Soup's On

I am not a fan of soup.

The fact that you slurp, and not chew, is what gets me. My husband started requesting chili during the winter and I made it, grumbling about how I'd have to make two dinners. But something happened.

I liked it.

I believe the chunkiness of chili and stew helps my getting past the whole "slurping" issue. It feels like food, not liquid.

Last week, I got really, really drunk. And the next day I felt really yuck, and like every other day this summer, it was kind of cool outside. So I found a recipe for a summer vegetable soup from this lady and changed it enough that I feel I can post my version here. Yes, it's pretty chunky.
 
Chilly Portland Summer Soup (adapted from Vegan Food; More than Tofu and Sprouts!)

• 1 sweet onion, chopped small
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 large carrot (or in my case, 4 small carrots) chopped
• 2 cups green beans, chopped
• 1 cup water + 1.5 cups tomato sauce
• 2 cups vegetarian broth
• 3 Tablespoons minced fresh basil
• 2 Tablespoons finely minced fresh sage (or 1 tsp dry)
• 1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, finely minced
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1/2 cup uncooked whole wheat pasta (I used shells)
• 2 cups of greens (I used 1 cup beet greens and 1 cup of kale)
• 1 ear of sweet corn, kernels cut off
• several drops hot sauce (I had szechuan sauce, and it was pretty tasty)
• salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, saute the onion, garlic, carrots and green beans in a little bit of water over medium low heat until onion is transparent. Add water and tomato juice mixture and simmer for 20 - 30 minutes or so, until carrots are tender.

Add broth, herbs, zucchini and kale.

Increase heat to medium high to bring broth to a boil. Add pasta then reduce heat to a simmer 7-9 minutes or until pasta is cooked.

Add beet greens and simmer 5 more minutes, until greens are soft/lightly cooked and pasta is done to your taste.

Season with a drop or two hot sauce, (for flavor, not heat), salt and pepper to taste.

As you can see, this was an awesome way of using up CSA vegetables. Everything minus the tomato sauce was local, and I just felt really good about the soup as a whole. Plus, it was delicious. And not slurpy.

This S*it is Bananas

My husband loves banana cream pie. His birthday is in a couple of days so I thought I would attempt a vegan version of the treat for a small dinner party we had with some good friends. In searching for a good vegan recipe, I stumbled upon this blog and decided to give the recipe a test run.

Instead of Nasoya, though, I found a different silken tofu dessert.

The first pie I made was a trial run. The flavor of the tofu dessert is not great. But I followed the directions of the recipe and hoped for the best. The filling was more custard like, definitely not creamy. It tasted like bananas but it was very bland. For the crust I mashed up some graham crackers and added some coconut oil and almond milk. It was just ok, but it would not do for my husband's birthday pie.

For the dinner party, I played around with the ingredients and baking time and succeeded in making a much more delicious pie. Here is what I did:

Graham Cracker Crust

Preheat oven to 325F. Lightly grease pie tins.

11 graham crackers, mashed
4 tbsp Earth Balance, melted
Splash of non dairy milk
2 bananas

 Combine crackers and Earth Balance until crackers are mostly moist. Add a splash of non dairy milk if needed and then form the crust into pie tins (I used 3 small "pot pie" tins. Slice the bananas and layer on top of the crust.

Banana Cream Pie filling

1.5 tbsp arrowroot powder
 1.5 tbsp water
16 oz or 1.5 packages of the tofu dessert seen above
1 tbsp soy creamer
1 tsp vanilla
big pinch of sugar

Whisk the arrowroot and water together into a slurry. Pour into a large bowl and add the tofu dessert, soy creamer, vanilla and sugar. Mix well. Pour into tins, filling each tin about 3/4 full. Bake for 30 minutes. The filling will still be a little jiggly but this is good!

Coconut Milk Whipped Cream Topping

1 14oz can full fat coconut milk
1/4 cup powdered sugar

Refrigerate the coconut milk for at least 4 hours. Carefully open the can and spoon the solid cream into bowl. Using an electric mixer, mix until the cream has slightly bulkened up and then add the powdered sugar and mix well. Spoon over banana filling and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

These were a hit. The filling was creamy and banana-y, the crust was sweet and still a little crunchy and the topping really pulled the whole thing together. This is the first time I've experimented with a baked good (well, a sort of baked good!) and had it gone so well!

The rest of the dinner party featured delicious Indian food, but maybe I'll share that later. The pies were definitely the star.

Vegan in Hawaii?

It looks as if we have an excellent opportunity to go to Hawaii for very cheap in a month with a good friend of mine. It will eat up a little of our Europe savings but I NEED to go somewhere. Wanderlust has completely taken over my life!

This means 3 meals a day of beans and rice, but it's worth it.

Suggestions? Rants? Raves?

What a Wonderful World

Last week was the anniversary of my husband's father's death. It has been 8 years since he passed, and his death has affected my husband and sister-in-law deeply. I didn't have the honor of meeting the man, but I hear we would have gotten along famously. As a tribute, my sister-in-law and I decided to carry on the tradition of getting tattooed. This event was something that we started last year - she got a Celtic tree on the inside of her wrist and I got a Scottish lion with my grandmother's maiden name on my shoulder.

