Summer Rolls + Curry Peanut Dipping Sauce [vegan]

At the risk of being too twee, I present to you the perfect recipe to celebrate this beautifully progressing summer: summer rolls. I’ve been obsessed with these since my grandparents began making them, following instructions provided by some Laotian friends who we knew back from the days when we all lived in New York State. And, in a charming turn of events, they are really a great hot weather food—filling, but not heavy, a breeze to make, and, bonus, there is no heat involved in cooking them. They can even be made ahead of time and kept covered in the fridge.

Friday things

Time for the collective workingman sigh. It's Friday.

I am amazingly lucky this summer to have reduced hours at work. At least, I choose to look at it as luck. Now I can do class + house work on Fridays. Theoretically. Today, so far I have made good on a little cleaning, and re-potted a plant. Hooray for me.

Now if I could just finish my class assignments and find a new place for us to live for the next year. That would be great.

But who wants to think about commonplace things like that on a Friday, and a memorial day weekend Friday at that? Not I, good sir. It's been a moderately stressful week (aren't they all though), so I thought some happy thoughts were in order. This is what I'm dwelling on today:

Sunny-day, lounging-on-the-porch memories.

Canola Oil Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies [vegan]

    Even after cutting out dairy, baking didn’t become really tricky until the first time I ran out of coconut oil.

   I prefer to use coconut oil in most cases, and did so often even before I stopped eating dairy. But I always had butter to fall back on in emergencies, and the first time I found myself with no coconut oil and no prospect of getting any in the near future I felt rather hurt—one of the bigger perks of being an adult is never being denied access to cookies, and being robbed of this right felt like a betrayal by the universe in general.

Grapefruit Fizz

   As warmer weather creeps in, I have found myself obsessed with this drink.

   It’s simple—only two ingredients—and takes less than five minutes to make. It’s a very rewarding beverage, the effort expended to make it minimal and the results uniformly delicious. (Trust me, as someone who has gone through two bags of grapefruit in as many weeks: I know).

Flax egg tutorial

   When one starts the grand adventure that is veganism, or at least vegan adjacency, which is the most I can claim, one quickly discovers an entirely new, sometimes bewildering, lexicon of food terms. Coconut whip? Not a lash made of tropical fruit. Earth Balance? That had me stumped for a while.  It is not, somewhat disappointingly, some mystical substance rumored in Wiccan texts, but as it turns out, just a popular cost prohibitive vegan butter substitute. (As in, I have only bought it once and cried a little inside as I put it on the conveyor at checkout). And no, I have not found any other truly vegan margarine substitute so far, though I went into my neighborhood supermarket with high hopes for their store-brand butter sub. Such is life.

Cold press coffee + a needless ramble

   So, this blog is obviously in its inaugural days, and so far, the only thing we don’t seem to be running short on is chocolate recipes and  sub-par photographs, so, with these facts in mind, here’s my freshest contribution to the virtual culinary pool, a chocolate-free recipe depicted exclusively with shitty pictures.

    Lately I’ve been trying to be “healthier”, something I tend to do periodically. My current kick has manifested itself in the urge to reduce my weekly sugar intake, which has become astronomical in the past few weeks, as well as caffeine. Yes, caffeine. So, I haven’t had any coffee recently. 

Coffee grounds suggestion. And why, you ask, am I holding it over a pillow? Why not?

   I accidentally weaned off coffee a few months ago and was determined to keep my intake at a few cups a week after experiencing a euphoric increase in energy in the wake of my break up with caffeine. I’ve been drinking coffee twice a day since I was around twelve, and had indulged occasionally before that. All of my coffee-guzzling life I’ve heard about how reducing one’s caffeine intake does stupendous things, turning you into an angelic iron-pumping health crusader who leaps out bed in the morning like a jacked up frog on heroin. Naturally, I laughed in the face of such nonsense. Everyone knows nobody can wake up in the morning—or stay conscious through the afternoon—without coffee.

    Turns out I was wrong. Not only can you achieve somewhat better than zombiesque sentience without coffee, the whole healthy-heroin-frog thing is true. Or at least, for me it was. For several weeks I felt amazing. But suddenly, I began to have trouble sleeping and staying asleep, sluggish and a little angry when I woke up every morning, and persistently sleeping in before lurching through a half-hearted 18 minutes or so of exercise embarked upon with all the enthusiasm and grace of a heavily medicated Elvis Presley. (Have you seen that man in his later years? That’s not much grace. Less than none). Sadly, the only change I’d made preceding to this sudden plunge in my general quality of life was getting back on that go-juice again. Go figure.

Happy Cinco de Mayo + Hard Times-style Haystacks [vegan]

 

    One of my favorite restaurants is a subversive-looking little joint in Minneapolis called Hard Times Cafe. Collectively owned, the place is open nearly all night and offers an unapologetically vegan and vegetarian menu, as well as some really delicious coffee. Hard Times has a personality that’s simultaneously welcoming and a little scary. The interior is casual and grungy— you feel perfectly at ease dumping your stuff in a booth and lounging around like it’s your own living room, just redone with more feral houseplants and anarchist graffiti. When one hears of a vegetarian restaurant, you typically expect little portions of artisan salads followed by raw deserts and herbal tea eaten at sleek tables by couples in Tevas who smell of patchouli, not nihilism and a casual refusal to fit into any recognizable mold, culinary or otherwise.

   You’ll see college students there, and people who look homeless, and others who look like they’ve done a lot of acid and are going to do a lot more in the future, and even the occasional trifecta of these things. My point is, Hard Times draws a mixed crowd, and vegetarianism isn’t exactly their selling point as a business. Awesome is their selling point. Awesome, and fantastic food, and not really caring about what you or Minneapolis or anyone else thinks. Being Hard Times.