Your Vegan Mom

Lemonade's Cranberry Relish

If you're not from these parts, you might not be familiar with "L.A.'s favorite modern cafeteria," Lemonade.  It's a local chain of fast casual restaurants from chef Alan Jackson. They serve sandwiches and salads and soups and...(surprise!)...lemonade made of high quality seasonal ingredients.  Everybody loves it.

The cookbook is as adorable as the cafe, and as moderately vegan-friendly.  I marked a bunch of salads  to try that I thought might be good for Thanksgiving, like Sweet Potato, Parsley, Pistachio Vinaigrette, and Kohlrabi, Granny Smith, Apple, Chive, Sesame Oil, ooh, and Farro, Spaghetti Squash, Pomegranate Vinaigrette.  Each of those recipes is vegan, save a sprinke of feta in the last one.  There are some really interesting salad dressing recipes here and a lot of smart, simple food.  I like it.  

I have dough for the fig bars (not vegan, easily adapted) chilling in the fridge right now, along with two jars of this cranberry relish.  With a perfect balance of sweet and tart, the children hate it, and I've been looking for excuses to slather it on anything.  Last night I ran out and bought a package of tofurky slices just so that we could have easy pre-Thanksgiving sandwiches for dinner.  We mashed a thick layer of cranberry relish into vegenaise on good bread and piled on smoked tofurky and avocado and lettuce, but can I tell you something I'm not totally proud of?  Next time I'll skip the avocado and lettuce.  They just diluted that all important tofurkey/cranberry contrast.

Cranberry Relish
From The Lemonade Cookbook: Southern California Comfort Food from L.A.'s Favorite Modern Cafeteria by Alan Jackson and Joann Cianciulli.

• 1 pound frozen whole cranberries, thawed
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons peeled and grated fresh ginger
• pinch of cinnamon
• juice and finely grated zest of 1 orange
• 1/4 cup water

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the whole and dried cranberries, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and orange juice and zest.  Pulse to break down the cranberries and incorporate the ingredients; it should still be a bit chunky.  Add the water, little by little, and pulse until the mixture reaches a chunky relish consistency.

Allow the cranberry relish to sit at room temperature for at least 1 hour, so the sugar dissolves and the flavors can marry.  The cranberry relish can easily be prepared in advance, covered, and refrigerated.

Sweet Potato Hash

I've been thinking about camping a lot lately.  One of the reasons I've been thinking about camping a lot lately is that it's more fun than thinking about cleaning pee off the floor.  We have just completed our three day family festival of all things execratory, Happy Underpants Days!  Some people call it potty training.  With the big brother it was called Pee Pee Summer Camp and it took place almost entirely in the backyard in August.  That was better.  This time around there has been a lot of pee on the wood floors.  (All rugs were removed in preparation last Thursday night.)  

On Sunday morning, day 3 of Happy Underpants Days!, I decided that a powerful breakfast was in order to get us through our last day.  I made hash - the sort that my dad used to make in the giant cast iron skillet over an open fire outside of the VW camper van somewhere in rural Oregon or coastal California on bundled up mornings when all that fresh air and running around made everything delicious, even canned corned beef.  

Mine didn't have that.  It had little cubes of soft sweet potato, and tempeh, and onions, and kale.

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?    

Delicata Tart with Kale Pecan Pesto

Desmond has the whole week off school, and the boys have done nothing but play together all day.  Not wanting to jinx the fraternal harmony, I ditched all our plans and Desmond is still in his pajamas.  Here are some snippets of their day - 

Anupy Singla's Aloo Tikki

Over the summer when Desmond's swim teacher asked him what his favorite food was, he answered, "Indian food."

I'm not sure if that is entirely true or if that was simply all he could recall eating.

Cookbook author, Anupy Singla is completely responsible for my recent obsession with Indian cooking and my five-year-old's worldly palate.  She's an Indian American Mom and former reporter who so, so successfully translates complex Indian flavors to the time constraints of the home cook without dumbing down the dishes one bit.  Her recipes are realistic and super flavorful.