all new

Guys, I really really love North Carolina. Really, to be simultaneously more specific and vastly more melodramatic, I love my new life. I just finished up my workday by doing some child development training at a totally cool cafe, which I can walk to. I strolled home listening to crickets, and was pleasantly surprised when a stag ran across my path. I’d experienced the cool urban style cafe, with the free city of Carrboro Wifi (lovvve), then walked home under a tapestry of stars with nature all around me.

Outdoors, if slightly less scenic, is my cute little balcony. Since I left most of my garden at home, I tried to recreate the effect of my awesome deck with a basil plant. I enjoyed looking at it (and, er, my air-drying bikini top that apparently fell into my shot) with my leftovers from the wonderful Mediterranean deli.

Which I supplemented with a salad made of farmer’s market yellow tomatoes and the deck basil.

Despite my awkward and introverted tendencies, I’ve made friends here largely effortlessly, mostly because everyone here is so damn friendly!

Anecdote 1: I had a friend visiting from out of town (he and his preggo wife are thinking bout moving here). We took them to the farmer’s market. Whilst there, over the course of about ten minutes we ran into six people we knew. My friend goes, “Wait, I thought you’d only lived here for two weeks…” It is a small town in the best possible way.

Anecdote 2: Yesterday I was headed out to the grocery store (which is NEXT DOOR to my complex; so walkable!) and ended up chatting with my neighbor and her cute little boy, and then my other neighbor’s cute little boy showed up too and we ran around chasing their kids for an hour and never bought groceries and now we’re having a cookout on Saturday. There are countless adorable little places to eat. There are neighborhood cats who I visit regularly and pet intensely. Anecdote 3: Somebody I met at a party sold me a bike for $40.

The aforementioned farmer’s market is magnificent and ENORMOUS. I’m already buddies with one lady who sells amaaaaazing samosas and told me all about Krishna’s birthday, which was last week. FYI. The aforementioned farmers market is also where my boyfriend was kind enough to buy me THIS AWESOMENESS HOLY SHIZZ GUYS.

The company:

Awesome:

But let’s be real, am I even thinking about the local and wholesome street cred? FALSE. I am thinking about THIS IS THE BEST PEANUT BUTTER EVER EVER EVER.

Another great lunch: more tomato-basil salad, scads of watermelon (which had to do with me being DYING OF THIRST as I prepared this lunch) quickly pan sizzled tempeh, and tortilla with OH MY GOD THAT PEANUT BUTTER.

 

I’ve been trying to eat in, and successfully putting together proper healthy meals for myself for the first time in quite awhile, but don’t worry. I’ve still been spending too much money going out to eat and exploring my new area. Neal’s Deli, an awesome place:

Pimiento cheese for lunch? OH YES. Truth: I ate most of the celery (which is delicious with pimiento cheese) and carrots; and I DEMOLISHED those MAGNIFICENT pickled green tomatoes. And the homemade pretzel chips, well, I didn’t hate those. But, in my defense, I could only make a dent in the pimiento cheese, so I took it home, and accidentally left it in Steve’s fridge, and he ate it, and I was sad.

Another home meal, enjoyed on the coffee table while sitting on the fuuf.

I was going out of town imminently for work training (more on that in a future post!) so this was a “use up all the vegetables in the fridge’ stir fry. Corn, peppers, tomatoes, basil, yadda yadda.

Think I was also thirsty planning this one. More scads of watermelon and some yogurt ‘n cinnamon.

  

If you think that meal looks insubstantial, you are correct! So I ate a thousand roasted almonds afterwards. It’s all good.

I brought my chickpea flour with me in the move, so I could make socca. Everyone knows that socca, when made correctly, is really a delivery vehicle for olive oil and salt and pepper. Was delighted to bring my AWESOME bunny shaped, magnetic, utterly delightful salt and pepper grinders out of storage.

And fact: socca is even MORE delicious when topped with melty cheese and served with salsa. Like bar food and yet really quite respectably healthy.

the Chinese new year experience

So I am not Chinese but sometimes I wish I was.

