Alternative Vegan

Set up big pressure cooker for small cooking.

2012-01-26T09:51:00.002-05:00

In the body of the pressure cooker is lentils with enough water to cover them. The first bowl in the stack has barley, and its cooking liquid. Atop that, I set the little trivet that came with the pressure cooker. Atop /that/ are some red potatoes, with a scant 2 cm of water in. There'll be plenty of steam in the cooker, so I need not even bother with it, but I don't want the potatoes sticking to my bowl. I then put the lid and weight on the whole mess, set it over high heat, and set my timer for 40 minutes. (Next time, I'll go with shorter time, because the potatoes got overcooked). Then I walked away, and heard the pressure cooker get to full pressure at like 6 minutes or so. Then, I dropped down the heat to low, and let the timer run out. I did a quick release. Honestly, if I just did like 20 minutes, I could have still done a quick release with no problems. I was just stupidly nervous. Boo.

My friend Christy Morgan, of Blissful Chef fame, is maintaining an ongoing pressure cooker party on her blog. Please check out this link for more info on cooking other stuff in pressure cookers! She's got lots of creative ideas for cooking in my style: whole ingredients, lots of produce, and minimising premade stuff. Check it out!

Christy Interview

2012-01-03T17:09:00.005-05:00

Christy Morgan, the author of The Blissful Chef, did an interview with me a few months back. Unfortunately, I was stupid, and uploaded it to my website holder. Which I lost access to. Which I then had no backup of, because I'm dumb.

Then, she graciously agreed to do a do-over. This is the do-over. However, after editing it, and fixing it, the program crashed, and I lost my work.

Rather than shoot something, and delay this any further, I decided to just upload the raw files, and the hell with editing, because this interview seems to be cursed or something. Either way, enjoy the interview! You can find Christy on Twitter and Facebook and G+.

Download the interview here, or download it on iTunes.

The book is out!

2011-12-07T18:32:00.002-05:00

If you go to the PM Press website, you can order the book directly from them. In this version, I've got a bunch of spelling corrections, the recipe for the Demonic Mushrooms (essentially, spicy stuffed mushrooms), and corrections to amounts/times/temperatures. I'm very excited that it's finally here! Hooray!

Pretzels, redux

2011-12-01T07:41:00.003-05:00

As mentioned in this post, I made pretzels. A friend of mine (called GrauFrau) from an online cooking forum had a couple of comments:

Finally had time to try this! A few notes: The recipe is great. Smell, taste, and texture are perfect. However, I made one significant prep error. I should have rolled out the pretzels HALF as thick as I wanted them to be when finished. They looked nice until I dropped them in the solution, at which point they bloated up like crazy. So they look ugly, but that's ok - they taste wonderful!

The solution I used for dipping was close to 4 tbsp of the baked baking soda (Na2CO3) in the liter of boiling water. The dough floated almost immediately, and I kept each one in for 30 seconds. I baked them at 425F and turned them at 14 minutes, saw they were getting a bit too dark, and pulled them 5 minutes later. Next time I might try 400F and look at them at the 10-minute mark. Oh, and in case anyone doubts the necessity of the soda dip - see that hideous albino pretzel in the low left corner? I didn't dip him, just to see what he'd look like. He was baked right along with everyone else. I suppose it's still edible, but ew.

Anyway, definitely a great recipe. I'll be doing lots with this one. Now I can make my own pretzel rolls!

So, to review: roll them thinner than you think you'll want them, and you'll be in good shape. Thanks for the awesome picture, and for the tips! The baked baking soda she refers to is 1 lb of sodium bicarbonate, baked in the oven at 350 for an hour. If you'd like to do this too, use the opportunity to bake off some potatoes, butternut squash, roast some peppers, whatever. No sense in using up all that heat for one thing. It makes the baking soda stronger, and gives the pretzels a darker colour, like GrauFrau's came out. I can't be bothered to go through the extra step, and will continue to just do them the regular way, but if you're feeling like you want that good strong dark pretzel colour, give the whole baking the bicarbonate of soda thing a shot.

Thank you especially for doing one without the soda dip, so that everyone can see how important it is to follow every step.

Rice cooker Quinoa

2011-12-01T07:18:00.001-05:00

Use a rice cooker! I'm serious. I was in a hurry, and decided to just try it out to see what happens. I used 6 "cups" of the millet & quinoa (50-50 mix), and filled the water to the 8 cup line, just as if I were making brown rice. I hit start on the regular white rice cycle, and let it go. At the end of the cycle, the rice pot beeped, and I had perfectly steamed millet and quinoa, cooked at the same time. They were cooked to perfection, and not sticky at all.

I find that if I make quinoa or millet by itself, they don't cook up as nicely. The quinoa tends to the overcooked stage, with the little swirly thingies falling out. The millet tends to the mushy, and sticky as heck side, with the whole thing becoming a globby mass. No thanks! From now on, I shall cook it in the rice cooker, and wind up with fluffy, tender, perfectly done millet and quinoa. From there, it's easy enough to use the grains just like you'd use rice.

If you don't have a fancy rice cooker with all kind of cycles, fret not! I did it with the rice cooker at work (which just has an on and an off button), and it came out perfectly there too. I just did the same measurement: 6 "cups" (and by "cups", I mean for you to use the measuring cup that came with the rice cooker; if you lost it, 1 "cup" is equal to 3/4 cups by dry measure, so do the conversions as necessary) of millet & quinoa, with enough water filled to the 8 cup line. If you have a larger cooker, I'm sure you could do 8 "cups" with water filled to the 10 cup line with similar results, but I'd suggest you don't experiment with this one. I know it may be tempting, but I've tested this out a few times, and it's always worked out with this ratio.

What to get your cooking friends.

2011-12-01T06:06:00.004-05:00

There are certain kitchen things that you can never have enough of. They're the things that you reach for all the time, but are so ubiquitous that you don't even think about it. Also, when those things start going bad on you, you keep using them anyway, because laziness is preventing you from replacing them. I therefore make this list of stuff that any cooking person would be happy to get from anyone s/he knows.

1) Rubber Scrapers/Spatulas: You would be amazed at how frequently these things get used, especially in baking. Your hand will never get that bowl quite as cleaned off as the rubber scraper. If the person intends to use it for cooking, please get one that's rated to high temperatures. You can generally find these at restaurant supply stores for less than $2 a piece. There is no cook that I know who would say, "Oh, but I already have one rubber scraper." They get a lot of use, and are endlessly wearing out.

2) Pastry Brush: Not to be confused with a painting brush. Again, these get heavy use, be it for brushing oil onto bread before baking, brushing marinade onto whatever you're roasting in the oven, brushing sauce onto stuff on the grill, or whatever other brushy things you can think of. And, as usual, these get worn out with startling regularity.

3) Silicon Baking Mat: If the person doesn't already own one or two, they'll love them. If they /do/ own one or two, they'll thank you for expanding their collection. I get annoyed at having to use parchment paper all the time to prevent sticking on my baking sheets. Instead, the baking mats do an excellent job every single time, and you don't need to grease them. Everything slides off with the greatest of ease. They're very useful to have around.

4) Wooden Spoons: I'm so not even being funny here. Wooden spoons are used constantly, for stirring, especially if the person owns a lot of nonstick cookware. Unfortunately, they get kind of grody looking over time. Some folk would consider this a good thing. I don't. Give them enough use, and the spoons will start to splinter off. Ew. However, just like the pastry brushes and spatulas, one feels way too lazy to go buy a new one, even though one knows that a new one would be a pleasure to use. This is where the friends come in. You'll generally get a, "Thanks! I was meaning to replace mine anyway."

5) Vegetable Peelers: I linked two different kinds, because wars have been fought over the superiority of the y-peelers versus regular peelers, and I'm not about to get involved in that particular battle. (For the record, I loathe y-peelers. Just saying.) If you look in anyone's drawer, either the peeler sucks (these peelers I've linked are the kinds to AVOID at all costs) or is horribly blunt. In this particular case, I'm going to ask you to get the specific brand that I linked. Every other peeler I've used is horrible and isn't worth the money. Yes, that includes the nicer brands, like Kuhn Rikon or Zyliss. Get that specific brand, and you're good.

6) Storage Containers: (Especially glass ones. They're really nice to have around, and most people aren't ready to splurge on them.) This is actually a good gift for anyone, because they're so versatile. I'm forever looking for stuff to put my food in. Even if you got me Gladware, I'd still be happy. Why? Storage containers get lost. Their lids get lost. You loan them out and never see them again. They break. You can never have too many of them, as long as you keep throwing out the ones that are nasty or broken or lid-less (as I do).

7) Bar Towels: For some reason, kitchen towels seem to be designed by people who don't cook. They've got all kind of designs on them, and are made of thick terry cloth, which is difficult to keep clean looking. They're not very absorbent, or heat resistant, because they've frequently got polyester blends in them. Ew. Bar towels, on the other hand, are excellent kitchen towels.

None of these gifts is terribly romantic, or expensive. They're commonplace things, which most people could pick up at any store. They're things that folk will reach for every day, and think of you when they use them.

You're welcome.

If you have any ideas to add onto my list, let me know, and I'll do so.

ADDITIONS:

Kitchen Timers: Why didn't I add this to my first list? Even if the person you know already has a kitchen timer, they will definitely be happy to have a second. Why? Because you're not always just timing one thing, especially when cooking elaborate dinners. You want to time the oven for the veggies roasting in there, while also timing the pasta that's cooking in the pot. And frankly, I don't want my phone in my kitchen to behave as a timer. I want to be handling something I can pick up with wet fingers, and that's cheap enough that if I break it or damage it, I won't care.

A few of my favourite (kitchen) things

2011-11-29T18:47:00.002-05:00

People frequently ask me whether they should buy a starter set from some company or another. I always strongly caution against that. Instead, I'd prefer that you buy a few excellent quality things (none of which are terribly expensive), and go from there. These aren't all completely necessary things (you may never reach for a pestle and mortar, because you don't actually use any spices that need crushing), so your mileage may vary, but I feel like for the price, all these items are very good deals.

Here is the list: http://www.amazon.com/lm/R3D907YKSJ0AG8/

Ginger Tea

2011-11-26T05:44:00.002-05:00

This morning, because of the heater, Steve's got a particularly nasty sounding cough. Time to brew up some ginger tea. This can be drunk on its own, or blended with whatever your favourite hot tea is. I generally serve it with a bit of green tea steeped in the hot liquid, but the choice is yours.

500 ml (2 cups, roughly) water

4 cloves

1 cardamom, in its pod

4 cm knob of ginger, sliced thinly

4 black peppercorns

1/2 cinnamon stick

1 lime, juiced

1 TB of your favourite tea (or 2 tea bags; ugh, tea bags)

Over highest heat, steep the clove, cardamom, sliced ginger, black pepper, cinnamon, and the juice of the lime (along with the leftover lime halves, if you're feeling adventurous) in rapidly boiling water for three minutes. Turn off the heat. Add your tea leaves. Allow it to steep for four minutes, with the heat off. Serve your tea piping hot. Strain out all the bits and bobs, and refresh it by pouring another 500 ml of boiling water over top the whole mess, and steeping it for five minutes. Strain again, and use the stuff for a third steeping.

If you're using tea bags, you need to steep the tea for four - six minutes, and only use it once. With actual tea, however, you can generally get three good steepings out of it, at the very least. In fact, the second and third steeping tastes better than the first one, which is why I suggest a relatively quick steep for the first go-around.

I and Steve both prefer this without sweetener, because it's so flavourful without. All the spices give a bit of sweetness on their own, without needing to rely on sugar. I urge you to try it on its own, and see if you can take a strongly flavoured tea, all on its own. You'll surprise yourself, as you reach for this blend for your morning cup of tea, and cut back drastically on the amount of sugar you pour on.

Small quantities

2011-11-25T23:02:00.002-05:00

It's a topic that's difficult for me to tackle, but frankly, I need to start cooking in small quantities when I'm at home. Why? Because if I don't, I'm going to wind up wasting food, and that's not a good way to keep my food shopping under control. Here's a helpful list for me to keep on hand, so that I remind myself of what a reasonably sized portion for one person (for one meal) should be.

1/4 cup of rice

1 potato

1/2 head of cauliflower

1/2 lb of spinach (cooked. Spinach is depressing in how much it cooks down!)

1/2 cup of beans

1 cup of red lentils (they're magic, and finish FAST)

1 cucumber

1 tomato

1 small red onion (or shallot, come to think of it)

1/2 cup of chickpeas, soaked and boiled (for hummus)

Ugh. This is depressing me. What are some tricks you all use to keep quantities small and manageable? I know I need to start doing it, because it's quicker too. 1 cup of rice or 1 cup of beans takes much less time to cook up than 5 cups of the same. Any tips from my lovely readers out there?

Thanks!

2011-11-23T10:17:00.002-05:00

Just a little note to thank you all for following my adventures all these years, and for a couple of random thank-yous to people who may or may not see them.

1) Thank you to the lady who let me go in front of her, because I only had one item to buy, and she had three. She had a small child with her, and I know how much of a challenge it can be to have an inquisitive child with you when you're shopping. Even then, she still thought of my comfort first, and that touched my heart. Thank you, lovely lady at the store! You've made my day a little brighter.

2) Thank you to the gentleman across the train who got up to let a father (who held his little girl in his arms) sit down. You didn't have to. What touched me even more was that there was a bit of a scramble of people (about three or four) who got up to offer him a seat. Were I on that side of the train, I'd have done the same. I'm glad to see that kindness exists out there, and that we're all eager to help each other out. It warmed me up on that cold, rainy night.

3) Thank you to Steve, who cleaned the kitchen for me yesterday, so that as soon as I got home, I was inspired to make beet daal. It was lovely, for the record.

Beet Daal

1 beet, grated

2 cups of red lentils

1 onion, chopped roughly

1 enormous piece of ginger, chopped very roughly

1 stalk of curry leaves

1/2 tsp oil

1 tsp cumin seed

1 tsp coriander seed, crushed lightly

1 tsp sesame seed

2 litres water

Start with the oil in a deep stock pot. Add the cumin and coriander seeds. Wait about 30 seconds into the popping before adding the curry leaves. Add the onion, ginger, and sesame seeds, and stir vigorously. Cook for about 2 minutes. You want the onion and the ginger to just barely cook. The reason you chop them into rough pieces is that you want the ginger to retain some of its raw peppery bite.

Then, add the red lentils and the water, and let the water come to a full rushing boil. Drop down the heat to medium, and cover the pot. Set a timer for 25 minutes, and go grate up your beet.

When the soup is done cooking at the end of the 25 minutes, turn off the heat, and stir in the grated beets. The whole thing will turn a vivid purple. It's a beautiful colour. Let the beets steep in the hot soup for about 10 minutes, so that they're just barely cooked through. Eat over steaming hot rice. You'll get little bites of just barely cooked ginger, and beet, and bursts of spice from the toasted seeds. Delicious on a cold, rainy day.

Philly Style Soft Pretzels

2011-11-20T16:50:00.004-05:00

From 11/20/11

EDIT: When rolling out the pretzels, please make sure to roll them out thinner than you think you want. As soon as you dip them into the boiling water, they will swell BIG TIME.

If I can manage to knock up a batch of pretzels without screwing it up, anyone can.

1 1/4 cups of water, at body temperature

1 package (2 tsp) of yeast

2 cups all purpose flour

2 cups of all purpose flour, set aside for later

2 TB oil

2 tsp salt

Combine the water and yeast together, and let it dissolve. Then, combine the first two cups of flour with the yeast + water. Let the sponge (this is what the yeast, flour, and water mixture is called now) sit for about 20 minutes. At the end of 20 minutes, the sponge should have doubled in size. If it hasn't your yeast has gone off, and you've got problems. Let it sit in a warmer space for another 20 minutes, and see if that does anything.

It did nothing? Buy fresh yeast, and fold it into your sponge, and try again. This is why I love the sponge method: you aren't too invested in anything at the initial stages. You haven't kneaded anything, and there wasn't too terribly much work going into anything yet.

When your sponge has doubled in volume, fold in, bit by bit, the remaining flour, salt, and oil. You can do this on a counter if you're feeling adventurous (and don't mind the mess), or in a food processor or stand mixer if you own one of those. It also works in a bread machine. If the dough is too sticky, knead longer. It'll de-sticky eventually. If it's still too sticky, knead in a bit more flour.

Once the dough is well kneaded (for about 10 minutes, or 2 minutes in the mixer or food processor), let it rise in a large plastic box/bowl/container that's been greased. Lightly coat the dough in a film of grease, either with cooking spray or oil. This will prevent that gross crust from forming on the outside. Let it rise in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours (more if you're doing it at a cooler temperature, like in the winter), until it's doubled in volume.

Beat it down, and form into pretzel shapes of your liking.

Boiling Liquid

1 litre of water

2 heaped tablespoons baking soda

Boil the water, and dissolve the baking soda. Drop in the formed pretzels, one at a time into the liquid. When the pretzel rises to the top, continue to boil for another 30 seconds. Scoop out with a slotted spoon, and lay onto a parchment-lined, greased baking sheet. As soon as it's laid onto the baking sheet, sprinkle on your salt or sesame seeds (whichever you prefer is fine).

Bake at 425ºF for 14 minutes. Turn the pans, and bake for another 7 minutes.

Quick Red Lentil Soup

2011-11-10T06:39:00.003-05:00

When I'm at my friend Nick's house, I can generally count on certain spices being in stock at all times: dried parsley, curry powder, celery seed, and he's generally happy to snag some onion, garlic, and red lentils when I come over for our weekly hanging outs on Wednesdays (formerly Thursdays, but there you go). We found the red lentils at his local grocery store, and picked up a pound, so that I could make a soup. I made about a gallon or so of soup, and the four of us demolished it. Last night, I made another batch of it, and it turned out rather well.

1 tsp olive or canola oil

2 medium onions, chopped small

1 head of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

Pinch of celery seed

3 tsp curry powder

1 bunch of fresh parsley, or a couple of tablespoons of dried

Salt and black pepper, to taste (you can use cayenne pepper, red chile flakes, or any others you like)

1 lb red lentils (these cook up in 20 minutes, no soaking needed)

About 5 litres of water (some will evaporate)

Add onions, garlic, and olive oil to the pot, over medium high heat, and cover the lid after stirring well. Let them cook until completely softened. This took us about 25 minutes last night, on the stove that hates to be controlled. I would try to set it on low, and it would turn off. I settled on medium to let it cook for a longer time without browning. When you have such a small amount of oil, it'll want to make everything get burned rather quickly. The lower heat allows the juices of the onions and garlic to come out slowly, and prevent the burning.

When the onions and garlic are soft, throw in the celery seed, curry powder, and dried parsley. If you're using fresh, just add it at the last 5 minutes of cooking, and not at this point. Stir the spices with the onions and garlic, and continue to cook over medium heat (uncovered) for about two or three minutes. You want the raw taste of the spices to cook out.

Add the pound of red lentils, and stir thoroughly with the spices and aromatics. Add the water, and let it come to the boil (covered) on high heat. Let it continue to boil over high heat for about 20 minutes, or until the lentils are completely cooked down. Add more water as desired.

We powered through almost the entire pot last night. It was brothy and tasty, and we just kept going back for extra helpings, even though there was plenty of other stuff to eat.

Beginner cooking, Pasta

2011-11-06T15:31:00.003-05:00

Today, we discuss beginner's recipes. Specifically, we attack pasta. When you're making pasta, I find that it's good to make a sauce while you're waiting for the pasta water to come to a boil.

Garlic & Herb Sauce

3 or 4 TB olive oil

1 TB Italian seasoning (or, a combination of dried basil, dried oregano, dried marjoram, and dried thyme)

1 head of garlic, peeled and chopped

1 bunch of parsley, chopped finely

1/4 cup of pasta cooking water

Few pinches of red chile flakes

Heat the oil over medium low heat, and add the garlic and herbs. When the garlic is soft, add the fresh parsley, pasta water, and the (optional) red chile flakes. Turn off the heat, and wait for the pasta to finish cooking. Toss through with about 1 lb of cooked pasta of your choice.

This works really well with any kind of additions, like leftover veg (kale, broccoli rabe, etc), capers, olives, or beans. It's also a pretty basic starting point for if expanding into tomato sauces, etc., because once you master garlic and herbs, the sky is the limit!

Paniyaram

2011-10-30T09:33:00.004-04:00

The Danes have their Æbelskiver, the Thai/Vietnamese have their Khnom Krok, the Japanese have their Takoyaki, and the Indians have their Painyaram. Paniyaram is essentially dosa batter that's been cooked in an æbeskiver pan. (Mine was bought for me by our dear friends Joanna and Mark Krull, of Long Island, for a wedding gift. She said that it was half for me, and half for Steve, because she knew that anything cooking-related would involve delicious food for Steve!)

Paniyaram is essentially dosa batter, with a bit of onion, some toasted cumin, a bit of salt, a pinch of red chile flakes, and thinned out thinner than a typical dosa batter. Suffice it to say that it was delicious.

The taste is somewhere between a dosa and an idli. It's got the crispy outside, while having a soft, fluffy inside. I cheated when making it, and soaked urad daal and fenugreek seed for a couple of hours. I ground the urad daal and fenugreek seeds until they were soft and creamy. Then, I added rice flour and glutinous rice flour, and mixed it all up with a bit of water. I let it ferment overnight on the counter (covered).

In the morning, I whipped it up with a bit of extra water (it had thickened up overnight), and all the spices, etc. I fried them off, and as you can see, they came out perfectly.

Paprika is not just "red"

2011-10-27T17:50:00.001-04:00

I hear it all the time, and it frustrates and annoys me. Turmeric is not there just for yellow colouring. Similarly, paprika is not there just for red colouring. Both spices have flavour, when treated properly. Both need to be toasted in a bit of fat for the complexity of their flavour and colour to emerge properly. Once you toast it in fat, you'll smell incredible aromas and earthy undertones in paprika that will knock your socks off. Please, try it. Better yet, just for kicks, combine equal parts paprika and turmeric, and toast them in a bit of fat, then pour it into whatever needs the most gorgeous orangey red colour you've ever experienced.

And stop saying that paprika has no flavour, and is just there for red colour.

Soup, part 4

2011-10-26T11:03:00.003-04:00

In this episode, we discuss basic soup theory, how to fix soups that have gone wrong, to stock or not to stock, etc. We even go over the commercial stock substitutes (stock cubes, demiglace in a jar, etc.), and my own opinions on them.

Mind you, I'm not completely averse to using stock, but frankly, I feel like for vegan food, we're fully capable of (shock, horror) using actual spices and herbs. I do go over a little on how to create your own stock, should the need arise.

Again, with the weird dreams.

2011-10-26T06:45:00.002-04:00

It was around 6:00 AM, and I was in the midst of a fairly annoying dream. I had missed my bus stop, and was living in a place where there was no grid, so the streets did annoying things, like have names (not numbers), and curve and all kinds of other annoyances. I was running, because it was raining, and made a wrong turn.

It was some kind of religious animal slaughter avenue.

Yesterday at work, while chopping some herbs, I managed to cut the tip of my thumb fairly deeply. I reacted in fractions of a second, and put pressure on the flap of skin left on my thumb, and managed to prevent any blood from coming out. I then got a bandage on the wound tightly, so as to prevent any bleeding. My thumb hurt like the dickens for hours afterwards.

And there they were, cutting into that animal's body.

I felt so upset, that by the time I woke up that I had to empty my stomach in the bathroom. It was extremely violent and disturbing. I don't know what prompted that, as I'm fairly careful to avoid violent films, TV shows, and the rest. I didn't take any medications, or alcohol, or anything else that night before sleeping.

Thankfully, Steve was not a few inches away, on his side of the bed. I moved over, and felt safe, and managed to catch another 10 minutes or so of calming down before fully waking up.

Soup, part 3

2011-10-25T13:31:00.002-04:00

In today's (rebroadcast) podcast, we explore more about soup. Tomorrow will have the 4th and final part in the series.

Soups, part 2

2011-10-24T09:43:00.003-04:00

In our second part of the soup episodes, we cover fenugreek seeds, their uses, and how to find them.

Soup

2011-10-23T19:32:00.008-04:00

In today's podcast (rebroadcast of an old episode) we talk about soup. There's a bunch of stuff to cover, so this spans more than one episode. Thanks go out to Steve Day for sending me the old episodes that he had saved on his computer. Since these were his favourite episodes, I figured I'd start here.

In other words, anyone who is already reading my blog will be able to get my podcasts directly through this blog, rather than having to go to a separate site. :)

Peeling garlic, updated

2011-10-22T05:36:00.000-04:00

Take an entire head of garlic, and smash it with your palm, so that all the cloves separate. Put it in a large glass jar! SHAKE for about 20 seconds, quite vigorously. The skin will all fall off. NO MORE BOWLS!

I used a pint jar of jam, that I could hold in one hand. Use any sized jar that fits in your hand. The size matters not. You just need enough space for the garlic to toss around freely.

Michael Blate

2011-10-22T05:19:00.001-04:00

I had this weird dream, where Caroline Rhea was living in this large house, filled with the friendliest, lovingest cats and dogs ever. They'd follow you around, and rub your leg with their faces until you reached down, or sat down for petting and sharing of love. It was adorable.

For whatever reason, it made me think of the late Michael Blate. He lived in an enormous house in Florida with many animals. There was an African grey parrot, two adorable goofy golden labs, a Pembroke welsh corgi (who bossed the bigger dogs around), a flock of geese (really watch-geese, if you ask me), and cats who roamed the territory. He'd have these prayer meetings at his house on Thursday nights, followed by a brief meditation and a Vedanta philosophy discussion, which I'd actively take part in.

I think I was either in middle school or high school, and Michael was the head of his family, which had his wife Gail, their daughter Laurie, Laurie's husband (whose name escapes me; he was usually at work when we came around, so I never saw much of him), and their son Kasey.

He never made me feel like because my thinking was coming from the mouth of a young kid, that it was any less valid or reasoned out. He would carefully listen to what I had to say before shooting back with his own ideas, and then listening to my rebuttal. It was never a case of "I need to be right," but "I share a mutual respect for you, and see the spark in your soul too; I recognise that by ignoring the bodies we wear, and recognising your mind." It was strange that someone who did so much reading, lived so long, and had spoken to so many people about so many things, was actually interested in what this kid had to say, and deeply respected my opinions.

To be fair, I had done just as much reading about Hinduism as Michael had. I'd read a pretty respectable chunk of the Hindu scriptures in my spare time, because I wanted to. I was surrounded by the stuff (dad is a priest; you're bound to pick up something, if you're paying attention), and we had friends who would give us excellent translations of the scriptures into English. I'd also spent a lot of time thinking about philosophical questions, and where one should walk towards. It was an odd time of my life.

When he died, I never quite processed my grief, because it had been years since I'd seen him when it happened. He moved to North Carolina, to this enormous stretch of land, with his family, animals, etc. So when it actually happened, I didn't really feel too terribly much about it. It's odd that I think of him now, when I've got this transition period going on with so many things in my life. People are coming and going, I'm moving (podcast spaces, that is; not my address, or god forbid, New York), I've got all kinds of other things going on. I haven't thought of him in a very long time, and if I'm strictly honest, I do miss him. He was a good man.

Him and his family were (and I assume still are) vegan. They're the quintessential healthy, happy, vegans. They eat excellent food, with lots of vegetables, and go about their lives quietly and contentedly. I don't recall their ever preaching at me or my sister when we came over to eat and play with Kasey. They introduced me to kale, which I love to this day.

It's 5:00 in the morning, and if I didn't set down my thoughts, I'd have lost them. Wherever you are, Michael, I miss you. You had a good impact on my life, because you respected me even though I was this know-it-all kid, who'd read way too many books for his own good. I raise my theoretical glass of water to you!

Moving

2011-10-20T10:59:00.003-04:00

Hi all! Thanks so much for keeping up with me all these years. I really appreciate it. As some of you may know, I kept a podcast going for a long time. Unfortunately, the site is down, and I can't contact the folks who owned alternativevegan.com, and I can't take over the domain, because I never bought/paid for the domain to begin with. Stuff happens, and the time comes for all of us to move on some day.

I will be moving to a new site. I have already asked iTunes to remove my podcast from the directory, because the site no longer exists, and you can't download anything from it anyway. When I do have the new site up and running, I'll update you all and let you know what's going on. For now, I'm not sure that there were that many listeners to begin with, so I'm in no rush to get things back up. As it is, I'd have to go back through my Garage Band files, convert them to mp3, and then upload them to the site. It's a lot of work that I'm not too keen on doing, especially when I've got a fairly loaded schedule.

If anyone out there has any old episodes, please let me know. It'll save me a huge amount of steps if I can just have a slush fund of the old episodes, and just upload them. I'm really not too keen on the time I'd need to spend on doing all that by hand, so unless I do have someone out there with old episodes, I won't be uploading them again.

New episodes, however, will be forthcoming, once I sort out hosting and all the rest. I really should have offered to take over paying for the stuff on my own ages ago, and I guess this is the gentle shove in the right direction that I needed. The folks who were paying for it all these years have been very generous with me, and never asked anything in return from them. I hope that they're doing well, if they see this, and know that I appreciate all they'd done for me in the past. They're dear friends, and I'm sad to have lost contact with them. I get a sickening feeling sometimes that they feel like I was taking advantage of their kindness.

Either way, it's a good enough reason for me to make a fresh start, and take control of my own stuff, and do a better job of keeping backups. What kind of idiot doesn't keep backups? This one. Ugh. Either way, I already discussed it with Steve, and he said that he's happy to let me buy a domain name and hosting plan of whatever size I'd need. Thankfully they're cheap enough to buy.

