I feel so vegan.

I made salad for lunch. In college (I say this like it was a long-term thing. ha!) I ate salad at least once a day. By the end of that wretched stay, I'd had my fill of salad. With my new host family, though, there's been a lot of salad-eating. My host mother and I usually make one for ourselves for dinner. It feels all healthy and other BS like that.


picassa didn't work, so this photo kind of looks like poo.

I've got this new salad dressing craze. Actually, allow me to be more precise and say that I've a general obsession with tahini (seasame seed paste). It's filled with good things like calcium and calories. I like to make a dressing with tahini, a little olive oil or pumpkin seed oil (mmm... omega-3s...), salt, herbs from the garden, fresh squeezed lemon and a teensy tiny bit of maple syrup. It's really good.


decimated pepper

I also roasted a pepper in order to make hummus or something else with later. Roasting a pepper is something easy that you can do. If you've a gas burner, you could have pepper roasting parties, if you've got an oven with a broiler, that'll do just as well. Basically either hold it over your gas burner or shove it in the oven (no baking paper! or it'll burn just like the outside of your pepper! let's pretend I didn't learn this the hard way.) and then... veganyumyum describes this process a lot better than I.

You could use roasted red pepper in a dish like this or this. okay. that last one is supposed to link y'all to a good basic hummus recipe. there's about 89thousand out there on the internets, but I won't be satisfied with just any one. and I refuse to give mine because I'm afraid it might be weird (and I don't measure). yeah, so there'll be a link there later.

ps. damn I'm wordy!

Getting sick. Guacomole.

I think that when you're starting to feel a cold coming on, you should up the liquids and switch to raw foods. So bread wouldn't be a good choice, but I needed it for decoration. My neighbors have got to think I'm a little whack by now what with all these photo shoots I've been doing on the front porch.



What's in it? An avocado, two small tomatoes (don't bother me with species...), a very little bit of onion, some fresh basil leaves. Blended with the best kitchen utensil ever: the emersion mixer.

Soup is people too!

Obviously I can solisit more of a reaction from y'all with bombardments of sweet treats than with my existential crisis of how to be a mountaineer.

So today I made potato leek soup, which came out being just okay, but when I have soup, especially something so comforting as I recall potato leek soup being, I expect it to be orgastic. Maybe it was the carrots. I've never been much of a carrot supporter.


the very ugly potato leek soup that was in need of its carrot garnish

And just to get y'alls attention back, I also made Lemon Gem Cupcakes from VwaV, but without soymilk because it's a total waste for me to purchase an entire liter. I never was much of a milk drinker (vegan or pre). The only thing it's good for is cupcakes and black tea. I put in some water mixted with cornstarch where the soymilk shoulda been. I've no idea how that changed the cupcake, but they look fine to me. there are one or two lemon cupcake that I'm not giving to the family. if anyone would like one delivered in the next 24hrs or so, please let me know.


I just wanted to make use of this cool-looking plate

It's come to my attention of late that I really don't care for speaking German. It was my intention in coming here, however, to learn the language thoroughly and to be able to speak it like a German. My skillz are adequate. Yesterday evening, for instance, I met with a friend in Neuss and we spoke German for the first hour and it was fine. I know my grammar isn't great, but I'm understandable. I guess I thought, back in early 2007, that I'd get all immersed and involved in the "culture" here; I do like parts of it, but a lot of it gets on my nerves (the Germans' closed mindedness and coldness being at the top of my list).

This is a stark contrast to my feelings about the French language. I bought a small book in French over the week-end to read for pleasure and I'm going to Lille for the week-end with the intention of practicing their language. By this I can tell that it's not foreign languages that I dislike, it's just... German.

Hopefully things will change when my Deutschkurs begins next week and my mind will be opened up to some new literature or grammatical nuances. I also won't have so much damn freetime to brood on these sorts of things. In the meantime, I'm going to keep enjoying switching to English.

I'd love to hear some of your sentiments on the foreign languages you might've learned (or wish you had).

Tomorrow will be a funnier blog post, I swear.

cupcakes!

Coconut Lime Cupcakes.



I think that my friend, Catherine, snuck crack into the frosting.



