what to eat when you have a tooth extracted

According to all 5 dentists I have seen since my teens, I have interesting teeth. Actually, to quote one, “amazingly interesting.” Dentists have actually called their colleagues (or assistants/hygenists) into the room to take a look at my mouth—just to show said colleagues how “interesting” my teeth are. You can’t tell from just looking at me; to the casual observer, including myself, I have fairly normal, straightish teeth.

But apparently the top right side of my mouth is a madhouse. One tooth, the second-from-the-end, has an extra cusp on the side, known as “the cusp of carabelli.” If you look this up online, it sounds as if it’s not that unusual—but I’ve had 3 dentists tell me they’ve only read about it—in dental school. “Interesting,” but no problem. However, there is another feature to my mouth that makes dentists say “hmmm” and frown: the tooth that is the furthest back in my mouth is pivoted 90 degrees. It grew in that way, and until this past year never caused any problems—and because x-rays are two-dimensional, no one took special notice of it until it started to bother me.
Long story short, the tooth had to come out. But because it is such an “unusual” tooth (another word my dentists have used), it wasn’t a simple matter of yanking. No, it was a surgical extraction. The procedure is about the same as having a wisdom tooth out, only in a different part of the mouth, and, if you’ve ever had a surgical extraction, you know it is NOT VERY PLEASANT. It is awful.

The worst part is that I couldn’t chew on that side for a week, and even then only really soft foods. I was despondent when I heard this, not just because I had a gaping hole in my mouth, but because I don’t like soft foods. I only eat soup occasionally, I don’t like drinking my calories (ie, smoothies, etc), and I LOVE CHEWING. I knew the foods I made in the next couple of weeks would have to be delicious, to distract me from the pain and sorrow of not being able to chew.

I didn’t feel like eating for a while after the procedure, and when I did opening my mouth at all was pretty rough, so I mostly took small sips of wildwood’s drinkable yogurt and made a few varieties of green smoothies. As I could fit a spoon into my mouth, I started eating soy yogurt and ice cream. But I became bored with sweet things and wanted substantial meals, so I went on a crazy soup kick.
First, a Carrot, Ginger, and Beet Soup that is apparently in Didi Emmons’s Vegetarian Planet, but I found on this site. I normally only use beets for Borscht when it comes to soup, but the thought of pureeing borscht seemed wrong. I’ll definitely make this recipe again; the ginger was a nice addition to the beet and carrot flavor.

Peaches are in season (and delicious!!!), so Peach Gazpacho from Martha Stewart’s website came next. I changed this recipe by adding a slice of bread and more water to get it the almost creamy consistency of gazpacho. Being allergic to nightshades, I’ve never actually had gazpacho, but The Boyfriend loves it, and reported that this tomato-free version is just as good as normal tomato gazpacho. In fact, he ordered tomato-y gazpacho at a restaurant a couple weeks later, and though to me they smelled the same, he said my peach one tasted better. Even though the peaches I used were ripe, the gazpacho wasn’t very sweet, which was nice—I didn’t feel like I was having dessert for dinner. However, the leftovers the next day definitely seemed sweeter. I REALLY recommend this one.

I also REALLY recommend these two soups from the gluttonous vegan.
Finding the recipe for this Spiced Parsnip and Coconut Milk Soup was easily the best part of the tooth extraction ordeal. It is delicious and filling AND by this day I had discovered that I could eat bread if I soaked it in the soup for a long time first, which was really exciting.

Being the intrepid entertainer that I am, I had a small dinner party 4-5 days after the extraction and served the gluttonous vegan’s Smoky Sweet Potato Soup. Since paprika is a pepper (nightshade), I replaced the smoked paprika with about a teaspoon of liquid smoke. I sautéed some zucchini with onions and lemon juice until it was really soft and roasted chickpeas for the side/garnish. I tried one before we ate—I could actually bite down on it! It had been 5 days since I had chewed anything, and I was so happy I almost cried.