UPDATE: I don't need to bother buying a hosting plan, or moving to a new website. This blog itself is capable of hosting a podcast, and archive.org lets me upload my audio to their site for free. It takes a bit more time, but it's not impossible to do!

Fixing mistakes, con'td.

2011-10-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

Today, we'll be talking about a few tweaks that you can make to a dish, to ensure that it comes out tasting perfectly each time. There are those times when you've spent a long time following a recipe to the letter (from a cook that you trust), and the final result seems a little bland, or lacking in brightness, or missing a little something or other. There are things that can be done to round out sharp edges, add sharp edges, or generally tweak your dish to make it work out wonderfully.

Dish seems a little too heavy, even though it's not swimming in fat.
There are times when you'll follow a recipe that seems relatively light, but for whatever reason, the major thing is that you feel is heaviness. This has happened especially in cases of soups, but also in fresh dishes. There was this one salad I made, with a peanut dressing. Perfectly delectable on screen, lovely in theory, but a little plodding and heavy on the tongue. I wanted to eat it, because it was loaded with all manner of good things (grated carrot, grated cabbage, shredded beets, granny smith apples, walnuts, peanut dressing), and lots of fresh herbs (cilantro, scallion, ginger, etc). It had acid in the dressing, so I didn't think that it needed more, but it was definitely lacking something intangible.
I started by adding in the zest of a lime. That started its work. Then, just before eating it, I squeezed on the lime juice, even though the salad already had a bit of acid in. For some reason, that last-minute addition of the fresh lime juice (and I know for a fact that lemon juice/zest will do the same thing) just brightened things up immensely.

You've used tomato from the tin, and the whole thing tastes of tinned tomato.
I've done this more times than I can count, and each time it happens, I swear that I'll never use tinned tomatoes again, and that I'll only use tomatoes when they're in season, and what an idiot I am for trusting something from the bargains section of the dollar store, etc etc. Then I'll see a large #10 tin of tomatoes at the store for like $2, and I'll get tempted, and promptly forget the problem in the first place.
For whatever reason, I've found that using a few drops of vanilla extract in the dish seems to offset that tinny taste. Tomatoes are about the only thing I'll ever buy tinned, so I'm not sure if that trick will work for other tinned veg. Overall, I find tinned veg to be pretty horrible in any case, so I steer clear. I'd sooner buy frozen, if I can help it.

The dish is excellent in every way, except it's too hot spicy (from chiles or pepper).
Traditionally, I'd say that a pinch or two of sugar should sort it out, however, the other day, I learned something new for savoury dishes. A wine reduction (preferably a white), with a bit of miso and nutritional yeast (if those flavours would complement your dish), a hint of coconut milk, and a generous bit of cornstarch seems to do the job just as well as sugar, and doesn't add any unwanted sweetness to your meal.
I made a rice and beans dish at home, which I'd managed to mangle with way too much chile. I could swear up and down that the stuff wasn't the extra hot ground red chiles I buy from the Indian store, but the wimpy ones that I get from the local grocery store (I don't even know why I'd have the wimpy one at home; that stuff is foul). It tasted great, except for the fiery burning that I felt up and down my body.
Instead of adding sugar (because 1. I hate sugar, and 2. I don't keep any in the house, and 3. If my beans tasted sweet, I would be committing acts of violence upon my own person), I decided to use up a bit of white wine I had lying around (there was some leftover Pinot Griggio I had from a party), and reduce it down, because I didn't want the rice & beans to be too watery. Once it reduced by about half, I whisked in a bit of white miso, and nutritional yeast, and turned off the heat. I whisked in a bit of cornstarch dissolved in coconut milk, and turned the heat back up. When the whole thing became like a thickish sauce, I folded it into the rice and beans, and all was right with the world. The heat was nice and controlled, while still perking up in the background, and I didn't have to resort to using sugar.
If you're not a fan of wine, use a bit of water to combine the miso and nutritional yeast, and you'll be fine. I just had some lying around, and wanted to make sure that I cooked out the alcohol (husband doesn't drink) before putting it in the food. I feel like the trick would work with the water, but the wine brings out different flavours that weren't immediately apparent in the first go-around, and helps control the heat in that manner. Also, if I'm strictly honest with myself, the wine does have a bit of natural sweetness. :cough: Hush. We won't discuss it. Yes, you can use apple juice or white grape juice in place of wine.

Fixing Mistakes

2011-10-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

There are times, while cooking, when you realise that everything hasn't quite turned out like you'd expected. You thought you could eyeball the recipe (more or less), and did so. All of a sudden, the ratios are all off, your tongue and brain are both berating your eyes for missing the mark, and it looks like everything is about to go belly-up. These moments can be frustrating and disheartening, especially to a new cook. The trick is to not panic. Or realistically, to panic, but recover quickly.
There's a couple of things you can do before you start cooking to avoid disasters in the first place. There are also things that cannot be salvaged, and should not be salvaged. If you've burned your spices to an absolute crisp, just toss them out, and start over. Better to lose a few cents in off spies than to go through with the whole thing and end up with a horrible tasting disaster that now cost you a lot of time and effort. If your oil smells rancid, or when you start up your skillet, you smell something rancid, throw out that fat, and start over. Clean the pan thoroughly, and try again.
Rancid oil cannot be covered up, no matter how much you'd like to think so. I was once using a cast iron skillet that I hadn't touched in a while. I also foolishly left a small pool of oil on it for too long. Instead of doing the sensible thing and cleaning it off first, I made up a batch of dosa. A rancid smelling batch of horrible dosa. A rancidness that just did not fade, no matter how many changes of oil I'd put in. Once I gave the skillet a good scrubbing, all was well. But then, there was a batch of 15 dosa that had to go in the bin, because I'd been too foolish to stop while I was ahead, and just start over.
This goes double for burnt spices. I'd started off a lemon rice, and let the mustard seeds go too long. They weren't just popped, they were little blackened bullets of charred mess. I bull-headedly kept going, and burnt the hell out of the cumin seeds and the urad daal too. Y'see, when the pan is too hot for the one spice, it follows that adding more spices will mean that you have even more burning, and not less. I don't know /where/ my head was. In any case, I managed to thoroughly burn the seven hells out of the spices. I kept going.
Bad move.
The final dish tasted absolutely inedible and awful. It wasn't worth salvaging. It couldn't be salvaged. If I'd had any sense, I'd have stopped the instant that I saw the oil smoking too much. If I'd had less sense, I'd have stopped when I realised that the mustard seeds went from just a little heavily browned (which is fine) to outright black char. I could have pitched the spices, and been OK with a fresh pot of oil and a bit more spices. Sometimes, it's important to know when to stop, so that you can save yourself much more pain down the road.
Or, there was the one time I'd made a walnut date crust. It seemed awfully fatty when I was putting it into the pie pan. I didn't listen to my instincts, and stop. I just kept going. In went carefully layered fruits, arranged in concentric circles, with a bit of sweetener in between. The whole thing was a disaster and a half. I should have realised that when the recipe says soaked DATES, that date puree will not do. When the crust felt too fatty, I should have stopped, re-calibrated things, and kept going.
Long story short, before you take any of these tips on how to save your almost disasters, please understand that I'm not condoning you keep chugging along when things have gone to hell and back. Know when to stop. It'll save you a lot of tears.
But all that aside, there are times when things aren't going quite according to plan, when you can stop yourself, tweak a bit here and there, and move forward. It'll work out just fine in the end.
Your hummus is way too thin, and you're out of chickpeas.
The prevention for this is to set aside about a small handful of chickpeas, while you make the hummus. If your hummus is just fine, and perfectly thick, just blend them separately with a bit of your hummus, and mix the lot together. Far more frequently, however, you'll need to add more chickpeas, because you overshoot perfect and creamy. In fact, it's so common that I've powered through huge amounts of tahini in doing so. That's the fix-it solution, by the by. Tahini. Lots of it.
Suppose you're making hummus, and your processor is merrily chugging along. It's taking too long for your liking, so you splash in a bit more fat or water to smooth things along. The processor kicks up speed, and demolishes the stuff in it. You open the lid, and the hummus isn't thick and creamy but droopy and runny. You promised to bring hummus! If you don't bring hummus, they'll take away your vegan card! (It's true. By the by, if anyone wants to know what to get your favourite vegan blogger with a sense of humour about his own veganism, get him that t-shirt. It's wicked cute.)
Start, bit by bit, adding more hummus, almonds, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, or any other toasted nuts you like. It'll add a richness and creaminess that will make your hummus taste far superior to other hummus that folk have eaten. It thickens up quite beautifully If you want to avoid over-adding water, there is another trick you can use to make the processor cream the chickpeas easier, and not have to add too much water.
Cheat and use a little bit of white beans in your mix. For every 2 cups of chickpeas that you soak overnight, soak 1/2 cup of white beans in a separate container. (Or, do what I do and soak the full 2 cups of white beans, and follow up the hummus making with rosemary & white bean dip). Essentially, you're looking for a 4:1 ratio of chickpeas to white beans. For whatever reason, the white beans seem to cream up much easier than the chickpeas. I don't know why. I discovered it by accident, when I made a batch of hummus after making a batch of white bean dip (and not clearing out the last 2 inches or so of white beans left in the processor).

Your roux based sauce is too thin.
The way to prevent this is to carefully measure out the fat and the flour, and make sure that the liquid is proportionate to the colour of your roux. Here's an easy way to remember how to work your roux: 1 TB of fat and 1 TB of flour will thicken up 1/2 cup of liquid when the roux isn't too dark. This means that you'll need to actually measure out a level tablespoon of fat and a level tablespoon of flour, so that you've got the proper thickening going down. The reason that I mention the darkness of the roux is because the darker roux don't tend to thicken as well as the lighter ones. This is why it's best to work best with medium low heat, and gradually get to the colour you want, so that you don't end up overshooting the mark, and get something that doesn't thicken correctly.
Suppose that you did indeed overshoot the mark, and your gravy/cream sauce/sauce is too thin. Don't use a slurry of flour and water. It'll require that you cook the thing for much longer to work out the raw flour taste. Don't use a flour/fat mixture that you whisk in. Just make more roux. It'll be fine. Get out a separate little pot, throw in a bit more fat, and a bit more flour, whisk for a couple of minutes to cook out the raw flour taste, and whisk in the too-thin sauce, and pour the mixture back into the thin sauce. Bring it to the boil, and you're set.
If you've run out of flour, whisk a bit of cornstarch with some water (about 1 TB of water with 1/2 TB of cornstarch), and pour that slurry into the thin sauce. The reason that cornstarch will work well is because cornstarch comes up to cooked stage much more quickly than flour.

Your rice isn't cooked to done-ness (while some of the grains are).
This happens from time to time, when the water to rice ratio is off. It's happened more times than I care to remember. What I tend to do is add a bit more water, put it into a pyrex dish, and microwave it (covered) for about 10 minutes. That's usually enough to get the last few stubborn grains to finish cooking. If they're still not done, sprinkle in a bit more water, and let it go another 7 minutes in the microwave.
The reason that I suggest using the microwave as opposed to the stove or putting it back in the rice cooker, is because the microwave tends to cook rice on the drier side. The stoves and rice cookers tend to need more liquid, and tend to steer the whole mess towards a mushy mass. The microwave, on the other hand, tends towards a bit drier.

This is, of course, just a start. There are plenty of other things that can go wrong along the way, and I'm sure I'll mention more in future. I wanted to mention these simple things, so that you all can get more confident in your kitchen.

Dinner in no time flat

2011-10-12T10:37:00.002-04:00

A couple of nights ago (Monday, I think?) Steve had invited friends over unexpectedly, and I had roughly 20 minutes to get my act together, and get a meal on the table. Thankfully, I had food in the fridge that I could reconfigure into a decent dinner. I had daal, rice, steamed snow peas, a couple of different dressings that I had made on Saturday to eat with the steamed snow peas, a quick vegetable dish I'd made with some spices, and a bunch of other things lying around. I got to work immediately.

I didn't have quite as much daal as I'd normally need to feed four people, so I decided to combine the rice, veg, and daal together in one pot, and make it like if that was the intention all along. There are multiple dishes all across the world that involve rice, beans, and veg, and this would be no exception. I brought a small amount of water to the boil, dumped in the daal, veg, and rice, and slammed on the lid, while I peeled some garlic. I reheated the snow peas, and gave the dressings a quick once over with a whisk. I also sliced up some courgette to dip into the dressings. This way, you'd have a choice of what you wanted to dip into the dressings.

Then, I grated off a cucumber, chopped up a small red onion, and tossed it with lime juice and a touch of salt. I also made a very quick courgette and cabbage thing. I popped mustard seeds, and roasted urad daal in hot fat, added some onion, stirred a bit, added chopped cabbage and courgette at the same time, and gave it a stir-fry until everything was cooked through. Just about then, I heard tinkling at the door. I quickly threw some garlic into the rice & daal pot (I used my garlic press, to make the fresh garlic smell waft through the air).

I stirred everything up together, turned off the stove, and started bringing out the dishes to the table, one after another. Once I'd filled the water jug with ice and water, the table looked positively overflowing with food! I found that when you make more varieties, the small quantities don't seem so small. When you make things that are meant to dip into other things, it makes things more communal, and friendly seeming. Everyone is picking up stuff and passing it around, rather than isolating.

The point is that if you keep a couple of different varieties of things in your fridge at all times (leftovers, essentially), you can perk them up with a bit of fresh garlic, and by combining them in different ways. Throw down some dressings, and you're golden.

Peanut Sauce
3 TB peanut butter
3 inches of ginger, chopped roughly
2 cloves garlic
Hefty pinch of salt
Hefty pinch of cayenne pepper or your favourite ground red chiles
1 1/2 tsp Rice wine vinegar
Water, to thin things out

Combine the peanut butter, ginger, vinegar, and about 3 TB of water into a blender. Grind on low speed until the ginger and garlic are chopped up more. Blend on medium high until everything is smooth. If you feel like the dressing is too thick, and isn't grinding up properly, just add more water until you reach the consistency you like.

Reach out

2011-10-10T12:51:00.002-04:00

I decided that I'd set a goal for myself to reach out to at least one person whom I haven't kept in contact with (even though I swore up and down that I'd never forget them, and we'd stay in touch). In a way, for me, it's almost as if I were doing wrong by them by not keeping up my side of the acquaintanceship. Mind you, things like facebook and twitter give an illusion of keeping in contact, but in reality, there are many folk with whom I have not had a good conversation, even though I deeply enjoy their company, and love talking to them. I felt guilty, and pledged to do something about it.

So I did. I reached out, and sent an email to a couple of people, as of Wednesday of last week. Today, when I got back to work, my inbox was filled with love from the people whom I'd lost contact with. If I am strictly honest with myself, I will likely end up losing touch with those same people again, but for now, our two souls have connected, and a small spark of kindness has been released into the world. There's just something about writing a letter to someone which (to me) is a lot more personal and meaningful than pressing a "like" button on something. I don't expect all my correspondences with people to always be deep and meaningful, but when they are, I enjoy them.

This goes back to how a lot of my friends work: we'll enjoy our time together immensely, then we'll go back to life as usual. Then, once in a while, we'll "find" each other again, and pick up where we left off. There's no guilt about not keeping in touch better than we "should", because both of us lead very busy lives. Trips happen, work happens, life happens. In between it all, somewhere, one needs to keep living, breathing, eating, and sleeping.

The reason I deleted that facebook account was because so much of the interaction was automated. It would tell me all kinds of things that I didn't really care about. I wasn't bothered about someone's score on some game. I'm not concerned whether or not a random person out there likes some dumb video about something that isn't all that funny to begin with, but every idiot is watching it with rapt attention. I'll be here reading my book, thank you.

It's also the reason I'm finding myself increasingly isolated from people who don't "get it". While I've had my nose stuck in a book all week, they're watching countless hours of mind-numbing TV, and expect me to care or keep up with it. Honestly though, I'm not bothered. I haven't kept up a TV watching diet in a very long time, and I have no intention of starting now. My escape has become reading books from the library or my own personal collection. I've been enjoying myself by listening to podcasts with interesting content that I'm learning from. I enjoy cooking, and learning new things about food.

My mother and I spoke last night, and she was so excited about that garlic peeling with two bowls trick. She tried it, and it worked. Now both of us have learned to peel garlic quickly, and are cheerfully throwing it into all kinds of things. I enjoy a lot of the youtube cooking videos that people create in their own kitchens. http://youtu.be/A9WnwK0cMng video that I was watching the other day taught me to make vada using urad daal, which means that the soaking process only takes about 1 1/2 hours, versus overnight. I didn't have any white rice in the house, so I used poha instead. It was a dream! The vada came out crispy and perfect. In fact, it stayed crispy even after sitting around a bit. It's a very cute video, because I understand both the mother and daughter, and they really are saying (more or less) the same thing.

I'm not sure quire where I'm going with all this. I just wanted to get my thoughts down, before they go flying off somewhere else, as they are wont to do.

Learning to food.

2011-10-09T09:02:00.002-04:00

Just after I wrote my hummus post, someone had asked about hummus, and how to sort it out. She hadn't made it herself, but enjoyed the stuff from the store. She listed the ingredients. The first ingredient was NOT chickpeas. It was water. It did not have fresh lemon juice, but it had citric acid instead. It also had some kind of food starch in there. It didn't have olive oil, it had soybean. I'm sorry, but if your first ingredient for hummus is NOT chickpeas, that's just not hummus anymore. I recall there was a debacle about guacamole that contained TWO PERCENT AVOCADO. That's disgusting.

Anyway. She seemed a little nervous about the whole process, but was willing to give it a go, on the grounds that there were plenty of folk on that message board writing encouraging things, and getting her through the sometimes daunting and confusing world of hummus making. The next day, she came back and posted that she found her own hummus to be far superior to the stuff from the store, and she was enjoying it with carrot sticks. Victory!

Rituals

2011-10-07T10:34:00.002-04:00

There's something about rituals that give connections between two people, and few of these are as powerful as food and drink. I remember my mother telling me stories of how her father (and, come to think of it, mother-in-law) would take great pains to make sure that the morning cup of coffee was just so. My mother, not being a coffee drinker, didn't have that connection to her mother-in-law. Her dad and her had different rituals, so that was fine, but when you come into a new house, there's something about that coffee drinking ritual that binds people. "How do you like your coffee" is almost code speak for, "I love you and want you to be happy."

This goes for tea, alcohol, and other such things that have such rituals associated with them. I can't count the number of times that I've sat across from a girl friend, while she poured her heart out over a long island iced tea, or a cup of tea. I've had some great conversations over a steaming pot of Turkish coffee, and a plate of baklava. Every time my boss gets a chance, he'll pick me up a caffeine free soda on the way to work, grab himself a soda as well, so that we can drink the beverages together in the morning. Again, it's not the actual beverage that's important, but the fact that you're both having versions of the same thing, together, to the exclusion of everyone else on the planet. This was the same thing when I was in Florida, and working around lots of people whom I genuinely liked. We'd all go grab a soda from the machine, and gossip furiously while sipping said soda.

Mind you, my boss is a confirmed coffee drinker. My friends and I do drink alcohol. However, in certain contexts (I don't drink coffee, or in the case of my friends at the old job, drinking alcohol at working hours is inappropriate), you shift the beverage to suit the needs of all the people there, so that it still gives that sense of belonging, of bonding, of togetherness. One of my dear friends, Dan, used to live nearby me, and would come over (in my eyes, too infrequently, in his, quite often) for food at my house, because we really liked each other's company. He doesn't drink alcohol, because he's a muslim. So instead, he'd bring over a nice bottle of exotic juice of various kinds, be it mango, passion fruit, whatever. Again, it was the sharing of something special that brought us together, in addition to the meal.

When I'm over to visit my brother's house in DC, I have a cup of coffee in the morning with my sister-in-law and my brother. In my normal life, I assiduously avoid caffeine. A soda can keep me up all night. However, for the sake of the ritual, I'll put that aside, and indulge. Frankly, after running around with multiple children underfoot, I fall asleep blissfully tired anyway, caffeine or no caffeine.

What am I getting at overall?

Rituals are important. They bind us to the people that we share them with, and they bind us to the people who came before us. We're in the midst of the major holy days for Judaism, are about to hit some major national holidays in the USA, and will have multiple other reasons to celebrate in the coming months.

This is where I encourage you to NOT take one thing with you that's vegan to your family's house.

Don't look at me like that.

Take MULTIPLE things.

Don't just bring one thing that you and your partner can eat. Bring a main dish, a couple of sides, and at least one baked good. Why? Because if you bring just the one thing, your contribution will get lost in the shuffle. If you bring a couple of excellent sides, a main, and a dessert, you'll have multiple things that folk will have a chance to try, and rave over. For example, if you're going to a Thanksgiving meal, offer to bring the mashed potatoes. 5 lbs of red or yukon gold potatoes, boiled. 2 cups of coconut milk. 1 head of roasted garlic. A good hefty few pinches of salt. A good grinding of black pepper. Smash together, and eat. So good.

Offer to bring a puffed tofu dish. Toss cubed extra firm tofu, cornmeal (enough to make a light breading), garlic powder, thyme, turmeric, plenty of salt, plenty of ground black pepper, a bit of turmeric for colour, and a good dose of vegetable oil. Toss everything together, and lay it out on a parchment sheet. Bake at 350F for 25 minutes, until all the tofu is puffed up and crisp on the outside. Don't skimp on the fat or the salt. It needs it.

Offer to bring a set of cupcakes, or cookies, or pie. There's a thousand and a half recipes out there that work very well. Make them and take them along. You will begin new rituals that form ties to the old ones. I love going with Steve to his family gatherings in Chicago. His family is lovely, and they look forward to my coming over, because they know I'm not going to bring twigs and bark, but rather things that are luscious and decadent. They know to expect things that leave them feeling full and happy, and remind them of the good tastes of home. This is not the time to break out the bark and twigs. Seriously. It's not. Eat that at home, with people that you know will appreciate it.

If you're going to take a salad, make sure that it's such a riot of colours and textures and flavours that nobody can resist. Throw in stuff that people always wanted to try, but were afraid of, like jicama, celery root, fennel bulbs, every colour of bell pepper you can find, lots of fresh herbs, citrus zest. Go nuts! Add walnuts, pecans, slivered almonds. The point of a celebration is that you enjoy things that you don't do every other day.

Because more important than the actual ritual itself is the people involved in it. Maybe the reason that the family's always done things just so is because they've never had any reason to change. Whatever it is that you do to make these social events bearable, do them. The best thing you can do for healthy happy vegans everywhere is to show the world that there /are/ healthy happy vegans out there.

Hummus

2011-10-06T15:26:00.001-04:00

There's a couple of things that you can do to ensure that your hummus comes out ultra super creamy and tasty. You can increase the fat, increase the cooking time, or increase the liquid (to an extent). All of the techniques leave you with a different kind of hummus at the end, but regardless, they're all tasty.

First and foremost is the option of increasing the amount of fat you put in. This can mean more olive oil or tahini than the recipe calls for. There's a couple of considerations to this method. For one thing, the tahini is going to thicken the hummus. It'll give it a mild bitter edge if you're too generous with how much you put in. Mind you, your chickpeas can take a lot! They can probably take much more than you think that they can, and still be extremely tasty. I've gotten away with (for about 1 lb of chickpeas, soaked, boiled, and drained) up to a half cup of tahini, and had it all come out very well! Just bear in mind that tahini is (1) expensive, and (2) mildly bitter. If you're already adding in bitter things, like bell peppers or walnuts (both of which can bring out bitter flavours if you're not careful), you want to ease on up with the tahini, and bump up the oil instead.

Unfortunately, adding extra oil to the mix means that you'll end up with a slightly more runny hummus. Again, this is OK, as long as you've got enough chickpeas and tahini to balance out. If you do end up (mistakenly) adding too much oil, throw in a handful of almonds to thicken things up. It'll take a little longer to grind it down until the hummus is smooth, but it's OK. You'll get there.

Finally, you can add a bit more water. Like the oil, you're still working with ingredients that will give you a more runny product, so please be careful when you add water.

I mentioned cooking time for a very good reason. For the best hummus ever, use dried beans, that you soak overnight in cold water, then drain the next morning, rinse well, then boil the beans until they're tender. You want the beans to cook until they're all the way tender. Don't stop until everything is cooked through. The problem with tinned beans is that they aren't built to break down. Something about the masses of salt that they're packed in makes it difficult for the beans to grind down to a smooth paste. They'll grind if you give them a long time in the food processor, but they'll take an awfully long time. It's not pleasant at all to have chunks of chickpeas left in your hummus.

Yes, it takes a lot longer, but the payoff is well worth it. Please soak your beans in cold water, then boil them the next day. Why does't pressure cooking or quick soaking (wherein you soak the beans for 1 hour in boiling water, drain, then boil over the stove) work as well? The beans don't get as thoroughly hydrated in quick cooking methods as you would when you're being slow and deliberate. That extra time that you spend in the soaking and cooking process will give you thoroughly hydrated beans, that are cooked all the way through to the middle, perfectly. No problems with stubborn beans that won't grind down properly.

I'll also note here that if you want to increase the lemon flavour in your hummus, please consider using the zest of the lemon, along with the juice. If you add too much lemon juice, you'll end up with a hummus that's closer to a dressing, than a creamy dip. The zest of the lemon will increase the lemony taste without increasing (too much) the acidity of the whole mix.

At the end of the day, I'd rather you were eating any hummus at all, because it really is a tasty and healthy treat. So even if it means you buy the tinned chickpeas, or use peanut butter or almond butter in place of tahini because your local store ran out of tahini and won't be in stock until the next week (this actually happened once), or you end up making it runny because you're using a blender (which you shouldn't be doing, but how am I going to stop you from doing so?), or you don't have any mechanical grinding tools, so you sit there and pound with a pestle and mortar, or a potato masher. However you get the stuff into you, go ahead and do it. I'll probably still enjoy it immensely, with either bread, sliced cucumbers, carrot sticks, sliced apples, or my greedy face.

Hummus
2 cups dry chickpeas, soaked overnight, rinsed, and boiled until tender
3 - 6 cloves of garlic, peeled
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tahini
2 lemon, juiced and zested
2 TB cumin seeds, lightly toasted and crushed or ground in a pestle and mortar
Salt, to taste
1 cup water, in reserve
1 bunch parsley
3 TB olive oil, for topping

When your chickpeas are cooked to perfection, drain them well, and rinse them off in cold running water to cool them off completely. Add the garlic to the food processor, and give the blade a spin to chop up the garlic. Add the chickpeas, olive oil, tahini, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Let the food processor run until all the ingredients are combined thoroughly. Add water, 1 TB at a time, until desired creaminess is achieved.

Top with ground cumin, chopped parsley, and olive oil. Serve with bread, sliced vegetables, or a big spoon. :)

Turmeric

2011-10-05T16:10:00.005-04:00

Working with turmeric can be a bit of a challenge, because it really is a strong dye. You spill that stuff onto your counter, and you've got a pretty long-lasting horrible looking stain. If you do manage to spill some onto your white dress, apron, or otherwise, just rinse it lightly in soapy water, and dry it out in the sun. It may take one or two dryings to get it to completely bleach out to white again, but it'll get there eventually. Or, as my mother says, "You could use Oxyclean. That stuff cleans everything."

For the record, it was also my mother who mentioned that drying in the sun will clean turmeric stains.

But this isn't about how to stain with turmeric. It's about how to cook with it.

Turmeric likes fat. Its colour gets much stronger, and more intense when there is fat present. It goes from bright yellow, to a more burnished, brownish-reddish-orange that looks very tempting. When combined with some kind of alkaline food, it'll turn a more reddy-orange. However, for whatever reason, there are multiple recipes that call for turmeric to be added raw. Ew. It's got a very odd taste when it's raw. In fact, there's recipes that I've seen that call for large quantities of the stuff raw. Eeeeeeewww.

Please, if you're using it, just toast it in a tiny bit of fat. You need not drown your recipe in fat, but a little goes a long way to making the colour and flavour be so much more enjoyable. In fact, the next time you see tumeric in a recipe where there's also some fat, just say in your head "and toast it in fat".

Here's how it works.

Start with your hot pan or pot with fat in it. Add your whole spices (cumin, coriander, sesame, etc). When the seeds pop, turn off the heat, and add your turmeric. Remove the pot from the heat, and stir it all around. Then, add it to whatever it is you're cooking.

Mind you, I'm aware that there are South Indian recipes that call for boiling the turmeric with the veggies, or daal. This isn't necessarily wrong. I'm just right.

FAST garlic peeling.

2011-10-05T16:10:00.001-04:00

Video

How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.

Essentially, you take two stainless steel bowls of roughly equal size. Take a head of garlic. Smash it with the heel of your palm to break it apart into individual cloves. Dump the lot into a bowl. Cover the top with another bowl. Shake shake shake. I tried this at home with a couple of different things. Since the concept seemed to be tumbling garlic together, I tried this with a tupperware box. No dice. It seems like the round shape of the bowl keeps things moving. I tried this with a plastic salad bowl with lid. Still no dice. It needs to be /two/ bowls. I tried this with two plastic bowls. It was getting better, but I had a couple of cloves still tightly holding onto the skin.

