Eating out of season

First—don’t forget to head along to the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen to drool over all the entries in the Vegetable Love competition, and to vote for your favourite!

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Living in the tropics, I expected to have a vast array of fresh, local produce to choose from at all times of the year. And most of the year, that’s the case. But alas, summer in Townsville is far too hot and far too wet for most fruits and veggies. The number of stalls at the farmer’s markets dwindle, and the variety becomes sparse. Sure, we could supplement with things bought from supermarkets, but they are transported pretty far—which is often reflected in the price.

Still, there are a few veggies which are available even during the hot and wet season. Potatoes and pumpkins are easy to get your hands on from the market. We supplement those with our pantry and well-stocked freezer—a few weeks ago, tofu and soy sausages were reduced to clear for $1 (a savings of $4 on soy sausages and hot dogs!), so we bought a buttload and we’re slowly making our way through them.

Here are some of the meals we’ve made during the off-season.

Green curry. Chunks of tofu, kabocha pumpkin, and potato simmered in coconut milk and curry paste.

An out-of-season risotto. Dried shiitake mushrooms, frozen green peas, carrot, and green beans (which were surprisingly cheap at the shops).

Since it is the rainy season, some days it gets cold. Especially after a wet trip home from uni. Granted, by cold I mean 25 or higher, which most people think is hot, but compared to 34 it’s chilly! I’ve even broken out the sweatpants a few times in the past several weeks. Yesterday was one of those days. Rain bucketing down, jeans all wet from walking between the office and the car, I came home and immediately changed into my favourite red sweats. After dinner, the power went out, so we lit some candles and huddled around a battery powered radio, sharing one pair of earbuds, to listen to Australian Story on the ABC, featuring Ben Potts--the guy who boarded the Japanese whaling ship, and wasn't allowed off. Later, we went for a walk around the very dark block and marvelled at the branches and palm fronds that had fallen on powerlines and houses, and watched the wind through the wires and the trees. It probably wasn't the safest decision, especially since we weren't wearing shoes, but luckily we didn't die.

Sweatpants weather calls for comfort food. Like mashed potatoes and gravy. More specifically, a mixture of mashed plain and orange sweet potato, topped with a gravy made with soy sausages and one leftover seitan burger.

Instant falafel mix is a quick and easy meal. Since we had the oven on one afternoon, Andy baked his balls. Then at dinner time we heated them up in a frying pan and they were fantastic.

At least February is the last month of summer, and avocados (and many more veggies) will be back in season soon!

Veggie Love

While browsing through various blogs last week, I saw that SusanV is hosting another Vegetable Love competition in honour of Valentine’s Day. I’ve never entered a blog competition before; quite frankly, I’ve never felt creative enough. I nearly wrote off this one as well, as I read through the rules: entries must be healthy and low in fat, and must feature at least one vegetable. I thought that a large majority of the dinners we eat fit these criteria, and I just wasn’t inspired enough to come up with something competition-worthy.

But then I thought, why limit myself to dinner? We add fruit to savoury dishes—could I put veggies into a sweet? I thought through my options, and figured I’d be best with either carrot, pumpkin, or beetroot, or a combination. I narrowed it down to beetroot, because the colour seemed appropriate for Valentine’s Day. I googled some recipes, I thought about my substitutions. I chose four options and then let Andy decide which one I would ultimately make.

His choice: beetroot chocolate cake. I saw a few recipes for this, and I compiled them and veganised and fat-freeised and uniquised, and I think the recipe is pretty good—and definitely different enough to call my very own. A combination of beetroot, orange, cinnamon, and cocoa provides the flavour base for this cake. I expected a texture similar to carrot cake, but was pleasantly surprised to find that my recipe yielded a dense, rich torte.

I know, beetroot in cake sounds pretty weird. But, somehow, the healthy ingredients all combine to form a sinful-tasting treat. This is something to share with the one(s) you love without feeling bad about making them fat and unhealthy. Andy recommends serving it with some sort of cream or sauce or ice cream, because it’s so dense.

Here’s the recipe:

“I love veggies so much, I’m having them for dessert” Torte

What you need:

Cake:

1 c. wholemeal flour
1 c. white flour
¾ c. cocoa powder
1 ½ T. baking powder
1 T. cinnamon
¾ c. raw sugar
2 T. orange zest
200 g. beetroot, peeled and grated (try to pick the smallest beets you can find as they are the sweetest)
2/3 c. apple sauce
¾ c. freshly squeezed orange juice
250 g. silken tofu (I used almond flavoured, which really just tastes slightly sweet. If you use plain, you might need to up the sugar.)

