Celebratory zucchini soup

I've left behind my crummy night job, and I'm beginning a new (sane?) daytime job tomorrow. That means more sunny hours for cooking, photography, and gardening. Ooo boy!

To celebrate, I scrounged through the produce lurking at the bottom of the fridge and came up with one zucchini and one yellow squash, a little worse for time. Coincidentally (magically?) I saw a recipe for zucchini soup in last week's Meatless Monday newsletter. I can't ever say no to soup.

[Meatless Monday aside. I really like this organization. They have a great nutrition news roundup, and I love the vegetable-packed message. But I've found the recipes to be hit or miss. This one was a hit, though.]

Here's my version of the soup, modified to fit the contents of my fridge.

Summer Squash Soup

oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 summer squash, cut into 1-inch pieces
vegetable broth
2 teaspoons dried tarragon
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

Sautee onion in just a smidge of oil until soft. Add the garlic, and cook 30 seconds longer. Add the summer squash, tarragon, and enough vegetable broth to just barely cover the vegetables. Simmer 10 minutes or until the squash is soft. Blend with an immersion blender (or transfer to a blender in batches). Stir in nutritional yeast. Serve hot!

Review: The Urban Vegan

I was on a cookbook fast during the year that I was looking for work. Now that I've been working for a few months, it's time for feasting!

The vegan cookbook market has exploded over the past few years. One of the benefits of having so many new vegan cookbooks is that there's room for specialty books. 2009 and 2010 brought us vegan cookbooks on brunch, Latin food, cookies, diner food, entertaining, and fine dining.

My first cookbook purchase of the year was The Urban Vegan: 250 Simple, Sumptuous Recipes from Street Cart Favorites to Haute Cuisine. Each chapter has a theme such as "Cafe Culture," "All Night Breakfast at the Diner," and "The Melting Pot."

The chickpea paprikash (at the top) from the "Melting Pot" chapter was creamy and flavorful and made a great one-dish meal. I subbed Anaheim peppers because I couldn't find the cubanelle or Hungarian wax peppers the recipe called for. We easily got enough for two dinners and three lunches from this recipe.

The baked potato, roasted asparagus, and aioli (below) made a perfect light meal. I've always eaten baked potatoes with just butter and salt (and occasionally soy sauce!), but I really enjoyed the tang that the aioli brought to potato. I suspect the sauce should be a bit thicker than this. I used the vegenaise from the end of the jar, and it tends to be liquidy.


I also tried the Welsh Rarebit (on homemade bread!), and it brought back great memories of gathering around a dish of Welsh Rarebit with my family. The recipes just calls for beer, without specifying what kind. Dewey offered to pick something up for me, and he grabbed a stout, since it's my favorite to drink. The Rarebit came out a bit dark, so stick with a pale beer.

A few recipes require vegan dairy products or harder to find seasonings, but the majority of the recipes can be made with ingredients from an ordinary grocery store. Some other dishes I'm looking forward to trying are the Rapini Panini, Curry Cashew Casserole, Spaghetti alle Melanzane (spaghetti with eggplant), and Potatoes with 40 Cloves of Garlic. Trying hard to think of something critical about the book, the closest I could come is that the constant references to busy urban life and city dwellers begin to wear a bit thin if you read the book straight through like I did. In other words, I highly recommend this.

Success!

I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions. Big sweeping changes are pretty rare and are usually motivated by something life changing. A life-threatening illness. The birth of a child. The loss of a family member. But, I do like to start the year off by taking stock and making a few, very concrete, goals.

In 2009, one of my goals was to get more comfortable with yeast. Yeast has always intimidated me. A lot of the steps are pretty subjective. (What does it mean that dough is "smooth and pliable"?) In 2009, I made bagels, pumpkin cinnamon rolls, and lots and lots of pizza. Besides some mishaps with pizza baking at the beginning, it all went pretty well. I can easily whip up some pizza for dinner or a batch of cinnamon rolls. But at the end of the year, I felt like I had cheated because I never made a good old fashioned loaf of bread. So one of my goals for 2010 was bread.

Above is a loaf of white sandwich bread from a recipe on the King Arthur Flour blog. Those folk know their bread



I'm pretty happy with my first loaf. It's incredibly soft and pliant. I can't wait until tomorrow to make some toast and spread it with melty peanut butter.

I'm hoping 2010 will find me eating homemade challah, whole grains breads, and some of the more unusual breads from 500 Vegan Recipes, like Mole Bread, a spicy cocoa bread.