Two stainless steel bowls, of comically large size later, and I had a head of perfectly peeled garlic. I think part of the peeling process is the smashing with the heel of your palm. I tried with just loose garlic cloves that were lying around, and they didn't work as well. The other part is agitating against the stainless steel bowl, which has a bit more grip than plastic or ceramic. It clings to the garlic, and not the skin. Also, with the cloves of garlic smashing around, and hitting each other, you've got a bit more abrasion going on than you would if it were one or two cloves of garlic.

Try it out, with two large stainless steel bowls, and you'll be happy that you did. Next step is to chop them. Or, to leave them whole. Or, to run them through a garlic press. I got one of these garlic presses a few months back, for a review copy, and have been impressed thus far. The cost seems to be fairly reasonable. The thing about it is that the OXO doesn't like unpeeled garlic. With this method, you can use the OXO, which does a fine job of getting the garlic into your cooking pot (rather than all over your counter, or stove, as the old style ones used to), and is easy to press without a lot of effort.

Frankly, I'm quite happy to use an entire head of garlic in my meals, but if you're not, there's a trick to storing peeled garlic. Just place an absorbent paper towel (lightly crumpled) in the bottom of a tupperware container that's just big enough to store the garlic cloves. Dump in the peeled garlic. Cover the lid tightly, and place it in your vegetable drawer of the fridge. It'll last a good few days, and won't get all wet and gross on you. Mind you, it is still best to use your peeled garlic immediately, but if you can't, you can buy yourself a couple of days of insurance.

If you do want to use the whole head, and don't want a SUPER strong garlic odour, just add it into your hot fat, at the beginning of cooking, rather than towards the end. Add it even before you add onions. The sharp bite will cook out, and the garlic will get more mellow. When you eat the final dish, it'll be garlicky without being overpoweringly garlicky.

Final note: do not let the garlic get more than a medium brown while you cook it in the hot fat. Burned garlic is bitter, and extremely unpleasant.

Onions

2011-09-13T12:10:00.003-04:00

What's the secret to divinely good food? Enough onions! I made a soup today, at the restaurant, and took a taste (for quality control, of course). It completely knocked my socks off (and I wasn't even wearing socks!). It had happened quite by accident.

I started sauteeing enough onions to make a large batch of soup. But then, when I went to the walk-in fridge, I realised that we were painfully short of the dark leafy greens that I wanted to use in said soup. It was going to be a riff on the classic Vichyssoise (potato leek soup), but instead of leeks, I used onions, and instead of plain potatoes, I was using potatoes, collard greens, and spinach, and then blending the lot together.

I also realised that I didn't have quite as many potatoes as I thought. This would mean that I had about triple the amount of onions that the recipe usually calls for. I cooked the onions down further than I normally would, and let them get a nice medium brown colour. I also added a bit of garlic to boost the flavours. When I added the last finishing touches, and gave the broth a taste, it was fantastic!

Then, when I finally pureed the lot of it together, I was in absolute heaven. All those extra onions gave the soup a really nice, bold taste. I'm not sure that I can do this every time, but once in a while should be fine.

Three 3s

2011-09-13T12:08:00.000-04:00

The lovely ladies at Our Hen House gave a talk at the PA VegFest, and mentioned their Three 3s, which is three reasons to go vegan, three tips to transition to veganism, and three favourite resources. For the Hen House ladies, they needed to give a talk, and needed to keep it short, so their Three 3s were like little sound-bites. For us, we'll likely ramble a bit more, because this is me you're talking about, and I like to ramble. Feel free to skim, or read it all, or add your own!

Mind you, these are my own personal reasons, and don't reflect everyone here at Chow, or every vegan. Each vegan will have her or his own opinions. Get three vegans in a room, and you'll have five opinions on the same subject. :)

Three Reasons To Go Vegan

1. It's really fun & easy! Once you realise that eating vegan simply means opening up your eyes to the vast array of plant life (most of which is stunningly delicious), you start discovering new and interesting ways to fill your tummy. Once I went vegan, I began to introduce myself to vegetables that I'd ignored in the past, and began trying grains and pulses that I'd ordinarily pass by because they're "too expensive".

Cutting out the animal products made it so that I could afford a higher quality of food, and not really worry about watching myself carefully. Yes, quinoa can easily run about $3+ per pound, but how many pounds of quinoa can you really scarf in one sitting? That stuff expands like mad, and it's very filling. Splurge and enjoy it!

2. Animals are not there to be used by humans; they have their own wants, needs, and lives, and my life shouldn't interfere with theirs. This thought of peaceful co-existence spreads to my desire to see to it that all people, regardless of the shape they take in this lifetime, deserve to be treated fairly, and it's my responsibility to see to it that I do my best to reflect that. I'm not always 100% successful, but to strive for that is a noble goal.

3. I feel more at peace with my life, and the choices I make on a regular basis. When I was a vegetarian, and ate eggs and cow's milk, I always had an uneasy feeling in my soul that something wasn't quite right. Why was it OK for my needs/wants/desires to trump the needs/wants/desires of those animals to be left alone? Why is it OK for a system of living to thrive where the things that I consume are the products of suffering, of both human and nonhuman animals? It wasn't. I didn't feel comfortable with it, which is why I made the leap over to the vegan side.

I couldn't comfortably answer the questions of "what happens to the male cows, male goats, male chickens, who don't "produce" the products (milk, eggs, etc) that people want to eat?" I couldn't comfortably answer the questions of, "What happens to "spent" chickens, goats, or cows?" I was vegetarian from birth, for religious reasons, so I'd never really examined the reason to be a vegetarian until I got to school, and the other kids were asking me why my lunch didn't have any meat in it. Once I began to question my parents, and we all sat down to discuss it, I realised that my religion disallowed the eating of animals, because killing animals for food is not OK.

I was comfortable at that point, until I kept asking questions, like the ones that made me uncomfortable. When I finally came to the conclusion that the questions I was asking /are/ valid, and that silently continuing wouldn't do anymore, I made my change. Again, I'm not perfect, and won't ever say that I am. However, I'm striving to live by my ideals, and it makes me feel much more at peace with myself and my conscience.

3 Tips to Transitioning to Veganism

1. Find other vegans, and soon. If you live in the middle of nowhere, get online, and start subscribing to blogs, news sites, and podcasts. Find every vegan cooking show, food blog, website that you can possibly find, and read them voraciously. Find vegan forums, and start making friends there. This goes double if you're in a place that's hostile to vegans. If you're a teen vegan, this is especially important, because your family may make you feel like you're stupid, or too young to know any better, or find any number of reasons to belittle you and your ideals. There are others out there like you, and they're just a few keystrokes away. We're here. Find us!

2. Start finding recipes that are already vegan to begin with. I haven't eaten cheese in well over five years. If I have a Daiya grilled cheese sandwich, it tastes and feels just like what I remember. Why? Because it's been a /very/ long time since I've had the stuff, and eating the stuff now reminds me of the experience enough that it's not going to be off-putting for me. The same thing goes for soy milk. I hadn't had dairy milk in a very long time by the time I tried soy milk, and found it to be satisfying. (For the record? Nowadays I find that I like the taste of Trader Joe's Almond Milk far more than any other nondairy milk for just drinking. I've heard the same from other folks.)

The point is, that if you look at this as a "OK, now I will be exploring all those things I'd ignored in the past", rather than "I can't have ____", you'll feel like you're on an adventure, rather than on some kind of great big self-denying, self-sacrificing, martyr thing. It becomes fun. Indian, Chinese, South American, African, and even some Eastern European cuisines all have excellent foods that are vegan to begin with. They also often involve ingredients that you can find relatively easily. If you can't find specific spices or ingredients, substitute! I've found that with cooking, it's easy enough to have some wiggle room, as long as you've got a bit of confidence in doing so.

This is why I suggest that you join those vegan forums and cooking websites. Ask questions! People are very eager to share what they know, and will be more than willing to guide you along the way.

3. Take food with you. I've gotten into the habit of taking food with me regardless of how long I anticipate the trip to be. Why? Because vegan food can get pricey, if you're not prepared. For example, if I were to go to a typical Falafel Hut on MacDougall, and snag myself a vegan falafel sandwich, I can pay about $2.50 for that. It's tasty, and reasonably filling. However, water costs another $1. We're at $3.50. For that same $3.50, I can buy an onion ($0.50/lb), some beans ($1/lb), some brown rice ($1/lb), and spices (I'd only need a few scant pinches of this and that), and put together an entire dinner for me and my husband, with leftovers. Mind you, it's nowhere near as fast as paying that $3.50, but it starts to add up rather quickly.

And the $3.50 is the best case scenario. Often times, while running around, the cheapest option is a bag of potato crisps (very unhealthy, very salty so I need more water) for about $1. But then, I'm hungry again fairly quickly. I'd sooner spend that same money, and buy some unsalted nuts, some seeds, some raisins, and toss them together as a sort of a trail mix. If you're feeling a bit more extravagant, throw in some dates, some almonds, some dried fruit of various sorts, and you've got yourself a much more nutritionally dense snack that will keep you moving.

If I am to stop somewhere and pick up individually wrapped snacks of some sort, I'll spend a fortune. If I buy the large packs at the store when they come on sale, I can wrap them up in my own little reusable containers, and not pay nearly as much.

Why do I mention this? Because often times, when I was a freshly minted vegan, I had trouble finding places that had something that I could eat. Then, on the way home, I'd feel hungry again, and feel tempted to stop somewhere and snag something. I'd think, "It's only a couple of bucks here and there", and think nothing of it. All of a sudden, I'd look at my expenses at the end of the month, and have a heart attack over how much I'd spent on random junk I bought outside. It was ridiculous! There was absolutely no reason for it either, because my house was always well stocked.

Even if it means that you buy some bread, some peanut butter, and some sandwich bags, packing a peanut butter sandwich is way cheaper than you'll ever spend on anything from outside your house. Throw on some banana, or strawberry, and you've got a serving of fruit, protein, and grain all in one. The point is that if you set yourself up for success, you'll find yourself keeping on top of your needs more, and you'll see your vegan lifestyle go much more easy than if you depend on the kindness of strangers.

Mind you, I say all this even though I live in New York City, where the local bodega has like three different brands of soy milk, and pretty close to /every/ restaurant you walk into will have vegan options. I just don't fancy spending that kind of money, or going hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry!

Three Favourite Resources

1. Vegweb.com is an excellent resource for anyone who's into cooking. It's where I learned to make my own bread. It's where I learned how to make pineapple upside down cake (that even the omnis were pleased with). It's an enormous repository of information.

2. Google. I'm serious. Type in "vegan _____ recipe", and see what happens. I've gotten to where I don't bother with cookery books so much anymore, because the Googles is so good at ferreting out good finds for me.

3. Bryanna Clark Grogan's Vegan Feast. This is like your aunt who's a mad vegan scientist. She has made recipes for so many things that I lost count. She's a complete genius when it comes to cooking, and making things work. Give her site a shot, and see what you find.

Weekends in the woods

2011-08-14T08:45:00.002-04:00

So I'm at my friend Denise's house on Friday night (fairly late too; traffic to her place was a little heavy), and decided to bang out a dinner. You know the usual suspects when you're hungry /now/ and need food five minutes ago: pasta, sauce, and dips. I did a hummus with lemon juice (from two lemons) and lemon zest (from one lemon). Then I threw in a handful of fresh basil, because it was there. The pasta was the farfalle. The sauce was a quick tomato-vodka-coconut cream sauce with lots of herbs and more fresh basil. I also did a white bean and rosemary dip. All of it came together in about 20 minutes.

However, it could have all gone horribly wrong, had I not been paying very close attention to the utter violence of her electric burners. Those suckers got hot and start to wend and weave their way through the pots, burning pretty much everything. Ack! Thank goodness that as soon as I realised it, I started easing back on the heat.

Why am I mentioning this?

Because you should firstly remember that the temperature dial is there on your stove for a reason. During the cooking process you will adjust it up or down, depending on how much power the food needs. Why? Because not all foods react in the same way in the pan. For this reason, it is quite sensible to keep a keen eye on your stove, regardless of where you are.

We ate the food late into the night, and chatted and had a great time. The next morning, on went a pot of potatoes to boil, and I showed Denise how to make the soy milk mayo. She was quite excited, and churned out a double batch that was ten kinds of perfect. In went some celery and 1/4 of a medium white onion, diced finely. Win.

That, along with the potato salad was our contribution to the Elise & Pat Hartmann potluck in NJ. A friend mentioned that every single one of their potlucks tends to have such awesome food. There's a good reason for that. Elise and her mother-in-law (Mimi) are goddesses when it comes to cranking out vegan awesome food after vegan awesome food.

I might have mentioned this before, but that is my ideal of what a potluck should be. The host provides the main meal, and makes enough so that everyone gets a crack at it, and can fill up. She makes sure that even if nobody brings anything, or of people bring stuff that's just ... unfortunate eating, there will still be plenty of food for all and sundry. She keeps the wine flowing, and the beer cooler filled.

A potluck is not (and should not be) "Cook for my party, because I'm providing the venue." That's when you get the lazy, or half-assed, or unfortunate stuff. It's when the hostess is thoughtful, and creates and actual party first, then lets her guests fill in the blanks with their own contributions that makes people bring their A game, and do only the most awesome stuff ever. And that, my friends, is exactly what happened. There was plenty of food to begin with, but with each new person walking in, the table just got more and more filled up. It was incredible!

A wonderful time was had by all, of course.

Now, when's the next one, Elise?

How not to stay in business

2011-07-26T18:56:00.001-04:00

I have ordered from here multiple times in the past. I order the same thing every single time: bean burrito, no cream, no cheese. Why? Can't have dairy. I have issues with dairy. I make sure to say no cream, no cheese, every single time, because it would be a disaster if I were to ingest any dairy.

I called for delivery today. Took the better part of 45 minutes to get here. Fine, whatever. The burritos arrive. All three have cheese. There are sides of sour cream. Mind you, in the past, they have always included sour cream, even though I make sure to ask for none at all. That's not a problem, because it's on the side, and I can just throw it out. This time, however, the cheese is on there.

I call the restaurant to report the issue. Lady says "You didn't ask for no cream or cheese." Uh yes I did. I ask for it every single time, every time I order, which has been multiple times. Lady insisted on being right. That's fine. You can pretend that you're right, but I'll never order from there again, and make sure to tell my friends never to order from them again. I know that the customer isn't always right, but it would be nice to be treated as if I'm not trying to lie or something. Just send the right order, and take back the messed up one.

Mistakes happen. It's OK. Just make it right, and I'm happy. They have forever lost a customer, and they've pissed me off that I'm going to make sure to tell everyone about it.

Home again

2011-07-06T22:46:00.001-04:00

I made it home safely a couple hours back. We ate dinner, and are settling in for bed.

My computer, phone, and ipod (in that order) remind me that today, I return from Chicago. And this, my friends, is what happens when we sync the living daylights out of everything.

Generosity.

2011-06-28T15:36:00.000-04:00

There's a couple of stories for this post, so please bear with me if you don't care for the more rambly of stories. There's the story of how I got to Chow, and the story about the $6 hero special.

It was a viciously slumpy month for us, and we hadn't had many people coming in. Neither of us could figure it out. The food was good. The people working here were friendly and kind. The wait times to get said food was reasonable. So what gives? This is about the time that we started getting aggressive calls from the deals websites, where you would offer X amount of food for 1/2 the amount of cost.

What they don't tell you is that the business only sees about 1/2 of what you paid for that voucher. The site offering the promotion keeps the other half. It's essentially like a loan, but with even worse rates than the worst loan shark ever. You're selling food for half the amount that it's worth, and then only seeing half of that money that you sold the voucher for. However, when you're in a tight spot, you start to consider those things feasible.

I reached a point of frustration, and said, "What about the folk who come here every day? If we're willing to sell our food for a fraction of what it's worth, and consider it promotion budget (advertising budget), then why can't we just offer the savings directly to the customers?" "Good point", he said. So we hatched the $6 hero deal. You get just the sandwich (no cheese, no Chow Slaw, no pickle. Which also means that the packaging is slashed by 75%, because now you just need to pack the sandwich in a piece of parchment paper, some foil, and a paper bag if the customer wants. With the regular heroes, it's the slaw, placed into a ramekin with its lid, the pickle, wrapped in foil, a fork, because you need something to eat the slaw with, and then the bag to carry that whole shebang with you. Yipes!

At the end of the day, it was cheaper for us too. And it made it so that people got to try our awesome sandwiches. And it meant that we could give people exactly what they wanted. It also meant that during our historically slow times (between 12 and 2), we could get more people to come in. The response was spectacular. People loved the fact that they could get a Kosher, vegan, organic sandwich for the cost of a couple of cups of coffee at certain national branded coffee chain. What's even better is that if you really did want the pickle or the slaw, you could request the stuff and pay a little extra, at your option.

So Cliff said, "It's like when you open up to the world with generosity, the universe brings it back to you."

It inspired us to really take a look at our menu, and look at the things that have gone down in cost, things that are easier to have made, because now everyone knows how to do them, and where we could offer lower prices and keep the "extras" on the side. We went through and pulled back the cost of a couple of the tapas, decreased the cost of the hero (now $10 instead of $12, and the cheese is $2 extra; so many people didn't get the cheese that it didn't seem fair to charge them for something they didn't want). We also decreased the cost of some of the desserts (cupcake, pound cake, etc).

Again, it was about opening up our arms, and letting folk know that we're thinking about them. Since we started getting a better price for our organic sugar and flour, we could afford to cut back the cost of those two things.

So now, a sandwich costs $10 (normal price), and a cupcake is $2.75. For a little more than what you used to pay for just a sandwich, you get a sandwich /and/ a dessert. And so now, people are actually ordering them way more frequently than they ever have before.

Which kind of brings me back to how I started working here in the first place.

It was back in November of 2007, and Steve and I had just moved to New York city. He had a job at the time, and was pulling in decent money. I didn't have to work, but I didn't want to faff about the house, doing nothing at all. However, I did love to cook (always had) and had a few copies of my cookery book with me. My Steve had let me know that a friend of a friend was working for NYU SEAL (an animal rights club), and they needed help with cooking for about 50 people, on a $50 budget.

In Manhattan.

Also, nobody could afford to do it from a restaurant, because they didn't have that kind of money.

Also, they wanted it vegan, and local, and seasonal.

Also, they couldn't afford to pay me.

I wasn't bothered about the money. I just love a challenge like that. I let Ashleigh (this was the person in charge of the food) that not only could we feed everyone who came, but we could feed them rice, beans, salad, and a vegetable dish, along with some kind of apple crisp. Yes, for less than the $50.

She was thrilled, and offered to buy me lunch at my favourite restaurant: Sacred Chow. Every time I came up to New York, I would jump in a Taxi and ask to be taken to Sacred Chow for at least one meal there. And at the end of each meal, I'd get a sinner bar. When Ashleigh offered to take me there, I jumped at the chance, so that the two of us could meet in person, and chatter away at each other about the food.

Apparently, she could offer a kitchen in one of the dorms nearby. It was fairly ill-equipped, but we'd have a lot of helpers. Also, the helpers had plenty of heart. I realise that this all sounds like a bad movie script, but it all really did happen.

You see, when you grow up poor, one of the things that you realise early on is that you can't always offer money to a cause, even though you may feel strongly about its goals. So you offer your time, your talents, and your heart. My mother was very good at this. Every week, when the Hindu temple in South Florida was a house that the community bought together, and filled with an altar and the things needed for a temple, my mother would pile us all into the car hours before the services started, loaded with food (at least a rice dish, and sometimes a rice dish and a vegetable dish), and all the kids. We'd get there very early, clean everything up, make it look presentable, and set out the floor mats for the people to come in and sit on. Then, we'd leave hours after everything was done.

Whatever the other people did or didn't think of it, whether or not they gave her any credit for it, whether they were jerks (and they were) or decent humans (rare, if ever) about freely asking my mother (who had a budget about 1/10 of what most of them worked with) for food (seriously), my mother was there every sunday, with large amounts of food. Why? Because she knew how to take a few dollars, and make them feed lots of people. I share that talent.

Ashleigh and I chatted for at least a couple of hours, in the empty restaurant.

SLAM!

Someone had slammed the door to the basement.

STOMP. STOMP. STOMP.

"You guys should NOT be eating here. The owner is a HORRIBLE man, and exploits his workers." (Side note: turns out she was stealing. How charming, right? The boss is a lovely man, for the record.)

STOMP STOMP STOMP.

She reached the door. She walked out, and slammed the outside door.

The outside door that has one of those hydraulic things that keeps it from slamming.

Made impotent by the uncaring door, the girl kicked the door with all her might, and stormed off. Ashleigh and I looked at each other in stunned silence, and burst out laughing. The waitperson apologised profusely for that particular little scene, and we both let her know that it was too funny /not/ to laugh at.

At the end of the meal, I approached the waitperson, and said, "OK, so it looks like you'll need a new worker."

She asked me to drop off my resume the next day.

The rest, as they say, is history.

What I'm getting at is that I was at the right place at the right time. I was there, because through some weird unconnected events, I was giving of my time and talents to a cause I believed in. They didn't have much money, and had to feed many people on very little money. The food turned out fantastic. Everyone was very impressed that we managed it for such a small amount of money.

Fast forward to a year or two later. Ashleigh called me to place an order for catering from Chow for her SEAL organisation.

I met my darling husband, because I was sitting in a vegan chat room a few years back, and sharing my cooking techniques with people. They would say, "Dino, I've got ____, ____, and ___, and I'm hungry now. Can you tell me what to do with that?" And I would. I'd give them about five or six different options for the stuff they had around the house. Then they'd come back in 30 minutes, and rave about how the food was so good.

Later, when I needed a vegan wallet, and mentioned it in passing (because carrying the leather one was making me a little ill whenever I thought of where it came from), Steve piped up and let me know that he makes wallets, and that he'd be sending me one, for free, "... because you help so many people out in so many ways, and I'm happy to do this for you."

Five years later, that gesture of kindness turned into a marriage that's given me more love and happiness than I could have ever imagined possible. And now that it's legal for us to get married, we've booked the Judson church, where Steve proposed to me (again) on Pride Sunday to ask me to officially marry him.

I said yes.

Onion Sandwiches

2011-06-10T13:20:00.001-04:00

I came into the office with my breakfast, and bossman gave me an odd look. "I like onion sandwiches," I said matter-of-factly. He agreed that onion sandwiches are indeed a lovely treat.

My mother used to say that I would take forever to make yoghurt rice (and I still do, with my own home made soy yoghurt that I make every few days). It's significant, because in a South Indian home, yoghurt rice is a very common snack, meal, finish to a meal, whatever. You have it when you want something fast. I liked it with lots of chopped vegetables (tomato, onion, cucumber) and spices (mustard seed, cumin seed, urad daal, toasted in fat) and curry leaves. In other words, yoghurt rice would take me 15 minutes to make, while most people are content with yoghurt + rice, which takes five minutes to make.

I tell you all that to tell you this: my onion sandwiches are no different. I like things just so. First, I liberally rub a baguette with a clove of garlic. This gives the bread a most tempting garlicky taste. I split the bread in half, and fry the cut sides in olive oil over medium-high heat, so that they get a nice crispy crust on the inside, and get pillowy and warm on the outside. This way, when I bite in, the outside is not toasted, but soft and fluffy. While the bread is toasting, I slice off a couple of slices of white (and if I have it, red as well) onions, and salt them. I let them hang out in the salt until they're a little tender. If you slice your onions thinly enough (as you should), they should be salted in about three minutes.

On a warm summer day, it's a most refreshing treat.

Heaaaaaat

2011-06-10T08:49:00.003-04:00

It's times like yesterday that I'm eternally grateful to have a well-stocked kitchen. It was hotter than the seven hells yesterday, and I sincerely did not feel like getting into an elaborate cooking thing. I felt like my body was going to melt into a puddle on the floor. I felt my hydration levels dropping ever lower on the walk home. I could feel the throbbing, pulsing heat rising up from the concrete sidewalk, as I manfully marched on, past the people sitting outside, fanning themselves in a futile attempt to battle the pressing humidity and heat.

It's been a few years since we moved up to New York, and it has made me less tolerant of heat in general, but yesterday would have been unbearable by anyone's standards. I got home, and decided on cold noodles. Yes, I would definitely be having rice later on, but for now, I needed to cool myself off.

That morning, I had thrown a piece of kombu (dried kelp) and a small handful of shiitake mushrooms (dried and sliced) into a couple of litres of water. Unlike boiling, this produces a light sort of broth that you can use as a cold soup base. I cooked up a couple of servings of noodles. Somen noodles (the really thin ones) are ideal, but you can use whatever you have. It'll turn out just fine.

I also had a fair bit of kimchi that my brother had sent me home with the last time I visited him in DC. I made a quick sauce with an apple, some sesame oil (just a few drops; a little goes a long way), five or six thai chiles, garlic, ginger, onion, some soy sauce, and some of that kombu broth I'd made. The sauce was spicy and tasty.

Once the noodles were boiled, I rinsed them off under cold running water. I topped them with julienned zucchini, the sauce, some kimchi, some of the water from the kimchi, and the iced broth. It was incredibly refreshing.

What was even more refreshing was the air conditioner. Let's be honest, it really was that hot.

Gay Archie comic

2011-06-09T18:39:00.002-04:00

Check it out.

I am very pleased that there's an openly gay character, and that he's getting his own comic. I ordered the first comic he appeared in, as well as the 4 comic run that they're doing for him. I used to read Archie comics as a kid, and I'm thrilled that they're keeping with the times.

Apparently, the response to him has been fantastic. It's the first time they've had to order a reprint of any issue of the comics. I really wish that there were gay or lesbian characters, and that their lives were portrayed as normal, just like everyone else's. I don't know that it would have made anything easier in my particular situation, but I think that it would have been nice to know that I'm not weird.

Colour me surprised and happy.

Me & my Nephew

2011-06-07T22:06:00.002-04:00

This is me with my nephew, Vinayak on his birthday. Just thought I'd share a happy moment for all of you.

Corn Chowder

2011-06-07T13:12:00.001-04:00

I was making a corn chowder yesterday, and I didn't want for it to have heinous amounts of fat, nor did I want to throw in starch (like wheat starch, corn starch, etc), because it doesn't really add much to the party with regards to flavour or nutrition. Interestingly enough, I was just talking to my mother over the weekend about how the cost of coconut milk has skyrocketed, and how it's getting prohibitively expensive.

Then, I started to do some digging. Every site that I see promoting silken tofu says that you can use the pureed stuff in cream soups, but then leaves it at that. Does that mean that you puree it, and then dump in a bunch of it? Do you puree it in the food processor, and use it as a thick creamy thing, or do you puree it in the blender, and let 'er rip with a bit of liquid of your choice, and stir it in? Can you cook it down, or should it be relatively uncooked? How about freezing or thawing or boiling or all kinds of other considerations? How much should you use?

First and foremost, let me make one thing clear: you don't /have/ to use silken tofu. You can, if that's what you have, but if you don't have any, or don't feel like tracking any down, just use whatever tofu you have lying around in the house, or whatever is cheapest at your market. You're throwing this into the blender to blend down to an absolute puree, so it doesn't really matter.

I'm just sick of all these recipes demanding that you use a particular thing, when it's not even necessary. Y'know, like those ones that ask you to use MELTED MARGARINE.* What is melted margarine? OIL. So why not use oil? It's infuriating. In the same way, since you're going to be blending the heck out of it anyway, just use whatever you have, and the heck with what everyone tells you to do.

Secondly, remember that tofu, when frozen, changes texture. This goes for pureed tofu, but far less so than for fresh tofu. This means that if you are going to be using tofu to replace cream, please use exactly however much you need, and use it up. Don't use frozen tofu. I wish that I didn't have to make this distinction, but I do, because not everyone is familiar with the stuff, and won't know not to do so.

Finally, if you are going to be using extra firm, or firm tofu, please don't cook it too terribly much. If you've ever had tofu that's been put into miso soup, and sat there, you'll know that the texture changes completely. For the best results, keep your tofu cream aside, and stir it in just before serving, or at the last minute to the pot of soup. If you do have silken tofu, and you grind it, you'll have more leeway to work with to make the magic happen.

How about the ratios? How much tofu to how much liquid?

Here's the exciting part. Yesterday, for two cups of coconut milk, I used about four pounds of tofu! Two cups is about the standard size of coconut milk can that you see in the store. This means that the coconut milk that you bought for however much can be stretched out with tofu and water to make far more than what you started with. To scale this back, it works out to about 1/2 cup of coconut milk per pound of tofu. This should provide you with enough cream to stir into a pretty decent sized pot of soup. This also means that you can scale this down further. You can use 1/2 lb of tofu for 1/4 cup of coconut milk, or 1/4 lb of tofu for 2 TB of coconut milk.

This means that people with less than normal food processors, or blenders (I'm looking at you, people with mini choppers who use them as food processors*) can still do the job, because you can scale down as far as you need to or scale up as needed.

So. Recipe time, right?

Corn Chowder

1 tsp canola, peanut, or olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped finely
1 1/2 tsp thyme
2 medium potatoes, diced
2 ears of corn, taken off the cob
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper (or, lots more if you're like me and love black pepper in chowder)
2 cups of water

Tofu cream
2 TB coconut milk
1/4 lb tofu

In a stock pot, sautee the onions over medium high heat until they become translucent. Add the thyme in with the onions, and stir everything around until the herbs are evenly distributed with the onions and the fat. You do this so that the essential oils from the thyme have a chance to release their flavours efficiently.

