Deep-fried nostalgia.

Let's take a moment and reflect back upon the fried happiness of our childhoods. Unless you grew up in Connecticut with a live-in nanny and/or were one of those freaks with highly attentive, healthy-cooking parents who were never, ever pressed for time, you know what I'm talking about. The late evenings after ballet class or soccer practice or detention when your harried mother could scarcely manage the drive-through or the local seafood buffet. The Saturday nights when a bored-looking babysitter emptied a box of frozen fish sticks onto a cookie sheet before calling her boyfriend.

These were not, as it would seem, moments of familial discord or neglect. No, those nights were crispy-coated pieces of slightly rebellious contentment, badass miniature vacations in grease-stained cartons. Just that once, the grownups were too busy to make you eat your vegetables. And for that golden-brown moment in time, you had fish sticks. And french fries. And hush puppies.

So when I read Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit's post about unfried fried foods, I was suddenly seven again, in the backseat of a minivan with a Long John Silver's box balanced across my ballet tights. Except this time around I am not so much down with the eating of the marine life, and I am no longer endowed with a prepubescent metabolism. Luckily for me, that's where the "unfried" aspect came in handy.

First I made Tofu Fish Schticks (I totally stole that from a cheesy vegan cookbook title, by the way) by adding Old Bay seasoning to the Yellow Rose Recipes crispy tofu and cutting it into thin strips rather than wider slabs before breading and broiling. Then I made the ballet-night moneymaker, hushpuppies, only this time around they were yummier, vegan-er, and, I dare say, healthier, since this recipe allows them to be lightly brushed with oil and baked rather than being dunked in a vat of oil and deep-fried. And I'm not saying there isn't a special place in my cold, black heart for deep-fried food, but we vegans like to preach about how superior our health is from time to time, and baking the hushpuppies certainly helps the argument. Also, I'm not bullshitting you when I say they're just as good baked.

Hushpuppies
(VegCooking by way of Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit)

• Egg Replacer equivalent of 1 egg
• 2/3 c. plain soy milk
• 1 1/4 c. yellow corn meal
• 1/2 c. unbleached flour
• 3 t. baking powder
• 1 t. sugar
• 1 t. black pepper (I also added some cayenne to taste)
  
• 1/2 c. minced yellow onion
• 1/2 c. whole kernel sweet corn
• 1/4 c. chopped green onion
• 1 jalapeño, seeded and diced (optional)
• 1/2 cup soy cheddar cheese (optional)
• Vegetable oil, for frying

Preheat oven to 400F.

Mix the egg replacer with the soy milk in a large bowl.

Add the yellow corn meal, flour, baking powder, sugar, and pepper to the egg replacer-soy milk mixture. Stir in the onion, corn, green onion, jalapeño, and soy cheese until combined. Form into balls.

Line a baking sheet with foil and grease it with some olive oil. Toss your hushpuppies onto it and roll them around a little bit so they have some oil all over.

Bake for 10 minutes. Flip. Bake for another 5-10 minutes, until cooked through. I served both un-fried things with some Vegenaise mixed with hot sauce and black pepper, but you could eat them plain with equal success (and fewer minivan upholstery stains).


Now if you'll excuse me I have to go practice my First Position before my mommy picks me up.

Duck, duck, truce.

As vegans and AR activists, we spend a lot of time bitching. It's intelligent bitching, it's logical, well-argued bitching, but it's bitching nonetheless. We bitch about being asked for the millionth time where we get our protein. We bitch about the Standard American's willfully blind eye towards factory farming. And we bitch with great fervor about those most repugnant of repugnant industries, veal and foie gras.

So it's good to remind ourselves, from time to time, that bitching can indeed be productive, and that, despite the oft-repeated activists' motivational phrases that we have by now become largely immune to, a small group of determined individuals really can incite tangible change.

So in the spirit of productively bitching about foie gras, I went straight for the proverbial throat here in Charlotte, NC, a mishmashed city of snotty old money and newly rich northern transplants (most of whom are now licking their Lilly Pulitzer-bandaged wounds in the wake of the whole economy-sucking thing, but I digress). Of course, there are tons of awesome people in Charlotte too, but none of them can afford foie gras. So anyway.

As part of my job, I do several luncheons a month at the painfully aristocratic Charlotte City Club, a private club with the well-polished brass balls to release a history book on itself titled "Of Pleasures and Power." Yet despite the fact that my income bracket and political leanings probably throw me way out of alignment with the place, powerful and pleasurable though it is, their staff and management has always been incredibly professional, helpful, and really good at accommodating vegan food requests. Which is why I was so righteously indignant to find out that foie gras appeared on ALL of their menus, including private functions menus and the exclusive once-a-year Chef's Table. Commence to bitching!

