Check out my farmer’s market, yo

By Monica on July 11th, 2008

So while Raleigh certainly isn’t vegan paradise, I wanted to elicit sympathy show folks why I found the NC State Farmer’s Market so exciting. Behold, this is my farmer’s market, all 5 booths of it:

The photo is from my car as I drive past because I have not bothered going so far this year. (Please ignore the dilapidated orange ghetto trains in the background, my town thinks those are “antiques”.) From my car window each week I can spot lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and more lettuce. Illinois won’t have much else for another month or two. There are 5 booths so far; there will be about 10 when sweet corn season hits. The nice older lady in the middle there sells beer mustard, and the booth on the far right is non-vegan baked goods, so technically there are 3 booths of produce. I hope this explains my fascination with REAL farmer’s markets now!

Moo-ving on, here are some smoothies made from aging berries I would not allow to go to waste. Really though, this is just an excuse to show off my new glasses. The animals all have butts on the other side, heh.

In actual food this week, I made a double batch of Jessy’s Mom’s Magnificent Tuna-Free Tuna Casserole. Rule of thumb in my house is to double any casserole recipe to save more for later. That would have worked well if we didn’t eat the entire damn thing over the course of the week. A word of advice if you double this recipe - immediately freeze half of it because self control is powerless here.

And to round things off nicely - Apricot Cranberry Nut Pie from The Garden of Vegan. It’s so pretty one can almost overlook the pre-made crust, I hope.

But wait, there’s more!  Despite being labeled a weirdo for making soup in July, we made a batch of V’con Roasted Garlic Tomato Soup with Beans and Rice.  July or not, it was delicious…

…especially when paired with Bryanna’s Focaccia Bread - a tomato basil variety, of course.  Both the soup and the focaccia recipes make enough to feed an army, so I have all these delightful leftovers to look forward to this weekend, yay!

Raleigh!

By Monica on July 4th, 2008

So I spent the better part of last week in Raleigh, NC.  While certainly not the vegan mecca of PDX, there were way more food choices than I’m used to in Illinois.  Go North Carolina!

Up first was a stop at Mellow Mushroom for some Spring Water Dough Pretzels with marinara:

And an amazing pizza aptly called the “Mega Veggie”, loaded with sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, onions, green peppers, black olives, tomatoes, banana peppers, broccoli, artichoke hearts, and tofu.  The tofu is really not radioactive, the sun was just that bright!  Mellow Mushroom was a really fun place, good food, very veg-friendly with knowledgeable staff, and  we got to sit outside enjoying the gorgeous NC weather.  I’d go back in a heartbeat.

The next day it was off to the State Farmer’s Market in Raleigh, an amazing 225,000 square feet of gorgeous local produce and plants.  Peaches and melons were in season, tomatoes (which won’t be in IL for another 2 months!), squashes, peppers - it was amazing!

There are even a ton of fresh beans, which I would have loved to take home with me, but I didn’t think they’d fare so well in the cargo hold of the airplane!

As if that weren’t enough, there were pineapple trees for sale!  I’m a pineapple fanatic, so the prospect of being able to grow these suckers was enough for me to move to NC right then and there!

Our next stop was Spotted Dog in Carrboro.  Admittedly, we ended up there only because the THREE other restaurants on our list were all closed for various, strange reasons.  Apparently divine intervention wanted us to have these faux wings:

and this imitation chicken BBQ sammich with beer battered french fries.  Both were pretty good, even though I thought the wingz were a bit overpriced at ~$8 for the portion you see above.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised that Raleigh, technically being a part of “the south”, was as veg-friendly as it was.  I didn’t find bacon in every single vegetable dish like I have in Florida and Georgia, and most places had vegetarian sections of the menu.  Again, go North Carolina!

But lastly, I’m going to leave you with a recipe for Rhubarb Ice Cream, about the only thing I’ve managed to cook since coming home.  It doesn’t look very appetizing, I’ll admit.  What it does, however, is taste like a rhubarb pie in ice cream form.  And if that isn’t the best thing EVER, I don’t know what is.

Rhubarb Ice Cream (inspired by AllRecipes)
3 cups sliced rhubarb
2 cups sugar*
1t lemon juice
1 cup coconut milk

Place rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice in a small saucepan.  Bring to a slow boil and cook until rhubarb is tender, about 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and (carefully!) transfer contents to a food processor or blender.  Process just until rhubarb is in pea sized chunks, or your desired chunkiness.
Whisk in coconut milk.
Process per the instructions on your ice cream machine, and then freeze overnight to let harden a little more.
*This is very, very sweet.  Use less sugar if you’re concerned with diabetes or you know, tooth rot!

Chocolate Peanut Banana Flapjacks & Vegan Ham Powder?

By Monica on June 19th, 2008

Feeling ambitious last weekend, I woke up early to make pancakes with the aging bananas on my kitchen counter.