While the onion cooks, chop up the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes. Since there's only two potatoes, you should be able to do this relatively quickly, even if you're a slow chopper. When the onions are cooked, add the diced potatoes, and stir the veggies around in the pot until everything is evenly combined. Drop down the heat to medium low, and put the lid onto the pot. While that hangs out and cooks slowly, take the kernels of corn off of the cob. When the potatoes have cooked for 7 minutes in the pot, add the corn, water, salt, and black pepper. Increase the heat to medium high again.

While the water comes up to the boil, combine the coconut milk and tofu in a blender. Blend until the tofu is pureed smooth. Add water (from the soup pot) to thin out the tofu cream, until it resembles the consistency of a thick heavy cream. Turn off the heat once the potatoes are tender. Let the whole thing sit for about five minutes to cool a bit. Stir in the cream, and serve immediately, with a rain of lovely freshly ground black pepper, chives, or soup crackers, as suits your fancy.

The reason that I'm a fan of using tofu instead of all coconut milk is twofold: for one thing, the tofu adds protein to the mix. Yes, I am well aware that the coconut milk, corn, and potatoes all contain protein of their own. However, the tofu does have a good fair bit of concentrated protein that will boost up the whole thing. Also, the tofu means that I can reduce the amount of fat that I'm using. In the past, for a recipe like this, I would have cheerfully used 1/2 cup of coconut milk. I've managed to cut back on the coconut milk drastically, and still keep that rich, creamy texture that I like. I've also not gone off the deep end to the other extreme, where I'm afraid of fat. Coconut milk and olive oil/canola oil/peanut oil are healthy fats. When used in moderation, they're good for the body, and help absorb fat-soluble vitamins. They are a vital part of your diet. While you don't want to overdo them, you also don't want to avoid them completely.

Besides. Fat tastes good. Just because I'm eating healthy doesn't mean that I have to eat like I'm sick, right? I can still enjoy the things I like while making minor substitutions which improve the overall food, while not going to any extremes. I hope you will also agree with me, and give the recipe a try! Corn chowder is absolutely delicious, and the perfect way to use up all that lovely corn that's coming into season.

*For the record, I'm using these lines in a humorous fashion. It's not meant to offend, or to seriously call into question how people like things, or do things. Sometimes, in the written word, the tone is not always clear. Let me make it clear now that it's meant to be taken in a jokey manner, and not in a ranty manner.

2011-06-07T10:47:00.001-04:00

I was reading a forum post somewhere, where a person off-handedly mentioned being gay in a small town in the USA. Let me preface this with a couple of disclaimers: I have never (and will never, gods willing) lived in a truly small town where I was old enough to know or care. I've never had to deal with an entire large group of random strangers who know all of my business (shut up, the Internet doesn't count) who I'm meeting on a regular basis.

Steve, however, did. Whenever we go out with his dad, there are bound to be at least two or three families out and around who recognise not only him, but (by extension) Steve as well, and in many cases, me. It's eerie. The next door neighbours at his father's house know me as one of his mother's son-in-laws, and will stop over for a chat if I'm outside and they're outside at the same time. It's eerie, and unsettling, because I have no clue who these people are, but they seem to know all about me.

Again, I'm reinforcing this with the fact that I don't have to live there, and any interactions I've had with folk out there have been friendly, warm, loving, and kind.

I find that in smaller towns, folk aren't as hateful as you would think that they are. Yes, you have hateful people in the churches who preach more of their brand of loathsome dogma, but you also have plenty of good decent people who are happy to let you get on with your life, as long as you let them get on with theirs. These are the same people who vote republican on the ballots, and are generally conservative.

However, I call myself a liberal, or moderate, or whatever, not because I have a fundamental understanding of how I vote, but rather because that's where my life and the conclusions I've drawn have lead me over the years. I didn't vote for Obama because I knew where he stood on all the issues that matter to me. I voted for him because people I care about, and whose opinions I respect deeply asked me to vote for him.

Huh. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

You see, I'm not trying to make myself sound like an idiot. I'm not. I'm intelligent. I am college educated. I enjoy reading, and learning new things. However, I am also able to be honest with myself, and that's what I'm doing right now: being strictly honest.

So why is it that I look with derision on folks who do the same thing that I did? They don't vote one way because they necessarily understand what all the implications of voting that way are. They do it because people that they love and whose opinions they respect are telling them to.

However, in interacting with the very same people (like me) whose rights they are restricting with their voting, the interaction totally becomes an "in the moment" experience, where two people share of themselves in a way that leaves both parties in a better place than when they started.

For the record, there is absolutely no doubt that I'm gay. You'd have to be outright ignorant of what being gay means to miss that glaringly obvious fact. The fact becomes even more glaring when I'm travelling with Steve, which I do frequently. However, in the small towns that Steve and I have visited (including the suburban towns that are largely conservative), we have been treated with kindness and warmth.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that to make any perceptible change in the world, we need to live our truth. Whether this be about being gay, being vegan, being a person of character, or whatever, living in your truth is about the most valuable thing you can do to propagate it.

If you're out there yelling at people that they are wrong, and horrible, you're going to end up alienating them, and will have very few people who want to be in your presence. If you firmly and matter-of-factly state your truth ("I'm gay," I'm vegan," etc), people have the chance to get to know you, and see that your day-to-day life is really no different from their own. The threatening part of the unknown "other" starts to fade away, and people start to see each other as people.

Let me finish this off by saying that I don't want to move to a small town. That's really not something that would work for my more fast-paced lifestyle that I enjoy having. I'm also not trying to deny the absence of hateful bigots. Those will be anywhere you go, and in a big city, it's easier to ignore them, because there are so many other voices to drown them out. There's a reason that so many gay kids flee to large metropolitan cities.

However, I am saying that it'd be nice to avoid lumping all people from a particular walk of life into one category, and deciding that they're all worthless. At the end of the day, we're all people, and we have value. When you give people a chance, you're often surprised at the goodness and kindness inherent in humanity that comes out. It doesn't help anyone to demonise the "other side".

Onion Samosa

2011-06-06T09:23:00.003-04:00

1 onion, 1 bunch of cilantro, 5 Thai Bird chiles, 5 cm of ginger, 5 cloves garlic. Turmeric, salt, ajwain, coriander, cumin, garam masala. 1 1/2 cups of poha.

National Geographic

2011-06-05T09:02:00.002-04:00

I remember spending hours watching National Geographic documentaries. This was back in the day when you had the local PBS stations carrying a good selection of documentaries, and they'd advertise a particularly cool one, and you'd wait for it to come out. Then they'd re-air it a few more times before the next round of awesome footage came out. I remember listening to the theme song for the National Geographic documentaries, and would likely recognise it immediately.

And then I saw this comment on the video:

FINALLY FOUND IT! EVER SINCE MADAGASCAR CAME OUT I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THIS SONG!!!!! THE NAME OF IT (The chase scene, right after Alex becomes 'wild' and chases Marty for the first time)

That makes me sad. I hope that discovering what the song is will encourage the person to go seek out the work that National Geographic has done. The magazines are still some of the coolest things ever. They're printed in such high quality paper that people hold onto them for years, as they would any sort of book.

2011-06-02T15:48:00.003-04:00

I talk frequently (in life, on my blog, etc) about popping spices, adding aromatics, then tomatoes, then dry spices, etc to make a rough gravy, then adding veg, beans, or whatever. This video does a top-notch job of showing, in video, the exact steps, and how it works, from adding the oil, to adding the mustard seeds, the urad daal, etc etc. OK, it's in Malayalam. I don't speak Malayalam either. I speak Tamil. (Granted, the two languages are extremely similar, so I can more or less follow her, but the point is that the /video/ is excellent.) Essentially, she starts with a couple tablespoons of oil, a few healthy pinches of mustard seeds, and urad daal. Notice how she waits for the seeds to pop and splutter before adding anything. That's how you know that the oil is hot enough to pop the mustard seeds. If the mustard seeds don't pop, the flavour doesn't come out.

All the other steps are pretty straightforward from there. If you're interested in any kind of South Indian cooking, watch the video, and just take notice of the technique. Also, the Keralites make the best food in India (sorry, Amma; we both know it's true--anyone who uses that much coconut every day has my vote), hands down, and I'm not even /from/ that state. She's got solid technique, and a charming personality. She was suggesting a few times (as a Keralite would) that you could quite happily add grated coconut, coconut milk, etc. Anything you say, Ms. Nair. <3

In this particular video, she's showing you how to use up leftover idli to make a sort of curried idli masala thingy.

That white powder she uses (aside from the salt) that she calls "Kaya Podi" is dried banana powder, which is another very typical Keralite thing.

Picky eating revisited

2011-06-01T09:14:00.003-04:00

The last time we talked about my picky eating habits, we were tackling bell peppers, and my sister-in-law's treatment of such, with the multiple peppers, corn, and black bean salad (called, in my house, "Deb's Salad", even when I warp it out of all recognition of her original, such as adding her most dreaded food: tomatoes), which taught me to not only tolerate, but enjoy red, yellow, and orange bell peppers. It's a feat I thought I'd never conquer, and I'm pretty happy that I am now open to this new thing that I never liked as a kid.

If people can acquire a taste for stuff like beer, which is not exactly health food, I can learn to like the multiple vegetables I've thus far deemed horrible.

Now that I've tackled peppers, I think I'm ready for aubergines. While I was visiting my friend Jamie's mum in upstate NY, there were more vegetables than I could count! They were all of excellent quality, and in abundance. Jamie commented that seeing the dinner table was like a Thanksgiving meal, with all the varieties. It really was most enjoyable.

Anyway. Her fiancee grilled the whole baby aubergines (each was the size of a small fist, but long too). They had no seeds to speak of. they were also firm to the touch when we started, and tender and juicy when finished. He served them with nothing more than a smear of tahini. That was it. No lemon juice, no herbs, no garlic, no nothing else. Just the aubergine with a bit of tahini. I liberally dosed mine with some salt, but neither he nor Jamie bothered with it. They enjoyed it as is.

It was quite tasty. The grilling brought out something different (there was apple wood in the smoking part of the grill) that regular roasting or frying doesn't quite do. The texture wasn't as slimy as I recall it being. Instead, it was cooked while retaining just a hint of firmness. And the tahini was absolutely the best complement to it ever.

I only ate one, but I think that I can bring myself to try more, as time goes on. Again, I'm not trying to rush at this, and get myself to like everything all the time, but am working, slowly but surely, at growing an appreciation for the plant kingdom.

EDIT: Here's something else I never saw myself doing: eating carrots by itself. Martha Stewart's carrot salad did the trick:

http://www.wholeliving.com/recipe/moroccan-carrot-salad

Quiet

2011-05-28T00:28:00.002-04:00

It's not often that I get to have a moment of absolute quiet. Ever since moving to New York all those years ago, it's been a constant state of something going on. Even when visiting my sister in what I /thought/ was far removed from major cities, there were still noises around. This night, however, is truly quiet.

I'm at the (beautiful) home of one of my friend's mother's. She lives up a mountain road, about 15 minutes away from paved roads, in a very small town in upstate New York. I never thought I'd be this far out into the country, but here I am. No cell reception, no subway access two feet away, and thunder and lightning rumbling off in the distance.

The last time I experienced this was when I was taking that trip off into the Galapagos Islands. In the middle of the water, you would have these moments of absolute peace and quiet. Nobody was awake, and the only noise going on was the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat.

That's what's going on here. Aside from the occasional cricket chirping, or the bullfrogs croaking, the entire place is quiet. I can hear the faint rumblings of thunder off in the distance, and it's kind of nice.

Mind you, I don't plan on making this a habit. Being too far from a subway makes me nervous. However, once in 10 years or so, It's nice to really get away from it all, and sit by the giant windows, and watch the storm roll in. It's going to be a beautiful night.

Amma

2011-05-08T22:17:00.001-04:00

Amma, in tamil, means mother. It’s what I call my mother, and because my friends didn’t realise that “amma” is just our word for mother (or, quite possibly, because they realised it), they ended up calling my mother by “Amma” as well. I think that it secretly pleased her, because she never bothered to correct it.

Amma tells me stories about how when I was young, I would constantly have her in my line of sight somewhere, and keep a peripheral ear out for what she was talking about. I actually know what she’s talking about, because there are multiple occasions when she thought I was playing with my friends, and I’d quote what one of her friends was saying. Whether it be because she spent the most time and effort on her pregnancy and childhood with me out of all her children (or so I like to think so; she would drink a large tumbler of grass juice every morning to ensure healthy milk for me, and that’s just one sliver of the things she would do to make sure I got only the best of the best of everything), or because of all her children, I think I have had a relationship with her as a peer as well as a son, I am truly her son. She never addressed me with things like “You’ll do so because I said so,” or “You wouldn’t understand.” She taught me from a very young age that if you ask, you’ll eventually find an answer. Maybe not immediately right at that moment, but to trust her that she’d come back to me with an answer that was considered and thought out.

It was like when I asked her why we’re vegetarian. She explained that it was because in our culture and family, that’s just what we did. I wasn’t satisfied with that answer, and she admitted that she had never really thought about it. Over time, however, she took me to vegetarian potlucks, and introduced me to various vegan and vegetarian activists, who did have a more cleanly articulated line of thinking for leaving the animals alone. Although she didn’t give me the answer as soon as I asked it, she lead me to find it on my own.

That’s the other thing. She never dismissed any of my questions as trivial. She somehow knew that I’m one of those people who considers, and reads, and looks for it on his own before having to ask her or anyone else. I remember one summer when I decided to read the as many of the Hindu scriptures as possible. We had multiple copies of multiple books around, and I had the spare time to do it. I stumbled across something discussing the four Yugas (divisions of Hindu mythological history). I knew we are living in the Kali yuga, but I didn’t know how far along we are, or how long each one is. She admitted that she didn’t know, but that she would find out if she could. A day or so later, she came back to me and explained that she had called a priest at the temple, and asked him. He gave her the exact breakdown in years, and she jotted them down for me. Most people would have left it at “I don’t know.”

She fostered my love for being in the kitchen. When you’re feeding a family of six, you’re going to end up spending a lot of time in the kitchen. Since that’s where she was, I’d go hang out with her there. She’d then assign me some small task, and the two of us would keep talking, while working on the meal. Over time, she grew to trust me enough to handle entire dishes, or in some cases, the whole dinner, for when guests came over. She would openly brag to her friends that her son is not only well read, can keep conversations with people much older than himself, and didn’t watch junky TV as much as he watched nature documentaries and the like, but he is also a talented cook, who is comfortable in the kitchen, and is happy to help her. The other mothers would turn green with envy, thinking of the hours they’d spend alone in the kitchen.

She values my opinion. When we get the chance to chat on the phone, the conversation often stretches from a few minutes, and a quick question, into a marathon session for a couple of hours at a stretch. Mind you, she’s the type of person who will take multiple viewpoints, and eventually come to her own decision, after thinking it over for a while, but I know that she gives what I have to say a lot of weight in the grand scheme of things. When she was skirting the edges of menopause, I went out and read every book, journal article and website I could get my hands on, and distill it down into a conversation about what’s going on and how to cope with it. She’s always been so proud of that ability of mine. I enjoy reading things that teach me something new, and I enjoy talking about what I’ve learned.

I remember one night, she listened to me rambling on about some of the reading that I had done about language development in children, when she was nervous about my sister’s son’s speech. He didn’t start talking as soon as she’d seen other children talking. (For the record, this is no longer an issue; the trick is to get him to stop talking! He’s too cute for words, and speaks clearly and at length.) I don’t know how long I chattered on about it, but she patiently listened to it, with only the occasional diversion or question.

I can talk to her about nothing at all, or everything, and both of us enjoy it. We joke that whoever is responsible for wire tapping my phone must be ready to end it all, because we have the most boring, mundane conversations. Frequent (and I mean close to half the call) topics include the cost of rice, vegetables, and the sales we got at the various stroes we shop at. Then, we talk about what we made with the things we bought. I’m seriously not joking. Then, in between, there will be some philosophical discussion about human nature, or a quick story about what her grandson did that day, or how Steve did something else.

She taught me that the best seasoning for food is having people you enjoy being around to share it with. That food is at its most powerful when it’s shared with as many people as possible. That the value you give something is far more important than its cost. (Actually, come to think of it, the value of something is often increased exponentially with how little it cost. I made her this ugly, lumpy bowl in art class in 6th grade. She kept it for years to hold her pens. I think she still has it somewhere, still holding pens.)

She reinforced, time and again, that no problem is too big or scary to talk through. That the way to get around things is to talk it out. That literally /no/ trouble her children get themselves into is too great to get past, and move on from. Steve came into our lives five years ago. He came suddenly, and without discussion. “How was your summer, Dinu?” “It was great. I got married.” (This is after they got back from being in India for a year.) “Oh. That’s great. What’s her name.” “His name is Steve.”

A couple of weeks later, Steve moved in. All four of us lived together for a year. I’m not sure what acceptance means to others, but having your gay husband living with the family, and introducing the both of us to their friends looks quite accepting to me. No, she’s not marching in a parade, but that’s likely because it’s hotter than the nine hells in June, and her feet would start throbbing within the first mile or so. Yes, we had our problems, but living with someone else is always going to present problems. If I were to see Steve’s family on a daily basis for a year, I’m sure stuff would likely come up that would test the limits of all of our patience. The fact that we’re all still on good terms (good enough terms, that is, that Steve even made a trip or two up to Connecticut to visit with my sister, her husband, and my parents without me) is a lasting testament to that acceptance.

She’s very proud of all my talents, but won’t hesitate to call me on it when she thinks that I’m being an idiot. When Amma and Appa (Appa = father in Tamil) moved up to Connecticut to help my sister settle in, they left Steve and me back at the Florida house. Steve and I lasted about four or five months before giving up on the entire state, and heading for the hills. And by hills, I mean New York. The whole thing was decided and orchestrated in the space or a month. Amma was furious and hurt, not that I was moving, but that I hadn’t said anything until it was too late. Even then, she still kept a couple of her friends on standby, in case we needed a couple of days to land somewhere before finding an apartment. “If you had said something, I could have helped make this so much easier on you. Why did you think you couldn’t talk this over with me?” She always said that she had no illusions about anyone in her life. She saw, and accepted, the good and the bad. It’s why people trust her to give them honest feedback. She doesn’t give empty compliments. If she says something is good, it’s because it’s good. If she says something can use some work, you take that into account, and fix it for the next time.

She taught me, through her actions, that the only person who can stop you from success is yourself. Let everyone else say what they want to say. You just keep your head down, and keep at it. When I was about ten years old, Hurrican Andrew hit Florida, and ravaged Miami. All the apartments that were left over were now going for premium prices. If I’m not mistaken, our landlord wanted to bump up rent after the hurricane, and my mother didn’t think it was feasible for a family of six to live in a three bedroom apartment. She wanted a house.

At the time, my father was pulling in minimum wage. This meant that any house my mother would be looking at had to be, above all else, affordable. The bank wouldn’t approve a loan to someone who doesn’t have the physical money to pay for. Amma worked as a homemaker, and Appa worked at an office. Her requirements were that the house be larger than our apartment, have more than 3 bedrooms, have at least 2 bathrooms, have a decent sized kitchen, be in a decent school district, be in a decent neighbourhood, and be priced at less than $80,000, give or take. Bonus points for being near major highways, and near the Hindu temple. Mind you, this was 1992, but we’re still talking about a state, that in those days, was getting about 700 new people in it every day (stat I learned in summer school of 7th grade). To say that it’d be challenging to meet all her goals is an understatement.

Most of the people we knew at the time thought that she’s completely nuts. It took a lot of searching. She spent hours with realtors, looking at ugly tiny house after ugly tiny house. Some would be fairly decent sized, and in OK repair, but be in horrible neighbourhoods. Others would be townhouses, or in developments, which would mean freakishly strict and intrusive rules (like no clothes lines, or no planting fruit trees in your own yard), along with hefty association fees, paid to a bunch of jerks who didn’t really do much of anything, except to enforce said arbitrary and intrusive rules. Others would be almost ideal, but situated in neighbourhoods that were one inch away from mob rule. You know all those bizarre news stories coming out of Florida? That’s because we have more than its share of crazies. Pair all of this with everyone she knew telling her to relax her standards, or her pocket book. She flatly refused, and kept at it.

The kicker? She didn’t drive. She had a learner’s permit, but didn’t actually drive herself until well after we moved into the house. Also, she couldn’t exactly afford a babysitter to watch after the kids, and my dad didn’t get home until fairly late anyway. Also, first Saturday of every month was a bhajan group that she attended for years, and wouldn’t think of missing. Also, every Sunday was temple day. She’d arrive (along with family in tow) well before everyone else got there, and leave well after the last stragglers left. This is also paired with random Saturdays being given up for religious events, weddings, birthdays, and all kinds of cultural and social events. Oh. While we’re mentioning things: she also would cook for pretty much every event/function we’d go to. She’d cook /every/ Sunday, in large quantity, to comfortably feed the 100 or so people that could show up to the temple.

I don’t even recall how she managed to find that house that she eventually bought, but she did. She got the house, and held a housewarming that had well over 120 people or so. (Life is funny though. Both my brothers moved out, leaving an extra bedroom. My sister and I both went to Magnet schools, so the local school district was moot. A short time after moving up, we stopped going to the Hindu temple, because 99% of the people there were [and still are] snobby, classist, small minded, back stabbing, gossiping, loathsome jerks.) Fifteen years later, she paid off the mortgage in full, and owned it outright.

Our relationship was never perfect. We’ve both managed to hurt the other. However, I don’t know of any relationship that I have with anyone, that doesn’t involve some level of challenge at some point. That’s just how people are. The important thing is that we do still seek each other out, however infrequently, because we both really do value the other person.

Thanks, Amma. I love you.

KISS

2011-05-07T01:01:00.001-04:00

Simplicity. It’s often difficult to achieve without considerable editing down. I’ve recently begun to take a serious look at my cooking, and wonder if sometimes I have the opportunity to improve myself by subtracting, rather than adding anything. I should certainly know better, having my pretty strong background in design. If you look at my website, or the website that I created for my work place, both share a couple of elements: few colours, few fonts, ease of use, and fairly stripped down looks.

It’s kind of how I like things to look. I want to see the most important thing, not all the sidebar stuff that can distract from the main point.

We had a photo shoot at the restaurant, so that I could get decent pictures of the food to either use on the website, or to use in various promotional materials, etc. The first round of photos was an unalloyed disaster. Everything had great masses of parsley on it, about 100 different elements on the plate, along with good, strong lighting. I went through to do some colour correction, light balancing, and the rest on the photos, so that I could bring up the most important colours, and mute the ones I’m not so interested in. The effect was a lurid mix of day glow neons, and just overall messy presentation.

I asked the photographer to try it all again. This time, each thing needed to be shot with /absolutely nothing/ extraneous. Take out the parsley chunks, take out the flotsam and jetsam, and give me something stripped down to its most bass level. The pictures were so gloriously beautiful that second time around. Mind you, the photographer was the same person. She used the same camera, same settings, same flash. The difference was the presentation.

This is kind of where I’m starting to lead myself in the pursuit of improving myself. Generally, a typical veg cooked in my kitchen at home involves all kinds of things. I start with oil, often mixing different kinds. I like a blend of peanut and sesame, because I really like the smell. Sometimes I’ll throw in a bit of coconut for that extra special smell. Then, in with the spices. Typical run for me is mustard seed, cumin seed, asafetida, and sesame seed. Sometimes I also throw in a bit of crushed coriander.

Then, in with the aromatics. I generally use garlic, onion, and ginger. Because I like to vary the taste of the garlic, I’ll add it at various stages of cooking, but I have recently fallen in love with frying the garlic first, then throwing in the onion. As of late, because I realized I don’t hate them anymore, I’ve also taken to throwing in some bell pepper. The smells by this point are intoxicating, and delicious. You can generally smell my cooking as you walk up the stairs that lead to my apartment.

Then, I add the vegetable, along with a bit of turmeric, and red chile flakes. Once the vegetable is cooked, I’ll finish it off with curry leaves, and a bit of salt.

By now, I’ve lost count of the amount of ingredients that have gone in there. If it’s beans, you’re also talking about the addition of a few tomatoes, possibly some tomato paste, and wine or vodka. If it’s a soup or stew, also add in some carrots, celery, potatoes, etc. Before too long, the dish is a teetering mass of ingredients. All of them are delicious, and the food is fantastic. It’s earthy, and homey, and you eat more than is decent, because it’s hitting all the good spots.

However, I have begun to wonder if I’m tasting the food, or the spices.

When I quit smoking, my sense of smell got a little sharper, and I was able to taste things more clearly. Things that I previously liked have become a chore to eat. I absolutely cannot bring myself to choke down a bowl of ramen soup. It’s awful. I’ve discovered that I love the smell of bell peppers cooking, along with onions and garlic. This has made it possible for me to eat, and enjoy them. I haven’t eaten bell peppers in so long that I can’t even count. My poor husband is so used to eating with me, and my piling his plate with various things I decided I don’t like.

What I am trying to get at is that of late, I’ve been experimenting with really stripped down food. It’s not something that I’m used to doing, but I decided to give it a try.

On Thursday, when I got home, there were two heads of cauliflower, six pounds of eggplant, and a large bunch of collard greens. Typically, the whole meal would have taken me about an hour to put together, all of which would have been spent with me stood over the cutting board or the stove. I would have gleefully moved around my tiny kitchen, making all four burners go at full tilt, while balancing all kinds of vessels on various surfaces. Tonight, I was going to dial it all back big time.

I cranked up the gas oven to 350 F. In went the eggplant, on baking sheets, unadorned. I didn’t cut them, rub on oil, or anything else. I just lay them on the baking sheet whole, and put them in the oven. Then, I made rough florets of the cauliflower. This took me less than a couple of minutes. I drizzled on a bit of vegetable oil, and threw that in the oven as well. I set the timer for 1 hour, and set a pot of water on the stove. I chopped up the collard greens roughly, and let them sit there. I made a small pouch of foil for two heads of garlic (which I doused in more oil). Into the oven they went. The water came to a boil. I turned off the heat, and plunged the collard greens into the water. I let it sit for about a minute. I drained off the water. Then, I tossed the greens in sesame oil, black sesame seeds, and salt.

That’s it.

I walked out of the kitchen, and got into my house clothes. I watched some TV for about 45 minutes or so, while the oven did my work for me. When the timer beeped, I came back to the kitchen to see the cauliflower perfectly roasted, the garlic tender and smelling great, and the eggplants collapsed from getting cooked so thoroughly.

I scooped out the flesh of the eggplant, and dumped in both heads of garlic, a bit of salt, and the roasting oil from the garlic foil pouch. I also threw in some red chile flakes. I stirred vigorously with a wooden spoon, until the eggplant were sort of shredded.

That’s it.

The cauliflower got some salt.

That meal was memorable. For the first time in a long time, I tasted the vegetables, as they were. Mind you, I didn’t touch the eggplant, because I don’t care for their texture. One thing at a time, right? I’ll get there when I get there.

What I’m getting at is that it was a lot of fun for me to try something that I haven’t done before. It wasn’t bland at all. The roasting gave the vegetables plenty of flavor and colour and texture. The oil and a bit of salt really brought out the natural taste. It was a revelation.

Next time though, I think I’ll add a bit of cumin to the eggplant.

And maybe tahini.

And lemon.

Just saying.

Tummy clear up

2011-05-05T11:51:00.002-04:00

I ate stuff that I really shouldn't eat (fatty, starchy, horrible, but tasty) last night before bed, and this morning, my brown rice and steamed broccoli loving tummy let me know in no uncertain terms, that he is unimpressed. He also let me know that if I try that again, he's going on strike. Ouch!

I wanted something to settle my stomach, and didn't feel like going to the drug store to get medication (which probably wouldn't have done that much for me anyway). I decided on a juice. I know that ginger is really good for settling upset stomachs, among a million other things it's good for. In went about two inches of ginger. I know that kale and other dark leafy greens are alkaline, and will counteract the strong stomach acids that are likely causing the upset in the first place, so I threw in a few leaves, along with the stems, of kale. I know I really dislike the taste of juiced greens, so in went a couple of apples, and five or six carrots too. I didn't care for the colour, so I threw in a small beet for good measure.

I could feel it work immediately. My stomach isn't completely settled yet, but I can smell things without feeling nauseous. Good to know for the future.

Cold dinner

2011-04-29T08:39:00.002-04:00

Last night, it was warm, and late. By the time I got home, it was 8:30, and I was exhausted from work. And the kitchen was messy, as was the bathroom. Ugh. I attacked everything, and got it all sorted by about 9:15. I was still hungry, but didn't really feel like cooking per se.

While I was in Chicago with Steve's family for Easter, his sister's wife Debbie made this fantastic salsa that everyone absolutely loved to bits. I especially liked it, so I commandeered the leftovers and ate it. "Ate it with tortilla chips", you may ask. I ate it with a spoon.

And I don't even like bell peppers. In fact, I absolutely hate bell peppers. Correction: I absolutely hatED bell peppers until I started my campaign of not being so stupidly finicky about everything. My eldest brother made this eggplant dish, for which I completely forgot to ask for the recipe for whatever reason, which was quite lovely over rice. Essentially, it was very heavily salted eggplant, fried in spices and such, so that it almost became like an Indian pickle. It was so good, but it was also an isolated incident. I'm not sure that I can clear my textural issues around eggplant quite yet, but hope springs eternal.

The bell peppers in Debbie's salsa, however, have a subtle sweetness that was accentuated by the corn. I didn't feel like I was eating bell peppers at all, and I happily chomped away at them. I don't know that I'll start seeking them out, but I think I've made my peace with the multi coloured peppers. Green bells are a different story for another day. Maybe if anyone is interested, I'll share my recipe for cumin bell peppers which work excellently as a side veg for those who enjoy green bell peppers.