Some of you may recall my trip to Taiwan back in the day. I ended up there both because my dad was going on a business trip and invited me to tag along (I’d just graduated college early), and because my stepmother is Taiwanese and it was a chance to get to know her family.

Anyway, my experiences there should have somewhat prepared me for the mega-quantity of food produced for my dad and Sally’s Chinese New Year dinner.

 
(note: this is not all the food. Not at all)

So we arrived to an already-bustling kitchen. Sally had created her own giant (GIANT) radish cake. She sort of explained the process to me, claiming that the steps involved, which included cutting radishes into tiny cubes, boiling them, combining them in mysterious proportions with a very specific kind of rice flour and dried shrimp, onion, and pork were “easy”… but I’m going to leave that to her expertise.

 

I just went ahead and fried them.

The kitchen filled with all kinds of other sauces and ingredients, some typical-looking and others utterly mysterious. Sally’s friends arrived and there was much gleeful chattering. Various relatives and relatives’ friends arrived. Place was hoppin’.

My dad decided he had to make cold sesame noodles. He got to work on that. Meanwhile, my aunt and I thinly sliced carrots upon which to steam the buns, which was an adventure with an electrically troubled food processor.

To begin the meal, soup was mandatory, per Chinese culture. Sally used like a GAZILLION types of mushrooms (yes!)

… to create a delectable hot and sour soup.

The other soup was a tangy, spicy, beef and radish. Different, and good.

My fried radish cake pieces went out, lovingly arranged with Steve’s skill.

Speaking of Steve, he was crazy about this ultra-thin-sliced beef. My boyfriend loves him some saturated fat :)

I was enjoying various veggie and noodle dishes (though I sampled everything).

I think these were something in the garlic/onion family. Livened up my breath for suuuuure!

This noodle dish was spectacular: the noodles were something special, as was the sauce. I’m feeling very inadequate to describe these things because I truly don’t know what went into them. Other than deliciousness.

 

My dad’s sesame noodles went out next to ma po tofu. WOW. Have to make. So spicy and savory and amazing. I don’t cook a lot with silken tofu but it only makes sense in this recipe. Also, in the US you tend to only see tofu in vegetarian dishes, but whaddya know; meat mixed with tofu tastes boss.

    

Speaking of meat, this fall-off-the-bone tender pork was the best meat I’ve had in recent memory. It didn’t taste all that Chinese; just like a really really good braise.

 

These head-on, tail-on, whole shebang shrimp were excellent and spicy. Some were tender enough to eat the shells, which had a lotta flavor.

Oh yes, there’s more!

Comfort food delight in this thinly shredded cabbage and thinly sliced pork dish.

Fish, always served at Chinese New Year: apparently it’s good luck because the scales look like money! Thus, you are supposed to leave some on the plate to have money in the new year.

So the table sort of wobbled under the weight of all those dishes, and we all sat around the living room and chowed down. And had some non-Chinese wine :)

Was that the end? Of course not!

There were two kinds of dumplings and steamed buns that then came off the stove. I mean really.

The rest of the evening was spent eating the cake my cousin made (cause why not), and watching Celine Dion’s performance (!!!!!!!!) singing in Chinese (!!!!!!!!!) on Chinese state television (!!!!!!!!!!!!)

so you’ve got yourself some gluten

First, because I can’t respond to comments: thanks to Ali for the excited comment the other day about UNC- it made my day :)

In other news, look at my attractive ciabatta!

 

The eternally helpful Mark Bittman, in his eternally helpful cookbook How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, assures us that we can make 100% whole grain bread that tastes good. The secret is in the gluten. Vital wheat gluten.

I was “that girl” buying my vital wheat gluten at Whole Foods. (I was also ‘that girl” when my burly male coworkers mocked me mercilessly for requesting a vegetarian sandwich together with a Diet Coke at a catered work event yesterday).

But guys it WORKS. You don’t get that cardboard taste/shoe leather texture 100% whole wheat bread if you just give it a little gluten.

I am a huge fan of this ciabatta recipe in general due to its low maintenance. But then I simply added 100% whole wheat flour plus two tablespoons to the recipe, added perhaps a splash more water, beat the bejesus out of the dough, baked it, and LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUS STUFF.