South Carolina Mustard Sauce

Soon after I switched to a vegan diet, I made a list of my favorite foods that weren't originally vegan. My goal was to find ways to enjoy all of them in vegan form. Four years later, I'm about halfway through that list. Some things are beyond my cooking ability still (kolaches!). Some require vegan ingredients that just aren't quite good enough yet. And some, well, I just haven't gotten around to yet.

This South Carolina Mustard sauce is something my family ate every so often when I was a kid. Often my mother would ask me to make the sauce, and then she would cook the pork loin when she got home from work.

Unlike other barbecue sauces, South Carolina mustard-style barbecue sauce doesn't have any tomato products. They're usually based on a combination of vinegar, mustard, and sometimes brown sugar. The red color in this version comes from chili powder.

The barbecue sauce was nearly vegan already, but I was left with the dilemma of what to pour it over. I don't remember what pork tastes like (this dish and bacon were the only pork foods we ever ate at home when I was a kid). But when I made the courico tacos recently, I realized they were the perfect choice for this barbecue sauce.

I still need to perfect the cooking method for the soy curls, but the mustard sauce was just as I remembered it. Tangy, sweet, and just a bit spicy.

South Carolina Mustard Sauce

1 cup apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup yellow mustard
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons pepper
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons Earth Balance

Combine the vinegar, sugar, mustard, chili powder, and pepper in a medium sauce pan. Simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes. Remove from heat source, and stir in soy sauce and Earth Balance.

February: Some Updates

It's been a busy month. I (finally!) found a job. Unfortunately, it's third shift. It's put a bit of a cramp in my photography and gardening since both of these things need sunlight.

In general Dewey and I have been busy improving the house, introducing the cats to one another, and just generally adjusting to the new schedule. But I've found a bit of time to squeeze in my hobbies here and there.

At the top is a puttanesca scramble from Vegan Brunch. It's a tofu scramble with tomatoes, olives, and capers. I had a lot of leftover ingredients from an antipasto salad, and this was a perfect way to use them up. I wasn't sure what I would think of this, especially since the antipasto salad wasn't a hit. But it was great.

I never wrote a review of Vegan Brunch, but some of our favorites are the courico tacos made with soy curls, the chocolate beer waffles with sweet cashew cream, and the (virgin) Bloody Moskowitz.

This is the baked potato soup from Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food. This cookbook has found a steady spot in our diet now that I have less time for cooking. Those are chopped green onions on top of the soup. I've been obsessed with them lately.

A little "aha" cooking moment from earlier this month. You have a microplane grater, right? They're lovely. They're great for zesting or grating small things like garlic or nutmeg. And they won't tear up your sponge (or your knuckles!) the way a traditional grater does. Anyway, if you turn the microplane grater upside down while you grate, it collects whatever it is you're grating.
I've put together the frame for my new square foot garden, but I've decided not to plant until we get the lawn regraded. Anything planted now will just get torn up then. Bummer for now, but in the long run, fixing the lawn so water doesn't drain under the house is more important.

And finally, I took Lizzie's advice (though her comment seems to have disappeared since then), and went with a chicken wire compost bin. Hopefully by this time next year I'll have enough of my own compost that I won't need to buy any to build a second square foot garden.

Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti Today

I spent Saturday cooking for today's bake sale. I made thyme spiced mixed nuts, vegan rice crispie treats made with Dandies, and curry spiced cashews.

Come out to Ten Thousand Villages between noon and 4 PM to buy some treats and donate money to support relief in Haiti.

Curry Spiced Cashews

2 tablespoons non-hydrogenated margarine
4 teaspoons curry powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups roasted cashews

Melt margarine over medium heat. Add the spices and cook about 30 seconds or until fragrant. Take the pan off the heat and add the cashews. Stir to coat the cashews evenly with the spice mixture. Spread in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Austin Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti

Come out to Austin's vegan bake sale for Haiti this Sunday, January 24th, from noon to 4PM at Ten Thousand Villages (1317 South Congress Ave). All money raised will be donated to Food for Life Global.

Many thanks to Ten Thousand Villages for letting us use their space and to Wheatsville Coop for donating supplies.

In Texas, vegan bake sales are also being held in Houston and Denton. There's a growing list of vegan bake sales for Haiti on the Post Punk Kitchen blog.

If you're interested in baking for the Austin bake sale there's information on Facebook and this thread of the VRA.