Strawberry and the World of Vegan Food

george bush eating peanut butter

germany’s way of eating strawberries
I…wasn’t aware that Germans ate strawberries any differently.

WHAT FOODS COULD WE USE STRAWBERRIES TO
I like this one because it just sounds so urgent. I am imagining someone in a complete panic because they have no idea what to do with some strawberries. They are hyperventilating so much they don’t even realize that what they just typed doesn’t really make any sense.

the worse vegetarian food ever
And that led to my blog? Damn.

Mushroom gravy.

Pecan pah with Good Karma Rice Divine.

Cherry pie! Yes, I know it’s November, but I was born in Michigan. That also means that if you try to make cherry pie with sweet cherries I will cut you.

I hope everyone had a good drama-free Thanksgiving!

A martini with a twist, because aren’t all holidays truly about booze?

Freakishly dark chickpea cutlets.  I blame the Filipino soy sauce I used.

Sweet potatoes glazed with molasses and horseradish.  So awesome.

Golden beet salad.  A holiday tradition because my family is weird.

Cranberry conserve.

Ok, I’m officially exhausted by posting pictures with dial-up.  More to come.

Today my mom and I went to Kinta for a late lunch/early dinner.  Kinta is on Belmont, across the street from Paradox, and features “new Malaysian cuisine.”  I started with mint soda, which was made with fresh mint and kind of like a virgin mojito.  And I love mojitos.  My mom got ginger ale which I believe was made with fresh ginger and was also very tasty.  As an underage person who does not particularly enjoy Coke or Pepsi products, I love seeing inventive non-alcoholic drinks on menus.  We got the battered vegetables as an appetizer– the batter is chickpea-based, so they were a little bit like pakoras, but I would have liked them more if they were less greasy.  They also had sort of a weird bitter aftertaste, which was odd.  They were still good because they were deep-fried vegetables, you know?

I ordered the curry noodles for my entree.  I love that you get to pick any four vegetables you want for the dishes– I got tofu, bell pepper, broccoli and mushrooms.   You also get to choose which kind of noodles you want.  I chose rice noodles.  I always feel like I make food sound really bad when I’m trying to communicate that it just wasn’t quite as good as I wish it was, so let me say that my food was good, ok?  I ate it happily, I enjoyed it, and nothing was majorly wrong with it– nothing was overcooked or otherwise gross.   I think my issue with the curry noodles was that I feel like rice noodles need a wetter sauce, and that I could sort of feel the the graininess of the spices, and also that I feel like there was too much of a spice that made the noodles kind of bitter, and maybe not enough of other spices.  I’m sure I’m making it clear that I am not a professional food critic.  I wish that I had gotten another dish, maybe one of the noodle soups, because I have heard such awesome things about this place, and I think I just ordered something that wasn’t really to my taste.  My mom actually really liked my noodles so maybe it really was just me.

Anyway, I want to go back to Kinta and try some other things, and drink a million mint sodas.

This morning I saw some leftover delicata squash in the fridge. After eating some cold with a spoon (mmm) I decided to make biscuits out of the rest. I googled “winter squash biscuits” and found this recipe, which was pretty easy to veganize.  I used soy milk instead of milk and half Earth Balance and half Spectrum Shortening instead of butter.  I also used 2 cups of flour because 1 3/4 didn’t seem like quite enough.  Then I made them ginormous drop biscuits and cooked them on a baking sheet for 20 minutes.  I don’t believe in putting butter (or Earth Balance) on biscuits since they are already so fatty it’s not necessary at all.  These were great plain and warm out of the oven.  I did take pictures but I can’t find my memory card reader so you’ll just have to wait.

Speaking of biscuits, last night I ordered biscuits and gravy from Paradox.  It was my first non-benedict purchase from Paradox and I was pretty excited about it but when the food got to the tables I was pretty disappointed.  I had heard such good things about their biscuits and gravy so it might have just been a fluke.  First of all, the food was lukewarm, which I know probably has more to do with how long it was sitting around before it was brought to me.  Lukewarm gravy is just not that great.  The biscuits themselves were also pretty disappointing.  I have heard that they were really bready, not flaky, so I was expecting that, but they just weren’t that good.  Maybe if I ordered them in the morning they would be more freshly made and tastier.  I probably won’t bother, though, because there are a lot of other things on the menu that I want to try.

