The Eggplant

This is what became of the featured speckled eggplant yesterday. I utilized another great recipe from Moskowitz' and Romero's Veganomicon. Since the speckled sky turned into this:

(photo courtesy of my friend, Linda -- I nabbed it off Facebook)

--by the time I started working on the "Roasted Eggplant, Tomato and Chick Pea Stew", going for missing ingredients was out of the question. I had no red bell peppers, which the recipe calls for roasting and peeling, but I had a crazy idea that I'd seen a jar of roasted peppers somewhere in my house about a year ago. Unbelievably, within a few seconds I found it in my pantry. (it's a hoarder's pantry, so it's quite miraculous the jar fell into my hands so easily when I needed it!). I didn't have a can of tomatoes, but I did have some fresh ones. I had everything else I needed except the tarragon, so I did without that particular flavor. The stew was so rich and warm and silky and full of flavor and sustenance. Perfect cozy food for our snowy night!

While a stew like this would be lovely with polenta or rice, I served it over my own recipe, "Easy Mashed Roots". This can be made with any root veggie, but it's important to use mostly potatoes. This is my favorite combo:

Easy Mashed Roots
3 russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks of about an inch
1 large parsnip, peeled and cut into same size chunks
a large handful of Italian parsley, washed and minced
2 Tbsp. Earth Balance Butter
1/2 c. unsweetened almond milk, or other non-dairy milk
nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste

Boil the roots for 13-15 minutes, then strain them and transfer to a large bowl. It's okay if a little bit of the boiling water remains since the roots will become drier as they cool. add the other ingredients except the parsley, and use a hand masher or pastry-chopper, or a large fork to mash it all together. Taste and adjust seasoning to your liking. Add parsley and fold into the mash.
Serves 4 as a side dish.

I wait for the mashed roots to cool a little before adding the parsley since I only want the greens warmed, not cooked. I prefer the parsnip with the potatoes because it is so mild and only subtly different from traditional mashed potatoes, and goes with so many different flavors. Depending upon which roots you choose, you can play with the seasonings, though I'd avoid adding sugar as some people like to do with baked sweet potatoes. This is a savory dish, with only the natural sweetness of the roots themselves. If you use a sweet potato you may like a little cinnamon or even a squeeze of lemon. If you add a carrot maybe powdered ginger would be good. Just have fun experimenting.

While we are enjoying being snowed in (after a few hours on the road which should only have been 10 minutes) our hearts go out to those folks who have still not made their way back home after being in the car since yesterday afternoon. Many people abandoned their cars, which had either run out of gas, had spun out and were undrivable, or were simply at a standstill on the highway along with all the other vehicles with nowhere to go since exit and entrance ramps were often completely impassable due to wrecked or unmovable vehicles. Some children were even stranded on buses, or at school overnight. After leaving their cars, some people walked miles to get home. One guy tweeted he had walked 11 miles after being in his car for 15 hours! People slept on the floor at Whole Foods, Publix and CVS, and some were lucky beneficiaries of good-hearted strangers who took them into their homes.

Atlanta is the butt of many jokes today for falling to pieces over 3-7 inches of the white stuff, but bear in mind that the budget does not include much salt/sand or road crew and equipment, since this never happens. Unfortunately the Department of Transportation got it wrong this time and sent all the resources to the wrong part of town. Also, the departments were not communicating and workers and schoolchildren were sent home at the same time, so all of Atlanta was on the road at once. Not many of us have snow tires, and even transplants like we haven't driven on the ice in a long time. We all know how one car wreck can affect traffic on a highway. Imagine 200 wrecks happening simultaneously in a small area (and many times over in other areas too), involving mostly entrance and exit ramps because that's where the slippery hills are, and you get an idea of what we are up against. Abandoned cars still litter the streets, which now cannot be cleared as a consequence. The roads are still too dangerous for the drivers of these vehicles to make their way back to them. We are sending prayers to anyone still in danger, and are counting our blessings to be snugly at home.

