:

1. Do use the chocolate creme filled cookies from Trader Joe's.

2. Don't use French vanilla soy creamer. The vanilla flavor will overpower just about everything else and make it have a very fake aftertaste.

The recipe did give a great texture, though not initially after mixing in the machine. I had to freeze it for several hours before it looked like how it is seen below.

Another thing that I associate with summer is barbecue. As a vegan, I usually would have to stick to roasted vegetables, homemade potato salad (done by me), or other such things. But this may now be a thing of the past. When I was in Seattle, I picked up a bag of soy curls because I had heard so many good things. What I did with them was pretty simple, and I smothered them in the bbq sauce from Veganomicon. (This bbq sauce is amazing and has quite a small kick that takes you by surprise!) I'm not sure how I feel about the soy curls, but the texture isn't too meaty or anything like that. What is great is how there are no preservatives in them, so I don't feel like it is a true mock meat at all. Here, the soy curls and bbq sauce are served on homemade whole grain bread. I have a feeling that this is a dish that will improve with being in the fridge overnight. I can't wait until I make this again because I'll probably take it a step further and make my own buns as well!

Everything Homemade

2009-03-21T22:06:00.003-04:00

Since going vegan, I've found bit by bit that I am a big fan of doing things myself whenever possible. (This mostly applies to the kitchen but has been known to manifest itself in other ways as well.) For over a year, I've been baking my own bread by using my parent's old bread machine, and I prefer making the Yellow Rose Recipes version of sour cream instead of buying the Tofutti version. Now that I've got my own ice cream maker, I've been experimenting with different recipes with that as well. However, this little installment is not about ice cream but rather falafel.

I am a huge fan of falafel. As someone who has spent quite a bit of time in Europe, this dish became my quick vegan go-to whenever I was out and needed something to eat fast. I couldn't tell you how many variations of stuff that I had last summer in Germany. I think that my favorite was the late night snack while visiting a friend in Köln because of discovering that the garlic sauce there was vegan.

Regardless, the process can be a little labor intensive if making these at home, but I get a great deal of satisfaction when I am finished. Usually I just buy a whole grain wrap to serve my falafel on, but last week I decided to take it up a notch. I had my first experience making my own pita bread. I used this recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan's vegan blog, and it worked well for the most part. I've misplaced my rolling pin somewhere between home and university, so I had to make due with using a long and narrow glass. I must have stretched them out too much because they didn't manage to puff up in the oven like they were supposed to do. (I had even bought a pizza stone specifically for this purpose.) The pitas were still good, and I just cheated aznd cut them to make my own pockets. Combined with the falafel and tahini sauce, I had a wonderful dinner even if it took a while to prepare.

A Little Bit Raw-er

2009-03-13T12:00:00.002-04:00

Since I am currently on Spring Break with, supposedly, more time on my hands, I decided to delve a little bit into the idea of raw foods. I'm not a complete enthusiast, but I do feel as if eating more foods in their natural state can be better and perhaps healthier. Knowing my own limitations, I realized that I wouldn't be able to go completely raw this week, nor would I want to. Even for the meals that haven't been totally raw, I have incorporated more simple and healthier foods. Here are examples of two of the dinners that I had this week.

The first is spicy peanut broccoli salad of sorts. I don't think my peanut butter is raw, but I tried, ok? I took a huge knife to a small head of broccoli and went crazy on it, then I tossed the bits with my usual spicy peanut sauce that I like with red cabbage.

Here, is my attempt at raw pasta. I was surprised at how easy it was to get the zucchini noodles with a regular vegetable peeler. A little more time consuming, maybe, but not overly so. The sauce is my improvised swiss chard/dark green leafy veggie mix pesto. I'm out of walnuts, so I used raw cashews instead, and I couldn't tell much of a difference. I also subbed a lot of the oil with water, and it didn't seem to effect the texture too much (and cut down on the fat). I must not have made enough noodles, because I was hungry again two hours later. Unfortunately, I caved in to my whole grain craving and had second helpings using whole wheat pasta. I must love my grains too much to give them up...

Today started off well with a breakfast of steel cut oats soaked in almond milk overnight with raisins. A little bit boring, so no picture was taken. Lunch consisted of more pesto and tomato on toast (yes, not raw, I know). Tonight for dinner, I plan on making a raw curried soup, so I'll see how that goes.

Full of Sugary Goodness

2009-03-08T17:36:00.002-04:00

That's right, my lunch today was full of bad vegan choices, but only because they weren't healthy! I'm in Seattle at the moment (visiting University of Washington for grad school), and I was lucky enough to have an entire free day today before I fly out tomorrow. After exploring some second hand shops this morning, I decided to make the trek over to Might-O doughnuts, which only sells vegan doughnuts (!). I decided to take advantage of this rare occurrence and splurged on buying a complete dozen. Check out these babies below!

There are a variety of flavors represented with plenty of raspberry, chocolate, and peanut butter varieties of some sort. The lady had put them all in a cardboard box for me when we realized that they wouldn't travel well on a plane that way, so she nicely transfered them over to plastic containers for me. Somehow, I managed to make the 30 minute walk make to my hotel before devouring two of them. The first one was a raised doughnut with chocolate glaze, and I was very under-whelmed. It felt almost as heavy and dense as the rest of the cake doughnuts, so I was a little bit disappointed. I was expecting it to be so much airy and lighter.

My second doughnut was chocolate with peanut butter glaze. This one was great, and it didn't taste too sweet at all and had just the right amount of peanut butter. I can't wait to try all the rest, well, at least most of the rest (I'm going to be nice and save one or two for my vegan roommate for when she gets back from spring break).

Now that I'm all rested up and full of energy again, I'm walking back to campus to take some artsy pictures (at least, an attempt at them). It snowed last night, but the sun is out at the moment, so maybe I'll be able to get a few mountain shots. Then tonight, I'm meeting some awesome people from the ppk at Pizza Pi, which is an all vegan pizza place. I'm really excited, and there will naturally be plenty of pictures taken!

Of Cabbage and Quinoa

2009-02-17T17:14:00.003-05:00

Below is the dinner from a while back that I promised. There are other dinners that I want to talk about, but I didn't manage to snap a picture. I guess that I'll just have to wait until I eat what was stashed in the freezer.

I'm sad that I haven't been able to keep up my red cabbage addiction, but Trader Joe's has been out of it the last few times that I have been there. Here is one of the last things that I tried.

For some reason, I just couldn't bring myself to cook the cabbage even though I decided to have it in a German/Eastern European style. Basically, I just nuked apple pieces in cinnamon, ginger, water, little maple syrup, and apple cider vinegar then poured the mixture on top of the cabbage. It was an interesting set of contrasts with the sweet/sour of the cooked apple and then the soft/crunchy between the apple and cabbage. I may make it again but with some alterations.

Here is my lazy quinoa dish, which turned out surprisingly good. I had some leftover cooked regular and red quinoa that was reheated along with some frozen corn and peas. On top is the tomato chutney from Trader Joe's. It was missing a little something, and then I mixed the chutney in and added a little bit of soymilk and siracha hot sauce. It was quick and easy, and I'll probably be making up several variations when I need a fast but healthy and tasty meal.

Future posts: I'll be in Chicago this weekend to visit one of the graduate schools to which I was accepted. The chemistry department knows that I'm vegan, so I'm curious as to how I'll be accommodated for outside meals, and I know that I'll be visiting some sort of veg place on my own before I leave town.

Dessert First is Always Better

2009-02-15T23:18:00.003-05:00

This is not the aforementioned carrot cake that was promised nor the dinner, but it is close. (To the cake at least...) I have pictures of the dinner but figured dessert is more exciting, and my friend, whose birthday the carrot cake was for, still hasn't given me the pictures that he took of it.

I realized last week that I had a bag of home-cooked black beans that needed to be used up before they went bad. I had bookmarked the recipe on have cake, will travel, which involved making brownies with black beans as a base, so I figured that it was time to finally give it a try. Here is the result:

On their own, the brownies were a little bland and had a healthy taste to them. I don't think my roommate liked them very much, but I didn't think that they were too bad with raspberries (frozen ones nuked in the microwave) or melted extra chocolate on top. The healthiness made me not feel as guilty when I ate them once (or twice) a day. Plus, the all the fiber in the beans and oatmeal has other healthy digestion benefits.

I ended up tweaking the recipe Celine posted and making it a hybrid of the two found on her site. If I make this again sometime soon, I'll probably work on the recipe a little bit more. Here is what I did:

2 tbsp canola oil

1/4 cup coca powder

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup sugar

1 banana

1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 cup oats

1/4 cup applesauce

2 tbsp peanut butter

I used the food processor to grind up the oats, beans, and then mix everything else together. After putting the batter in a 9x9 baking dish, it was baked at 350 F for 30 minutes. I think that I may have added a few chocolate chips to the batter, now that I think about it. The fact that I almost forgot probably means that I didn't add near enough.

Snow Day Cooking

2009-02-05T00:19:00.004-05:00

Okay, I'll be honest. The hinted upon snow day was really a week ago, but I felt obligated to blog about it (since I've been meaning to do so) before I blog about my dinner and bread baking tonight. It was actually a very fun meal that involved me and two other roommates each making a dish to contribute. (Please excuse the messy kitchen in the background below.)

In the front are some frozen vegetables which were sauteed with balsamic vinegar among other things. To the right are latkes, or "those Jewish pancakes" as my roommate likes to call them. I always top them with apple sauce and never ketchup, because I want to do it the German way, plus I think ketchup just overpowers the potato taste. The recipe that she used was from Veganomicon.

And last but not least, is my contribution on the left. I had a bunch of swiss chard, a great vegetable love of mine, and I somehow got the idea to make a pesto with it. I had seen recipes were spinach had been used for some of the basil, and, since I didn't have any basil, I figured that I should give it a try with chard.

