Your Vegan Mom

The Plan

 

I go about meal planning in several different ways.  The varied approach helps keep getting dinner on the table from ever becoming a tedious task.  This week, I'm going about it in my most favorite way - the go-crazy-at-the-Hollywood-Farmers-Market-then-figure-out-what-to-cook approach.  Here's what I've got:

• a dozen purply baby artichokes
• 7 very fat spears of asparagus
• a pound of fava beans
• 5 ounces of chanterelles
• 2 baskets of strawberries 
• 1 basket of raspberries
• 1 big bunch of kale
• 1 big head red leaf lettuce
• 1/2 pound purple blossoming broccoli
• 2 heads of garlic
• 1 bunch of tiny little purple spring onions

I also have a gazillion meyer lemons and navel oranges because my pal from Ojai just moved back into the city (4 blocks from me to be precise) and brought her rural bounty along with her.  Man, I love friends with fruit.

This is not how I shop every week, because going crazy at the Hollywood Farmers Market can get pricy.  I was doing pretty well until I inadvertently spent $15.00 on a tiny sack of chanterelles.  

We already ate the broccoli in a super-simple lemony pasta for lunch.  And then the artichokes and fava beans became a creamy gratin for dinner.  Here's what we're going to eat the rest of the week.

Monday: pan-fried seitan and asparagus (Did you click the link?  Something like that recipe.  Russ Parsons is just so convincing when he talks about asparagus.  I'm not exactly sure how a vegan brown butter sauce will go, but I'll follow his basic technique at least.  Also, this noodle dish with asparagus sounds like a great mid-week dinner, but as you can see, we already have the pasta covered this week.)

Tuesday: pasta with chanterelles (hot pan, olive oil, mushrooms, garlic, maybe some of those spring onions, salt and pepper, cashew cream - on top of fettucini) 

Wednesday: lefotvers or take-out (Wednesday afternoons are busy, man.)

Thursday: big ol' salad and bread (My current favorite salad has good lettuce, chunks of orange, avocado, and toasted pecans with a lemon chive vinaigrette.  I'll write down the recipe for this super simple salad dressing tomorrow.  Also, if there's any seitan left over, it will go in there as well.  When we eat salad, the toddler has a deconstructed version that he can pick up and dip.)  

Friday: strawberry milk shakes, kale chips, oven fries, tofu sticks (Desmond's current mantra is "I want something crunchy.")

I'm late to sharing the Meal Plan.  Here's some more from around the internet:

• I know Shelly shared her plan a few weeks ago. (Vegan.)
• Jan Scott at Family Bites shares her weekly menus.  (Not vegan.)
• And wow, 300 people share their weekly menus here.  (Not necessarily vegan.)

Hey!  If you don't have a blog, it would be super-rad if you jotted down your meal plan in the comments.  This could be a really helpful vegan resource, don't you think?  

What We Do Eat: Apricot Upside-Down Cake

I missed apricot season last year.  And cherry season too.  We spent the spring in northern Louisiana and then the summer back in Los Angeles, and a whole season got lost in the shuffle.  I am now very much making up for it. 

This time of year, and really any one of those magical times where one season is becoming the next, leaves me giddy.  I wander through the Hollywood Farmers Market in a haze of strawberry smells and tomato slices on tooth picks, pulling me one way and then the other.  I have no plan, but to buy any fruit or vegetable that looks delicious and elusive.  I'll figure out what to do with them later, and I do.  I buy morels, and then make pasta with fresh peas and lemon cashew cream.  And then some melon too, just to eat.  I spend most of our weekly food budget and don't feel at all bad.  It's important that the boy know that peas don't grow in freezer bags.   

I unpack the long beans and ginger and rhubarb and get to my most precious plunder - the net bag of tiny blushing blenheim apricots that I picked out of the almost empty black crate next to the mulberries.  With great hope, I lift one out of the bag, run it under cool water, and split it in half.  It is perfect.  Just perfectly apricot.   

