I’ve learned all kinds of useful things from about.com…..

Including, how to make aloo matar, which could be absolutely the wrong way to spell it. Nonetheless, it is peas and potatoes, only Indian, and tasty. Here is the recipe I got:

There are many, many different ways to prepare Aloo Matar, Indian spiced potatoes and peas. Some recipes use a coconut base, and others simmer the potatoes in a tomato sauce. This basic recipe uses a few simple spices for a flavorful and tangy Indian food dish that is both vegetarian and vegan. Serve with rice, if desired.
Ingredients:

* 3 tbsp vegetable oil
* 2 onions, diced
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 tsp fresh ginger, minced or grated
* 1 bay leaf
* 4 potatoes, chopped
* 1 1/2 cups peas
* 2 tbsp water
* 1 1/2 tsp garam masala
* 1 tsp paprika
* 2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
* salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
In a large skillet over medium high heat, sautee the onion, garlic and ginger for 3 to 5 minutes, or until onions are soft.

Add the bay leaf, potatoes and peas and stir to combine. Add the water. Cover and allow to cook at least ten minutes, or until potatoes are almost softened.

Add the garam masala and paprika. Cover and cook another 8 to 10 minutes.

Remove from heat. Stir in the cilantro and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with rice if desired.

I mostly followed this (!!!) because the instructions are so direct and non-prescriptive. Though I had these originally with flatbread for this incarnation I had some thick, doughy whole wheat tortillas from tj’s, which worked great. Someone made me this a few months ago, and  at that time the peas POPPED in your mouth, and I was cooking for somebody who has this things that explode in your mouth a little bit-apparently things like steel-cut oats do this. I have no idea whether or not this is true; I don’t have the patience to invest more than three minutes in my oatmeal. Anyhow, when I made this the peas didn’t pop, but I also had the unexpected issue of not having a lid big enough to cover all the crap in the pan I was cooking it in, so that’s problematic…..I mean, it worked out, but the pea-popping might have been attained with the proper tools.

In other news, I got in the UW. Party for me. I am still divining what really fabulous treat I am going to acquire for myself as a result of this outcome, because that whole actualizing-life-goals thing clearly isn’t enough.  Because something really extravagant and meaningful is called for outside the normal realm of getting a haircut or cake or whatever. I have yet to figure out what this is, aside from getting a big fat thumbs-up from the universe.

emotional landscapes (cream of potato soup)

Hi friends,

I started my foxy new job and it makes me tired but it is still awesome. Queer DV agency. I do outreach. Bam.

Also, my housemate has the black plague or something else really terrible right now, and everybody is trying not to get sick, but I made her soup. And it’s vegan.

So, this is the recipe she gave me:

Creamy (Vegan) Spinach, Leek, & Potato Soup

22Mar2008 Filed under: Recipes Author: cookie

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 cup onions , diced
• 2 garlic cloves , crushed
• 1 leek , white and soft green parts, sliced thinly
• 1 potato , peeled and cubed
• 2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 (10ounce)package frozen spinach
• 2 tablespoons Earth Balance margarine
• 2 tablespoons tofutti sour cream
• 1 cup almond milk
• 2baby carrots, shredded for garnish (optional)
• 1 tablespoon tofutti sour cream , for garnish (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat oil in large saucepan.
2. Saute onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes.
3. Add vegetable stock and water.
4. Add leeks and potato.
5. Season with salt, pepper, and basil.
6. Bring to boil then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.
7. Add spinach and process in blender until somewhat smooth. Skip this step if you want your soup chunkier.
8. Return to saucepan and add Earth Balance, sour cream, and milk.
9. Heat through.
10. Serve with a sprinkle of shredded carrot and a dollop of sour cream, if desired

So what I actually put in:

1 onion

1 leek

3 potatoes

10-12 garlic cloves

whatever amount salt/pepper/basil

six leaves kale

4 cups water

2 cups almond milk

1 tub tofutti cream cheese

There are probably other things. Please reference recipe above for things that probably need altering.

