Your Vegan Mom

You're Invited....

yes, you...to a potluck Caribbean Barbecue on Sunday, July 29th at 2:00 PM. The top-secret location will be privately disclosed to you when you RSVP. Unless you know me, in which case you can probably guess the "top-secret" location. Need a hint? It's about a half hour drive from downtown, and it's on the beach. In any case, just email me with what you will bring. I've got the jerk seitan taken care of, and Paul's in charge of rum punch. I figure that way even if nobody else shows up, we're good. So, sign up to bring a theme-appropriate side dish, appetizer, or dessert. See you soon!

Bulan Thai

I've just started reading The Gospel of Food by Barry Glassner. In the first chapter he cites a study to support his assertion that enjoyment is undervalued in the science of nutrition. The study compares iron absorption in two groups of women, one group Thai, the other Swedish. When both groups are served the same Thai dish that the Thai women enjoyed and the Swedish women found too spicy, the Thai women absorbed more iron. The same held true in the reverse when both groups were served Northern European fare. Also, when both groups were served a flavorless paste that was high in nutrients, neither group processed much iron at all.

Since reading this, I have, of course, been craving Thai food. So today we finally paid a visit to Bulan Thai on Melrose. I'm sure you've probably already been there. It used to be called Busaba Thai? It had a wonderful write up in the L.A. Times last November? Lest you haven't, I must tell you, this is not your neighborhood Thai joint. And if it is, I am so freakin' jealous.

We ordered pretty basic Thai restaurant fare. As I sat down in the warmly stylish little room with the dark wood tables to wait for my picnic, I was feeling guilty about my hurried, boring order, consoling myself that next time we would have both the eggplant salad and crispy rice salad, and busaba pumpkin, and crisp fish with green apple. With coconut custard for dessert. This time, I just rushed in to grab takeout for Paul and I to enjoy in the kid-friendly great outdoors, you know the manicured lawn of the Wattles Mansion in Hollywood? We ordered sate, golden tofu, grilled dumplings, and papaya salad. I'm glad that we ordered such mundane fare because eating dishes that we had eaten in a hundred different Thai restaurants really made clear the fact that this food is good. It is anything but mundane. The flavors are sophisticated and refined. The presentation thoughtful. (I know, I know, you can't tell by the photo.) This food is lovingly, beautifully crafted. In addition, everything on the menu is vegetarian and the vast majority of items are clearly marked as either vegan or capable of being made vegan.

The golden tofu is four large rectangles of fried tofu served in a sweet tart tamarind sauce that contrasts with the round warmth of the toasty onions and dried chilis that rest on top. The papaya salad is fresh and crisp and spicy. The grilled dumplings are soft with a meaty filling of vegetables and tofu. The sate. The sate...is so good. So good that I found myself eating it without the peanut sauce. Usually I think anything dipped in peanut sauce is better. Actually one of our usual dishes at home is just a big pot of peanut sauce with various things to dip in it. (I'll show you sometime...it's good stuff.) But this sate was steeped in flavor, delicious flavor. Coconutty, with warm spices. Go, eat it. Mmm, feel those tasty nutrients coursing through your system.

The Lovely Hayleigh Paige Evans, Age 9

has my gratititude for the beautiful organic fruit and vegetables from her garden. As I debate the most delicious way to use the corn, romaine, pepper, zuchini, and cucumbers, Desmond, Paul, and I are simply eating the plums. Well, eating them, and stopping to swoon at how gorgeous they are. Thank you for sharing with us!

Leftovers

Perhaps the best part of our Fourth of July picnic is the leftovers. Now I get to eat rib-b-q sandwiches any time I want (yesterday, that was lunch and dinner.) You see, I made a lot of ribs. It was a bit of a fortuitous accident really. I left the first batch in the oven for way too long (use a timer), so I made another batch real quick before we left. Gotta put your best vegan foot forward with the omnivores. Can't serve any ol' dried out fake ribs. As it were, the second batch, the company batch, was a hit with vegans and omnivores alike. They were thin; I spread a single batch over most of a 9x13 inch baking pan rather than the 8x8 suggested in the recipe and the resulting ribs were more like the original tantalizing photo. But now I have all of these slightly dry, big thick ribs that are perfect for putting between vegenaise slathered slices of toasted sourdough. Ah elementary school cafeteria, you were never this delicious or reliably sourced.

