Recent Foods

This weekend (and today) were a weekend of cooking and baking. Which seems to be the norm since I have become vegan. So, I'm going to show off. Hope you forgive me. Also, I think I need to get over my carb fetish. What's that? you're surprised I have a carb fetish? You shouldn't be. I love carbs far too much for my own good. Eat them too much.

But anyways.
Saturday
On Saturday, i got home from from the Sessions Committee for New England Yearly Meeting (the group that organizes New England Quaker's business/social annual gathering held in august... www.neym.org) to which I was nominated back at the very beginning of the year at Young Adult Friends midwinter. I went with two other YAFs and met two more there. It was nice to see them so shortly after having seen them earlier this month. There was a lot accomplished at this meeting and needless to say, I am stoked for yearly. Except for maybe the food. I might be eating cereal and salad with no dressing all week. We'll see..

But this entry is about food. So, onwards, my friends.

The first thing I made was a gluten-free vegan cornbread slightly adapted from glutenfreegirl.com's recipe for cornbread. It came out absolutely delicious. Tasted exactly like any cornbread I'd ever had. Or almost, at least. It was slightly slightly heavier.

Yes, it is next to a very heavily glutenized loaf of bread. As no one in my family actually NEEDS to eat gluten free, this isn't an issue at the moment. We do love our wheat flour. Everyone agreed that this cornbread hit the spot, however.

I also made the Vegan Girl's Guide to Life Twice baked Chipotle sweet potatoes. The skins fell apart, probably because I didn't follow the instructions precisely when it came to removing the flesh to mix in the chipotle seasoning.. So they look a bit funky, especially the foil 'skin.' Sorry for it being sideways. I'm feeling too lazy to go back and fix that in iPhoto and it won't let me here. As you can see, we still have a vestige of christmas hanging around.

Onwards. After this, I made vegan banana bread in preparation for Sunday morning (I have no pictures of the loaf, whole). What's that you say? What did I make for sunday morning? Well, onwards, I shall show you!

Sunday


I woke up Sunday morning with not a hankering in the world for Banana Bread French Toast. Funny, since I'm usually all over hot baked goods for breakfast. Not this morning, no sirree. So I went to go snowshoeing instead for an hour and came back, took a shower and finally convinced myself that I should just make the damn french toast. After all, I'd already made the banana bread. What could hurt? I could always give it away to someone..somehow.

So I made it. Dude. DUDE. I think my life is changed. I can't believe i didn't feel like eating french toast for breakfast. I must have been crazy. Look how crazy delicious this is:

Yeah. I know. This recipe is easily found in Vegan Girl's Guide to life. I changed nothing. 

I knew I was heading for a pizza party later that day, so I made pizza to bring with me! I was going to make the same thing as I'd made way earlier this month, pizza with sweet potatoes, caramelized onions and spinach. Last minute, I decided what the hey, I'll substitute mustard greens for spinach even though I've never had them. 

Still not sure that was a good decision, but it is one of the healthiest pizzas I've ever seen:

(Yes, the mustard greens are under the sweet potatoes and onions) Also, there's red sauce under there. Very very onion-y red sauce. I killed the onions yesterday, having forgotten to get more on Friday. Whoops.

I also made my lunch for the week, Kale and Chickpea Tagine with Quinoa. Only without the quinoa because we apparently left it in New Hampshire over Christmas. Whoops. So I'm eating it with plain white rice. Forgive me for not taking a picture of the rice. You've all seen it before. Also, I forgot to take a picture of it while it was hot, so this is post-refrigerator, wilted look.

Monday


Only one thing I made today, from the wonder that is theppk.com Their orange-cranberry muffins have been staring at me for a while now, so I finally made them, the applesauce replacement for oil followed. I also did not have fresh cranberries, so I used the dried ones I've had sitting around for a while. I left out the zest because we didn't have any oranges and because I don't like zest (could have used clementine zest).

Yum. This weekend was full of yum.

Randomness

I'm still working on that vest. Went to a retreat last weekend and actually got to a pretty sweet place in the vest, which I am very happy with. But it seems to be moving slowly, especially given that I haven't worked on it since.

I made sourdough bread again yesterday. Left the starter out overnight to proof it, made the dough in the morning, let it rise for FOUR hours, punched it down, shaped it into a loaf and shoved it in the warmed oven to rise again for two hours. Finally baked it. Still heavy and dense, but not as bad as my first try (the second has been the best so far). Time needed: ~18 hours.