The whole tub of vegan cream cheese was sort of an adventure rooted in the fact that I wasn’t sure what would happen; I haven’t actually eaten any of this, but reports came back good, though it’s really to pour….which I imagine surprises readers.

i’ll squash you!

Squash makes me want to make a lot of really bad puns. Not sure why.

At any rate, I made squash muffins. Wanna hear about it?

Roasted 1 small butternut squash. I find the classification of “large” and “small” squashes really baffling, but to be clear; I roasted it and ran in through the food processor, which resulted in 2 cups of squash mush. That is how big it was.

Also, some people find squash hard to manage, so to make it really easy for you:

Cut it open, scrape out the seeds, slice off the rind by any means necessary, chop up into smallish bits, spread on a pan, drizzle with olive oil, bake at 350 until a fork goes in easy. Puree as necessary.

I also included:

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

2/3 cup yogurt ( which was actually supposed to be milk, though I now see water was also an option….huh.)

2 cups sugar

3 eggs.

And I added about a teaspoon each of nutmeg, clove, and cinammon.

I also threw in about 2 cups chopped walnuts and for the second batch some vegan chocolate chips as well.

Conclusion: These are really good! Also, I forgot baking powder, now that I’m rereading the original recipe. (which I adapted from a pumpkin bread recipe out of joy. Also, last fall after researching for a friend the difference between corn bread and corn muffins was what they got cooked in, I’ve been feeling inspired to put things in muffin tins.

The original logic of this was that butternut squash and pumpkin are remarkably similar. Turns out yes. Though if I make these again I probably won’t put chocolate in-it’s an easy compulsion of mine to indulge the question of should-we-add-chocolate-well-yes-of-course, but some things on their own don’t require it.

Also, I had kefir for the first time. Kefir is drinkable yogurt. It’s fine.

I’ve been steaming a lot of kale and eating it with balsamic vinegar, mostly because this is the easiest thing I can do to remind myself to eat green things, which I haven’t been doing enough of lately. I will develop more complex methods eventually, but in the meantime this is what I have for you.

In other news, grad school acceptance rates are low, but I might just say fuck that and move to Portland like all the other cool kids these days. Committees are still investigating but there are a lot of lovely people who have offered for me to live on their couch, including my goofy aunt who shares my birthday and is loud and funny and one of my mom’s best friends.

Also, I have a fabulous new job at a queer DV agency, and this is really exciting.

And very soon I will be making olive bread.

potato fennel soup

So, I bastardized a recipe from Moosewood, and I will attempt to maintain the patience implicit in giving you the actual information rather than just what I did. But I will first tell you that.

Chop up and saute 2 cups (or in my case, don’t measure, just use 2 onions) onions in olive oil until soft and slightly brown.

Chop up 4 cups (or, 6 small potatoes) potatoes, 1 cup fennel bulb (or 2 cups fennel fronds), and saute for about five minutes.

Throw in 4 cups water, 1/2 tsp cumin (they used a fancier spice which I can’t remember now) and salt and white pepper to taste.

Cook until the potatoes are done, serve with sour cream on top if you feel so inspired. I never have sour cream at home, but I celebrate you if you do.

Tasty and stupidly easy. Pretty quick, too.

I’ve been hitting up the food not bombs free food market lately, and acquiring lots of produce, which is great, so I will hopefully continue to find/conjure palatable recipes, but I feel really tempted to make everything I cook into a variation of peanut soup. (ie throw vegetables, tomatoes, garlic, peanut butter, and red pepper flakes into a pot with water and cook until done; but I really need to learn new tricks.)

Maybe next week I’ll make minestrone.

The office of the nonprofit I work in is closing, which has been stressful in general and lately quite chaotic-I have someplace to be after that shuts down, but nonetheless cooking has been the consistent way I deal with this, because I am starting to run out of words for life these days, but it is rather grounding to make vegetables into food. Also, I think I am REALLY comfortable putting garlic in EVERYTHING, and I really wanted to add garlic to this recipe, when in fact it wasn’t necessary or appropriate. I just can’t help myself.

