My pleather boots were made for walkin’

By Monica on August 13th, 2008

In the next two months, Ray and I are participating in charity walks for two amazing organizations that most of you are familiar with: Farm Sanctuary and PAWS Chicago. I know that the missions of both charities are close to the hearts of many of my readers, so I gracefully ask for you to consider supporting one or both of these events. Now, I don’t have Bazu’s courage so I will not be jumping out of an airplane to earn your donations, but I do have a cold cellar stocked with homemade vegan jams. I will happily send out jars of the sugary goodness to the first ten people who donate to either cause. (If you want goodies, make sure to leave your name/blog/identifying moniker when donating so I can contact you!)

If you’ve landed at my blog, you probably already know about Farm Sanctuary and the amazing work they do for the most forgotten of creatures, “farm” animals. Each year Farm Sanctuary hosts a “Walk For Animals” with walks scheduled around the country in honor of World Farm Animals Day. This is our second year participating and I absolutely encourage anyone interested to join a walk happening in their area - it’s a good time!

CLICK HERE TO BE TAKEN TO MY PAWS CHICAGO DONATION PAGE.

If you live in Chicago or watched Oprah’s show on puppy mills, you know about PAWS Chicago. PAWS is Chicago’s largest no-kill shelter, running the stunning cageless facility you might have seen Oprah visit. They also operate the Lurie Family Spay-Neuter Clinic, the nation’s busiest low cost/free surgical clinic. Since PAWS began in 1997, they have reduced Chicago’s euthanasia rate by over 50% and are putting Chicago on the path to be the largest no-kill city in the US. I cannot say enough about this organization. This annual event is extremely important to raising funds for PAWS Chicago’s life-saving programs.

Both charities have been awarded the highest 4 star rating by Charity Navigator - so you can feel good about your donation being used wisely. And I promise that you will feel good eating homemade vegan jam from my very own rhubarb and strawberry plants! Thank you so much!

Foods for Vegans without Power

By Monica on August 8th, 2008

I think Illinois is telling me that it’s time to go, time to pack my bags and move on to greener pastures.  A few weeks ago a storm came through delivering 5.75″ of rain in less than 3 hours.

We had 6″ of water in our basement, which thankfully receded when the sun came out - but it destroyed almost everything stored in our basement.  There was even a feline rescue when one of our cats was stuck atop a wooden box, floating and meowing like mad.  Extra thanks to American Family Insurance for their very helpful reply during this, which was basically “too bad, you don’t have flood insurance, stop calling here.”  I truly feel for the folks in Iowa dealing with real flood waters after seeing what a mere 6″ can do.

Then earlier this week a tornado passed through, and I am so grateful that it didn’t injure anyone, but it brought 80mph winds and left 565,000 people without power and craploads of wind damage.  Lightning struck a giant evergreen tree about 100′ from our house, splitting it in half and sending sparks and horrifying electrical noises through all of the outlets inside the house.  The TV is smoked, all the standard AV equipment is ruined, screen doors were literally ripped off their hinges, and worst of all, Ray lost his Mac and specialized art printer.  Well, worst of all if you don’t consider that my KitchenAid convection oven is also fried - constantly beeping at me, locking the oven door, and showing me error messages about inserting “probes”.  I haven’t heard back from our insurance company yet on how they’re going to screw us on this one, but I’m sure they’ll figure out a way…

Ok, enough whining!  I know that we are very lucky no one was injured, our electric was only out for 2 days, and it’s just “stuff”.  But it does not make for very exciting meals, be forewarned!  Here’s what I was able to drum up with no electricity, no ambition, and a bad attitude:

Fajitas.  A fine way to use up the once frozen veggies now thawing and dripping in your freezer.

A no-heat-necessary taco-pie of sorts, utilizing now un-frozen corn, Spanish rice that needed immediate eating, TVP (which reconstitutes just fine without heat, eventually), a can of refried beans, onion, and assorted salsas, olives, guacamole, and condiments that the FDA advises one to dispose of after 24 hours without refrigeration.

With all those ingredients handy and needing to be used, I was pleasantly surprised to have enough left for taco salads. It may have all been the same regional cuisine, but I think we ate pretty well, considering!

However, the thought of my new bottle of Vegenaise warming up in the refrigerator was highly disturbing, and given that the large bottle is now almost $7 at Whole Foods, I was determined not to let it go to waste.  With this enormous cabbage I scored at the farmer’s market for $2, I knew what had to be done.  (For reference, that is a 10″ chef’s knife in the cabbage, and yes, stabbing a cabbage repeatedly is very cathartic in times of stress…)

Obviously cole slaw needed to happen, and in times of stress, there is no better coleslaw than Sarah Kramer’s sinful concoction of cabbage, pineapple, mandarin oranges, vegan marshmallows, raisins, walnuts, and other good stuffs.  A dessert-slaw, if you will!

And because that didn’t even make a dent in my monster cabbage, a batch of my old standby Dilly Garbanzo Slaw was in order.  With that, the Vegenaise was spared from the garbage bin, and there was plenty of slaw to share.