The nice thing about grassroots activism is that you have the opportunity, from the very first step, to be diplomatic and pleasant, and can thus say in all following arguments that you came to the table with honey and not vinegar, so to speak, though to be accurately vegan it'd have to be agave nectar. And so I wrote gently-worded letters to the club's general manager and executive chef, and pointed them towards further information regarding foie gras but didn't initially bash them over the head with gory photos, and lo and behold, that's all it took. The manager called me a couple of hours ago to say that he'd met with the chef to discuss it, and that they'd agreed, after reviewing the information, to take foie gras permanently off all their menus.

I know it's a teensy little plink in the bucket, but I love things like this. I love knowing that the oldest of the old money and the richest of the rich and the highest of the high society in this city won't be able to order foie gras anymore, and further, will question why they can't, and maybe--hopefully--learn something about the truth of food production in this country. And I love that a couple of nice friendly letters and a passing on of information can get change like this moving surefootedly along.

So I'm going to sponsor a Farm Sanctuary duck in the Charlotte City Club's name, as a profound thank you and as a way of adding a few more drops to the bucket.

See? 99% less depressing. Told you.

Slightly somber pizza.

So, I'm kind of a downer this week. It's been a what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-people kind of few days. First, as many have probably heard, UNC's student body president was shot multiple times and killed in what was apparently a random act of violence. I graduated from UNC last year, lived a few blocks from where her body was found, and, as much as I often mock the whole "omg Carolina spirit!" thing, am as shocked and horrified as everyone else, especially given the (apparently false) sense of security we all felt in Chapel Hill, even walking around alone at night--which I almost always did.

A few days after that, in quick succession, a close friend's brother was shot and killed, just 3 months after her mother was also shot to death (both murders are thought to be drug-related and specifically marijuana-related, though I won't report on or guess at how out of respect to the remaining family), and a former high school teacher of mine was arrested on felony charges of soliciting sex and exploitation of a minor. I won't go too much into either of those, since investigations are ongoing and all that, but goddamn. This is just all bad PR for humanity in general.

Which is why it's good to remember that humanity in general is not indicative of people as individuals, and that there is, despite all the evidence to the contrary, still some good in the world. So I holed up with my tiny dog and my bitchy alarm clock of a cat and my man-candy, made some delicious vegan pizza, and read Farm Sanctuary rescue success stories to cheer myself up. (If you look closely at that pizza up there, which is covered in FYH Monterey Jack, peppers, spicy seitan, and fresh basil, you can see the Coveted Crust Bubble, which also cheered me up a bit, given that I usually fail at pizza crust.)

Part of me really wants to launch into an anti-handgun, pro-marijuana-legalization, kiddie-porn-bashing tirade, but furiously typing a long bitchfest isn't going to bring anyone back or undo anything that's been done. Instead, all I can do is take a break from our regularly scheduled smartass programming to remind you to appreciate every minute that you can remember to appreciate and to honor any life, in any form, that you come into contact with, because there are people out there who aren't honoring any life at all.

The next post will be 99% less depressing, I promise.

The Shitty Week Cookie Cure

Between the ages of 18 and 21, I adopted about 14 different personas in rapid succession, beginning with the three months when I thought I was going to grow up to be an international journalist (a dream promptly squashed by the realization that I had to write, like, the truth and shit, not just what I thought everyone should be doing) and ending with a particularly rabble-rousing semester during which I had frequent blog-comment fights with my nemesis, Kris Wampler (seriously, Google the fucker. You'll see what I mean.) and spent a lot of time explaining to my poetry professor that he just didnt understand the depth of my feeling. Granted, drawing a metaphor between the Grossmünster and a vagina was a bit of a stretch.

Anyway, somewhere in there was a short-term obsession with a neo-hippie Oral History (teehee!) professor who had a penchant for abandoning the syllabus and spending weeks talking about What Is Important In Life. During one such tangent, we talked about how tragic it is that some people use food misguidedly as a form of comfort, and what that says about Society in General.

And even in my easily-brainwashed undergrad state, I knew that was a load of shit.

If food isn't firmly wrapped around comfort like a frosting-flecked Linus blanket, then I don't know what is. I could go on indefinitely here about the interwoven nature of food, family, familiarity, and What Is Important In Life, but that was about four phases ago, just before the Wampler Wars of 2006.