In other news, in the near future I’m taking a little train-trip to Portland and bringing my bike, and me and my bike go everywhere together, so I’m pretty stoked that we’re making it across state lines.

Also, hope everyone had a lovely Valentine’s Day- my mom brought me cupcakes, and I hung out with one of my oldest friends and drank a lot of wine and acted girly and ridiculous, and I was really happy about it.

I don’t like cabbage

So, I have made and improvised several peanut soup recipes.

I intended to make a sweet potato soup, which turned out to be a variation on peanut, though it was called indonesian, though the striking difference about it was it used sweet potatoes instead of regular, cabbage instead of other kinds of greens, cayenne instead of red pepper flakes, and some soy sauce and ginger.

I improvised with this, but I’m also unused to cabbage. I think it is watery. When it enters water, it becomes flaccid.

I am not impressed.

I didn’t eat vegetables so much when I was little, though unlike lots of my friends parents, I was supposed to eat all kinds of nonsense when I was little, and did not remain unshielded from things like beets. I had a conversation with someone yesterday who grew up not eating beets because her parents’ parents were direct from Eastern Europe, and there was extensive beet-consumption in their houses growing up, so they did not LIKE beets. I just didn’t like them, in general, though I don’t know what small child likes vegetables, though the little ones I see wandering around the farmer’s market insisting that we HAVE to get radishes mom you SAID we could give me a little bit of hope. I was an unadventurous child in general and the ones that I babysat for ever and ever would freak out about pasta made of something besides wheat. I don’t think that it’s unnatural or unadvisable to feed kids all manner of things, spicy and vegetabley and interesting, but I do think children are pretty simple and like sweet starchy things, but dear god please don’t just feed them wonderbread or they will DIE.

Though upon further consideration I bet the little kids at the farmer’s market get bribed by their hippie parents to act that way in public. They probably get them to act that way in their co-op preschool and feed them rice krispie treats and lets them watch Barney when they go home for acting like a good hippie child and sharing and loving the earth and getting excited about radishes. I bet that’s what happens.

That being said, my family is hippie-dippie in ways that excuse, or at least explain, my most outrageous behavior.

But I really only got into vegetables after I quit being vegetarian, and especially after college, because being adventuresome with vegetables for my sweetie in college meant romaine instead of iceberg. I had some learnin’ to do.

Regardless,  I don’t really like cabbage. I hear someone somewhere snarking about being a bad Irish girl-potatoes are great. Cabbage-not great.

I like purple cabbage, but that may just because it’s purple.

Also, the weather in Seattle has been ridiculous lately. Snow, sun, snow, hail, rainbows.

In other news, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and I think that’s just great.

vegan chocolate chip cookies that taste good

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

2 cups unbleached flour

2 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp.salt cinnamon to taste (optional)

vegan chocolate or carob chips – put in as many as you like

1 cup raw sugar (turbinado #1, sucanat works too but sucks up a lot of the moisture)

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup water

Directions: VERY IMPORTANT-make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. It will work if they’re not at room temp but it works MUCH better if they are. Also while your oven is pre-heating put the cookie sheets you are going to use on top of the oven so they get preheated as well. Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon (if you choose). Add chips. Make a well in the center and set aside. In a medium size bowl mix vegan sugar and oil. Mix it well. Add the vanilla and then add the water. Mix it well. Add the wet to the well in the dry. Mix it well but be careful not to overwork it. Add more chips if you need to. Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheets. Put them in the oven. Bake for 5 minutes and then flip and rotate the sheets.(top to bottom,and 180 degree rotation) Bake another 4 minutes and check them. The cookies are done when they seem a little bit softer then you want them to be. They will harden up some as they cool. I usually go in two minute increments from here untill they get to where I like them. Take them out when they are done and move them to wire cooling racks. If they split or come apart when you try to remove them let them sit on the pan for 2 minutes before transferring them to the racks.