Half way into mixing, I thought I’d add some peanut butter and chocolate chips to really spruce them up.  I could not have imagined that peanut butter would be so amazing inside pancakes!  What could be better than a fluffer-nutter in pancake form?

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Flapjacks
1 1/2 cups flour
2t baking powder
1 overripe banana, mashed
1 cup non-dairy milk
4T creamy peanut butter
1 cup chocolate chips
vegetable oil

Whisk together the flour and baking powder.  Then add all remaining ingredients and mix well.  Put your cast iron pan or skillet over medium-high heat and coat lightly with vegetable oil.  When hot, spoon in the batter.  (I made mini-pancakes which were about 2T of batter each.)  Cook until golden brown on each side.  Makes about 12 mini-pancakes.

And secondly, I’m bringing you the first installment of Bizarre Search Terms people have used to arrive at my blog.  Some of them are so wacky I googled the terms myself to see if my page really turned up in the results.  These terms confirm my suspicions that the world is insane.  (My responses are in parenthesis.)

“swastika mason jars” (a collector’s item for sure!)
“cooked testicles” (not vegan!)
“tapioca poisoning” (first tomatoes this week, now tapioca?)
“squirt dairy cream in the ass porn” (I fear this person was gravely disappointed when arriving at my blog.)
“i hate bloomington-normal” (me too!)
“baked silly putty” (maybe vegan?)
“dairy goat software” (for extra smart goats)
“massive wieners”
“great white shark pets and fish tickles” (Does one need a special permit to have a pet great white, or to tickle fish?)
“cat helmet sundae”
“creating a bonsai by digging a tree”
“wet french fries” (ewwww!)
“ass farmer” (The world has enough asses, I don’t think we need to grow more!)
“pictures of foods that are bad for you” (err, thanks?)
“people dressed in pizza” (Best Halloween costume ever, though probably messy.)
“vegan ham powder” (please tell me this doesn’t exist!)

Chicago Green Festival

By Monica on May 21st, 2008

Last weekend was the Chicago Green Festival, and since Ray and I were in the area anyway, we headed to Navy Pier to see what vegan yummies and green innovations the show had to offer.

The first ‘innovation’ we came across was this blueberry cheezecake from Totally Vegan. I’ve never heard of “Totally Vegan” before and possibly for good reason, this was the worst cheesecake I’ve ever had in my life. Each bite was different, one chalky, the next runny, like it may not have been mixed well? After 2 bites each, it went into the compost bin.

Thankfully there was no shortage of other vegan vendors with other goodies to get that taste out of my mouth, like this delicious bread pudding from Karyn’s Cooked:

After sampling for a couple hours, we made it to the food court where the Chicago Diner, Soul Veg, and Temptation were set up. After harassing the Temptation staff about not bringing Teese for me to buy, Ray and I got two massive cookie dough ice cream cones, not knowing they would weigh about 2 pounds each! So good!

VegNews was giving out these handy totes for renewing your subscription. Mine needed renewing anyway, and then I had a new tote to carry home all of our free loot!

My favorite part of the Green Festival, however, was all the elephant poop. That’s right - there was a ton of elephant poop at the fest!

We learned that many organizations are now making paper products with recycled elephant dung in an attempt to foster a healthier relationship between elephants and the people of Sri Lanka. Apparently Sri Lanka is home to 1/10 of the world’s Asian elephants and they are being killed because they interfere with agriculture. Given that an elephant leaves behind 500 pounds of dung each day, and that their veggie-based dung is almost entirely cellulose (perfect for paper making), many organizations feel that utilizing dung for income is one way humans and elephants can coexist in Sri Lanka. If the elephant is seen as an economic contributor to the region, people may be more tolerant, and may even learn to value the elephants as a part of their world.

The paper is gorgeous, acid free, environmentally and animal friendly. How cool would it be to send out wedding invitations on elephant poop?! Check out MrElliePooh for more info.

And lastly, I am including a recipe for Aunt Yvonne’s Rhubarb Bread, a recipe from Animal Times. (You should get used to seeing a lot of rhubarb posts for a while!) I don’t know who Aunt Yvonne is, but she makes one wicked loaf of rhubarb bread!

Aunt Yvonne’s Rhubarb Bread

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup silken tofu
1 cup soy milk mixed with 1 Tbsp. lemon juice (let stand 10 minutes)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups diced rhubarb
1/2 cup chopped pecans (I used walnuts)
1/3 cup white sugar
1 Tbsp. margarine, melted

Preheat the oven to 350°F
In a large bowl, combine the brown sugar, vegetable oil and tofu and mix with an electric mixer until smooth. In another bowl, combine the soy milk, baking soda, salt and vanilla.
Alternate adding the soy milk mixture and the flour to the sugar mixture, beating well after each addition. Fold in the rhubarb and pecans.
Turn the batter into a lightly greased and floured loaf pan (8″x 4″x 3″).
Stir together the white sugar and melted margarine, then sprinkle over the top of the loaf. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.