It may be a bit difficult to see, but this pesto was absolutely lovely. I followed the pesto recipe in VwaV except that I used three rather large chard leaves. I think one of my favorite parts of this pesto was how the red stems give it these gorgeous red flakes amongst all the green. Even though I served it on top of a lemony brown rice with white beans and tomatoes, I have plans on making this again for pizza along with the vodka tomato sauce. Such a combination could only turn out absolutely amazing and may cause me to forget to put any other vegetables on the pizza!

Coming soon: another variation on red cabbage salad with lazy quinoa and carrot cake!

An Unofficial Vegetable Challenge

2009-02-02T20:00:00.005-05:00

I know that so many people do some sort of resolution nonsense (well, sometimes they can be practical rather than silly), thus I decided to wait a while until admitting mine even if it is not a resolution, per say. I am considering it more of a challenge to myself. Just like everyone else, I notice sometimes that I get a little over-enthusiastic in the baking department. I also realized that I wanted to branch out a little bit more in my eating. Thus, I have been consciously trying vegetables that I had not eaten in a while or try new ones that I don't recall ever eating on a regular basis. It probably sounds silly, but I am thinking of it as a vegetable adventure.

The first casualty to this experiment was Brussels sprouts. To many, they are a feared vegetable since youth, but I honestly couldn't recall eating any in my youth. After consulting my cookbooks, I knew that baking them would be the best option. Sadly, there are no pictures of this first foray, but that is only because those sprouts did not last long! Using the cornmeal crusted recipe in Veganomicon, I discovered a new favorite side dish. Even the rest of my roommates couldn't resist the slightly spiced smells coming from the oven!

My next foray took me by surprise, to be quite honest. On an impulse, I picked up a bag of shredded red cabbage while at the store. Being somewhat familiar with German dishes, I have tried and occasionally liked the stewed red cabbage side dish stable. (The ones that I've experienced have usually been more on the sour side, which wasn't always pleasing. There was this stewed plain cabbage that I was once given in Prague, but I am not quite sure how that was prepared differently.) I perused favorite food blogs and cookbooks, unsure of what to do with this vegetable. There is a recipe on Fat Free Vegan Kitchen that I shall be trying later this week, but for now, my new salad that I can't seem to get enough of is seen below.

I hadn't realized how good red cabbage was raw if you just have the right dressing! Upon seeing the high vitamin C content, I knew that I didn't want to cook it the first time around. Here, I have it paired with a spicy peanut sauce that I threw together (along with some carrots on top). The recipe is more of a guideline than anything exact, but I'm including it to give you a general idea.

apple cider vinegar (a tbsp or two)

garlic powder

ground ginger

red pepper flakes (this gives it that kick)

a little lime juice

a few dollops of peanut butter (I use crunchy, since that is what I keep around.)

Just mix it all together with a fork and then add a little water to thin it out. Add the veggies and coat them well. This simple ensemble turned out to be surprisingly delicious, and I used my whole first bag eating it with dinner several days in a row. I just couldn't get enough of it! (I'll blame it on my peanut butter addiction.)

My next challenge will be to actually do something with cooked cabbage, and I also have an eggplant sitting in the fridge, wanting to be used. I've cooked with eggplant before in making hummus, a vegetable quinoa dish, or a hungarian paprikash. This time, I want to try something new, so I'll see what I can find.

Pizza Revelations

2009-01-24T15:31:00.003-05:00

Usually, I am a huge proponent of making things from scratch whenever possible. I've been baking my own version of a whole grain bread for over a year now, and I've recently been getting really good about cooking my own dried beans and stockpiling them in the freezer to use when needed. Almost whole wheat pizza dough, based on the recipe in Vegan with a Vengence, normally falls into this category as well. However, when I was at Trader Joe's yesterday, I saw their garlic and herb already made pizza dough and decided to give it a try.

Now it is picture story time!

I don't recall who did it, but over at the post punk kitchen forums, someone decided to put swiss chard on pizza, and I thought it was an absolutely fabulous idea. Above is the pre-greened pizza with red bell pepper, corn, and the soy chorizo (also from Trader Joe's)

There are two different sauces on the pizza since I had to improvise due to someone eating a large portion of the tomato vodka tomato sauce that I had for dinner last night but was saving the remainder for this pizza. The left side has some homemade sundried tomato hummus instead.

The verdict? The dough was alright, but I much prefer making my own. I learn more towards a wheat-ier crust, which has a bit more bite to it. Perhaps I'll just have to make my own whole wheat version of this one.

But in all honesty, the star of the show was the tomato vodka sauce. I inhaled that side of the pizza. Seriously. How come I had never thought to use it on pizza before? I'd highly recommend doing it, because it was absolutely brilliant. Took the pizza to a whole new level.

Why I never cook steel cut oats on the stove

2009-01-11T18:00:00.002-05:00

I don't know why I have an inability to cook steel cut oats on the stove, but I do. I've tried to do this seemingly simple procedure several times and have always succeeded in making a total mess of it. Case in point:

Would you want me doing this to your poor innocent stove? I think not.

I get everything set up, and I leave the room for a half hour after making sure that they are gently simmering in their water. I come back, and that was the sight that greeted me. Not much fun to clean up, trust me.

So how do I usually cook steel cut oats if not on the stove? I use a crock pot. I discovered this method after a thorough introduction to steel cut oats over at the fat free vegan kitchen blog.

My slow cooker was given to me by my parents after they got a new one, so it is rather ancient (well, let's just say that they got it as a wedding present and have been married 25 years or so). It takes me about 4 hours (sometimes 5) to cook my oats, but if I have homework or reading that needs to be, it is convenient to go stir it whenever I need to take a break. I cook two cups at a time, which gives me enough oats for an entire week's worth of breakfasts.

I really like steel cut oats because they are rather filling and a whole grain. To reheat my oats, I get a few scoops of cooked oats that are congealed and pour a little non-dairy milk over them. I put this in the microwave for a minute or so. Then I add a little maple syrup, ground flax seeds, and frozen raspberries and microwave it for another minute or two. Stir well, and you have a very satisfying breakfast indeed.

A Vegan's Take on Disney World

2009-01-07T19:30:00.002-05:00

For some reason, I do not have any pictures from my good eats during last week's family vacation at Disney World. Instead, I am going to give the highlights and a few tips of how to eat vegan at a place that may not initially seem vegan friendly.

Like last year, the two best meals that I had were at Jiko (Animal Kingdom Lodge) and Spoodles (Boardwalk).

For New Year's Eve 2007, my meal at Jiko consisted of a dish with a whole grain pilaf and an Afrikan spiced tofu dish, which happened to be an entree on the regular menu. This year, there was no such thing on the regular menu, much to my initial dismay. After learning that I was vegan, our server promptly came back with a totally vegan menu. (We kept it, but I have no idea where my mum tucked it away at.) There were about 5 appetizers (and they weren't all salads though several were vegan versions of dishes on the omni menu) but only one entree and dessert. It would have been nice to have more than one option as an entree, but it was tasty. It was a curry with tofu, artichokes, eggplant, rice, and several other vegetables that I can't recall. Although it was a take on an omni dish involving shrimp on the other menu, it was rounded out quite well. My parents had also ordered an appetizer, and the server was very good about verifying which breads and such were vegan.

My other good vegan meal was at Spoodles, which is a Mediterranean inspired restaurant. There was no separate vegan menu here, but they are very accomadating to vegans. Once the server heard that I was vegan, he brought one of the chefs over to our table. The chef was extremely nice and clarified with me what items I did not eat. He quickly told me which appetizers that my party had ordered that I could eat. Then he asked what sort of dish I wanted to eat. I could try to veganize something already on the menu or have him make up something totally different. I chose to have one of the two vegetarian options on the menu, but I altered the flavorings a bit. My dish was a lemony couscous with sun-dried tomatoes, and several grilled vegetables. There was also a red pepper sauce drizzled on the top, which was absolutely amazing. Plus, this place keeps non-diary ice cream in the back, so I was actually able to have dessert with the rest of my family, a scoop of both chocolate and vanilla, naturally.

Even though my best experiences were at nicer sit down restaurants, it does not mean that you cannot have good vegan meals at other places; you just have to look harder and be more flexible. In a pinch, I did have to go with the default of a baked pretzel and spicy mustard, but there are places in each park where you can get some sort of fresh fruit. For counter service, the park maps will show where vegetarian options are available. Just because there is a vegetarian option, it does not always translate as vegan. Stay away from pizza places as they will not be accommodating. However, you can find vegan chili, a soup with tofu (at an Asian pavilion), and sandwiches. Usually the sandwiches would have cheese or a spread that may have diary. I learned that all cash registers have allergen information, and this knowledge did prove to be helpful on a few occasions. Also, depending on how busy a place is, usually you can make some sort of substitution on the sandwich if need be.

Sometimes you have to be patient, but eating vegan at Disney is not impossible. This was my second year doing it, and I learn new tricks each time. Hopefully by next year, I will be an old pro.

And, to make up for the lack of food pictures, the above is a photo taken in a "forest" at Animal Kingdom.

Attempting to Fool (or rather, Outsmart) the Omnis

2008-12-28T00:40:00.002-05:00

Stops you right in your tracks, doesn't it? This is the vegan version of my dad's amazing lasagna, which we have always had on Christmas Eve since I can remember. It is pretty basic with whole wheat noodles, cashew tofu ricotta from Veganomicon, bell peppers, an improvised tomato sauce, and a secret ingredient or two. Even though my brother complained about the lack of meat, he still went for seconds. Wouldn't you?

We served a similar lasagna last year when we had family friends present for dinner in addition to my family. It was my first holiday season as a vegan, and I was nervous as to how the improved version of this tradition would be received. I was amazed when one of our guests was raving about it and totally blown away when my dad revealed that it was vegan, and thus non-dairy. Such a reception is what any vegan would love to have from the average omnivore, and I'm glad to have gotten it during my first vegan Christmas.

Not enough sugar?

2008-12-25T00:22:00.002-05:00

The holiday baking has begun. Just about all the sweets that my family will have this week will be made by me (excluding the apple pie tomorrow, which, luckily, is vegan). Monday was round one with me baking the YRR spice cake for my mum when she went to a get-together.