This all eventually becomes relevant to veganism in that I just spent a week in Toronto working with clients at an industry conference from 9am to 8pm most days, subsisting on stale Luna bars, getting alternately insulted and harassed by piece-of-shit-scum-of-the-earth stock brokers whom I could not fire back at for fear of getting fired, and regularly begging the conference hall nurse for tampons because I accidentally went without a supply and didn't even have enough spare time to go get some Canadian change for the restroom dispenser. (Aaaaaand there went my paltry male readership. Sorry boys.)

So yeah, it was kind of a shitty week. And I don't care what you think about Society in General, times like these call for cookies. As I always do in times of need, I consulted the mighty Veganomicon, where I found the recipe for Chewy Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies, modified it a bit, added copious amounts of Tofutti cream cheese and powdered sugar, and slightly fancified it with almond extract and cardamom. It all worked out marvelously. Sometimes, when there are no crazy careers to aspire to or campus pundits to scream at or literary professors to argue with, all you can do is enjoy some badass cookie sammiches and be glad you got the fuck out of Toronto ahead of the blizzard. And that's ok.

Chocolate-Apricot Cookie Sandwiches with Almond-Cardamom Cream Cheese Icing

For the cookies:
1/2 cup apricot preserves
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
1/2 cup plus 2 tblsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups AP flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment. Stir together the preserves, sugar, oil, and extracts. In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients gradually, mushing everything together with your hands to form a thick but pliable dough (if you pussy out and try to use a spoon instead of your hands, it will take forever, your arms will get sore, and then you'll be too cranky to even enjoy the cookie deliciousness). Roll walnut-sized balls of dough between your palms, flatten them out, and place them on the cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes.

For the icing:
1/4 cup Earth Balance, room temperature
1 8-oz. container Tofutti Cream Cheese
3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. almond extract
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cardamom

Beat the EB and cream cheese together until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat well, until everything's incorporated. Pipe or slather the icing onto half of the cookies. Chill the iced cookies for at least an hour so everything can firm up, then place the other half of the cookies on top to form heavenly little week-redeeming sandwiches.

The sweet spice of the cardamom is a good counterpoint to the tangy apricot, and chocolate makes everything better. And even if that fails, there's always comic relief. In this case, the fact that my cake-decorator-icing-thingy looks like an evil, evil penis pump:
Which probably doesn't do much to win back any dudes I just scared off with the conference-hall tampon saga. Oh well. At least I'm not writing bad poetry about it or trying to use it on Kris Wampler. Baby steps.

Fancy lunches, peaceful protests, freezing forking cold

First and foremost, it's a little difficult to type right now because Anthony Bourdain has been kissing my pale vegan ass since last week, and that makes for rather uncomfortable sitting arrangements. You see, with the power of The Internet, we crafty vegans are uniting to veganize Bourdain recipes, greasy little meat pockets that they are, improve them with our mad cooking skillz, compile them into zine form, and sell said zine with the aim of donating the proceeds to a vegan-oriented charity in Bourdain's name. And, in honor of Bourdain's description of vegans as a "Hezbollah-like splinter faction," the project is dubbed Hezbollah Tofu. Check it out and get to cookin'.

I did veganize Bourdain's Les Halles onion soup over the weekend (recipe is on the afore-linked Hezbollah Tofu blog), but I can't be simmering dark stocks and infusing things with sherry all the time, or I'll start speaking with a broken French accent and screaming at people to get out of my kitchen. And since the only "people" in my kitchen are usually the tiny dog and the formerly gutter-dwelling kitty, that would just be mean.

So before I left for Toronto, where I am currently stuck for a few days for work (and P.S., how do you Canadians LIVE, I am freezing my metaphorical balls off up here), I made some fancy jasmine risotto spring rolls for lunch. The jasmine risotto recipe is from a Vegetarian Times dessert recipe that called for the spring rolls to be filled with strawberries and served with vanilla sauce. I veganized the risotto by subbing agave for honey, and then made the rolls more of a lunch-y dish by folding the risotto together with mango, kiwi, and baked tofu in the wrappers.

The resulting spring rolls are a nice balance of savory and sweet, tasty enough that you feel like you're having a really lovely special lunch (until you find cat hair in the risotto), but light enough that you can drink half a sixer of dark porter afterwards and totally not fall into a Saturday afternoon coma until after the hockey game is over (clearly I am all class). I went the lazy route and used Trader Joe's Thai baked tofu, though you could use any baked tofu recipe (the one in Veganomicon is amazing). Incidentally, the lovely lightness of this lunch will be ruined if you immediately follow it with half a bag of Trader Joe's dark-chocolate-covered pretzels. I'm just sayin'.