But enough with the freakin' ribs you say? I agree. We shall never speak of them again. Though that recipe is just so easy. It is such a perfect summery seitan standby. Okay, no more. Let's move on to the salad. Like so many good picnic salads, it's really better once it has had a chance to sit overnight. Now that all of the flavors have soaked in and comingled, it is good eating. I made a ton of that, on accident as well, because the two main ingredients were new to me: whole wheatberries and dried pinquito beans. They worked so well together. They looked like little jewels: the slightly pink, plump little beans and the golden grains. I love their closeness in size. I think that next time I would finely dice the other additions to keep this enjoyable uniformity so that you get that whole range of flavors and textures in one bite. Here's a recipe:

2 c. cooked whole wheatberries
1 c. cooked pinquito beans
1 c. diced grilled vegetables
the kernels from one ear grilled corn
1 diced avocado

dressing:
About 3 Tbsp. lime juice
About 5 Tbsp. orange juice
1 shallot, minced
2 shakes of cayenne
2 shakes of cumin
salt and pepper
drizzle of canola oil

Okay, now I 'm going to take a moment to rhapsodize over the ingredients. We got the dried beans from a stand at the Hollywood Farmer's Market after I realized that the organic canned beans that I buy at Trader Joe's are imported from China. All the recent food scares aside, I don't need to be party to the incredible waste of resources that results from my convenient can of beans being shipped from China. Just about anything that I need can be grown right here, so unless it's some luxurious fancy specialty ingredient, I'm making an effort to buy local. As a result, on Sunday I happily discovered the dried beans at the Suncoast Farms stand. The beans came all the way from Lompoc. (About 3 hours north of here.) And they were good. After I soaked them overnight, they cooked in an hour because they hadn't been sitting on a shelf for years and they're also pretty small. Plus, they have ties to the local food history that I didn't even know about when I bought them. They're one of the essential accompaniments to Santa Maria Barbecue. And did you know (at least, according to the Chamber of Commerce) that Santa Maria is the "Barbecue Capital of the World?" Probably not, because you're reading a vegan website, and this cooking tradition passed down from the rancheros is meat, meat, meat, with a side of meat-laden beans, but even so, that tie to Old California made me even happier to have included them in my own little barbecue.

I am out of room for rhapsodizing so I will simply leave you with a photo of some gorgeous, speckly purple string beans that were grilled along with summer squash and thrown into the salad:

Happy Fifth of July!

We hadn't intended to celebrate. I had a long list of things to do around the house. That's how we were going to use Paul's precious day off. Hang up that sagging diaper organizer and Nana's quilt and shelves over my desk, but then my brother called, and really I can't ever resist the beach and a barbecue. So we managed to wrest the Godmother and Uncle Kevin away from their cooler plans, and I made ANOTHER batch of ribs, some chocolate-peanut butter rice crispy treats, and a big ol' salad. We parboiled and marinated some artichokes, made a chipotle mayonaise and headed to the beach.

I love grilled artichokes. I LOVE grilled artichokes. I love GRILLED ARTICHOKES. Paul trimmed and boiled four beautiful green medium-sized globes in salted water for 15 minutes, while he made the
Marinade :
juice of 1 lemon (about 2 Tbsp.)
2 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil (about 1/4 cup)
pinch of sea salt
ground pepper

The halved and mostly cooked artichokes soaked up the marinade while we drove to the beach, enjoyed the sun, and my dad's guacamole, and eventually lit the barbecue...this was several hours...but really even 30 minutes would be fine. Paul put the artichokes on a medium-hot grill for about 5 minutes on each side, pouring the left-over marinade into the cavity of the cut side while they grilled. Then, we devoured them, dipped in
Chipotle Mayonaise :
1/2 c. vegenaise
1 chipotle chili in adobo sauce, minced
a little tiny squeeze of lemon

So, now, here I sit in my messy house with the sagging diaper organizer, the unhung quilt, the disorganized desk, dreaming about that delicious char on the outside of a soft artichoke stem. It was worth it.