Then, of course, can't forget about the peanut butter pie. This stuff is seriously addicting. It wasn't quite as good as when my roommate made it, but it was still tasty. The rest of my family loved it and would never have guessed that the main ingredient was tofu. I'm not sure if my brother actually did figure it out since I never told him nor did he complain (as is the case whenever I serve him something with tofu).

Tonight, the sugar coma was induced by chocolate white chocolate chip walnut cookies, which was a variation on a recipe in Veganomicon. I got some white chocolate chips in a care package swap on the ppk in October, and I was so excited to finally get to use them. (I had been saving them for something special.) These were amazing, and my brother could not stop eating them. I started to get scared that there wouldn't be any left for tomorrow!

Tomorrow I'll show off the vegan lasagna that I made, which bended the usual Christmas Eve tradition just a bit. Plus, I'll be making falafel for myself and hopefully making the rest of the family jealous.

Old pictures and Plans

2008-12-22T20:55:00.002-05:00

In my attempt to take pictures of desserts today, I found some old pictures from Thanksgiving.

Here is the pumpkin pie I made at the last minute because my dad didn't tell me that he wanted a pumpkin pie until there was no time to make a better one. This is from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen and is without a crust. Not sure if I am a big fan of the lack of crust. On top is some Soyatoo straight from Deutschland that I brought home just for the occasion in August.

This is just a basic scrambled tofu from VwaV with homemade vegan sour cream plus hot sauce on the side. The pancakes are from VwaV as well and are banana walnut. Not a bad way to start the day if I do say so myself.

With the semester done and finals finished, I won't have to worry about school for three weeks. This means that I'll be at home trying to get my very omni family to eat vegan food. Next week we'll be on vacation, but I managed to sit down with my dad and sketch out a basic menu.

Monday: Non-traditional pizza with roasted eggplant and garlic hummus from YRR, homemade 2/3's wheat crust, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, and Trader Joe's soy chorizo. Very different but very tasty.

Tuesday: Southwestern bean chili in the slow cooker. Then I'll make corn bread to serve with it.

Wednesday: Our traditional Christmas Eve lasagna made vegan. Whole wheat pasta will be coupled with cashew tofu ricotta, tomato sauce, bell peppers, possibly spinach and some other secret ingredients.

Thursday: I'll be trying to ignore the very non-vegan slaughtered pig that the rest of my family will be eating. The sides will be vegan though, and I have decided to make myself falafel since I have a ton of chickpeas from tonight's hummus as well as parsley.

Friday: Tempeh Shepards Pie. This will be a good way to use the mashed potatoes from the day before and the tempeh that I brought home with me. Plus, a vegetarian friend highly recommended the Veganomicon recipe.

Hopefully there will be plenty of pictures and updates in the next few days and couple of weeks!

The resurrection of roommate bonding Wednesdays

2008-12-10T21:05:00.003-05:00

Wednesday has returned with a vengeance! Even though I am busy preparing from finals last week, I took a well-deserved break from Physical Chemistry homework to cook the main portion of dinner. (Two of my roommates helped as well, and the other vegan made this wonderful peanut butter pie with chocolate. You would not even guess that it contains a whole block of tofu!!) We felt so fancy tonight with a main course, appetizer, and dessert. The meal consisted of the penne vodka sauce from Veganomicon and spinach artichoke dip (except with Swiss chard instead of spinach) from Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk.

Wow. Just wow. If you haven't made the penne vodka sauce yet, do it now! I added a bit more garlic than the recipe called for and guessed on most of the measurements, but it was so flavorful. We usually don't keep much hard liquor around the apartment, but one of my roommates hosted a party over the weekend and was left with an unopened bottle of vodka. We weren't sure what to do with it until I thought of this pasta sauce. The dip with chard was an excellent variation, though next time I might add even more chard than I used. The pie was unbelievably peanut buttery. I cannot wait to make it at home during the holidays because my family would never guess that it contains tofu. (Score one for veganism!) Plus, drizzling chocolate on the bottom and on top makes it absolutely irresistible. All of this was rounded out by a bottle of red wine. It was a most excellent combination, and I am absolutely stuffed.

Coming soon: This weekend I will be baking chocolate stout cupcakes and cookies for two friends who have had recent birthdays. Yay for pre-final exam stress reducing baking!

A Beginning to a Birthday Extravaganza

2008-11-27T14:30:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned previously, my friends and family have a lot of birthdays during this time of the year. (My younger brother has one today, actually.) Two of my best friends have birthdays within a week and a half of each other, and I usually bake them something while I am at home during Thanksgiving break. Last year I actually made two different sets of cupcakes, but this year I said that I would make one big cake if they could agree on the flavor. Tiramisu was requested, and here is what I came up with.

Is that enough of a close up for you? I took the cupcake idea from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and ran with it. I apologize of the poor qualities of the photos. It was nighttime when I took the pictures, and my camera was about to die. (I really need to look into getting a new camera...) The one below was also taken after I had delivered the cake, hence the plastic wrap, random booze bottle, and star wars lego in the background.

Basically, I followed the recipe for the cake exactly. The middle layer is actually the dark chocolate Chocoreale that I still had left from my stay in Germany. For the coffee/Kalua soaking, first I lightly cut off a thin layer from the top of the cake so that it could soak up the mixture better. (This also gave me an excuse to try the cake before delivering it.) Because I used the Chocoreale to keep the layers together, I only needed one batch of the cream cheese frosting, which was good. The cake was very well received (as can be seen since only half is left), and a few of my friends could not believe that it was vegan.

Coming soon will be what I made for my family for Thanksgiving. (Sadly, they insisted on cooking their own dead carcass, but one can only do so much.) I am also being rather lazy this year and am not going to make my own main dish. (I'll save the fancy stuff for Christmas, I suppose.) However, all of the sides and desserts will be vegan. This morning, I did make banana walnut pancakes and scrambled tofu with Trader Joe's soy chorizo mixed in. Hopefully I'll be able to snap a picture of the leftovers tomorrow. Other pictures to come will be a crustless pumpkin pie, multigrain rolls (yes, from scratch), and the veganized version of my dad's mashed "party" potatoes.

And what about birthday cakes? Well, my brother has requested Coconut Lime Cupcakes (but I'm not sure when I'll be baking them if we are taking a mini vacation tomorrow.) A good friend of mine from University has a birthday this next week as well, so I shall be baking her something next weekend.

Failing at VeganMoFo

2008-11-25T20:01:00.003-05:00

Yes, so my apologies for dropping out of VeganMoFo as it was reaching the final stretch. School and life just started to get way too crazy, so I didn't have much time to cook awesome meals (only simple things). With the end of the school semester approaching, things are liable to get just as crazy, but I'll probably be doing lots of baking to help de-stress. Plus, holiday foods will be coming. To make up for my lack of activity, here are two pictures.
This falafel and tahini sauce was made sometime during VeganMoFo, but I never had time to blog about it. (The picture is actually taken from a reheated meal. *gasp*) Needless to say, I almost considered using this recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance as my meal on Thanksgiving.

This is a double layer cake of red velvet with cream cheese frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World, naturally. I made it for the birthday of one of my roommate's, who was quite obviously turning 22. I was actually going to write happy birthday, but I ran out of time and was going to be late for work. The writing was made of quick melty ganache and set up quite nicely after being in the fridge.

That recipe is absolutely amazing, so, if you haven't tried it, you better get to it soon. So good. It took a lot of control for me to let the birthday girl have the final piece when it got to that point.

VeganMoFo: Roommate bonding Wednesdays

2008-10-22T19:27:00.003-04:00

I am not sure how this started, but it has become a thing for the roommates in my apartment to all have dinner together on Wednesday nights. What makes it even more special, is how it will be one of us cooking for the other three. Last week, the volunteered cook wasn't even vegan, but she cooked a vegan meal since two of us in the apartment are vegan. I hadn't cooked a Wednesday dinner yet, so I volunteered for this week.

Last time my other vegan roommate cooked, she make pasta, so I knew that I wanted to make something different. I didn't want to make something overly vegan (just yet). Thus, I wanted to avoid tofu or tempeh. Luckily, my parents went to the Farmers' Market for me at home while I was taking the GRE Chemistry subject test last weekend, so I had some fresh produce like butternut squash, cherry tomatoes, and green bell pepper. I was initially thinking of a lasagna of some sort, but after seeing the Pumpkin and Black Bean Casserole on Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, I knew that I had found the perfect dinner.

Do yourself a favor and make this soon while squash is in season! I used butternut squash instead of pumpkin, and it turned out amazing. It is very flavorful even if I went a little heavy on the cumin and paprika. The nutritional yeast gives it a little something without tasting overly vegan-y. Everyone loved it and ate it so quickly that I forgot to get a picture! Like Susan says, it does look a lot prettier in the pan than it does on the plate, but the taste certainly makes up for that.

VeganMoFo: Care packages are the best

2008-10-20T23:42:00.003-04:00

Over at the ppk we had a care package swap for the month of October. I had never participated in such a thing before, but I can officially say that I am hooked! I got some really awesome stuff, and it wasn't all food.

In the box are some green tea walnut biscotti from Isa and Terry's upcoming cookie book. (I've already had two pieces, and the flavor is interesting and hard to describe.) There is also some ginger pear jam, which I will try for breakfast tomorrow. I had heard of the mythical vegan peanut chews, and I now have a bag of my own. Oh my. So addicting. I also got some white chocolate chips. Now I just need to decide what wonderful baked goods I will use them in. That scarf is so long and amazingly soft. I wore it this evening and already got complimented on it. What fun. The mug is adorable with a sun on it and is filled with (mostly vegan slogan) pins. Oh, and I can't forget the cute card!

I knew it would be coming any day now, but it definitely made my evening. I can only hope that mine was well received too.

VeganMoFo: Blowing the Socks off of Omnis with Cookies

2008-10-19T13:15:00.003-04:00

Last night I went to the party, where one of the hosts had a birthday a few days ago. Naturally, I decided to bake him some cookies as a present. After double checking to make sure he had no food allergies, I decided on Isa's Peanut butter oatmeal cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance.