I'm writing again! After National Novel Writing Month, I burnt myself out for a month-which is not too unusual for me. It happened last year and frankly, I'm not surprised it happened this year. I'm currently only writing Fanfiction (fiction based on already created piece of work...in case you didn't know. Which I'm positive you do. Just covering the bases) out of the Firefly world (a tv show starring Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau etc that was cancelled far too early in 2002 by Fox and then made a movie in 2005...again in case you don't know, which I'm sure you do). Hopefully, I'll get around to my nano piece as it's kind of whining at me, wanting me to finish it. Surprisingly, I don't think it's crap. Not in the sense that I think the first nanonovel I wrote was crap. It's something I can work with. Like putty sitting there unformed, but the majority of what it needs is already waiting to be formed into a piece of beauty.

I made vegan chocolate chip cookies. They never browned, which was incredibly disappointing. And then they didn't taste very good. But a funny thing happened. The next day, they tasted better. And the day after that, even better. I think the process of going stale actually made the texture/taste of these things better. Which is completely contradictory to anything I've ever heard...

Being Vegan is kind of awesome. My body feels way better, I'm more alert to the world. Last night, I made a dish from theppk.com called Cashew Vegetable Korma.  I halved the recipe, since I wasn't cooking for 16 people and I still have two yogurt containers full of leftover. But it was delicious and I will probably have it for lunch all week.

Food thoughts

I know my blog name doesn't really seem to reflect how my blog seems to have been going in the past few weeks, but I won't apologize. My interests are varied. And fickle, to say the least. I'm still knitting, I'm still thinking and talking about hiking (one of these days I'll actually organize a hike out in Western Mass) and I'm considering writing again (nanowrimo wore me out). For now, food is something that has taken up some goodly time of my thinking.

I realized recently, that dairy may be giving me some intestinal issues. It's that or possibly gluten, which I truly do not want to face. (i'm a bread person) I wasn't spectacularly excited at this new development, but it did give me a kick in the butt.

I should explain. For seven and a half years, I was a vegetarian, after hearing a lovely speech in french on how I should be vegan. I was unwilling to give up eggs and dairy products, so I chose being vegetarian. It wasn't much of a sacrifice-meat has never been a big part of my diet for the most part. That lasted for 7.5 years, in which I did not eat healthfully. Too much carbs. And dairy for that matter.

I changed back to omnivore near the very beginning of my hike, needing high calories without worrying about meat in my foods. I have since been enjoying the pleasures of eating meat. I've also been considering going back to vegetarian.

Naturally, with the realization that dairy could be an issue, I decided vegan could be the way to go. I've decided to go for it and am currently reading a variety of cookbooks and books about being a feminist and vegetarian-hopefully will get the one on veganism by melisser elliott soon.

So, I'm hoping to create a menu for the first few weeks at least, while being vegan. There are so many good ones in these cookbooks I have.

Anyone have any ideas?

Knitting and a sidenote

On Friday, I knew I would be watching all three Star Wars in a row (4,5,6...1,23 don't exist) and I knew that that much time spent looking at a tv screen surely meant that I ought to have something productive to do with me. Such as knitting. I've had Talia on my to-do list for the last month or so and I have the yarn, so why not? I found the pattern on Knitty. I got four skeins of Berroco's Vintage yarn in this bright, brilliant purple. Already, I'm quite in love with my choice of color.

So far, it has come out truly beautiful. When looking at the pictures on the pattern, I had completely failed to notice how detailed the bottom hem is on the vest. And it truly is quite beautiful. I doubt mine is quite as defined as the model vest, but I like it, mistakes and all. It's purple after all. And I am always a sucker for purple, frankly. I can't wait for more surprises with this vest! 

Also, I made a second loaf of sourdough bread yesterday, attempting to fix the problems with the first loaf. I believe it is fairly safe to say that i succeeded. Patience is key. I let it rise for 3 hours and proof for another three hours. Both times in a slightly warmed oven. Of course, turning on the oven to bake it suddenly produced a strong reaction to this wild strain of yeast in my starter and it poofed up even more, which was fantastic! It has a very unique flavor to it. I'm looking forward to being able to find new sourdough recipes to use with this starter I have!

My New Pet

Over the last  year or so, I've become rather enamored of creating a sourdough starter. I tried to several months ago (before my thru-hike) and was spectacularly unsuccessful. I suspect contamination, frankly, after having read something from another website about mold spores.