I get out the bowl of very pretty, big ones that I bought in Torrance on Tuesday that did not live up to their apricot promise, cut them in half and get them ready for cake, making room in the fridge for all of the more authentic representatives of late spring and early summer (or the ones that manage to survive the day - as it turns out, I am not the only appreciator of perfect apricots in our house and those precious little fuzzy orbs are gone before the week begins.  Good thing there's a neighbor down the street with a lawn and side walk littered with them.  The ones on the sidewalk rarely have bug holes.  We walk this way often.)

Apricot Upside-Down Cake
Adapted from Gourmet, July 2003, via Epicurious

topping:
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. black strap molasses (Or skip this and go with 1/2 c. brown sugar)
3 T. butter (Earth Balance Vegan Stick)
about 8 large apricots 

cake:
1 T. vinegar
3/4 c. soy milk
2 T. flax meal
6 T. water
1 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. white whole wheat flour (if you don't have it, use more all-purpose, don't use regular whole wheat)
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 c. butter (Earth Balance Vegan Stick)
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1/2 t. almond extract

Heat the oven to 375. 

Make topping: 
In an 8-inch cast iron skillet, melt butter.  Mix together the sugar and molasses, and add to the butter in the pan.  Stir.  Cook for about 1 minute, until sugar is mostly melted.  Slice the apricots in half and arrange in pan cut-side down.  Remove from heat.

Make cake batter:
Pour the tablespoon vinegar into a glass measuring cup and add enough soy milk to make 3/4 cup.  Stir with a fork and set aside until thickened.  (i.e. make non-dairy buttermilk)

In a very small bowl, stir together the flax meal and water.  Set aside to thicken.  

In a small bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, soda, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butters, sugar, and extracts until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes).

Give the flax mixture a quick stir, and add half of it to the butter and sugar.  Beat to incorporate.  Add the other half, and continue beating until the mixture is light in color and doubled in volume (about 2 minutes). 

Alternate stirring in the buttermilk and dry ingredients, starting and ending with the dry mix.  Stir in 1/3 of the dry, then 1/2 the buttermilk, and so on.  (Don't over-mix this part!)

Assemble the cake:
Pour batter over fruit in skillet.  Smooth with a rubber spatula.  And bake for 40 - 45 minutes at 375 until a tooth pick comes out clean.  Immediately invert onto a plate.  

Serve warm, or cool.  (Either way, you'll want to eat this.)

Happy Apricot Season!  Apart from eating them immediately, what's your favorite way to enjoy an apricot?     

Natchitoches, LA

About an hour south of here, the Cane River Green Market opened for the season in April. On the gloomy day that we visited it was all onions and greens, but I can only imagine what they have now. All of a sudden, spring is coming on so quickly. Oh, and that's nack-uh-tish to those of you that aren't blessed with a mama-in-law from these parts.

March Salad

1 bunch watercress, chopped
1 cara cara orange, cut off peel and chop into small segments
1 avocado, peeled and diced
1 smallish handful toasted pistachios

squeeze of lime juice
drizzle of agave nectar
shake of salt
shake of cayenne

Toss and serve.

Notes: Tonight I'm going to use romaine rather than watercress. Also, I'm going to roast a beet, dice it and throw it in hot? Maybe. I love hot and cold contrast in a salad, but then you have to eat it fast, because I don't love everything kind of warm in a salad.

Thoughts? How would you improve on this "recipe"? What is you current house salad?

Another little note: I just made a quick version with romaine because I was embarrassed by the lighting in the watercress photo. Oh my, is that a good salad.

To Market: Cara Cara Oranges

90 cents a pound from Thys' Ranch at the Torrance Farmers' Market last Tuesday. I cannot get over these oranges. So beautiful, so delicious...is that a touch of melon? I will show you what I've been doing with them tomorrow. (Besides, of course, gobbling them up.)