The First Radish! + a Money Tree Update

As I was in the fresh air yesterday to get away from the paint fumes, I checked on my garden. The radishes have begun to look robust and voluptuous, positively pushing themselves out of the ground, so I harvested one of them, perhaps a bit early, since it was about the size of my thumb, but ripe enough to eat. I was tempted to down it right then and there, but I stopped myself because of the dirt. A quick rinse later, I ate the whole thing, stringy little roots to fresh, spiny leaves. It was superb. I'm not kidding -- anything homegrown is always surprisingly delicious.

Remember the dead money tree which stayed dead despite my counterintuitive decapitating of it? Well, guess what I got on my front porch today, all the way from China? (Not literally -- it was grown in Mississippi, but the order was from China!)

A new money tree from my brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece! They do live in China. This was so thoughtful and kind of them, and provides evidence that they are tracking my blogposts! I love and miss you guys so much! Grateful!

What do you think of the new paint color I chose for the kitchen/sitting room? I was trying to be more modern, less radical. It's actually close to the old color, but lighter and more grey -- neutral. My daughter says it looks exactly the same as the old color. 

Scattered Odds-n-Ends {Hoarder Edition}

I've been in a "shedding" season of late, which is odd for a "waste-not-want-not" kind of gal (hoarder). Yep, it seems I've inherited a tad of my sweet Mom's hoarding tendency. This likely sounds much worse than it is -- neither Mom and Dad's home nor mine looks anything like the homes on the TLC hoarding show, but recent life events have illustrated all too well that I'll need to make an effort to un-hoard.

What life events? Well there's the water damage for starters. One day I noticed drip marks on the wall of the sitting room off the kitchen, then after days and days of rain, I noticed a big wet spot on the ceiling and wall. This is covered by insurance after we pay a deductible, but it'll be more than just a small corner repair. The paint has to match what's there already, and it doesn't after 13 years, so I got to choose a new paint color (yay!) and the whole kitchen and sitting area will be painted. Where am I going with this? (can you tell shedding season leaves me scattered?) I had to move everything out of these two rooms. The items filled the guest room and the dining room! Yikes -- how and when did this happen? With 13 years in one place, the accumulation was so gradual, I didn't notice.

So I am shedding -- anything we don't need, anything I don't like, anything broken, duplicates. Sorting -- consignment, donation, trash -- it's very unsettling -- hence my "scattered" odds-n-ends today.

After moving the items out of the rooms and before the painters covered everything with plastic, I made  this for breakfast:

Avo-Toast from Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Kitchen. It's one of those "why didn't I thinka' that?" recipes -- so simple. You can use any bread, I used Eziekiel. Kris has a video where she learns to squeeze a ripe avocado -- no cutting or peeling -- just slice it in half and squeeze the darn thing. Again, why didn't I thinka' that? It takes one second. You then squeeze half a lime over it and top with pepper. Kris' recipe calls for pepper flakes, but I am having a love affair with chipotle powder lately (smoky and deep!), so avo-toast became an apt vehicle for it. This was a lovely start to my home-improvement day. I highly recommend Kris' books.

In other news, I'm loving the micro-greens I'm growing in pots around my garden. They are so fresh, tender, delicious and ALIVE! So far the pots have daunted the marauding garden critters.

Following up on the "plant rehab" attempts from my earlier post, I've determined the bamboo "money tree" is truly dead as a doornail and since I don't need that kind of financial karma, it is now with the other detritus being shed. My exciting avocado tree experiment is over. I decided I wasn't quite sure which way was up (is that a root or a sprout?) After trying it both ways, the confused pit stopped doing anything. Who could blame it? So I'm hoping it grows happily in a landfill somewhere, far from me, its clueless tender.

Finally, I'll wrap up this edition of Odds-n-Ends with something unrelated to being vegan or any part of the life of this midlife vegan+.  This just gave me a fit of giggles, and I hope it does the same for you. Laughter is good for you.

Odds-n-Ends, Back to School Edition

Long time, no post, I know. Transitions have always been a challenge for me, creature of habit as I tend to be. With the kids at school, I am now thriving in a new routine, but it has taken me almost a week to settle into it. I'll share a bit of life in general around here during the transition.