In other news, I got Veganomicon a few days ago, and it is amazing.  So far I’ve only made the chickpea noodle soup and the cornbread.  The chickpea noodle soup was so good and perfect for sick people like me.  I added beet greens  which just upped the level of awesome.  The cornbread was good too but I grew up with one specific cornbread recipe so all other cornbreads taste funny to me.  I have purchased ingredients for chickpea cutlets and potato kale enchiladas, but my social calendar has been so full of PPK events that I haven’t had much time to cook.

I guess I’ve already lost VeganMoFo, so my goal is now “update food blog regularly.”  If I keep my standards low I can’t really fail.

Coming soon: It’s a Beautiful Pizza Review, Ode to Farmer’s Markets,  other stuff!

Bay Leaf is in my old neighborhood, but back when I lived there the area wasn’t cool enough to have things like Chinese vegetarian restaurants.  Now it’s one of the many areas of Portland that people say will be “the next Hawthorne” which just means that hipsters will continue to move there.  The truth is that in a few years I think there will be very few places in Portland where hipsters don’t live.  Gentrification sucks but it does mean more vegetarian restaurants.

My experience at Bay Leaf was probably affected a lot by how ridiculously shitty I felt.  I’ve been sick and last night was the worst– I cringed every time I swallowed because it hurt so badly.  I had to run to the bathroom because I needed a few minutes to cry and feel sorry for myself before digging into my food.  So I might have enjoyed it more had I been in a better mood.  We started out with some appetizers– the seasoned spinach was great.  For my main dish I got sesame tofu, which was just ok.  It was big cubes of fried tofu in a citrus sesame sauce.  I thought the sauce was pretty bland– it really just tasted sweet and could have used some tanginess and spice.  I also ordered a cup of hot and sour soup, which felt nice in my throat but was otherwise unimpressive.  I mostly ordered it because I wanted some soup, though, not because I am a huge fan of hot and sour soup, so a hot and sour soup aficionado could probably give a more informed review.   Most people at my table said their dishes were really good but I wasn’t really that excited about eating food so I didn’t try anything else.  I’ll probably go to Bay Leaf again but I’ll definitely order something else.  They have a lot of mostly vegetables dishes that sound really good, like their tangy eggplant.

This morning I went to Paradox for breakfast, like I often do.  Even so, I cannot really review Paradox as a whole, because I have only ever gotten one thing there.  I always mean to branch out but I just love the Paradox Benedict so much.  It’s sourdough bread with veggie sausage, fried tofu (or eggs if you swing that way), creamy gravy stuff, tomato and lots of potatoes on the side.  I really don’t need the sausage– I actually like some vegan breakfast sausage a lot but the kind they have isn’t that exciting– but I love the way the gravy soaks into the sourdough and it’s just so good and the potatoes are awesome.  Paradox has the slowest service ever, but the Stumptown coffee is bottomless if you can get your server to notice that you finished your coffee an hour ago and would like some more please.

I wasn’t really expecting that much from American Airlines. We all know that airplane food isn’t good, right? But honestly, I will eat a lot of things happily. I appreciate really awesome food but I won’t turn my nose up at something mediocre. My meal on Delta Airlines in June wasn’t anything spectacular but it was edible. My two meals on American Airlines? Not so much. I was too cranky to bother with pictures but now I wish I had.