A couple weeks ago, I bought a giant pyrex mixing cup (eg pretty much a bowl) and it sat on top of the refrigerator, waiting for me, until Wednesday evening. I finally got it down and trepidatiously mixed the cup of flour and water together and let it sit on top of the stove (probably the closest to a warm place in this house). In the last day and a half, it's started to bubble rather ferociously, in my opinion, which is quite fantastic! Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture before using it, so this is a picture after I've put it in the refrigerator (it makes it 'hibernate' so to speak) so it's not quite as excited about bubbling.

As you can see it is very very shiny. (This is definitely a good thing from my perspective.) It filled the entire kitchen with a quite sour smell. Not necessarily a good smell, but hopefully it will translate into delicious tasting sour dough bread. I mixed in sugar, oil, and salt and more flour to form a good bread dough and let it rise for an hour. (A short time even by my standards and short by sourdough standards...soooo we'll see) This was taken a little while after I first formed the dough, once it had been sitting in a slightly warmed oven for a few minutes. Already it was showing signs of rising:

I punched it down added a tiny amount of flour and formed it into a loaf in this small pan (It looks quite good and smells sour already!):

I had to leave for my plans before it was baked, but I took a picture this morning after I had a slice (and others did last night!) so here's a picture of the bread now (Clearly, I didn't let it rise enough...which is why I'm going to try again today!!):

Gluten Free Girl & the Chef

I spent some of last night and most of my free moments today reading "Gluten Free Girl & The Chef" a book from the blog of the same name. I haven't gone over all of the recipes, but the ones I have? They seem really delicious.

I've been thinking about food a lot recently, as I've been in the process of applying for a job in the food industry. So, naturally, being something of a bibliophile, I kept an eye out for books at the library on food-this one was part recipe book, part memoir, part food philosophy. Food philosophy is something that I find really really interesting.

I was first introduced to gluten free as a way of life back in the summer of '09 when I worked at a camp called Farm & Wilderness. It tries to be as natural in it's food process as possible. I found myself making foods that were gluten free.

Since then, the idea has intrigued me. And as someone who (most likely) does not have celiac's disease, I've found it difficult to justify actually messing around with it. I will probably continue to have this issue, unfortunately. But the book was good, because it focused more on food groups those with celiac's CAN eat-such as meats and fresh in season vegetables and fruits and other grains such as teff and millet. All the recipes look quite delicious so far. I'm quite excited to maybe try some in the future!

In other news, I finished my fingerless gloves (knucks found at knitty.com) and embroidered 'damn cold' on them. The embroidery is crap and I'm going to have to re-do that, but otherwise, I think they came out quite fantastically.

Baby it's cold outside?

I think I have heard that song once too many times in the last couple of weeks. While I like christmas, I find the music equal parts charming, lovable and annoying.

In any case, I started the Knucks a while back in late November. And the fingers flew along flawlessly. Joining the fingers together? Not a problem. Knitting down to joining the thumb? No issue there! No, the trouble came from where I forgot to add stitch markers. It turned out to be a relatively simple issue, one that required no tinking or other futzing with the knitting to fix. I just had to put stitch markers in the next round. But the wording of the pattern took a moment to work out where the stitch markers should be. Which was annoying to say the least. They ended up needing to mark where the thumb started/stopped and I kind of stared at the pattern and wondered why the hell it didn't say that in the first place!

And now, once I figured out that one problem, they have been flying off the needles. I'm at the cuff on the second knuck so I have several more rounds to go before I bind off. And then, I believe I am going to embroider 'DAMN COLD' onto them. I got a suggestion from a friend last night and unfortunately I have no memory of what his suggestion was. However-I do know that as soon I found Damn Cold as a suggestion in the pattern, my mind was made up unless something even more awesome came up.

I haven't finished them yet, but I anticipate doing so today. If I were a picture person, I would share them with you. But, sadly, I have neither a good camera nor a good eye for photography.

Next on my queue is Talia and I'm really excited about it. I have this Berrocco Vintage yarn that's a bright purple and while it's not the black that Talia originally has, I don't care. It's PURPLE. How much better could you get? not at all..

As for writing, I have grand plans for today. Though I will say I probably won't get all that much done.

I almost went backpacking this weekend, but that fell through. I have this new pack, the Granite Gear Vapor Ki (It's purple) and am really really excited to try it out, even though it will probably be my summer backpack, as it only holds 30lbs and 59 liters. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to lighten everything up to  use it in winter. As it is, I cannot wait for summertime to come again!