These cookies are seriously addicting. He hid the cookies after I arrived and didn't reveal them until late in the night. Everyone was raving about them and couldn't believe that they were vegan after that little fact was revealed. One girl asked me what made the cookies stick together if I didn't use eggs, milk, or butter. I find it interesting that people don't realize how vegan baking is so similar to non-vegan baking. (Admittedly, I felt the same way before I was vegan.) Yes, some recipes might call for tofu, but they really don't call for obscure ingredients.

What lovely peanut butter goodness resides in these cookies. I saved three for myself (hey, they couldn't fit on the plate!) and managed to eat them for breakfast this morning. Well, I ate two, had a hot chocolate, and then ate the last one right after taking that picture. They are definitely my favorite, and my go-to recipe whenever I want to impress omnivores. In all seriousness, I have never met an omni who didn't like these cookies. Score for veganism!

VeganMoFo: Pseudo-Thai for Omnis

2008-10-16T22:52:00.002-04:00

Sadly, my trip home has coincided with the seeming demise of my camera. I will see what I can do to revive it, or maybe temporarily borrow my mum's. In the meantime, tonight's dinner will have to go without a photo yet again. (Hopefully I can figure something out by lunchtime tomorrow when I reheat leftovers.)

Even though I wasn't able to get to the Farmers' Market last weekend, I still had an eggplant and a few small bell peppers which needed to get used. As in as soon as possible. I had been thinking about this dish for the past few days and it is a hybrid of sorts of this dish from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen and this in the PPK recipes section. I was inspired by a late night (not entirely sober) snack of the original quinoa dish that I had doused in store-bought peanut sauce and extra hot sauce. It was so good and addicting. Having my eggplant made me think of making it again.

I simplified the recipe a bit since I am at home. The only seasoning that I used for the 1 1/2 cups of quinoa was 3 cloves of minced garlic. I used coconut oil when I sautéed an eggplant, a yellow summer squash, 3 small zucchinis, and 3 small bell peppers. When those were done, I combined it with the cooked quinoa. The peanut sauce was run through a blender before being poured over the dish and consisted of the following:

spicy peanut sauce

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup hot water

1 tsp ground ginger (had none fresh)

1 bunch of scallions with a few of the green stems added in for good measure

zest of 1 lime

juice of said lime

a few squirts of sriracha hot sauce (I couldn't be too liberal with it since my mum can't handle hot stuff.)

I was really pleased with the dinner, and my younger brother even got seconds, which is always a good thing since he can be such a picky little omni.

VeganMoFo: Green smoothies, the sequal

2008-10-15T23:43:00.003-04:00

I know that I talked about green smoothies a week or so ago, but I mixed up my recipe again with interesting results. This time I halved the amount of water and ice that I used previously, froze the banana first, and used two kiwis instead of a kiwi and raspberries. I will say that I missed the tartness that the raspberries added. Plus, I had no idea how hard it was to peel a frozen banana. What a pain. It did add a thicker consistency to the smoothie that I liked though.

(See that book underneath my smoothie? I'll be taking the Chemistry GRE subject test in 3 days. So, even though I am going home for my Uni's fall 'reading' break, I will be doing lots of studying. Yikes. Hopefully I'll be able to fit in a few good vegan meals for my omnivore family.)

I don't have any excited meal updates because, even though I planned on making a fun dinner tonight, one of my roommates ended up cooking for our entire apartment (which includes another vegan in addition to me). Here is the quick picture that I took before my camera died. She didn't do too bad, and I didn't find her Moroccan stew as spicy as she seemed to think it was. I think it is my turn next Wed. to cook for the entire apartment. Any suggestions would be welcome...

VeganMoFo: The sweet versus savory breakfast conundrum

2008-10-13T22:36:00.002-04:00

Sorry about the lack of picture again, but let's face it; toast is not very photogenic. You might have guessed it from my previous statement, but I did in fact have toast this morning for breakfast. Not that it was totally boring, mind you. One slice had a generous helping of crunchy peanut butter, and the other had roasted garlic hummus with tomato slices. Hopefully such a simple meal gets bonus points because the bread is homemade.

But what is this breakfast conundrum? I often wonder whether or not I will be appealing to my sweet or savory side in the morning, and sometimes I have to appease both. Usually, toast is my fall-back, but I can easily vary it with different toppings. The two mentioned above are regulars, but I also have been known to just eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, have toast with chocoreale (at least, until it runs out), or spread with tofutti cream cheese and toasted a second time with raspberries on top.

My other usual breakfast is much more filling and consists of steel cut oats. Early this year, I read this post over at the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen blog, and I figured that I should give steel cut oats a try. Up until then, I had only had steel cut oats after soaking them overnight in soymilk and then just heating up the bowl in the microwave in the morning. As low key as this method was, it made for some chewy oatmeal. After reading the post, I decided to try steel cut oats in a more authentic manner. I had several unsuccessful stovetop attempts, but I finally found out that the slow cooker method works best for me. It is great because I can just set it up while I do homework and just randomly stir it every hour or so. The method that I used came from here. Note: my slow cooker takes longer than the time listed because it is rather old (aka it was a wedding present of my parents, which I got to claim after they got a new one last year).

But what do I do with all those oats after I cook them? I simply let them cool and stick them in a tupperware container. When I cook 2 cups of oats, I get enough cooked to last me for a week. Morning preparation is easy. I just scoop some out into a bowl and pour a little soymilk on it because it will have congealed a lot. Zap it in the microwave for 1 minute or so then take it out and mash it up with the spoon so that the oatmeal clumps break apart. I add in my other flavorings (lately, I have been favoring ground flax, maple syrup, and raspberries) and heat it up for another minute or so. Stir vigorously and enjoy!

So as you can see, my breakfast choices lean on either the sweet or savory side. I have been known to make pancakes, but only when I have a lot of time to spare. Cinnamon rolls would also hit the spot, but the infamous pumpkin ones of Don't Eat of the Sidewalk fame have yet to be made. (Perhaps I'll finally do it this weekend when I am at home for Fall Break aka get all the loads of homework done that you have fallen behind on.) As for other savory items, I do love my scrambled tofu, but I usually fix it for dinner and rarely for my morning meal. I prefer to get a huge helping of fiber/grains as opposed to protein.

And, to make up for the lack of photos, I will leave you with the (mostly) whole grain bread that I have fallen in love with. It is a hybridization of several have cake, will travel recipes, though the identities of them have become unclear over time.

(Mostly) Whole Grain Bread

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup bread flour

~1/2 cup rolled oats

~1/2 cup 7 grain mixture (I found it in the bulk bins at my local (very hippie) health foods store.)

2 tsp vital wheat gluten

2 tsp soy milk powder

1 1/4 cup water

2 Tbsp molasses

2 Tbsp canola oil

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp yeast

I use a bread machine (stolen from my parents as well due to a lack of use), so I just toss in the wet ingredients, then the dry (make sure to put the oats and grains in first so that they are mixed in better), and finally the yeast on top. Don't for get to set it to a whole wheat setting so that it kneads it properly. Sit back, relax, and become hungry as your place fills with the amazing scent of baking bread.

I am too lazy (and have too much homework aka Physical chemistry and German exams this week) to write out what to do sans bread machine. Go to the above mentioned have cake, will travel blog, and you will find some wonderful directions there.

VeganMoFo: Experiencing an underwhelming vegan option

2008-10-11T23:50:00.002-04:00

No, I have not disappeared from VeganMoFo, in case you were wondering. I just haven't really done much cooking since Wed, and I have been super stressed and dealing with a lot of school work. I did bake Veganomicon's Chewy Oatmeal Raison Cookies (with added chocolate chips). It is going to take all of my will power not eat yet another one right before I go to bed.

But what I really wanted to talk about is an interesting experience that I had today. I am the President of my University's Environmental Concerns Organization this year, and even though I went vegan partially because I wanted to reduce my environmental impact and be less wasteful in terms of how and what I eat, I really do not try to be a total push-over about this aspect. People can become easily offended when their diet is on the line, but I am glad to talk to people about my veganism in depth if they are curious after discovering this facet to me.

But I don't want to get off topic about what I wanted to discuss. Today I went to an Indiana Climate Change Summit (which happened to be taking place at my Uni) sponsored by Earth Charter Indiana. This is a very interesting organization, and I actually would like to take more time (eventually) to explore the international website because they have many interesting facets involving sustainability and social justice/cooperation.

I was so excited when I signed up for this Summit because the two lunch options online were Vegan and Non-vegan. Sounds promising, doesn't it? I was a little apprehensive when I heard that the catering would be done by my Uni's dining services. I had a hard enough time eating there when I was vegetarian (let alone as a vegan). It turned out that I was right to be apprehensive. They did not make much of a special effort for the vegan lunch at all. It was a sandwich bar with plenty of meat and tuna salad (not to mention a very dairy-filled pasta salad). Good thing that they had hummus and veggies, but that seems like they didn't feel like making much of an effort. Sure, there was a fruit salad, but no vegan baked good options. Thanks for tempting with brownies and cookies that I could not eat.

I should have known better than to get too excited. You would think if they acknowledged the existence of vegans and it was one of two lunch options that the spread would be more easily balanced. Such was not the case, and it saddened me. I went in with so much hope only to be disappointed. So, lesson learned today. Just because there may be a published vegan option, it does not mean that a lot of care and thought was put into it.

And don't get me started about how diet was never mentioned today in regards to global warming. They had so many other facets covered but not that one. At least CAFOs (Confined Animal Feed Operations) were mentioned, albeit in passing.

And now I am done with my little vegan rant as I run off to get a cookie and go to bed.

VeganMoFo: A taste of fall

2008-10-08T19:03:00.004-04:00

Tonight's post will be brief because I have a ton of homework for Inorganic and Physical Chemistry classes that is calling my name, but I wanted to share tonight's dinner.