The photo above is an example of a lazy way to make the mundane fabulous. This is just whole wheat linguine with jarred marinara, daiya "cheese"and kalamata olives, along with grape tomatoes and fresh oregano from my garden. The others ate theirs without all my chosen goodies.

Here is something tried and true: greens, grains and beans. The addition of french bread makes it vegan junk food, though.

Oops -- I forgot that nobody else at home doesn't really mean nobody else at home. I'll have to shut the door all the way if I want privacy. Otherwise Ellie's gonna get into my business.

On a night out with the man, at Sage, a restaurant/bar where we frequently order tapas with our drinks, I ordered what I usually do -- Mediterranean Crostini without the feta. It is the only thing on the menu veganizable except for a boring salad. Normally the veganized crostini is perfect bar food, but the other night someone in the kitchen must have decided to "improve" the crostini by broiling the toasts covered in feta. Grrrrr -- they thought I had only meant no additional cheese on top! How many times have I ordered the exact same thing? The photo is of the second batch of crostini after I sent the first one back. The cheese had been buried under all the yummy Mediterranean veggies, and we each had a bite or two before my husband noticed the flavor of cheese. I knew it tasted different, but I had forgotten what cheese used to taste like, I guess. Within five minutes of the accidental cheese eating, my head filled with stuffiness and confusion and I really was quite a boring girl for about an hour. Cheese steals my joie de vivre, my witty banter, my sense of humor. I just sit on the bar stool like a lump -- of cheese.

Back at home, after I had finally regained my personality, we decided to watch a concert DVD in our basement theater, and my husband did push-ups on the coffee table. Okay.

Taking a good look at my bread and pasta filled transitional days, I understand why I am feeling a bit, um, fluffy around the edges. Noticing and analyzing trends in cravings is a good way to get a read on what is going on with our bodies. I was craving carbs because of my lack of energy from the B12 deficiency. There is great news on that front, personally, though. I saw my Integrative Medicine M.D. the other day and she trained me to give my own B12 injections! I am no stranger to needles, since my mainstream MS medication is a daily subcutaneous injection, self-administered, but it had been ten years since I had done the intramuscular injections. The longer needle is a bit more of a challenge psychologically, but if one doesn't overthink it, the IM shot is a breeze. Now I can give myself B12 every two weeks! I bought a vial of B12 (30 doses) and a bunch of syringes for $94, and my labor is free. I am going to save a bundle on what it would have cost me to go in every two weeks to have my M.D. administer the shots. I love my doctor. She's always looking for a way to get what I need for less. Isn't she cool?

I Like Tempeh Now!

Look at this hearty, healthy, rustic panful! Inspired by Isa Chandra Moskowitz'"Smoky Tempeh & Greens Stew" from Appetite For Reduction, I actually followed a recipe instead of perusing it and doing whatever the heck I want in my usual, lazy pattern. I followed the recipe because I was working with an unfamiliar ingredient.

Heretofore, I've been under the impression that I am not a tempeh kind of girl. Accustomed to the lovely, bland, homogeneous nature of tofu, tempeh did not appeal to me the one time I attempted to cultivate a taste for it about a year ago. I had bought a shrink-wrapped portion of tempeh with no plan in mind, and cut into it and popped a chunk of it, cold and unadorned, into my mouth. Not knowing anything about tempeh at the time, I was put off by the slightly sour flavor of this fermented soybean product. I was not entirely sure I did not have a bad batch of it, so I am ashamed to say it went into the trash, and I resolved to stick to beans and the occasional tofu meal.

I'm so glad I finally bothered to actually follow Isa's recipe! This stew is positively delicious in an uber-wholesome way. So I am a big fan of tempeh now! Even more shocking, my omni-husband also enjoyed the stew. Knowing how my husband's psychology works, I am better off not asking him about whether he indulged in any tempeh chunks. He's more likely to eat "funky" vegan food if I keep it under the radar and just sneak it in there stealthily. So, I don't know if he ate any or not, and I don't really care. He liked the stew!

We ate the stew with some jasmine rice, which I know my daughter loves.