I ate things other than soups, too! I made pesto and mixed it into mashed sweet potatoes, and served it for brunch with basic scrambled tofu.
The Boyfriend got some nice crusty bread with this brunch, but I had to do without. (So I gave myself extra avocado.)

I was still eating yogurt for my snacks, but it was getting boring, so I figured out other ways to use it, including in this Arugula Dip. It’s based on a spinach dip and is mostly arugula, silken tofu, and plain soy yogurt with some garlic, salt and pepper. Embarrassingly, I still couldn’t really eat chips at that point, so I just sorta ate the dip off of the chip. The Boyfriend got to eat the chips, though.

I also made Blueberry Crisp, here topped with ice cream that for some reason hated the flash on my camera:
Finally, though I didn’t make the following recipe after my tooth was extracted, I wish I had. All of the information the dentist gives you afterwards, and all of the websites you read, advises to eat soft things like “ice cream, pudding, and jello.” This reminded me of a recipe I made just a week or two before:
Strawberry Jelloish Dessert
Serves 4-5. It’s not very sweet, but I prefer it that way; taste before you add the agar and add more agave/sugar if you want it sweeter.

1 1/2 cups strawberries, chopped into pieces no bigger than 1/2 an inch.
4 C water
1/4 C agave (or sugar) (more to taste)
1 Tbsp agar powder

Combine the strawberries, water, and sweetener in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally. After about 10 or 15 minutes, when the mixture starts to bubble, reduce the heat. Stir in the agar powder, and stir constantly until the powder is completely dissolved (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat, pour into either a large, flat bowl, an 8x8 baking dish, or, for swank-looking desserts like I made, into glasses. Chill in the fridge at least 1-2 hours.

Serve by itself, or garnished with fruit, ice cream, cashew crème (as below; soaked cashews and dates blended with vanilla and soymilk until whipped-cream-y), or some form of vegan whipped cream.


Anyway, I’m long back to chewing solid foods, thank goodness—but in case YOU need to go on a mush diet for a while, you’ll know what to do!

"Adopt a Shelter Pet" stamps

I love the Post Office. I'm just going to say that right up front. I know people who complain about the United States Postal Service, but I adore them. I write a lot of letters, enjoy sending packages, and really really love getting mail--and the USPS has never let me down. Well, no, once I think a letter I sent didn't get to its destination, but I've written hundreds of letters in my life, so a < 1% fail rate is okay by me. While the lines always move slowly at Post Offices, it's worth it to me to be able to send mail wherever I want. It's actually amazing to me: if I want to send a letter to someone in California, from Boston, it often only takes 3-4 days. They allow you to rent out PO Boxes cheaply. When you move, they'll forward your mail for free for a year! The post office is so cool!

My love for the USPS knows no bounds anyway, but ESPECIALLY this past spring, when they released their "Adopt a Shelter Pet" stamps. Every year, the USPS does a "social awareness" stamp line, be it for cancer, literacy, or children's health awareness--and this year, they are drawing attention to the need to adopt animals from shelters. (You can read the USPS press release about the line here, where the Postmaster General mentions how the awareness campaign aims to "encourage pet adoption and promote humane and responsible pet care.")
I've been using them since they first came out this spring, and I'm way more excited about them than the fruit or vegetable lines they had a couple years ago (and that's saying a lot, since I was really excited about those). (Guys, I can't help it: I really like stamps and mail.)

Not only do I love them just because they're stamps, but also because the stripy orange cat on the bottom right looks like Fritz, one of the three (former shelter) cats with whom the boyfriend and I live:
If you are interested in increasing awareness of shelter animals and supporting the post office (I love both of these things!), you can buy these stamps at your local post office or online. Do it sooner rather than later, because with unstable economies, you never know when stamp prices may change!

One Hundred Years of Solitude: milk candy

I love food and I love to read. As a result, the first week of each month, I'll combine these two interests in a post about food from literature. I'll mostly be sticking with books from classic literature, so you're likely to know the storylines anyway, but just in case you don't: warning: there may be spoilers ahead.