What you are looking at is the Beet, Barley, and Black Soybean soup from Vegan with a Vengeance, albeit with a few alterations. I don't usually plan out all of my meals for the week because sometimes I just do not know how much time that I will have to cook. However, I try to have a particular dish in mind during the weekend for when I go shopping and visit the Farmers' Market in case there is a special ingredient or two that I would need. This soup was what I had in mind for this week.

I have only made this once before, and it was probably about the same time as now last year. I had noticed that beets were appearing at the market, and I figured that I should give it another try. Oddly enough, I did not have the main herb ingredients of fresh dill and dried tarragon for which the recipe called. Good thing that my roots are strictly German and Hungarian or else any Russian ancestors would be rolling in their graves. (Yes, somehow the combination of beets and barley makes me think of Russia.) I substituted an Italian spice mix as well as marjoram not to mention doubling the garlic from 3 to 6 cloves. I also tossed in a vegetable bullion cube for extra good measure. When I was adding the beans, I felt as if I should add a little more color, not to mention healthiness, to the soup. So, I quickly chopped up some swiss chard to add to the pot. (Yes, I hadn't used up my batch from Saturday's market yet, and I need to get my weekly fix on almost a daily basis while the cheap market chard lasts. Store-bought just doesn't even compare.)

But how did it taste? Amazing. The chard adds a little something, and the barley still has a bit of bite to it and isn't mushy at all (which is a problem I can have with barley sometimes). The wholesome feeling almost makes up for the overly large amount of chocolate that I consumed this afternoon for no good reason. Almost, but not quite.

VeganMoFo: What to do with a plethora of apples

2008-10-07T23:38:00.003-04:00

Back home at my parents' house, we have an apple tree in the backyard. It is a cute little thing, which grows rather crooked since my dad didn't stake it up properly when it was little. Regardless, we have been getting a lot of fruit this year after smaller harvests for the past two years. (With apples failing to grow due to buds falling off or early freezes.) So much fruit, in fact, that my parents gave me a bucket full of apples three weeks ago. Yes, it was literally a bucket. I had so many, that I was worried about them going bad in case I could not eat them fast enough (even though they are residing in the pantry closet, which is both cool and dark).

My solution: bake the gingerbread apple pie from Vegan with a Vengeance. I had had my eye on that recipe for a while, and using up apples and going to a potluck was the perfect excuse to use it. As you can see by the picture, I was a bit lazy and didn't bother to peel my apples. I don't really think that it made much difference in the final product. I would recommend reading the directions though, because I definately was all ready to roll out the dough for the crust, and then I realized that you crumble it on instead. Whoops.

I also ended up having more filling than would fit into my pie pan. As you can see, I improvised and put it in a few cupcake liners in a muffin pan. I even saved up some of the crust so that I could sprinkle it on top of these so-called mini pies as well.

I took this pie to a potluck as soon as it came out of the oven, and it was an amazing success. Everyone loved it, and I didn't bring a single piece back with me. (I guess it was a good thing that I had extra filling for the min pies then.) Everyone was complimenting me on it and asking for the recipe. The taste was even better after I let it sit since I felt as if the spices weren't as strong right when it was still really warm. It definitely feels like a quintessentially fall recipe, and I would strongly encourage using it when you need to impress people. I can't even begin to imagine the amazingness if I were to have it with a scoop of soy ice cream.

Coming Soon: I will be making another very fall-esque dish tomorrow- VwaV's Black Soybean, beet and barley soup with beets fresh from Saturday's Farmers' market!

VeganMoFo: In which I proclaim my love for zucchini bread

2008-10-05T10:44:00.004-04:00

There, I said it. I love zucchini bread. I have some very fond memories of eating it as a child because my grandmum was always making it. Even when we weren't visiting, she would always give some for use to take back and stick in the freezer. I used to think that zucchini bread would be healthy, but having a veg in the name is a little misleading. My grandmum's original recipe is practically more of a cake than a sweet bread. Here it is in all of its non-vegan glory:

2 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

3 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 cup oil

1 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups shredded zucchini

When I finally got my own kitchen at school last year, my dad let me take a lot of grandmum's old recipes that he had sitting around. I have really played around with the zucchini bread recipe and have finally found something that is actually reasonably healthy without tasting too healthy.

Tip: If you have a food processor, use it to shred the zucchini. It is amazing. I used to do it the hard way, and it would take a half hour (or so) to shred a large zucchini. Now, it just takes me five minutes. Also, I like to leave the skin on the zucchini. For some reason, I get a little kick out of seeing those green flecks in my bread.

Tastier and Healthier Zucchini Bread than Grandmum used to Make

-Preheat oven to 350 F

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 cup all purp. flour

3-6 tsp cinnamon (yes, I get a little liberal with it sometimes)

pinch nutmeg

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

-Take those dry ingredients and sift them together into a large bowl.

-Take 3 Tbsp ground flax seeds and combine with 8-9 Tbsp water in a small cup or bowl. Whip/stir vigorously with a fork. Let sit while you prepare the wet ingredients.

1/3 cup applesauce

1/2 cup canola (or veg) oil

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup sugar

1 cup soymilk (or whichever non-dairy you prefer)

2 cups (or slightly overflowing 2 cup) shredded zucchini

-Combine the wet ingredients, mixing in the flax and the zucchini last.

-Pour the wet into the dry. Mix until everything is combined.

-Pour batter into two good-size loaf pans.

(Also fits into 2 small loaf pans with extra for 6-8 muffins)

-Bake for 45 minutes. Check if done with a toothpick or knife. It may need another 5 minutes.

-Leave in the pan for 5-10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

-Keeps at room temperature for 3 days or up to 2 weeks in the fridge.

How good is it? Well, it passed the taste test with my dad. (Who is still trying to come to terms with my veganism. Seriously, it has been 17 months already!) Also, I have a few friends who purposely invite themselves over when they know that I am making it.

Zucchini are in season right now, but whenever I bake a batch I make sure to shred extra zucchini. Measure out in 2 cup portions and freeze in plastic bags. Then you can have zucchini bread in the winter as long as you remember to let the zucchini thaw out during the day first.

Veganmofo: Can one really buy too many vegetables?

2008-10-03T14:46:00.010-04:00

This answer to this would be yes; yes you can. (Trust me because I have done it.) I know that I have discussed it before, but I am a big fan of Farmers' Markets. The one that I frequented in Berlin this summer was amazingly huge AND only a five minute walk from my house. I also went to Berlin's (in)famous Turkish market once as well. That one was not quite as close to home for me. I had to take a street tram, subway, and walk quite a bit in order to get there. Luckily the unique atmosphere and cheap fruits made up for the trip length.

One problem that I have is that I like to buy too much produce at the market. I don't know what it is about local produce, but it gets me insanely excited. Pictured here is my load from two weeks ago. Yes, I really did buy a large amount of red bell peppers like you see better in the second picture. One booth was having a sale where they sold them by the pound, and, if you bought more than 3 pounds, they were only $2.50 per pound. Not a bad deal at all. Even though I love peppers, I couldn't eat all of those in a week, so I froze them. Peppers freeze surprisingly well, so I stock up in the fall when they are cheap at the market so that I can enjoy them all winter. It is so easy to grab a bag from the freezer and toss a handful or two into a recipe.

With this particular catch, I was also able to get some fresh basil. That huge stalk next to the Mangold, erm chard, was $3. I was worth it because I made a batch of pesto using the recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance. Sooo good. I hadn't enjoyed homemade pesto in a long while.

What did I do with my pesto? Make pizza of course. I love the crust in VwaV so much. I've been making it even healthier recently by substituting 2 of the 3 cups of flour with whole wheat flour. It gives the dough a nice little crunch and makes me feel less guilty when I eat practically half a pizza in one sitting. (This really did happen later in the week when I made the second pizza with the remaining dough. Just in case you were wondering.)

My parents visited me the day after the market, so I put my dad to work making Veganomicon's Cashew Ricotta Tofu. Putting some fresh tomatoes and bell peppers an top, and you have one very satisfying meal. So good that my omnivore parents don't care that their pizza is devoid of cheese, which I consider to be a very good thing.

Coming soon: Gingerbread apple pie because I am going to a dinner/potluck tonight (where sadly, I won't be able to eat most things that others bring), so I decided to make up for it by baking a kick-ass dessert. We'll see how that goes...

Veganmofo: Do you know what mangold is?

2008-10-02T17:58:00.004-04:00

I don't expect you to because that is the German name for what we Americans know as Swiss chard. Honestly, I think the German name is so much better. But back on topic... I am constantly thanking my turn to veganism since it has helped me discover so many new foods. Yes, this sounds silly but is entirely true. One example of this is, in fact, Swiss chard.

My favorite is the rainbow verity. It just looks so pretty and irresistible. I discovered it at the farmers' market a little over a year ago, and I have not ever been able to get enough of it since then. I have used it in so many dishes. Examples would be making an Indian-spiced side dish along with chickpeas or as an addition to Veganomicon's chickpea noodle soup. (Why, yes, it does go well with chickpeas in case you were wondering.) Despite those amazing dishes,

I had been wanting to branch out...

As usual, the ppk was a great source for ideas. I don't even recall why I clicked on it, but after reading a thread about green smoothies, I knew that I just had to try one with Swiss chard. I love to eat it cooked, but, just like any green, it shrinks so much as it cooks, and what once looked like a lot of chard turns into not so much. Plus, I figured that eating it raw was a little bit healthier as well. After stumbling upon this site, I came up with this recipe.

-1 banana

-6 or so stalks of chard (more/less depending on how green you feel)

-1 kiwi (I just cut off the ends and don't bother with taking the skin off. More fiber never hurt anyone...)

-handful of frozen raspberries

-1 glass water

-1 glass ice

Do not forget to put in the water. I did this the other day, and my roommate's blender was not very happy with me at first. And to think that I started to wonder why it wasn't blending correctly...

Here I am trying my very first homemade green smoothie. I may not look it, but I was a little nervous about the taste. Luckyily, I really do love chard, and my taste buds have changed so much since my conversion 16 months ago. I didn't think that it tasted overly healthy at all. And to think that I was all set to make myself drink it or add some agave if it tasted off.