Some notes about my actually following a recipe:  Isa says the active time for this prep is 15 minutes and the total time is 45 minutes. I agree with the 45 minute figure for the actual cooking time, but only 15 minutes for the prep time? No ma'am! I spent at least half an hour chopping, but that may be because I didn't actually weigh my gigantic sheaf of collard greens, and I may have prepped much more than a pound of them. My collards were at least as large as the biggest Miss America congratulatory bouquet you can imagine. That's how we grow 'em down here in the deep south, I guess. No matter, as the greens cooked down, I was able to work all of them into the pot. Otherwise, I think most measurements matched the recipe's. I did use full-grown organic carrots instead of the baby ones (which aren't really babies anyway - they just carve 'em that way).

In shopping for smoked paprika, I had no luck. I went to the ethnic aisle first (I can call it that because my kids are ethnic) because the spices are soooo much cheaper than in the baking aisle.

There was only this regular paprika in the ethnic aisle, so I went to the expensive aisle in search of the smoked paprika. There was no smoked paprika in the expensive aisle either, so back to the ethnic aisle I went. The ethnic paprika cost $1.53 and the ethnic bay leaves cost $.59! You won't find any spices in the non-ethnic aisle for less than $3! Marketing -- pricing can be so random.  My ethnic spices did the trick, with the addition of a few drops of liquid smoke.

I love Isa's recipes and am grateful for this chance to expand my vegan ingredient repetoire.

This is Vegan Junk Food

If I were Catholic, I guess this would be my confessional. I've veered off track from my usual beans/greens/whole grains formula that normally keeps me in top form and at peace.

I guess it all started with our travels for the wedding, but then, back at home, we've struggled to create a new routine, in this "summer but not really" season. You see, my 17 year old son, who you may remember missed a lot of school last year due to chronic migraines, has luckily received three incompletes out of his 6 junior year classes (instead of failing the classes). This means he has until August 1 to finish the classes. He feels grateful for the extension, as do I, but being close to adulthood, he bristles at any attempt on our parts to create any sort of routine. He wants to do the work when he feels like it. Well, this won't work, so we have negotiated a settlement with him which involves various sleep schedules and accompanying consequences that he may choose from day to day according to how he feels. Recounting the details of the arrangement would be tedious. We figured out he needs at least 4 hours of work per day to meet his deadline. Hans has been very good at following the guidelines thus far, but the variable nature of the arrangement involves a watchful eye by me. I need to get up at night to make sure he is going to bed when he says he is. So I'm tired. And you thought it would get easier once they are older? Nope, just different problems.

Most of us vegans get clear signals from our bodies about what is needed to achieve balance. But if we ignore or misread the signals, they are of no benefit. I have been misreading my tired signals as cravings for carbs. Oh, you're right, I really knew better, I just wanted an excuse for some vegan junk food.

The photo above is a couple of lovely toasted cheese sandwiches (I'm still in my Anglophilia phase from the Royal wedding, so I will call them that instead of the American "grilled cheese"). The bread is a delicious sunflower seed bread and, yes, it is white flour, and I don't know if there are eggs in it or not (confession). The cheese is daiya -- non-dairy, made from tapioca. It is not animal fat but it is still fat. These were delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed the ten minutes it took to consume them, but then felt overstuffed and miserable for an hour.

Here is some more recent vegan junk food in which I've indulged:

Herbed smashed potatoes! Yum -- boiled potatoes, some peeled, some not, mashed with plenty of earth balance and tofutti sour cream, salt, pepper and a big handful of herbs from my garden -- in this case Italian parsley. White carbs again and plenty of vegan fat. The result? Pretty much the same as the toasted cheese -- ten minutes of joy and satiety, followed by an hour of discomfort, with no residual energy.

It occurs to me that my dietary rebellion mirrors my son's responsibility rebellion. But as our pendulums swing, equillibrium is what we ultimately crave. We know what to do to achieve it, and the rewards are much longer lasting.

Repose

After six inches of snow last night, I walked around my home and garden. This is my little world today, so quiet, asleep under a blanket of white.