Your Vegan Mom

Almond Oatmeal Apricot Muffins

I dropped off muffins Friday morning for the last elementary school bake sale of the year.  This was followed by the Spring Dance which turns out to be a school-wide dance recital on the black top, not the kindergarten prom that you might expect.  (Just me?)  

Tangerine Macerated Strawberries

"We're not really good sharers," says the three-year-old, earnestly protecting his bowl of vanilla soy yogurt topped with straberries, "that's why we have our own."  

I put a dollop of yogurt on top of the last few juicy berries in the blue mixing bowl, and I totally understand the boy's concern.  It's hard, but I hand Paul a bite.  

Tangerine Macerated Strawberries

makes: 4 dainty servings or enough for my two children, with a tiny taste left for Paul and me
takes: less than a minute, plus 10 for sitting 

• 1 pint strawberries, sliced
• 1 heaping tablespoon raw sugar
• juice of half a big tangerine or a fat wedge of orange

Sprinkle the sliced strawberries with sugar and citrus juice and stir it up.  Let sit for about 10 minutes for the strawberries to soften and release their juices and the sugar to disolve.  Serve over vanilla yogurt or ice cream.  

Our Favorite November Snack

Slice a fuyu persimmon into thin rounds.  (The firm kind with the flat bottom - as opposed to the pointy bottomed hachiyas that are meant to be eaten soft.)  Squeeze a bit of lime over it - just enough to slick it with a shimmer of juice and floral tang to offset the (slightly dull) sweetness of the persimmon.  I find half of a juicy lime to be just right for three nice fuyus and two hungry boys.  

Also, I imagine if I spent less time at the park and the preschool and more time sitting around the table with grown-ups at impromptu dinner parties, a platter of persimmons tossed with lime juice would be the perfect end to a rich winter meal, don't you think?    

Jennifer Cornbleet's Chia-Blueberry Breakfast Pudding

Paul and I just got back from a beer-filled weekend in San Diego.  Our favorite stops were:

• the Hess Brewery where they make extraordinarily well-balanced silky smooth beers in pots not much bigger than mine, all in a business park garage.  
• Tiger! Tiger! where we had the most brilliant vegan take on poutine - hand-cut skinny fries scattered with fresh cilantro leaves served with a steaming bowl of creamy rich green curry sauce to pour over.  Those goopy fries were beautiful friends with both a crisp ESB brewed with English hops and a maltier organic brown ale.
• Afternoon coffee and sweet potato streudel from Stephanie's Bakery.  (And the boys were delighted with the tiny vanilla cupcakes we brought home.)   
• Oh!  And the house-made vegan sausage at The Blind Lady Ale House served with apple mostarda house pickled onions and whole grain mustard.  

I was shocked over and over by how seemlessy vegan-friendly every place we visited was.  Even the Mexican place that we stopped at on the way down for emergency lunch when traffic jacked up our plans had vegetarian enchiladas and potato tacos and vegan refried beans, and the waitress knew to let us know that the rice wasn't vegetarian.  We also had an unplanned and totally pleasant stroll along Doheny Beach, but still, please don't let me forget that we are taking the train next time.  

And then at the end of all that beer and streudel and tortilla chips and sausages and french fries, do you know what we did?  Went home, right?  Took a long walk?  Had a big glass of water?  Maybe did a load of laundry?  No.  We went to a four course vegan Oktoberfest dinner in Atwater Village.  There was more beer, and lights strung over a long table set for forty, and oompah music, and bread dumplings in mushroom gravy, and a lovely refreshing cucumber salad flecked with dill, and more beer, and housemade suaerkraut, and warm potato salad, and smoked king mushroom sausages, and ice cream for dessert.  It was pretty magical.   

So now, are you wondering where Jennifer Cornbleet's Chia-Blueberry Breakfast Pudding comes into it?

Mark Reinfeld's Raw Pear (or Plum!) Tart

I should have listened.  The recipe called for one cup of finely chopped pitted dates.  I did not do that.  Instead I threw a big rounded cup of somewhat dry whole pitted dates into the food processor along with the raw pecans and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg to make the crust for Mark Reinfeld's raw tart.  I did this despite the fact that I had never made a raw tart before and the author of the well-tested recipe has cooked professionally for twenty years, founding a much loved restaurant that I always wanted to visit.  He has co-authored five cookbooks and recieved many honors and awards for his vegan cuisine, and still, I decided that I probably knew better.