Glaze:

½ c. orange juice
¼ c. icing sugar
1 T. cinnamon

What you do:

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Spray your pan with cooking spray. I used an 8 inch springform, and then got 4 cupcakes as well. Or you could make just one in a slightly larger pan—say 9 or 10 inches. In a large bowl, sift together the flours, cocoa, baking powder, and cinnamon. Stir in sugar, beetroot and orange zest. In a separate bowl or a food processor, combine apple sauce, orange juice, and silken tofu. Blend (I used my handy stick blender) until smooth. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry, and pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 1 hour and test with a skewer—if cake is still gooey inside, cook for up to 90 minutes total. We left ours a bit gooey, because Andy hates dry cake. While the cake is baking, whisk together the ingredients for the glaze. When the cake is removed from the oven, pour on the glaze and let cool for an hour before removing from the springform pan. Store in the refrigerator.

I didn’t want to leave Nacho out of the veggie-lovin’ fun, so I made her up some special cat treats. They combine her three most favourite foods—oats, pumpkin, and oil—with a bit of soy milk, wholemeal flour, and ground LSA for nutrition.

Pumpkin Oat Kitty Bickies

What you need:

1 ½ c. oats
½ c. whole meal flour
¼ c. vegetable oil
½ c. lowfat soymilk
1 T. ground LSA (that’s linseed/flax, sunflower, and almond)
2 T. mashed cooked pumpkin
Optional ingredients: nutritional yeast, catnip, veggie stock

What you do:

Combine all the ingredients. Form into kitty-sized biscuits and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 180/350 for 30 minutes. Store in an airtight container in a cupboard or the freezer.

My first blog competition proved inspiring; I think I just may have to do this again. And I think I’ll play around more with beetroot for dessert…

A night out.

On Wednesday night Andy and I went to see the Townsville Choral Society’s production of Les Miserables. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, Les Mis is just full of social commentary. It questions the law, skewed notions of justice, and the prison system. It depicts the greed and corruption that is rife within capitalist systems. It features class struggles and insurrection—but set to music. The battle is a bit glum, but then, much of history isn’t happy. And for the romantics in the audience, there’s also a love story involved.

I must say, though, it was a bit weird sitting in a theatre full of Townsville’s bourgeoisie while watching this musical. During intermission—just after hearing the students’ tirade against the bourgeois who ignore the plight of every day people—everyone was sucking down champagne and wine. It was the same thing when we got free tickets to see a stage production of Animal Farm in November. For both plays, Andy had to wear proper shoes instead of his usual ratty black thongs. Neither of us feels very comfortable in those situations—we’re definitely not a closed-toe couple.

Despite feeling out of place, Les Mis has been my favourite musical since middle school, when I sang young Cosette’s solo for the high school chorus concert (yes, I was a music geek—I was in the choir and I was lead clarinet). I went to see it on Broadway with my mum in year 10. We watched the non-musical version starring Liam Neeson and Claire Danes in high school French class. Rather than limiting itself to a simple love story (like many musicals seem to do), Les Mis tackles issues like suffering, greed, and poverty all in 3 hours.

I can’t help but make comparisons with my other favourite musical, also about class conflict and insurrection—Newsies.

(Okay, so the ending of Newsies is pretty much the exact opposite of what happened in real life, but it is Disney.) Although this film was released when I was in 2^nd grade, I watched it for the first time in 2005. The songs are catchy and far more cheerful than those from Les Mis (again, it is Disney), and perfect to sing when facing down the police at a protest.

Like this one:

And our ranks will grow
And we’ll kick their rear
And the world will know
That we’ve been here!

Or this one:

Friends of the friendless, seize the day
Raise up the torch and light the way
Proud and defiant
We'll slay the giant
Let us seize the day

Maybe that’s the secret to a successful revolution—catchy song and choreography. So, creative vegans, get to work writing us some music we can sing and dance to as we turn the world herbivorous!

Since I’m a bit too busy with my PhD to write the score to the vegan revolution, here’s my contribution: anarchist pancakes.

More specifically, pancakes made with both white and (reduced to clear) wholemeal flours, coconut milk and nutmeg and topped with local mango slices and maple syrup made by my auntie in upstate NY.

Veganniversary

This month marks the fifth year of my meat-free diet, and the third that I’ve been strictly vegan. For me, veganism is one (important) facet of my commitment to a world which is free of exploitation. I don’t hide the fact that I’m staunchly anti-capitalist—and, thanks to social theorists like Karl Polanyi, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Etienne Balibar, I view capitalism as the root cause of things like racism, sexism, and speciesism.