Jasmine Risotto Thai Spring Rolls

4 jasmine tea bags
3 ounces arborio rice
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 kiwis, diced (retain a few slices for prettiness)
1/2 mango, diced
8 thin slices baked tofu
4 spring roll wrappers

Steep the tea bags in 3 cups of boiling water for 5-7 minutes. Heat the rice over medium heat in a large pan, and add the tea about a half cup at a time, stirring constantly and allowing the tea to absorb completely before adding more (this is not as lengthy or tedious as it sounds; use the idle time to think of creatively insulting ways to use "Bourdain" in a sentence). Add the agave and vanilla and cook until the rice is tender, usually just a few minutes after the liquid is absorbed.

Fold the risotto together with the diced fruit. Soak each spring roll wrapper for about 20 seconds in cold water, lay it flat on a clean surface, and place 2 kiwi slices or the tofu slices in the center. Spoon in 1/4 of the risotto/fuit mixture (and the tofu if you didn't use it as your centerpiece), fold in the top and bottom of the wrapper, and roll it tight. I had them with some sweet & sour sauce, but the sauceability possibilities are endless, really.

And now, in the spirit of vegan peace, I leave you with the usual view of my couch:
Bena (see cat-centric blog post) and Alfie, our 3-year-old puppy-mill-liberated Maltese, are unsure of their respective species and thus spend all of their time playing and napping together. Why can't we all be like that? Oh, and Bena's sticking her tongue out--she's looking at you, Bourdain.

I've got your pulled pork right HERE.

We have this thing in North Carolina about barbecue. It's kind of like the Protestants and the Catholics, except with more dead pigs and fewer religious principles. Eastern NC swears by a tangy, vinegar-based sauce, while Western NC insists upon a tomato-based, often ketchupy mixture. Funny thing is, you can drive from East to West or West to East, and no matter what kind of gospel Bobby Ray spouts to you at Myrtle's Pig Palace, the stench of the hog farms--and the pig feces-generated mass killing of the state's waterways--remains depressingly the same.

For Southern veg*ns who grew up Southern carnivores, this is made even more depressing by the fact that no amount of delicious sauce from either faction can save the not-quite-right texture of barbecue fashioned from seitan, tempeh, tofu, or TVP. There is a certain texture and mouth-feel to authentic barbecue--the falling-apart texture that conjures the term "pulled pork,"--that some of us will always miss, despite the fact that newfound knowledge and ethical empathy have pulled pork permanently off the menu (see what I did there? PULLED pork? Nevermind). But we're not all destined to live in a permanent state of guilty pining for barbecue, because we, my friends, have jackfruit.

Jackfruit is an odd nubbly-skinned tree fruit indigenous to India, possessing a faint, not-too-sweet flavor and sold in 1-pound cans for 99 cents at your local asian market. And, when sauteed and simmered with some kick-ass barbecue sauce, it looks and feels exactly like pulled pork, without any of the nasty meatiness (or odd stunt-meat processed-ness). Observe:
This doesn't taste the faintest bit fruity or Indian-esque, I promise. It's just pure unadulterated barbecue deliciousness, and when served on a bun under some coleslaw (I used broccoli slaw; cabbage or celeriac would also do nicely) and roasted taters as seen at the top of the post, it's good enough to argue about with some fool who thinks Eastern NC barbecue is where it's at (pshhaaww).

I whipped up a new bbq sauce different from the one I used for the bbq lentil burgers, because I wanted a stronger, darker flavor for this recipe. And because most things are improved by strong coffee and Irish whiskey (even Protestant-Catholic debates), that's what I used. The fragrant coffee and liquor complement the jackfruit really well, but then, what isn't well-complemented by booze?

Irish Coffee Jackfruit Barbecue

For the sauce:

1 medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/4 cup Irish whiskey
1 1/2 tablespoons cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
cayenne to taste (I used about 3 teaspoons, but I like things to be lethally hot)
3/4 cup ketchup (and all you Easterners can SUCK IT)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup strong black coffee
1 tablespoon liquid smoke

Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat, add the onion and saute for a few minutes. Add the whiskey and saute for a few minutes more, until the onion is soft. Stir in the spices, then add the remainder of the ingredients and mix well. Reduce heat and let simmer for 30 minutes. Some swear by letting it sit refrigerated overnight so the flavors can develop more, but I'm too impatient.