The only downside to this recipe is that it makes a ton of smoothie. About 2- 2 1/2 glasses worth, well of the size glass that you see me holding there anyway. Plus, the first time or two that I made it I had to use the loo a bit more frequently than usual.

Since my discovery, I have been trying to have a smoothie about twice a week or so. It really has made me feel quite a bit healthier. Because it makes so much, sometimes I use the smoothie as an entire meal. Well, at least as a lunch. If I make it as a dinner, I usually need to have a piece of toast with hummus or peanut butter later.

I don't want anyone to get tired of seeing all of this Swiss chard, so I have only one more photo/meal idea. Even though I love to cook and try new things, I am still a university student, so I do not always have a lot of time for meals. (My parents pay for my food, yes lucky me, but I am a total cheapskate, so I like to try to eat cheaply a lot as well.)

Here you see my dinner from tonight. Homemade bread from the bread machine that I stole from my parents. (Hey, they weren't using it!) One slice has hummus and the other, which was already in my stomach, had Veganaise. I just lightly sautéed some yellow summer squash, zucchini, yellow pear tomatoes, and (surprise, surprise) chard. Oh and don't forget the Thai chile hot sauce. I just bought a bottle two weeks ago, and I absolutely love it. I try to sneak it into so many dishes, it is crazy. But this meal was very filling and satisfying. Sometimes, I just feel like I need a veggie overdose, and this hit the spot.

Let the VeganMoFo-ing begin!

2008-10-01T23:30:00.004-04:00

Because I do not have any photos from tonight's dinner (and it was really easy anyway), I will start off the month with a review.

Soy Creamy Mini Chocolate Sandwiches from Trader Joe's

I would like to say straight up that I love shopping at TJ's, and I am lucky enough to have one 20 minutes away from where I live. I cannot believe that it has only been a year and a half since I learned about this place. They have a lot of packaging on their produce, but I go there consistently for their cheap (not to mention tasty) soy milk, tofu, chocolate chips, and wine. (Hey, what a combination!)

I manage to stock up every trip that I make, so I only need to go about every two weeks or so. I am not a huge fan of driving a ton, even if I only do it on the

weekends, and I don't really eat so much that I need to make a weekly trip to go there. About a month ago, I ran across that box you see there. TJ's is pretty good with vegan options, and I just had to check out this dessert. (Notice how it has a convenient little V for vegan in the lower left corner! Things like that make my job of checking ingredients so much easier.)

This next picture is a really burry, but

it gives you an idea of the size of one sandwich.

The size ends up being not too big to make you feel guilty and not too small that you feel unsatisfied. (Though, I will admit to sneaking a second after my first initial tasting.)

These little novelties are pretty good. I feel as if the chocolate taste could have been more pronounced considering how the coloring is so dark. It had a slightly rich taste and was neither too bitter nor too sweet. A lot of people complain that non-dairy ice cream can taste too beany, but I did not have that problem. The soy flavor was not too pronounced (but what do I know since I don't eat that other junk anymore?).

I am actually considering buying another box when I make my biweekly trip this Friday. It will help me with my chocolate cravings since last time I bought the Pounder dark chocolate with almonds and managed to inhale it in 9 days. (That may seem like a long time, but that chocolate bar is HUGE.) I am also curious as to how this sandwich would taste if I spread a little bit of peanut butter on it, which is something else I cannot seem to get enough of...

In case you are wondering...

Coming attractions:

talk of green smoothies

farmers' market loot

zucchini bread

and possibly, an apple pie (because my parents brought me literally a bucket of apples from the tree in our backyard at home)

Oh, and Happy World Vegetarian Day (for at least 9 more minutes anyway)!

What to do with an eggplant

2008-09-28T17:17:00.004-04:00

What is this you may ask? It is the Eggplant Paprikash from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen. It was amazing. It was suggested to serve it with noodles, but I was lazy and had it with couscous instead. (Plus, I had eaten pasta the previous day.) I pretty much followed the recipe except that I omitted the onion and only used 1/4 cup of sour cream, if that, and I ad-libbed with soymilk for the rest of it.

This stuff was absolutely amazing. I actually made it almost two weeks ago, and I am planning on making it again with the eggplant that has been sitting around my kitchen. It was so savory, and the eggplant practically melted in your mouth. The sour cream/milk combination was definitely the element that gave it a little something that you couldn't quite put your finger on but that pulled all the flavors together.

I have lots of other backlogged post ideas, but I may or may not be waiting for VeganMoFo to start so that I can be ahead before I get behind...

What is to come...

2008-09-20T13:41:00.003-04:00

I have been super busy, but I have been taking pictures of food and thinking of future posts. If the lack of updates has been noticed, there is no need to worry. I will be joining in on VeganMoFo for the month of October! What is this? It is something that was started over at the Post Punk Kitchen website and is a vegan version of NaNoWriMo. This means that I will be positing on an almost daily basis about a variety of topics. If you want to check out the other participating blogs, then go to the Post Punk Kitchen Blog.

Trust me, updating my blog (with an actual food post) is on my list of things to do this weekend. That, and update my flickr.

All things ECO

2008-09-10T23:19:00.002-04:00

Things have been very busy for me with Uni starting up again. I've been doing a reasonable amount of cooking, but nothing too new or exciting. I managed to re-tweak my vegan version of my grandmum's zucchini bread. I still have two zucchinis that need to be shredded, so expect a photo and recipe sometime this weekend.

However, the theme that I wanted to talk about today is the environment. This year, I am the President of a student group called Environmental Concerns Organization, ECO. Now I consider myself to be a very environmentally aware person (examples include, oh well, me becoming vegan partially for environmental reasons, driving my car only once/twice a week, recycling like a fiend, and many more), but, since I fully took over my duties, I have been thinking about it even more so. I've been doing so much more reading online than normal as well as having my opinion asked of me. Which is sort of cool, actually, and brings me to my next point.

Cafeteria trays. Seem sort of innocuous, don't they? I don't eat in the Uni cafeteria anymore, so I hadn't thought about them in a while. A writer from the Uni newspaper asked for my opinion about the trend of Unis going trayless. Can you guess whether I'm for it or against it?

Did you even need to guess? I love the idea of going trayless for several reasons. First of all, it helps in reducing the water and energy that would normally be used for cleaning the trays. Secondly, it helps reduce the waste of food because people will not be piling food on multiple plates since they are forced to take only what they can carry. Having less room by not having a tray really helps people to think about the amout of food that they are consuming. Sometimes it seems like many people do not realize how wasteful our society can be in such manners (which is something that irritates me to no end), and going trayless would help people be more conscious about such things. The issue of overeating is another issue that can be alleviated in the same manner. No tray, means (hopefully) a more appropriate amount of food is eaten.

I especially loved my clincher sentence (yes, I realize that makes me sound like a dork). Part of it was used as a highlighted (and bigger) excerpt, though I feel like they didn't use the most important part. Here it is in its' entirety: Going trayless would be a bit of an adjustment to make, but I think the positive ramifications of being more environmentally conscious and more aware of our society's (not necessarily positive) habits far outweigh any possible complications during the onset of such a practice.

Now, I feel as if I should go search out other seemingly innocuous things and expose them. That, or go hug a tree or something of that sort.

Not really new but different.

2008-08-24T18:45:00.002-04:00

Readjusting to life in the USA has been rather interesting. For one, my hometown seems even smaller now after my summer in Berlin. Driving a car for the first time in 3 months seemed a bit strange as well. I still miss different little quirks about life in Berlin, and some of the amazing people there, but it has been nice to see people here again. Also, I love having a bigger kitchen with a lot more different foods and appliances.

I have been cooking for my family a lot, and I

absolutely had to make pizza. It doesn't look that beautiful, but it tasted delicious. Making whole wheat pizza from scratch was something

that I really missed doing this summer. The white stuff is the amazing cashew ricotta style tofu from Veganomicon. The tomatoes and bell pepper are fresh from the Farmers' Market. (Sadly, mine back home is practically nothing compared to the one that I frequented in Berlin. I can't wait for the one in Indianapolis. It isn't as

big as the Berlin one, but it is just as good.)

Speaking of produce, my parents have a small garden in the backyard. Lucky for me, our raspberry bush has really taken over. I went outside rain or shine just about every morning in order to pick my favorite berries. (Sometimes even facing off against the bugs that loved to take bites out of my legs and arms!) The bush is so big that you can easily miss perfectly ripe berries, so you have to take your time looking at the branches from all angles. See how they like to hide behind some of the leaves!

Fresh raspberries and some strawberries that were looking a little worse for wear in our fridge provided the perfect excuse for me to make something from Yellow Rose Recipes. The picture of the lemon almond cake in the book looked decent, and the recipe is deceptively simple, but don't let this fool you.

This cake is absolutely delicious. Just look at the moist lemony goodness. So good, that I almost forgot to take a picture the next day. With the help of my family, this simple but pretty creation was gone in 24 hours.

So light and moist, this is the quintessential dessert for summer. I cannot believe that I did not try it sooner. Next time that I make it, I might try to use less sugar in the cake because the glaze makes it rather sweet.

Being back in the USA, my entries are going to be a little less exciting from now on. Plus, I will be very busy seeing as it is my last year for my undergraduate degree. I have lots of things to do ahead of me: taking two GREs, writing a thesis, and figuring out which graduate schools to apply to. The observations of some posts might be more political with comments on the upcoming election or environmentalism (I'm president of my Uni's Environmental Concerns Organization this year.).

Don't worry, I will still be cooking. I am going to try to eat healthier because sometimes I ate way too much vegan ice cream, chocolate, or falafel in Berlin. Next up, zucchini bread. That is healthy-esque, right? I mean, it has a vegetable in it. Ok, well maybe I'll try to tweak my recipe a bit and use no unbleached flour and a healthier sweetener, or something like that. After all, one can't really use the vegetable excuse to claim that carrot cake is healthy, though one can certainly try...