I think I had about 8. In retrospect, it was not a wise decision, but at the time it felt so right.

And now I just made soup

Spicy Peanut Eggplant Soup



It's in Isa&Terry's Veganomicon, but I got it from their website.

You all remember how to crimp, right?

Green Thai Curry

I can never seem to follow a recipe precisely. Maybe it's just more fun to deviate a little from the rules. Below is the version of Green Thai Curry from VwaV that I made last night. My host father really enjoyed it. My host mother didn't try it because it was nose-runningly spicy. I guess not everyone digs clear nasal passages.



The proper veggies for this recipe are red onion and red pepper. That doesn't feel very thai to me, though, but nor does canned corn seem very thai so who am I kidding? I made the curry photographed below a couple months ago (with snap peas, orange pepper and fresh basil). I actually liked it a lot better. I really wasn't missing out without the onion, tofu or peanut oil. I think next time there'll be rice noodles, eggplant and yellow pepper (yellow purely for asthetic reasons).



Moral! Everyone can make a curry! And everyone could use a little nose run. I buy my green curry paste from the local aisian grocer. There's also red and yellow, but they've sometimes got fish in 'em. Just sauté some veggies and throw them in with some coconut milk (I like to buy mine in small packages of 5-8oz, which the Americans probably cannot do) and a spoonful of curry paste. Just be careful how much curry paste you add. A little can go a long way.

Soup! Complete with crimp.

If you don't know what a crimp is, you need to watch The Mighty Boosh right away!

Soup, Soup - a tasty soup, soup

A spicy carrot and coriander, chili chowder!

Crouton, crouton - crunchy bread in a liqid broth

I am gaspachio - uh! I am a summersoup - mm!

Miso, miso - fighting in the Dojo

Miso, miso - oriental prince in the land of soup!

July 4th

I skipped a really great July 4th CouchSurfing party in Bonn to celebrate Independence Day with one of my favourite ex-pats and some Germans.

Amanda had the idea to make this flag cake. I baked a yellow cake (vegan, of course) with sprinkles on the inside!! You know, like what you get when you're five? Amanda got soywhip, blueberries and strawberries from the store and then the magic happened.

Flag cake!

Amanda also had the idea from her Auburn days to pour vodka into a watermelon. You don't taste the vodka, but you do taste the nastiness that is watermelon.

Me and my friends out on Timo's balcony.


They found sliced cheese at the store, decided it looked more like playing cards than food and turned it into cards, however crudely.


The whole shibang. note the ketchup/mustard tube mix, american buns, tons of booze. also, quinoa salad. not pictured: tofu dogs.

Easy, breezy beautiful...

Hummus!


chickepeas, tahini, olive oil, fresh basil, unfroz'd spinach, nooch, salt, peppah.

In other news, I skinned my knee real bad and now it's stinging like a hungry bear's nose in a beehive.

pancakes

Aren't pancakes great? Especially the kind with fruit in them. Especially the kind that you get to share with friends in the morning. Especially especially the kind that I can eat.




There is no recipe because I never measure what goes into my pancakes. Just a fuckload of baking powder.

New Baby + Smoothie

I found out today that a friend of mine (Juin, from Taiwan) had her first baby. It was two weeks earlier than she was expecting, but I figured she'd be early since she was so huge. Me and another woman from my Deutsch class went to the hospital after school to visit. She and her husband are so adorable and innocent. My friend held their baby for a while and he started to open his tiny little eyes. My friend already has two sons of her own (24 and 26, I think) and she was giving these new parents all these intructions.... I could sense they were a little over whelmed. I'm sure they'll do fine.

Because it is actually almost hot today, I made me a smoothie with frozen blueberries and kiwis with a wee bit o' orange juice. Y'all, I have not been hot since July, possibly August. Isn't that crazy?

EDA: I was checking out this one vegan blog that I like when a ran upon a smoothie that this person made. If you thought you knew about smoothie-making, think again.

Cornbread!

Since leaving the south, I've really fallen in love with all things southern. Cornbread, black beans, bad country music (just caught glimpses of it on movies), driving nowhere, the lot. I'm constantly in search of the perfect cornbread recipe. Now, with cornbread, there's sweet and there's salty. I usually only have the ingredients around for a sweet cornbread, so that's the one I've been working on. I won't call this recipe perfect, but it ain't bad.