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I have taken two comprehensive literary exams this year: the Literature GRE, and the literary history comp exam for my MA program. One thing that becomes engrained into your mind as you study for the world literature portions of these kinds of tests: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works embody the genre of Magical Realism. In Magical Realism, the setting is the real world, our world, and feelings, actions, and situations are all ones that could happen in real life, but inevitably certain supernatural things happen--often unexplained. I like Realism as a genre, and as a result find Magical Realism to be a tricky line to walk: authors have to be very careful not allow readers to feel tricked ("oh, I didn't know this was a magic world, I thought I was reading historical fiction!"), nor to dwell on the magic parts too much (who wants to read pages and pages of characters acting surprised and trying to puzzle out miracles?). For me, Marquez's genius lies in his ability to make strange and unbelievable events occur in his novels with such a subtle touch that I, as a reader, don't even question whether it could happen in real life--I don't have time to wonder, because the story (like life) goes on. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, ghosts wander in and out of alchemy labs, rain occurs for four years straight, characters live to be 140 years old or more, and the vast majority of the characters just accept these things as true and move on with their day to day activities.

(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Though I like Marquez's model of Magical Realism, I didn't actually like this book. I read Love in the Time of Cholera a couple years ago for my book club, and thought it was decent, but have been told many times that Marquez's real masterpiece was One Hundred Years of Solitude, so I bought it at a second-hand bookshop. The book follows several generations of the Buendia family as they found, settle, populate, control, lose control of, love, and hate the town of Macondo. The book spans around 200 years (despite the title), and jumps from family member to family member, none of whom is a main character and all have similar or the same names. The book explores repetition between generations, how we pass down good and bad behaviors, how and whom we love and hate and worship and fight. But that's where my problem with the book comes in: there isn't a plot. The writing is cyclical (we often hear about events several times before and after they happen in the book) and the lives of the characters are cyclical, and the whole thing never goes anywhere until the family dies off and the book ends. The book is about generations and what kinds of things we pass down from generations to generations, and I can get into that idea; Zola and Balzac, two of my favorite French authors, both explore similar themes in their works, but their novels and stories actually tell a story. One Hundred Years of Solitude starts to tell dozens of stories, one for each member of the family and some for the townspeople around them, but it never finishes the stories it starts.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book, however, and the main focus of this entry, is the strong role women had in shaping the development of the Buendia family. The matriarch, Ursula, is one of the longest-lived characters in the novel, living almost to 140 years old (the other oldest character in the novel, Pilar Ternera, is also a matriarch of the family, though an illegitimate one). Ursula offers strength, support, and common sense throughout the affairs (business and love), wars, births and deaths that occur constantly throughout the text. She is practical and industrious, and even when she goes blind in her old age, she hides it from her family and runs the household as if she were still in her thirties. And, the reason I am writing about this book at all: she makes candy. Milk candy, to be specific, and shapes it into little animals and makes a living off of mass producing and selling milk candy from her kitchen. I am always interested in food in a novel, not just because I love food, but because it usually represents sustenance: who's giving it, who eats it, and what form it takes is fascinating to me. Here, Ursula, the matriarch, makes milk candy to support her family and offspring, as mothers do (with milk!), but also to keep herself constantly busy--the same way she does by raising her constantly-extending family.

With Ursula making little milk animals every few chapters, I began to wonder: What are these candies? What are they made of, other than milk? ARE THEY DELICIOUS? So I started to do some research into Colombian candy. Though it appears the vast majority of Colombian sweets are dairy based, the dairy desserts are usually caramels or sauces--nothing you could mold into animals that would hold their shape. However, Marquez doesn't set his novels specifically in Colombia, his homeland, so I expanded my research to include other Latin American countries. Dulce de leche, caramels, and milk fudge abounds in Latin American countries, but a specific Milk Candy was hard to come by, until I discovered Canillitas de Leche, a traditional Guatemalan candy made from sugar, milk, and cinnamon.
Canillitas de Leche literally translates to "Little Milk Legs," so called because of their shape. You can use your hands to shape them into these little oblong pillars, so, I figured, maybe someone as industrious as Ursula Buendia could shape them into animals! So I found a recipe online, veganized it, and took it upon myself to make what I think of as Ursula's Milk Candy.