How did I get here? Well, I’m not really sure. My undergrad supervisor asked me that one day and I had no easy answer. I grew up in a conservative little town in upstate NY where half the school population is missing on the first day of snowmobiling, hunting, and fishing seasons. My parents aren’t quite conservative, but seem to view over-consumption as an American right.

I wasn’t overly aware of political issues when I was growing up. I was concerned about gender inequalities and global warming during high school. I was an animal-lover, and sensitive to others’ troubles. In year 12 government class, we all took an online quiz that matched our values with the political party closest to us. From a class of 30 students, there were 25 republicans, 4 democrats, and one green—me.

In uni, I went through a post-modern feminist phase for a while, but was never really sold on that ideology. In my second semester of uni I became vegetarian and refused to eat or use any product that an animal had to die for (meat, gelatin, leather, cheese with rennet, etc). I was a half-hearted greenie for a while, but thought band-aid solutions were a waste of time.

To make up for excessive wordiness, how about some cat pictures?

Pop goes the Nacho!

I spent a semester in Australia without my po-mo then-supervisor’s influence and shook that attachment. When I returned to the US, I took theory-heavy classes with some great professors which revolutionised the way I thought about the system we live in. I went vegan and anarchist. I read Marx and thought his critique of capitalism was spot-on. I did an honours project on Rastafarians, the ultimate anti-systemic group. I moved back to Australia and now I’m studying Aboriginal activism.

Opposing the forces of racial, sexist, and speciesist exploitation can be a tiring pursuit. Oppression is all around, and it gets depressing to see it everywhere you turn. That’s why veganism is so appealing to me, because it is an incredibly simple way to remove one form of exploitation from my immediate life. And, hopefully we vegans—through our blogs and our good health and our tasty treats—encourage others to buy into the animal industries a little bit less.

That said, I don’t think that simply eating tasty vegan food is enough, and I’ve been feeling a bit stir-crazy lately, so expect some more political posts in the future.

Turkish bread

A few weeks ago, Andy and I picked up some turkish bread from the shop to have with burgers. It was so light and fluffy, tasty and slightly chewy. Trouble is, it’s really dear. So I decided to make my own (based on this recipe).

Before you can make the bread, you have to make a starter. Mix ½ c. flour with ¼ c. water. Cover it, and let it sit overnight. The next day, stir in another ½ c. flour and ¼ c. water. Cover and let it sit for another night. On day 3, mix in yet another ½ c. flour and ¼ c. water. At this stage, it should be smelling a little funky, sort of like parmesan cheese. That’s normal (I think). Let it sit overnight. On the fourth day, you can either make bread, or store the starter in the fridge for up to four days. If you do that, bring it back to room temperature before making bread.

So, starter done. Mix 5 tsp. yeast with ½ c. hot water and 1 tsp. sugar. Let it sit for 10 minutes or so, till it’s super frothy. Mix in the starter, 1 c. warm water, and 1 T. salt. Then gradually add flour, 1 c. or so at a time, until you get a stiff dough. Mix it with your hands, adding more flour if you need to (you should use about 6 c. total). Knead it on a floured surface for 10 minutes. Then put it in an oiled bowl and flip it over, cover, and let rise for 1 ½ to 2 hours. Cut the dough into two. Knead each half for 2 or 3 minutes, then form into a loaf or buns, and let rise another hour. Bake at 210/425 for 40 minutes. I would recommend not letting it get too brown, because the outside will get crunchy.

We made one giant loaf…

and a handful of variously-sized buns.

What can 2 people do with Turkish bread when there isn’t enough room in the freezer for all of it? Well, first we ate it warm out of the oven with margarine and vegemite. Next, we halved the buns and Andy made bruschetta.

Some buns were sliced and toasted under the griller to be eaten with pumpkin soup (with a dollop of tofu sour cream and fresh rosemary).

For lunch, a big sandwich. This one has Chickpea and Wakame Salad, beetroot, cucumber, tomato, and vegan mayo. Unfortunately, the sandwich was far too big and fell apart while we ate it.

We learned from our mistakes and finished off the loaf and the sandwich ingredients the next day, except that time we scooped the inside of the bread. After assembly, I put a chopping board on top of the sandwich and weighed it down with some pans, to really let the ingredients meld. I highly recommend this; the second sandwich was so much better to eat!