Anyway. I digress. When I got home, I made sure to bug Debbie via the Internet to remind me of what all she put into that salsa. Here's what she said:

Need 1 can sweet corn, 1 can black beans (rinsed and drained) 1 purple onion, any or all colors of peppers (green, red, yellow), jalepeno pepper (good part is you can make it as hot as you want and leave the seeds in), 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 cup lime juice, 1 tsp cumin and 1 tsp cayenne. whisk liquid together with spices and pour over veggies; put in the fridge for a couple hours and serve with tortilla chips and enjoy!

Easy enough! What you'll notice immediately is that the riot of colour makes it extremely appetising. A couple of things to note. For one thing, don't think that you have to make this in enormous quantities. If you do, you'll end up with an enormous grocery bill. Make just about what you and your family can eat in one sitting, and you'll be fine. Yellow peppers, red peppers, and orange peppers can get freakishly expensive. If you buy just one, it shouldn't amount to very much money. I don't think that this will work with green bell peppers, because they're way too bitter, and would be jarring in comparison to the other, nicer flavours.

Another thing to note is that this is an excellent place to get other vegetables and herbs that you like. I threw in one tomato, a cucumber, and an avocado, as well as a bunch of cilantro, because I like those things. I didn't use lime juice (having forgotten to buy lemon), but I hit it with some citric acid, and it did the job. Also, I didn't have olive oil, so I used a couple tablespoons of canola oil. Yes, I left the seeds in the one jalapeño chile I used.

I was exhausted, so it took me the entire 9 minutes that my pasta was boiling to finish chopping up all the veggies. However, since I wasn't exactly doing anything else while the pasta was boiling, it's not like I had to spend extra time in the kitchen. When the pasta was done, I drained it, and rinsed it under cold water. This was both to cool it down very quickly, and to prevent it from cooking much more. One of the most awful things about pasta salad is when the pasta is overcooked.

For my one pound of pasta, I had an enormous quantity of fresh, raw vegetables, making the dinner quite healthy and tasty. Because I didn't shake off too terribly much of the liquid from the draining pasta, the liquid combined with the seasonings and oil in the vegetables, and was quite refreshing on that warm night. The total put together time was about fifteen minutes, making it a meal I will most likely make again. I'll just need to find tinned black beans and tinned corn on sale somewhere, and keep a few in my pantry, so that I can avoid the extra steps of making those things fresh. The charm of Debbie's Salsa is that it's incredibly quick.

2011-04-27T08:33:00.001-04:00

“It’s fine if you’re gay; just don’t flaunt it in front of me.” In that case, please extend the same courtesy to me. Otherwise, you’re holding me to an arbitrary double standard.

Don’t flaunt being straight to me. Don’t mention your significant other in loving terms in front of me. Don’t call that person your lover. Don’t fill your songs, books, movies, mythology, and stories with any mention of the loving and tender feelings between a man and a woman. Don’t build religious institutions that actively promote the heterosexual lifestyle. Don’t create thinly veiled hate groups, that masquerade as religious groups, which get tax benefits.

Don’t ever call your lover by a term of endearment. Don’t hold their hands. Don’t give them a hug to comfort them when they’re sad, to show them that you love them, to express joy at seeing them.

Don’t make the assumption that everyone is straight.

Who was doing that flaunting? I know it's not me.

Dino needs a brand new bag

2011-04-18T08:18:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, on the way home from Port Authority, I had to use the restroom, and we were on a local train (the A) which is notorious for dragging behind on the way uptown. It just got worse and worse. To distract myself, I started thinking about the problem that Steve and I have: we both need new laptop backpacks. Let me explain myself.

On 20 July 2008, I bought this bag. It's become such a part of my life that pretty much everyone who's seen me has seen me (and Steve) with that bag. Why? Because back in those days, to prevent either of us getting jealous of the other's things (a stupid concern, seeing as how we freely borrow each other's things [with permission, which is always granted] all the time), I would frequently buy things in duplicate: one for me, and one for him. This does not apply to clothes, because we share our whole wardrobe. Except my red shoes. Nobody touches my red shoes.

I digress.

Point is that I bought one for Steve first, because he needed it the most. He was commuting the better part of 1 1/2 hours both ways to work at the time. He needed something to hold his 15" laptop, along with a few other extras. I wanted something that was sleek and stylish, and wouldn't look like a nerdpack growing out of his back. I didn't want a messenger bag, because (1) he already had one or two, and (2) for holding heavy things, like a laptop, for extended times, a backpack spreads out the weight much better than a messenger bag. There comes a point where style becomes bad for your body, and that's where I draw the line. If it's going to cause physical discomfort or pain, I don't want to bother with it, because then it's no longer a pleasure to own that thing.

Anyway. Both of us use our bags fairly frequently, and somewhat roughly. They get thrown in all directions, and both of us, being fairly attached to our electronics, tend to take our backpacks with us everywhere. Here are a couple of reasons why our current bags are so good:

1) When travelling by bus for long distances (generally, greyhound to DC), the bag fits very neatly under the seat, fully packed. This means not having to toss it in overhead or checked baggage. This applies for flights as well. It fits so neatly that no matter how cramped the under the seat storage is (Greyhound bus, subway, city bus, plane, Metro North train, etc), I can still slide my bag into it.

2) It looks really good. Even after (almost) three years of heavy, constant use, it still looks pretty nice. I've never had to throw it in the wash, so I'm not sure how it'd deal with it.

3) It sits sleekly on my back. This means that when I turn around in a crowded subway, I don't knock people over. Larger bags tend to do that, and all you need is one guy who's had a bad day to make the value of this bag unspeakably priceless.

4) It fits a /lot/. My macbook pro, laptop charger, wallet, phone, ipod, phone charger, ipod charger, wireless headphones, wireless headphones charger, work/home/friend's keys, 20 oz bottle of water, salt shaker, food for one meal, roll of yarn (and a crochet hook), a paperback novel, and CD wallet (into which I'd packed a bunch of DVDs). Steve's fits even more, because his computer is smaller. Best part is that there are compartments into which everything neatly fits, so I'm not searching forever.

However, Steve and I both have very different needs. I need something to hold just my computer, its charger, and basic day-to-day things. So although my bag needs to be larger than Steve's—to hold the computer—it also needs to be smaller on my back. Steve needs his to hold his computer a bunch of notes, his previous night's graded assignments, the test he's giving that day, possibly some snack of some sort, possibly water, and a whole host of other crap. Why? Because as soon as I get into my office, I have everything I need right there. Steve, on the other hand, is an adjunct teacher, meaning that he's got to carry his office on his back. There are a few things that both of us require, and a few things that would be nice bonuses, but we can have some wiggle room on.

On to the requirements:

1) It's got to be vegan. I'm not spending our money on something that has animal parts on it, including leather. This is absolutely non-negotiable.

2) It's got to be within my price range. I spent about $44 for each of our bags all those years ago, because we were making enough money that $44 wasn't a huge expense. I still researched the heck out of it, and bought the bags carefully, because this is something you're using every day, and you want it to be so convenient that you don't even think about it. Currently, we're not making too terribly much money, and need for our things to be within our price range. Right now, $44 is workable, but a titch on the pricey side. I wish we could afford more, but there you go. In other words, I'll spend it if I know that said bag will last longer than the (roughly) three years that the current bags have lasted.

3) Steve wants one that is big enough to hold all his stuff. He's also not too fussed about it looking nerdpack like. Because of the sheer quantity of stuff that he's carrying, his needs to maximise the comfort, and durability. He does need it to hold his laptop, but if there isn't a particular compartment meant for laptops (with the extra padding that comes with it), he's willing to use his own laptop sleeve for it, which he does own already. His laptop is 15".

4) I want for mine to be sleek, but big enough to hold my 17" macbook pro. I specifically want the laptop compartment, because I carry my computer with me all over the place, and I want the computer to be segregated from the chaos that is the rest of my bag. If something spills, at least I've got a bit of a thick, physical barrier between the $3,000 machine and the $1 bottle of water.

5) Comfort. Both of us tend to carry our backpacks frequently. We both need thick, cushioned shoulder straps. Padding is definitely a good thing.

This likely means that I'll be purchasing different ones for me and him. I'm OK with that.

My wants:

1) Red. I'd like for my bag to have as much red as possible, because it's my favourite colour, and it's different from every other laptop bag, which is either grey or black. I like being able to pick out my bag from a lineup. Yes, I know that looks aren't everything, but I do like using things that are attractive.

2) A nice carrying handle. I don't frequently use it for more than a few seconds, but the handle up on top of the backpack is often neglected. They're rarely comfortable to use. I like my current top handle, because it's just as padded as the rest of the bag.

3) Mobile phone holder. Again, not an absolute requirement, but for me, I used my mobile phone holder to hold my phone and my metro card, because I reached for both so frequently. I found out that I can even slide my ipod touch 2nd gen in there instead of the mobile phone, because the holder is flexible.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. I mainly mad this list so that I can organise my thoughts on it, and make sure that I'm not missing anything major. If you can think of anything that I'm missing (in my set of requirements) that you think I should be considering, please let me know.

Annoying subway preachers

2011-04-07T11:25:00.001-04:00

I was once on a small shuttle bus that took me between my bus stop and my job. This was years ago, when I lived in Florida, and actually needed such services. Thank goodness they existed, because it was a goodly mile or so to get there, and on hot days, an air conditioned bus is much nicer than walking.

The driver had on some bible preaching show on the radio, but the reception was terrible. Overlaid on the show was a rap station. It was very interesting to listen to, because you could hear the beats of the rap song, which was for whatever reason, in iambic pentameter. What was the interesting part? The rap song and the preacher synced up almost perfectly. Why? Because the preacher had training in speaking in public. He doesn’t have to yell and gesture wildly. He has to open his mouth, and fall into those familiar patterns that humans are so attuned to, and people listen. People don’t even realise that they’re listening. It just sneaks right in there.

This is part of the objection I have to those street preachers that invade our subways. It’s offensive, not just because it’s intrusive during a time (journey to work) that should be a private moment between you and your ipod, but also because they suck. They have none of the natural charisma that the trained preachers have, and they have absolutely none of the skill that comes from speaking in front of people for a long time. They’re making a mockery of an art form.

To someone who does know how to speak in public, listening to that crap is like someone who’s got a good ear for music listening to someone caterwaul along to a song on the radio, and do so off-key. Then, all of a sudden, even though you know the correct tune, all you can hear is the horrible singing.

Take home message: save the crappy flailing arms and shouting for your church. Nobody else cares. If you’re going to preach out on the streets, where others are going to have to listen to you without being able to get away from it, have the decency to do it well. Otherwise, shut up and let me get back to ignoring you and the rest of the world.

Soothing nature/animal documentaries

2011-03-31T20:48:00.002-04:00

I'm going to rant for a bit, so please carry on if you don't want to hear me frothing at the mouth about stuff that, in the grand scheme of things, isn't that important to anyone else.

You know what I miss? Good documentaries about animals. I'm talking those ones with a soothing voiced person telling us really cool facts about animals in their natural habitat. When Animal Planet (a TV station in the USA) came out, I spent almost the full first day watching those awesome documentaries. It was so cool. I would catch every episode of Nature that I could on PBS. I would watch them obsessively.

This goes double for Food Network. I remember a time when there were back-to-back cooking shows. Not with someone with any particular "celebrity" or "personality". Instead, it was people who would stand there, and teach you how to make food, and how to make it well. No gimmicks, no product lines, no nothing. Just good, honest shows.

Then, over time, Food Network stopped playing cooking shows, and started playing stuff that only vaguely had to do with food. Chefs on the network became celebrities in their own right, and were more interested in forwarding their gimmick than telling you anything about cooking. And then we got Sandra Lee.

This is what's happening to the documentaries too. National Geographic used to be at the forefront of excellent documentaries about animals and nature. Now? They're doing some crap about "Gorilla Murderers" and other such rubbish, where half the bloody thing is interviews with idiotic locals. It's sensationalised rot.

I want, nay, demand, the documentaries of my youth, and I don't think I'm the only one.

This is like when MTV stopped playing music videos. So then they made MTV2. Which also stopped playing music videos. And then the FOOD FREAKING NETWORK stopped playing real cooking shows, in favour of garbage. So then they come out with the Cooking Channel.

Which promptly starts playing the same old crap.

Now I remember why I cancelled the cable TV. Netflix gets me there.

Pineapple scones

2011-03-30T10:56:00.000-04:00

Sweet scones are meant to be unhealthy. Don't try to use wholemeal flour for these. They won't be as nice. Use the all purpose flour. Also, don't use brown sugar. Use the crappy white sugar. Trust me, it's worth it. You're not having these every day. You have them once in a great while with a cup of tea, and a spot of jam. Feel free to substitute orange juice for the pineapple juice if you'd like to. It'll be lovely still.

VERY IMPORTANT: Do not combine the wet with the dry ingredients until the oven is heated, the baking sheets are prepared, and you're ready to toss them into the oven. If the dough sits around for too long, the baking soda and baking powder will be spent, and your scones won't rise. Ew.

Pineapple Scones

2 cups all purpose flour
1 TB baking powder
1 ½ tsp baking soda
¼ cup oil
¾ cup pineapple juice
½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and baking soda together. Using a whisk, lightly whip the flour, baking powder, and baking soda together, so that everything is well combined. Combine the oil with the dry ingredients, and stir with a rubber spatula. Stir until all the oil is incorporated with the flour.

In a measuring cup, measure out ¾ cup of pineapple juice. Measure out ½ cup of sugar, and pour it into the pineapple juice. Stir the sugar and juice together. It won't completely dissolve, but do your best to dissolve as much as you can.

When the oven is preheated, set up your baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon baking mats. You need some kind of protection for your baking sheet, because these suckers will STICK. Between the pineapple juice and the sugar, you're dealing with sticky little guys.

Using a rubber spatula, scrape out every last drop of juice and sugar from the measuring cup directly into the flour mixture. Use said rubber spatula to combine the ingredients together well. Don't overwork the mixture, or you'll end up with tough scones, and nobody wants that. Just mix until everything is combined. Don't worry if there are lumps. It will bake out.

Also, don't worry if the dough seems extremely wet and kind of sticky. It's supposed to be.

Using a tablespoon, drop the dough onto your lined baking sheet. Try to space them apart about 1 inch away from each other, so they don't run into each other when they bake.

Bake on the bottom rack at 350F for 14 minutes. When 14 minutes are finished, turn the baking sheet around, and move it to the top rack. Bake for an additional 6 minutes. When the baking is done, remove from the oven, and cool the scones in the baking sheet.

Tofu Scramble

2011-03-28T10:48:00.001-04:00

In The New and Now Zen cookbook (did I get that name right?) the author suggests that one use regular (not firm) tofu to make tofu scramble, because the texture of well made scrambled eggs is soft, and not firm. I gave it a shot this morning, using some ideas from her first book, which detailed Japanese recipes. In it, she had you use a good fair bit of vegetables, so that each pound of tofu is stretched much further than when you make regular tofu scramble.

Let me just say that it came out fantastic. I didn't have nutritional yeast, and I don't like the colour that soy sauce makes my scramble, so I left both out. However, I did use scallions (about 3 stalks), carrots (3 medium), a courgette (small one from which I already took a couple of thin slices for a sandwich last night), turmeric, garlic powder, and salt. I let the carrot and scallion cook in oil until it was soft. Then, I piled up the veg to one side of my skillet, and added another teaspoon or so of oil. I dropped the whole cubes of 1 lb of soft tofu into the skillet. This is tofu that Steve picked up from Chinatown on Sunday. They sell both firm and soft tofu.

Their version of soft tofu is not like that which you'd find commercially. Instead, it's kind of firm, but silkier than firm tofu. Very lovely stuff. I generally don't buy it, because the firm does everything that I want it to, but they ran out of the firm, so Steve bought one of the soft. I added the turmeric and salt.

Anyway. Once the tofus were in the pan (in Chinatown, the tofus are made in ⅓ pound increments, for whatever reason), I let them sear a bit for about a minute. Then I seared off the other sides for about 30 seconds each. I wanted to evaporate a bit of the excess liquid. Then, as I stirred it with my wooden spoon, the tofu broke up into chunks on its own. That's the other bonus of using soft tofu. You don't need to mash it ahead of time, and make your hand feel frozen.

I let the veg and tofu cook together for a good five minutes or so, so that the excess liquid would evaporate, and the tofu would break up a bit more. Essentially, I wanted it to get to the point where it gets a little watery, then cross over to the other side, where it dries out a bit. I wanted a bit of moistness in the scramble, but not so much that there's liquid that'd pool on my plate. Your stove may require more or less time.

At the last 3 minutes of cooking, I added the courgette. It came out fantastic. We ate it with garlic toast.

Biscuits/Scones

2011-03-27T10:06:00.002-04:00

Scone/Biscuits

2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¼ cup coconut milk
¾ cups water
2 tsp oil
1 tsp sugar

Preheat oven to 350F

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a mixing bowl. Using a whisk, combine the ingredients together until thoroughly mixed. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (I use a silicon baking mat).

In a blender, combine the coconut milk, water, oil, and sugar. You can mix the liquid ingredients by hand, but I've found that I get best results when I use a blender. If your coconut milk is not chilled cold and separated, it works just fine to mix by hand.

When the oven is preheated, combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients. Use as little force as possible when combining everything together. However, because the recipe is fairly forgiving, don't worry if you work it a little hard. Just be careful to be gentle with the dough.

Using a table spoon measure, measure out about 25 - 30 little ball shaped dough lumps, and place them on your baking sheet. You can use a small ice cream scoop to do the job even better.

Leave about 1 inch on all sides to allow the biscuits to expand as needed.

Bake in the oven for 14 minutes.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

2011-03-27T09:42:00.001-04:00

1 1/2 cups flour (REMOVE three TB of flour from the 1 1/2 cups)
3 TB cornstarch
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Combine in a measuring cup:
1 cup pineapple juice
1/3 cup canola, peanut, or corn oil
1 TB cider or distilled vinegar
1 TB vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract

20 oz can of pineapple chunks in pineapple juice (this is where the juice came from; if you don't have quite enough juice, feel free to augment it with water)

Preheat oven to 350F. Line your baking apparatus with parchment paper. Drain (but don't squeeze out excess juice from) the can of pineapple chunks, and reserve the juice. Sprinkle the pineapple evenly over the parchment paper in your baking dish.

Sift the flour, cornstarch, sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together. Once you've sifted them into your mixing bowl, use a whisk to combine the ingredients together completely.

In a separate container, combine the pineapple juice (augmenting with water, as needed), oil, vinegar, vanilla, and almond extract. It's not going to form any kind of emulsion, but that's OK. When the oven is preheated (and not a minute sooner) combine the liquid ingredients with the dry ingredients, using a rubber spatula, so that you can quickly combine all the ingredients together. Do this in as few stirs as possible. If there are lumps in the batter, it's OK. They'll bake out. The important part is to combine everything quickly.

Then, using your rubber spatula to scrape down the bowl completely, pour the batter into the baking dish with the pineapples in. Get every last bit of batter into the dish, so that you don't miss anything.

Bake in the oven at 350F for 37 minutes. When the cake is finished baking, remove it from the oven, and invert it onto an oven safe dish. I used a baking sheet. Remove the parchment paper, and lightly sprinkle the pineapple chunks with a bit of brown sugar. If some of your pineapple pieces get stuck, don't worry. The sugar is going to cover up any ugly spots. Place the dish under the broiler for a few seconds at a time, until the sugar is melted and caramelised.

The brown sugar under the broiler step is optional, but I like it, because it makes such a nice crispy counterpoint to the moist cake.

1 year later, and still smoke free

2011-03-12T18:15:00.003-05:00

I got a letter from the NYC Dept of Health, letting me know that one year ago, I had called 311. That means that it's been one year since I quit smoking.

I remember that night well. Puppy and I were chatting, and I noticed that I was down to three packs of cigarettes. That would mean that I'd have another nine day's worth of smokes left in my stash. I went to the box that the cigarettes came in (I generally sent away for them, because I could buy cartons, rather than one pack at a time). It wasn't until that moment that I noticed that there was a note in the bottom of the box. "Due to Obama's [something or other law], we can't ship cigarettes anymore. Sorry guys!" (Or something like that.)

My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach, as I realised that a habit that used to cost me $4.50 a pack (including shipping) was about to jump to $12+ per pack. And a pack lasts me 3 days. $12 for 3 days is more than I spend on groceries. In a blind panic, I looked at Puppy, and said, "I have to quit. There's absolutely no choice anymore." I called 311 that night to ask about getting nic patches for free (they provided the first two weeks for free, then you're supposed to use the money you'd save from not smoking to buy your next round).

It went horribly. I was shaking all the time, dehydrated, and had the most awful, violent, upsetting nightmares. Anyone who knows me knows that I won't even watch films that are violent, because they upset me. Having things more graphic and brutal than that invade my brain was horrible. What was worse is that every time I'd pass by a smoker, the cravings would get stronger, and more severe. I took that mess for about a week, and stopped. It was getting too physically painful to function. Fortunately, a friend had a batch of Chantix that he was done with, and let me have. Why couldn't I go get my own? While NYC does provide Chantix, and ever major insurance and health care plan covers it, I had none at all. That'd mean I'd need to spend hundreds of dollars out of pocket for a doctor's visit, then hundreds of dollars on the pill. I don't know how that's supposed to be a choice.

So here I am. The reason I'm quitting smoking is because I can't afford it anymore. The best option (Chantix) is restricted to those folks who have the access to a doctor, and a health care plan. The worst option (nicotine patches, which do not work) are available freely. The garbage wasn't working, so I went for the Chantix.

What really helped, however, was this book called The Easy Way to Quit Smoking. I'd been off of cigarettes for a couple of weeks by that point, so I couldn't follow his advice of continuing to smoke while reading the book, and seeing that I could break the addiction. Whatever, that's fine. I was at least on the Chantix which deadened the effect of what little cigarette smoke I was inhaling from being outside, etc. WIth the combination of the two, I managed to get from going through even worse withdrawal symptoms (of quitting the patch, no less) into having my body be back at a reasonable equilibrium.

This is also when I realised that were I ever to rely on hormonal birth control I'd be pregnant many times over. I'd keep forgetting to take the pill. I tried alarms, I tried notes to myself, I tried carrying the pill in my bag. No dice. I was supposed to take it twice a day, then taper off to once a day, then taper off to none eventually. I started taking it once a day, because that's about what I could remember, and reading my book. I read the book in bites, rather than all at once, because my schedule still existed, and I still had a life.

Funny thing is that I never got to the end of the book, but I did manage to break the spell that cigarettes had over me. I don't care for the smell so much, but it doesn't grate on me like it did when I was on the gods-awful patch.

Has anyone out there actually used a patch successfully?

As I sit here in bed, hacking up a lung (bad flu or something), I'm kind of at peace to know that it's a horrible virus inside me that's causing it, and not my own actions. I don't know why, but that gives me some level of comfort for some reason.

Here's to one year, and hopefully many more, of being free of my addiction.

Quinoa & Collards

2011-03-06T10:42:00.001-05:00

I generally like Quinoa, but in fairly dry applications, like pilaf, or whatnot. What I didn’t realise is that it also does rather well in wet-ish applications as well. I made a dish with curried collard greens. You know the drill. Mustard seed, cumin seed, sesame seed, curry leaves, onions, garlic, ginger, bla bla bla. Throw in collard greens (chopped finely at the stem, and coarsely at the leaves, so that they cook at the same time). Finish with a splash of coconut milk and water. Let the collard greens get tender.

While that was going, I had a pot boiling with quinoa in. I let it cook until it was about 75% of the way done. I drained it, and dumped it into the collard greens. The quinoa absorbed the extra liquid in the pot, and made it so that the whole thing became coherent. It wasn’t as fluffy and dry as I generally serve quinoa, but I didn’t care. It was cold out, and I wanted comfort food. In case you haven’t noticed by now, comfort food tends to be creamy, and on the wetter side. Bread is good, but it becomes great when doused in large quantities of garlic, oil, and herbs. Mashed potatoes don’t become pleasurable until bathed in coconut milk, and showers of ground black pepper. Macaroni and cheese that’s not smothered in the sauce is just not tasty. Similarly, comfort quinoa is generous with the wet.

When it finished cooking, there was still a bit of sauce in the pot. A kind of quinoa and collard green and coconut cream gravy. I made a fairly large pot of the stuff, but Steve and I managed to demolish it in two sittings. First sitting was the night I made it. I served it with rounds of French bread that I sauteed in oil until it was crispy like a crouton on both sides, then I sprinkled it with salt. We ate the quinoa sort of like a thing to pile on crackers. It was ever so tasty. When the toasts were done, we just ate the rest of the stuff with a spoon.

The second sitting involves us sitting on this bus on the way to DC. The quinoa is now gone. Boo.

Dhokla

2011-02-20T22:21:00.007-05:00

It's easy to make, and relatively low drama. Here's my rough guesstimation of a recipe:

1 cup rice flour
1 cup chickpea flour
1 cup coconut milk + enough water to make the dough into a batter
1 teaspoon lemon juice, OR 1 teaspoon vinegar, OR 1/2 tsp citric acid
1/4 tsp - 1/2 tsp turmeric (adjust to your colour preference)
1/4 tsp salt
big pinch asafoetida
3/4 tsp baking soda

Soak the rice flour and chickpea flour in coconut milk/water and lemon juice/citric/vinegar overnight. Soak it on your counter, as the souring will be helped by the natural fermentation of the rice and chickpeas. You're looking to end up with batter that's the consistency of pancake batter. The next day, stir in the turmeric, salt, and asafoetida. Prepare a pan and a steamer. This will easily fill a standard cake pan. I use a steamer that fits over my wok, or a steaming rack in a big pot, with a bit of water. Grease your cake pan with oil.

When the water comes to a full boil, and the steamer is all nice and steamy, add the baking soda to the batter. You want to add the baking soda at the absolute last minute possible, because it will react with the acid almost immediately. You want the baking soda to be able to create enough bubbles that the batter becomes light and airy, and stays that way. Put the cake pan with the batter into the steamer. Let steam for 20 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium low when you put the cake pan in, so that the water isn't at a fierce boil. This prevents the pan from drying out, and burning.

When the timer goes off at the end of 20 minutes, turn off the heat, and let the cake pan sit for another 10 minutes. Cut around the edges with a knife, so that the dhokla comes out neatly. Chop into 1 inch squares or diamond shapes.

To garnish

1 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
2 big pinches asafoetida
5 - 10 chiles, sliced vertically

Heat the oil over high heat. Add the mustard seeds. When they pop loudly and vigorously, add the chiles. Turn off the heat. Spoon the mixture over the cut up dhokla.

EDIT: If you don't want to soak overnight, don't bother with rice flour. Use just chickpea flour. The final batter you end up with should be the consistency of thick pancake batter.

2011-02-05T13:51:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wux9aLivoDQ

These two ladies are too cute. Check out their video.

I've never heard of adding dosa batter to bajji, but I certainly will from now on!

Seriously?

2011-01-26T12:26:00.002-05:00

I found this recipe on Vegweb for Tofu Sour Cream (which, for the record, came out delicious), involving really simple ingredients: tofu, fresh lemon juice (and it did make a difference using fresh), olive oil, salt. The recipe called for sweetener, but nuts to that. I hate sweetener. Also, vinegar. Meh. Don't really care about vinegar. If I'm adding lemon anyway, I'll stick with lemon, and not have to add another ingredient to keep track of.

However, when reading the comments for the recipe, I wanted to slap my forehead repeatedly. Various folk tried to use /frozen/ tofu.

D'oh!

Clearly, they'd never worked with the stuff before, and weren't aware that when you freeze tofu, it gets a very spongy texture. There are some Chinese dishes that take advantage of this property, and they're lovely (not my thing personally, but I know people who like that extra chewy texture). But when you're blending tofu in a processor or grinder of some sort, you're meant to use the stuff direct from the box.

And I thought /I/ had it hard with writing recipes! For someone who has worked with tofu before, it's very obvious that no amount of grinding is going to get frozen tofu into a soft fluffy cream like you'd get with fresh tofu (the fresher the better, come to think of it). For someone who's never touched the stuff, however, there are bound to be pitfalls. This is why I love VegWeb so much: there's various people who reply to the recipe with their experience, and you can learn from it by reading the comments. It's become my go-to source for when I'm trying something that I haven't made before.

Cutting board

2011-01-26T07:49:00.002-05:00

While we're on the subject, let's talk cutting boards. I'm not going to ask you to go out and spend a fortune on them. I have one large one that I bought in a store for like $17. This is one of those things that takes a little more work to get your hands on for cheap, but again, it's well worth it.

I was in Florida at the time, and at a friend's house. He had a beautiful kitchen. Viking range, gorgeous marble counter tops, one of those huge sinks that you can easily wash a large stock pot in with no trouble at all, and enormous windows to let in the heavenly Florida sunshine. He even had the Henckles knives that I'd been eyeing at the store!

And then I saw his cutting boards. They were glass. Glass with pretty patterns on.

OH GOD WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME.

