The Thanksgiving Post!

...a little overdue. But I now have my camera cable back, so there will be pictures! hooray!

Thanksgiving in upstate New York was chilly but lovely. Some culinary highlights:

A Festive Chickpea Tart from VegNews:

Good, very flavorful, and because you puree most of the chickpeas, it was very quiche-y - not especially beany or grainy, so non-veg people liked it, too.


This was my mother's idea: a Sunchoke Salad for those of us who can't enjoy the mashed potatoes (she's allergic to nightshades, too). I'd never had a Sunchoke before (also known as Jerusalem Artichokes).
They're bumpy, swollen root vegetables that look like a cross between ginger and a potato, but have a definite artichokey taste when boiled. I recommend these! Christina Pirello uses them in Cooking with Whole Foods a lot. Here they are boiled and mashed with lots of vinegar, some salt and a dash of dijon mustard.

This is a phenomenon known only to my mother's side of the family: Pea Salad.

Imagine potato salad, but with peas. Peas, celery, onion, vegenaise, and to make up for the lack of egg, I put in silken tofu and a generous pinch of turmeric. No one ever believes me, but it's delicious.

THIS was my triumph of the day:

A Double-Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake from the Fat Free Vegan. It was my first attempt at vegan cheesecake, and it went well. It tasted just like pumpkin pie, and was AWESOME.


There were loads of other Thanksgiving foods in addition, of course - candied sweet potatoes, rolls, salad, corn, mashed potatoes, as well as some foods for the non-vegans, but all you get are the ones I made. It was embarassing enough to be taking pictures of food around my family (they think the whole "me having a food blog" thing is hilarious and nerdy) - I went minimalist.

And finally... our family pets enjoying the leftovers:

they're so cute.

Hope you all had a great holiday!

thanksgiving approaches. without pictures.

so you may be wondering, why hasn't vegetalion posted in a while?

BECAUSE MY SISTER STOLE MY CAMERA CABLE. The one that lets me upload pictures. And I like pictures. ALAS. it will be a photoless entry. My sister came to visit this weekend (the theft was an accident, by the way - it happened when she was packing to leave for home again), and brought with her a lovely diwali gift from my mother - Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! I have already made some cupcakes from it... but no pictures till later in the week. They'll be worth the wait.

I've seen/heard quite a few vegans hating on thanksgiving recently. Granted, it IS a terrible day for turkeys. And people gorge, especially on rich, unhealthy, unvegan foods. But I have been raised in a very veg*n-friendly environment, and the day is really about having our closest family members sit around our dining room table and talk and laugh, and eat and tell each other their secret ingredients. And then after dessert the adults slowly waddle out to the kitchen table to have tea and talk about all of the relatives and old friends whose names haven't been dropped recently, while the kids split off to play outside or in the cellar or video games upstairs. Hours roll on, and sometimes we break out Scrabble or Pictionary or family videos, and my relatives stay until the first one says, "how did it get to be 8:00?" And they all leave. I love my family, and I love food - the two together are magical.

Plus my mother is an amazing cook and is totally willing to make me vegan pie. ohhhhh the vegan pie.

That said, I don't want to trivialize the mass slaughter of turkeys that goes on for this holiday. Last night I watched the I Am an Animal: the story of Ingrig Newkirk and PETA, an HBO documentary that is totally worth watching no matter what your views on PETA. Though it was not at all the main focus, there was some appalling footage taken at the Butterball factory. Watching it made me think that most people don't ever consider that the basted shape in their ovens started out as a bird - nor do they think about the conditions under which it was raised, conditions to which they would probably object - if they thought about it.

I think hunting is wrong. I do not like or approve of hunting. But I can feel a certain degree of respect for a hunter who hunts for food, because s/he at least sees where their meat comes from, studies how it lives and is actively involved in the process from death to plate. I think the disconnect between food as it grows and food on one's plate is one of the biggest causes of our dietary and animal-rights related issues.