Vegan Milk Candy (Canillitas de Leche)
Depending on the size, this will make 12-15 2-inch canillitas. You will need a candy thermometer.

1/2 C soymilk powder (I used Better than Milk)
1 1/2 C water
2 C sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 Tbsp margarine (optional)

In a medium-sized saucepan, whisk together the soymilk powder, sugar, and water until thoroughly incorporated (ie, no lumps). Turn on high heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and stir constantly until the mixture reaches 240 degrees. This is going to take about 40 minutes, so have a book you can hold with one hand while you stir with the other. Don't let the temperature go over 240, because the mixture will get too hard too quickly when it cools: it's better to err on the side of a couple degrees cooler.

Remove from the heat, take out the cinnamon stick, and pour into a glass baking dish or large bowl, so as much of the surface touches the air as possible. Stir in the margarine, if using. Let the mixture cool until you can handle it. This, too, will take a while. Depending on the room temperature, give it at least half an hour before you go near it--it's very hot! Once you can handle it, roll small handfulls of the dough into little oblong pillars. The original recipe said you can dust your hands with flour to keep it from sticking, though I think having slightly wet hands would also help. Allow them to cool fully before eating and/or storing the ones you don't eat in an airtight container.
The end result has a texture like maple sugar candy, and I know this is going to sound weird, but it tastes a lot like maple sugar candy, too, only without the maple part. I'm not a big candy eater, but they are delicious! The cinnamon flavor is so subtle that you can't quite tell it's cinnamon, but it adds a nice level of complexity. Just a reminder: it's important not to let the recipe go over 240 degrees, because then the mixture will get too hard to work with as it cools. I know because I made this mistake, and only got to make about a third of the canillitas before the remaining dough in the bowl hardened and had to be scraped out. It was still totally edible, but not pretty:

Oops.

Crazy Rumors Lip Balm

I am a lip balm fiend. It started back when I was in elementary school, since I always licked my lips, making them red, raw, and swollen. I started simple: chapstick, then worked my way up to those Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, which had a huge variety of flavors. By middle and high school I was using all-natural and/or environmentally-friendly brands, and by college I added "animal-friendly" to my list of necessary traits of lip balm. Unfortunately, this meant that my once huge collection of lip balm varieties dwindled. Most companies use beeswax or lanolin or honey or something else not vegan to make their products. The few vegan lip balms I've had since are often disappointing: they come off easily, taste/smell funny, go bad quickly, or they melt or separate too easily.

But then I discovered Crazy Rumors.
And I went a little crazy. But I'm glad I did--the lip balm goes on smooth, doesn't feel too greasy, and feels like it lasts for at least an hour. The ingredients are awesome: about half organic, and all natural. That is, you can pronounce everything, and probably even picture it. It helps that they are made in small batches by the couple who owns the company. The flavors are strong, but though they smell sweet and have stevia in them, they aren't sweet at all, so I don't feel like I'm rubbing my mouth with a popsicle or something. They are all an opaque, waxy color, so they won't stain or tint your lips.

As my "small" collection suggests, Crazy Rumors has a variety of flavors. They have multiple lines, each of which contains 4 different flavors. The "Soda pop," "Fresh Squeezed," "A La Mode," "Gumball," and "Candy Cane" lines all sounded a little too fruity and/or Lip Smackery to me, though I did try the Raspberry Sherbert and the Peppermint Stick. Ther sherbert one does smell a bit too fruity for my tastes--I like my lip balms to be a little more subtle, and remind me a little less of when I was 11. The peppermint one is a decent, basic mint-scented lip balm--just what I wanted. The Brew line, however, sounded more up my alley. Tea-flavored lip balm?! I tried the Orange Bergamot/Earl Grey-flavored one and was a little disappointed, because it's really fruity, not too tea-y. Their flavors are strong, but the site says that, because they use all natural flavors, the flavors might fade a little over a year or so. Maybe I'll age my Orange Bergamot lip balm so the flavor mellows ; )

