Your Vegan Mom

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?

Mango Lemonade Slushie

 
(Isn't that straw beautiful?  I am totally in love with it.*) 

Prepare to be nutritionally unimpressed.  Okay, are you ready?

Well then, say you have a whole bunch of lemonade left over after... say... your baby's little third (third!) birthday party with his preschool pals.  

The existence of jugs of lemonade in the fridge will be difficult for two small children that are rarely exposed to juice and related forms of liquid sugar (liquid sugar - that's a quote from my first PTA meeting) to ignore.

You could repeatedly say no while you parse it out in vodka-based grown-up cocktails for weeks after bedtime, or you could more than placate those two kids with some fruity slushies.

This recipe slightly mitigates the concentrated sugar of juice or any sort of ade by diluting it with a bunch of ice and reinforcing it (both nutritionally and deliciously) with fresh (or frozen) fruit.   

Super Quick Spicy Garlic Dill Pickle Chips

 

Last Saturday we drove the kids to the mountains.  We spent the night at the grandparent's cabin and then left the dudes with Grandma and Grandpa while we came home to learn how to make beer and brew our first batch.  (It's bubbling away in the closet right now!) 

In preparation, we scrubbed the kitchen clean, and packed the car the night before.  We had the coffee pot ready to turn on as soon as we woke up and bars were made and fruit was sliced for a portable breakfast on the road.  We were ready.  As soon as the boys woke up we would go.  

And then I made pickles.