I don't know where I was going with that preachiness. See the documentary, though. And I'll post a Food post on or after thanksgiving, I promise.

oh EW and I tried the hachiya persimmon... it tasted okay but it was REALLY GRAINY, so that it felt like I had a mouth full of baby powder with each bite. I had to throw it out. Stick to the fuyu, people! gah...

fruit is so pretty

I like to start my day with fruit. and when I'm not in a blur of a hurry throwing my stuff together for work, I remember to take pictures.

persimmons, in a sexy soft-focus.

the one on the left is a fuyu persimmon, which you eat when it's firm, like a tomato. The one on the right is a hachiya, which have to get basically so soft they seem rotten before they're sweet enough to eat.

Here's a fuyu:

They look so much like tomatoes that they're a little scary for me to eat. But tasty!

My mother and brother often complain all I ever eat is asian food. And looking over my blog... I see how someone could make that claim. But I eat a variety of foods! In fact, I had a very continental day the other day. A huge pesto pasta (no pictures), thanks to the fresh pesto my roommate made, and then:

Stuffed Button Mushrooms

this is not a great picture. But they were good. Quite savory and garlicky. I'm still refining my ideal stuffed mushroom recipe... so I won't post a recipe. I've tried some from christina pirello's cooking with whole foods, which were okay, and adapted this one from dreena burton's everyday vegan to be nightshade- and gluten-free (used chopped walnuts and mashed rice as a grain/binding agent). But I'm not satisfied yet. I'll keep you posted.

(oh snap! "post"ed. ha!)

my sister's visiting this weekend. my thai for dinner tonight, veggie planet for brunch tomorrow (vegan waffles!!!).

less strange fruit

for breakfast yesterday, I had a dragonfruit!

These BRIGHT PINK, user-friendly fruits are so photogenic!

I'd never had a dragonfruit before - this little guy was another adventure in super 88 produce. The texture and taste resemble kiwi. I should've let it ripen longer - some parts weren't as sweet as others- but I couldn't resist.

And for lunch, some tasty leftovers - cold sesame noodle salad. I improvised a big batch of it for a boston vegan association get-together the night before.

The purple noodles are actually cooked black rice noodles:



Cold Sesame Noodle Salad

Enough Rice Noodles for 4 people
4 Tbsp Toast Sesame oil, divided
1 carrot, cut into matchsticks
2 Tbsp Tamari or soy sauce (more to taste)
1/2 cup Edamame, shelled
1 cup Bean Sprouts
1 Tbsp Toasted Sesame Seeds*
1-2 Tbsp green onion, chopped

Cook Rice Noodles in boiling water until al dente. Drain, rinse with cold water, stir in 1 Tbsp sesame oil to prevent sticking.

In a small pan, saute carrots in 1 Tbsp sesame oil over medium until just tender.

In a large bowl, combine noodles, carrots, edamame, tamari, and the remaining 1 Tbsp sesame oil. Add bean sprouts only if/when everything else has cooled, then garnish with sesame seeds and green onion. Stick in the fridge until cooled.

*To toast Sesame Seeds:
Put sesame seeds, dry, in a pan over low heat. Shake it around from time to time to make sure they turn over. Remove from heat when VERY LIGHTLY browned. Pale is better than dark - they continue toasting after you've removed them from the heat due to the oils inside. ***WATCH THEM CAREFULLY: they burn really easily, and once they've burned - ew.

and in durian-related news: the majority of things in the freezer either have a faint taste or smell like durian. Some, both. It's the fruit that keeps on giving.

Culinary Adventures

If you remember from my last post, roomie michele and I picked up a bunch of random things from super 88 market. One of which was a Durian:

We saw some in the frozen section and, after a too-friendly guy came up and told us all about how durians taste and smell like a sort of soft cheese, and that they were an acquired taste, we decided to take this five-pound, spiky (painfully so!) monster home with us.

As it was frozen, we left it on the coffee table overnight. When we woke, the whole apartment had a sort of odd, trash-like smell. Like a rotten melon. Our durian had thawed!

We brought it to the kitchen, laid down some newspapers, and took turns attacking it with a large knife.