I brought it to a work potluck and it was vair popular, particularly with some olive oil and fresh herbs. Soft and bubbly, it was.

Pleased.

Anyway, having the vital wheat gluten also gave me an opportunity to make seitan for the first time. Also from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, I saw it as a fun opportunity to do some food-lab style cooking and liven up my non-meat protein, since I have come to the conclusion that I really don’t like the taste of meat very often and if I had a choice I would eat cookies for every meal. So if there’s a protein that can kind of be like bread, that could be called “meeting me halfway”, right?

Gluten as dough is not necessarily easy on the eyes.

As dough it looks like something pulled out of a cadaver…

 

And after cooking in the Asian-style broth (veggie stock, soy sauce, etc.), it looked like that same thing pulled out of the cadaver that had then been left out in the sun for awhile.

But I persevered, envisioning a stir-fry.

Eggplant.

Squash, carrots. Ginger. Flavors.

Overall the ensuing stir-fry tasted… okay. For all the fuss, I’d say not really worth it.

The texture of the seitan was odd- I’m thinking I’d cook it less next time, because it was too airy. It also really tasted like… bread! Sort of unsurprising, given the ingredients. But like an especially airy and chewy bread you might get at an Italian restaurant. Which is weird all mixed up with hoisin sauce and ginger, yknow?

Anyway, an experiment!

 

The most successful (though least photogenic) seitan I made was a Bittman recipe for seitan loaf with lentils. I really have never met a lentil I didn’t like. I was having friends over, two of whom were boys, one of whom was Steve, so I knew I needed a hearty and manly meal. I was jonesing to make some cornbread, which to me meant barbecue to go with it.

SO I threw together a homemade vegan barbecue sauce (apple cider vinegar, mustard, maple syrup, ketchup, etc.) and crumbled up the lentil seitan into it.

It was REALLY good.

 

To round out the meal, I made a MEGA pasta salad to satiate boy hunger

I do mean mega- it required multiple bowls. (I also did one with olives and feta, making it non vegan. I figured the vegan and the picky eater who doesn’t like olives- except then Steve ended up loving the olive one, go figure- could eat from the smaller one. Smaller being a relative term.)

A cucumber and mango salad for a tropical twist and some extra vitamins. A few chilis for kicks.

 

And the cornbread I so craved.

I’ve been making eggless cornbread of late because we tend to only buy farmer’s market eggs now and it just seems a waste for them to disappear into batter. So I just replaced my usual buttermilk with soy buttermilk (soymilk mixed with apple cider vinegar and allowed to curdle for a few) et voila.

Vegan Cornbread

1 ¼ cup soy milk mixed with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar to be vegan (or 1 ¼ cup buttermilk if you aren’t vegan)
2 T sugar or honey
1/3 cup applesauce
2 T oil
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 T ground flaxseed
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ear fresh corn, off the cob (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400. Place cast iron skillet in oven to warm. Combine buttermilk, applesauce, sugar or honey, and oil in a blender, or whisk together. Stir together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Create a well in the center and add the wet ingredients and optional corn. Gently fold together until just combined. Remove skillet from oven, and spray with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the prepared skillet. Bake for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

 

All together now.

 

Okay BUT. I’d left work early for some reason that day (can’t remember) and on my way home decided to get the items for an ambitious vegan dessert, because it sounded fun!

I got the ingredients for a graham cracker crust (note that I called Lydia and asked if Brian was okay with honey grahams, and she went “Eh, we don’t care about bees”. Lydia hates bees a lot)- just toasted up some graham crackers in oil.

Then I made a chocolate custard by using bird’s custard powder (which is actually just cornstarch with vanillin) and combining it with chocolate almond milk and some extra dark chocolate oomph (note that a surprising  amount of dark chocolate contains milk fat- check the label!).

Topped with more dark chocolate shavings and some toasted slivered almonds, emphasizing the almond milk within.

Friends, if you are inviting any vegans for Thanksgiving this year, I highly recommend this. It is easy and it is GORGEOUS!

 

And WOW this was good! I mean, especially accompanied with non-vegan real whipped cream :)