Ms. Veggie's Review

First glance: Get Cooking

2010-02-14T17:36:00.000-08:00

When I learned that Mollie Katzen had released a new book, I had to get it, even though this queen of vegetarian cooking has crossed into carnivorous waters. Katzen, you may know, authored the original Moosewood cookbook in 1977 and it has become one of the best-selling cookbooks of all time. She is widely credited with moving vegetarian cooking off the periphery and into the mainstream of American cuisine.

She doesn't directly address why this new book isn't vegetarian; actually, she doesn't seem to be talking to her former, all-veg constituency at all. Rather, she's reaching out to people who have been smitten by the images on the Food Network and in the glossy magazines, but don't know how to create them.

Her primary message is to enjoy food and to eat healthfully. And, as I had hoped, the book is top-heavy with simple recipes for vegetarian soups, salads, pastas, and side dishes. So far, I've tried only the all-American three-bean salad, but it was the real deal, almost exactly like my mom's, only better (sorry mom). I'm looking forward to trying broccoli-cheddar cheese calzones and hot fudge sundaes, so stay tuned for upcoming dispatches!

Katzen's unmistakable style shines in this book. She's that good friend or older sister in the kitchen with you, whispering instructions and encouragement over your shoulder. Everything about the book, from the typeface to the sepia-toned photos (of which there are many) says comfort.

Having used her cookbooks for almost 30 years, I feel like I know Mollie and that we're growing old together. To me, Mollie Katzen is a state of mind as much as she is a talented, creative person. To sample her aura, be sure to visit either of her web sites, get-cooking.com or molliekatzen.com. And get cooking!

Recipe Flash: Chickpea Curry

2010-02-03T14:26:00.000-08:00

If you haven't been to the grocery store lately, the produce at this time of year is depressing -- even in so-called sunny California. The selection is sparse: apples that have been on the shelf since September, limp grapes, that kind of thing. The bright, fresh flavors of summer and autumn are just not to be found on the vegetable aisle in February.

Instead, you'll find the perky tastes you crave in cans and the on freezer shelf. At this time of year, canned and frozen goods are a better value than fresh. Because they're processed at their peak ripeness, canned and frozen veggies are almost as good for you as the real thing. This week, I tried Chickpea Curry in a Hurry from Lorna Sass' recently re-released book, Short-Cut Vegan. It's made using spicy Ro*tel canned tomatoes with green chiles, frozen spinach, and a can of chickpeas. For dinner, I added a pound of cubed tofu to keep my tummy full until breakfast the next morning.

Chickpea Curry in a Hurry
reprinted from Short-Cut Vegan

by Lorna Sass

1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes with green chiles (I used 2 10-oz cans of Ro*tel original)
1 10-oz package frozen chopped spinach (I thawed it)
1 15-oz can chickpeas
1 T minced garlic
2 tsp curry powder
1/3 c unsweetened, dried, grated coconut
1/2 tsp salt, to taste
1 lb firm tofu, cubed (my addition)

In a large saucepan, combine all the ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat, then cover and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Break up the block of spinach with a fork, cover, and continue cooking until the spinach is cooked, about 5 more minutes. Stir well before serving.

Serves 2 or 3.

Food Matters: A Reverse Book Review

2010-01-25T16:23:00.000-08:00

After a brief hiatus, I'm back with lots of new information and ideas to get more veggies into your life!

First though, I want you to go get yourself a snack and something to drink and settle in for an entertaining and enlightening half hour of Mark Bittman discussing his new book, Food Matters. Click here for the video. (If you don't have 30 minutes, you can also listen to selected bits of it, which run in roughly 5 minute chunks.)

Bittman, a longtime food writer for the New York Times, says that, "shifting the balance of what we eat is the top priority." The typical American eats half a pound of meat every day -- and an additional one-and-a-half pounds of animal products, such as butter, eggs, and milk. Taken together, this amounts to two-thirds of the American diet originating with animals.

With animal agriculture comes a host of catastrophic problems: increased emission of greenhouse gases; animal cruelty; and numerous diseases of over-nutrition, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. All are part and parcel of a society that eats primarily animal products.

To Bittman, the key to heading off these dire consequences is shifting the balance. Reducing our animal consumption by 10 percent, would reduce greenhouse emissions and diet-induced disease by 10 percent each. As I've said before in this blog, it's not an all-or-nothing. Big changes are the result of many, many small changes. Skip the burger once a week and replace it with a slice of veggie pizza and you're making a difference. Really.

Along those lines, Bittman promotes what he terms "less-meat-terianism." This means that you don't have to bite off more than you can chew, so to speak, of the vegetarian lifestyle. Do what you can, one meal at a time. Bittman himself follows a diet he calls "vegan-til-6;" that is, he eats vegan and eliminates the junk in his diet until 6 pm. In the evening, he eats whatever he wants.

Bittman is exceptionally articulate, easy to follow, and an entertaining listen. I look forward to reading Food Matters.

Haitian Remorse

2010-01-16T15:42:00.000-08:00

I have found it debilitating to follow the coverage of Haiti's earthquake. How can we begin to comprehend the suffering and the sheer chaos of the situation? To raise funds for the recovery effort, I'm planning to compile an e-book of Haitian and/or Creole recipes, which are surprisingly few and far between -- at least in my cookbook collection. If you have any recipes, I'd love to see them. Don't worry if they contain meat; I'll find a way to veg-ize them.

The Ultimate Winter Salad

2010-01-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

Salads in winter? Absolutely! But at this time of year, I don't base my salads on lettuce. Last night, I improvised a delicious, crunchy first course built upon a foundation of fennel.

Fennel is a delicious vegetable that looks and has a texture similar to celery, but is more fibrous. I love its mild licorice taste. The trick to fennel is cutting it paper thin -- think 1/16" or less. Much thicker and you'll feel like a cow chewing its never-ending cud.

The best tool for the job is the mandoline. Mine is an oxo and truthfully, I don't use it very often. However, when I need it, there is really no other utensil that can do the job. You can pay whatever you want for a mandoline, from about $20 dollars up to several hundred dollars. Because it isn't a high-use item in my kitchen, I'm wasn't compelled to go for the high end. My mandoline, which I received as a gift, retails for about $60 dollars

The salad couldn't be simpler. Here's the recipe:

Cyn's Fennel Salad

1 large bulb fennel

6 or 7 mandarin oranges

1 ripe avocado

1 T olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Use a mandoline or very sharp knife to cut the fennel bulb into paper-thin slices. You won't need the stalks or the pretty fronds, so put them aside.

Peel the mandarins and half-heartedly squeeze them into a bowl with the fennel. You want to express some, but not all of the juice because you put the sections into the salad, too, and you don't want tasteless segments.

So your bowl now contains the slivered fennel and the mandarin segments and juice.

Chop the avocado into small, 1/2" or so cubes. Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil, then season with salt and pepper. Toss and devour!

You'll never miss the lettuce!

First Farmer's Market of 2010

2010-01-03T15:01:00.000-08:00

In California, the farmers' markets run at full tilt all year. Today's crowd was as dense as any summer

Sunday -- only the produce is different.

In January, you'll find citrus...

and mushrooms...

How about some nuts?

Fresh eggs are available all year. The green things to the right of the eggs are green tomatoes. Only in January would the farmers give up and pick the tomatoes before they were ripe.

Special Vegan with a Vengeance Dessert

2009-12-30T15:21:00.000-08:00

Last night, a couple we like but with whom we have rarely connected, invited us over for an impromptu dinner. They asked if I would mind bringing dessert. Would I mind? I spend half my waking hours thinking about dessert, so I was thrilled!

I had just one evening to decide what to make and seriously considered picking up something at my favorite local bakery, Sugar, Butter, Flour. But then I picked up Vegan with a Vengeance. This is a terrific book written by the reigning queen of vegan punk-dom, Isa Chandra Moskowitz. It's filled with easy, appealing recipes and, so far, I haven't found a dud among them.

When I saw the recipe for no-bake black bottom peanut butter silk pie, I knew I had to make it. There's no dairy -- no cream, no eggs, no butter -- and you'll never miss it. It's a heady mix of peanut butter creme, chocolate wafer cookies, and semi-sweet chocolate (I used Scharffen Berger) that will send your taste buds soaring.

Here I am, the proud mommie...

And the Oscar goes to...

Gracias Madre

2009-12-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like a new restaurant to perk up my day and I recently got treated to one of the best!

Gracias Madre is a brand, spanking-new vegan restaurant in the Mission District of San Francisco. Located on Mission St. near 18th, Gracias Madre is at the center of the Mission's hustle and bustle. But from the iron security grating to its spare but warm dining room, the place is an island of calm. At least, that's what we found when we arrived for an early lunch on the restaurant's second day.

The menu, which is the same at both lunch at dinner, offers Mexican food's greatest hits done up with the best ingredients and a vegan flair.

To start, we shared a plate of roasted cauliflower drizzled with a vegan nut-based cheeze and topped with crisp bread crumbs. Halfway through it, I was overcome by the desire to suck my thumb and curl up in a corner. Such comfort.

To go with it, we each had a mandarin orange aqua fresca. Gracias Madre's version was like drinking a ray of sunshine. Really. I was running very low blood sugar when we got there and this drink was exactly what I needed. Be forewarned: this kind of refreshment comes at a price, $7 dollars to be exact. If the world really, truly wants organic produce, then get used to things like a $7 dollar glass of juice. (Besides, it's no more expensive than a margarita -- something we definitely don't need in greater supply.)

My dish was a Mexican Christmastime favorite, a tamale. Gracias Madre's version was a handmade treat, filled with smooth butternut squash filling. Its mild flavor played well with the tasty pickled veggie salad, a Mexican restaurant staple that I usually avoid, but found irresistible here.

My husband, Mr. Veg, ordered his personal favorite, Chiles Rellenos. His take was two beautiful poblano peppers stuffed with a medley of fresh veggies and topped with a light-colored sauce. The mixture was delicious and mild in my mouth but left a spicy aftertaste.

I'd love to show you pictures of the meal, but -- nightmare of food bloggers' nightmares -- I was so caught up in the meal that I forgot to take pictures. 'Guess you just have to go there yourself to fully appreciate the attractive, unpretentious presentation (and the hand-pressed blue corn tortillas).

By the time we left, business had picked up considerably. Even when they're busy, Gracias Madre retains a sense of sanity -- something that's so often missing. The proprietors also own Cafe Gratitude, a terrific local raw-foods place with multiple Bay Area locations. Cafe Gratitude's positive vibe buzzes here, too, so on many levels, you'll be happy you came.

Waffles for Christmas Brunch

2009-12-25T16:11:00.000-08:00

Christmas at our house is not generally a big affair. Aar and I exchange presents on Christmas Eve night and celebrate both Christmas and the day before with special meals. This year, that meant gingerbread waffles and winter fruit salad when we got home from the gym.

This is the first recipe I've tried from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's book, Vegan Brunch. If you've read the front matter in her other books, you know that she considers herself something of a legend for serving outstanding brunches to her friends when she lived in New York City. If these waffles are any example, her claims are true.

I'm no food photographer or stylist and even my best waffles look as though I studied at the Salvador Dali culinary school, but still, they're delicious.

The waffles are redolent of cinnamon, cloves, fresh ginger, and molasses. They're not quite as crispy as waffles made with eggs, but I can assure you that the texture did not deter me from inhaling more than four of them (that's where lost count). Aar made a spectacular winter fruit salad containing apples, persimmons, pomegranate arils, clemintines, and banana and of course, the whole thing was doused in maple syrup. On the side, Lightlife's Smart Links. Every bit as good as their porky counterpart without laying a finger on a single pig. No cholesterol either! The whole thing adds up to a very merry Christmas.

The Wonderful World of Soy Crumbles

2009-12-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to reduce the amount of meat in your diet, but aren't quite sure what to start with, try making a casserole using soy crumbles. As you might know, soy can take a lot of forms, including tofu, milk, burgers, and tempeh. Crumbles are just another permutation of this flexible, protein-rich bean.

Resembling ground beef in look and texture with a somewhat meaty taste, crumbles are a pre-cooked, no-cholesterol swap for the real thing that you can use in burritos, spaghetti sauce -- even shepherd's pie -- with absolutely no risk of E.-coli contamination.

