Breathing Some Soul Into My Kitchen

You would think that since I grew up in the South, my formative years were filled with Southern comfort and soul foods. Truth be told I was never a fan of fried chicken, grits, collard greens, or most of the staples of the South. But all of that seems to have changed in the last few years (except for the chicken part, of course), and now I savor the flavors of soul cuisine. So when I was asked to review Vegan Soul Kitchen, a new cookbook by Bryant Terry, I took that chance to breathe a little bit of soul into my kitchen.... and here's what I came up with.




One mandatory recipe to make (for anyone who gets this book) is the one that inspired the book itself; citrus collards with raisins redux. This was my first time cooking collards in my kitchen, and I was worried that the bitterness would be too much for me. Wrong! The burst of citrus and sweetness of the raisins was the perfect compliment to the greens.

Along with the collards, I made whole-grain mustard and cornmeal crusted seitan and sweet cornmeal-coconut butter drop biscuits. The biscuits ended up looking more like cookies, but none of that mattered once you slathered on a little Earth Balance and took a bite... these just melted in my mouth. I also loved the crunch I got from using coarse cornmeal.

Another meal I made was the blackened tofu slabs with succotash salsa. The blackened tofu was quite a hit, and I liked his suggestion of chilling, slicing, and putting it on a salad. The succotash was alright, I don't think it turned out so well because I used both frozen corn and lima beans (fresh is recommended), plus my tomatoes were less than stellar. But during the right season (summer) I think this would really compliment the tofu.
And to round out my review, tonight I whipped up a trio of salads for dinner, including: carrot-cayenne coleslaw, chilled citrus broccoli salad, and roasted red potato salad with parsley-pine nut pesto. The pesto had a very unique flavor, thanks to the addition of miso I am guessing. Next time I would use more red pepper, but this is a potato salad that would certainly please a crowd. The broccoli was also full of flavor, though the citrus wasn't too overpowering. The only unfortunate thing is that the acid in the citrus turned my bright green broccoli into a mucky brown color! The coleslaw wasn't much of a standout, and I didn't end up tasting the cayenne at all. But my cabbage-loving husband still devoured it with pleasure.
Overall, I have really enjoyed the recipes from Vegan Soul Kitchen. Bryant Terry gives us quite a variety of traditional southern recipes, but with a modern twist. The tone in his directions is smooth and relaxed (he actually told me to "massage" my broccoli!). And his soundtrack selection for each dish allows the food to really sing to you in more ways than one (though I didn't have too many of them on my iTunes playlist). Surprisingly, though, I'm not even sure Bryant Terry is a vegan (based on his comments in the introduction... haven't confirmed this!). I guess this is one detail I am willing to overlook, because I sure do like his soul food!

One Year of Blogging

I had so many good intentions of a big one year blogiversary post. But with my business travel to Calgary last week, a busy weekend of running around, and top of everything getting a cold for the first time this year, it just didn't happen. Suffice it to say that the last year of blogging has been a wonderful experience and I thank every one of you who visits the blog and takes the time to read my sometimes random monologues. I have gotten so much more out of blogging than I had ever imagined, and for that I am thankful. (**here's the part where I blow out my imaginary candle and wish for many more years of productive, entertaining blogging**)

Over the weekend, we celebrated Earth Day with our local vegan society (Society of PEACE) with an all vegan picnic in the park! Everyone brought their families and we had about 40 people turn out on a gorgeous spring day. The picnic was BYOP&S (plates and silverware) in order to be more Earth friendly :-) Here's my plate, filled with a veggie dog (provided by SOP), twinkie, enchiladas, prospect park potato salad (from Vcon, which I made), fruit salad, green curry w/potatoes and chickpeas, broccoli salad, cabbage salad, and macaroni salad. More food came after I got my plate, and I tried a few including a bean salad, lentils and rice, and local green salad. All very yum.

The afternoon was full of lots of eating, chatting about veganism in Houston, and watching the kids (and adults) run around and play. Here's John and I... me with my dessert plate that included carrot cake, fat free chocolate cake, and chocolate peanut butter cookies. Like my new Vegan shirt from Cosmo's?

Just to prove that I haven't solely been living off of potluck food, here's some food from my kitchen.... Dinner last week of cumin lime tofu (from ED&BV), sauteed french green beans, and a baked sweet potato. I loved the tofu, especially with the crunchy pumpkin seeds on top. This will definitely be made again.

And I was a lucky recipient of some sourdough starter from the amazing Bazu!! John is a huge fan of sourdough, so he was especially excited to see this arrive in it's little green package (with a cute origami figure) in the mail. I began by making some sourdough pancakes to familiarize myself with the whole process. These were light and fluffy with a nice hint of sour. See all those instructions by the plate?!? I love how baking is a science. The next challenge will be making the crusty San Francisco style sourdough bread. You have not heard the last about sourdough here. Thanks so much Bazu for the starter!!

And finally, while in Calgary last week I had some roasted beets and asked myself why I had never made any on my own. I took care of that last night. Just a simple salad with mixed greens, walnuts, shredded carrots, and a maple balsamic vinaigrette. The beets are topped with a bit of sea salt. And to imagine I hated beets as a child....

Hope everyone did a something kind for the planet today..... Happy Earth Day!

Eating Green: Mini Food Journal

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I've decided to do a mini food journal today to record my Irish (and not so Irish but at least green) eatings. I do believe I have some Irish blood in me, though I am mostly English and Scottish. But John is half Irish, 2nd generation American, so there is definitely a reason to make it somewhat authentic for him. You'll see later what I have planned for dinner....