Having any kind of knife, cruddy or otherwise, and using a glass cutting board, your counter tops, or a hard plastic cutting boards (yes, they're not /as bad/ as glass, but they're pretty up there) is like seeing a really hot guy at a cocktail party, and then having him turn around to see that his face looks like he fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Aside from the annoying loud tapping noise that happens every time the knife hits the glass cutting board (and the gut-wrenching feeling that you're going to shatter the thing), you're wrecking your knife. This goes for using the counter to cut on. Or a plate. I think I just imagined my own personal hell: a person using a small tiny paring knife to cut up a mountain of vegetables, doing it on a ceramic plate that's sat atop a glass cutting board. Also, it's a plate from a tea cup and plate dealie, so there's no flat surface. Also, the cutting board is 1 inch square. Oh. And there's a giant knife block behind the person, with actual knives in.

Anyone who likes to cook will likely be cringing right now.

Let me explain a couple of things, and hopefully it will all make sense in the end. A cutting board is for a couple of things. First and foremost, it protects your knives from getting damaged. When your knife constantly is hitting hard surfaces (counter top, glass cutting board, dinner plate, etc.), the pointy tip that makes the edge is slamming against a surface that it's not meant to encounter, and over a very short time, the knife's edge warps, bends, or even shatters (in tiny little places; it's not instantly noticeable). A cutting board will also protect your counter top. Finally, a decent sized cutting board means that you're not dirtying up a million little bowls and such while you're cooking.

I know you've seen the shows on TV or the Internet where everything is neatly placed into bowls, which the chef tips into the cooking vessel. The reason they do it this way is that on TV, you want the ingredients to be in stark enough contrast to each other that you can easily identify them. Realistically, you'll notice that folk who have a large cutting board will tend to use it as a space to park the prepped veggies.

Suppose I'm making a potato soup. I set the pot on the stove over medium heat, and quickly chop an onion. If I'm making a bit more, I chop two. It shouldn't take me but a minute or two. By the time the onions are chopped, the pot is pre-heated. I heave the onions into the pot, and throw in a teaspoon or so of oil, and stir everything around. I drop down the heat to medium low, and let the onions simmer away. While that's going, I peel and chop my potatoes. For two people, I'll use two to three potatoes. For each additional person, I'll add an extra potato. Point is that while I'm chopping the potatoes, I want space enough for the potatoes to hang out while I finish the job of chopping them. Were I to have one of those dainty little cutting boards, I'd need to find a bowl where the potatoes can park. With my large cutting board, I keep everything in one place, and it's easy enough to lift the whole do, and carry it over to the stove when the veg are ready to go in.

This goes double for when I'm making more complex things, like vegetable soups, where your aromatics alone end up being three to five ingredients (onions, celery, carrots, garlic, bell peppers, etc etc), to say nothing of the veg to follow. Again, I want a place for all the different veggies to hang out so that I'm not constantly bumbling around, looking for containers for everything.

What material should you get?

Whatever you can afford that's not glass or hard plastic or marble. Stick with wood, or plastic. Try to avoid one with ridges around the side, because it makes sliding vegetables from the board to the sink a pain in the butt. Instead, try to get one that's completely flat. Trawl your local department stores for sales on them.

If you insist on getting one of those horrible flexible cutting boards, please use them as sort of liners for your larger cutting board. They're too thin to protect your knives. The first cutting board I bought was plastic. That was three years ago, and I'm still using it quite happily to this day. It's about 1/2 inch thick, and very large. I've got plenty of space for whatever I'm prepping. Later, I bought a small wooden one to supplement the plastic one, because I found myself wanting to wash just the little guy when chopping just one small onion, or one clove of garlic. For anything more than that, I pull out the big dog.

Make sure your cutting board is, at the very least, the size of a standard sized sheet of paper. Get one (initially) that's relatively cheap, so that you're not worried about damaging it with repeated use. Anywhere between $10 - $30 is a reasonable amount to spend on one, because you will use it so frequently. This one is about the size of a cookie sheet, and is around $11. Even if you live in a small apartment, get a decent sized cutting board. It's worth the space.

Life will be good.

Small hands, big knives

2011-01-25T12:09:00.000-05:00

What is it about folk with those tiny little knives? I understand that some people have small hands, and it’s easier for them to wield a smaller knife, but there comes a point when you’ll need more than a paring knife to do the job. Mind you, the cook him/herself will make the food work regardless of what tools there are to work with. I’ve seen some perfectly lovely spreads of food created by people who are working with a tiny little paring knife, no cutting board (they’re cutting on the counter instead), and plenty of care and attention to detail.

However, these people also tend to take a rather long time to get the cutting finished, because each little piece of food must be chopped inidividually, rather than en masse. If you’re not a fan of those enormous 10 inch, 8 inch, or even 7 inch chef’s knives that weigh a half ton, and cost the same as your mortgage payment, you can still snag a pretty nice Kuhn Rikon knife from the Amazons for about $20. Those things are wicked sharp, and stay sharp for a good long time. I had mine about a year before having to sharpen it. Best part is that it’s got a non stick surface, so when you’re chopping vegetables, they tend not to stick to the blade.

If you have a bit more money to spend, consider getting your hands on a ceramic knife. They’re also on the small side, and weigh as much as a postage stamp (or at least the ones I’ve used are). It’s a little awkward for me, because my hands are large. I’m typing this on a 12” iBook G4, and my hands dwarf the keyboard/bottom of the computer. For me, the 8 inch to 10 inch steel chef’s knife is ideal. For someone with smaller hands, however, the ceramic knives are an excellent option.

The only thing you have to watch for with ceramic knives is that they’re brittle, meaning that they’ll snap in half. You don’t want to do too terribly much banging and bashing of a ceramic knife.

If for no other reason than you’re going to have a faster time of it, get yourself a decent knife, and get a cutting board. The difference is noticeable, as the students in the classes I teach will let you know. Trying a nice knife exactly once (and I don’t mean the $100+ ones, I’m talking about the Kuhn Rikon ones) is enough to convince you that it’s worth the small investment.

Midweek Feast

2011-01-20T11:11:00.002-05:00

As many of you know, I try to do at least one during-the-work-week dinner that's a little more elaborate than the usual brown rice and vegetables, or brown rice and beans. It takes a bit longer (last night took about 1 1/2 hours), but it's worth it to me to break things up, and keep us both motivated to eat at home every night. The amount of money I'd have spent on one meal (about $15) I spent on enough food to feed me and Puppy for that night, and quite a few nights to come. The most expensive part was the Korean seasoned nori. That was about $1.25 for each 5-pack.

Update on the book

2011-01-14T19:53:00.003-05:00

So there we go. In other words, the current issue has been cancelled from the sellers, and will be re-listed. I'd say wait up until you see the whites of the pages, then go forward.

Hello Dino,

I hope you're having a good holiday season and that the weather isn't keeping you down. We've been slammed in New England, but I heard New York was spared, at least in this last storm.

We've had an issue, that I hope you view as minor, with the release date of Alternative Vegan. Due to the continued delays we've experienced and the way of the publishing world we've had to cancel and re-list Alternative Vegan. Our distributor who handles all of our sales to the book selling world left us with no option but to follow this path. Due to the delays the pre-orders for the book were lost and the likely hood of the title being picked up by most bookshops doesn't look good when that occurs.

What this means is that instead of the book coming out in the next month or two we've had to re-list it for the start of Fall 2011. That's the official release time period. However, the title will be finished on the same schedule we planned to complete it in which will help a great deal in the end with some of the oddities of the publishing world. We'll be able to recoup the pre-orders and get the title into the hands of reviewers who won't usually review late titles, or even titles released on time, if they don't have the book in hand a month or two in advance of its release.

Overall it's a positive development, though we were hoping to have the book released sooner than later.

I hope this makes sense and isn't too upsetting. If you have any questions please let me know.

Take care,
Jonathan

Dosa

2011-01-10T13:56:00.002-05:00

The problem is that you have to have the feel of the thing for it to work properly. The consistency of the batter is adjusted at the last minute, so that it's not having too much water in. The other problem is that I mostly eyeball it, because I've made it so many times, so my measurements may or may not match what you've heard others say. I use short grain brown rice, because I like the flavour/colour of it better when it cooks up. You mileage may vary.

If you think you dislike brown rice, you can use parboiled rice, which is more traditional in India. Just bump up the urad daal by another 1/2 cup. It's not that I use brown rice for health reasons. I deep fry things, thank you very much. It's that the flavour is (to me) far superior to white or parboiled rice. My sister and her husband flew in from India, and had dosa all the time. To tell me that mine is excellent is a pretty ringing endorsement.

To make it easy on me, I use the measuring cup that came with my rice cooker. I do four "cups" of brown rice, and wash it once. You don't want to wash off any of the natural/wild bacteria or yeast on the surface of the rice. Soak it for twelve hours in cold water. The next day, soak 1/4 "cup" (I like a lot of fenugreek, but it will make your dosas slightly bitter; feel free to scale back if you think you'll dislike it) of fenugreek seeds in water for 1 hour. Then, soak 1 "cup" urad daal in water for 30 minutes. The urad daal doesn't need very much soaking. When my mum bought a dosa grinder, the recipe that came with it suggested that she only soak the urad daal for a short time. So far, it's been working great.

SEPARATELY grind the urad daal, fenugreek, and rice, until it's very finely ground. Use the smallest amount of water humanly possible to lubricate. It's best if you use the soaking liquid. Here's the method I do. I strain out the soaking liquid for the urad daal, and set it aside. I add the soaked urad daal to the blender, and start it on low speed, along with about 1/4 of the liquid, to get it going. Once it's chopped up fairly well, I crank up the speed to high, and pour in more soaking liquid, as needed. When it's ground to a fine paste, I stop the machine, and dip my finger into it. I rub the dough between my fingers to ensure that there's no grit left. If there's no grit, I pour it out into a mixing bowl, and grind the fenugreek seeds the same way.

Once the fenugreek and urad daal are ground, I add the rice, 1 "cup" at a time, to the blender, along with 1/4 "cup" of the soaking liquid. Start it on low speed, and get the rice grains chopped up. Once they're good and chopped up, add a bit more water, and increase the speed to high. Keep adding water as needed, occasionally stopping the blender to scrape down the sides. Again, try to use the smallest amount of water you can possibly do. It's vitally important to grind down the rice very finely. Otherwise, your dosa will be gross. Also, the reason I'm asking you to grind the rice in such small batches is because you want the rice to get thoroughly ground, without overworking your motor. If you have a vita mix, feel free to use two to three "cups" of rice at once. It can handle it.

As you finish grinding the rice, pour it in with the ground urad daal and ground fenugreek. Finally, at the last batch, grind the rice along with a generous pinch of salt. Why? You want the dosa batter to ferment a bit, and it will, like a sourdough. Because of the fenugreek seeds and urad daal, you'll have a good fair bit of wild yeast in there, and it'll get nice and sour. The pinch of salt keeps the yeast from over-multiplying, and making your batter taste off. You don't want very much, because you don't want to kill the yeast. Just a nice pinch should do it.

Using a wire whisk, thoroughly mix together the ground rice, ground urad, and ground fenugreek. Cover with a kitchen towel, and let it rise in a warm~ish location. If it's cold out, feel free to wrap it in a few thick terry cloth towels, and set it near your radiator. If you don't have a radiator, preheat your oven to as low as it'll go, and turn off the heat. Wait about 1 minute, and put the mixing bowl in there. It'll rise just fine now.

Let it rise while you're off at work. If you time this just so, you can soak the batter before you sleep, grind the batter the next morning (budget at least an hour if you don't have a powerful blender, like a vita mix), and let it rise while you're at work. Anywhere from 8 - 10 hours later, your dosa batter will have puffed to double the size. It'll smell very like sourdough, and make you hungry. Don't cook it yet.

For the best results, I give everything a very good stir, and put it into the fridge overnight, to let the rice and the rest fully rehydrate. I don't know why, but for whatever reason, that final park in the fridge just makes it work. When I don't park it in the fridge overnight, it tends to make a mess of my pans, and not turn out properly.

The next morning, pull about 1 1/2 cups of dosa batter, and add just enough water so that it's like a crepe batter. Whisk it with the extra water very well. The dosa batter will keep for a good week or two. I'm not sure exactly how long it'll keep, because we tend to go through it in a couple of days. Cook up your dosa, and enjoy with salt, vegetables, or coconut chatni. :)

UPDATE: As of late, I've been making smaller batches of dosa batter at home. To make sure that my tiny little blender can handle it, I sprout the brown rice, which seems to make it softer. To sprout brown rice, wash it once under hot tap water. Soak it in more hot tap water, covered, in a place where it won't be disturbed. The next morning, drain off the water, and rinse the rice under lots of cold running water. Place the drained, washed brown rice into a tupperware container, and put it into your fridge for one more day. It will be perfectly softened 24 hours after you drain and rinse it.

Once you have sprouted your brown rice, you can also cook it much more quickly than if you used raw brown rice. In my rice cooker, I can set sprouted brown rice for "white rice" setting, and it cooks to perfection.

Coconut Rice

2011-01-08T09:43:00.002-05:00

It's one of those dishes that I keep under my hat, because I know that it's a crowd-pleaser, and I know that I can generally sort it out in a few minutes or so. I'm going into a bit of detail, because it can be intimidating for folk who haven't done it before, but it is certainly simple enough to make.

Mind you, if you've never done the spice popping thing before, please listen to my podcast episode on popping spices first:

http://alternativevegan.com/index.php?id=26

I explain in fairly decent detail about what's involved. So, here goes nothing. These are the amounts I used. You can use more or less, depending on what you've got. I didn't have fresh coconut, because the stores are only carrying really bad quality stuff, so I used frozen in this case, because it was easy enough to find. It also means that you're not worrying about having to open up the coconut. I used nonstick, because it would mean that I can use a bit less oil (although I don’t know why I bothered, because I’m adding coconut and peanuts, both of which have a considerable amount of fat in them).

Substitutions: If you don’t have asafoetida (I use LG Compounded Asafoetida), leave it out. It won’t hurt anything. If you don’t have the urad daal (also, you should be using the hulled, white, split urad daal, and not the whole one with the skin on), leave it out. The peanuts will do the job. Curry leaves are another one where it’s strictly there for if you have it. If you don’t, don’t stress about it. Those three ingredients cannot be substituted, but they can be comfortably left out. It will still be delicious in the end. The sesame seed is there, because I can’t easily get my hands on the sesame oil that I’d be using to cook with in South India. I find that adding the sesame seed to the spice mix gives a nice flavour, gives a boost of iron, and has a nice colour in there too. Use white hulled sesame seeds.

This makes a fairly large batch, but it freezes well.

Don’t use brown rice. It won’t taste right. At home, Steve and I eat only brown rice, except for when I make something special like coconut rice, tomato rice, lemon rice, tamarind rice, or any of the other South Indian spiced rice dishes. We don’t eat them frequently, because they’re not really that nutritionally strong. It’s best to keep these sorts of dishes for those times when you have nothing else in the fridge.

6 cups basmati or jasmine or long grain white rice
2 TB peanut, canola, or vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon mustard seed (brown, black, or yellow; just don’t use powdered or prepared mustard)
1/2 teaspoon cumin seed (powder is not acceptable)
1 teaspoon urad daal (optional)
1/2 teaspoon white hulled sesame seed
2 big pinches asafoetida
1/2 cup raw peanuts (preferably with skin), cashews, or other nut of your choice
1 - 3 stalks curry leaves (you can add up to 1/3 cup of curry leaves with no problem)
3 - 6 green thai bird chiles, sliced into rounds (omit if you don’t like it spicy)
1 - 3 TB grated fresh ginger
1 cup grated coconut (frozen is fine. If you’re using unsweetened coconut flakes, cut it back to 1/3 cup)
Salt to taste

Cook the basmati rice in whichever method you’d use to cook rice. I use my rice cooker, but you can use a pot if you’re comfortable with it. When the rice is cooked, DO NOT OPEN THE LID. Let it sit in the covered pot for about five minutes to finish the last stages of cooking. If you remove the rice from the cooking vessel as soon as it’s done, you’ll end up with undercooked rice. If you’re doing this one the stove, simply remove the pot from the burner, and set it on your counter. If you’re using a rice cooker, unplug it from the wall, and let your rice sit, undisturbed WITHOUT OPENING THE LID, for about ten to fifteen minutes.

While the rice is having its rest and relaxation time, start up a skillet over medium high heat. You want the heat to get hot, else the mustard seeds will never get cooked. While your skillet is pre-heating, get your spices (mustard see, cumin seed, urad daal, sesame seed, asafoetida, peanuts) in order, so that you don’t end up burning your spices. Start by pouring the oil into the skillet. A small wisp of smoke should come off the surface of the oil. If a lot of smoke comes off, you’re working with something other than peanut, canola, or vegetable oil. There’s a reason I specified.

Once your oil is smoking a little, start off with the mustard seed. Wait about 30 - 45 seconds, while the mustard seeds splutter and pop. Once you hear the seeds pop, lift the skillet off of the stove for a few seconds, until you hear the popping subside. Replace the skillet over the stove. If you hear the popping begin again in earnest, pull the skillet back off the heat for a bit, and let the mustard seeds continue to pop. The reason you do this is because the difference between burned spices and just cooked spices is a razor-sharp margin. It’s best to err on the side of caution, rather than burning your spices.

Yes, it’s normal for the seeds to end up all over your stove. The flavour is well worth it.

Once the popping of the mustard seeds has subsided (when the skillet is over the flame), add the cumin seeds. They will pop much more quickly; about 15 - 25 seconds should suffice. Add the urad daal, sesame seeds, and asafoetida. IMMEDIATELY pull the skillet off the heat, because the sesame seeds are violent little buggers, and will start popping at a much lower heat than the other spices. You’ll also notice the urad daal turning from white to a medium brown colour. As soon as the urad daal is cooked, and the sesame seeds aren’t popping so violently, add the peanuts to cool down the skillet. If you're using dried chile, or chile flakes, add it with the peanuts. Dried chile needs to cook in fat for the flavour to come through strongly.

Drop down your heat to medium low, and toss the peanuts in the spices and oil, so that they’re coated. Turn down the heat to low, and put the lid onto the skillet. Let them toast for about two minutes, then open the lid, and toss the peanuts in the spices again. Continue to alternate stirring and covering the peanuts until they’re lightly toasted. You’ll notice that the round part of the peanuts will get a darker toasty colour, while the rest of the nut is only slightly darker than before. This is perfectly fine.

Add the curry leaves when the peanuts are cooked. Stir to combine. Add a few big pinches of salt, to your liking. Stir through the chiles and ginger, and cook for an additional minute or two. The ginger tends to make everything want to stick to the pan, even if you're using nonstick, so you don't want to add the ginger any sooner than you absolutely need to.

Finally, add the coconut, and turn off the heat. Toss to coat, until the coconut gets lightly cooked. If you’re using frozen or dried coconut, turn the heat back on to medium low, and toast lightly until the coconut is light brown. I find that to bring out the strong coconut taste that the dried and frozen coconut lack, you need to give them a bit more time to cook, so that they really stand out a bit. Fresh coconut, on the other hand, needs no help at all. It is the superstar of the dish, and you just need to barely warm it through.

By the time your spice/coconut mix is finished, your rice is done resting. Take the skillet off the heat, and set it aside. If you’re nervous to have the spice mix done in time (because you’re using frozen coconut, or dried coconut, and you’ll need additional time to cook it), feel free to make the spice/coconut mix while the rice cooks.

Now, open the lid of the rice cooker. A steamy puff of fragrant aroma should rise up from the rice, and greet you. Please don’t be tempted to stick your face near the rice. It’s still piping hot, and having steam burns on your face, because you wanted to smell it closer isn’t going to help anyone.

Using a rubber spatula (heat resistant is best), gently pull the rice out of the rice pot. Pile it onto a cookie sheet, and gently (ever so gently) pat it down with the spatula so that it’s one layer high. Pour on the spice/coconut/oil mixture over the rice, until it’s fairly evenly spread out. Set it in front of a fan, or open window, or use a paper fan, or do whatever it takes to cool the rice down to room temp. If you try to mix the rice and spices when the rice is still piping hot, you’ll end up with broken rice, and a mushy mess. Ugh. Be patient, and it’ll pay off. Then, when the rice is cool enough to touch, use your hands to very gently toss the rice with the spices. Be gentle, so that you don’t break up the super long grains of basmati rice.

Eat it as is, or with Indian pickle, or as a side dish to another meal.

EDIT:

My mother saw the blog entry, and sent me an email:

greatly detailed.i cant imagine anyone having any doubts but then i'm a lifetime cook and cant think like a novice.you can add some chopped fresh cilantro to the coconut mix at the end if there is no curry leaves.try it sometime.ive had it and it tastes really good.
maybe you can mention while cooking rice its a good idea to try to cook it so it falls apart and not mushy.did you leave the ginger out on purpose or you dont use ginger.
love you
amma

D'oh! I forgot the ginger. I'll go back and edit that in now. Also, I forgot to mention when you add the chiles. It should be fixed now. Thanks, Amma!

Easy kombu dashi

2011-01-07T11:42:00.002-05:00

So I was googling around on how to sort out a kombu broth for miso soup. Turns out that all you have to do is soak the kombu in water overnight, and you're set. So I actually tried it. I broke off what I thought was a tiny piece of the kombu kelp, and put it in about 1 1/2 litres of water overnight. The next morning, the thing had grown to fill the container!

I guess I didn't need quite so much. Next time, I'll cut it in half.

Another suggestion I read was to throw in a shiitake mushroom (dried) along with the kombu, and let the lot sit overnight. If you do try this suggestion, please make sure you wash it well. Otherwise you'll end up with a fair bit of grit in the bottom of the container. This goes for the kombu as well. Wash that thing under cold running water, to wash off the excess salt, and clear off any grit that's on the surface.

The point is that the next morning, all I had to do was to heat up the broth, add a tablespoon of miso paste, some sliced scallion (1 stalk), and 1/4 cube of tofu (cut into tiny tiny cubes--it was so cute!), and a touch of salt (I like things salty), and all was right with the world. I always have a pot of piping hot rice, because my rice cooker keeps the rice hot for three days without drying it out. It made a lovely breakfast.

What's even better is some enoki mushrooms put into the bottom of your soup bowl. They cook when you pour the hot miso soup over it.

The Japanese are definitely on to something. On a cold morning like today, when the snow is falling in fat flurries, there are few things as comforting as a bowl of piping hot miso soup, a bit of brown rice, and a couple of nice condiments to round out the meal nicely. It's also super quick to sort out, and fairly filling.

Difficulty of writing a recipe

2011-01-07T09:22:00.003-05:00

Please read this real quickly.

If you don't feel like clicking, I'll copy paste a bit from it.

The recipes aren't very specific as well. Some dishes will require 2 large tomatoes, chopped. Yet what is large to one person can be small to another. I would have preferred a direct measurement like 3 cups chopped tomatoes. Some dishes will call for 2 to 3 green chilis. Well, what kind of green chilis? Serrano? Jalapeno? Poblano? Bell peppers? We overcooked our mangoes into a mushy mess on our first attempt because the recipe required simmering in water, but how much water?

Also, the recipes do not specify exact serving amounts rendered, for example the fishcake recipe simply states "Serves 4". Ok, but how many fishcakes does it make? 4? 6? 8? We ended up with 12 fishcakes from a doubled recipe. Somehow the math didn't add up. There is a definite assumption with this cookbook that one is a somewhat experienced cook and/or familiar with Indian cooking.

My friend Chuck is a rather accomplished cook. I remember when he first started his journey, and he could knock up a rather nice pizza dough, and put various toppings on for a lovely dinner. Unfortunately, he hadn't ventured out too far from said pizza dough. Then he blossomed overnight somehow, and recently shared pictures of his bread baking adventures, many of which made me want to book a flight to Alabama, and schlep the however many hours it takes to get to his particular small town. Why do I mention Chuck? Because to him, the book seemed a fine book, and one that made plenty of sense for my way of thinking: get a few good pantry staples, combine them with a few fresh ingredients, and sort out dinner in 20 minutes or so.

Unfortunately, for those folk who are unfamiliar with cooking in general, or that particular cuisine, such things are not so simple. One needs to be highly specific. While writing my book, I had to learn that lesson the hard way, because what I assume to be the norm is anything but. I recall asking someone to use a tin of chickpeas. In my brain, it was the 16 oz tin, which holds about two cups (give or take) of beans. In her mind, it was the one double that size, because that's what she buys all the time.

And, as the reviewer mentioned, "two large" isn't as specific as "two large tomatoes (roughly the size of your fist)", or even better "two large tomatoes, which yield about 1 1/2 cups of chopped tomato", so that you know that you're working with similar quantities. If the exact amount doesn't really matter much, then /say/ so. "I'm calling for ___________ amount of onions, but if you have more or less, it won't hurt anything" would be a useful thing to mention. Come to think of it, I wish I did mention those guidelines in future, so that people who are unfamiliar with the recipe feel confident to try it. I think I'll do that in the future when it comes up.

Another thing she mentioned is that they couldn't find some of the ingredients, and had to make replacements. I know that in mine, I gave instructions on replacing ingredients. I guess it's one of those things that you have to specify, or someone will try to substitute something that won't work, or substitute in places where you can't, and disaster ensues.

I find that reading the reviews on cookery books is enlightening, and helps me to learn to tighten up my own work. Thank you, review writer. You're a star for being so specific in your feedback.

EDIT: PS. I'd most likely consider the book to be quite entertaining, much like Chuck did, because I /am/ familiar with Indian cooking, and its nuances. I don't know about being an accomplished cook, but I do know my way around a spice pantry.

Red Lentils

2011-01-06T11:29:00.001-05:00

Red lentils are like this magical bean. Why? They cook in about twenty minutes or so, and you don't need to soak them. They're also loaded with fibre, protein, and a respectable bit of iron. They’re also fairly low in calories (around 170 if you start with 1/4 cup of dry red lentils, which is a decent serving portion). And they /cook in 20 minutes or so, without soaking/. Please keep that in mind.

This means that during those weeknights that you’re running late, there’s really no excuse to call for delivery of bad junk food (or, for that matter, good junk food; it all costs a fortune). I live up in Washington Heights/Inwood, where vegan options in restaurants are fairly limited. It’s why when we do order delivery, it’s from this Chinese place that does every kind of mock meat you could think of, and then some. The food is not greasy at all, and when you ask for tofu, they don’t mess about. They give you some serious tofu load.

However, dinner for two can easily run $20. Ouch. Throw in tax and tip, and you’re talking around $25. Mind you, they’re extremely nice people. When I call up, the lady knows that I’m going to ask for vegan food, and knows my address. This year, however, I have resolved to stock my pantry with staples that I can whip up in a hurry, even if I’m running a bit late from work (since I work at Chow, it takes about 45 minutes, door to door, to get home).

I always have garlic and onions in the house. This is non-negotiable. In the rare times that I don’t, the bodega downstairs carries it. Even though it’s four flights of stairs down, I can deal with it. I also always have a few kilos of red lentils in my cupboard. Why? Because there are many a time when I get home, and am too tired to really do any cooking, but I don’t want to call in for delivery and spend a fortune.

Most places that you go, you can get red lentils for anywhere between $1 and $2 per pound, depending on which neighbourhood you buy from. If I’m in Jackson Heights, or in certain areas of Brookyln that cater to Middle Eastern folk, I can snag red lentils for around a dollar a pound, give or take. Anywhere else, and you’ll be veering towards the two dollar per pound range.

At the end of the day, however, it’s well worth the expense. If you’re looking to feed six people, you can easily do it for under $10 with red lentils on your side. A pound of decent onions should run you about $0.50, if you’re not shopping in the really expensive stores. Garlic is pretty cheap too. A tin of diced tomatoes would be about (if you’re spending a lot) $1. A pound of the red lentils (max) would be $2. All said and done, you haven’t even broken a fiver. Snag some bread, and you’re out another $2, give or take. If you’re in the mood, grab a lemon, some lettuce, a cucumber, and a bit of parsley, cilantro, or whatever other fresh herb you like. All told, you’ve got a good fair bit of food.

Combine the cucumber (sliced), lettuce (washed and shredded), herbs (washed, and chopped fine) together in a large bowl. Smash a clove of garlic, and mince it up finely. Add the juice and zest of the lemon to the garlic. Sprinkle on a bit of salt and pepper, and you’ve got a lovely low fat dressing.

Take a nonstick pot, and throw in a few drops of oil. Add a diced onion, a few cloves of smashed garlic (don’t bother chopping them; the flavour will be more mild) and cook over medium high heat until the garlic and onions are softened. You don’t need to bother browning them, because that takes too long. Throw in your red lentils, tomatoes, and just enough water to come up about half an index finger’s length above the red lentils. Set it to cook over medium high heat with a lid on, until it comes to the boil. Drop the heat to medium low, and clean up after yourself. If you rub the bread with a clove of garlic, then drizzle on a few drops of oil to the outside, then toast it under the broiler for 30 seconds to a minute (just before serving), you’ll get a lovely garlicky bread.

Once the red lentil stew does come to a boil, set a timer for 20 minutes. Then go off and relax for a bit, while dinner comes together. By the time the red lentils are cooked, you’d have had time for a quick freshen up in the washroom, and a bit of time to clear off your table.

Taste your red lentils to check for seasoning, and add salt and pepper as necessary. Remember that tinned tomatoes have a bit of salt in them already, so it’s best to wait for it to finish cooking before fussing with any more salt.

This is also a good base from which to build different soups. It takes up other aromatics (that you’d add with the garlic and onion) with the greatest of ease. Peppers, chiles, celery, carrots, whatever you have. When the lentils are cooked, you can add any variety of frozen or fresh vegetables you have. The point is that it’s very easy to put together, and should be one of the first things you really get comfortable with cooking, because it’s so forgiving. That’s the reason I didn’t provide specific amounts: you’re meant to customise this to your needs and liking.