Lunch was potatoes and eggplant with a goopy white sauce. The meal was supposed to be dairy-free but I was still suspicious of the sauce. It also just looked really gross so I sort of scraped it aside. Fortunately it was viscous enough that it wasn’t that difficult. The potatoes were just potatoes, and they were fine, but the eggplant was slimy and something about the seasoning was just really off and gross. The meal also came with a small salad that actually contained various types of greens as well as jicama, which was surprising. There was a cute little bottle of balsamic vinaigrette to go with it. I also got stale white pita bread and this apple dessert thing. Actually, that wasn’t bad, and I was kind of impressed that I got a vegan dessert since that’s not something that most restaurants will even provide. It tasted very health-foody but was still relatively tasty. There was a crust at the bottom, I think made out of whole wheat flour and nuts, maybe, and then apple stuff, and then more crust at the top, and some sesame seeds. The sesame seeds seemed like an odd choice but I am a huge fan of them and it worked ok.

Dinner was my least favorite part of lunch, the gross eggplant, recycled and put on top of really oily salty rice, along with grapes and cookies. I got halfway through the rice stuff and gave up. Fortunately I really like grapes. I got green grapes while everyone else got purple ones, because everyone knows that purple grapes are made of meat. The cookies contained six different grains and were made with unrefined brown sugar. They tasted pretty much how you would expect them to but weren’t bad.

American Airlines gets 2 out of 5 stars. If I were just judging the entrees it would be 0 out of 5 stars but cookies make me happy (and the website made it seem like only people in first class got cookies so I was pleasantly surprised) and come on, there was jicama.

Yes, I am behind on veganmofo. I am also sick, exhausted and using dial-up so I think I’m doing pretty well considering.

since I am spending about 24 hours traveling back to the US.  But don’t worry, my digital camera is packed in my carry-on.  The batteries are about to die but hopefully they will last long enough for me to create some airplane food porn.  Yeah, I know you’re excited.  I could be eating a tofu frittata or meatless meatloaf, according to the American Airlines website.  Most vegan airplane food I’ve had has been some sort of veggie stew thing, which is usually bland but edible.  Tofu frittata and meatless meatloaf seem kind of…ambitious, you know?   I am highly skeptical.  At least it also comes with fruit.

The vegans in first class also get salad and a cookie.  I want a cookie.

So, I am sick. It came on suddenly last night. I was fine, though tired because I have barely been sleeping, and then it hurt to swallow, and then I had the chills and I bundled up and turned the heat all the way up and was still shivering, and my nose was stuffy and I couldn’t breathe. I imagine that my immune system doesn’t really appreciate what I’ve been eating for the past two weeks or so– mostly bread. And jam. And sometimes rice or an apple. Today I have the house to myself until the afternoon, which means I get to use the kitchen. I wanted soup. Ridiculously healthy soup to somehow make up for my horrible diet of late. And also ridiculously cheap soup because I’m pretty fucking poor right now. It turned out pretty awesome, though it looks kind of like a swamp.

So here is the recipe, if you want to call it that. This is not the most exciting thing I’ve ever made but it is warm and tasty and good for you.

I started by sauteeing three shallots (already in the house– would have used onions otherwise since they are a lot cheaper), coarsely chopped, in olive oil and then adding five cloves of garlic (also already in the house), also coarsely chopped. When those were nice and brown I added about a liter of water and two vegetable boullion cubes (99 cents for the package). When the cubes dissolved I added about half a cup of chunky tomato sauce (package was 99 cents, had to buy it for the kid’s lunch today so it wasn’t actually my money), though I would probably just use a half a can of crushed tomatoes if I made it again. Then I threw in two carrots (20 cents) chopped into coins, and some spices– cumin, coriander, dried red chiles, a little bit of cinnamon and a few shakes of curry powder (also already in the house). Let that cook for a while, then added a can of kidney beans (29 cents) and a block of frozen baby spinach (49 cents). Cooked it until the spinach was thawed (I could have cooked the spinach first and then put it in but I hate making extra dirty dishes). Then I ate it.

Yes, groceries in Germany are really cheap, so it would probably cost more in a lot of places, but it would still be pretty damn cheap, I think.

By the way, in case there was any doubt, the frozen spinach was definitely vegan! It said so right on the package.

Ok, you probably can’t read that.  I should have zoomed in more.

But I’m sick, leave me alone.

Emergen-C is vegan food, right? It’s pretty awesome.