With the insides from the sandwich bread, we made bread crumbs. They can be stored in a jar in the freezer until you’re ready to use them. They made a great coating for eggplant steaks. First, we dredged eggplant slices in a mix of soy milk, mustard, and arrowroot, then dipped them in the crumbs and fried them. The eggplant was served with garlic aioli alongside green beans, and herb-charged sweet potato mash with chick-e-cheez topping (from Ultimate Uncheese).

It may take a long time to make, but with Turkish bread, the possibilities are endless!

Supa big mangos

Photo from wikipedia

Though not quite as big as The Big Mango in Bowen, these delicious specimens we picked up from the market are probably as close as you’ll get with an edible mango.

They are Kent Mangos, and they are massive. Pretty much the size of my face.

And they are tasty. Super juicy—dripping down your elbows juicy. The smallest seed imaginable. Not stringy. Close to the seed, the flesh is a little fuzzy, like shark skin, Andy said. Not unpleasant, just tickles the tongue a little. The flavour is closer to a Bowen than to any of the asian varieties. Almost a cross between a Bowen and last year’s favourite, the Piango.

A perfect treat for two hungry, thirsty vegans (well, one vegan, one opportunistic omnivore) after a bike ride home from uni on a windy day.

There's only another month of mango season left. That makes me a sad panda!

It's so good

For vegans in Townsville, there is not much variety in vegan processed foods. One grocery store in town carries Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese. There is no vegan sliced or block cheese. And there is one brand of ice cream to choose from: Sanitarium So Good. Luckily, they’ve just come out with a new flavour: Coconut Mango Swirl.

When you see the ‘97% fat free’ label, you might think it’s not so good. Especially if you’ve tried their chocolate ice cream, which was more like frozen yogurt, in my opinion (good in it’s own right, but not ice cream). But the new flavour is creamy and rich, yet somehow manages to stay light and delicate. The coconut flavour of the ice cream is not overwhelming, but just tickles the taste buds. The mango swirls make for a surprising burst of mango flavour, with pieces of real fruit. Natural fruity flavours mean the ice cream doesn’t need to be overwhelmingly sweet.

Healthy as well as delicious, and great on its own, or alongside fresh mango or brownies: this ‘frozen dessert’ is the perfect antidote to a tropical vegan sweet tooth.

P.S. Kevin Rudd, Australian PM, has set a date for an apology to the Stolen Generation on behalf of the government. Maybe the police should apologize for the alarming number of indigenous deaths in custody, including the one on the Australia Day weekend. Unrelated, I know, but these are the things I contemplate while eating ice cream.

Chickpea Cutlets, two ways

Thanks to Celine for pointing out the online version of the much-blogged-about Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomicon, I have finally tried them out. After hearing numerous excellent reviews, I had scribbled down the recipe and then came across a few not-so-great descriptions.

I decided to try them anyways, and to stick to the recipe for the first test. My only change was to use fresh sage instead of dried, and to form them into nuggets, rather than cutlets.

I thought they were surprisingly easy to make, and they didn’t take long at all to cook. The flavour was fairly simple, and was perfect dipped into a mixture of tofu mayo, hot sauce, and tomato sauce. They were a bit chewier than I expected, almost stringy even after they’d been cooked; not a downside per se, but a bit weird.

The next time around, we had less than a quarter cup of wheat gluten but decided to make the recipe anyways. This time, I mashed the chickpeas a bit more than before. Instead of water, we used a salty veggie stock. We added probably twice as much multi-grain bread crumbs than the recipe called for, and filled in for missing wheat gluten with plain flour. Instead of lemon, sage, and paprika, we opted for lime and coriander chickpea cutlets. We replaced the soy sauce with lime juice, used lime zest instead of lemon, and added a healthy amount of chopped fresh coriander. These were formed into cutlets and fried up.

These are a winner. Andy and I both found the texture much more appealing with the addition of extra bread crumbs. The flavour combination of lime and coriander is always a winner in our house. I topped my cutlet with plain tofu sour cream, and Andy had BBQ sauce. Andy envisions chickpea cutlet burgers in the future, since they are so much easier to make than our current seitan burgers. I think we’ll keep playing around with this recipe, trying out different flavour combinations and textures.

Chickpea cutlets are definitely a winner, I think.

A day of food with the Tropical Vegans

I’ve seen some bloggers do food diaries in the past few months, and I think it’s a good idea so I’m stealing it. Here’s what we ate over the course of one day…

We started the day off with a bowl of cereal and a cuppa tea. Meusli and Sultana Bran for me, and Vita Brits, Corn Flakes, and Nutrigrains for Andy (we are cereal mix-masters). Whenever we have cereal, we have to fight off the cat, who loves snagging oats, flakes, and nutrigrains from our bowls. Her breakfast is 2 scoops of Veganpet dry cat food.