Serves: almost two dozen Preparation time: 15 mins?-10 to 12 cooking time

I have made cinammon chocolate chip cookies for year; it was something I did pretty frequently in high school, and they were always huge and dense. It was not weird for me to bake late into the night. I think I stayed up late sometimes in high school because things because I really wanted to buy into this idea of myself of being lawless and free-spirited, though by 11:00 at night the only thing I could think of to do was bake cookies or check my email repeatedly, because clearly I was incredibly badass. Not so much badass as just generally unsupervised. I may have been channeling that when I made these.

I made them for a community meeting the nonprofit I work for had; there’s lotsa vegans. And vegans need treats too.

Things I will say about this recipe:

I found it randomly on the interweb; but I recommend it highly. Vegan baking is still a slippery slope as far as I’m concerned, but this recipe delivers. It’s a pretty damn good recipe. I’ve been staring at people intently while they’re eating them and saying,”They’re vegan! Can you tell??” Consensus says no. The woman who crafted this recipe has a 6 year old. If 6 year olds are into it, then it’s a good chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Carob is disgusting. I don’t care who you talk to, but I spent an obscene amount of money buying vegan chocolate chips that didn’t taste like ass. Vegans may convince themselves otherwise because they are broke and hungry…..but it’s just not the same thing. We can make something yummy out of dumpstered fruit, but this carob shit is not going to work for either of us.

That’s the other thing. The non-carob option is pricey. DAMN.

I don’t make cookies often, I don’t really have positive feelings about baking cookies, but I do love cookies because they are quite stackable, and easy to share, and many people will restrain themselves when food that is indulgent becomes a production, ie cake uses a fork and therefore is far too much, whereas a cookie you can convince most people to eat. Though it then becomes a thing of I’m-eating-six-cookies-and-now-I-feel-crappy. Or maybe I just have some association of cookies with Oprah with an overeating/self-loathing cycle. Which is no fun.

In other food news, I’m going to venture back to the produce stands in the International District to see what I can see and I promise to come up with something amusing.

Also, I’ve had a longer-term dalliance with hibiscus than may or may not be documented here (the first tea I drank consistently was tazo “passion” which is all about hibiscus, orange hibiscus scones were one of the first recipes on this here bloggy blog) and anyhow someone brought me a baggie of lemon hibiscus tea, which upon first sniff I thought smelled like grass, and was unmoved, but made it for my friend who wanted something herbal, and my arsenal of black tea wasn’t gonna do it, and actually was really tasty-I had a lot leftover saved in my little teapot in the fridge, which was kind of great.

I got rid of a lot of stuff in the last couple of days, and filed my taxes; I’m getting back what I normally make in a month.

fuck to the yeah.

we call this hectic

Hi fat tuesday fans,

There’s been some cookery, and some chaos.

It goes like this: the anti-violence organization I do Americorps at will be closing it’s office at the end of February, and continuing to function….somehow….in some capacity…..and they are in lots of debt. There has been a great to-do.

I will probably moving to another anti-violence organization. More words on that later.

But the cooking has been happening! I will update these in an abbreviated fashion!

I made peanut soup this morning for Americorps team meeting, and there was a large communal freak-out, which is silly because there was also barbeque, but people were so, so enthusiastic about this soup. Or maybe I was just sitting in the corner with the rowdy people and I keep making raunchy jokes and snorting when I laugh, so they’re eventually going to figure out something to get verbal about with me.

But it went like this:

4 cups collard greens

2 cups kale

1 1/2-2 cups peanut butter (crunchy, Adams. really, any other kind just disappoints me a little.)

3 sweet potatoes

1.5 yellow onions

1 can diced tomatoes

Throw this is in a pot, put in enough water that it is level with your heaping piles of stuff, flavor liberally with red pepper flakes, garlic, salt and black pepper. Cook for 45 min-1 hour. People will RAVE.

I  made bun, which is a Vietnamese salad type thing that I love, love, love. I made a bastardized Maria-style version, which is mediocre, but amusing.

Boil rice noodles, chop up lettuce and carrots, pan-fry chicken with lots of olive oil and garlic.

