My purple Chia Pet

Chia pudding is one of those things like massaged kale salad, that all the cool kids have been making for a while now but I am only just getting around to.  I bought a small bag of chia seeds at Trader Joe's a few months ago, put them in the pantry, and forgot about them.  Last week I had some soy milk to use up and decided to give chia pudding a try.

Chia pudding could not be easier to make.  You combine the chia seeds with a liquid, mix it up really well, and leave it in the fridge overnight.  The chia seeds drink up all the liquid and transform into something a lot like tapioca pearls, with little crunchy centers.  If you like tapioca pudding, you will like chia pudding.  If you don't like tapioca pudding, you should probably stop reading right now.

I approached this project without a specific recipe or even a very clear idea of what I was doing.  First I mixed 1/4 cup of chia seeds with a cup of unsweetened soy milk in a Mason jar.  I left that in the fridge while I ate dinner, then went back and mixed it up again.  The chia seeds had massed into a solid clump at the bottom of the jar, and it took me a while to break that up.  I mixed it up really well so the chia seeds were more or less evenly dispersed throughout the milk, and put it back in the fridge.

Then I started to think.  This chia pudding, as is, was not going to taste very good.  I'd started out with sort of a vague idea of folding whole fresh blueberries into the pudding, but after looking at Gena's amazing chia tutorial and recipes, which is where I should have started in the first place, I decided that I should puree the blueberries and mix them in ASAP.  So  I did that -- pureed a cup of fresh berries in my mini-processor, and mixed them into the pudding really well.  I considered adding some stevia powder, but I am really trying to break my dependence on added sweeteners, so I put in some cinnamon instead.

The next morning I woke up to this:

This pint-sized Mason jar was solidly full of pudding.  It came out just the right texture, not too watery, not too firm.  It had kind of a subtle blueberry taste.  Most people would probably prefer it sweetened.

Verdict:  I will probably not make this again.  It was good, and would be refreshing on a hot summer morning, but it just wasn't filling enough to justify the fat and calories in my book.  My intention was for this to be a new breakfast option, but it's not enough breakfast for me.  It would be better in smaller portions as a dessert, and I don't eat dessert.

If you can handle added sweeteners and are looking for a light, healthy dessert, I recommend trying some of Gena's recipes.  The pumpkin one sounds especially good to me.  I will probably end up eating these seeds a tablespoon at a time, sprinkled into my rice and beans, for the omega-3's.  Actually the pumpkin pudding might be good without any sweetener at all -- maybe I'll make it next Thanksgiving.

Bean and barley chowder

After last week's broth debacle, I was still determined to cook a bean and barley soup.  "Bean and Barley Chowder" was last week's "recipe of the week" over at the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, and it sounded good to me, but maybe a little boring, especially once I knew homemade vegetable broth was not going to be part of the formula.   Then I got an email from America's Test Kitchen about a vegetable barley soup that had deep flavors without homemade broth (warning:  non-vegan site), and the way ahead was clear.

I combined elements of both recipes, and as always this dish was also influenced by what I had in the pantry.  Lima beans and barley sounded good, but I didn't have either.  I found barley at my local health food store, but no lima beans, so I went with the cannelini beans I already had in the house.  I liked the idea of using ground dried mushrooms to add flavor to the broth, but didn't see any reason to stick to the stingy amount in the America's Test Kitchen recipe.  I ended up grinding an entire package of mixed dried mushrooms (about 0.8 oz), and putting that in.

Flavor enhancers:  portobello mushrooms, extra virgin olive oil, Bragg Liquid Aminos, ground dried mushrooms, onions, celery, leeks.

Mushroom, Bean, and Barley Chowder

All ingredient quantities are (very) approximate

One tablespoon olive oil

One onion, chopped

Two stalks celery, chopped

Two leeks, white and light green part only, halved lengthwise and then sliced crosswise

Six ounces portobello mushrooms (two big mushroom caps), diced

0.8 oz package mixed dried mushrooms, ground to a powder in an electric grinder (What?  You don't have a coffee grinder you reserve for grinding spices?  Why not?)