Children's Aid Society soon gone?

2010-12-01T15:55:00.002-05:00

For people downtown, the Children's Aid Society has been extremely helpful in getting child care out for poor families. They're looking to sell the building in Greenwich Village, however. They just sent out an email:

We have been pleased to be a part of the Greenwich Village community for more than 100 years, and have tremendous pride in the great early childhood, nursery, arts, after school, and summer camp programs that are currently offered there. Children’s Aid has been dedicated to helping the poor children of New York City thrive since 1853, and we constantly struggle with difficult decisions about which services are most closely aligned with our mission.

We thought it was important to take the unusual step of informing you that we are considering putting the Center up for sale. This is not a final decision, but is under serious consideration. If a decision is made to sell the buildings, it is likely that the Early Childhood Program and other programs will operate through June 2012. We know that many families will want to explore other nursery school options for next year under these circumstances. For that reason, we did not want to wait for a final decision before alerting you to the potential sale.

We are aware that this news will come as a shock to many. The programs are wonderful and the staff is comprised of supremely talented and caring people. We appreciate the support we have received from families to make the Center a nurturing and enriching environment. We will be working hard to support families and staff through this transition if the buildings are sold. We will keep you informed as this process unfolds.

If Children’s Aid decides to move forward with the sale, we will hold a meeting to explain our reasons and provide a detailed timetable. If you need to speak with someone before then, there will be agency administrators on site at various times during the next few weeks to speak with staff and parents. To begin, Vito Interrante, Division Director, will hold an Open Forum meeting for families, Thursday December 2nd at 5:30pm in the 219 theater. We are sorry to be bringing you this unsettling news, and will work to make any transitions as seamless as is realistically possible.

Sincerely,
Richard Buery President and CEO

Bill Weisberg
Chief Operating Officer

I know a fair bit of my friends have children, or have gone there as children. Rest in peace, Children's Aid, Greenwich Village. D:

Musings

2010-11-15T17:39:00.002-05:00

Those two pictures are from the path on my walk. The first photo is a picture of the subway station that I get on every morning.

Today, at least four people let me know in no uncertain terms that when they think about food/cooking, they think of me. It made me feel all warm and glowy inside. I'm "that food obsessed guy" in my friends's lives.

2010-11-14T09:30:00.001-05:00

I quit smoking and can smell things more clearly. This is not an asset on the subway platform. I can pick out four different deposits of stale, ripe, dry urine,

Not missing much

2010-11-04T08:07:00.001-04:00

I haven't really bothered watching TV in the past couple of months. There's a couple of shows I used to follow fairly regularly, like Simpsons, South Park, or Top Chef. I don't feel like I've been missing much. Maybe this means we'll just cancel the cable when the contract is over?

Weekend recap

2010-11-02T09:07:00.002-04:00

So, Saturday was (I think) about the most sensible kid's birthday party I've attended in a very long time. This is, of course, in Falls Church, VA, where my brother (Kumar), sister-in-law (Sowmya), nephew (Vinyakak), and niece (Nithya), along with their neighbours the mom (Shobha), dad (Rajesh), daughter (Neha), and son (Rishul). For reference, Nithya is 8, Vinayak is 6, Neha is 6 and change (or is she 7 already?) and Rishul is 5 (turned 5 last week, and was having his birthday party on Saturday).

We went about an hour out of Falls Church to some tiny little town with a bunch of trees and fields and such. I guess they need a lot of space for this play place, because it was enormous. Essentially, it's a giant room full of bouncy castles, bouncy obstacle courses, and bouncy slides. Everything is bouncy. And there's a music in the background, a rack where you dump your coats, shoes, etc., and pretty decent carpetting everywhere. The mix of children were pretty decent, so they actually liked playing together, and there weren't any (that I recall) tantrums or the like.

For the better part of two hours solid, you've got the children running, jumping, climbing, sliding, and laughing their heads off. Add to that the fact that the facility encouraged parents to go join their children, and you've got a clear recipe for every child in there really giving it their all to take advantage of fun time. When mommy and daddy (and a fair few of the parents did partake of all the festivities, as well as Steve and I) are crawling through the obstacle course, or sliding down the enormous slide, or jumping in the bouncing room, it somehow amps up their energy even more.

Fortunately, a lot of fun for the nephew and niece is having their uncle come watch them do something or other, so I could happily park myself somewhere, make appreciative faces, cheer when appropriate (yes, that really /was/ an impressive jump), and make sure nobody's trying to do something dangerous (rare, because everything is soft and bounces). After a good two solid hours of this, it was time to get everyone in the room to eat pizza and cake. Steve and I had eaten at home, so we were fine by then.

Anyone who's been to a child's birthday party can generally forsee how things will end up. Someone is going to get into a screaming tantrum at some point. That one screaming and fussing is going to rile up the rest. Then, nobody really wants to sit and eat, so the parents fret, because now they know the child is going to come back like 30 minutes later to whine that she/he is hungry, and why can't you get me something NOW NOW NOW.

No. Nothing like that here, thank you. After spending two hours running and giggling like loons, one tends to be ready to sit and eat. Then, once your tummy is full, and you've seen all your friends, and had a good time in general, you'll take your cake, your goody bag, and your balloon (Kumar saw to it that those got handed out to each child). There was minor fussing, but that was mostly tiredness and a readiness to go home and get some sleep. I'm very sure that the other parents had just as easy a time putting theirs down for sleepy time as we did.

Sunday was Halloween, and my mother's birthday, as well as the eve of Sowmya's birthday (her birthday was the reason that I had planned the trip that weekend). Steve's friend Rehmah was going to come over, because she lives in DC area, and it's a lot closer to hit up the train for like 30 minutes or so, than to get on a bus for 5 hours to get to New York.

Sunday was also trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving day. Sowmya, being wary of those enormous pumpkins, snagged fairly small one for the children. Each child got one that would be carved by one of the adults. No harm, no foul. First came the cleaning out part. That in itself can take a fair bit of time. Then came the carving part. I hadn't a clue what I was doing, so as soon as Rehmah came in, I promptly conscripted her to the task of carving Vinayak's pumkin, while Somya and Shobha made quick work of Nithya, Neha, and Rishul's pumpkin.

Then, off to scatter for changing, shower time, and costume putting on. Because the two houses were so close, there was the inevitable ferrying back-and-forth of various pieces of make up, hair product, and the rest. By around 6~ish, everyone was ready. We all trooped over to Shobha's house, for Sowmya's surprise party. Her friends were over, there was a small cake, but Rajesh and Kumar weren't back yet. So cue the children playing and carrying on for a few minutes until the fathers did arrive. Once Kumar and Rajesh came back bearing dinner from an Indian restaurant a short distance away, Rehmah, Steve, and I headed back to my brother's house to pass out treats from there, and the rest all went off for their door to door thing.

Apparently, the mothers on this block plan it so that said trick or treating starts promptly at 6:30, and ends in about a half hour, give or take. The efficiency was stunning. Seriously. When you have all the children in a two block radius descend for treats in a 30 minute period, it leaves you much more time for socialising, and hanging out. I sincerely doubt that it's even about the candy, because the parents are pretty good about keeping a keen eye on how much sugar the children are guffing down. Essentially, the limit is one piece per day, full stop.

We got plenty of children coming over. Sowmya didn't pass out candy, but instead had a large selection of spider rings, bracelets, stamps, pencils, mini puzzles, all sorts of things. Neat thing is that the children /were/ excited by it. Other neat thing is that Sowmya had bought a /lot/ of the stuff, so she said, "Be generous. Let them take however much they want. I don't want it sitting around my house, so get rid of as much as you can." Happily. When you see a child's face light up at being told, "Take as much as you can carry", it makes you remember back to when you were that age, and a stamp or pencil or some other junky toy was the Coolest Thing Ever at that moment.

Once trick or treating was over, everyone trooped over to Shobha's house for the cake (see how they planned it? cake at the end of the night, so you're done eating, running around, and playing, then you're ready for sleep). Once that was all done, and clean up was finished, we went back to Kumar's house to settle the children in for bed time, and for Steve and me to get packed for the trip back to New York.

After all the excitement for that weekend, Vinayak was more than happy to settle in quietly with his book, as I was with mine. For about half an hour or so, we read quietly. Then, we joined Sowmya, Nithya, Kumar, and Steve in the living room to park in front of the TV for a bit. I had Vinayak next to me, and he conked out promptly in five minutes. Nithya and Sowmya followed suit soon after.

For what happened after this, the previous entry tells about our adventures on the journey home.

Next time, let's spend the $10

2010-11-01T19:56:00.001-04:00

We got to the train station well in time, around a little past midnight. Apparently, others had the idea to catch the overnight bus back to New York. I think there were about five or six people (at the most) in front of us. I’m blaming that rally for the full bus, but the rest is just a function of being anywhere out at that hour in a city that seems to shut down around 11 PM on a Sunday.

As soon as we queued up behind those other five, we were treated to a loud, drunk, sobbing Mexican guy carrying on to his girlfriend on his mobile phone. Along the side where the pre-boarding people are to stand is a long power strip (about 20 outlets or so) where people can charge their devices. This guy thought he was plugged in, but the actual plug itself was on the floor, as he loudly and openly wept on the phone.

I, being the ever so considerate person, quietly plugged it back in for him, because I didn’t want the soap opera to cut off early. I also quietly texted Steve a translation of the Spanish, so that he didn’t feel left out. If you thought you’ve seen bad overacting in Bollywood, you haven’t seen anything yet. It started with “I’m dying, because of all the pain you’re putting me through …” and wound up around “You’re so cold and heartless my love, my life, my heart is tearing into pieces”, etc etc, interspersed with plenty of “Why do I even live anymore? I work at a bar! AT A BAR!” All the while most of the people are completely oblivious, and only see this guy sobbing a lot.

Clearly, he missed the part where working at a bar meant that he’s getting all the drinks he can get through, because he was well and truly flying in the clouds.

Apparently, he was also on a really bad phone card, because the call would drop frequently. So he’d stop crying for a few minutes, while he’d sort out how to dial the innumerable. It was like watching a young child throw a really bad tantrum. He looked around and asked if he could borrow a pen. I politely offered mine, and the use of paper, should he need. Always helpful, right?

That went into another 15 minute crying bawling fit to try to get her new phone number, so he doesn’t have to go through this rigmarole every time he’s trying to call her. She wouldn’t acquiesce, and he’d continue the waterworks. One of the greyhound employees tried to break in, and he stopped crying long enough to explain in broken English that it’s a long distance call, while pointing to the phone card. She seemed to get the picture.

So, it gets to boarding time. Suddenly, the pre-board side fills up, as if by magic. The entire lot of them had paid the $5 extra to board early. There were all of five or six of us who didn’t. While those people were all getting on, as we silently wondered if Greyhound is in the habit of overbooking, I asked Steve to snag some water. Of course, we had completely forgotten to fill our bottles at the house before leaving. That would be too easy, right?

He searched up and down the station, to see that every machine was flat out empty of water. All except the machine directly in front of us. I guess rather than spending $4 on two bottles of water, the rest of the folk heading to New York decided to spend $5 on guaranteeing a seat. I’m not sure how much I care for that, but that’s neither here nor there.

Finally, all the pre-boarding people were on. We got on to a completely full bus. Again, I’m blaming the rally, but whatever. It seems stupid that we got there that early, and were basically the last ones to get on. It seems even more stupid that a trip out of DC in the middle of the night, when the Metro isn’t running, and half the state is asleep would be quite so full. Take my word for it when I cast my doubts about the ability for the folk sharing our bus home to be able to get a rental car or taxi happening. I’ve seen what those things charge.

As seems to be tradition by now, Steve was seated at one end of the bus, and I’m on the other. Fortunately, because the hour was so late, both of us promptly conked out, and slept until (more or less) arriving in New York. Had it not been for the half hour of nervously watching the bus fill up, and hoping that we actually /get/ a seat, we’d have not really minded the wait at all. The screaming drunk guy was actually entertaining, because he was fairly skilled at changing up his diatribe enough. I also got plenty of time to charge my computer and iPod (neither of which I used, because the bus on the way home didn’t have wifi, and because I was sleeping).

I woke to see New York out the window, which meant that we’d be home shortly. There was absolutely no traffic on the tunnel in, and there was no traffic to get into Port Authority Bus Terminal. This meant that we got into the bus terminal and out of there in minutes, and were on the way to the subway station.

At 5:30 in the morning.

And the entrance to the subway via the bus terminal doesn’t open until 6 am.

We walked out around 42nd and 8th (basically, the west end of Times Square, which is still very well lit up at that hour) to realise how hard the cold has set in. Neither of us was prepared for that bone-chilling blast of cold air, having just come from DC, where it was pretty pleasant and mild. We managed to make it to the subway platform in a minute or two, but only well after having been chilled to the bone. This is after both being seated next to snorers.

At some point that night, Steve said, “Next time, spend the $10.” Fair enough. Either that, or book that Megabus or that Bolt Bus and the heck with the weird pick up locations. At least the drop off location isn’t that bad (in DC side).

We made it home fairly quickly from there, even though the train took like three or four minutes to get there, and was running local. I conked out for a second nap (I don’t leave for work until 9:45, and it was around 6:30 by the time we walked into the apartment). Steve did his coffee thing, and something else, but I was well into sleepy time by then. Three snooze buttons later, I threw on a pot of rice, and went out the door to work. I got in about 5 minutes late, but that was fine, because I was still on time to get to the stack of stuff that piled up from the weekend. It didn’t occur to me until about 11:15 that my boss wasn’t coming in on time today for some reason. Oh right. He had a meeting with investors who wanted to get some capital to expand the business.

A meeting that’d last well into the day.

As the waitress is telling me that the state Kosher inspector is there, and needs to be dealt with. Thankfully, I remembered where everything was, and he was suitably satisfied about our Rabbi’s inspection records from the previous months. Just as he’s walking out the door, and I just managed to get the soup on the stove (there were about three servings of the previous one, and blistering cold days like this on whet t the appetite for soup), I get a call from the accounting firm to sit down with me to show me how to handle deductions and work the new QuickBooks something or other. An hour after chatting to “Vincent” and “George” (I surmised by the accents that were coming through that it was likely Vijaykumar and Gopalakrishnan, but try saying that to one of the Caucasian persuasion, and watch the wholesale butchering of the names), I managed to finish off the list of the cooking that needed to get done that day, and got out the door only one hour later than usual.

Next time, we’ll spend the $10 and sleep properly in the bus.

2010-10-29T17:02:00.001-04:00

On the bus. No internet. Five more hours to dc.

How to do customer service right.

2010-10-19T20:31:00.003-04:00

Dear Companies Who Use Automated Answering Devices for your Customer Service,

It's cool if the option is "press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish". I don't even mind entering my account number (if I can find the damn thing). But that's about the extent of patience I've got for your automated system. Much more than that, and the rage begins to build. Having me route myself is merely going to piss me off, because often times, it took /way/ longer than it should have.

Verizon is a prime example. It takes me at a minimum, 2 minutes and 47 seconds to get through /just/ the prompts to get to tech support. Time Warner? About 15 seconds, give or take. Bank of America is another one that's pretty foul, especially if you have one of their credit cards. TD Bank? ANSWER WITH A HUMAN THE FIRST TIME. No automated anything. You ring up the 800 number, and a human answers. Yeah. THAT is outstanding. I think that my brother was calling (if I recall correctly) Dish network or something. Same deal there. He was actually surprised at not having to enter anything on his phone. He called the number, and a human answered.

It's getting to where I'm actively avoiding those folk who make me jump through hoops to get stuff done. I've spent more hours than I care to think about at work, sitting through Verizon's obnoxious phone prompts. Even if it takes a long time to sort out the mess, I don't mind, as long as I reach a human promptly. Because the thing is? All those prompts did NOTHING. I still have to restate all the information. What the fuck was the point of the prompts then?

So you mean to tell me that I spent the last 3 minutes of my life, punching random buttons, so that you can ask me to repeat it all again? Are you serious?

It's going to take anywhere between 10 - 15 days to do it, and it's going to cost us money to get the switch over to happen, but it's gotten to where I've flatly told my boss to switch to Time Warner, and the hell with the cost. Anything is worth getting decent customer service, promptly, and on my terms. You know what was even BETTER? When I was done with the call with Time Warner, the lady said, "And if you need to call me with any other questions, here's my direct number. Call me, and I'll personally handle everything for you."

I used TurboTax this year to file the taxes for Chow. It was difficult to use, because our books were a mess, and I had to do some fenagling. However, when I had an issue with technical aspects of th software, a techinician sorted me out in minutes after I asked the question. For that reason (along with the ease of /reaching/ said tech), I'll be using them again in the future.

The News is for crap

2010-10-17T08:11:00.002-04:00

I used to have respect for CNN news. Note the past tense. Yesterday, Steve and I were sat in a government building to sort some stuff out, and they had the news on the idiot box. There's a reason why I haven't watched TV since I quit smoking: it fills me with rage.

There was a story about how thin women make more money than plumper women.

I turned to Puppy, and said, "Next they'll have as breaking news: 'Cake is delicious!'"

Seriously, people. I understand that it's a slow news day, but there comes a point where there is no point to saying something, if what you're going to say is bloody inane and mindless. There was other news going on. Unfortunately, none of that was apparently ratings-worthy enough to warrant any time. No no. I had to sit there and listen to inane patter about how the study was so "interesting" and how it "revealed so much".

If I were rolling my eyes harder, they'd turn around.

The preceding story was about how people with high IQ tend to drink more. Guess what? Now we know why.

Weekend of busy

2010-10-06T11:29:00.002-04:00

This upcoming weekend is about to get a little crazed. Steve has his GRE on Saturday, and Sunday is our trip to Pennsylvania to attend the wedding of a friend of mine (I've known him for years). The sweetest thing ever was to get the wedding invite, and see a little check box for "If you'd like a vegan meal, please say so here".

I was stunned, and floored by it.

When I've been to other weddings, I was the lone vegan there. The "vegan option" generally consisted of roasted vegetables (delicious, mind you) with nothing else. No, seriously. No starch, no protein, nothing. Just the roasted veg. Yeah. It would be filling, but not satisfying, if that makes sense. In this case, they're having a vegan option built into the wedding meal, which is incredibly nice.

OK. Onions on the stove are starting smell a little strong. Time to get back to work.

2010-09-25T08:36:00.001-04:00

Vegan Blogging

- Food
- Personal Life
- Politics

Regardless of which of those categories you choose, there's bound to be overlap between the three, because so much of what we do is so interconnected with so much else. When you get into the political aspects, we get questions about "Well, then what do you eat?" Enter food. When we chat about food, people want to know how you manage to make "such elaborate" things on a busy schedule. Enter personal life stuff. When you talk about your personal life, the other two /always/ come up, because they're part of your personal life.

However, the preponderance of the blogs I've read have been about a general category, and occasionally have little sprinklings of the other two. Why? Because unlike TV, the Internet is sorted neatly into those special niche markets that people go seek out. If you don't care about something or someone, you merely ignore it, and find someone who is catering to your whims. Why? Because there's a /lot/ of stuff out there, and adding to the cacophony without some kind of focus leaves the blog lacking in something.

It's like those cookery books that try to be everything for everyone. People end up getting overwhelmed by all the stuff on there, and promptly ignore it. Instead, those books that make a strong statement (::cough::, like mine), and continue with that message all the time end up attracting their audiences, and flourish.

So what's the reason behind my writings and the rest? To show that being vegan is easy, enjoyable, and can be done by anyone, regardless of whether they're not huge fans of soy, living in a place where convenience ingredients (tofu, soymilk, bla bla) aren't readily available, or those who simply can't afford those things. All the entries (ok, not all, but most) are gathered around that central tenet: regardless of where in the world you are, and what your budget, if you can afford to buy enough calories for your needs, you can make it tasty and interesting, while keeping strong hold of your moral convictions. There are no excuses that apply to a majority of people.

Underneath it all, I do enjoy writing. I like putting my thoughts to paper, and I like letting the piece go where it will. Why? Sometimes I find myself writing something that I would have never said aloud.

How do I get started?
First, set up the thing. Because I'm not technically savvy, and because I'm not too fussed about the look (as much as I am about the content), I chose blogger. You may or may not have the same situation, so work out what is best for you.

Then, before launching, have a few entries planned in advance. There's nothing as disappointing as seeing someone get started on a blogging journey, and see the first few entries be utter crap. Any accidental readers who stumbled across your blog will ignore you from that point on, and you've lost a potential audience.

Then, once you have a few entries sorted out, space them out on a regular interval. The web comics and blogs I regularly visit are updated on a specific schedule, and I know I can expect there to be content there when I come back to view it. Yes, there are RSS feeds and the like, but for someone like me, who likes a small, uncluttered RSS list, inactivity means deletion. And deletion means I won't likely be coming back.

Then, as the days and weeks go by, keep ahead of yourself by at least five entries. That way, if life happens, you can still throw out a good solid entry in the interim.

Also, don't be afraid of posting extras in between your regular schedule. Sometimes stuff comes up that needs immediate attention. Be flexible enough to give your readers bonus content.

Avoid adverts at all costs. Unless you're reaching hundreds of thousands of readers, avoid any stuff that distracts from the main content. Even worse is that you can't exactly control what ads show up on your page, for the most part. What happens when the entry you wrote for mock beef has an ad next to it with a bleeding, dismembered dead thing in it? Yeah. Avoid that.

That's what worked for me when I was dedicatedly blogging. Now, I just keep the blog going for when I have major reports of my life, or plenty of pictures to share. Since mine is a food blog, pictures are priceless. Unfortunately, I have neither the attention span nor equipment to upload very many of them on a regular basis. I'll leave that to those more talented than I.

But there's a key to attracting a huge audience. Frequently update your blog with high quality images of delicious food. You'll have 'em eating out of your blog.

2010-09-03T19:32:00.002-04:00

"Excuse me," she said to the whole train. "I don't want to bother anyone, so I'll be fast. I don't need money, but I'm really hungry. If anyone has any leftover food or pieces you're not going to eat, please let me know. Thank you and God bless."

She spoke in a soft voice, just barely above a whisper, so that those who didn't want to listen didn't have to. She looked to be all of 100 lbs, and was wearing a full sweatsuit, which hung off her body like loose drapes. My stomach lurched with the thought that here I was, bemoaning the lack of cigarettes, and there she was, wasting away because nobody wants to help her find food.

There was some leftover chocolate cake that my boss wanted me to take home for Steve.

Steve agreed that she probably enjoyed it more.

Back from DC

2010-08-30T14:40:00.005-04:00

I just got back from a trip to DC.

Cast of characters
Kumar Anna: means Kumar older brother.
Sowmya Manni: means Sowmya wife of my older brother
Nithya: their daughter, 9(?)
Vinayak: their son, 6
Shivakumar Anna: Sowmya Manni's brother. He has the same exact name as my brother, so I'm using the full version to keep them sorted.

So I got to DC, and one of the first things Kumar anna asked me is "Why didn't you just catch the bus at 1 am on Friday, sleep on the way here, and just arrive into DC in the morning?" D'oh! The answer was so obvious that I couldn't see straight. OK, so that's what we'll do the next time. Vinayak was well and truly conked out. Nithya was playing with Kumar anna's new ipod touch. Sowmya Manni was driving in the front, and chatting with Shivakumar anna.

I updated Kumar anna about my committment to quitting smoking, having learned that he'd undertaken the same journey. On the way to the store, we find out that Shivakumar anna had done his own quitting about 4 years back. Huh. Interesting, eh? So with that knowledge under my helmet, I was free to relax about curbing cravings.

Once we made it to their house, got the car emptied, and trooped indoors, I was quite ready to tuck into Sowmya Manni's cootoo. It's a South Indian dish made from vegetables (generally things like radish, squash, bit of onion, cumin, mustard seed, and coconut milk). It's a pretty simple (though very tasty) dish, and it looked ravishing after that five hour bus ride to DC. I immediately helped myself to a bowl.

I mentioned off-hand what a pain it was that my ipod's bluetooth had gone under with the latest software update (which no amount of rolling back fixed, thanks), and I had to use wired headphones, because that's all that will work.

"What's wrong with the wired?"

"They keep getting caught on everything."

"Just wear the wire under your shirt."

The day had barely begun, and he'd already delivered two hugely useful bits of advice without a second thought.

I thought of these exchanges today, when I was at work. "Huh? What does '1 bucket of soup, broken and discarded'," even mean? I stared at the "broken/discarded items" log blankly. Last year, I'd keep forgetting to update the Quickbooks with any losses because of damaged items. This year, I'm jotting it all down on a log, so I can keep a running tally.

Upon further investigation ("Boss, what on earth does this mean?), it would mean that one of the service buckets, inside which soup is stored, was dropped by accident (everyone was OK; the service buckets are plastic), and the bucket broke, meaning that the soup and the bucket had to be thrown out.

Now we're getting somewhere. Right, but what do those cost? Boss Man shrugged. I silently cursed as I stalked off to the office to get to the bottom of this. I calculated the rough liquid capacity of the soup mug (12 oz~ish), and the rough size of the bucket (3 quarts?), and went about converting the one to the other and dividing across, and looking at the final score.

Then I cursed aloud, balled up the paper, and flung it across the room at the wall. 8 servings per bucket? That made no sense. So I started up again. Maybe the buckets are 2 quarts. Yeah, that's it, it's 2. Then I checked my math, and the cost of the soup. If that indeed was how much soup I'm getting for that soup recipe, we're not charging nearly enough. This makes no sense! I balled up a second sheet of paper, and stewed for a minute.

Wait a minute.

Excitedly, I ran out into the plating area, grabbed a soup mug, grabbed an empty service bucket (it needed washing out anyway), and filled it with water. Then, counting down, I started to empty the bucket, one mug at a time.

7.

Sometimes, it takes an intelligent person a frustratingly long time to find the same answer that you could have figured out in 10 seconds. I cross-checked the math with the pricing, and the little lightbulbs went off in my head. Yes. Everything fit neatly, and easily. Also, now I had a quick way to assess whether or not I'll need more of a particular thing. If I've only got 1 1/2 buckets of soup left, I'd better get into the kitchen and whip up another one. If it's lunch rush and I've only got 1 1/2 buckets of soup left, then I'd better crank the stove, crank the oven, and /run/.

Why is this so exciting to me? Because now I /know/. A little thrill of triumph crossed my face as I completed the maths problem the easy way, made my notations, and moved to the next set of hurdles to jump, with its own set of numbers to rescue from the clutches of "I don't know."

All in a day's work.

To be continued ...

300th post!

2010-08-29T13:25:00.003-04:00

Welcome to post number 300. I've been doing this blog thing for a fair bit now, and it's introduced me to some awesome people. Thanks for sticking around with me this long. It's nice to know that other people out there are interested in hearing my voice.

I'm in DC with my eldest brother and his family. The neice and nephew are adorable, as always. Their neighbours, who are such good friends that they pass in and out of each other's house all the time. I didn't realise that there were such friendly and open people around who are that comfortable with each other. I sometimes wish I could have that with another family.

To be fair, Dan and Nate are pretty cool with us, to the point that we can throw spontaneous dinner parties at random, and they'll happily come over to partake of the feast. It's pretty cool.

I've also realised that leaving Manhattan won't kill me, and that I need to chill out a bit more about it. No, this doesn't mean that I'll be voluntarily leaving very frequently, but visits to other cities aren't out of the question.

No, I'm still not hitting up the left coast.

Switched from the patch to the Chantix. So far, so good. It's not nearly as debilitating as the patch, and the dehydration would be easier to handle were it not for the fact that I'm sitting in the middle of a city that used to be a swamp. The heat is stifling hot, and there's nothing for it but to escape into the recesses of air conditioning.

Ah, well.

I'm looking forward to getting back home to Steve, because I miss him terribly even though it's only been a day thus far. My sister-in-law let me know that they have his mother's old sewing machine. Reconnecting it with Steve will be very awesome, because he's had the sewing bug in him since day one, and we thought it to be lost in space.

Life has this funny way of magically making things work out.

I still hate it

2010-08-26T08:15:00.002-04:00

I'm thoroughly not enjoying this quitting process. The patches dry out my mouth to the point where I'm dehydrated by the end of the day, and even drinking things with electrolytes in doesn't help. This is extremely unpleasant. If it weren't for the cost, I'd still be happily smoking away, but let's be honest. It's only going to get /more/ expensive. I don't fancy spending half a month's grocery bill on a luxury product like cigarettes. That's kind of ridiculous.

It still doesn't make it easy. I'm on the last 2 patches that were provided by the city. Next step is only 1 week long, and the step after that is another week. Hopefully, the smaller patches will mean less side effects.

Oops

2010-08-20T10:46:00.004-04:00

And like an idiot, I forgot to put on the bloody patch this morning. And I don't notice until I'm here at work. Good job.

To be fair, I'm not a morning/daytime smoker. So the nicotine delivery in the daytime isn't really necessary. So I texted Puppy to ask him to bring me a patch IF and only if he's in the area. Otherwise, I can deal, and put one on tonight when I get home. Maybe I should be doing that anyway. Y'know, just putting on the patch around the hours when I'll need it?

I had a phone conversation (a quick one) last night with Steve's nephew Trevor. I had to be quick, because I didn't want to reach for the no longer there pack of cigarettes, but I guess it's a step in the right direction.

So I made this soup from red bell peppers, and I didn't hate it! Why? Because I couldn't taste it strongly, that's why.