Mix it all up together and dump the sauce on top, which is evidently called nuoc cham. I made this with 1/2 cup hot water, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup oyster sauce (was supposed to be fish but Safeway has none FAIL), 1 tsp chili powder, and juice of 1 lime whisked together. Mer, it’s okay. Not bad for homemade bun.

But paralleling things that were well-received, I don’t make a lot of dessert, particularly savory dessert, but  something I made that was particularly well received:

1 bunch chard (this was mostly rainbow and a little bit of Swiss, I pick up a lot of chard), 3/4 yellow onion, 2 chicken thighs, chopped up and pan-fried in olive oil and, again, flavored liberally with garlic and red pepper flakes. Serve with scrambled eggs, and toast if you’re really really hungry.

Conclusions for recent cooking adventures: garlic and red pepper flakes will seldom to never fail me, I have an unjustified preference for yellow onions, and throwing shit in a pot is a reasonable method of cooking, and sometimes I just hit it, and isn’t that awesome.

Look forward to vegan cookie recipes. Joy of joys.

In other news, I need to stop cutting my own hair because it is not long enough for that to be okay anymore, and I am now on the path to filling out stuff for financial aid for grad school. Which is almost as sexy and interesting as writing personal histories and statements of purpose. Eventually I will become a grad student and will struggle not to communicate in my increasingly more specialized theoretical gobbledygook. And I will have to cook things just to make sense of anything.

Also, I have adopted arugula and kale plants, and found out I have collard greens in my garden. Amazing.

I made another cake.

Coconut cake:

Ingredients: * 3 cups sifted flour * 4 teaspoons baking powder * 1/2 teaspoon salt * 1/2 cup shortening * 1/2 cup butter * 2 cups sugar, divided * 1 1/3 cups coconut milk (if using fresh coconut milk, add regular milk to make 1 1/3 cups) * 1 teaspoon vanilla * 1 teaspoon almond extract * 1/3 cup coconut, optional * 5 egg whites

Preparation: Cream shortening and butter with 1 1/3 cups of the sugar. Add sifted flour alternately with liquid, beginning and ending with flour; add vanilla and almond extracts. If desired, add 1/3 cup fresh coconut to the batter. Beat egg whites to soft peaks; gradually add remaining 2/3 cup sugar. Fold meringue into cake batter, just enough to incorporate. Spoon into 2 9-inch layer cake pans lined with oiled waxed paper. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 25 to 35 minutes, or until cake bounces back when touched lightly.

So, needless to say, I fucked with this at great length, and didn’t frost it, and I think I may be getting bored of my throw-everything-in method of baking.

So what changed: 1 can of coconut milk, reduced to 3 tsps baking powder because 4 seemed REALLY excessive, used 3 whole eggs, 2 cups brown sugar, added about 1.5 tsps fresh-grated ginger, and mixed it all up and threw it in and sprinkled it with powdered sugar when it was done. Then I strapped it to the back of my bike with a whole lot of bungee cords and took it to my friend’s house. This was probably the most impressive part.

Conclusion: when it tasted like ginger, it was okay, otherwise it just kind of tasted like mushy white cake without any particular flavor or direction it was going. Really, just a disappointing cake. Though I’m not going to point to the recipe so much as my methodology as flawed in this instance.

Life has been pretty hectic lately for reasons out of my control, so there has been not so much cooking. But I will circle back to that in not-too-long.

i made a cake

strawberry chocolate whipped cream cake

this is a cake i made-it looks unintentionally dramatic because I took a picture on my kitchen counters which are this weird black fake-slate thing.

Really, it’s box cake that I layered with strawberries and whipped cream and made a pretty sunburst on and carved a heart into the one in the middle because my sweet friend/friend’s boyfriend had a birthday, so I made him a cake.

Also, the magic of our lives intersecting goes like this:

When I was a teenager, for the summers in high school I did trailwork, and I would see him every summer through the program I did it through. He’s about three years younger than me. We were never good good friends, but he was a sweet guy.