For the jackfruit:

2 1-lb cans green (young) jackfruit in water (NOT cooked jackfruit in syrup)
2 tablespoons canola oil
sea salt and pepper to taste
1 recipe Irish Coffee Barbecue Sauce (above)
1 tablespoon liquid smoke (more or less if you prefer)

Saute the jackfruit in the oil with the salt and pepper over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Pour in the barbecue sauce and mix well. Add more liquid smoke to taste. Reduce heat, cover, and let simmer for 1 hour.

Serve on sesame or whole-wheat buns with coleslaw (shredded broccoli/carrots, cabbage, or celeriac + a few tablespoons of Vegenaise, salt, pepper, and dill).

V is for Vapid

Let the record show that it's not all bitter single women with 17 cats who alternately loathe and mock Valentine's Day. I've been bangin' the same dude for 5 years and I only have 1 cat (and a dog and 3 guinea pigs and 2 horses, but who's counting), and once I exited that now-embarassing phase of my life in which I voluntarily listened to the Dixie Chicks and attempted to wear kitten heels to my 8 a.m. literature class, I poked my head up out of the nasty pop-culture sand and realized that this is all, pretty much, bullshit.

And I don't necessarily mean that in an I'm-such-a-unique-nonconformist-LOOKATME way. It's just that, why are women supposed to get all squealy about stuffed animals from Hallmark that play tinny versions of Motown love songs when you squeeze their little sweatshop-stained paws? And why are we supposed to brag to our friends about how many long-stemmed roses or boxes of milkfat-laced Russel Stover we got, as if they--or we--really care? I won't go so far as to say that we should campaign against a day in February on which we're supposed to express our love--it's actually a perfectly nice little holiday, if you think of it in terms of an excuse to get hugs in the draggiest, most depressing part of winter. But if you were out shopping for your baby mama (or daddy, or co-mama or co-daddy) and you HADN'T been mainlining greeting card advertisements since February 1st, would you really look up and say, "wow, s/he would really love that fuzzy gorilla that plays 'Love Machine?''" Probably not, unless you're married to/dating/cohabitating with an engineering major who is also a chimp enthusiast.

So, for v-day this year, we decided to give/make/do things that actually held some significance. By which I mean that we used the convenient holiday to eat delicious food and go hang out in the mountains.

On the day itself, I made chickpea cutlets--fried, not baked!--with some taters and kale, all slathered down in some spicy sweet & sour mustard sauce I made, because I am a culinary genius (actually it's just equal parts chipotle mustard and sweet & sour sauce).
















Naturally this was followed by red velvet cupcakes; however, the color and texture of said cupcakes reminded me much more of a circa-1975 velour leisure suit that your Nana would wear to play bridge on a Tuesday, so we're just gonna call them Red Velour Cupcakes instead.









And since we are awesome, and because roses are lame and milk chocolate is for losers, I gave him a book about The Wire and he gave me these splendiforous aprons (which I asked for, so it's not an underhanded blow to my feminist independence or any shit like that).















You know what else is for losers? Fancy-ass restaurants and $500-a-night hotel suites. We forced my poor truck up into the mountains and holed up in Hot Springs, NC, in a bed & breakfast owned and run by my newly adopted gay uncles. There were cats that barged into our room at all hours and a dog that demanded breakfast scraps by shoving his nose into our respective crotches and growling, so we felt right at home.

On Saturday we hiked part of the Appalachian Trail up to Lover's Leap, which is a really sketchy hunk of rock hanging out into thin air off the side of a mountain. I boldly and bravely ventured out onto it (by which I mean I refused to go out onto it, was forced and guilt-tripped into doing it, and then bitched, moaned, and screamed until I got out to the far edge), and was rewarded by glorious views.














Don't I look kinda scurred? That sheer-ass rock wall behind us is the kinda shit I had to slide down and scale to get down and back up. You'd be scurred too.















Anywho, after I very nearly died at the top of the mountain, we ventured back down to the camp store for lunch, where Merle, the nice elderly lady in the kitchen, made me a cheeseless pizza covered with delicious peppers. But she refused to charge us for it, because, as she put it, "there ain't much on it." Silly Merle. Clearly she'd never met a vegan with a pepper fetish.















Jesus tapdancing Christ this has gotten to be a long blog post. What the fork was I even talking about?

In summary:
cupcakes are awesome
my new gay uncles are even awesomer
perilous death-hikes often end in delicious pizza.