If you're like me and LOVE chocolate and/or coffee, you really should get all the flavors on the Perk line.
They're all coffee-themed, so there is a straight-up coffee lip balm (which I found to be the msot subtle of all the scents; it's barely there, but in a good way), amaretto (which is AMAZING), mocha, and french vanilla (my boyfriend, sitting across the table from me when I first put it on, asked "is that french vanilla coffee?" so their flavoring combination is spot on!). These are my favorite.

They have other line I haven't tried, but have read good reviews of on the ppk forum: Hibiskiss line of lip colors.

Right now, Crazy Rumors is having a HALF OFF EVERYTHING sale, as they (as in, the couple who makes them and their baby) are moving. Use the Voucher code MOVE to receive 50% off your order. This is an AMAZING deal, especially because their homemade, natural, mostly organic, vegan lip balms are now cheaper than most of the low-grade, questionable lip stuff you find at pharmacies.

Note: Crazy Rumors don't endorse this entry or even know it exists. This review is unbiased; I just love sales, lip balm and small family businesses and wanted to pass on the news.

fresh summer rolls and my new obsession with jellyfish

The boyfriend and I live on the third story of a three-story building. In the winter, our location allows us to save money on heat bills: heat rises from the units below, and comes down through the not-very-well-insulated roof. However, in the summer, our place is consistently 5 degrees hotter inside than out--and with temperatures consistently above 90 degrees in Boston this month, we have been sweltering. I still cook most nights, but sometimes we just have to escape to restaurants for warm food, or eat meals that involve little or no cooking.

The boyfriend is fine with salad every night, but not me! So last week I made fresh summer rolls, a quick dish that, depending on your ingredients, can be a simple side or appetizer or a filling entree. Note that summer rolls are the uncooked cousin of spring rolls, wrapped with rice paper instead of wheat-based wrappers. If you can't find rice paper your grocery store (though if your store has an "Asian" section, it should be there), they are always available at Asian markets. Like tortillas, they come in varying sizes; if you can only find the 12-inch ones, just use a lot more filling per wrapper. Unused wrappers should be stored in a resealable plastic bag so no moisture gets in.
Before you begin with the rice paper, gather and chop all of your fillings. The ingredients you use to fill summer rolls are flexible, but they should all be cool at the time of rolling. Good ingredients include (but are not limited to): lettuce, vermicelli noodles, cilantro, mint, bean sprouts, strips of marinated tofu (or other protein, cooled if cooked), chopped mushrooms (cooled if cooked), grated or julienned carrots, shredded cabbage, julienned cucumber.My ingredients were (clockwise from the top left): chopped mint, pea shoots, carrots, finely chopped mushrooms I'd sauteed with garlic and soy sauce earlier in the day, and spinach.
Fill a pie plate or baking dish with about an inch of lukewarm water. Slide in one sheet of rice paper, and allow it to soak until softened, about 30 seconds.
Remove from the water, hold it above the dish for a second to let the excess water drip off. It'll be really floppy and will stick to itself almost as easily as saran wrap. Lay on a flat surface. [Right now, as a sort of assembly line process, you can put another wrapper into the water while you fill and roll this one] Place 2-3 Tbsp worth of filling (or just small handfuls/spoonfuls of each ingredients) near the bottom of the sheet. Fold in the sides and roll it up from the filled bottom, just like you'd do with a burrito. The roll will stick to itself at the ends, so it won't come apart.
Ta dah! Now, for sauces. I like to have a variety of choices. Any bottled Asian sauces will do, but to make your own, I recommend a sweet-and-sour sauce that is almost equal parts vinegar and sugar or mirin. (For a thicker texture and less sweetness, do what I do and do equal parts apple sauce and vinegar, pictured below.) There are good recipes for this available all over the internet (for the first link there, scroll down to the bottom for a few different sauces, substitute soy sauce for fish sauce). Hoisin sauce is a HUGE favorite of mine; this recipe is really simple. (I omitted the hot sauce and added extra pepper.)Also, for something a little heavier and with more protein, a good peanut sauce is always nice. I made this this one but didn't heat it, just stirred it a lot... and added some extra water, and baked it with tempeh to really round out the meal:
Yum!