One pound cannelini beans, soaked overnight and then drained

About half a pound of barley

A few carrots, peeled and sliced

Bragg Liquid Aminos, to taste

Poultry seasoning, to taste

Chick'n style seasoning or nutritional yeast, to taste

Water

In a large soup pot (6-8 quarts), saute onion, celery, and leeks in olive oil until onion is translucent.  Add portobello mushrooms and continue cooking until mushrooms release their liquid.  Sprinkle in poultry seasoning and powdered mushrooms and stir so they coat everything.  Add all other ingredients (I would start with two quarts of water and see how you feel), stir, bring to a boil, then simmer, stirring occasionally, until the beans and barley are fully cooked.  

  

A few notes on ingredients:

• There's no poultry in poultry seasoning.  It's a mixture of thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, black pepper, and nutmeg that makes things taste like Thanksgiving.  If you don't have it, but have all those other herbs and spices, you can make your own.   
• Those ground mushrooms really added body and flavor to the broth.  Highly recommended.  I used a mix of mushrooms that I happened to have in the pantry.  I think either porcini or shiitake would work fine.
• If you don't have cannelini beans, any kind of white beans would work.  I would advise against using canned beans, because the cooking beans add body to the broth.
• I threw in some chick'n seasoning because I happened to have it made up, and poultry seasoning made me think of it.  You could also use a couple tablespoons of plain nutritional yeast, or leave it out.
• Can I just give a shout-out to Trader Joe's Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil right here?  That stuff is a revelation.  It tastes like olives.  It's probably really wasted on this recipe.  If I were really feeling decadent, I would drizzle a little on top of my bowl of soup, right before I ate it.  If you are the kind of person who likes to dunk bread in olive oil, this is the olive oil to use.

This soup was really yummy and reheated well.  I ate it for breakfast for most of the week (the photo above was taken on my desk).  My girlfriend pronounced it a keeper.  And as a bonus, I got a good start on my next broth bag: 

      

Onion, celery, leeks, mushrooms, carrots.   No mystery ingredients this time.

 

 

When good broths go bad

You all know about the broth bag, right?  You save all your vegetable scraps in a ziploc bag in the freezer, and when it's full you use it to make stock.  Well, I've had a bag in my freezer for a while now, and I want to make some bean and barley chowder this weekend, so I decided to make some broth.  I put the contents of the bag in my biggest slow cooker crock, filled it with water, and left it on High all day.

When I got home from work, I could smell the savory broth the moment I got off the elevator.  It smelled great, and my apartment smelled even better.  I turned off the slow cooker and strained the broth into a storage container.  It was a lovely dark brown, and smelled like onions and other wonderful homemade goodness.

And then I tasted it.  It was bitter.  I tasted it again.  Still bitter.  I tasted it a third time.  Did I want to use this bitter liquid as the base for my chowder?  I did not.  I poured it down the sink.

I'm trying to figure out what went wrong.  Here's what was in the bag:

onions (ends and skins)
garlic (same)
carrot peels
potato peels (just a few)
celery tops and ends
fennel tops
lime rind
squash ends -- summer and winter

I'm thinking either the squash or the lime rind was a mistake.  The other stuff seems benign.  I always use the onion skins in my broth because they make it a pretty color, and I can't remember ever having a problem.

Any ideas?  I had both red and yellow onions in there, but I don't think that can be it.

So I will be making my soup this weekend with Spike broth powder, plus about a cup of bean stock I have languishing in the freezer. Gayelord Hauser was a charlatan, but the broth powder is pretty good.  I'm going to grind up some dried wild mushrooms too, as recommended by America's Test Kitchen, and hope that does the trick.

Fennel Compote with tomatoes, olives, and butter beans

I came across this recipe by Mark Bittman the other day and was intrigued. I love olives, capers, garlic, tomatoes, and thyme, separately or in combination, so it sounded like something I should try (and it was a good excuse to visit the olive bar at Wegman's).  I was also curious about roasting the canned tomatoes, which I had never heard of doing before, although I have used the Muir Glen fire-roasted canned tomatoes in the past and was not particularly impressed.

The recipe suggests serving this with fish, but of course that wasn't going to happen.  I pondered my protein options for a while and settled on giant lima beans, or butter beans if you prefer.  I cooked them separately the night before. 

I don't think I'd ever cooked fennel before.  I wasn't even sure which parts we were supposed to eat, so I started off with this video: 

I did put the stalks and fronds in a ziploc bag and stash them in the freezer for stock, as suggested.  I diced the trimmed fennel bulbs in small pieces, like onions.