One of my favorite ways to use soy crumbles is in Hungry Girl's Hot Tamale Pie. (Scroll a bit; it's the third recipe down.) It uses several convenience foods to their best advantage, delivering a delicious, quick casserole.

These days, most grocery stores, including Trader Joe's, sell soy crumbles. Among the makers are Morningstar Farms, Boca, Yves, and LightLife.

Health Magazine's Easy Granola

2009-12-11T12:34:00.000-08:00

Making holiday sweets for my friends is something of a tradition for me, but one close friend, A., is diabetic. I don't want to interfere with her regimen by presenting her with sugary treats, so this year, I'm making her some granola. The oats, nuts, and seeds metabolize more slowly than straight white sugar and flour, so even though it is sweet (mine contains maple syrup, dark agave syrup, and dried fruit), it won't cause her blood sugar to spike.

I am a rabid recipe clipper and I found this granola recipe in Health magazine's October 2009 issue. It was contributed by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and you can get it here.

The beauty of granola is that no two batches are alike. This time, I put in walnuts, chopped almonds, and pecans. I also added sesame, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds to the mix and a couple bags of mixed dried fruit. But you can use any fruits, nuts, and seeds you like. Pine nuts, hazelnuts, poppy seeds, raisins, dried apricots -- the sky is the limit and Jamie's recipe allows for improvising.

Granola isn't the only healthy sweet you can make for your loved ones. Bran muffins and banana bread made with whole wheat flour have also been a hit with my friends. And who wouldn't enjoy a gift card to Jamba Juice or Whole Foods? Have an oatmeal lover in your life? Make them a gift basket with a couple different kinds of oats (for example, steel cut and thick cut), a variety of sweeteners such as agave syrup and apple butter, and a sampling of exotic dried fruits. 'Healthy' and 'treat' don't have to be mutually exclusive terms!

Roasting Brussels Sprouts

2009-12-09T11:07:00.000-08:00

If you don't like Brussels sprouts, you haven't tried them roasted. On the West Coast, they're a real taste of the season. Here's how to roast 'em:

1. Preheat your oven to 425F.

2. Select the best Brussels sprouts you can find. We found this beautiful stalk -- about three pounds worth of perfect, tight-leaved, deep green mini-cabbages -- at the farmers' market. To remove them, just pop them off the stalk. No sweat.

3. Prep them. To do this, first I slice off 1/16" off the bottom stem. Be careful, though. You don't want to completely slice off that stem because it holds all the leaves together. Having trimmed the stem, cut an X into the bottom. Two reasons for doing this: first, it allows you to clean the inner leaves. Second, by exposing the inside, it helps the sprouts to cook faster.

Once you've trimmed and X-ed the sprouts, wash them. Usually, I'm pretty lax about washing my fruit and vegetables; just a quick rinse and I'm done. Recently, however, I found Environne fruit and vegetable wash and now I swear by it. Environne can coax out the finest grit and the tiniest bugs without leaving any residue, taste, or smell.

So put a small squeeze of Environne into a large bowl. Fill with water and drop in the sprouts. Let them soak for around 15 minutes, then rinse well.

4. Oil and season them. This step is simple and even fun! Put a tablespoon or so of olive oil into a large Ziploc bag. Add salt and pepper to taste. Fill bag with roughly a dozen sprouts, close the zipper, then mush it around to coat those precious little globes of green.

5. Place the sprouts on a cookie sheet lined with a Silpat. Put them into your preheated oven.

6. Bake for about half an hour, til the outer leaves have browned. Don't fuss over them. Just let them roast in peace. You'll be richly rewarded.

If you don't love 'em roasted, then you're incapable of appreciating this humble but delicious vegetable. Fortunately, you can use this method on any cruciferous vegetable. On Friday night, I'll be roasting some broccoli and cauliflower.

Hey Butterfly - You Won!

2009-12-07T12:55:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Butterfly, who won the Moosewood Restaurant Farm Fresh Meals recipe deck. The deck has 50 recipes organized by season. Here's the dish, cranberry bulgur pilaf, I made to accompany the stuffed squash I made for Thanksgiving. It's tasty, high in fiber, and has a lower glycemic index than most starchy holiday side dishes.

Cranberry Bulgur Pilaf
2 T olive oil
1 1/2 c chopped onions
3 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
dash of salt
1 orange, plus juice to make 1/2 c
1/2 tsp. crumbled dried rosemary (1 1/2 tsp. chopped fresh)
1 1/2 c medium to light bulgur
1 1/2 c water or vegetable broth
1/2 c dried cranberries, currants, or raisins, chopped
1 T soy sauce, more to taste
1 T lemon juice, more to taste
2/3 c chopped toasted pecans, walnuts, or almonds (optional)

In a saucepan on medium heat, warm the oil, add the onions and garlic, sprinkle with salt, and cook until softened, about 10 minutes. While the onions cook, grate the orange peel and juice the orange.

Add the rosemary, orange zest, and bulgur to the onions and cook for a minute, stirring. Add the orange juice, water or broth, and dried cranberries, cover, and cook on low heat until all the liquid is absorbed, about 10 minutes. If the bulgur is still crunchy, add 1/4 c of hot water and cook a few minutes longer. Remove from heat. Stir in the soy sauce and lemon juice. Add the nuts if you like, and more soy sauce and/or lemon juice to taste.

Quorn and Moosewood Giveaways

2009-12-01T16:09:00.000-08:00

I like to keep the holiday spirit alive throughout the winter holidays, not just on the big eating days. Because I don't eat animal flesh or drink milk and limit how much yogurt, cheese, ice cream, and eggs I eat, I can party-up my meals without gaining a lot of weight. Sort of. (OK, so I'm dangerous around candy, ice cream, and baked goods.)

Anyhow, you'll find that going meatless during the holidays -- even at just one meal each week between Thanksgiving and New Year's -- offers infinite variety as well as a tasty, humane change of pace. Here's a 'chik'n' dinner I made recently that celebrates the season without going overboard on fat and calories.

Chik'n Nuggets by Quorn. I don't actually know what McNuggets taste like, but Quorn nuggets are simply delicious. The taste and texture is remarkably like chicken and the breading belies the fact that they're baked in the oven rather than fried. At 180 calories for 4 nuggets, this delightful little finger food is a calorie-watcher's pal. As to the dipping sauce, we ditched the ranch dressing, substituting jalapeno chutney for a more grown-up taste.

Cranberry bulgur pilaf. Bulgur (aka cracked wheat -- the stuff you use to make tabouli) plays an unexpected but welcome supporting role in this meal. The dish is seasoned with orange, rosemary, and dried cranberries. The rosemary is aromatic and a good foil for the sweetness of the berries. Note, though, that if you're making the dish ahead of time or serving it cold, you should add the rosemary immediately before serving. The flavor doesn't stand up to reheating or refrigerating.

You can have them both! I'm thrilled to offer one lucky reader an assortment from Quorn that includes a sample of every product they make! On the blog, I've reviewed their chik'n tenders, turk'y burgers, and now the chik'n nuggets and my taste buds stand behind every one. One lucky person will receive a sample each of their 12 products, shipped in coolers with ice packs to keep them cold. (BTW, Quorn products are meat free and soy free, but not vegan.)

I'm also happy to be giving away Moosewood Restaurant Farm Fresh Meals recipe deck, a package containing 50 of the Moosewood collective's newest recipes for every season. This is where I found the bulgur recipe. You'll also find dishes like sweet potato-stuffed eggplant, mediterranean orange and olive salad, and brussels sprouts with chestnut beurre blanc.

To have a chance at winning one of the prizes, simply register as one of Ms. Veggie's followers, then post a comment indicating so (don't forget your name, too). I'll choose two random numbers using random.com and the writers of the corresponding comments will share in the loot! I'll take entries until Saturday, December 5 at noon Pacific time.

The grand finale

2009-11-28T17:53:00.000-08:00

Before the moment is lost for good, I have to tell you about my third and final Thanksgiving dinner.

We had originally planned to work and eat at Cafe Gratitude, who was putting on a free dinner in exchange for helping out that day at the restaurant. It sounded like fun, but cut into our gym schedule (shallow, huh?), so we were staying open to other possibilities, too.

On Wednesday night, to celebrate the four-day weekend, we went to a favorite place of ours, Merit Vegetarian, in Sunnyvale. The owner, Sam, recognized us from our many previous visits and came over to say hello. We told him about Cafe Gratitude and he mentioned that a friend of his in The City also owned a vegetarian restaurant and that he had been helping her prep for the Thanksgiving blow-out she was putting on.

Golden Era Vegan Cuisine -- located in the Tenderloin, just a short walk from our beloved Millenium -- offered a four-course vegan meal for just $25 dollars (that's half of what Millenium was charging)! And it was terrific!

We started with a savory pumpkin soup, flavored with a little curry and a lot of hot pepper. It was as smooth as silk. Non-dairy cream soups such as this one this never cease to amaze me -- how do they achieve such a glorious texture with no butter or cream?

From there, we enjoyed an entirely serviceable dinner salad with field greens, shredded cabbage and carrot, and a nicely tart vinegarette.

The third course was simply beautiful:

Faux meat fascinates me the same way that dairyless cream soups do; how do they do it? Nancy, Golden Era's owner, gave us a rough overview of how they made the faux turkey, but all I took away from it is that the outer skin, which tasted remarkably like the skin of a turkey, is made from tofu-skin wrappers. On my own, I surmised that the 'meat' was seitan (she said tofu, but it really didn't taste like or have the texture of tofu) and that the stuffing was regular old stuffing that would have been happy on just about any Thanksgiving table, vegan or otherwise.

Seitan, if you're interested, is the base of a lot of faux meat. It's made from something called wheat gluten. What that is and where one buys it I don't know, but it makes for mighty tasty fake flesh. But back to the dinner...

Being as I'm never one to shy away from dessert, I gladly took on the fourth course, a pumpkin cheesecake. It had the same tanginess of a dairy-based cheesecake and the spiciness of a traditional pumpkin pie. I feel certain that an omnivore wouldn't have felt that he was missing a thing.

Actually, there was one thing missing for me: the weight gain that invariably accompanies the day after Thanksgiving. My weight stayed exactly where it had been the day before. I didn't miss a thing!

BTW, we asked Nancy if they were planning a dinner for Christmas. She said they were considering it, but hadn't reached a final decision. So make a point of calling her (415/673-3136) and telling her to do Christmas dinner, too!

Thanksgiving: Part Deux

2009-11-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

The great thing about living in the SF Bay Area is that everybody is represented. People come in more colors, speak more different languages, and eat more different food than in just about any other part of the country that I've lived or visited (the exception being New York City).

In Palo Alto, the macrobiotics are represented by the Peninsula Macrobiotic Community (PMC). I'm no expert about macrobiotics, but from my observations, it's a very yin-yang lifestyle, balancing hot and cold, sweet and sour, heavy and light. Before I joined the group, I imagined the macrobiotic diet to be mainly seaweed, fish, and brown rice, eaten by terminal cancer patients. And that's not an entirely incorrect picture.

A lot of sick people do turn to this easily digested food and brown rice is a staple in this diet, but the PMC at least also enjoys a lot more of what you might think of as just good old vegan food. And for 22 years, they've been able to attract 100 or more diners to their Monday night dinners. Here's what we ate in celebration of Thanksgiving:

* Sparkling punch
* Savory sage broth
* Bread basket with miso tahini sauce
* Tempeh vegetable cutlets w mushroom gravy
* Cornbread stuffing (a favorite)
* Mashed sweet potatoes
* Green bean casserole
* Green salad
* Orange ginger cranberry sauce
* Mince 'meat' pie w tofu creme

It was divine and many of the dishes were really no different from a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. And like a traditional T'day repast, the servings were large enough that I was able to take home leftovers to eat the following day for lunch.

The only thing dinner was missing was pictures. I completely forgot to take pictures -- ARGH!

Still, you can learn more about the PMC at their web site or their chef, Gary Alinder's, blog.

Thanksgiving: Part Une

2009-11-24T15:24:00.000-08:00

Aaron and I will be celebrating Thanksgiving three times this year. This past weekend marked our first nod to the holiday with a glorious stuffed butternut squash for the main course. I found the recipe in a new book called Gather by Georgeanne Brennan.