Dilly Garbanzo Slaw
6 cups cabbage, finely shredded
1 medium beet, shredded
2 carrots, shredded
1 medium red onion, diced
1 15oz. can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1T dried dill
1t dried mustard powder
1t white pepper
1t salt
3/4 cup Vegenaise
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

Mix everything together and refrigerate (you know, if you have electricity) for 2-4 hours prior to serving.

And lastly, many, many thanks to Shellyfish and Veggie for awarding me the Brilliante Weblog award.  As always, I am in awe of the amazing online veg*n community and cannot wait to get caught up on all of your blogs so I can be inspired by delicious foods I can make now that the power is back on!

Check out my farmer’s market, yo

By Monica on July 11th, 2008

So while Raleigh certainly isn’t vegan paradise, I wanted to elicit sympathy show folks why I found the NC State Farmer’s Market so exciting. Behold, this is my farmer’s market, all 5 booths of it:

The photo is from my car as I drive past because I have not bothered going so far this year. (Please ignore the dilapidated orange ghetto trains in the background, my town thinks those are “antiques”.) From my car window each week I can spot lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and more lettuce. Illinois won’t have much else for another month or two. There are 5 booths so far; there will be about 10 when sweet corn season hits. The nice older lady in the middle there sells beer mustard, and the booth on the far right is non-vegan baked goods, so technically there are 3 booths of produce. I hope this explains my fascination with REAL farmer’s markets now!

Moo-ving on, here are some smoothies made from aging berries I would not allow to go to waste. Really though, this is just an excuse to show off my new glasses. The animals all have butts on the other side, heh.

In actual food this week, I made a double batch of Jessy’s Mom’s Magnificent Tuna-Free Tuna Casserole. Rule of thumb in my house is to double any casserole recipe to save more for later. That would have worked well if we didn’t eat the entire damn thing over the course of the week. A word of advice if you double this recipe - immediately freeze half of it because self control is powerless here.

And to round things off nicely - Apricot Cranberry Nut Pie from The Garden of Vegan. It’s so pretty one can almost overlook the pre-made crust, I hope.

But wait, there’s more!  Despite being labeled a weirdo for making soup in July, we made a batch of V’con Roasted Garlic Tomato Soup with Beans and Rice.  July or not, it was delicious…

…especially when paired with Bryanna’s Focaccia Bread - a tomato basil variety, of course.  Both the soup and the focaccia recipes make enough to feed an army, so I have all these delightful leftovers to look forward to this weekend, yay!

Raleigh!

By Monica on July 4th, 2008

So I spent the better part of last week in Raleigh, NC.  While certainly not the vegan mecca of PDX, there were way more food choices than I’m used to in Illinois.  Go North Carolina!

Up first was a stop at Mellow Mushroom for some Spring Water Dough Pretzels with marinara:

And an amazing pizza aptly called the “Mega Veggie”, loaded with sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, onions, green peppers, black olives, tomatoes, banana peppers, broccoli, artichoke hearts, and tofu.  The tofu is really not radioactive, the sun was just that bright!  Mellow Mushroom was a really fun place, good food, very veg-friendly with knowledgeable staff, and  we got to sit outside enjoying the gorgeous NC weather.  I’d go back in a heartbeat.

The next day it was off to the State Farmer’s Market in Raleigh, an amazing 225,000 square feet of gorgeous local produce and plants.  Peaches and melons were in season, tomatoes (which won’t be in IL for another 2 months!), squashes, peppers - it was amazing!

There are even a ton of fresh beans, which I would have loved to take home with me, but I didn’t think they’d fare so well in the cargo hold of the airplane!

As if that weren’t enough, there were pineapple trees for sale!  I’m a pineapple fanatic, so the prospect of being able to grow these suckers was enough for me to move to NC right then and there!

Our next stop was Spotted Dog in Carrboro.  Admittedly, we ended up there only because the THREE other restaurants on our list were all closed for various, strange reasons.  Apparently divine intervention wanted us to have these faux wings:

and this imitation chicken BBQ sammich with beer battered french fries.  Both were pretty good, even though I thought the wingz were a bit overpriced at ~$8 for the portion you see above.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised that Raleigh, technically being a part of “the south”, was as veg-friendly as it was.  I didn’t find bacon in every single vegetable dish like I have in Florida and Georgia, and most places had vegetarian sections of the menu.  Again, go North Carolina!

But lastly, I’m going to leave you with a recipe for Rhubarb Ice Cream, about the only thing I’ve managed to cook since coming home.  It doesn’t look very appetizing, I’ll admit.  What it does, however, is taste like a rhubarb pie in ice cream form.  And if that isn’t the best thing EVER, I don’t know what is.

Rhubarb Ice Cream (inspired by AllRecipes)
3 cups sliced rhubarb
2 cups sugar*
1t lemon juice
1 cup coconut milk

Place rhubarb, sugar, and lemon juice in a small saucepan.  Bring to a slow boil and cook until rhubarb is tender, about 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and (carefully!) transfer contents to a food processor or blender.  Process just until rhubarb is in pea sized chunks, or your desired chunkiness.
Whisk in coconut milk.
Process per the instructions on your ice cream machine, and then freeze overnight to let harden a little more.
*This is very, very sweet.  Use less sugar if you’re concerned with diabetes or you know, tooth rot!