A Quiet Sunday Afternoon

By Monica on March 11th, 2008

Ok, so it wasn’t so quiet! On Sunday Ray and I went to Peta2’s Take Action Conference at DePaul University in Chicago, which was followed by a KFC protest.

About 50 people gathered on the street for the protest, including members from Chicago’s Mercy For Animals, another great group. If you haven’t attended a protest before, I highly recommend it. It’s about the most fun one can possibly have standing on a street corner in Chicago on a cold winter day!

One week outside of St. Patty’s Day, and just a few feet away from one of Chicago’s many Irish Pubs, we even picked up a few extra supporters, even though they were highly intoxicated and some of them bleeding from the head for unknown reasons.

All in all, great fun (for everyone except KFC, so sad!)

I also want to thank So What Do Vegetarians Eat Anyway for honoring me with an Excellent Blogger Award. I’m so glad people enjoy visiting and am humbled to be in such great company!

Eat it, it’s good fuyu!

By Monica on March 6th, 2008

Be still my beating heart, I have stumbled across a new Asian market. It’s not exactly next door at over an hour away, but it is in the same neighborhood as the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s I visit when I trek into civilization for fancy-pants vegan items. Aisles and aisles of beautiful, fresh, cheap produce - I spent hours in there!

One of the new food items I came home with was a bag of “Fuyu Persimmions”. At 4 fuyus for a buck, I figured I’d take them home, Google what to do with them, and give it a whirl.

Google said I should make this Fuyu Bundt Cake, recipe courtesy of the California Fuyu Grower’s Association. Rarely is Google wrong. Who knew fuyu could be so delicious? (Ok, lots of people probably.) It was like some sort of gingerbread fruit cake, but better! If you ever find yourself with extra fuyus, definitely try this out.

I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my bitter melon, fuzzy squash, and other exotics. In the meantime, favorites like Sourdough Calzones balance out the new, strange goodies I’ve brought home. (Why I bought a can of “vegetarian mock duck” I can’t tell you…) Anyway, I like this dough recipe because it needs only 5 minutes to rise. For those of us with no little patience, that’s a lot better than the usual hour we have to wait for dinner. It’s an incredibly easy dough to roll, is crispy, and durable enough to make a calzone you can pick up and eat with your hands.

And lastly, I’ve been discovering the wonders of minute tapioca lately. Bryanna turned me onto using it in one of her recipes and this week I branched out into Tapioca Apples. This was a super quick way to use up my aging apples and though it’s excellent all on its own, next time I will serve it over vanilla ice cream.

Fuyu Bundt Cake
(I subbed apple sauce for the eggs, canola oil for the butter, and cashews instead of walnuts. I also had to bake mine for a lot longer than the recipe calls for, so make sure to check yours before pulling it out of the oven.)

Grease and flour a bundt cake pan. Preheat oven to 350.
Blend 2 tsp. baking soda into 3 cups of chopped firm Fuyus. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat 1/2 cup soft butter with 1 2/3 cups sugar. Add 2 eggs, 2 tsp. lemon juice, and 2 tsp. vanilla and beat until fluffy. Stir in Fuyu mix.
Sift together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. ground cloves, 1 tsp. cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp. nutmeg. Stir flour into Fuyu mixture just until blended. Add 1 cup chopped walnuts and 3/4 cup raisins.
Pour into prepared bundt pan. Bake at 350 for 55 - 60 minutes or until toothpick tests clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes. Turn onto rack.

Sourdough Calzone Dough
1 package dry active yeast
1/4 warm water
2T vegetable oil
1t sugar
1t salt
6 ounces soy yogurt
2 1/2 cups flour, whole wheat or all purpose

In large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in sugar, oil, salt, yogurt, and 1 cup of flour. Mix until smooth. Mix in enough remaining flour to make sough easy to handle.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Cover with your bowl and let rest for 5 minutes.
Divide dough into 4 portions, roll out into circles. After filling and sealing your calzone, bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Tapioca Apples
1/3 cup minute Tapioca
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2t cinnamon
1/2t salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 cups sliced apples

Bring water to boil in a small saucepan. Reduce heat to low, and add tapioca and sugar, stirring constantly until mixture is clear and thick. Stir in cinnamon, salt, and lemon juice.
Put apples in a shallow baking dish or pie pan. Pour tapioca mixture over the apples and bake in a 350 degree oven 30 minutes.