The squash was stuffed with a variety of sweet and savory ingredients, including fresh sage, dried peaches, sauteed onion, prunes, and rustic whole wheat bread cubes. It was not a fast dish, but it wasn't difficult either. First I had to bake the squash for an hour, then let it cool another hour, prepare the stuffing, fill the squash cavities, and heat it through.

It was a very rich and savory dish that contrasted well with the tangy cranberry chutney I served with it. I found the recipe in a 1980 edition of the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook. Being vegetarian, I don't turn to this book on a regular basis because it's too meat-centric. But every now and then, when I need a good, standard recipe -- like cranberry sauce -- it's a terrific resource. (My other go-to books include the Joy of Cooking and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.)

It was a great way to kick off Thanksgiving; I can hardly wait for part deux!

Pumpkin shortage -- and solution!

2009-11-23T14:01:00.000-08:00

I'd like to say it isn't true, but the pumpkin shortage I mentioned in early autumn appears to have returned. Hungry Girl reported it in this morning's broadcast e-mail and backed it up with a press release from Libby's. So if you can find canned pumpkin, buy it. Stock up because it could be another year before you see it again.

There is another answer to the shortage: substitute any other winter squash. How to substitute other squash for pumpkin: 1) Bake the squash til it's soft (bake it whole at 350F for about an hour, randomly puncturing it with a knife to allow air to escape), 2) Cut in half and scrape out the seeds, 3) Puree the pulp in a food processor. 4) Proceed with your recipe as usual, substituting your pureed squash for pumpkin. Your guests probably won't notice the difference and they may actually prefer the change. One of the best 'pumpkin' pies I've had was made with kabocha squash.

For a Southern twist, bake up a sweet potato pie. There's a terrific recipe for it in Oprah's circa-1990s book, In the Kitchen with Rosie. If that book isn't on your shelf, just Google "sweet potato pie" and you'll find more versions than you could eat in a lifetime. I also found -- but haven't yet tried -- a neat-looking sweet potato pie with coconut crust on Gary Alinder's blog, macrochef.

BTW, my favorite sweet potato is the garnet yam. Is there a difference between sweet potatoes and yams? I don't know and truthfully, I don't care. All I know is that I use garnet yams and ONLY garnet yams and I'm always happy with the results.

So not to worry. Either you'll get to the grocery store before the pumpkin is depleted or you'll try something new, be it a different winter squash or garnet yams.

Congrats to Zucchini Breath!

2009-11-14T17:31:00.000-08:00

The winner of Jennifer Cornbleet's flashy new book, Raw for Dessert, is Zucchini Breath from Klamath Falls, OR. Please contact me at your earliest convenience so I can arrange shipping for your book. Stay tuned, because more give-aways are in the making!

Raw for Dessert Give-away!

2009-11-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Cornbleet got wind of my making the Greek dates in her most recent book, Raw for Dessert, and has generously offered a copy to give away to a lucky reader. This book took me by surprise; I was expecting not to like it, but having tried the dates last week, I'm already planning my next raw 'baking' session!

On my list is her mince pie -- which I'm planning for Thanksgiving -- and the apple compote with golden raisins and pistachios. You can learn more about Jennifer and raw cuisine on her web site. In the meantime, to get a chance at winning the book, just leave a comment with your favorite Thanksgiving dessert. (Why do I think pumpkin pie will be the hands-down winner?)

We'll take entries through Thursday, November 12 at midnight Pacific Time. Good luck everyone!

Chocolate-covered Katie give-away

2009-11-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

I love give-aways and one of my fellow bloggers is having one where you get to choose your prize. For more info, take a look at Chocolate-covered Katie's blog.

Sublime Stuffed Dates

2009-11-09T17:19:00.000-08:00

So I volunteered to bring dessert to a pot-luck I attended recently, but my oven went on the fritz. Having very little time, I wanted to come up with something show-stopping using only ingredients I had on-hand. In every crisis, lies an opportunity; for me, the silver lining is that my broken oven got me to try out ahead of schedule a book I just received called Raw for Dessert. Jennifer Cornbleet's book is filled with glorious photos of hot-looking goodies, but frankly, I've had a mental block about making anything out of it.

If you're unfamiliar with the raw food scene, raw foodists are vegetarians (vegans really) who eat primarily unprocessed, uncooked foods -- fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, grains, and beans. They believe that cooking food destroys beneficial enzymes and therefore, don't employ traditional cooking and baking methods. Whatever you think of the diet's efficacy, preparing raw dishes has always struck me as very time-consuming: soaking nuts for hours, 'cooking' with dehydrators, and chopping into oblivion. I've enjoyed all the raw dishes I've sampled, mostly at Cafe Gratitude in Berkeley and San Francisco, but it's easy to like because someone else has done all the work!

Good news! My first raw dessert took just minutes and was brilliant! Cornbleet's Greek dates taste like baklava encased in an exotic, sweet date shell. I couldn't stop eating them and neither could my friends. Theses are a no-brainer to make. In the food processor, pulse some nuts, agave syrup (see What is agave? below), and orange peel. Stuff generously into dates and refrigerate. Such bliss! For my money, it's the orange zest that makes this dish click.

What is agave? Agave is a desert plant whose sap is used in making tequila. It's also a wonderful sweetener that I've found to be interchangeable with honey and maple syrup. It's low on the glycemic index, which means it's a good choice for diabetics; what's more, it doesn't produce a sugar rush and subsequent crash. If you haven't tried agave, Madhava is a Colorado company that produces both the light (similar to honey) and amber (think maple syrup) varieties. While I haven't found agave in traditional supermarkets, I have gotten it at both Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.

Talking turk'y

2009-11-06T15:03:00.000-08:00

The best thing about blogging is that I occasionally receive unexpected packages containing interesting food or books. Yesterday, my friends at Quorn sent me a package of their new turk'y burgers. If you haven't come across Quorn already, they make meat substitutes from mushroom protein (who knew?). Vegans beware: turk'y burgers also contain egg whites, so they're not entirely plant-based; however, if your diet allows, you should give them a go.

These burgers are a little on the small side; think oversized slider. Each one has just 90 calories and 4 g fat, so if you put two on your burger bun, you're still safely below 200 calories. We had ours between two slices of Trader Joe's sprouted barley bread (only 70 calories per slice with 2 g fiber) and a dollop of TJs apple-cranberry chutney (mmm!!). They taste remarkably like poultry and cook up easily on the grill pan.

On the side: baked sweet potato "fries."

Tutorial Sweet potato fries are a cinch to make. Just cut a sweet potato into wedges the size of your index finger. Put the wedges into a zippered plastic bag into which you've put a tablespoon of olive oil and a few shakes of salt. Toss to coat, then place on a baking sheet. Bake in a 425F oven for 30-40 minutes, until fork-tender.

Apple Bread for Your Holiday Sideboard

2009-11-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin pie is a holiday staple and I know that I, for one, would be disappointed to leave the Thanksgiving table without having had a large slice of it. I would never, however, turn down additional dessert offerings and this fresh apple bread is a terrific complement to any harvest celebration.

The recipe is from Ken Haedrich's now-out-of-print book, A Passion for Bread. If you're lucky enough to find a copy of this hand-lettered gem, pick it up. You'll find more than 30 recipes for yeasted breads, 20-plus quick breads, and half a dozen unyeasted breads. In the almost 30 years I've owned it, I have never had a recipe fail.

While you can make this bread in either a regular, standard-sized loaf pan or three mini pans, it bakes more evenly in the smaller pans.

Fresh Apple Bread
from A Passion for Bread
by Ken Haedrich

2 large apples, cored and chopped
2 1/2 c whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour (preferred)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
2 T cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
1 c apple juice
1/2 c honey or maple syrup
1/3 c oil or melted butter
handful raisins
handful chopped walnuts

Prepare the apples and set aside. Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon. Add the apples, raisins, and walnuts. (Tossing them with the dry ingredients prevents them from sinking to the bottom.)

Blend liquids in a separate bowl and add to the dry. Stir just until smooth.

Pour batter into three greased mini-loaf pans or one regular-sized pan. Bake for 1 hour, until a toothpick emerges dry.

We have a winner!

2009-11-05T10:19:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Jami, the winner of Nava Atlas's ebook, A Bountiful Vegan Thanksgiving! Please contact me with your e-mail address so I can send you the goods. Thanks to everyone who commented; all this talk of Thanksgiving makes my mouth water. More soon.

Nava Atlas Give-away!

2009-11-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled to be having my first give-away! Just in time for the holidays, I'm offering a free copy of Nava Atlas's A Bountiful Vegan Thanksgiving. This exciting e-book has 65 festive, plant-based recipes. You'll find appetizers, soups, salads, side dishes, main dishes, stuffings, cranberry sauces, desserts and more -- everything you need to celebrate in a healthful, conscious way. All you have to do is respond to this post with your name and your favorite Thanksgiving food. I'll select a winner using a random number generator. Please respond by Tuesday, November 3 at 9 pm Pacific Time.

It's apple time

2009-10-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

On our way home from a short trip to Lake Tahoe last week, we stopped in Placerville, a cute gold-rush town along highway 50. In addition to having a fun downtown, Placerville is also the home of apple hill, a collection of 50-some apple orchards. After one false start at an orchard with seemingly no employees, we found an apple-pie perfect orchard called Larsen's Apple Barn. There were cars in the parking lot (good sign), a working water wheel (better), and an on-site bakery (best). I could feel the promise in the air as we entered the apple showroom.

Just inside the doorway stood an outgoing young woman, paring knife in hand, ready to teach us the difference between a Delicous and a Jonathan by means of free samples and friendly apple banter. "My dad and his brothers run the place," she said. "Each one of my uncles grows different varieties; that's how we can have so many kinds."

My husband, Aaron, decided quickly that he wanted to take home a bag of Winesap apples. I liked the Mutsus, but I had more in mind than just eating them out-of-hand. I wanted to make homemade applesauce and apple butter. For these, first-quality apples are unnecessary, so I began peeking behind the displays, looking for the seconds bin.

Our friend the apple sampler noticed me prowling around and approached me. "Are you by chance looking for seconds?" she queried.

"Uh, yeah," I said.

"Follow me," she replied, leading us into a walk-in refrigerator the size of our living room. In back was box after box of less-than-perfect pommes. She located a 40-pound box of Mutsus -- a steal at $12 dollars -- and we were on our way.

What's followed has been sheer bliss.

I've made a slow-cooker apple "pie"...

Four pints of applesauce (recipe at the end of this post) and four of apple butter...

...As well as half-a-dozen baked apples which we have with breakfast or for dessert, and a carmel apple crisp that I'll be sharing tonight with friends.

Still to come are another batch of applesauce and a wonderful fresh apple bread that I've been making since I was in college.

Here's the applesauce I made. I found it years ago on the inside flap of a box of Celestial Seasonings
peppermint tea. They call it a chutney, but it doesn't have that sweet-tangy tension chutney provides. It's delicious just the same and contains no sugar or other sweetener. I had no idea that tea bags could deliver this much flavor!

Cinnamon Apple Chutney
from Celestial Seasonings

(Note: I made a double batch.)

6 Celestial Seasonings Cinnamon Apple Spice tea bags
2 c water
6 c chopped apples (no need to peel or core - not that I ever do anyway)
1/4 c raisins
1/2 c chopped walnuts
other dried fruit or nuts that sound good, optional (I used a bag of dried fruit bits)

Place tea bags in a heavy pan, add water and bring to a boil. Steep over low heat for 5 minutes. Remove and gently squeeze tea bags over pot, then discard.

Add chopped apples and all dried fruit and nuts to the pot. Simmer everything over low heat for at least 1 hour or as long as all day. Chutney should be thick and chunky.

Storagewise, I put up four pints of this to enjoy later in the winter and put a couple more in the fridge to eat immediately.

Topmost image of apples courtesy of the US Apple Association.

Vegan Dad's yeasted pumpkin bread and rolls

2009-10-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

If you've never visited Vegan Dad's blog, now is the time. Vegan Dad has great ideas, the perspective of a family man with sometimes-finicky kids, and a terrific sense of humor over negotiating a plant-based diet in a meat-based society.