Makes precisely 12 muffins or 1 brownie pan.

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup corn flour or meal (actually, I used 175ml gluten free corn flour and 75ml vital wheat gluten to balance it out. What can I say? I'm an improviser.)
1 tsp (heaping) baking powder
1 tsp (heaping) salt

Wet Ingredients:
1 cup soymilk + 1tsp apple cider or other light vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
4 Tb buttah

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350°F/ 175°C. Actually, I usually do this right before I mix the wet and dry ingredients together because I take forever.
• Grease your pan! Unless you're using cupcake liners. Here's my method: pour a teensy tiny bit of oil in each muffin crevice. Get a paper towel, stick it in a bit of your buttah (I grab, very approximately, a 1/2 Tb), and spread that around with your oil. Also make sure to get the top of the pan, where the batter isn't supposed to go, but inevitably ends up. This gets things nicely greased and makes for easier cleaning. You don't even need to spread messy flour over the top.
• Stir together soymilk and vinegar and set aside.
• In a large bowl, beat together sugar and buttah until smooth.
• In a smaller bowl, combine dry ingredients. I like to whisk mine together.
• Add the now curdled soymilk and the dry ingredients in the the butter mixture and mix until just combined.
• Fill the crevises or brownie pan until 1/3 of the way full
• If muffins, bake 20min until a toothpick comes out clean. If bread, like in a brownie tin, bake approx. 30min until a knife or toothpick comes out clean.

This still needs some tweaking. I'm going to try adding baking soda next time and see if I like them fluffier. as is, they're more cup-cakey. Could be the funny flour combo, though.

I would not challenge me to a BBQ Tofu Contest

Do you know that song "Nuclear War" by Yo La Tengo? A BBQ Tofu Contest with me would be like that. At the end of it all, you could kiss your ass goodbye goodbye.

But this isn't about contests, is it? Now that we've affirmed the true victor, it certainly isn't. You all can make your own, less worthy bbq tofu as well. I got mine from a jar in our basement, but I had to check the ingredients first because bbq sauce isn't always vegan. It would've been tastier, though, had I made my own. If you want to DIY, just add about equal portions of molasses, vinegar (I'd go for brown rice, but apple cider would be fine too), tomato paste (maybe a little more of it than the other things), agave nectar or brown sugar... and flavor it up with some fresh herbs, garlic, salt, and a bit o' cayenne peppah.


Mmmm... globs of bbq sauce.... I feel like Homer Simpson!

I blanched some tofu, cubed it up, threw it in a bag with my bbq marinade, then let it sit for a while. I'd think at least an hour up to overnight. Then, take your tofu out of the marinade and toss it with some corn starch. Corn starch makes the outside crispy when you fry it. I'm sure that there are other, possiblly better things to do, but that's my old stand-by. I just pan fried mine until it was kind of charred. Serve it alongside a nice whole grain and a side of garlicy greens.


Too close for comfort?

Isa Pizza

I had a long day and when I got home this evening, I just felt beat... and hungry. I'd defrosted some Isa Pizza dough earlier and had gotten some tofu at the Plus (typical German grocery chain). I decided to make a green garden purée...

so I blanched half of a block of tofu (really helps the tofu absorb other flavors), steam some peas and zucchini, sautéed some onion, added it to the peas and zuc., then sautéed a bit of eggplant with garlic. I puréed together the tofu and steamed veggies with my handy-dandy emersion blender (my absolute favorite kitchen utensil) so it turned a nice light green colour all together; sweet, like spring-time. Oh, and there were seasonings added. If I were you, I'd head for the nooch, peppah, fresh basil and maybe some salt. Then I threw on the eggplant and mixed that in, folded it in my pizza crust, serrated the edges appropriately, revealed by my awesome photo shoot.

It was real big. Plenty of leftovers for tomorrow.

Time to clean and meet people in the city for the evening!