Unintentionally Filling the Vegan Stereotype

2008-08-10T15:31:00.003-04:00

One thing that I find rather annoying in regards to veganism is that many people assume that eating out is too difficult to do. This idea does have some truth, since eating out can be tedious when one has to constantly ask questions about ingredients or scour the menu. Regardless, I usually have had positive experiences in restaurants, especially if the food is something other than home-style cooking (be it German or American).

Yesterday I learned that Berlin has, in fact, been spoiling me with so many vegan options and vegan-friendly places. I actually was in an Italian themed restaurant where I could hardly eat anything there. Normally, the thing that I have to watch out for in Italian places is if the pasta has eggs or not. At first, I got so excited when I asked about the pasta and discovered a lack of eggs. There was even a special of the month that was a green curry and specifically a vegetarian option. Upon seeing the sauce, I figured that I should check to make sure that it was with coconut milk since it looked rather creamy. To my surprise, it was with regular milk. Seriously? I could not believe it since I usually associate coconut milk as being the milk of choice for curries.

With my original idea being thwarted, I go back to the allergen listing just to see if there was some other hidden dairy that I had overlooked. Unfortunately, such was the case, and I was startled to discover that even the normal tomato sauce contained dairy. Tomato sauce! Why they would put dairy in tomato sauce, I do not understand. Plain tomato sauce should just be tomatoes, spices, and a little oil. Keep it simple and save the dairy for a creamy tomato sauce or something. I would have hated to have eaten there if I was lactose intolerant because then I would have been even more frustrated.

The option of getting a pizza sounded unappetizing because not only would I have to omit the cheese but the sauce as well. I can get better and cheaper veggie pizzas elsewhere in Berlin. Thus, my final choices consisted of bruschetta and a small mixed greens salad. Thankfully, the balsamic dressing was vegan. Actually, I am pretty sure that it was the only one without dairy.

Needless to say, I was not very happy about the salad being just about my only option. I enjoy my veggies, but I can just as easily make a salad at home for cheaper. At least it was with mixed greens and not iceberg lettuce, an entity that I refuse to eat due to its amazing lack of nutritional content. That fulfillment of the stereotype is even worse.

Thus, going to my last brunch at Hans Wurst Vegan Cafe was the breath of fresh air that I direly needed after having such a frustrating dinner last night. I also was once again reminded that preconceptions of some of the simplest dishes can be deceiving when dairy is involved.

How to make a stuffed vegan and find a lose of inspiration

2008-08-03T14:37:00.004-04:00

Today I met up with a friend and we decided to go to the Sunday brunch at Hans Wurst Vegan Cafe. Let me tell you, a brunch buffet on Sunday is a really big deal here. You can walk down streets lined with cafes and just about every one will be offering a brunch on Sunday. In my 10 weeks thus far, I still have not managed to actually go to one. Unfortunately, I found out too late of the amazing offerings at this particular buffet.

(Shown here are our loaded plates and me having a third helping of pancakes.)

There was so much good food. The favorites were the pancakes with the chocolate mousse, and the tomatoes with the feta style tofu. It was really fun and low key. It was also really neat how the pricing was done. Basically, after you were finished eating, you pay somewhere between 7-12 Euros based on how much you ate or how good you thought the food was. I think that is a really good concept, and I will definitely be going next weekend for my last Sunday here. Plus, I ate so much that I wasn't hungry for the rest of the day. (Yes, that is indeed possible.)

The somewhat disappointing aspect to my day was my visit to the East Side Gallery. I was there three years ago, and two years ago during my previous stays in Germany. On both occasions my group made trips to Berlin. The East Side Gallery is a large section of the wall that was painted by artists as a memorial and source of inspiration after the fall of the wall. Today, many of these amazing murals have been lost to time and graffiti. Some portions are hardly recognizable as how I re

member them a few years ago.

Usually I am a big fan of street art. It can be really interesting and makes you think on occasion, but there is also a big difference between street art and graffiti. Graffiti I do not admire as much because I feel like it does not usually have an artistic purpose and mostly only a form of vandalism. In the case of the wall, the graffiti is more akin to vandalism and has ruined large sections of what was once a source of inspiration. I walked along the whole 1.3 kilometer stretch, and just seeing the extent of the damage just made me want to cry. The artwork on the wall had a message of freedom, hope, and overcoming what was once thought to be impossible.

Here you can see a portion of the wall, and how badly the original artwork is covered up. This was actually a favorite section of mine when I first saw the wall. In my picture from three years ago, almost none of that graffiti is present, and the message is still easy to read.

It really does make me sad that the young people have chosen to rebel in this way. I am all for going against authority and rebellion, but, when you destroy a message of hope such as this, I think it is in bad taste and shows a poor understanding of the bigger rebellions that have already been accomplished.

Learning from Experience

2008-07-30T16:01:00.002-04:00

I learned two semi-important things today.

1. Do not go to Vöner after 7:30 pm. You will be too late and may have to face the possibility of them having run out of Vöner for the day. Then you will be obliged to buy a Wagenburger, but it is nothing special in comparison to the amazingness of Vöner.

2. Buying vegan eis after the Vöner failure is perfectly acceptable. Getting two scoops with double chocolate and lemon is not. No wonder the guy behind the counter double checked to make sure he heard me okay. Lemon has no place being eating before (an amazing) chocolate. Orange might go with chocolate, but the flavor of lemon just puts everything else off.

Ah well, sometimes one just has to learn things the hard way.

Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren

2008-07-29T16:01:00.003-04:00

So goes the line of a famous folkslied. If the past weekend has taught me anything, it has been that even though Heidelberg is fast a kitschy typical old castle/uni town, it still has a special place in my heart because of the great memories I have and the people whom are there. I cannot believe that I was there for only a mere six weeks two summers ago. At the time, six weeks seemed like a long time to be studying abroad. I know so much better now, and I am amazed at all the things I managed to cram into that short time.

Visiting my old host family was amazing. They are such nice and helpful people, which is probably why I recall my time in Heidelberg so fondly. Sadly, I did not get to see their two songs who are a little younger than my own brother. (They are hosting a student right now, so the reason that I was able to come this weekend was because the boys were gone and I could use one of their rooms.) I did get to speak with the younger one when he called his mum's handy. His voice is lower (though not too much), and he sounded so much older and more mature than the cute/curious youngster that I remember. We did not discuss anything complicated, but it made me feel good that I was able to talk to him all in German.

The weekend went by so fast, but we managed to actually do a few things and relax a bit as well. Friday was a little exciting on my end since I almost did not make my train. I did not want to get into Heidelberg very late as a courtesy to the family. My problem was that I did not wake up early enough to finish packing and needed to have a few minutes between getting home from my internship and going to the hauptbahnhof so that I could throw my stuff into my bag and backpack. (At least I already had everything scattered haphazardly all over my couch.) Of course, this was the time when the S-bahns in Berlin were not punctual. Due to waiting for 15 minutes for one that usually comes every 5 and then other ones being a minute or two late, this really adds up. Upon reaching the hauptbahnhof, I literally jumped into the first open door of my train that I saw just as they were issuing the final boarding call. We left not even two minutes later. Talk about cutting it close.

At least the rest of the night was low key, and we went to a neighbor's birthday party when I got there. I of course had a 'how stupid of me' moment when, while discussing something food related with my host mum, I recalled that I had not mentioned of my switch to vegansim. Whoops. Last time I was there, I had only been vegetarian (of which she had been lovingly accommodating to). I had eaten a few quick things on the train, but at the party I discovered how tasty wasabi peanuts are and that basmati rice with fresh squeezed lime juice and Thai hot sauce is actually really good.

Saturday consisted of a nice leisurely breakfast in the small garden out back. Then we went into the old part of the city by bike (I borrowed the younger son's), but took our time on the way there. Ate Italian, where the noodles had no eggs in them (score!), and the tomato sauce was amazingly fresh. This was followed by a 1 1/2 hour boat tour on the Neckar, the river that runs through the town, adding to its quaint charm. By the time our tour had ended, there were some massive storm clouds that were approaching, and the wind was already starting to make the formerly hot day seem rather cool. We booked it on the way back home, as we did not want to get wet. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing. We had an outing to the grocery store and media store later in the evening, but it was fun to ride around on a bike again. Plus, the grocery run was insisted on by my host mum so that we could get some soymilk so I could have it with my muesli the next morning. Isn't she the sweetest? Dinner was rather late, and, sadly, we ended up not watching a movie together as the parents were tired and ready for bed.

Sunday began with a relaxed breakfast as well. (Yes, I loved how my family was all about the relaxed breakfast. Even on a school day, I would sit down for 25 minutes or so and chat with my host mum.) I got educated and was given a copy of the Goethe poem that inspired the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment in Fantasia. It was funny how we got onto that topic after discussing politics and the actions of people and needing to think ahead. Then, I was told to take a quick ride to the old city by myself via bike because, according to my host mum, I could not visit and not go into the old city. (We had only been on the river the day before and not actually in the old part.) I was proud of myself that I was able to remember the way to get there and back. It was a quick trip because I did not have much time, but fun nevertheless. So many tourists, but I was able to smile at the memories.

By the time I had come back, my host mother had managed to cook up something for lunch. (I hardly had any hunger yet, despite my bike ride, because I had eaten such a big breakfast.) It was so simply vegan orientated that it made me smile. Rice and (boxed) falafel with a coconut milk curry sauce. (She and her husband had fish as well.) But regardless, her flexibility was greatly appreciated despite my earlier absentmindedness.

So there was another amazing weekend away from Berlin visiting acquaintances. Plus, I got to use so much German. Yes, I could not recall a few words every now and then, but I was glad that I could converse more than my last time in Heidelberg. (Sometimes, while we were talking politics, I was unsure of what exactly my opinion on something was, but I was able to, for the most part, understand the views that my host parents were explaining.) It is actually surprising how much over the state of the world and politics that we talked about. Last time I was there, we talked about a lot of stuff, but it was mostly me listening, trying really hard to understand half of what was being said, and not really participating in actual conversation. I can only hope that they were pleasantly surprised by my improvement since last time (even though there are times when I question how much that I have improved, but such is the nature and tribulations of learning another language.)

