Happy Thanksgiving!

I will be spending this week out of town and may not be able to post. I'll be back later, with some updates on yummy restaurants I intend to visit and other food-related news, but in the meantime I'd like to wish you all Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you enjoy some tasty treats and some time with your loved ones.

I love, love, love Thanksgiving. This holiday -- I guess like all holidays -- exacerbate family differences. It's been quite a while since I've had the family Thanksgiving fantasy I hold so dear. I have fond memories of being a child and seeing my mother organize the menu so carefully, timing out the dishes on a white-erase board on the refrigerator. We'd even make homemade potato rolls.

I love Thanksgiving food, even all the recipes using condensed cream of mushroom soup, as well as seeing family and friends. As soon as you spend a holiday with another family, though, you realize that not everyone does everything the same way. Even having a vegetarian Thanksgiving can't replace those fond family memories. Last Saturday, I went to a cooking class, A Traditional Vegan Thanksgiving. I was super-excited to take a vegan cooking class, and I dreamed of learning how to cook kale or Swiss chard, figuring out what to do with flaxseed and quinoa. Instead, I wasted my $36 going over everyday substitutions, like how to make vegan mashed potatoes and stuffing. Really. I did learn how to use nutritional yeast (for gravy and broth), and although I fully intend to use that in the near future, my entire plate was yellowish-white-and-gray at the end of the class when we sat down to eat.

Even before that class, though, my Thanksgiving has been more of a fond memory, as the actual day hasn't brought me those family favorites. Last Thanksgiving Alex and I were vacationing out west and ate two meals at Jack in the Box -- the only restaurant we could find open. Another year was the first Thanksgiving I spent with his family, eating pink mashed potatoes, avoiding the turkey, and missing all my favorite dishes. I wish I'd brought one my family favorites-turned-vegetarian to share, even at my now mother in law's insistence that I should just be their guest. Before that, I remember a Thanksgiving dinner with a variety of "holiday orphaned" and international graduate students, drinking wine and eating a wilted spinach salad with pomegranate seeds. I think that was the year I realized that dressing and stuffing weren't two names for the same thing.

This year, I'll be spending Thanksgiving on the road, driving back home. Sometime this weekend, we'll make a festive dinner will all the fixin's. I'll be sure to tell you about it.

Homemade Snack: Sesame Sticks

Last weekend we bought some sesame sticks at the local market, and after reading the ingredient list I figured that I had everything it called for and could make this myself. I still can't believe they don't admit to adding any fat or frying them. If a food is fried, like potato chips, do they have to list oil as an ingredient?

Is Walnut Creek Foods exempt from admitting its sesame sticks have oil or butter in them?

After searching the web for a recipe, I decided to wing it. I didn't measure anything. More than half the dry mix was wheat flour, and I threw in some sesame seeds and bulgur. For seasoning, I used some sea salt, garlic powder, and a sprinkle of chile powder.

I mixed all that with a few teaspoons of melted margarine and water. I added the water slowly so that the dough was stiff and not too wet.


Then I pressed it out and cut it into sticks with a butter knife. I baked at 325F for 10 minutes, then flipped and baked another 5 minutes. These sticks aren't really anything like the store bought ones, but they're pretty good. I think next time I'll have to use less sesame or less bulgur; they seeds make it pretty tough to chew. I wouldn't call this a complete failure, though -- I'm keeping them ,after all, and I fully intend to eat them.

Semi-Homemade, or a Product Review: Pacific Onion Soup

I have some definite favorite ready-made, pre-packaged foods. Most of my favorites come from Trader Joe's. Other things I've bought have been real flops -- including some things from TJ's! I had no idea how this was going to turn out, but Alex loved it. He has a greater love for French Onion Soup than I do. I thought it was pretty good, and certainly easy.

I picked up this Pacific Natural Foods Organic French Onion Soup when I saw that it was beef-free. The carton had been waiting in the cabinet for the perfect moment for soup, and the time had finally come. With the leftover Gruyere from the mushroom tart and the leftover bread from the briami, I could make a crouton and have cheesy French Onion Soup.

This is the never-ending bag of cheese, which I find fitting since it was so expensive!

I dolled this up by caramelizing some thinly sliced onions in the soup pot, then warming the pre-made soup in the same pot.

I had already left two slices of bread in the oven after it was turned off from something else I'd been cooking, so the bread was toasted. Alex piled cheese on the toast slices and broiled them. We popped the toast on top of the soup and enjoyed an easy tweaked soup supper.