It's surprisingly easy to cut, once you can get a grip on it. And we laid it upen to find the edible parts looking remarkably like fetuses, or livers, or something I definitely don't eat:

And I haven't mentioned the smell. The once tolerable trash/rotten melon smell had grown stronger. It's a rather indescribable odor, but I'll put my creative-writing-major skills to work here: imagine, if you will, hollowing out a honey dew, stuffing it with sliced onions, then leaving it to rot for a week. Sprinkle with sulphur and you have the smell of durian. The edible part is the fleshy seed coating, so you have to pick around the seed.

This fruit is obscene. The texture is appalling, too. Websites that list it as a delicacy call it "custardy." I would say it's closer to thick snot.

We had two bowls full of durian. We tasted it. IT WAS DISGUSTING. Apparently, there are a few different varieties, and only one can be shipped out of Southeast Asia, home of the durian. And since they smell so terrible when thawed, super 88 market sells them frozen. So there's no way of knowing whether you're getting a good durian or not - some websites I read just now mentioned that there are some unsavory sulphury ones that make you burp a lot - that'd be our little darling here!

Maybe there are tasty durians out there, but even under the sulphury taste, the flavor was still reminiscent of onion-stuffed honeydew. Michele and I realized we couldn't possibly eat this thing, so we removed the seeds and scooped what was left into tupperware to freeze.

EW. But we both believe this terrible thing can be saved. I, for example, was thinking that if we blend it with other vegetables and use it as a sandwich spread, it would not be very unlike a "veggie and chive"-flavored cream cheese. Michele was not convinced.

Anyway it'll be a while before we take it out of the freezer - it took 2-3 hours with our windows wide open to get that terrible stench out of our apartment.

After a long walk outside the stinky apartment, I got my appetite back, so I made myself a thai dinner (in honor of the durian... but durian-free):

baked rama tofu and fresh spring rolls! (with dipping sauce)

I made my own sauces, but next time I'm going to just use peanut sauce (for the tofu) from a jar. Faster. The dipping sauce is mirin, rice vinegar, and tamari.

Spring roll ingredients: snap peas, bean sprouts, basil, grated carrots and daikon radish.

The daikon was a little overpowering, but enough sauce helped drown it.

Moral of this story: durians are gross.

more groceries, less cooking

My roommate and I went to super 88 market today, because I haven't been there enough in the past week. and we got:

there will be posts about most of these foods sometime in the future.

Went to Bagel Rising with some of the BVAers for lunch today, then roommate Michele had a dinner party tonight! She made a yellow thai curry with shrimp, but reserved a vegan portion for me:

My portion was also red-pepper free, but it was in a smaller, separate pot from this one and didn't photograph as well. And then we had haagen daas sorbets afterwards - not all of which are vegan, I will tell you (treacherous sorbets!), but the coconut IS and is delicious.

The moral of this story is: I have not cooked today. Although I made rice to go with mish's curry. So I leave you with a pretty little picture of soap suds in an olive oil bottle from when I was doing dishes.

I will write a VERY INTERESTING entry tomorrow. I promise.

Happy Diwali!

Today is Diwali! I didn't really do much to celebrate other than make mithais...

Carrot Fudge:

Carrots, soymilk, agave syrup, earth balance, some cashews. I'm playing with ratios, so no recipe yet.

I'm used to this being a pastel orange color, like sherbert - but since soy milk is not the same pristine white that milk is it's beigey. Next time I am going to try half soy, half coconut milk.

I also made a date roll that turned out to be SO HUMUNGOUS and unwieldy that I refuse to post a picture. but that was tasty, too.

AND since it was my last day at this particular temp job, I made COOKIES for my co-workers:

I was inspired by the pictures on what do vegans eat? of the post-punk kitchen's jam cookies, so I made my own. DELICIOUS. And everyone at work gobbled them down, almost spoling our appetite for SUSHI - my boss took us out to lunch in honor of my last day!

and then, to make it an even MORE festive diwali, I went out with two friends from the boston vegan association to My Thai Vegetarian Cafe and Bistro, where we ordered loads of food and shared it all - I LOVE hanging out with other vegans! and their german chocolate caramel coconut cake... INCREDIBLE. And then we wandered around super 88 market for while, because no night out is complete without ending up grocery shopping. A good night. ^_^

I leave you with an EXTREME COOKIE CLOSE-UP - CAN YOU HANDLE IT?!