Pizza

Turns out the second yeasted thing I made wasn't foccacia or challah but pizza. Dewey and I have been making our pizzas using dough balls from Whole Foods up until now. I think we'll be making all of our own pizza crusts from now on because this was one of the best pizzas I've ever had.

The crust recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance as is the pizza sauce. The pizza dough recipe made enough dough for four 6- or 7-inch pizzas, so we froze half of it for another time. Making your own pizza sauce is incredibly easy, especially if you don't mind chunks of tomato or have an immersion blender. (We blend ours. Tomato chunks are on Dewey's avoid-list.)

We each topped our own pizzas. I took this separate-but-equal food opportunity to eat lots of things Dewey won't touch. I topped my pizza with a thinly-sliced heirloom tomato, black olives, artichoke hearts, and pesto. Basil is the one thing I'm growing successfully in my garden.

Bagels!

Recently, my grandmother bought Dewey and me a stand mixer (thanks Barbie!). One of my goals this year is to get more comfortable working with yeast. I've made bagels and pretzels a few times before, but I'm not very confident doing it. So Dewey and I knew exactly what we wanted to make first with the stand mixer's dough hook.



These are some bagels we made earlier this year with the recipe from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. This is the first time that cookbook has let me down. The instructions were both too complicated and not detailed enough. They suggested spritzing the oven with water to create steam, but failed to mention that the
water mixed with the yeast should be warm. They turned out too tough and unusually brown.



But with our new mixer in hand, we tried the recipe from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. And this recipe turned out perfect for us. Crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. And they're nicely browned (but not brown), too. Just perfect.

And this recipe has fewer steps as well. Only one rise instead of two. No fussy water in the oven. And Isa's instructions for shaping the bagels worked out much better for us.

Now I'm excited to try more yeast recipes. I think focaccia is next on my list.

Vegan Frito Pie

Dewey has asked me to make my Texas chili four or five times since I first made it. He brings the leftovers to work for lunch (almost unheard of for him). He even brought a triple batch to work for a potluck and then called me up excitedly to tell me they made great frito pies.

So we had frito pies for dinner the other night. Fritos, Texas chili, chopped white onions, and Ctate's Queso. (The recipe is temporarily offline because they're going to bottle and sell it.)

Vegan Grilling

It's barbecue season, and just because you're cutting out or cutting down on meat isn't any reason to retire your grill. Here are some tasty and healthy ideas for veggie grilling.

1. Vegetable slices. Eggplant, squash, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and whatever else you can think probably. For smaller vegetables, you might want to invest in a grilling basket to keep pieces from falling onto the coals. Cut the vegetables into similar sized pieces, brush with a bit of oil, and grill until crisp-tender. (Alternatively, I have a friend who makes tinfoil packets of vegetables with marinade and grills those campfire-style.)

2. Fruit. Pineapple is the quintessential fruit to grill, but peaches, pears, apples, and bananas are great, too. Keep a close eye on softer fruits as they'll get a bit mushy if they cook too long. (Bananas can be grilled in their peels with chocolate.)

3. Kebabs. Either soak bamboo sticks or use metal skewers and thread them with whatever you can imagine. Try for lots of different shapes, textures, and colors. This is a good place to use a marinade. And don't be afraid to add cubed tofu or tempeh here. Try this recipe Kim O'Donnel posted for barbecued tofu skewers.

4. Pizza. Go easy with the toppings here, and feel free to precook vegetables that might need a bit more time to get soft. Here are Heidi Swanson's instructions for grilling pizza.

5. Burgers and sausages. Let's face it, vegetarian hot dogs aren't very good. But there are some excellent vegan sausages out there. I really like Tofurkey and Field Roast sausages. They're flavorful and grill up nicely. There are a million veggie burgers out there, so I'll leave that one up to you.

If you're up for making your own vegan sausages, try this recipe from Everyday Dish. It's really versatile. I've seen everything from chorizo to pepperoni to boudin come out of this basic recipe.

6. Portobello mushrooms. This is a great option if you're looking for something on a bun but you're not into veggie burgers. Marinate or brush with oil before cooking.

7. Corn on the cob. Remove the silk but leave the husks on. Soak the ears (with husks) in water. The wet husks help steam the corn. Turn the ears occasionally as they cook. More complete instructions are here.

8. Salad. I know, I know. But really, you can grill a head of romaine.

9. Polenta. Recipe from the NYT's great new "Recipes for Health" column. (Obviously sub Earth Balance or olive oil for the butter if you're cooking for vegans.)