When I moved back to Seattle after college, I dated someone for awhile whose bff/housemate was dating this boy. I met him in their kitchen; and we had been telling each other our life stories for in ten (maybe fifteen?) minutes to each other for several years, so I told him about the last seven years of my life in three minutes, and vice versa.

Now person I was dating lives far away and the time that we were dating was long ago and far away, but bff and boyfriend are still part of my life.

Recently we figured out that his sister was a reasonably good friend of mine in college. I was in a married-type relationship, and she was (is-they have several cats) and so we would hang out and have married-people time. Our lives have intersected in several ways; I do not know the intricacies of his heart. Nonetheless I love him. So I made him a pretty cake-type-thing and smoked hookah at his house for the first time ever. (pomegrante tobacco what?)

This blog is become increasingly less about food. But in so many ways this is the short story of my life that it’s about food but really it’s about love, or dancing, or talking out this hard thing, or sex, or mystery, or delight or wonder or beauty.

adult beverages-or, why in slightly fewer words I have a chipped front tooth

We are  a ridiculous culture when it comes to booze.

I have found it really baffling and frustrating in my life (in DARE, in high school health class, in college classes where I was learning all kinds of social worky things like harm reduction strategies and addictive personalities) when teachers would say DRUGS and ALCOHOL. Um, alcohol’s a drug. Must we differentiate because it is liquid? No, I suppose it’s that whole legality issue. Which is something I will not touch right now.

It preoccupies an unnecessary amount of my time and socializing, people define themselves at great length by what alcoholic beverages they consume, and I spent hours on Christmas Eve with my family discussing banana daquiris vs gin & tonic vs rum & coke as signifiers of gender sexuality and open-mindedness. I have also been informed that old ladies drink gin and tonics in the summertime, which makes sense because I first had one at a picnic table with the old ladies from my parent’s church when I was 19. I then proceeded to order it at bars when I decided that ordering cosmopolitans was laughable and other things like tequila sunrises and white russians were not cute after I was 21. (And now I am 24. Watch and be amazed.)

I didn’t really drink in college-the person I was dating had extensive complicated reasons for not drinking and it was easier to avoid conflict by not drinking, though it eventually came to the point where we would drink Mike’s and play boggle. I now refuse to drink Mike’s-though apparently it’s unnecessary because….that’s disgusting, and such is the quality of the people I hang out with.

But foody-ism aside and being a Seattlite that’s snobby about things like coffee and cheese; I know so many people that drink two buck chuck after blowing paychecks and foodstamps on organic produce. It’s incongruous. And while I will praise Elysian over all other breweries (It’s in my neighborhood, and a guy I went to middle school with brews for them. My biases are very specific.) I can only tell you what I like after I put it in my mouth. I am only barely beginning to put words to my preferences particularly as far as beer is concerned.

I’m developing superstitions around wine in particular; mostly I bought a particular bottle of wine; it’s got a beautiful label, and I bought that wine and drank it on new year’s which was a beautiful beginning to a new year, and I want to retain that same spirit of delight and a lovely balance of intrigue and familiarity throughout the rest of the year. It is also a red wine which I only recently started buying for myself. However, the wine itself is fairly unappealing. This is disappointing, but it is wine and it took a few months of convincing for me to agree that Carlo Rossi was not a suitable thing to serve at a party, unless you are going to a potluck in which case people will probably find you amusing. Really; if you want to get them drunk, and are willing to inebriate whatever five people showed up with hummus and pita, they deserve what they can get.

People are snobby about beer; I don’t drink beer at home much because for whatever reason the people I hang out with appreciate good beer but will drink shitty wine with a pretty label. Or maybe they just drink what I hand them and don’t complain.

I cooked tonight, but it wasn’t anything you haven’t heard about before; sometime in the near future I will assign things like tags to my posts for greater searching capacity.

Also I should probably divine exciting new things to make out of chard.

And while my crossover has not been intentional, I do not want to eat very much meat these days. Which is like vegetarian. My housemate who knows about these things told me my blood type was well-suited to vegetarianism.