Ghouls & Goulash

By Monica on October 13th, 2007

Last week it was 90°F here, now it is 36°F and frosting at night. Quite a change to acclimate to! Chilled to the bone this week, I thought I’d make a big pot of goulash to stick to the ribs and warm us up. Now, I realize that this looks like something the dog yakked up and I tried very hard to make it look more presentable, but it is what it is!

I used Czechvar (aka Budvar) beer in this recipe. While not my favorite Czech beer, I’m fortunate that my backwater grocery store carries even this. Feel free to use whatever pilsner or lager you prefer. You can also serve this as a stew, but at this time of year I am seeking out food items to place on top of dumplings like a bear preparing for hibernation.

1 bag Morningstar Farms Steak Strips, cubed
2T vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
2t caraway seeds
2T sweet Hungarian paprika (not hot!)
1/4t pepper
1 six oz. can tomato paste
1 bottle of beer
1/4t salt
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4t marjoram
2 carrots, chopped (optional)
2 red potatoes, diced (optional)
1 1/2 cups V8 or vegetable juice (use less if omitting carrots & potatoes)
2T flour

In a stew sized pot, heat oil and cook onions and caraway seeds until onions are soft. Add cubed faux steak and brown slightly. Stir in all of the remaining ingredients except flour. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes, until potatoes and carrots are soft. If necessary, add flour to thicken.

Because this meal is clearly calorie deficient (ha!), I thought I would use up some rhubarb that’s taking up space in my freezer. In a momentary lapse of reason, I planted no fewer than 12 rhubarb plants when we bought our current house. Suffice it to say, I have rhubarb coming out the wazoo and have found millions of ways to use rhubarb. (If the big bomb ever comes, we could hole up in the basement and live off rhubarb jam for at least a year.) Still, I have bags and bags of it in the freezer.

Here is one of my basset hounds, Moose, posing in front of a few of the rhubarb plants.

Anyway, for this ice cream topping, I cooked 2 cups of rhubarb with 3T of agave nectar over medium heat until it was soft, maybe 7 minutes. Then I added 2 cups of strawberries and cooked for another 2 minutes. Delicious!

The Chicken Post

By Monica on October 12th, 2007

Per request, here are some chicken photos of another kind! It rather fascinates me that whenever guests come over, they are either absolutely terrified of chickens, or think they are the coolest thing ever. And seemingly everyone has a chicken story of their own to share!

Chickens make excellent guardians. Here they are protecting the driveway from insects:

This is Burt the House Chicken; she is a Barred Rocks. Burt is technically a girl, despite her name. A few years back Burt injured her leg and was unable to walk so the others picked on her. So Burt came in the house and lived in the basement until she healed. She’s one of the friendliest hens and loves to sit on your lap and have her ears rubbed.

This is Henny Penny Pudding Pie; she is a Black Australorp. Henny enjoys stale bagels, grasshoppers, and long walks in the soybean fields. She’s very curious and one of the first to greet you when you enter the chicken run.

This is one of my rescued hens, we call her “the Muppet chicken” for obvious reasons. She is a Feather Footed Bantam White Silkie. Her ears are blue, she lays tiny little off-white eggs, and she loves to protectively sit on them. She would make a wonderful mother except that the rooster has no interest in her, so her eggs are not fertile and would never hatch. We don’t tell her that and let her sit on them as long as she wants anyway!

Presenting Seniorita Chicken Butt! She’s a White Orpington, not the friendliest in the flock, but a gorgeous girl.

Baby Peepers the first day I got them. (This is before I knew better and I actually bought chickens instead of rescuing them.)

Roo the rooster. Roo was supposed to be female, but it didn’t turn out that way and lucky for him he was mis-sexed and therefore avoided the woodchipper. Roo tries to kill my brother and barely tolerates Ray. He has chased the electric meter reader out of the yard, and two Jehovah’s Witness’ who were earnestly warned but would not listen to reason. He’s never tried to attack me, maybe because I am always threatening to turn him into Rooster Soup. (He doesn’t know rooster is not part of a vegan diet!) In any case, he’s cool as hell. He’s about 12 pounds and adores his hens. He cackles to them when he finds something good to eat instead of eating it himself. He watches over them while they forage and keeps the dogs on their side of the fence!