So Vegan Dad's most recent post is for a quite-nice-looking dinner roll made with -- you guessed it -- pumpkin! Unfortunately, I can't fire up the oven tonight to try a batch (we're on a little get-away in Lake Tahoe), but you can. He doesn't provide a recipe so much as a technique that involoves replacing the recipe's liquids with pumpkin puree. So if you have a favorite dinner roll recipe, read Vegan Dad's thoughts, then give 'em a try. If you start now, you'll have them down pat by Thanksgiving! Be bold!

Pumpkin curry

2009-10-16T20:05:00.000-07:00

Lest you think I've finished my pumpkin phase, aha -- a really wonderful, mild curry comes on the scene! It's from Colleen Patrick-Goodreau's recent book, The Vegan Table, and it's mighty tasty. Unlike the dairy-filled, calorific curries in Indian restaurants, this one is dairy- and oil-free, with just 177 calories per serving. The pumpkin taste is subtle; if you didn't know it was there, you might not pick up on it. But you will pick up on its satiny, smooth texture and the fetching flavors of coconut, chiles, and curry -- seductive and exotic.

The dish is built around pumpkin, coconut, and lentils (she wants you to use red lentils, but I only had the conventional brown ones and they worked out fine). I can't share the recipe with you (yet), but I can show it to you in all its pumpkinny orangeness.

Fresh ginger, curry powder, cayenne pepper, and dried red chiles are a few of the aromatics that build the taste of the dish. Personally, I get kinda shy around the bolder flavors, like cayenne and dried chiles, so I erred on the side of restraint and I wish I hadn't. For the chiles, I used two pasilla peppers, where she had called for five of unspecified variety. Because pasilla peppers are mild (chiles rellenos is often made with pasillas), I could've gone all the way, but wimped out. Next time, I'll be a real woman about this.

This dish has a special guest-star quality that's important even though we don't always discuss it: fiberwise, Colleen's pumpkin curry is off the charts. By the book's calculation, a serving has 13 marvelous grams of fiber -- that's close to half of what an adult should consume each day. It's delicious and good for you, too!

So I can't print the recipe yet because I haven't obtained the necessary permission, but stay tuned for details. Or better still, go buy the book; it's only $13.57 on Amazon. It's a very friendly volume, with Colleen's easy, conversational tone dozens of gorgeous pictures, and 199 other mouth-watering recipes. At the very least, make a visit to her web site, Compassionate Cooks.

Jamba Juice's pumpkin smoothie

2009-10-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a Jamba Juice fan from way back (like, when they called themselves Juice Club). Jamba is a special treat for me; even the lowest-calorie smoothies pack a lot of calories, so I only go when the occasion warrants.

Going to the dentist is one of those occasions.

Monday, I had a tooth pulled. What a way to start the week! Because I availed myself of my dentist's sedation dentistry services, I had to fast for 12 hours prior to the appointment. So Monday morning, I took the little blue pill they gave me then watched the world disappear like fragments of a dream. It was wonderful, but not in the same giggly way that nitrous oxide is.

With the little blue pill, I was able to be an ideal patient -- no anxiety, no gagging, able to keep my mouth WIDE open for an entire 90 minutes. And I don't remember a thing.

But boy, was I hungry by the time it was over. Definitely time for a stop at Jamba Juice. With my darling husband acting as interpreter between me and the sober world, I ordered a power-sized Pumpkin Smash.

Granted, I was coming off of one heck of a trip when I drank it, but I loved it and feel certain that I'll still love it when I go back. With a satin texture and a hint of pumpkin pie spice, it's a winner.

The stats (original size, 22 ounces): 510 calories, 0.5 g fat, 3 g fiber. Like I said, the calories quickly add up at Jamba, so it's not an everyday thing, but perfect for pumpkin season!

A pumpkinny twist on chocolate chip cookies

2009-10-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

In a pumpkin-induced craze, I baked almost 9 dozen of these delectable goodies!

I’m having so much fun with the pumpkin theme that I think I’ll stay with it a while. Pumpkin nut and chip cookies are a superb way to add fiber and Vitamin A to your diet. Did you know that half a cup of pumpkin contains 5 grams of fiber and 300 percent of the suggested intake of Vitamin A? Sneaking some into chocolate chip cookies is brilliant!

I picked up this recipe at BlogHer Food, a women’s food blogging conference held in San Francisco recently. I find that these taste better the second (and third) day, as the pumpkin pie spice melds with the pumpkin and the chocolate.

Pumpkin nut and chip cookies

California Milk Advisory Board

Makes about 4 dozen

1/2 c butter, softened (I used Earth Balance margarine)

1 1/2 c sugar

1 c canned pumpkin

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 1/2 c flour

2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c milk chocolate chips (I used mini chocolate chips)

3/4 c walnuts, toasted and finely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Sift dry ingredients into bowl; add chocolate chips and walnuts, stirring well.

3. In a separate, larger bowl, mix butter and sugar until creamy; add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla, beating well after each addition.

4. Gradually add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture until well blended.

5. Drop batter by heaping teaspoons onto lightly buttered cookie sheets.

6. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

7. Cool on wire racks and store in airtight container.

Vegan pumpkin cake and cream cheese frosting

2009-10-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

Here at last are the recipes I described in my October 8 posting for the pumpkin cake from Veganomicon and the cream cheese frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Both books are extremely – to borrow a term from the 1980s – user friendly. They’re upbeat and accessible, even if you’re new to vegetarian/vegan ingredients. You’ll never miss the artery-clogging butter, eggs, and milk used in traditional baking. I own every one of Isa Chandra and Terry's cookbooks, so you can plan on seeing more where these came from!

Pumpkin cake

Adapted from Veganomicon

1 15 oz. can pureed pumpkin

3/4 c milk (I used almond; Isa recommends soy)

3/4 c canola oil

1 1/2 c granulated sugar

3 T light molasses

2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

2 2/3 c all-purpose flour

1 T baking powder

1 tsp. Salt

1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

3/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

3/4 tsp. ground ginger

1/2 tsp. ground allspice

1/8 tsp. ground cloves

3/4 c chopped, toasted pecans (my addition)

1/2 c raisins, softened by soaking briefly in boiling water (my addition)

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 9 x 13” baking pan.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin, soy milk, oil, granulated sugar, molasses, and vanilla. Mix well. Add roughly half the flour, the baking powder, salt, spices, and nuts and use a fork to fold everything together. Add the remaining flour and mix gently until combined. Add raisins. Don’t use a hand blender for this, as pumpkin can get gummy if it’s mixed too aggressively. Blending with a fork helps maintain the texture.

Pour batter into the prepared baking pan and spread it out with a spatula. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until a knife inserted through the center comes out clean.

From the book Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero. Reprinted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2007. www.dacapopresscookbooks.com.

Vegan cream cheese frosting, 2x

From Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

1/2 c nonhydrogenated margarine, softened

1/2 c vegan cream cheese, softened (dairy cream cheese would probably work fine, too)

4 c confectioners’ sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Cream together margarine and cream cheese until just combined. Use a handheld mixer to whip while adding the confectioners sugar in 1/2 c batches. Mix until smooth and creamy, then mix in the vanilla. Keep tightly covered and refrigerated until ready to use. (This also freezes very well.)

From the book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero. Reprinted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2006. www.dacapopresscookbooks.com.

Pumpkin trivia

2009-10-10T01:12:00.000-07:00

Even Annabelle loves pumpkin!

DID YOU KNOW... that some veterinarians recommend feeding cats pumpkin to help keep them regular? Our girl Annabelle -- who is very regular, thank-you-very-much -- discovered pumpkin on her own and ate it with great gusto. Who'd a thunk it?

Great newsletter from Nava Atlas

2009-10-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of Nava Atlas for years. She's the esteemed author of several veg cookbooks, including three that I have: Vegan Soups and Stews for All Seasons, The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet, and The Vegetarian Family Cookbook. She also writes a monthly newsletter and maintains an information-filled web site, In A Vegetarian Kitchen with Nava Atlas.

This month's newsletter is particularly interesting. She includes a recipe for apple streudel, a bulghur salad with fruit and nuts, and a link to her e-book containing 65 vegetarian recipes for Thanksgiving. Be sure to have a look at her newsletter.

...and be sure to try that delectable pumpkin spice latte I mentioned earlier!

Pumpkin latte from neversaydiet.com

2009-10-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

Remember the pumpkin latte I mentioned a couple days ago? Well, I made it last night and it's fabulous. GO MAKE IT NOW! It's that delicious.

You might remember that the recipe is available on neversaydiet.com. Made with real pumpkin (as opposed to pumpkin flavored syrup), this latte one-ups Starbucks by light years -- and I like Starbucks!

The recipe is a little bit of spice heaven. In addition to the pumpkin, espresso and milk, the drink features whole cloves, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, orange zest, and vanilla. I streamlined things by not straining it or frothing the milk. I'd give you the recipe here, but I really want you to go visit neversaydiet's web site!

You know you want to taste this stuff. So hey -- it's the weekend. You can afford to mess around in the kitchen for an extra five minutes...go do it. You won't be sorry!

Isa Chandra's Pumpkin Cake

2009-10-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

What a happy coincidence that I procured a case of canned pumpkin just days before the annual Sukkot potluck dinner my husband's congregation puts on every year. Briefly, Sukkot is the annual harvest festival celebrated by Jews. A sukkah (hut) is erected and we all get together in it to thank God for the plentiful harvest and to share food with friends. This year's turn-out was good with about 20 of us there. The hut was solidly constructed, which kept us warm, and enough people brought lanterns that we weren't completely in the dark by 7 p.m.

The buffet was ample and satisfying with lots of noodle dishes, including kugel, lasagne, and pasta salad, and there was a lot of good crusty bread. Is it me or do potlucks generally lack in green vegetables? Maybe next time I'll get gutsy and bring a platter of sauteed spinach or steamed broccoli.

But not this time. This weekend, I was itching to get into that pumpkin. I wanted to make a pumpkin cake. Not muffins or bread. Cake. The difference is subtle and some would say there is no difference, but I find that whether it’s made with carrots, pumpkin, bananas or some other fruit or veggie, a cake typically has a softer crumb than its related bread or muffin.

I ended up finding what I was after in Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s book, Veganomicon. I made her Pumpkin Crumb Cake with Pecan Streusel on page 255, with a couple of alterations. First, I omitted the streusel, instead using vegan cream cheese frosting (from one of her other books, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World). I also added 3/4 cup chopped pecans and 1/2 cup softened raisins (softened by soaking them briefly in boiling water before adding to the batter).

I had originally planned to serve the cake

at the dinner, then bring two big pieces to Leona and Larry, new friends who live down the street. This is the gorgeous jewel of a cake I brought to the dinner...

And this is what I brought home…

Sorry, guys; I promise, you’ll have first dibs on the next baked good I create!

Pumpkin palooza

2009-10-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

Armed with my case of pure, canned pumpkin, I am on a quest for every interesting way to cook and eat the stuff. This afternoon, I caught wind of a yummy-looking pumpkin latte on neversaydiet.com. It rivals the Starbucks creation, packing fewer calories and containing real pumpkin. (Starbucks uses flavored syrup.) So have a look at this delicious pumpkin spice latte. Feel free to try it out and report back your impression of it. I'll do the same.

What's your favorite way to eat pumpkin?

Pumpkin shortage?

2009-09-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

I loooove pumpkin and eat it all year round. When I'm not whipping up a pumpkin dessert, muffins, or bread I use it in my oatmeal (recipe follows). It's also terrific tonic for my sweet tooth; when I want something sweet, I microwave a scoop of pumpkin with a splash of maple syrup and a healthy dash of pumpkin pie spice.

Because I'm so enamored of this endearing orange veggie, I have canned pumpkin in my pantry all year long. So I was a little alarmed when I couldn't find it in two different grocery stores recently. Turns out, we have something of a shortage going.

The good news is, it's almost over. Here's the story: Bad weather in 2008 led to a smaller-than-expected pumpkin harvest that year. There was enough pumpkin to get holiday bakers through the season, but not enough to seamlessly carry us through until the 2009 harvest. So if you've been looking for canned pumpkin this summer and come up dry, that's why.