Still fresh, peeling and bubbly. HAWT. 

While my grandmother would vehemently disagree if she were still alive, I believe it to be a way to immortalize her and her heritage. Well, then I went to Scotland myself and fell in love with the damn place and needed my own way to remember it. So Jeff and I drew up a composite of two different Scottish thistle images and made it our own. Here is my newest piece of art. And I love love love it.

Jeff's sister has a couple pumpkins she's planning on getting on either her neck or her feet. But the girl sprained her ankle the day before and wasn't feeling up to hobbling in, so I'll gladly share her tattoo with my small group of readers later.

ANYWAYS, the anniversary of the day that Jeff's father died begins with a wild story. My husband's best friend is a state patrolman. That morning, Jeff's sister called in a panic, telling us that the best friend had been shot at work and she was watching one of his kids because his wife was picked up in an unmarked car and she didn't know how he was doing or what had happened SO PLEASE come over because she really didn't feel like being alone. All the way across the river (she lives in Vancouver) we listened for breaking news of an officer being shot, and heard nothing. We got to SIL's house and she had two different news stations on. Nothing.  Poor Jeff started to think the worst had happened.

And then we got the phone call.

Apparently the friend was in a weapons training exercise, and had shot himself in the leg. His safety was off and he was pulling the gun out of the holster when it went off. The guy shot one more round of targets, limped back and was rushed to the hospital. After an hour of surgery, he was back to joking around and being himself. SERIOUSLY. This guys has been a cop for what, 5 years now? Isn't putting the safety on the number one rule?

After all that stress and hilarity, we all needed a drink. So the three of us dropped the kids off and headed over to Eastburn, a bar on Burnside, ran up a $60 tab (but only paid $20 thanks to a bad ass Groupon deal!), met with the head chef and drew on the tables.

Icy goodness

What's this, two posts in a row? Why I never!

So, getting back to this heat wave. If it is not completely obvious, I hate the heat. I love snow, I mostly tolerate rain and I think 70 degrees is perfect.

One solution, or at least, a way to deal with my heated, suffering self, is ice cream. More specifically, a sundae.

Coconut milk ice cream + mini Oreos + sprinkles + homemade "whipped" topping made of coconut cream, vanilla and powdered sugar. With a damn cherry on top.

Summer has hit Portland.

Having a CSA is seriously saving our monetary lives right now.

I'm being challenged to use up the vegetables we're getting in order to prepare for the next week's share. Sometimes, I fail (fennel, I'm looking at you). Sometimes I win (hello, newfound love for collard and kale chips). Each week is an adventure in frugality and utilizing what we have. The last big push to stock up on dry staples such as rice, beans, pasta and such has allowed us to live the past couple weeks without buying much at all. But the reserves are running low.

This week's share

At the moment, we have in our fridge, just from our CSA:

1.5 bags of fava beans

1 bag of kale

1 bag of collards

1 head of lettuce

1 onion (it still had the dirt on it from being plucked from the ground!!)

1 bunch of carrots

1 fennel bulb
1 bunch of gorgeous carrots

some heads of broccoli and cauliflower

I'm finding that you can make pesto out of pretty much anything. A favorite of the household is Isa's edamame pesto, so I cooked up some of the fava beans from last week's share and threw them in the blender with basil, macadamia nuts (it's what I had!) nutritional yeast, water, olive oil, salt and pepper. While not as tasty as the edamame pesto, it surely made a delicious base for the "let's use up all these vegetables" pizza. It had broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, onion and soy curls draping its beautiful self.

The pizza crust I use is from Emeril and it's so easy and delicious.  Seriously. It deserves its own fan club, even if Emeril is not somebody I'd like to meet.

Some other ways I've been using up this bounty of green? 

I know this sounds like a total hippie statement, but try kale chips. Seriously. And sprinkle them with nooch. You won't regret it.

Lots of pasta, of course.

Have a lovely week! It's getting hot here in Portland, so I'm trying to keep my cool. Hardy har har.

I *heart* beer

This is no secret to those that know me. I blame my beer snob ways on my husband. I've really started to cut back on drinking the liquid of the gods due to being broke and wanting to be healthier. But I can't pass up a good opportunity to drink delicious, local brews for free.

Every year, Portland hosts the North American Organic Brewers Festival. Local and national breweries come and hock their organic wares in beautiful Overlook park in north Portland. I first signed up to volunteer last year out of sheer boredom and after all the free beer I got to drink I couldn't resist signing up again to pour this year. 

Another awesome aspect of the festival is the food. The festival requires all vendors to use compostable cutlery and there are recycling stations around the park to prevent the least waste possible. My favorite food cart, Viva Vegetarian Grill from Eugene, was there serving up delicious vegan cheesesteak sandwiches, hot dogs, soy sausages and tempeh reubens. If the cart wasn't 2 hours south, I think I would eat there every. freaking. day.

A taster of beer is one token and four ounces, and I had 20 tokens, just from volunteering. I enlisted the help of a friend for the imbibing on Sunday and it was an amazing day for being outside in Portland.

Flower of the Gods IPA from Lompoc (my favorite brewery)

Viva Cheesesteak with awesome cashew cheese