Cheezy Quakers, S'mores, Three Country Point

I seriously heart southerners. Who else would drive by your place on a Friday afternoon to check if you were in? For Germans, it's a serious faux-pas. (side linguistic note: Shouldn't that be "fait pas" or something? "Not do" rather than "fake not"? Or maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.) I was cleaning the house because I didn't know when my host family would be back (they still aren't), and I hadn't vaccumed all week plus I had quite a few dirty dishes (as you'll note from my baking excursions as you continue reading this narration). We had a coffee and she waited patiently while I finished everything.

Then our question was, "What to do now?" We had an entire Friday afternoon on our hands and Europe at our doorstep! Amanda, the lovely Alabamian, suggested: three country point! A brilliant plan! So we high-tailed it to her loud, muffler-less automobile and found our way to the site where the lands of Belgium, Holland, and Germany intersect. It stands atop of a substantial hill and also marks the highest point in the Netherlands! We found it truly remarkable. Very improper tourists as we are, each of us forgot her camera, so I stole this photo from Wikipedia:


Red is Belgium, Yellow is Netherlands, Black is Germany. You see that little triangle of red that's between Belgium and Germany? I think that that's supposed to mark the land that encompasses Kelmis, my technical town of residence, because in the early 1800s or something, it was it's own seperate country on account of its substantial copper resources; the surrounding contries did not want conflict inflicted by it. Sort-of like what Belgium is in the first place, but that's another story.

Then we went downhill to the Netherlands to buy marshmellows, chocolate, and crossed our fingers for the chance of Graham Crackers or something similar. The latter we did not find, but were happy with the substitution of some Theebiscuits, as they were referred to in their Dutch name. Because of my German skillz, I was able to read the ingredients and decipher that niether the chocolate nor the biscuits contained animal products. The marshmellows, I knew before we embarked on or mission, did contain gelatin, which is a translucent, colourless, brittle, nearly tasteless solid substance, extracted from the collagen inside animals' connective tissue, specifically that of (I believe) our friend, the pig, but I'm not sure. (Thankyou, wikipedia.) Nevertheless, we lone Americans knew that the Europeans had to succomb to the delicious campfire treat known as a S'more. Ethics were temporarily cast aside and I made my way determindly to the check-out, after a short stop in the beer asile.


^A Euro S'more^

Taking advantage of the free house, I invited some Eurofriends over to share my hearth. The Frenchman pretended to be disgusted when he tried his first, "proper" S'more, but we knew that he was really just trying to hide the orgastic pleasure bursting with rich, chocolatey flavour inside his mouth. There was a German/Dutchman as well, who partook of a biscuit and marshmellow sans chocolate as he didn't care for the cocoa-rich sweet very much. He found it odd that he was supposed to eat the entire marshmellow, despite it's charred exterrior, but he indulged all the same. Amanda and I reminisced the days when we could eat about 100 S'mores in one girl-scouty evening and not vomit. After one each on this evening, we were quite full.

And last, but not least, I made some Cheezy Quakers from Céline's have cake, will travel! blog.

recipe here.

They were everything I'd expected them to be and oh so much more. They'd be a great addition to a light, brothy soup or just to serve up to some guests at afternoon tea. They're nice and flaky and I found them cheezy, but my omni friend, Amanda, did not. However, she still enjoyed them. Next time, I think I'll try adding some dried basil, oregano or thyme to the mix to make it a little more diverse.

Gnocchi

Does anyone know how to pronounce that word? I haven't a clue, but I do have a feeling that it's not the way that I say it. That sounds like a job for wikipedia... but later.

Because I'm at home alone, I can do whatever I damn well please at whatever time I want, so at 9 last night, I started making gnocchi. It's a good thing to have hanging around in your freezer because... well, who likes pasta out of a bag, anyway?

A recipe for gnocchi is very simple and standard: Cook a potato or two, mash, add olive oil and salt and herbes or whatever else you'd desire in realm of flavor, toss in flour until it becomes soft and not sticky or crumbly. Whatever recipe you do have, though, remember that it makes a hella lot and that it's very time consuming because, if you're like me, you'll want to make each individual pasta that you roll out perfectly pretty like all the rest.



Here's the roll of dough that I cut into "pillows."