While I was making these summer rolls, I couldn't help but think of jellyfish. Of course, everything makes me think of jellyfish lately; I'm obsessed. Before this past month, I had only ever seen jellyfish in aquariums, so I assumed they were tropical creatures, like sea horses. However, I work by the Boston Harbor, and sometimes I take breaks to walk by the water. AND GUESS WHAT I HAVE SEEN IN THE WATER:
JELLYFISH. IN NEW ENGLAND. I've since told everyone I know about this, and almost no one else is surprised. I guess everyone but me knows that wherever there is salt water, there are usually jellyfish. Seeing these little guys by my office inspired me to do some research. Jellyfish especially thrive in areas that are overfished and/or get runoff and other pollutants in the water. While most jellyfish sting, these little guys, the one most common in New England, are Moon Jellies (Aurelia aurita), which do not sting.
Earlier this month, some friends and I went out to one of the Boston Harbor Islands, which have ample areas for hiking, swimming, and soaking in gorgeous views of Boston:When we first went on the beach of the island, the tide was out, and I discovered that jellyfish frequently wash up on shores during low tide. Though they are dead, they are still soft to the touch. My friends and I were at first too timid to touch them, since, after all, jellyfish who do sting can hurt you even when they're dead, as people on New Hampshire beaches learned last week, but two 5-year-old girls came running down the beach and were literally juggling the dead little jellies, so I guess there really is no need to fear moon jellyfish.
Seeing the jellies on the beach really allowed me a chance to see their anatomy; it's hard to see it when they're alive in the water because they move all the time. But one thing I noticed about their anatomy:
THEY TOTALLY RESEMBLE RICE PAPER.

House of Mirth: cilantro pesto

I love food and I love to read. As a result, the first week of each month, I'll combine these two interests in a post about food from literature. I'll mostly be sticking with books from classic literature, so you're likely to know the storylines anyway, but just in case you don't: warning: there may be spoilers ahead.

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Edith Wharton's 1905 novel The House of Mirth is about a young-but-not-getting-any-younger woman named Lily Bart who is desperate to secure a wealthy husband to ensure her place in society. Lily has no money of her own and spirals into debt to try to keep up her rapidly dwindling social standing. Beautiful and well-versed in the complex rules of 1900 high society, Lily should have it made--except that she falls in love with Lawrence Selden, a smart, handsome, and unfortunately poor (and therefore impossible for Lily to marry) lawyer. Lily's feelings for Lawrence keep ruining her prospects for a wealthy marriage, and most of The House of Mirth depicts Lily's frenzied attempt to avoid becoming a poor old maid.

The first time we read about Gerty Farrish, Selden is explaining to Lily that she doesn't have to marry someone rich to be happy; she could afford a cheap flat like his cousin Gerty's. Lily laughs condescendingly, implying that Gerty (who is only a couple years older than Lily) is already an old maid "--and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the food tastes of soap."

In some free indirect discourse in the book, we find that Lily thinks Gerty "typified the mediocre and the ineffectual." Gerty has neither money nor good looks, and "Lily's own view of her wavered between pity for her limitations, and impatience for her cheerful acceptance of them." Gerty doesn't mind her poverty at all, and spends all of her free time working with charities for poor working girls in the city. For all of Lily's jibes at Gerty, even she knows that Gerty is the kindest and most generous person in the book--Gerty takes Lily in several times throughout the novel when Lily has problems, and listens to Lily's problems. Gerty falls in love with Selden and is crushed when she realizes that he loves Lily, but although several times she has the opportunity to thwart their attempts to be together, Gerty remains stoic, kind, and generous. She encourages the two to talk, meet up, to help each other when they can. Even though it's breaking her heart!!! Lily judges Gerty and looks down upon her way of life until even the end of the book, but as the novel progresses, we readers realize that the strongest character, the best person--and the only effectual person--in this shallow, duplicitous society is Gerty. During the dramatic ending (I'll try to avoid a blatant spoiler here!), Gerty steps up as the only character who can take charge and direct the events. Free of Lily's point of view, we can see Gerty as she is when she rises in a crisis: she glows with an "extraordinary light," and as she tells Selden what to do, "a light broke through Selden's stony misery, and he saw deep into the hidden things of love." Gerty's love, light, and strength propel her and other characters through difficult times throughout the novel.