For a mid-morning snack at uni, we each brought a hot cross bun spread with Nuttlex margarine and lightly sprinkled with nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla sugar. Both Woolworth’s and Cole’s hot cross buns are vegan*, and if you shop at the right times, you can find them marked down to half price or lower.

Lunch for me was a leftover chickpea cutlet with some leftover pasta. There wasn’t enough pasta sauce, so I supplemented with some salsa. For Andy, a salad sandwich on a Soy Linseed roll.

When we came home from uni in the early afternoon, Nacho got another scoop of Veganpet, mixed with a bit of snipped cat grass. Andy had a pot of tea. We each had a Berry Chocolatey Blondie. These are basically the Raspberry Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars from Vegan with a Vengeance, but with a few changes. I used blueberry flavoured soy yogurt; I subbed just under half the flour with whole wheat flour; instead of the raspberry layer I used a mix of raspberry and blackberry jam; and instead of chocolate chips, I chopped up 2/3s of a bar of Lindt 70% cocoa.

A little while later we split an orange and a half. Andy started putting together a marinade for some seitan, which consisted of soy sauce, orange juice (the other half), garlic, and hoisin sauce. Nacho got another scoop of Veganpet (are you noticing a trend?).

An afternoon bike ride got our hunger up for dinner, but we kept it fairly light with a stir fry. It featured carrot, capsicum, mushrooms, marinated seitan, and noodles. Alongside dinner we each had a glass of Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, which did not go well at all with the flavours in the stir fry. For Nachito, a scoop of Veganpet mixed with a little bit of mashed carrot.

After a day full of food, we still found room for dessert. A mango sundae, to be exact. So Delicious coconut mango swirl ice cream (review forthcoming) and some fresh diced mango. Yum. And for Nacho, yet another scoop of Veganpet.

Aside from all the sweets, and the wine, this was basically an average day. Most days we bring a banana to uni rather than a hot cross bun. Anyways, I find that whenever I try to record my daily food intake, I’m having an ‘unusual day’, so I’ve realised that I don’t know what usual is anymore. But in general, this is a pretty good snap shot of what we eat.

*The hot x buns from Woolie’s in Townsville are vegan. But check the ingredients at your local store, just in case.

My shiny new...

I’m pretty much a tight ass. I don’t like to spend money on things. Generally, if Andy and I can live without something, we do. When we do purchase stuff, it’s either used, or reduced to clear.

I bought my bike at a garage sale for $10. It’s too small for me. It squeaks. When we were changing a tire one day the back brake broke. It’s hot pink, and rusty. At first, I thought it was the bomb diggity. I felt so punk riding around on such a piece of trash. I didn’t even need to lock it up, because you’d be crazy to steal it.

But, with petrol prices going up, Andy was thinking about getting a bike to ride to uni. After looking around at a few shops, we both agreed it would be completely unfair for him to wizz around on a flash new bike while I chugged away on the old gal. We considered buying cheap bikes from Kmart or Toys R Us. But after a few conversations with Andy’s cycling-fiend brother, we decided we should get a proper, bike shop bike. Because, in some cases, you really do get what you pay for. Anyways, we both feel better about giving our money to a small, local bike shop rather than an American corporation.

And what a great decision it was. The guy at the bike shop spent probably 2 hours total talking to us about different types of bikes, the brands he liked best, what we needed it for, and you could tell he wasn’t trying to rip us off. We felt comfortable with him, and we liked the looks of the bike he suggested, so we ordered two of them--mine in 56 cm, Andy's in 60 (he's super tall).

Andy and I are now the proud owners of two Kona Dews (dew dew, heehee). It’s sleek, it’s sexy, and it’s so much easier to ride than my old beast of a bike. It's a commuter bike, so it has many features of a racing bike but without all the expensive extras. With tires that are designed for asphalt, and a frame that makes pedalling much easier, I envision a lot more bike riding in my future. And every time that Andy rides his bike is one less car ride.

Photo from Kona website

In terms of petrol costs alone, it may take a while for these bikes to pay for themselves. But, when you factor in the health benefits (we both spend a lot of time sitting in offices at uni), environmental effects, and all those other unquantifiable benefits, I think we’ve got an incredible value.

And anyways, sometimes when you spend money, you get good deals. In addition to the bikes we got a helmet, lock, and pump all for half price, and our first service is free. All up, I think it was worth spending a bit of extra cash. But I’m still not paying $5 for veggie hot dogs.