10. Bread. Recipe from the Food Network.

11. Grill and mix. Use grilled vegetables to make fajitas, sandwiches, wraps, or pasta.

Teriyaki Eggplant

Dewey and I have a culinarily mixed household. I'm vegan and health-minded and a treehugger. He's an omnivore, and while he's interested in health and the environment, he's not nearly as invested in it as I am.

Our meal planning has to take into account my diabetes, too. That means avoiding meals that combine too many carb-heavy options (like spaghetti and garlic bread). (Note: When they cure diabetes, my first diabetes-free meal will be pasta, garlic bread, tiramisu, and several glasses of wine.)

We combined our households about six months ago, and I think we've finally found a balance that works for us. We take turns choosing what to eat. I push for more vegetables, Dewey pushes for fewer of certain vegetables (raw tomatoes, mushrooms, and avocado are on his banned list). Most of the time, this means we eat the same food. Occasionally, we eat separate, but equal.

The meal above is an example of this. Dewey wanted to make teriyaki beef and soba noodles. So we made teriyaki sauce together (this video recipe), and I used my part of the sauce to make teriyaki eggplant.

I sliced my eggplant, brushed it with oil, and baked it in the oven for about half an hour. Then I finished my eggplant by glazing it in the teriyaki sauce following the directions for glazing the teriyaki beef. When I make this again, I'll peel the eggplant. It looks prettier with the skin on, but the texture of the skin was a bit tough and added a bitterness to the eggplant.

The way my garden grows

I'm beginning to think I should stop growing vegetables and start cultivating bugs. I'd be more successful that way.

Here are some adorable aphids sucking out the juices of a pepper leaf. With them, their friend the ant.


Here is a picture of a spidermite on a sheet of white paper. The mite is that light colored thing in the middle of the photograph. For size comparison, they're about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

I spent the evening washing aphids, ants, and spidermites off the leaves of my plants. Too bad the snails will love all that moisture.


Leaf damage on an eggplant leaf. The white spongy part is actually where a pest sucked the bottom layer off the leaf, leaving just a thin top layer.


And finally, a holey squash leaf. These holes are circular unlike the irregular holes above. I think the black bits are waste left behind by whatever is chowing down on the leaf.

Diabetes--does it get in the way?

There's a lot of talk lately about Sonia Sotomayor and her type 1 diabetes. Will it affect her ability to be a Supreme Court justice? Of course not. Mostly.

Trying to tell someone how diabetes affects your life is difficult. It changes everything. And at the same time, it's not a big deal.

In a story about Ms. Sotomayor and her diabetes, Time Magazine ran this photograph of a woman injecting herself with something. And yes, you can take insulin injections in your arm by squeezing it up against a chair or wall, but there are easier ways to do it. (And ways that look less like a hype getting a fix.) The most common places to give yourself an injection are the stomach, legs, and butt. They're easier to reach and they have more fat as well.

If I were to pick a photograph to show what diabetes is like, it would be this:



Yup. Food. I eat a lot of food in bowls. When you have type 1 diabetes (which I've had for 23 years), you have to count every bite of food you eat. For me, the easiest way to do this is to eat out of bowls. This far up the bowl is one cup. This far, two cups.

Pictured there, one cup beans, half a cup rice, for a total of 50 g carbohydrate, which translates to 7 units of insulin. I do a mental calculation like that every time I eat.

And that's the hard part of having diabetes. It's counting everything you eat. Thinking about when your next meal will be every time you step out the door. Keeping track of five prescriptions that need to be renewed at different times. Carting around a bag of supplies everywhere you go. Noticing that you walked three miles today instead of two. It's six doctor's appointments a year. Four to ten blood sugar checks a day. No vacation.

But all these things I do, they're what keep me healthy. Sometimes I'll catch someone giving me a look when I test my blood sugar. I guess testing reminds people that I'm "sick". Which is ironic. Testing my blood sugar and taking insulin make me healthy. If you ever notice me ignoring my diabetes for days on end, like a normal person, start worrying.

Occasionally, my blood sugar goes low. And I lose fifteen minutes or so of time waiting for things to come back into focus. And that part isn't such a big deal.

Twenty-three years into this, I have no complications so far. Statistics tell me I'll die seven to ten years earlier, probably from a heart attack. I'm not going to spend a lot of time worrying about dying at 87, rather than 95 (the age my great-grandmother lived to).

There are a lot of factors that should be considered before choosing Ms. Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice. Her diabetes just isn't one of them.