SO. In honor of Gerty Farrish (who isn't even in the movie version, I hear! I am appalled), I am celebrating her "queer," "soapy" cuisine with something else that some people (people who are wrong!) find "queer" and/or "soapy"--cilantro!
Cilantro is often used in Mexican and South Asian food, both in dishes and as a garnish (as seen above), and this distinctive, delicious little cousin of parsley gets a bad name. Some people associate cilantro with a soapy or bad taste--and these people, like Lily Bart with Gerty, just can't appreciate cilantro's fine qualities.

Not that people who don't like cilantro are closed-minded. They literally can't appreciate the herb. As I learned from this report on NPR, people to whom cilantro tastes soapy or gross lack certain taste/odor receptors. So, readers, if any of you are said "non-tasters," feel free to substitute parsley or even arugula for the cilantro in the following recipe for:
Cilantro Pesto

2 lightly packed Cups (usually about 1 bunch) cilantro
1-2 cloves garlic, depending on how garlicky you like it
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp lemon or lime juice
1/4 Cup canola or other flavorless oil (olive can overwhelm the cilantro flavor)
1/4 to 1/2 Cups pine nuts or coarsely chopped walnuts

In a food processor or a blender,* combine the garlic, cilantro, and salt; process/blend for 10-20 seconds, until there are no large chunks of garlic. Add the citrus juice and oil; pulse once or twice to incorporate, then add the nuts and process/blend until it has reached the desired texture; usually a chunky paste to a smooth puree, depending on your preference.

*-Blenders make the texture smoother and more consistent, like in the picture above; food processors allow you more of a chunky paste, like I used for the picture below.

Cilantro pesto is good on rice, bread, burritos, and pasta, like on my sweet potato gnocchi (a good recipe for sweet potato gnocchi is here, only substitute sweet potatoes for the carrots, obviously).


I hope you all like this first installation of Food from Books, or whatever I decide to call this feature when I think of a snappy title. Suggestions welcome... for a snappy title OR for books to use. Let me know what you think!

Fast, Easy, Homemade Vegan Puff Pastry

Whenever the boyfriend and I feel like deviating from our fairly normal weekend brunch menu of scrambled/fried tofu or tofu benedict, we take out Vegan Brunch and page through it to see what appeals to us that day. I make and remake Isa's seitan sausages often, as well as the whole wheat drop biscuits, and when it's the boyfriend's turn, he makes me the pancakes and waffles.

But there is one thing we have not been able to make. Without fail, every time we open up the cookbook, the boyfriend turns longingly to the Tempeh Sausage Pastry Puffs and asks me if I can make them. "We have to get puff pastry," I always explain.

As it turns out, this is harder than it seems. We shop at a natural food coop that rarely carries puff pastry--and when they do, it has butter. We decided one day to try Whole Foods, who carried, to our initial delight, three kinds of puff pastry! ...but they all had butter in them. Vegan puff pastry is hard to find--especially if you care about what you eat. Vegan Brunch says that Pepperidge Farm's puff pastry is vegan, but guys, do you know what's in Pepperidge Farm's Puff Pastry? Copy and pasted from the nutrition information:

Unbleached Enriched Wheat Flour (Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Folic Acid) Water, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Shortening (Soybean and Cottonseed Oils Colored with Beta Carotene) 2% or Less of: Gluten, Mono and Diglycerides (from Hydrogenated Soybean Oil), Soy Lecithin.