So those are them! The original chickens I bought from a hatchery must be about 6 years old now, most of them healthy and going strong! We have lost some along the way to predators, which is very sad, but unavoidable in the country despite elaborate efforts to erect predator proof housing. I’ve learned to accept it as part of the natural cycle, certainly much more natural than ending up in a KFC bucket at 6 weeks of age.

They have a 12×12′ insulated coop complete with windows, nesting boxes, and lots of wood shavings. This opens up to a 99% predator proof 25×25′ ‘chicken run’ layered with gravel that they need to digest their food. This opens up to another 30×30′ ‘chicken yard’ that is natural brush for them to forage through, and dirt for them to dig holes and dust bathe in. They only go out there under supervision right now because we have a nasty hawk on the prowl. Finally, they get free run of the front yard when I’m out there to keep a close eye on them.

As for their eggs, none of my hens (except the Muppet) have any desire to sit on eggs or hatch them, called being “broody”. This instinct has been bred out of them as they were designed only to be laying machines. They lay an egg, jump off it, and never look back. So we collect the eggs and feed them back to the hens, or to the dogs and cats.

Hope you enjoyed my chicken post! Please share your chicken stories or chicken questions; I know you have some!

Chimichangas & Quesadillas!

By Monica on October 11th, 2007

I lovelovelove Mexican food. We have one Mexican restaurant nearby and they do have a meal that can be made vegan, but there’s only so many veggie fajitas one person can eat. I’m also sick of paying the same price for veggie fajitas as corpse fajitas. One is clearly cheaper to produce than the other, grrrr!

Nevertheless, here are Tofu Chimichangas from The Garden of Vegan. The tofu ends up quite flavorful and the shell gets nice and crispy. Much better than paying $14 for glorified sauteed onions and peppers!

Then just to thoroughly prove my point that I don’t need to go out for Mexican, I whipped up some Garbanzo - Roasted Red Pepper Quesadillas from a Compassion Over Killing recipe. Embarrassingly easy to make and super tasty!

Garbanzo & Roasted Red Pepper Quesadillas
15 ounce can garbanzo beans
1/2 cup roasted red peppers
3T lemon juice
1T tahini
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4t cumin
8 tortillas
1/2 cup chopped green onions, optional
1/2 cup salsa, optional
vegan sour cream, optional

Drain the beans and place in a food processor with the next 5 ingredients. Process until very smooth, 1-2 minutes.

Spread 2-3T of the garbanzo mixture onto a tortilla and place in a dry nonstick skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle with green onions and salsa, if desired.

Top with a second tortilla and cook until the bottom tortilla is slightly browned, 2-3 minutes. Flip and cook the second side for 1 minute. Remove and top with sour cream or extra salsa, if desired.

Bramboráky - Potato Pancakes

By Monica on October 10th, 2007

So many cultures have potato pancake recipes, this is mine. Fortunately these are easy enough to veganize by using non-dairy milk if your recipe calls for it, or a replacement binder instead of eggs. Since I’ve always eaten applesauce with the pancakes anyway, I thought applesauce would make a tasty egg replacer and it actually worked pretty well too. They held together beautifully!

If you want the Czech version, make sure to top with both applesauce and faux sour cream, because well, everything Czech is coated in sour cream.

2 large potatoes
1 medium onion
2/3 cup applesauce
1/4 cup lemon juice
2T parsley
2T flour
2T bread crumbs
1/2t thyme
1/2t salt
1/2t pepper

Grate the potatoes and onion, preferably in a food processor so you don’t skin your knuckles. Drain very well and squeeze out all the liquid. Combine with all the remaining ingredients and mix well.

In a large skillet, heat enough vegetable oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Add 1/2 cup of the potato mixture and flatten a little to make a pancake. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side until nicely browned, adding more oil as necessary.