8:20am
But first, the breakfast that made me late for work. You guessed it, irish oatmeal!! (aka steel cut oats). I couldn't think of anything green to add to these, so it's topped with agave nectar, bananas, and frozen raspberries. It's sticking to my bones right now. Oh, and do you like our crocheted green shamrock? That's from my sister-in-law. Isn't it cute? I really need to learn to crochet. More updates as the day goes on, I need to get to work now.

12:15pm
Lunch time!! Which usually means leftovers for me at my desk. Over the weekend I made a tofu scramble with Mori Nu tofu. Usually I use the refridgerated kind, but John wanted to experiment because the aseptic package has fewer calories. We discovered this was mostly water since the tofu cooked down to about half the starting amount. Oh well, still tasted fine. So this isn't really Irish, but it's very green! Additions include asparagus, swiss chard, mushrooms, onion, and pesto. Wrap it in a whole wheat pita and you've got yourself a meal. Over lunch today I made my shopping list for after work: raisins, Earth Balance buttery sticks, and more swiss chard. Any guesses as to what I'm making?
6:30pm
For dinner, I wanted to have one of John's more traditional St Patrick's Day foods, Irish Soda Bread. (you were right, chocolate covered vegan! the chard was for another part of dinner) I veganized a recipe that has been passed down in John's family, my only modifications were to use non bone-char sugar, soymilk, and nonhydrogenated shortening. I followed cakespy's advice and soaked my raisin in sugar water, yielding a plumper, moister raisin when baked. This stuff is hard to beat when freshly baked with a few pats of Earth Balance.

The rest of the meal was a bit less traditional, but one component is still typical Irish fare. I made veganyumyum's version of colcannon (you were right too, amy!). My modifications were using blue potatoes, swiss chard instead of kale, and tempeh bacon instead of seitan. I left the skins on the potatoes, which gave a nice texture. The saltiness of the tempeh was the perfect contrast to the creamy potatoes. We have lots of this leftover. On the side were some sauteed apples, which ended up getting stored in a tupperware because the soda bread and colcannon were so filling. But they'll be yummy warmed up with some vanilla soy ice cream. Or maybe even for breakfast. Still one more treat coming your way this evening. Hopefully I'll have some room to eat it, otherwise you may just get the photograph.
9:00pm
And finally, dessert!! These are neither green nor Irish, but they are super fudgy and rich. Yesterday I made a batch of the crumb topped brownies from My Sweet Vegan (after oogling them on other blogs such as overflowing with awesome ). Oh my, I like to think that I am one of those that has endless amounts of room for sweets, but these brownies fill you up. The crumb topping adds a fun crunch. Oh, and can you see the little face on the corner in the center of the photo (down in the fudgy part of the brownie)? Hopefully it's not just me.
Hope everyone enjoyed eating, drinking, and wearing green today! Maybe this post will help give me a little luck of the Irish.

Houston Vegan Potluck

That's right, you read the title correctly. A vegan potluck in Houston! When I first became vegan I thought I might be the only one in the city, but there are actually quite a few of us. The Houston vegan meetup group hosted a potluck last night at a gracious member's home. There was a wonderful variety of vegan food and it was a good time chatting with other Houston vegans. Here is a peak at plate #1:



The food includes (from the left): chickpea patty (which I brought, see below), Ethiopian food with injera bread, veggie sushi, mini-sandwich with hummus and deli "meat", three different kinds of tofu, and beans with veggies dogs. I gobbled up all the food and went for seconds, which included a Santa Fe green chile casserole and General Tao's tofu. Yum!! Here's plate #2:

And of course, who can resist vegan desserts. Here are the desserts I sampled, a vegan cheesecake, some kind of tart (must find out, it was delish), and chocolate cake. I was stuffed by the end of the night.

Here are the dishes I contributed, including Moroccan Chickpea Patties from Vive Le Vegan, served with Sesame Mustard Tahini Sauce. These were delicious and I thought the spices added a unique flavor, we will definitely be making them again. I also brought the Maple-Mustard-Glazed Potatoes and String Beans from VWAV that I've blogged about before. Love those, they are the perfect potluck food.

And of course I had to bring a dessert. I tried out Vivacious Vegan's recent post, the Best Vegan Brownies Ever. I have to say I must agree with the name! I used pecans instead of walnuts and topped them with some powdered sugar. They disappeared from the plate very quickly, a good thing because I'm trying (regardless of the dessert plate you saw) to cut back on sweets since this past week full of cupcakes.



The evening was a great experience. I can't wait for my next vegan potluck (which I think will be in September!), it is such a nice way to discover new types of food, share recipes, and meet new people.

Maple and Mustard Magic

This week the focus has been mainly on warp-speed wedding planning (we're aiming for early Oct. 2007), not really food. But even in my cooking haste, we've had a few tasty dishes. Monday night I tried a new recipe from VWAV, the Maple Mustard Potatoes and Beans. I needed to use the green beans in the fridge I had from last week's farmer's marker, as well as some new potatoes that I bought there. I figured there would likely be enough leftovers for lunch the next day .... wow was I wrong! I loved this dish, the maple and mustard were a great combination. I wonder how it would taste on different veggies?

Tuesday night, John cooked up some zucchini flowers that we spotted at the farmer's market. I had never had these before, but John remember them growing up, so he was in charge of the cooking. He dipped them in plain soy milk then coated them with flour, salt and pepper and fried them up southern style! (The browned thing beneath the fried flowers is a mini zucchini that was attached to one of the flowers, how cute!) Simple, but good. Served them along with some yellow squash and mushrooms sauteed with pesto and almond-crusted homemade seitan patties.