Your Vegan Mom

Meyer Lemon Pancakes

 

I'm still mentally stretched out on a chaise lounge in the backyard, the sun warming my knees.  My book's open in the overgrown grass next to me where it fell out of my hand when I last dozed off.  And the ice is slowly melting in the glass of freshly squeezed imaginary lemonade on the little iron side table next to me.  

You probably don't observe the holiday in your house, but here May means Trina Appreciation Month where my birthday is followed by Mothers Day and then warm weather and barbecues and picnics, so I'm trying very hard to shake off the pampered fog and get my head around to writing something.  I was thinking, maybe something about pancakes - meyer lemon pancakes with cashew ricotta and berries?  With your own mother to celebrate this Sunday, I thought you might need an edible "I love you and I think you're great."  That's what meyer lemon pancakes with cashew ricotta and berries are - a hug and a kind word - that you can eat.  Here's the recipe:

Meyer Lemon Pancakes  
Makes about 40 3-inch pancakes, or less if you like them bigger.  

• 1 meyer lemon
• 2 cups soy milk (a little less actually, see below)
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup melted non-dairy butter

Zest lemon into a large bowl.  Squeeze two tablespoons of juice into a large measuring cup.  (If you have a medium-sized lemon it will probably yield about 2 tablespoons of juice - a little more or a little less is fine.  If it's a very large lemon, then measure out the juice and save the rest to make cashew ricotta.) Add enough soy milk to the lemon juice to make two cups.  Set aside to curdle and thicken.  

Add the dry ingredients to the zest and whisk to combine.  Make a well in the center and add the rest of the ingredients.  With dainty little strokes, whisk together the wet stuff in the middle and then mix the whole thing together to make a smooth-ish batter (a few lumps are okay and much preferable to over mixing).  

Heat a griddle over lowish medium and brush with more melted butter or oil.  For small pancakes, pour a couple tablespoons of batter onto the hot griddle, or for larger, pour out 1/4 cup pools.  When the edges are dry and bubbles have formed and popped, flip and cook on the other side.  Repeat.  

Serve with berries - whatever sort you can get.  Though I know it's early, I was gifted some black berries (probably from the wilds of Costco) so we used those, but fresh strawberries or defrosted blueberries would be good too.  To turn black berries or raspberries into a pancake topping without cooking them into a syrup, I sprinkle them with a bit of sugar, smash a few against the side of the bowl, stir, and let sit while I make pancakes.  The juice from the crushed berries will melt the sugar and give you a bit of fresh syrup.  

And I highly recommend a good dollop of cashew ricotta.  

What the Jaconi Bierys Ate for Dinner, the April Edition

 

Paul says that I shouldn't pull aside the curtain quite this far - that I should maintain (establish?) some sort of Martha Stewart-style magical un-realism.  I say this blog is pointless if I'm not showing you how this incredibly imperfect family eats - quite well, thank you - just not always according to plan.  

The men-folk have been working crazy hours, so we got some moms and kids together for dinner a couple nights last week which led me to improvise a bit for larger quantity meals and more universally kid-friendly fare.  Then, there was a last minute girls night out when my pal, Alexis, came into town from North Carolina, necessitating a mid-week sleep-over at grandma's house and more welcome changes to the plan. 

Here's what we actually ate:

Monday - pan-fried seitan (I'm going to link to the method I used.  It's a photo tutorial for pork chops.  If you don't want to see that, then don't click on this link.), mashed potatoes, and salad with agave-mustard salad dressing
Tuesday - samosa quesadillas and salad with creamy mango dressing and spicy pickled onions (recipe to come!)
Wednesday - Taco Spot
Thursday - burgers at my mom's house 
Friday - Those hand-held salads and mac and cheese
Saturday - Desmond and Uncle Denny ate the rest of the mac and cheese, but this time with peas! while Paul and I went out (two grown-up nights in one week!) 
Sunday - We finally ate the asparagus, like this, with bread (It was too wine-y for the boy so Paul and I hogged it to ourselves, smashing the garlic onto slices of bread, and I made a super-quick broccoli cheese soup for the boy from broccoli puree that I had set aside for the baby.)

Hey, let's meet back here later for recipes.  (Say, Wednesday?)

Here's some more meal plans:

• at this Menu Meal Plan blog event, (a tiny bit vegan)
• and from the fishbowl, (vegan)
• at Family Bites , (not vegan)
• and at another blog I love, Home Ec 101. (not vegan)

How was your week?  Did you stick to the plan?    

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.