Sort-of-Greek Barley Salad

It's been a long time since I've posted here - and I have my reasons, trust me, but that's neither here nor there. Right now, it's all about quick, easy, summer food, the kind you make when you and your spouse are both ravenous and you're broke and your AC is broke and it's 90 degrees out and running the oven is patent suicide. It's made even better by a side of cooling Ecuadorian-style marinated onions, an easy recipe I learned to make from my amazing past employers, who taught me all kinds of lovely cooking things which will probably end up on this blog.

Elephant Smoothie Bowl + Homemade Salted Magic Shell

Hello, friends.

This is a smoothie bowl. 

You probably already know that.

But you're about to see a lot of pictures of it, anyway.

 I used to live on peanut butter banana smoothies. Sometimes I would have them for two or three meals, which illicited some concern from my parents, as any seemingly liquid diet probably should. But, seeing as it has plenty of carbs from bananas and fat and protein from peanut butter, I maintain it's basically a perfect meal, especially when you throw in some spinach. And, it tastes like dessert. I'm not even joking, it's like ice cream.

Really Special Pancakes

Why, you may be asking, are these innocuous pancakes, which, if this photo is any indication of the overall condition of the general surroundings may have been made in squalor, special? Well, these pancakes are suitable for special people. The kind of people who don't eat refined sugar, or gluten, or animal products. And they can be made without a trip to the health food store for a package of buckwheat, or some other gluten-free flour expensive enough to have been a gift to the infant Christ. In fact, they can be made with stuff you probably already have lying around. Lucky you.

Creamy Chickpea Pasta

Ready for another easy, pasta-based recipe? Really, these are changing my life. This one is creamy and rich and, due to the rosemary, reminds me of my mother, with her rosemary-filled garden beds and epic rosemary-roasted potatoes, and my grammy, who gave me my first gigantic bottle of dried rosemary when I got married and moved out of state.

Funfetti Salad

You're probably thinking one of two things - "what is funfetti doing on a salad", or "oh, this poor vegan, she's been eating vegetables alone so long she thinks they're fun. And confetti-like."

  My advice to you, in either case, would be to just stop and eat this delicious salad - complete with creamy hummus dressing! - and look at a ton of pictures I took of said salad, because it's amazing and I want to remember it forever and ever. Ready?

So far, I have made this salad as a meal and as a side with two different dressings. A great addition to the toppings I already have pictured are celery and radish, by the way, but I was out so that was a no-go.

hi.

 Winter days are for . . .

And also - 

Salted Caramel Mocha Frappe: Pt I

Around the time the other half and I were jaunting around the Boston area for my aunt’s wedding, Starbucks did their thing and released their usual fall flavors: pumpkin spice and salted caramel mocha. Many factors, such as its revolting, distinctly un-vegan ingredients and the fact that the barista/snob in me generally hates the sort of individuals who come in frothing at the mouth over the flavor, abbreviating it to PSL as if pumpkin spice latte crosses some obscure threshold of tolerance is just too much of a mouthful to actually say, rabidly snapping celebratory iPhone pics of their decidedly run-of-the-mill beverages fated to be over-sentimentally hashtagged and posted and reposted to the point of exhaustion, have made me refuse to order the ever-popular pumpkin spice. This is pure pigheaded- and meanspiritedness, because I actually love it.

    My one choice when abroad, therefore, was to suck down as many salted caramel mochas as possible before returning home. This left me with such a spoilt, salted caramel lust that I actually drove to a Starbucks after leaving my job—again, at a coffee shop—to get one of said drinks. It was pathetic, and I was in my uniform still and the Starbucks and I kept exchanging knowing but confused looks. So I staged an intervention. For myself. 

And yes, I know I'm just the salty cousin of all those pumpkin spice hags.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie

This Thirsty Thursday, I'm taking a step away from my usual coffee beverages to bring you a quirky smoothie. Yes. Quirky. 

It's like Zooey Deschanel in a cup.

Mint syrup + iced coffee

    I’ve been extremely busy the past few weeks, moving to a new apartment, trying to settle in, finishing up my summer class, working, and running countless errands, but there is always time for coffee. Always.

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.

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.

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.

Double Chocolate Almond Truffles [vegan]

   I tend to cover things I love in chocolate, whether accidentally or on purpose.

  

 These truffles are no exception. If anything, it’s rather surprising that it took me this long to do so. For lack of a better term, we’re going to call them truffles, even though they clearly are not truffles at all, because, you know, vegan. I think they’re better, but more than one person has described my eating habits as “weird”, so that’s probably just one of my many eccentricities talking. 

     They were originally inspired by my love of Larabars, which was constantly at war with my desire not to literally eat myself out of house and home. (Almost two dollars for a bar? Please. I’m not made of money). So, I started making my own. Granted, my flavor repertoire is limited, mostly because I’m kind of lazy, but it holds me over in between legitimate Larabar splurges.

Vegan Peanut Butter Cups

So. Easter is upon us once again.

To some, Easter is about time with family, religion, or vacation. To me, it is about candy. I've tried to really think about the origins of Easter as a holiday and get into the spirit of the thing, but let's face it: the American mode of celebrating Easter is one big Pavlovian debauch. Though there has been no candy-laden basket waiting me on Easter morning since I have began that adventure that we call "adulthood", I still wake up salivating. 

   For things like this. I was never a jelly bean girl. Chocolate was where it was at. As a child I used jelly beans, and candies of their ilk, to trade for everyone else's chocolates—or I just stole them. (Mine was a glorious childhood). A favored guest in my Easter basket, a classic that my mother and I would do battle for, was Reese’s peanut butter eggs.