Fortunately, the 2009 pumpkin harvest is underway and appears to be a healthy one. Soon -- hopefully in time for Thanksgiving -- shelves will once again be fully stocked with my favorite source of beta carotene, a substance the body uses to produce Vitamin A.

Oh, and here's my recipe for pumpkin oatmeal. :-)

Pumpkin oats

Serves 1

1/2 c old-fashioned oatmeal

1/4 c canned pumpkin

1/2 c milk of any sort (dairy, soy, almond)

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, more to taste

1 T maple syrup or agave nectar, more to taste

Put all ingredients in a large bowl with high walls (I use an eight-cup measuring cup). Cover with microwave-safe plastic wrap and cook for three minutes, watching closely to prevent it from boiling over. Stir, adding more milk if you prefer a thinner consistency. Serve as-is or with applesauce or yogurt.

Brown rice chips at Costco

2009-09-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

Costco fascinates me, not so much because of its warehouse setting and outsized-everything for sale, but more because of the unlikely things I find there. My most recent Costco gleaning is Brown Rice Chips with Black Sesame and Sea Salt. They're from Ming Tsai over at Blue Ginger in Massachusetts. You might remember him from his show, East Meets West with Ming Tsai, which ran way back during the Food Network's infancy. Now he hosts a PBS series, Simply Ming. He is also a national spokesperson for The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.

So let me tell you about these chips: They're light as a feather! And it really is impossible to eat just one of them. This turns out to be OK because a serving (a whopping 33 chips) has only 110 calories. And if that weren't enough, each serving packs 3 grams of fiber and a mere 3 grams of fat.

My local Costco was selling the chips at $5.49 for a 14-oz. bag. Truthfully, I don't know how this compares to the prices of corn chips or potato chips, because I buy them so infrequently. To me, they felt like a little bit of a splurge but not outrageously so.

For more information, visit Kellogg's or Tsai's web site.

A day in the life

2009-09-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

I was talking recently to my dental hygienist and she asked me what a vegetarian actually eats on a typical day. It was a great question, so yesterday, I wrote down everything I ate for your inspection.

Breakfast:

1 c oatmeal

1/4 c pumpkin

1/2 c unsweetened almond milk

1/2 c nonfat yogurt

1/2 c unsweetened applesauce

Morning snack:

28 almonds (1 serving, according to the jar)

5 dried apricots

5 dried figs

Lunch:

2 cobs of corn

handful snap peas

1 T spicy hummus

Afternoon snack:

2/3 baked sweet potato

3 mini chocolate pretzels

Dinner:

2 small quesadillas w pepper jack cheese

1 9-oz bag spinach, pan sauteed

12 corn chips w salsa

1/2 mashed avocado

Dessert:

1 c grapes

Back with J and J and tomato cobbler

2009-09-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings! Life has been busy, but I'm back with lots of inspiration from having seen Julie & Julia last night. I completely identified with Julie: her job frustrations, her discontentment over getting insufficient validation as a writer, her self-absorbed quest for meaning in her life, and most of all, her great romance with food. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I'm now looking for a vegetarian equivalent to Julie's journey, cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, blogging all the while. To me, there's nothing like being completely consumed by a project, losing track of time while taking in every single aspect of it. If you have any suggestions for a J&J-type project, send them along.

Today, I'm sharing a recipe I almost didn't try, which would have been a shame because it's possibly the best thing I've eaten during the Summer '09 harvest. It's a savory tomato cobbler. The dish looks a lot like its fruit-cobbler cousins, but tastes like a compote of sweet tomatoes and basil with a biscuit on the side.

My husband and I ate it as a main dish with freshly picked green beans on the side. It would also be a pot luck show stopper. It's easy to make and, who knows, it could become your signature dish.

The recipe comes from The Full Belly Beet, the newsletter of Full Belly Farm's community sponsored agriculture project in Guinda, California.

Savory Tomato Cobbler

filling:

3 c fresh tomatoes, chopped

1 yellow onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 c chopped basil (I used 1/2c pesto)

2 tsp sugar

Dash tabasco

1/2 T balsamic vinegar

Salt & pepper

topping:

1 T flour

1 c flour

1 c cornmeal

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 stick chilled butter, cubed

1 1/2 c gruyere cheese, grated (I used regular Swiss)

1/4 c water

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 c chopped parsley

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Saute onions and garlic in butter and let cool.

Mix tomatoes with 2 T flour, sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, basil, and tabasco. Add onion and garlic mixture, stirring well. Transfer to a casserole dish.

In a large bowl, mix flour, cornmeal, and baking powder. Add butter and cut with a pastry cutter until you get a coarse meal. (I pulsed them in my food processor until I achieved that coarse meal look.) Add water and pulse until mixed, as drop-biscuit dough. Add more water if necessary. Fold in cheese and parsley.

Spoon topping over tomato mixture.

Bake 40 minutes or until crust is brown. Sprinkle parsley on top. Let cool before serving so that tomato juice settles.

Hamburger Helper goes veg

2009-08-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

On her blog, the PostPunk Kitchen, Isa Chandra Moskowitz posted a veg make-over of the processed food we all love to hate: Hamburger Helper. It's a great beginner recipe and you get to try some veg ingredients you might be wondering about, like tempeh and nutritional yeast (a.k.a. nooch). Don't be intimidated by the long list of ingredients; most of it is spices and you can make a bunch of the spice mix at once to have available any time you get the urge.

So hop on over to Isa Chandra's site and fire up the TV to reruns of the Brady Bunch, cuz we're going back in time! Click here for the recipe.

Detox Day 11 - Another lapse

2009-07-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

The cleanse is over.

While I've been OK with eliminating animal products, alcohol, and caffeine from my diet, not being able to eat gluten or sugar has been really limiting and making me a little crazy.

Yesterday, my darling husband took me to Specialty's for lunch. Specialty's is a terrific bakery/restaurant near our home that I really enjoy because it's so veg-friendly. In addition to sandwiches and soup, they have a lot of hearty salads, so I could have avoided the bread, but I just didn't want to. Instead, Aaron and I shared halves of a Caprese sandwich (fresh mozzarella, tomato, and red pepper pesto on focaccio) and a peanut butter & stuff.

The Caprese is an old favorite, but I've been dying to try peanut butter & stuff. It's really good! If you have any inhibitions about ordering PB&J in a restaurant, set them aside because you don't want to miss this grown-up version of every kid's default, go-to sandwich.

It starts with a slice of hearty whole wheat bread and a layer of satiny peanut butter with granny smith apple and banana slices. The clincher is the cranberry chutney, which has a strong orange accent.

Calories? Sure, but no more than a sandwich made with meat -- and without the cholesterol! It comes down to chemistry and plant-based foods do not contain cholesterol.

Even though I didn't last all 21 days, I learned a lot by avoiding gluten and sugar for eleven days. I'm not convinced that there's a reason for anyone but those with celiac disease to avoid gluten (a topic I hope to cover soon), but my sugar consumption has been out of control. Taking it back -- and continuing to enjoy a healthy, vegetarian life -- is my goal.

Day 9 - A Lapse

2009-07-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

I succumbed. The afternoon had been a little hectic and my 21-day cleanse was feeling like more than I wanted to deal with. I'd gone eight days without consuming any caffeine, alcohol, animal products, sugar, or gluten. But I wanted a little chocolate. So I ate it. I didn't agonize over my decision, but I did promise myself I wouldn't pig out on it. Just two little chocolate truffles, which I thoroughly enjoyed. A hundred calories and it was over. No big deal.

I'm thinking of lapsing tomorrow, too. I'm going out for lunch and I want to enjoy myself, free from restrictions. I'm not rebelling. Actually, I'm learning a lot from the experience -- one of the biggest things being that sugar is completely unnecessary. You just can't make a case for it. It contains no nutrients, it rots your teeth, and it's a diabetic's nemesis.

What this means to my eating I'm not yet sure. I love sweets and don't want to eliminate them from my life, but how much is the right amount? At what point am I going overboard? The same with diet soda, which I also cut out. There's no reason to consume it. It's like smoking -- no benefit, all detriment. What's a girl to do? Stay tuned.

Detox Day 8 - Loopholes?

2009-07-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

I have a real sweet tooth and I just love to bake, so eliminating baked goods from my diet has been the challenge of the century and I've been looking all week for a recipe that satisfies my baking and eating urges while still staying within my guidelines of no gluten and no sugar (as well as no alcohol, animal products, or caffeine).

This weekend, I found it. It's in the 1983 book Uprisings, a collection of recipes from the Cooperative Whole Grain Educational Association to which my beloved Wildflour Bakery -- Ann Arbor's co-op bakery during my college years -- belonged. Wildflour's recipe for fruit bars -- being wheat-free, dairyless, and, with a little tweaking, sugar-free -- fit my diet.

I made my bars with fresh peaches, but you can also use blueberry, cherry, apple, or dried fruit. While they definitely filled my need to bake and to eat something sweet, I'm torn over whether I've abandoned the spirit of the cleanse. As I grapple with my conscience, have a look at the recipe.

Fruit Bars

Crust

Mix well:

7/8 cup soy margarine

1/2 cup honey (I used agave nectar)

Add:

3 cups oats

2 3/8 cups oat flour

Divide mixture in half. Reserve 1/2 for the topping, and press 1/2 firmly into a greased 8x8" pan.

Filling

On low heat, cook down 2 1/2 pounds diced peaches with 3/4 cup water. Drain 3/4 cup juice and cool. To the liquid, add 1/4 cup arrowroot and mix well. Add liquid and 1/4 cup honey (I used agave) to the fruit and bring to a boil. Keep fruit boiling and stir constantly. It will be cloudy and thick. When the mixture becomes clear, turn off the heat.

Spread filling over the bottom crust and press remaining crust on top. Bake at 350F until golden, 20 - 30 minutes.

Detox Day 2 - Not so bad!

2009-07-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

Day 2 of my 21-day cleanse went really well, partly, I suppose, because there's no food in the refrigerator. For breakfast, I stuck with my faithful oatmeal, today with half a banana sliced in before cooking.

Lunch was very odd. Around 11:30, I ate a huge bowl of watermelon and finished the Spanish cocktail mix from Monday. I got hungry again around 2 and made myself a really nice smoothie with a banana, a handful of frozen strawberries, almond milk, agave nectar, and a heaping teaspoon of psillium. Sweet but not too sweet and perfect for the 90+ degree day.

When DH got home, I ate 9 corn chips with him (that's a serving according to the nutritionals). A couple hours later, I finished the watermelon. I am capable of eating as much melon as you put in front of me. There are worse vices.

So far, I've had no cravings for flour or sugar, but there's a lot of food mine fields between here and August 2, which is when I'll be done. Stay tuned.

Detox Day 1

2009-07-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

A week of vacation for me means a week of great food and this past week included everything from grilled cheese on sourdough at a brewery in Ashland to black bean empanadas in Eugene to perfect Oregon marionberries in Portland. Without a doubt, last week was a vegetarian foodie's delight.

This week I'm hosting three additional pounds and embarking on a 21-day detox.

I'm loosely following Kathy Freston's 21-day cleanse, the one that caused Oprah to go vegan for three weeks. What the plan entails is abstaining from all animal products, alcohol, caffeine, gluten, and sugar. For me, the first three are relatively straightforward. With the exception of yogurt and the occasional egg or wedge of cheese, I pretty much avoid animal products. The same is true with the alcohol and caffeine.

But three weeks of no baked goods? Oh. My. God. I'll be taking this one day at a time. One meal at a time. One bite at a time.

I'm pleased to say that I made it through day 1 without incident. My food for the day included a breakfast of oatmeal with agave nectar, unsweetened almond milk, and unsweetened apple sauce.

At lunchtime, I purchased a fruit salad and a banana.

For afternoon snack, I picked up two fresh rolls filled with tofu, julienned carrots, spinach, and cellophane noodles. Later on, I tried several handfuls of Spanish cocktail mix, a really nice combination that contains corn nuts, pistachios, Largueta almonds, fava beans, and chickpeas. (Today, as I finished the mix, I noticed flour on the ingredients list. It was the second-to-last ingredient, so it couldn't have contained much flour, but I was still disappointed. Press on!)