Another Attempt at Homemade Seitan

I made a second batch of homemade seitan, this time following the recipe I found in The Ethnic Vegetarian, which I've previously mentioned is becoming one of my favorite cookbooks. I know my aunt who gave me the book reads the blog -- so thanks!

This recipe has you mix the gluten with flavoring and water, and then it stops. There's no boiling or baking as part of the seitan recipe like in my first attempt. Instead, you cook it in whatever recipe you choose. I made this a week or so ago and kept it in the freezer waiting for the perfect time to use it.

Seitan recipe:
2 cups whole wheat gluten flour
1 teaspoon each: salt, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper
1 cup water
1 cup soymilk

Combine the dry ingredients, then add the water and soymilk to form a thick dough. Knead 10-15 times by hand, then let rest 5 minutes. Knead again 6-8 times, then place in a bowl, cover with a towel, and let rest in a warm spot for 15 minutes. The seitan is now ready to be cooked. At this point, I put it in the freezer in a zipper bag.

When I thawed it, it was still doughy and springy. I pounded it out, then sliced it into thin pieces. I fried them in a small amount of canola oil and crisped each side.


Then I placed the whole skillet in the oven and turned it off. (The oven had been on, baking my cauliflower -- I served these dishes together along with some Amy's Mac and Cheeze.) When I went to retrieve the seitan, it was all puffed up.

I returned the skillet to the stovetop and placed a potholder over the handle so as not to burn myself on it, after I made that mistake once. Then I poured on this sauce, the recipe for which I found in the Horizons cookbook. I was initially worried that I wouldn't have enough sauce, but these little pieces soaked up the sauce and it was really good. This reminded me of the fake chicken found in Chinese restuarants.

Sauce:
1/4 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon molasses
2 tablespoons agave syrup
Juice of 1/2 lime
2 teaspoons Caribbean or Jerk seasoning (I used a storebought mix)
freshly grated ginger

I mixed all that together and tasted it, then I decided to add a little sriracha, which almost surprises me because I typically don't like heat. I added a very, very little of this. Then I put it directly over the seitan in the skillet. It doesn't take long to cook this with the seitan because all the sugar will burn, you're basically just heating it against the seitan.

I think this is a recipe is a winner, at least for the texture of the seitan. I'm still working on how to properly flavor it, but I have some new ideas I'd like to try next time.

Vegetable Highligt: Cauliflower

One of things I want to do more as I cook more at home is to try new ingredients. So far, I've been doing that to an extent, but there's so much farther to go. I've never used bulgur before, or really done tofu well, or even attempted any stir-fry at all. I want to learn how to use more grains, greens, and other ingredients I haven't typically included in my diet.



I have been familiar with cauliflower in two forms: first, raw on a veggie and dip tray; second, pickled in giardiniera. Recently I had a cauliflower cheese dish, and I decided to try oven roasting it without cheese to eat as a healthy side dish. From what I can tell with quick web search, cauliflower is high in fiber, has Vitamin C and some compounds that are thought to be anti-cancer. Way to go!

I just cut a whole head into florets, tossed in my casserole dish with a little olive oil, salt, and garlic powder, and baked at 375F for about 15 minutes. The florets became tender and slightly browned. Yum, yum, yum.

I ate this as a side with barbecue seitan and frozen Mac and Cheez. What a good lunch, and a healthy take on some comfort food.

Briami, My Way

Briami is a Greek dish of roasted vegetables. I start some on the stove, bake it all up with some garlic, and then add some crushed tomatoes near the end. Serve with feta and bread.



I've made briami a few times and I think it's one of those things like lasagne, or chili, or anything else that you can adapt to your taste within a certain framework. So I'm not saying this is authentic briami, but it sure is good. Especially in the cooler months, I love a dish you can put together and then relax while it bakes. I have a hard time eating a dish immediately after I've cooked it if I haven't had a few minutes to sit down first.

The only tough part of this dish is cutting all the veggies. First, I cut the potatoes pretty small and cook in a skillet with canola oil. The other veggies can go right into the oven: zucchini, eggplant, carrots, onion, mushrooms, and smashed garlic. My carrots were still a little firm, but I like them that way. If you prefer them tender, you can skillet them as well.

I baked at 350F for an hour, stirring partway through and with about 20 minutes left I added some salt and the canned tomatoes. I think I mistakenly bought crushed tomatoes when I should have bought diced tomatoes, but this was delicious nonetheless. My tomatoes had some seasoning in them already; otherwise I would have added some oregano.

Biocompostable Dinnerware

A cellphone photo from the lunchroom at a site visit. But there are only trash bins to dispose of these guys... I did enjoy some pretty tasty vegetarian vegetable soup, though!