I decided to try roasting the tomatoes.  I drained two 14 ounce cans of diced tomatoes (I needed about one tomato's worth for a different recipe, so I didn't end up using 2 full cans, but this is a pretty forgiving recipe and I think it would have been fine with a little more or a little less).  I lined a cookie sheet with foil and sprayed it with cooking spray, then spread the tomatoes across it in a single layer with my hands:

After about 20 minutes in the oven, I had this:

OK, maybe that isn't as dramatic as I'd hoped.  You can see a little caramelization on there, though, and I really do think roasting them concentrated the flavor.

While the tomatoes were roasting, I worked on sauteeing the fennel.  The recipe says not to let it brown at all, but I found that impossible.  Here's what the dish looked like when I got all the ingredients in the pan:

That's fennel, tomatoes, olives, capers, garlic, and thyme.  I used big olives, with pits, and put them in whole as instructed.  I can't tell you what kind they are -- I just picked what looked good at the olive bar.

To serve this, I heated up the butter beans I'd cooked the day before.  I was worried about them drying out in the microwave, so I cooked them in the leftover juice from the canned tomatoes.  Then I drained them and mixed them with the compote.

That's my Sunday lunch.  We served the beans with baked potatoes and a second rendition of the massaged kale salad.

Verdict:  delicious.  I was afraid the fennel flavor would be really strong and overpower everything else, but it was subtle.  I'm not sure how I feel about the few big olives.  Next time I might use Nicoise olives, or cut the olives up.  The leftovers tasted even better the next day, with a baked potato and some steamed green beans.

I would definitely make this again.  If I couldn't find fennel, I think it would work with onions, too.  In fact, that sounds great. 

How to go vegan

Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times's "Well" blog has put up a nice post titled "How to Go Vegan."  She interviewed my favorite vegan blogger, Susan Voisin, and the post has generated a lot of great comments.  In fact, some of the comments are better than the original post.  It's worth a read, and it inspired me to come up with my own list of "how to go vegan" tips.

• Do it for the animals.  Lately it seems like a lot of people are adopting vegan diets, or veganish ones, for their health.  A vegan diet can certainly make you healthier -- it's done that for me -- but from my perspective, that's more of a side effect than the main goal.  My personal experience is that if I'm trying to make a dietary change for my own health, I'm much less likely to stick with it than I am if I'm doing it for ethical reasons.  Read about factory farming.  Check out the pictures and videos Compassion Over Killing has taken at farms and slaughterhouses.    Watch "Meet Your Meat."  I know, I know, PeTA, but they really have done some good work here.  Visit a farmed animal sanctuary, get to know the animals, and hear their stories.   Your mileage may vary, but my own experience has been that even after a significant health scare (or series of scares), compassion for other creatures is a much stronger motivator than fear for my own well-being.
• Don't neglect umami.  Umami, the "savory" taste, is one of the things people miss most about meat and cheese.  Seeking out vegan sources of umami -- miso, tomatoes, nutritional yeast, mushrooms -- will help make your meals yummy and satisfying without animal products. 
• Skip the substitutes, at least in the beginning.  Commercially available vegan substitutes for meat and  dairy tend to be highly processed, full of salt and fat, expensive, and not very satisfying.  Especially in the beginning, they will seem like very feeble substitutes for the real thing.  Daiya cheese, probably the best vegan cheese widely available in the U.S., may satisfy your Velveeta jones, but it won't take the place of  a good aged cheese, and if you expect it to you will just be disappointed.  On the other hand, six months after you last tasted "real" ice cream, a bowl of So Delicious coconut milk ice cream -- especially the Turtle Tracks flavor, OMG -- will really hit the spot (so much so, that I can't eat it any more). 
• Expand your culinary horizons.  Take this opportunity to learn new ways to plan a meal, and explore new tastes.  If you don't cook now, learn (or you can be one of the laziest vegans in the world, but I don't recommend this).  There are a zillion vegan recipe sites on the Web -- Fat Free Vegan and the Post Punk Kitchen are two of my favorites -- and many of the recipes are quick and easy.  Explore cuisines that have a strong tradition of meat-free cooking.  Asia is now your favorite continent.
• Learn to love beans.  Cheap, high in protein, high in fiber, low in fat, and very satisfying -- beans are the word.  Beans are how you get protein-rich satisfaction without relying too heavily on soy products and fake stuff.  There are so many varieties, you could eat a different bean every day for weeks. Dry beans are cheaper than canned and, in my opinion, healthier and tastier (and there's a much greater variety available), but canned beans are also very good and with canned beans, you don't have to plan ahead to have a great meal ready when you want it.  I eat beans at pretty much every meal.  Yes, including breakfast.  Baked beans on toast are a traditional part of an English breakfast, but it's also worthwhile to expand your concept of what constitutes appropriate breakfast food.  There's no law that says you can't eat the same things for breakfast you eat for lunch and dinner, and in my opinion "lunch and dinner" foods can be a much more appropriate way to start the day than the sugary crap so many people eat for breakfast.
• Abstinence is easier than moderation.  Again, your mileage may vary, but this is my experience.  If you keep eating animal products "once in a while," you won't lose your taste for them, nor will you really learn how to thrive without them.   Just quit.  When it gets hard, watch Earthlings.