Dinner was also carry-out, portobello mushroom teriyaki, sauce on the side and mostly untouched (it's just too sweet!).

A girl can't be expected to go without dessert, even on a sugarfree diet, so I indulged in a quarter of a Dulcinea watermelon -- you know, the small ones with so much flavor.

Stay with me for more details on my detox journey!

A Very Veggie Fourth of July

2009-07-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

Chico in summer is like a blast furnace. By the time we finish breakfast, the mercury is in the nineties and climbing. Without air conditioning, we couldn't have enjoyed Margo's vegan flax-and-berry pancakes. Margo is the proprietor of The Goodman House, a veg-friendly bed-and-breakfast on Chico's Esplanade, a stately boulevard of homes in this farming and university-centered town located at the top of California's Central Valley.

Although it's the Fourth of July, we are the inn's only guests. Margo tells us that the inn hops in September when school starts, then again in June for graduation. But today, the students are gone and we share the city's glorious summer market with the townies hardy enough to withstand the midyear heat.

We came to Chico for The Farm Sanctuary's annual Fourth of July "pignic," which by chance happens this year on market day. I'm a sucker for a small-town farmer's market, so with sun visors pointed and water bottles filled, we're off.

It's not a large market, barely filling a small downtown parking lot. But unlike some of our suburban markets which are filled out with oranges from Mexico and flea-market style bric-a-brac, Chico's market is the real deal.

We sneak in between an olive dealer and an artisan bakery, wishing we were hungrier and didn't have a generous picnic planned for later. Today is mostly a viewing, not a buying, day.

You might be familiar with Chico; it enjoys the distinction of having been crowned America's top party school by Playboy magazine a few years back. Today, however, it is a wholesome slice of Americana.

We taste oversized blackberries bursting with burgundy juice and wave wistfully at the plums and peaches and cut flowers that we have to pass by.

On our way out of town, we stop at a liquor store for water, maneuvering through the jam-packed parking lot filled with twenty-somethings. They're using the place as a staging area for an inner-tube expedition down the Sacramento river.

Traveling west on highway 32, we marvel at how much of California there is beyond our little Bay Area. The landscape is golden with parched grass and punctuated by the deep green of live oak trees. Ten or so miles past Interstate 5 is The Farm Sanctuary, a haven for some 400 farm animals rescued from abuse and neglect, our guide, Sophia, tells us.

She leads our group of a dozen or so kids and adults into a corral occupied by Lester, a honey-colored steer who in a previous life had been a stud at a large factory farm. Stroking his flank and looking into his knowing eyes, it's hard to imagine what horrors he has seen. But now he happily greets his new admirers and enjoys the 102 degree sunshine.

Nearby is an eager, young flock of goats. They're led by Rufus, the somewhat insecure alpha with an every-man-for himself attitude. He assertively pursues the pail of fresh vegetables, playfully butting one woman who doesn't hand over the grub quickly enough.

Aaron and I leave the group shortly before the tour ends so I can get out of the heat. Back at the visitors' center (which they call the People's Barn), we're treated to a 'pignic' of Field Roast veggie sausages and Lightlife tofu dogs, chips, and oversized vegan cookies from Alternative Baking Company.

The folks at The Farm were welcoming and informative without being evangelical about farm-animal welfare. Their small store is filled with books, cookbooks, and other materials about factory farming and vegetarianism and it's definitely worth a detour should you find yourself in Chico or Orland. It was a very fitting place to spend the Fourth of July, contemplating freedom in all its many forms.

Invasion of the crookneck squash

2009-07-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

When we got our farm basket last Saturday, I neglected to mention that among its contents were 18 yellow crookneck squash. Perfectly shaped, not too big, and blemish-free, it would have been a crime not to use them all before they went bad. Last weekend, I pan-fried a few of them in a splash of olive oil with salt and pepper. Then last night, my dear, sweet husband made a stir-fry using eight or nine of them with some heartbreakingly beautiful green beans and chickenless strips from Trader Joe's.

Still, I had another half-dozen squash to go. By chance, Tracy over at the Strawberry Hedgehog just posted an interesting recipe for summer squash muffins. It caught my eye because, while most summer-squash baking assumes that you're using zucchini, Tracy had photographed her gorgeous muffins alongside a yellow crookneck.

With our road trip looming and the produce-freshness clock ticking, I knew this morning that it was now or never for the remaining squash, so I took out my box grater and got to work. The result is beautiful and delicious. The predominant flavor is five spice, a Chinese spice blend that tastes a lot like cinnamon, but with a little something extra.

How can you not love a muffin like this? It's moist, tasty, and easy to make. Be sure to visit Tracy's blog to pick up this terrific recipe!

Saturday morning's take

2009-06-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

I love Saturday mornings because with them come a new box of produce from Full Belly Farm, the CSA we've belonged to for a couple of years. Here is this morning's glorious gleanings.

While this sort of windfall can be overwhelming, I divide and conquer, pairing up like vegetables and making several dishes over the course of a week. For this booty, I already have several things in mind: with the carrots and beets, I'll make carrot and beet juice (drink it as soon as you make it so that it doesn't separate).

The cabbage will be turned into a cabbage-ramen slaw-like salad we call Runner's World salad because the recipe originally came from Runner's World magazine. If I have a chance, I'll post the recipe.

With the green beans and potatoes, I'm going to try the potato-green bean salad with lemon and basil from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen. The carrot-beet juice will go really nicely with this.

For the second week in a row, Full Belly has sent a bag of baby apricots. They're about the size of a ping-pong ball, though much denser. Sweet like candy. I keep meaning to put them into a crisp or a cobbler, but in our house, stone fruit doesn't usually last long enough to be cooked into anything. If you've never had plums or nectarines or apricots from Northern California, put it on your to-do list.

A tip: to know when stone fruit is ripe, gently press the little cheeks on either side of the stem end. If they give slightly and have a beautiful, concentrated, unmistakable scent, it's ready. Eat it immediately or store in the fridge. Ah, summer!

Vegetarian birthday dinner

2009-06-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

My birthday is today, but we started celebrating this weekend with a special trip to Millennium, arguably San Francisco's best vegetarian restaurant.

Millennium is acknowledging the economic crisis with a special Frugal Foodie Menu. For $39 dollars, you select an appetizer, main dish, and dessert from a subset of the regular menu.

I started with a refreshing nectarine salad. It was a very delicate dish with butter lettuce, sesame seeds, and a fresh creamy lemongrass & ginger vinaigrette. Aaron's sweet chili-glazed tempeh was popular, too, seeming to show up on every table.

Both entrees were showstoppers. Recently, we discovered a delicious vegan Vietnamese-style crepe at Merit vegetarian restaurant in Sunnyvale, so when we saw it on Millennium's menu, we had to try it. With mung sprouts, sunchokes, cubes of firm seared tofu wrapped in an amazingly eggy-flavored crep

e, it's definitely something new (to me, at least).

I opted for the French fingerling potato roulade, which is something like potato strudel, in a beautiful orange puddle of carrot puree. Haute comfort food!

In my book, the appetizer and entree are nothing more than an excuse to kill time while waiting for dessert. We shared two desserts, rice pudding and dark chocolate vegan cheesecake.

The rice pudding had just the teeniest hint of hot pepper that I could only taste at the very end of each bite -- something like a culinary peck on the cheek. Almost every dessert came with a little scoop of a sorbet or ice cream, which I really liked because it didn't force me to choose between a cakey dish or ice cream. A sherbet of pluot and Pu-erh came with the rice pudding. Pu-erh is a kind of tea, but it was wasted on me; I really couldn't identify its taste. Really, the plum and apricot stood out more.

My own dish, dark chocolate cheese cake, was delicious, but a far cry from cheesecake. It tasted like a very dense chocolate cake with a melted chocolate bar on top. The winning taste in this dish was the blackberry coulis. Very seductive taste with the dark chocolate!

To mark the occasion today, I'm planning a little trip to Sugar, Butter, Flour, a really fun bakery in Sunnyvale that has a big selection of individual-sized desserts. Watch out!

Goodbye PB&J, hello PB&More!

2009-06-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

Going from carnivore to herbivore has its moments. Even now, I am tempted by the fragrance of rotisserie chicken at the deli counter and sometimes day dream about chopped liver. Just because I've gone veg doesn't mean I don't like the taste of meat! Though my values and my taste buds clash, my values generally prevail.

Here's a baby step you might consider on your way to a meatless diet: Instead of eliminating the meat, try increasing the number of vegetables you consume at every meal. Go for five a day -- and really give it the old college try. It's not as easy as it sounds. Eventually, the vegetables will displace the meat and you'll wonder why you ever felt that a meal wasn't a meal without a slab of flesh on the plate.

I'm also a fan of sneaking the veggies into unlikely places. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) recently released a new cookbook, PETA's Vegan College Cookbook, and their Bunny Butter Spread does exactly that. You make it by grating a carrot into a bowl containing enough peanut butter for one sandwich, along with a few raisins and a little orange juice. Slap it between two slices of bread and you're done.

Peanut butter has an assortment of strange bedfellows. As a kid, my grandpa sometimes fed me peanut butter sandwiches on crispy Italian bread between whose slices he slid concentric circles of sweet Spanish onion. And though I've never tried it, I imagine that peanut butter and chile peppers is probably a nice combination, too.

The PETA cookbook has an entire chapter (20 recipes) devoted to peanut butter. While I enjoyed the Bunny Butter Spread and I'm eager to try the Super Quickie Peanut Sauce -- which combines PB with lemon juice, soy sauce, and chili-garlic sauce for slathering over steamed veggies and tofu -- I'm a lot less interested in The Nut Job Salad, which pairs our hero with Italian dressing. Yechhh!!

Experienced cooks may find PETA's new book to be frustratingly simplistic, but if you're brand spanking new to cooking or just don't like to cook, but want to move in the direction of a healthier diet, its 275 recipes are worth investigating.

The Vegan Scoop transcends inferior hardware

2009-06-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

I was truly excited when I received Wheeler del Torro's new book, The Vegan Scoop, because it gave me a great excuse to take my dusty old ice cream maker out for a spin. The book is a compendium of ice cream fantasies with flavors ranging from sweet curry fig to sweet potato basil.

For my first attempt, I decided on classic chocolate. I could have drunk the unfrozen base and called it a day. The flavor and creamy texture were that good.

I dutifully followed the instructions for my Cuisinart ice cream maker, but after 30 minutes, nothing had happened. The base wasn't freezing.

Determined not to waste the precious chocolate base, I put it back in the fridge, returned the bowl to the freezer and tried again two days later. No deal. Several days later, I repeated the charade, producing the same results.

I was ready to take full blame for the failure, until a friend started telling me about her recent experience making ice cream. Without knowing of my fiasco, she related to me having made two different bases, neither of which froze. Her machine? The same Cuisinart as mine! She ended up tossing both the bases as well as the machine.

In desperation, I poured the beautiful chocolate base into ice cube trays, froze them, then scooped out the glorious product. Even without a bona fide ice cream maker, The Vegan Scoop delivered the deepest, darkest, best textured chocolate ice cream I've had.

I contacted Cuisinart, but heard nothing. Until they explain where I might have gone wrong and why two of us had identical (bad) experiences, I can't recommend their ice cream maker. I heartily endorse The Vegan Scoop, however. It would make a great gift for your favorite ice cream lover -- vegan or not.

The Veg Party of the Year

2009-06-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had the good fortune of attending the launch party for The Vegan Table, Colleen Patrick Goodreau's second book. By her estimate, more than 160 people attended; it was definitely a standing-room only shindig. Held at Numi Tea Garden in Oakland, CA, the fete offered live music, good food -- from the book, of course -- door prizes, and book signing.

Warm up to a veg diet through baking

2009-06-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

My transition to a vegetarian diet occurred at the same time I was learning how to cook for myself. I had always enjoyed baking, so it was a logical starting point for my new role as chief cook. My curiosity led me to Ann Arbor's baking cooperative, Wildflour Bakery.

Wildflour had beautiful, whole grain breads which I bought unsliced so I could cut myself inch-thick slabs of it, onto which I spread freshly ground peanut butter from the People's Food Coop next door. (Peanut butter is another great food for easing into a vegetarian diet. More on that later.) The bakery also had an essene bread, the sort of which I have never seen since. It was unleavened and filled with dried fruits, nuts, and sprouted grains.