Start with two large Spanish onions, and sautee it in enough oil that the pan is well lubricated. Keep going until they're almost brown. While they're going, chop up 6 large baking potatoes. Get them into an even dice, if you can. If you can't, who cares. You're going to puree the thing anyway. Then, chop up 6 large red bell peppers. Dump the peppers and potatoes in together when the onions are cooked through. Stir everything around. Add in a good kick of curry powder. It needs it, trust me. Also, heave some salt into the mix. Keep stirring. When everything is a lovely yellow, slam on the lid, and let it cook in dry heat for about 10 minutes. You can open the lid and stir every couple of minutes if you're a nervous nellie, like me. :)

To make cheater cheater pumpkin eater type quickie stock, get 2 litres of boiling water, and pitch in 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast, and whatever dried herbs you have lying around. I used oregano and thyme. Let it sit for five minutes, and you have stock. Wahey. Don't add salt, because hi. Who adds salt to stock? You might as well leave it unsalted, and adjust at the end, so you have control over your flavourings.

OK. So once the potatoes and peppers have cooked for a good 10 (or 15, because I got distracted and forgot) minutes, throw in the cheater stock you just made. If you don't have nutritional yeast, no big. Leave it out, and just use the herbs. If you don't have herbs, go to the bloody store and /get/ some herbs. Come on, people. Gotta work with something, right?

Then, once that's all sorted, blend 2 cups of coconut milk with 1/3 cup of cornstarch, arrowroot, tapioca starch, potato starch, or whatever other starch you have. Use a stick blender or a regular blender, because those starches can get stubborn, and clump on you for no reason. No, you can't use all purpose flour, because you then have to cook the raw flour taste out of it. If you /really/ were determined, go ahead and make a roux, and add coconut milk to it. I won't tell anyone if you won't.

Let the potatoes and peppers boil together until the potatoes are tender enough that they're almost falling apart. Pour in the coocnut milk and starch mix. Let it come up to a full boil, and then turn off the heat. Blend the soup until it's smooth. If you're one of Those People, strain it. If you're not afraid of a tiny bit of texture, leave it be, and eat it.

It was tasty. There was the savoury taste of the bell peppers, but none of that yucky bitterness.

Reeling it in more.

2010-08-17T18:38:00.002-04:00

OK, so because of the horrible nightmares, and terrifically bad insomnia, I stopped wearing the patch before going to sleep, and don't bother putting it back on until I'm good and awake, and have seen the better side of a shower. So from about 9 PM to 10 am~ish, I'm not wearing it. That's fine, because I never was a big smoker in the mornings anyway. Hopefully, this means that when I have to get to the next stage, it won't be quite as challenging as getting rid of cigarettes was.

The improved weather conditions means that I'm not going through such dehydration issues anymore. My appetite is back, and I am able to get through the day as long as I keep a glass of water on hand at all times. It's a good thing that I'm trying this when the weather is clearing up, because if I were sweaty, dehydrated, and generally physically miserable, I'd be outright unbearable to be near, much less live with.

Yesterday's books were Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (sp?) and Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, as well as Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey. Garlic and Sapphires is Ruth Reichl's memoir of her tenure at the New York Times as their food critic. She talks about the various disguises she used at the restaurants, so as to remain anonymous. Interspersed are recipes for various foods that she enjoys. Nothing that I can eat, but a fun read nonetheless. Lords and Ladies is another Discworld classic, and features Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg (and the rest of the Ogg clan), and Magrat Garlick. They're amongst my favourite characters, so it was definitely a fun read.

Sleeping Beauty is another story in Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series. It's about a princess who is being pushed into a Traditional fairy tale life (beautiful looks, mother dies, wicked stepmother enters, handsome prince, etc. etc.), and is none too thrilled with the prospect. You learn early on that Fairy Godmothers sometimes need to use expediency over strict rules, so that the people they care for are taken care of. Definitely a fun read, in my opinion. It's technically a romance novel, but there's no smut. This is a Very Good Thing, as the thought of a man and a woman being intimate turns my stomach.

I've noticed that every time I crave a cigarette really badly, I tap on, or touch the area where I've placed the patch. I don't know why it comforts me, but I'm not going to complain. It's doing its job right now. I guess when I finally am no longer wearing said patches, I can wean myself off with a bandage or something. It won't be quite the same, but it'll get me there, just as touching the patch isn't the same as lighting up, but it gives me something to temporarily discharge the all-encompassing craving very quickly. I'll take what I can get.

I'm still quaranting myself from high-trigger situtations, such as talking on the phone, watching TV, or eating big meals. Hopefully, in a few week's time, when the worst of the edge isn't there anymore, I can slowly integrate those parts of my life back into my regular schedule. Mind you, watching TV and eating big meals aren't exactly the best things in the world, but I do miss talking to my mother and my friends on the phone. There's something that the phone does that is missing with an email.

Oh well. Baby steps, right? It hasn't even been a week yet.

Ratcheting down

2010-08-15T10:05:00.002-04:00

When I'm feeling sad, or scared, or in need of comfort, I tend to make soup. I don't know why, but the ritual itself has a calming effect, especially when I do it Properly, and chop all the ingredients really finely, and have everything in neat little bowls, arranged atop the cutting board, ready to go. No last-minute chopping for me! When I make soup in this manner, the point is not to get a pot of soup finished. The point here is to get the perfect pot of soup on, and to savour every step of the ritual, and completely lose myself in the process, so as to have it almost be a sort of meditation.

Yesterday, when my mood was particularly bad, I decided to putter into the kitchen, and make soup. See, the thing about it is that with the nicotine patch on overnight, as they suggested so that I don't get morning cravings, I ended up with pretty disgusting, violent (prolonged, not one-off), and gory dreams, and I would wake up with a sick feeling. Unfortunately, this would mean that more than a couple of hours of sleep was just not going to happen. This also meant that I would feel even more out of sorts the next day, which kind of defeats the purpose.

So anyway. I'm feeling a bit rough, and decided to go into the kitchen and make soup Properly. I started with two medium sized onions, and chopped them into a fine mince. I chopped one large jumbo horse sized carrot (you know the kind; one of them weighs a pound) into 1/4 inch dice. I diced up 2 plantains (peeled, 1/4 inch dice, please), 1 yucca (1 lb yucca, peeled, split in 4 lengthwise, middle stem removed, then 1/4 inch thick slices), 1 medium potato (1/4 inch, unpeeled waxy potato), and a medium head of cabbage (quartered lengthwise, then each 1/4 cut into 3 lengthwise pieces, then shredded with a knife of about 1/2 inch thick slices). Since my soup pot is cast aluminum, I did have to use a bit of fat to get things started, instead of doing just a couple of drops as I normally do.

Usually, what I do is that I get the stove started, throw the pot on, and throw in some oil. Then, while the oil heats, I make a mad dash for the fridge, grab the onions and carrots, and start frantically peeling. The oil is hot enough by then (and almost smoking). I then throw in the mustard seeds and run back to chopping, then in with cumin and back to chopping. It's chaotic, frenzied, and ever so much fun. It's almost like a race to beat the stove.

But today was about slow, deliberate, and thorough cooking.

The whole chopping of the vegetables took about 30 minutes solid, which gave my brain time to completely blank out. Even though I can carry on conversations with others when I'm cooking, I tend to prefer to let my brain clear completely when I cook alone.

Once the veg were chopped, I did the standard mustard seed and cumin seed thing, then threw in the carrots and onions, along with a bit of turmeric for colour. I turned the heat down to medium, covered the lid, and turned around to clean up after myself. See, usually when I'm cooking, there's a fairly big mess to be had, because I'm mainly concerned with getting all the food cranked out at the same time. This means that any spare moment is spent getting more food cooked, and clean up becomes secondary. This time, however, I had the time to putter around for a bit, and watching a pot of onions and carrots sweat slowly isn't my idea of amusement, no matter how pretty it may be.

I remembered that I should have put a pot of rice on, so I shut the lid, and quickly threw in 4 cups of brown rice, along with the needed water. That barely took a few seconds.

By the time the requisite 15 minutes had passed (for the cooking of the onions and carrots), I'd managed to clear out most of the breakfast dishes, along with the new ones I'd created while cooking. In went the plantains, potatoes, and yucca. Since they're all chopped small, they'll cook at the same speed. I tossed them around to get them evenly coated with the spices and aromatics, then increased the heat just a tiny bit, and replaced the lid. Back to cleaning! After another ten minutes, I added about 3 litres of water.

Side note: I don't use stock, because it doesn't actually add enough flavour to my soup. When I have all these spices going, only water will do, so that the spices can come through, rather than being muddled as they would be were I to use stock. Save your stock for when you're in a real rush, and don't have even the time to throw in a couple of powdered spices to the mix, and just want to dump everything into a pot, throw in some stock, throw on the lid, and set it to simmer away.

I increased the heat to high, and went back to my cleaning. I have one of those gas stoves that has the super high heat burner, which meant that it wasn't going to give me but 3 or 4 minutes to clean. Just like with Proper Cooking, I tend to let my mind wander when washing dishes or doing other cleaning. I just mentally disconnect, and let myself go for a while.

After the water came to a full, rushing boil, I went to my freezer, snagged a few stalks of curry leaves, and scattered them in. I would ordinarily throw them in with the spices, but with frozen, I wanted the taste and colour maintained, so I added it at the end. I also added a clove of garlic, and a bit of salt and black pepper to taste. As a finishing touch, I sprinkled in a bit of red chile flakes, and shut the lid again.

The water needs to now boil quite fiercely for about 15 minutes. If you chop your veg slightly larger, they'll need closer to 25 - 30 minutes. At the end of the 15 minutes, the kitchen was mostly clean, save for the cutting board atop which the cabbage rested. I opened the pot back up, threw in the cabbage, let it keep boiling, and opened up a tin of coconut milk. In that went, and on the lid went. I turned off the heat. Cabbage chopped that small doesn't need to boil. It can cook in the residual heat. I cleaned off the cutting board, and went to lie down for a bit, while the cabbage finished its cooking. I picked up Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel. Very good book.

By the time I got to the chapter with Tita's wedding cake, the rice pot beeped (it had a few more minutes when I left the kitchen). The cabbage was done to a turn. Not soggy and limp, but very slightly crisp still, although cooked through.

Books read thus far as of Friday:

Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett
Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman (I didn't know what to expect from this one, but from the teachers I've spoken to, such things still go on.)
Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett

For the record, the soup was delicious.

Still craving, slightly cranky

2010-08-14T16:56:00.003-04:00

After not getting decent sleep last night, from the horrible nightmares, and then getting a fairly massive high-level craving like I haven't had in a very long time, even when I was smoking and I'd forgotten my cigarettes at home, I picked up "Up the Down Staircase". Definitely a good read. To give you an idea, I powered through it in the space of roughly 2 hours and change. That, alongside a stiff drink, took the edge off, and I'm not craving, until some jackhole is smoking right outside my window, and the smoke is drifting in. Going back to the dining room, where it's a different side of the building that faces out.

2nd day

2010-08-14T09:21:00.002-04:00

Last night was rough, I finally got to sleep around this morning at 6:30 ish, and couldn't manage more than an hour, because I started getting horrific, violent, bloody dreams. Same thing happened the first night, and early last night when I did get that quick sleep. I don't watch violent film, watch the news, watch violent TV, read books of that nature, or anything else along those lines, so it's a little disconcerting to try and figure out where my brain is manufacturing these images from.

I'm mainly talking to Steve, who's talking me through the rougher patches. Fortunately, I haven't really had any other purely physical withdrawal symptoms, which is reassuring. I guess then that I need to alter my patch schedule, and just not wear it at night before sleeping, else this may end up to be a rather nasty little set of side effects that can make this more miserable than it needs to be.

I'm thinking it might be best to snag some chamomile from the store to brew as tea for bed times, so that I can at least get to sleep without any further chemicals going into the mix, but we'll see about that. Still, today shouldn't be too hard, because I don't usually smoke in the day time when I'm by myself, or relaxed already from the night before (as is the case), and I'm just staying home. It's a tiny bit difficult to be computer-less, but hopefully, they'll get that sorted soon enough.

Currently reading Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel to occupy the hands. Will keep you all posted.

But in everything, there is some good.

2010-08-14T02:24:00.002-04:00

So, as stated earlier, I've made the leap and decided to quit smoking. This morning, we woke up at 6:30 (as we always do), and the patch had stayed on (miraculously) overnight, and hadn't budged. So far, so good. I dashed into the kitchen to scare up some breakfast for Steve (I'm not a morning person; my job is to /make/, not eat said breakfast), and truly wake up. There I am, making some curried plantains, when it sunk in. Once I put on that first patch, I needed to go forward and commit to it completely.

I walked into the living room, picked up my lighters, ashtrays, and cigarette boxes, and threw them all in the trash. That way, even if I am tempted to bring home a cigarette, I won't be "set up" to smoke the thing. It's a small concession, but there you go. Removing the triggers will likely help me to think of my house as nonsmoking now.

We made it out the door to get to City Hall. After four years, we finally decided to stop procrastinating, and get our butts down to get a domestic partnership agreement signed and sealed. It was difficult not to bite down a bitter thought towards the couple in front of us who were getting a real marriage license, her in her pretty white dress, and him in a nice black suit, but I managed, because those two were having a wedding in City Hall, whereas mine was with family and friends. Small concession, but there you go.

On the way to City Hall, we stopped by the Starbucks, where I got an Earl Grey to clear out the morning cobwebs. Bad idea. I've known for some time now that I can't hold my caffeine, and that it hits me strongly. That stupid tea is the reason I'm still awake right now, after like a 1 hour catnap. Anyway.

It was still freakishly early by the time we got out of City Hall, and I had a good two hours until work. On a whim, I asked Steve if he'd like to just go to Washington Square Park with me, and hang out for a bit till I had to go in to work. He looked at the time, and thought that sounded positively fabulous, because the day was very beautiful (cool breeze, very light bit of sun, empty streets). We decided to walk, because he didn't have an unlimited ride card, and again, beautiful day. He took me up Broadway, past Chinatown, across Houston, and up Sullivan Street. On the way to the park, the buildings stood out so much more vividly than ever before.

Things that I'd never paid attention to before came to the forefront for me. It was a wonderful excuse to just be together a little longer, and make plans for the future (shopping and otherwise), chat about stupid things, and for him to show me "his" neighbourhood. He works down there around West Broadway, and is very familiar with that trail.

We got to the park, and the first big craving hit. Usually, when I'm early for work because I planned it that way, I'll grab a soda and a cigarette, and sit on one of the benches in the sun to just relax for a bit. I kept it light, choosing instead to talk about anything that would distract me. We walked to the Fountain, facing the Arch. Then, a man walked onto the fountain on the opposite side, took off his shoes, and waded in. Watching him collect coins that people had tossed into the fountain provided a good bit of distraction.

See, the literature that I got told me that if I'm to kick the habit permanently, I need to break patterns. For example, if I come home, and sit in one particular favoured spot, and do a certain set of activities before lighting up a cigarette, to do anything but that when I get home. So this time, instead of buying a soda, I had a tea, and instead of the benches we headed to the fountain. I don't know why, but that small thing took me out of that head space, and got me distracted enough by the new experience. I guess that's also why the buildings looked so pretty.

I headed to work an hour early, as there were more and more people coming into the park, and having their own cigarettes. The smell was becoming too tempting, so I asked Steve if he minded if I head into work early. He seemed game, and walked me to the restaurant. I showed my boss the domestic partner certificate, and he and Steve got into a heated rant about how stupid it is that I can't just get a marriage and get it over with. I quietly agreed, but didn't really get into it, because my brain was still thinking of those cigarettes in other people's mouths. I know that this will pass too, but it's still hard to get past that initial craving.

Aside from being ritualistic (smoking on the phone, while walking, after eating, etc.), smoking is also a very social habit. You'll tend to smoke when others are smoking, whether or not you really crave a cigarette. I guess it's like any drug in that way, eh? So seeing someone else light a cigarette makes me subconsciously reach for my bag, even though I stopped carrying cigarettes in the day time a long time back (except on those one or two days that I'd have in the Park).

Work wasn't stressful until I started plunging into the numbers part, which started to give me a throbbing head ache. There were records that weren't being categorised correctly, and when I saw the large list of them that needed to get done, a ghost of a headache started from the back of my skull, and spidered its way forward.

Stupid cravings.

Of course, it doesn't help that the nicotine patch is giving me dry mouth something fierce, because the kitchen is dehydrating as it is. A few hours of sweat later, I managed to get onto the subway, shaking a little. An uneventful, though anxious trip home followed. I dreaded it a little, because the first thing I do when I get home on a Friday night is to have a glass of water. Why? Because the water is tasty, and it helps me disconnect from the world that I just left behind. Then, I'd either flip open the phone, and chat to a couple of friends or Amma, pour myself a drink, and have a cigarette in front of the TV. In between phone calls, I'd keep having more drinks, and more cigarettes, until the rest of the week would fade away.

It makes it pretty bad, because now I associate talking on the phone or watching TV with having a cigarette. I don't want to avoid my friends or family, but right now, I'm still a little rough around the edges, and don't trust myself very much to handle contact. So I poured myself a drink, and sat at the dining room table, in front of Steve to chat to him. Pattern breaking, you know. It seemed to do the trick for about five minutes, before Steve noticed me fidgeting.

"Did you finish that Pratchett novel?"

"Oh shoot! No I didn't!"

He inadvertently struck on the one thing that I never smoke while doing: reading. When I read, I'm so engrossed in the book that I can't be bothered to. Sure, I can eat, or drink water, or whatever, but smoking is a definite no, especially since I could end up damaging the book. I guess I've found my distractor for the next few days: reading.

For the curious, the novel was Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett. Not his best work, but still quite diverting. Yes, I did finish it, by 9:00 which is bed time. After we both went to sleep around midnight~ish, I got back up at 1:00.

Damn tea.

2010-08-13T17:41:00.001-04:00

Good god day one of no smoking was rough. Threw out all my lighters and ashtrays. No turning back. But the dry mouth is murder.

How to eat hummus

2010-07-27T05:50:00.004-04:00

Side update: I'm still having issues with the heat, because when the oven gets turned on at work, the temperatures skyrocket, and no matter how much water I drink, I go into mild heat exhaustion, and I start shaking, and my head gets light and floaty, and my muscles get really weak. Once I'm on the subway in the air conditioning, I'm fine. It's been persisting for about a week and change now, and I don't rightly know what to do about it, save not go into the kitchens, which isn't an option. If anyone's got any suggestions, feel free to weigh in.

Now. Onto how to eat hummus.

With a spoon.

The end.

I'm only teasing. Irma asked in a comment what to do with hummus, and/or different ways of using the stuff, aside from just putting it onto pita bread. I had a couple of suggestions mulling about in my head, so rather than just replying to the comment, I figured I'd just answer it here, in a new post.

First off, here is my little blurb about how to get perfect hummus every time. If you've got any input for that recipe, feel free to weigh in. I went extremely detailed and slow, because a lot of times, the recipe will be vague, or so rushed in its eagerness to show you how simple it is that people aren't going to be able to reproduce your results. That's just not right.

For starters, let's talk about different ways of using the hummus all by itself. I really wasn't joking when I said I could cheerfully eat it with a spoon. I can, and do so regularly (someone has to taste the hummus to make sure it's perfect, right?) at home and at work. Sometimes, it's nice to just appreciate something for what it is.

Vegetables. Vegetables are a perfect excuse to eat more hummus. Break out the carrots, celery, cucumbers, apples, pears, broccoli (steamed or raw), cauliflower (steamed or raw), beets, or anything else that comes to mind, and try it with your hummus. If you're making hummus with nice fresh herbs, like dill, or basil, or oregano, it's especially delicious with apples, pears, or other sweet but firm fruits, so that you get that contrast of the crisp, juicy fruit, and the salty, creamy hummus. Yes, I know that pears and apples are a fruit. Moving on.

Breads. Pita bread is excellent with hummus, but it's not your only option. While I'm here, let me make a sideline note about pita & hummus. You will find that your eating will be ten thousand times more pleasurable if you simply toast the pita bread with a little bit of oil before eating it. If you're doing like 20 or 30 pitas, just brush them with oil, and toast it in the oven, until it's lightly browned (about 10 minutes), and warmed through. Otherwise, heat up a skillet, drizzle in just a tiny bit of oil, and lightly fry the pita on each side until it's toasty and brown. Then, slice it up into triangles, and serve immediately. The pillowy steam that escapes the pita bread will make it so much nicer to eat, and you'll soon find yourself out of pita.

But aside from pita bread, try other breads. Often, when you go to the store, you can get day old bread for cheap. Take it home, and lightly sprinkle on a bit of water onto whichever slice of bread you want to eat. Then, fry as you would the pita bread, but use a touch more oil. Then, slice the slice of bread into strips, and dip away. Pumpernickel, rye, sourdough, baguettes, or any other dense, hearty bread works great.

While we're on the subject of breads, let's talk sandwiches and wraps. What better bread spread can you think of than hummus? It's high in protein, and lower in fat than those margarines and other rich dressings (like vegan mayo, etc.), while still having plenty of taste to boost the sandwiche's prospects. This is also a great spread for when you want to make a wrap of some kind. Think of it. Just a generous dose of hummus, cucumber, spinach, olives, and maybe some red onion and salt, and that's a wrap! Soooo good.

On to more advanced techniques. When my friend Mikeypod came over for Thanksgiving one year, he brought some pita from this place in Brooklyn that makes it fresh every day. They were like eating clouds. I split one open lengthwise, so I had two circles. I smeared both with a thin layer of hummus. I sandwiched them back closed, so that the hummus is on the inside. Then, I sliced them into triangles. I then dipped it into my bajji batter (it's in the book), and deep fried them. You heard me. Mind you, it's not something I'd do nowadays (or if I did, I'd make only a very small batch), but it was a special occasion, so I decided to splurge a little on the calories. What ended up happening was that the batter sealed the traingles well from the oil, so that the triangles started to puff up into fat little pillows. When they were golden brown in both sides, I served them piping hot. It was so much fun to eat those little pockets.

Of course, one must never forget hummus dressing. Essentially, it's just hummus thinned out with water until it's as liquidy as you want. You can do it with the store bought stuff or home made, depending on how much space/time/appliances you have. If you want it to be better still, dump it in the blender, and drizzle in a bit of extra olive oil as well as a bit more garlic and salt, and then add the water, with the blender going on medium speed. This will ensure that it's as smooth as possible. Try it some day over mixed greens, or other vegetable or bean salads, and you won't be disappointed.

My mother likes to stir into hummus some cabbage, carrots, and diced dill pickles, to make a sort of a cole slaw without the mayo. Try it some time, and I'm sure you'll love it as much as we do. She did it the first time, because I had added too much salt for her liking, and she wanted to eat those raw vegetables anyway.

When it's just for me and Steve, I like to make hummus really spicy, by adding a fair bit of chiles to it. When you do such a thing, an excellent way to serve it is as a canape. Just get some cucumber slices, pipe on the hummus, and top it with a little spray of dill. The presentation looks so cute to see all those little slices of cucumber with their hummus hats. The same works with zucchini, summer squash, tomato, or any other vegetable you can get into nice little rounds. If you felt like it, you could also do this with rounds of toast, but the vegetables are already in that adorable shape.

Hummus is excellent on crackers, especially if you do a cracker, a thin layer of hummus, a slice of vegetable, another thin layer of hummus, and then top it with a slice of tomato, a dollop of hummus, and a bit of cilantro or parsley. Again, it's a bit of work, but it looks so fetching. The fat in the hummus will protect the cracker from getting soggy, but it really should be eaten as soon as possible.

I know that others will have plenty of their own ideas, so feel free to weigh in if you wish. Hope this helped, Irma!

Random Call

2010-07-24T06:12:00.003-04:00

I've been feeling sick all this week, so I haven't really been up to posting much of anything. It's those kitchens. In the 90º heat, you start feeling dehydrated and dizzy, and mentally loopy, not matter how much water you get through your system. So I'll leave work, and just come home and pass out from tiredness.

In better news, my friend Denise called me last night (early, so she caught me before my inevitable collapse into sleep), and said "I have some cauliflower and some chickpeas and some tomato, and I'm not sure what to do with it". I told her to use the QUICK Garbanzo Soup (sort of a quick and dirty Chana Masala type thing), and do a shortcut type aloo gobi (pop cumin and coriander in a pan with oil, add garlic, onion, ginger, sautee, add potato, turmeric, salt, cook till tender, add cauliflower and cook till tender, then turn off the heat and stir through garam masala). Apparently, she already had leftover rice, so that was no problem at all. If she did have access to an oven, I'd have asked her to simply toss the cauliflower and potato with the spices, garlic onion, ginger, oil, and what have you, and just throw it in the oven for 30 minutes.

Either way, the food came out great. She graciously took a photo for scientific purposes. Here it is.

Dino's Mac & Cheese

2010-07-16T16:09:00.003-04:00

I mostly eyeball it, but I can share the rough outline of how I put it together, because people have asked, and I don't really mind sharing. Some of the amounts are approximated, but there you are.

1 lb pasta (I like the large, fat, ziti noodles, but elbow macaroni works too)
1/4 cup flour
3 TB oil
2 cups coconut milk thinned with 2 cups water
1/2 cup water, reserved
1 TB miso paste (sweet white miso)
1 TB dijon mustard
1 TB nutritional yeast
2 tsp tahini
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
3/4 tsp turmeric
1 tsp paprika
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
Breadcrumbs, tossed in oil

Set a pot of water on the boil, and cover the lid. It'll boil faster this way. You'll want about 1/2 gallon of water per pound of pasta, so that the noodles don't stick together. While the water comes to a boil, we'll make the sauce.

Start off with a roux (fat + flour, over heat). Over medium high heat, set down a large skillet (larger than you think you’ll need). Add the 3 TB of oil, and ¼ cup of flour. Whisk the two over heat, until the flour smells slightly nutty, and the oil and flour are bubbling slightly. When you’ve reached this light light blond stage (called a blond roux), pour in your room temperature water and coconut milk. Many recipes say to have your liquid hot, but I don’t care to mess up another pan. So nuts to them.

When the sauce (now a béchamel) comes up to a boil, drop down the heat to low (as low as it’ll go), before adding the next set of ingredients. Add the miso, mustard, nutritional yeast, tahini, garlic powder, onion powder, turmeric, paprika, salt, and pepper, and whisk vigorously, until all the ingredients are in a smooth creamy sauce. If it’s thickening up too much, add a few tablespoons of water from the reserved water. I often find that I do need to add water, but your mileage may vary.

Once the water has come up to a full rushing boil, dump in your pasta, and generously salt the water. I’ve been told that it should be salty, like the sea. I grew up in Florida, near the sea, and I know what that means. For those of us who have never been in the ocean, think of it to be as salty as your tears of disappointment at never having been to the sea. This is so that the pasta gets good and salty early on.

Once you have the pasta in the pot, slam on the pot’s lid, so that the water comes up to the boil faster. The sooner your water comes to the boil, the easier it is to prevent it from sticking to itself. As soon as you hear the water in the pasta put bubbling away, and making a boiling noise (it sounds like when you blow bubbles in your juice in the morning to annoy your sister), remove the lid to prevent the pasta from overboiling and making a mess on your stove. Set the timer for 7 minutes. Yes, this means that the pasta will be under-done, but that’s the point. Stick with me.

Now that your pasta is merrily bubbling away in its hot bath, the sauce has had a chance to simmer over low heat for a few minutes. See what we did there? Rather than fussing at the sauce, we let it just relax, and the flavours combine properly. This is important. At this point, you may taste the sauce (but just a little—you want to save some for your pasta, right?) for seasoning. If you feel like it could use a bit more salt, go ahead and add it. If you feel like it has too much salt, panic. No, don’t panic. Just add a bit of sugar until the salt seems to be neutralised. Whisk, whisk, whisk. Right then. Once it’s seasoned to your liking, turn off the heat under the sauce, put on the lid, and let it chill out while your pasta finishes cooking.

Generally, by the time I’ve finished fiddling around with the sauce’s flavours, the pasta would have finished cooking. Drain the pasta once the timer beeps, and put it into casserole dishes. Why? Because this way, the pasta pot is only dirty with water, which is easily cleaned, versus being dirty with sauce too. This way, you can also gauge how many casserole dishes you need without making a big huge mess. My pasta pot’s opening is much narrower than the top of the casserole dish. I make less of a mess when I transfer from colander to casserole dish.

Make sure that the casserole dish is only filled up ¾ of the way. Now pour the sauce over the pasta in the pot. If you do end up having to split the pasta up into two or three dishes, it will have been fairly easy to do if you did it when the pasta is unsauced. Now, toss the pasta in the casserole dish until it’s combined with the sauce. If you have extra sauce, this is very good. Dump that over the pasta in the dish too. It won’t hurt anything.

Finally, sprinkle the tops liberally with breadcrumbs that you have tossed with oil. This is not an optional step. The crispy breadcrumb crust makes it all the more worthwhile. If you don’t have breadcrumbs, run down to the bodega and grab a few packets of soda crackers, and crush them with a rolling pin (while they’re still in the package). That’ll do the same thing.

Bake the casserole dishes (covered for the 1st 15 minutes, then uncovered) at 350°F (180°C) for 20 minutes. If the breadcrumbs on top aren’t browned to your liking, slide the casserole under the broiler for 30 or so seconds. Serve in generous slices, with a side salad of something healthy, so that everyone can pretend that they’re not eating pure indulgence on a plate. Enjoy!