I do have a criticism of the Times post.  It focuses completely on food, and there's a lot more to being vegan than that.  Finding nice winter clothes and shoes that don't contain animal products can be a challenge, and you may need to start shopping for cleaning products and personal care stuff at the health food store to find things that aren't tested on animals (or made by a parent company that tests on animals).  Shoes, sweaters, and lip balm have been the toughest ones for me, but it's all doable, and there are a lot more choices now than there were even a few years ago.  It's not that hard.  And it's worth it.  

What are your best tips for new and aspiring vegans? 

Massaged kale with tahini-miso dressing

This afternoon at Wegman's I found a huge box of organic baby kale.  I knew it was coming home with me, and of course I immediately thought of massaged kale salad.

Massaged kale salad has been a thing for a couple years now.  Basically you tenderize the kale by physically massaging it with your hands, plus an acid, a fat, or some salt.  It's fun and messy.  I made a massaged kale salad a while back with beautiful fresh pineapple and tomatoes.  The acid from the pineapple and tomatoes tenderized the kale, and the fruit basically formed the dressing.

This time I knew I wanted to use a tahini-based dressing.  I had seen a yummy-sounding kale salad on Choosing Raw, with a dressing made from soaked cashews.  I can't have cashews in the house because they (and most nuts) are like crack to me, but for some reason I am OK with tahini.  I started to type "massaged kale" into Google, and it suggested "massaged kale tahini dressing" as a search option, so clearly I am not the first person, or the five hundredth,  to think of this combination.  

I used the first dressing recipe that came up, minus the cilantro.  I liked the idea of combining tahini with white miso (mmm, umami), and I had all the ingredients in the house.  I put everything in my mini food processor and whipped it up in less than a minute.  Here's what I did next:

First, I had to give some kale to the cat, so he would leave me alone and let me cook.  He loves greens.

This is what the kale looks like right out of the package.  The leaves are about the same size as baby spinach.

I put about a third to a half of the pound of kale in a big stainless steel bowl, and sprinkled it with a few pinches of coarse kosher salt.  Then I started squeezing and massaging it with my hands.  The salt adds friction and helps draw out the liquid in the kale.  After I'd worked on it for a few minutes, it looked like this:

 See how it's kind of glossy and wet looking?  It also takes up less room in the bowl than it did before.

Next, I mixed in a little dressing and massaged the kale some more:

Then I let the salad rest while I prepared the rest of dinner, which was basically the same leftover dry chickpea curry and brown basmati rice we've been eating all week.

Here's my dinner plate.  I drizzled some extra dressing on the kale.  Om nom nom.

If you like cooked kale but can't imagine eating it raw, I strongly encourage you to try a massaged kale salad.  The massaging really does transform the kale, as if it had been very, very lightly steamed or sauteed.  Plus it makes a mess, and it's fun!

If you've made massaged kale salads before, what is your favorite dressing?

The dairy habit

Here is a good collection of information about the addictive qualities of dairy products, and why they are so hard to kick.  So many people tell me, "I couldn't be vegan because I could never give up dairy."  There's a reason for that:  it's addictive.

Back when I ate dairy, cheese and ice cream were two of my major binge foods.  As a vegan, I continued to binge on soy or coconut milk "ice cream," and I found that Daiya cheese (especially those cheese blocks they have now) was almost as much of a problem for me as dairy cheese had been.  I think it has to do with the texture and the fat, rather than the umami flavors, since I can eat other umami foods like miso and nutritional yeast (and Bragg's) and do okay.  These days I don't eat ice cream or cheese, whether it's cow-based or vegan.