After Wildflour, I couldn't look at conventional bakeries the same way. Their hydrogenated buttercream frosting, sugary glazes, and white flour-based cookies and muffins were a lot less interesting now that I had been initiated into the world of mellower sweets made with honey, molasses, and maple syrup. And so began my cooking journey.

If you're feeling bogged down by the myriad offbeat foods and condiments on the shelves of natural foods stores, maybe what you need is a stroll down the baking aisle. Colleen Patrick Goodreau's new book, The Vegan Table, has a fabulous apricot whole wheat muffin that you'll enjoy and be proud to share with friends.

Being as I am possessed by the need to alter recipes, I made just one small change: Instead of using dried apricots, I used reconstituted sun-dried peaches from Full Belly Farm in Guinda, California. Sublime!

So, with the generous permission of Patrick-Goodreau's publisher, here are The Vegan Table's apricot whole wheat muffins. I'll be reviewing other recipes from this glorious, 304-page tome, so stay tuned.

Apricot Whole Wheat Muffins

makes 12

1 tsp. ground flaxseed plus 3 tablespoons water or egg replacer plus water equivalent to 1 egg

1 cup whole-wheat flour

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 to 3/4 cup granulated sugar, as your sweet tooth dictates

1 1/4 cups nondairy milk (I used unsweetened soy milk)

1/4 cup canola oil

1 cup chopped dried apricots (I used a generous cup of reconstituted sun-dried peaches)

1/2 cup walnuts or almonds, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly oil muffin tins.

In a food processor or blender, whip the flaxseed and water (or egg replacer and water) together, until mixture reaches a thick and creamy, almost gelatinous, consistency. Set aside.

In a large-size bowl, combine whole-wheat flour, whole-wheat pastry flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar. Add milk, oil, flax or egg replacement blend, apricots, and nuts and stir quickly until just combined. Be careful not to overstir.

Spoon into prepared muffin tins and bake for 20 minutes, until lightly browned.

A surprisingly tasty summer soup

2009-05-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

My DH, Aaron, came home from the gym with a new recipe and a bag of produce. "Look at this great recipe," he beamed. "I'm going to make it for lunch!"

I rarely refuse when Aaron offers to cook because 1.) he's a good cook and 2.) I hate chopping vegetables, of which -- being vegetarian -- we eat a lot. So off I went for my own hour at the gym, leaving Aaron with his vegetables and his new recipe. The dish, called Rena's Summer Soup, originates with a friend of the Y's nutritionist, Anna. It's a straightforward recipe that didn't sound at all good on paper, but turns out to be brilliant. (BTW, the sandwich next to the soup bowl is something called Better Than Tuna Sandwiches from Colleen Patrick Goodreau's new book, The Vegan Table. More on that in an upcoming post.)

But enough talk.

Rena's Summer Soup

1 avocado

1 mango

1 medium tomato

1/2 green pepper

1/2 red onion

salt, pepper, and chopped fresh cilantro, to taste

juice of 1 lime

12 oz. tomato juice (we used V-8)

12 oz. pineapple juice

Chop the avocado, mango, and tomato into small, but not tiny pieces. Do chop the pepper and onion into tiny pieces. Mix all ingredients -- we used an 8-cup measuring cup for easy pouring. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Anna recommends eating this immediately. "It isn't as good if it's been sitting in the refrigerator for several days," she cautions.

Resources for bloggers

2009-05-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

I've recently come across two opportunities for food bloggers. The first is BlogHer Food, a conference for women food bloggers scheduled for September 26 in San Francisco. While there isn't a schedule of events yet, it promises good networking and sneak peeks at what's new in food blogging. For more info, visit BlogHer's web site.

On a different front, the Zesty Cook blog is having a contest to win a free blog makeover! Be sure to click through for details.

Quorn Mango Chik'n with Barley & Asparagus

2009-05-26T12:38:00.000-07:00

I might not eat meat, but that doesn't mean I don't like the taste. Quorn's Naked Chik'n Cutlets are a terrific substitute. They look, feel, and taste like boneless, skinless chicken breasts -- without taking any lives. And they're a mere 80 calories per cutlet!

I made up a fun little skillet starring Naked Chik'n; here's the 411:

Naked Chik'n Cutlet Skillet Dinner

Serves 2 - 4

1 box Quorn Naked Chik'n Cutlets (4 cutlets)

1 bunch asparagus

1 1/2 cups cooked barley (cook like rice)

1/4 cup mango or apricot preserves

Vegetable broth

Thaw cutlets in the refrigerator or in the microwave, covered with a damp paper towel to prevent them from drying out.

Cover a large skillet with pan spray and put in the cutlets. Heat through on both sides, adding a small amount of broth if necessary to keep them from sticking. Remove cutlets from pan.

Chop the asparagus into 2" pieces and cook briefly, until it's bright green. Add the cooked barley.

Make a thick sauce from the jam and broth. Paint it onto one side of each cutlet and place the cutlets back into the skillet, jam side down. Add broth to the pan if needed to keep the food from sticking.

Brush the top of each cutlet. Add remaining sauce, if any, to the pan.

Cook until heated. Season with salt and pepper and serve. Delicious!

Book Review: Made from Scratch

2009-05-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

I'm mad about crafts and fixing up my house. Growing vegetables, making quilts, baking bread -- I love to do them all and have a long trail of partially completed projects to prove it. It's finishing that's hard, which is why I want Jenna Woginrich to be my new best friend.

Woginrich knows how to complete her home improvement projects. She chronicles them, and her larger journey towards a more self-sufficient, simpler life, in Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life.

For Woginrich, living more simply means doing things like raising chickens, teaching herself how to play the fiddle, and growing some of her own food -- simple for her perhaps. Into her tales of shearing angora rabbits and recovering a nearly decimated colony of bees, she weaves plenty of practical advice for the wanna-be homesteader.

For example, in the chapter on raising chickens, Woginrich explains that the primary reason baby chicks die is because they get cold. She then details how to rig a brooder box with a bare lightbulb to keep them warm.

Woginrich relishes the past and isn't afraid to say so. In her quest for a cheese grater, she spends an hour scouring two antique shops before locating her booty. "There are a lot of really good reasons why I run to the past when I need something as utilitarian as a cheese grater. Things were made better, looked prettier, and lasted longer before plastic took over," she declares. Maybe, but sometimes Walmart is just easier!

To her credit, Woginrich gives ample recognition to the people who have helped her create her homestead. Throughout the book, she enlists coworkers, shopkeepers, and anyone else she can lasso into helping her, proving over and over that first, experience is the best teacher and second, no man is an island.

Woginrich is a vegetarian, even though she raised her family's Thanksgiving turkey (which her family then couldn't bring themselves to eat). "I haven't eaten any meat in almost seven years. I do, however, plan on eating meat again when I raise it myself," she writes in an e-mail message.

"I am not anti-meat. I'm anti assembly-line, cruelty, factory farms, and agri-big business. Small local humane farms of veggies and animals are my kin," she says.

Remarkably, Woginrich manages a regular 9-to-5 job in addition to tending her farm. She encourages newbies to experiment with self-reliant living in whatever way they can, no matter how small. "Just because you won't be moving out of your apartment any time soon doesn't mean you can't be more self-sufficient," she says in the book's preface.

"Plenty of people in suburbs and sublets all over the country are replacing their pansies with peas and putting up henhouses where doghouses used to be. Knitters are casting on in subways and homebrewed wine is fermenting in your neighbor's basement. A revolution in self-sufficiency is riding the L train and we saved you a seat," she offers.

What I liked best

• The book is enthusiastic, not preachy, and is filled with personal stories and tips for numerous homesteading activities.

• Woginrich operates from the premise that finished is better than perfect, which enables her to plow through any number of projects and complete them, when navel-gazers like me would have abandoned them.

To learn more about Jenna Woginrich, view her video or visit her blog.

You might also enjoy Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

The good enough vegetarian

2009-05-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

In the scholarly work on child-rearing, some experts refer to what they call good enough parents. These are parents who might not always achieve perfection in parenting but who still get the job done, raising successful, independent children. The idea here is to relieve the pressure on moms and dads who feel that their efforts are never sufficient and to assure them that they'll still raise great kids even if they sometimes fall short of their own standards.

I think the same can be said about eating on the vegetarian spectrum. Some of us -- me included -- can't always achieve that state of grace whereby no meat, dairy, fish, or honey passes our lips and no leather, silk, or wool adorns our bodies. We can't all be perfect all of the time and that's no crime.

Max Fisher explores this idea in a recent essay published in The Atlantic magazine. What I took away from it is that no matter where you are in your vegetarian journey, you're fighting the good fight and making a difference, both to yourself and to the world.

Vegetarianism, as I see it, is a continuum, not an all-or-nothing proposition. As much as we herbivores might wish for it, the world is never going to completely stop eating meat. But small changes can reap huge rewards. In his book, Diet for a New America, John Robbins reveals that 2,500 gallons of water are needed to produce one pound of beef. Have one fewer meat-centered family meal each week and save a swimming pool's worth of water!

The benefits to personal health of eating more vegetables and less meat are abundantly documented -- and every little bit helps. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. So you had a burger at lunch; have vegetable soup for dinner. Can't live without dairy-based yogurt? Then buy soy milk instead of cow's milk. It's all about incremental change and you can do it.

Ms. Veggie's Review is here to help and encourage you, one baby step at a time. Stay tuned for reviews of eggplant cutlets, naked chik'n, and an exotic cool soup.

Textbook-perfect oatmeal cookies

2009-05-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

I have an insatiable sweet tooth and I love to bake. This is why I'm a slightly chubby girl in spite of being a regular at my local gym. I try to limit my sweets to one a day (a valiant, if sometimes elusive, objective) and confine my baking to once every week or so.

My sweet tooth was twitching this weekend, so I pulled out a recipe for oatmeal cookies that I'd picked up at -- of all places -- the gym. My gym, the Silicon Valley YMCA, has a nutritionist who regularly posts healthy (or at least, healthier) recipes on the gym's bulletin board. The recipe, from the Promise Institute for Heart Health Nutrition, looked encouraging, calling for just six tablespoons of margarine, one egg, and half a cup of yogurt.

The results were more than encouraging; these cookies were textbook perfect. Saving for the possible addition of a little cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice, I wouldn't change a thing. Well, actually, I did change just a few little things, which I've made note of in the recipe. Still, these cookies are stellar!

Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

makes 28 cookies

2 cups quick or old fashioned oats

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

6 Tablespoons Promise Buttery Spread (I used Earth Balance)

1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar

1 large egg (I used Energ Foods, Inc.'s Egg Replacer for one egg)

1/2 cup lowfat vanilla yogurt (I used plain, nonfat yogurt)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup raisins (mine were a little old, so I soaked them briefly in hot water to plump 'em up, then drained them)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I toasted them in the toaster oven for 5 minutes)

(in addition, a bit of cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice would be brilliant)

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease baking sheets; set aside (I use Silpats.)

In medium bowl, with electric mixer, beat Promise Buttery Spread and brown sugar until creamy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg, yogurt, and vanilla until blended. Gradually beat in oat mixture just until blended. Stir in raisins and walnuts.

On prepared baking sheets, drop dough by 1 tablespoonful. Bake 12 minutes or until edges are golden and centers are set. On wire rack, cool 2 minutes; remove from sheets and cool completely.

I'll let you go to Promise's web site for the vital statistics on these tasty morsels. Trust me, Promise's chewy oatmeal raisin cookies will deliver the next time you're prowling for a little something sweet.

Designer Granola

2009-04-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

I love granola. I can't get enough of its fruity, nutty, grainy taste, with textures rough and wrinkled and chewy. Recently, I found a new granola delicacy, mixmygranola(tm) the way i like it.

mixmygranola has a few premixed selections, but their forte is make-your-own granola. In just a few mouse clicks, you can create the cereal of your dreams, FedEx-ed to your door.