I've made gnocchi before, but last time it didn't turn out nearly so good. The dough kept on being too sticky. This time I got a perfect consistency with 1.8lbs of cooked potato (we have a scale at home) and 200ccm (just short of 1 cup) gluten-free corn flour (that's all I had in the cupboard). It gave it a super-nice texture and colour. I don't know about y'all, but I really like yellow foods.

I'll make a meal with these later and let you know. For a much more comprehensive tale of gnocchi, take a look at veganyumyum. I swear that I do read more blogs than just hers, but this is my favorite.



I rolled 'em out on a fork.


I layed them out on sheets and stuck them in the freezer until they were cold enough for me to put them in little plastic bags for more convenient storage.

Easter Saturday

This is what it looked like when I got up around 8AM on Saturday. I had some terrible zombie dreams with Russel Brand in them. I was in the middle of this drug deal that'd gone wrong, so there was gun fire, but like in the movies, so people would be shooting right at me, but I'd never get shot. Plus there were zombies coming to attack, which exacerbated things.

Here are some photos of a CouchSurfing party from Saturday. The hostess made all of these great international dishes. I mean, they were really good. I could eat most of them.

There was Tabouli. A classic.

A potato thing with corn and greens. They were yummy.

Fried plaintains with spicy stuff. I'd never had something like this before and rather enjoyed it.

some kind of Bruschetta thing:

I threw together this fruit salad in just a few minutes because I gave up on the cake frosting of a Lychee cake just before I had to catch my bus. I was way too embarassed to bring the cake. I mean, it would've been like be showing up without pants on and being like, "Sorry, but I don't know how to iron!"; or something like that.It was just banana, orange, apple and kiwi and I poured a little bit of lemon juice and coconut milk over it. People liked it :)

Here's me, catching snowflakes on my tongue.

Last Night's Dinner and "Hey! It snowed again!"

Last night's dinner was a miso, rice noodle soup. I fried up some onions in a teensy bit of peanut oil, added ginger, fried a little more, then added some chopped seaweed stuff that you use for sushi, water, miso (about 1 big Tablespoon), a little bit of vegetable bouillon, pepper and the noodles. It was delectable and eated with my favorite pair of Hello Kitty chopsticks.

And here's that damned snow that I woke up to this AM.

Heidelberg

I went to Heidelberg over the week-end. It's a very touristy town- lots of Japanese. It has a rather large Schloss, or castle and.... I'm going to keep this entry short because I don't have a functioning computer (again! I've been oppertating for about 3 weeks since the start of 2008 and let me tell you, it is not convenient!) and the Dad keep checking in every 5 min to see if I'm done.
So, I met with some other vegans from my PPK thing and stayed with an American who coincidentally knew a friend of mine from Sewanee. Small world.

I'll leave y'all with some food pics.

One of the vegans made a whole bunch of baked stuff....









and then we went to eat out at this all-vegetarian restaurant....









that last one is mine. And now I'd better go before I piss anyone off too much.

Is this turning into another vegan food blog?

Well, here are some more things that I ate:

The other day we had a baggette in the house that the Dad's girlfriend brought over. I knew that no one was going to touch the day after and who could pass up on an opportunity to make Fronch Toast? The recipe is from VwaV and has chickpea flour in it. Chickpea flour generally has a rather unpleasant taste, but some magical reaction happens when you cook with it.



The maple syrup 'round here is absurdly expensive: You can only find it in those fancy, little gourmet bottles and they're about €5 a pop. It's nice to have, though, as an unproccesed, animal-free sweetener and also because a maple syrup-lime juice combination in some soups results in utter amazingness. I learned that from Isa Chandra Moskowitz.



We had some Fennel Honey in the cabinet and I thought I'd give that a try.... Blech! Sometimes I forget that I don't like the taste of absolutely everything. Fennel is one of the few things that I really despise. Most slices are topped instead with a bit of margarine and puder zucker.
*~~~~*
And here's a shot of my lunch today. It's another Ethiopian dish from Kittee's cookzine: Papa Tofu; Yemiser W'et, or, lentils in a spicy red gravy. I added in the green beans because 1) I simply have to have something green in every meal and 2) to give it texure. They were perfect.