The rest of Sunday was spent in Tübingen, visiting a friend who was an exchange student at my Uni this past year. Tübingen is not too far from Heidelberg, and I figured that I ought to go because I had heard, like Heidelberg, it had much old-world charm as well. The afternoon was a great success, and I rather enjoyed the tour of the town that I was given and speaking about so many different things with my friend.

I got back to Berlin at 1:30, which means that I just missed the last S-Bahn out of the Hauptbahnhof. Just my luck. I managed to take a night bus for a few stops and just walked the rest of the way home. It was not as bad as I thought it would be and only took 45 minutes. I had eaten so much earlier in the day and had slept on the train, so I had plenty of energy for my trip. It made Berlin seem smaller by the fact that I could actually do something like that.

All in all, this weekend has been a great change of pace, and I was reminded how I need to always remember to mention my (maybe relatively new to my hosts) dietary status. It was even cute how my host dad looked up veganism online so that he could ask me a few questions about it Saturday morning. If only everyone could be so open-minded and accepting, this world would be so much better in dealing with all sorts of differences.

(How is that for ending an insanely long post on a philosophical note?)

Ob nur für einen Augenblick

2008-07-26T10:55:00.002-04:00

(If only for a moment)

(Originally written on the train from Berlin to Heidelberg yesterday)

Sometimes that seems exactly the span of my summer. With two and a half weeks to go, I am constantly in disbelief of how fast the time passes. (Yes, this is going to be a constant theme until I leave Berlin.) This past week has been a gift in the fact that I have been getting to leave work relatively early in comparison to the long hours that I had previously been keeping. Getting to go home at 4 (or even 3 on one occasion) makes me feel like I am being lazy or something. Such is the way things go when you are doing more with peptide (biochemistry) synthesis and not organic synthesis. This week in the lab has been interesting (though slightly monotonous at times) and has reinforced the feeling that I probably will not go on to study biochemistry. Even though some ideas might be interesting on paper, the work in the lab has to be so meticulous and is often don on a smaller scale. Such an attention to detail is not for me. (Do not get me wrong, I have to pay attention to stuff in organic synthesis as well but I feel like you can have a little more leeway with things there.) At least working with a different chemist has proved to be funny even if we are speaking auf Englisch and not auf Deutsch since he is French.

Actually using my German handy on a regular basis has also helped me keep in contact with other students so much better this past week. Except for one day, I think that I have gotten to hang out with other students every evening. Not too bad. This was especially good since I have gotten to know some more of the newer people as more and more of the people that I met early on are leaving. And to think that it won't be long until I join the ranks of those whom 'sind weg.'

As for vegan food, whittling down my small stash of food is proving to be interesting. I basically only have lentils (red and brown) left and a bit of brown rice. (Well, I still have agave, soy sauce, cumin, and coriander but those aren't hard food staples.) I might be giving the brown lentils away to a friend since even though Isa's Snobby Joes might be amazing, I must not have cooked them right and have been having digestive issues afterwards. Not very fun. I plan on using the rest of the red lentils to make a very vegetable filled dahl later this week. As for the rice, I think that I am going to splurge on nori and try sushi. I have never had sushi before (cue gasp here) and there is a neighborhood grocery down the street owned by some oriental folks. The nori seemed to be pretty cheap there (cheaper than back home), and I know that my host family does have a sushi mats o that I could roll them correctly. I am really curious as to the taste of it, and I think it will be a great way to use up my rice.

Also, it will prevent me from visiting Vöner again. That place is dangerous, so cheap and so good. Though replacing my Pfefferminz Ritter Sport addiction with Vöner might be better since I am unable to visit Vöner as often.. Not to mention Carmello Eis Cafe nearby. Berlin is spoiling me with vegan options, and I do not know how I am going to adjust to being so limited for dinging out once I return back home. (Though, I might try to try really hard to get my parents to eat tat the Chicago Diner after I fly back before we drive home. I don't think it will be that easy to convince them though. Perhaps I can swing it as a late birthday present...)

A jam packed weekend a.k.a. be ready for a really long post

2008-07-20T13:58:00.004-04:00

I love how good intentions never really make it sometimes. That was my day yesterday. I planned on making a day out of thrifting and markets, but I got a rather late start. As in me not waking up until 1:30 pm. Ah well, I guess that is what I get for staying up until 4 am with friends.

Unfortunately, I have been getting home late from my internship this week, and, as a consequence, I have hardly been cooking. Plus, midway through the week I completely ran out of produce due to not being here over the previous weekend. Oh horrors! Needless to say, I have eaten several falafels and much bread this week. Probably not the best thing, but this next week is going to more than make up for it (hopefully).

As usual, I visited the market on Kollwitz Platz to get my week's produce on Saturday. My 10 Euros worth of produce this week is 6 carrots, a zucchini, small garlic, red bell pepper, 3 apples, small container of raspberries, and a large (500g) container of red currants. Not too bad of a haul. I wasn't sure what to expect with the red currants (johannesbeern here) because I have only eaten them (or their black relatives) in jam or cake. I ended up being pleasantly surprised, and they might be going on my favorites produce list because of their perfect amount of tartness. I rather enjoy fruits that are more tart than sweet (proved by my love for raspberries and lemons). Red currants are in season right now here in Germany, but I am not sure how long it will last. Hopefully long enough that I can make them as an addition to my usual breakfast of muesli, fruit, and soymilk. Until now, I have been switching between strawberries and raspberries (and even a peach on a few occasions). My purchases at the market also consisted of two homemade jams (strawberry and a black currant with mint) for my host family in Heidelberg when I go visit them next weekend.

As for the rest of the day, I had only eaten a light brunch, so I decided to start things off by heading to Vöner first. Wow is that place addicting. I bet most people would not have guessed that vegan döner can be so filling, but for a mere 2.90 Euros, I walk away feeling rather full. I got to visit a few smaller second hand shops in the area between Vöner aznd Carmello, but I did not find anything good. At Carmello Eis Cafe, I proceeded to get a cone with two scoops of vanilla and chocolate with chips soy ice cream. Sooo good and the chocolate was a new flavor as well. Enjoying my good vegan ice made up for the fact that it had started to rain rather hard.

Sadly, I got to my main thrift store destination too late and discovered that it was only open until 6 on Saturdays. I will try to go back sometime soon because it looks promising. Four floors of second hand goodness. That is correct- four floors. See why I was excited?

Sunday was also started a little late (but not due to my laziness this time) but because of me doing laundry. Then there was the other complication of the other student doing laundry as well and not enough drying racks to go around. (What to do? My host just took me to visit some neighbors upstairs and borrow two from them.) Then I had to spend a bunch of time going to/from the laundromat, hanging clothes, etc. But that is all boring stuff no one wants to hear about.

As for fun things, I went to the Flohmarkt (flea market) in Boxhagener Platz for the first time. As usual, there was so much absolute junk like the one in Mauer Park. Strangely enough, I did manage to buy a few things. The first of which was Flintstones wallpaper. Exactly, and it was only in black and white, so I guess that I could color it if I wanted to. I paid too much for it (6 Euro), but I just could not pass it up. I could make a banner or two with it, use it to cover boxes, or as wrapping paper. My other purchase was some cool patches cut out from used clothes. Two are very vegan. One is a chicken that says, "Isst mehr tofu!" (Eat more tofu), and the other has a sheep saying "Friends? Not food o.k.?" The third is a heart surrounded by the triangle recycling symbol. Because I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by Carmello again and got the same flavored cone as yesterday because it was just so freaking good.

Diner was fun as I actually cooked Isa's Snobby Joes, albeit a totally bastardized version. They were still amazing though. I also got reminded of how I need to be more careful when guessing amounts. (That's right. Since I have been in Berlin, I have not been measuring anything at all.) I did the 4x water ratio to the lentils correctly, but I had way too much water in the pot that I was using. Oops. It proceeded to overflow a little several times in the cooking process, and I was afraid that my host was going to come home at any moment and complain about the mess I was making on the stove. I also spaced out and did not pay attention to the time when the lentils started to cook, so after a bit, I just tasted a few to make sure they weren't too crunchy before proceeding with the recipe. Apparently, using a load of cumin makes up for not having chili powder, oregano, or salt. Ha.

Sorry about having no pictures to go along with these adventures, but all the ones that I took ended up being blurry. Schade. To make up for it, here are two pictures of a new friend of mine. He was worried that the Ritter Sport Pfefferminz that I was eating was not vegan and insisted that he had to double check the ingredients for me. Here are the before and after expressions because they are just too cute. They make me smile every time that I see these pictures.

The Little Things

2008-07-13T17:13:00.003-04:00

A single weekend is too short of a time to visit a friend that you have not seen for two years. This, I have discovered. My time in Köln was short, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Also, getting falafel at 3 a.m. is worth it when you say no yogurt sauce, and the guy questions you so that you have to clarify by saying no milk products. Then his answer sort of made my night because he asked if I was vegan and said that the garlic sauce was, in fact, vegan. So random and so great.

Visiting my friend was great in that we just enjoyed being around each other. I also got to meet one of her best friends from Uni and ta

lk German with him. I was actually surprised at how much German I understood when it was being spoken around me. (This is a very good thing.)

I feel like have a renewed sense of energy now that I am back in Berlin. Strange how getting away for a weekend can do that to you. Whatever the reason, I am ready to throw myself back into the last 30 days that I have here (why yes, I am counting, but only because I want to cherish the few that are left). The time is going by so fast that I can scarcely believe it.

I have so many things to do in my time before I leave Berlin, plus, I have a ton of lentils and quinoa that I need to eat before leaving as well. Clearing out the small pantry that I have should be interesting, and I will have to try to not eat out much until my last week here when I will hardly have any food left. How sad that I actually have to start planning ahead about this sort of thing.

Na ja, the summer of adventures still will continue.