You begin by selecting a base; I chose French vanilla. All the bases contain grains and sweeteners, plus some extras. The French vanilla base has the rolled oats you'd expect, along with honey, almonds, crisp rice, and nutmeg. The web site's FAQ section discloses every ingredient in each of the bases, making life easier if you have food allergies or a special diet. Of the four, the organic base and the muesli are vegan.

Once you've chosen a base, you're directed to mmg's online pantry of 17 different dried fruits. If you're adventurous, choose goji berries or papaya. I opted for organic banana chips and dried pineapple. Compared to other banana chips I've tried, mmg's were a little starchy, but, in all fairness, the sweeter ones are generally heavily sugared and fried, whereas mmg's are made from dried banana. No frying. No added sugar. Nada. Nothing. Just banana. Dried not fried.

The dried pineapple was surprisingly fresh; I hadn't realized how much stale granola is out there until I experienced this stuff -- chewy without sticking to my dental work and sweet with just a little tang. This granola is so fresh it practically stands up and says good morning!

Next, the site guides you to pick from 17 nuts and seeds. What makes 17 a magic number, I'm not sure, but you won't feel slighted by the variety, which again includes both offbeat and conventional items. For my mix, I went for peanuts and pepitas.

But you still aren't finished with your masterpiece. There's one more category called 'extras.' Some of the extras, such as oat bran flakes, are healthy boosts. But others -- the lion's share, really -- might be better named 'guilty indulgences.' From a selection that included everything from mini yogurt pretzels to wasabi peas, I ended up selecting chocolate mini morsels and crystallized ginger. Again, the ingredients were impeccably fresh.

The resulting mixture was delicious and had 266 calories per two-ounce serving. This stuff is tasty, fresh, and you might even say it's on the healthy side, but it's only as diet friendly as you make it. Fortunately, mmg is on top of this, too. A nutritional calculator is built into the ordering system, so with a single mouse click, you can view your creation's vital statistics.

The web site also keeps a running tally of how much the whole adventure is costing you. Bases run $3.99 and $4.99 per pound, while fruits, nuts, and extras vary from $0.49 to $1.99 per ounce. I was able to purchase two different mixes, totaling two pounds, for just under 25 dollars, including delivery. This unusual take on breakfast would make a terrific gift and the company sells gift certificates that can be e-mailed or printed.

mix my granola at a glance

Pluses:

• It's distinctively fresh.

• The nutritional information for your specialized blend is available in one mouse click.

• mmg has great variety, with more than 50 fruits, nuts, seeds, and extras.

Minuses:

• mmg's texture is uniform, lacking the tasty granola clumps I dig for.

Too-cute Desserts

2009-04-21T16:52:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, Aaron and I attended a reception that his employer put on and while it was hardly veg-centric, there were some delicious bites available to us herbivores, including these tasty desserts-on-a-stick. We could choose from several varieties, including marshmallows dipped in dark chocolate and jimmies (the frontmost one), angel food cake dipped in icing (to the left of the marshmallow), cheesecake on a stick, brownie triangles, and frosted Rice Crispies treats.

Other culinary high points for us veg-heads included roasted asparagus and green beans as well as a delicious selection of bruschetta topped with mild fresh tomato salsa, tapenade, or a light artichoke salad. We particularly enjoyed a crunchy Chinese chicken salad available with or without chicken and served in Chinese take-out containers. To me, the broad selection of veg appetizers shows tremendous progress over the first company gathering we attended a few years ago, where the main event was the meat-carving stations with large slabs of roast beef, ham, and turkey.

I was surprised by the amount of hard liquor flowing from the open bar. I'm largely a tea-totaler who occasionally imbibes in a glass of beer or wine, but I don't think I've had hard liquor since before I was old enough to drink. What about you: what are your feelings about hard liquor?

Smit'n with Chik'n for Passover

2009-04-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

I might not make any friends by saying it, but I love fake meat. I get a giggle from it and enjoy the taste, the texture, and the variety it adds to my meals. I understand that some faux meat foes feel that it's junk food, as highly processed as Velveeta, Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches, or house-brand hot dogs.

Still, I must respectfully submit my fondness for it. I put Italian 'sausages' in my spaghetti sauce, make chili with Gimme Lean, and most recently, cooked up some un-chicken soup with vegetarian chik'n tenders.

Chik'n tenders are made by a British company called Quorn that has been selling meat substitutes in this country since 2002. Personally, I discovered the stuff only last month in a health-food store in Hawaii (of all places). I was impressed with how nicely it worked in a simple stir-fry and thought it would be fun to put it in an un-chicken soup for Passover.

First, I assembled my ingredients, sticking to what I understand to be the traditional

ingredients: carrots, celery, fresh dill, matzoh balls, egg noodles, no-chicken broth, and Quorn's chik'n tenders.

Such a soup -- you would not believe! Had I been told it was the real thing, I would have believed it without thinking twice. The broth, from Imagine Foods, was remarkably realistic. The 'meat' -- be still my beating heart -- had all the taste and the same bite and texture as chicken.

I was surprised to learn that Quorn's chik'n is made from mushroom protein, a.k.a. mycoprotein. Who knew that mushrooms have protein and can be made to taste like chicken?

Whatever the case, I expect to be eating more of Quorn's pseudo-meat and Imagine's un-chicken broth.

Des asperges?

2009-04-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

The hallmark of spring in California is the arrival of the year's first asparagus. I love the early-season crop with its bright green, pencil-thin stalks that are tender tip-to-tip. Our CSA, Full Belly Farm, has already sent asparagus several times and I can never get enough. For a beautiful, willowy bunch, no price is too high -- which is good, because even at season's peak, it isn't cheap.

For the most part, I believe that asparagus is best served au naturel, simply steamed in the microwave and served with a little Earth Balance, salt, and pepper. If your asparagus stems are on the thick side, pare them down with a vegetable peeler to expose the tender flesh underneath. (This is also a good way to handle broccoli stalks that you might otherwise throw away.)

When I was growing up in Michigan, I don't recall ever having eaten asparagus. Though I knew what it was, my depression-era grandparents, with whom I lived, almost never purchased fresh food because they saw it as an unnecessary luxury. Really. To their way of thinking, asparagus would probably have been the ring leader of superfluous vegetables.

When I was in college, I might have bought asparagus, but I don't remember it being available. 'Turns out that while Michigan is the third-largest producing state, only 25 percent of the crop is sold fresh. Processors buy the rest.

California, on the other hand, is the nation's top asparagus grower and it's available for nine glorious months each year. Springtime, though, is definitely the best time for it.

Question: Which fruit or vegetable signifies the end of winter for you?

Pantry Dinner

2009-03-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

Well, all good things must end and and so, too, has my month in Kauai ended. Reality for me means three things: food, laundry, and the mail. You can go around in dirty clothes not having read your mail, but all God's chil'n gotta eat, so I started sizing up the kitchen situation almost immediately.

Before we left, we had done a rather admirable job of eating all our perishables, so on returning, there was nothing to eat -- in a manner of speaking. There was no fresh food, but enough canned, dried, and otherwise packaged food to keep two people going indefinitely. This time, I created something I call the mix-in.

A mix-in has three ingredients: a box of soup, a package of frozen vegetables, and a cooked grain. For our return

dinner, I used a box of tomato-roasted pepper soup, some spinach, and brown rice. Just cook each ingredient separately, then mix them together. If the soup cools down while you're combining ingredients, just give it a minute in the microwave for a big bowl of steaming hot goodness.

I admit it: this is no big deal. Three ingredients and you're done. But it's terrific! I had to keep reminding myself that I was eating a pantry dinner. The secret, I think, is the boxed soup. Every variety of every brand of boxed soup I've tried has had a really bold flavor that pops with the essence of the featured vegetable.

This saucy little combo is only the beginning. Another of my favorite boxed soups, from Pacific Natural Foods, is curried red lentil, which also works great with spinach and brown rice. (By the way, mix-ins work equally well with fresh vegetables and steamed rice.)

I'd love to hear about other mix-in combinations, so send them along!

Would you like papaya with that?

2009-03-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

A high point of my stay in Kauai has been has been my daily treat, a fresh papaya smoothie. Papayas are in season now and can be had for next to nothing; at the Koloa market yesterday, large, 2-3-pound fruit were going for just two dollars!

At these prices, I can afford to stock up and so my little kitchen hasn't been without them. For a smoothie that generously feeds one, the recipe goes like this:

1/2 papaya

1/2 c plain, nonfat yogurt

1 banana

2 glugs of soy milk (about 1/4 cup)

1/4 c bran cereal, such as Fiber 1 or All Bran

4 ice cubes

Whir the whole thing in a blender until ingredients are well mixed and ice is crushed. I guarantee that you will be trying to lick the inside of the glass to get every drop. As you can see from the shape of my preferred smoothie glass, this is an ongoing challenge.

Kauai's papayas are a delicious but endangered species. During the second half of the twentieth century, papayas on every Hawaiian island except Kauai have become infected with the ringspot virus. As the fruit is re-introduced, many farmers are opting to plant a genetically modified version. The citizen group, GMO-Free Kauai, charges that the genetically modified papaya is less resistant to disease and unpopular with importing countries. Keeping Kauai's papayas pure is a cause celebre and GMO-Free Kauai has begun a grass-roots program testing the island's papayas to ensure that they haven't been contaminated with the genetically altered variety.

Groceries: Kauai's Dirty Little Secret

2009-03-09T18:26:00.000-07:00

With Hawaii's lush landscape, you might expect there to be an abundance of inexpensive, delectable produce in the markets here. Unfortunately, the produce aisles at Kauai's markets all look like war zones. Limp lettuce and bruised apples at out-of-sight prices only begin to tell the story.

Whether I'm on vacation or off, I usually enjoy grocery shopping. For me, shopping for food is an interesting way to learn more about an area and its people. If I were to judge Kauaians by their grocery stores, I'd say they've given up. Lemons sell for $1.99 EACH. (In California, they're usually four for a dollar.) Bananas are brought in from Ecuador at premium prices when a more flavorful local variety grows unharvested by the roadside. A single-serving bottle of V-8 juice is $2.75. Surely the merchants here don't think that consumers are happy and wouldn't go elsewhere if they could?

Fortunately, others are questioning the high prices, low quality, and dangers of Kauai's reliance on imported food. The Kauai Food Industry Forum, a group of concerned community members, estimates that 90 percent of the island's food supply is imported. Recently, the group held a conference to encourage open dialog about the problem. Foremost on their agenda is encouraging home and community gardens. To learn more, visit kauaicommunitygardens.org.

Strange Fruit. Really.

2009-02-23T14:20:00.000-08:00

I recently attended my second farmer's market in Kauai. The first one was last June in the west side town called Kekaha. The market was very simple: half a dozen senior citizens congregated in the parking lot behind the community center, opened their hatchbacks, put out the fruits and veggies they had gleaned from their backyards, and called it a farmer's market. If you sneezed, you missed it because it lingered only for an hour or so, unlike California markets, which typically last all morning or all afternoon.

This weekend, we journeyed from our home base in Poipu to the north coast town of Kilauea, where I was prepared to see a 'real' Hawaiian farmer's market, with produce from farms instead of backyards, longer hours, and more vendors. But that wasn't meant to be, as the Kilauea market was remarkably like the one in Kekaha. Rather than lament having again missed the 'real' market, I embraced this one and in return, made a number of priceless discoveries.

The first of my take was the rambutan. This golf-ball sized fruit is red and covered with what Wikipedia describes as "fleshy, pliable spines."

Actually, the term 'rambut' is Malay for hair, so the name is fitting.

Judging from its outer shell, I never would have guessed that the rambutan is edible. To get at the insides, you score the leathery, red, protective coat, and pop out the inside. What do you imagine is there?

Fertility symbolism aside, the rambutan's egg-shaped, pulpy interior has

a texture similar to that of a stone fruit: think plum in both texture and taste. Like stone fruit, the rambutan also has a pit similar to that of a peach.

The day's other notable find was the chico fruit. On first glance, I thought it might be an Asian pear or an overgrown kiwi fruit, but the inside was nothing like them. The texture was a little too grainy for my palate, but a pleasant, mild cinnamon taste. I could see pureeing this -- remove the seeds

first -- for use in cakes or quick breads. By the way, Mexicans, Philipinos, and Indians also call this a sapodilla.