YUCK. Two kinds of hydrogenated oil. Plus soy and wheat are two things that, if you eat organic, you want to be organic, and because cotton is not a food crop, there are way fewer limitations on the types and amounts of pesticides and herbicides used in dealing with cotton plants. Cottonseed oil is nasty, guys, and if you prefer to eat organic, so is Pepperidge Farm's puff pastry.

I would have to make it myself. But traditional puff pastry requires time, energy, and skill with dough that I do not have. It calls for about 24-36 hours of preparation, most of which is chilling, but a lot of which is rolling out dough. Basically, if you can't master a pie crust (which, embarrassingly, I can't), you're doomed with traditional puff pastry recipes.

BUT THEN I found this recipe. A food processor puff pastry dough that only needs to be rolled out twice and refrigerated once? It was worth a try. I obviously veganized and otherwise changed it slightly, but full credit goes to Cooks Illustrated for it. This is a picture-heavy post because the directions are easier to illustrate than to describe.

Fast, Easy Vegan Puff Pastry

The recipe makes 24 puff pastry squares. You can halve it if you want, but the dough freezes well, so if you only want 12 (like I did), just make the whole recipe and save the rest for later. Also, though the original recipe calls for salt, it also calls for unsalted butter, so I figured earth balance was salt enough.

Ingredients:

2 Cups all-purpose flour (plus a bit for flouring your work surface)

20 Tbsp (that's a cup and a half) vegan margarine, cut into small chunks

6 Tbsp ice water

I normally use the organic Earth Balance, but it's much easier to measure 20 Tbsp with the sticks, which are at least all natural.

1.) Put the flour and about 4 Tbsp of the margarine into a food processor; pulse 15ish times to incorporate. Add the rest of the chunks of butter, then pulse again, but only 3-5 times.

2.) Add the water. Pulse for 10-20 seconds, until it starts to form a ball of dough.

3.) Put the dough on a large sheet of parchment paper, form into a rough rectangle. Put another sheet of parchment paper on top.

4.) With a rolling pin, roll it out long and flat; 12 by 18 inches. Remove the top layer of parchment paper, turn the dough over onto a well-floured surface, then pull off the other layer.

5.) Fold the sides over the middle, so it's now about 4 inches in width.

6.) Roll it up length-wise.

7.) Squash it into a square, then wrap this tightly in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge until firm. The recipe I used says 1 hour, but the longer the dough was in the fridge, the firmer it got, so if you can leave it for a couple hours, even better. (At this point, you can freeze it [or half, like I did] for later use; just put it in a plastic bag in the freezer. Simply thaw by moving it to your fridge then night before you want to use it.)

8.) Take the dough out of the fridge. If you are using the full recipe (for 24 pastries), divide the dough in half and just follow these directions twice, keeping the half you're not using in the fridge until you're ready for it. Again, put the dough between two large sheets of parchment paper. Roll to a 10- by 15-inch rectangle, then cut into 12 pieces.

Here is where the recipe and I differ. I had doubts that these thin little strips would really puff up, so I took each piece, folded it over itself twice (you can see an example of the folded square on the right side of the picture), and rolled it out again not quite as thinly before putting them on the baking sheet.

It took maybe an extra 5 minutes total and I was really glad I did it; they puffed up well, and I know I owe some of the layers to the fact that I did that last-minute extra folding.

I loaded them up with the sausage topping, hoping that after all my work they would really actually puff, and followed Isa's recipe directions (400 degrees for 18-20 minutes)... and voila!

Homemade vegan sausage-topped puff pastries! The are very filling; we each had 3 and a salad for dinner and were stuffed.

I still have the other half of the puff pastry in the fridge. I might make something desserty with it, maybe those palmiers... Any other recommendations for use?

For the record, you could substitute some of the flour with whole wheat pastry flour, but it will puff way less, be less flaky, and take a little more water. I recommend trying it with all white flour the first time at least.