We got our copy of the Veganomicon and have made our first recipe: black bean burgers. Yes, they were excellent.
I’m not going to post the recipe this time, mostly because I followed it right out of the book: think black beans, gluten, bread crumbs, and southwestern spices. I do plan to make some changes next time, so I might post what I did differently. I think they could be a bit spicier: maybe I’ll add some grated jalapeño or some Thai chili paste. They had a great flavor and texture and worked really well with the Taco Slaw that Autumn made — another recipe from the Veganomicon.
I decorated my burger like I usually do: mustard and ketchup, Clausen dill pickles, salt and pepper, and a bit of Tabasco. Simple and delicious.
Tonight’s menu was short-grain brown rice and lima bean curry. My recipe is based on Mary McDougall’s from The McDougall Program. One of the things I love about curries, is that I can really add — or remove — whatever I like. For example, I do not like coriander. So, I took it out of Mary’s recipe and added curry powder instead. Anything you don’t like? Leave it out. Something you think should be added — go for it. I happened to have some cooked new potatoes in the fridge, so I added a couple to this recipe. So what am I saying? Do what you like.
Here’s what I used:
1 bag of frozen lima beans
3 cooked new potatoes, diced
1 cup of vegetable broth
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 leak, chopped
10 cloves garlic, chopped
2 teaspoons ginger, grated
2 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
1 poblano chile, chopped
1 14-oz can stewed tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons dried cilantro (use fresh if you’ve got it)
1 cup of brown rice (I use short grain, but use what you like)
Put the rice on.
Sauté the curry powder, cumin, and mustard seed in 1/2 cup of water for a minute. Add the onion, leek, garlic, ginger, and chiles and continue to cook until the vegis are soft; add more water if it gets too dry.
Add the tomatoes and cook until most of the liquid has reduced. Add the soy sauce, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, beans, potatoes, and vegetable broth.
Cook until beans are heated through, about 10 minutes. Stir in the cilantro and serve over the brown rice. I put a bit of Tabasco on top ’cause I like it hot.
I ate this awesome curry with a lovely Pinot Noir. Enjoy!
Autumn and I have gone back to basics. Yes, this time it will work. When I first moved to Macon, I was 165 pounds; now I’m hovering around 200. I need to get back to a comfortable weight, and the only way to do this is to eat right and exercise regularly for the rest of my life. I know that diets do not work, so I must change my lifestyle.
We’ve adopted our favorite plan, once again: The McDougall Program: 12 Days to Dynamic Health. I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, so I won’t go into detail here; suffice it to say: no animal products and no added fat. We’ve only been doing it since the start of the semester, but I already feel better.
So, I’m going to try to post recipes, at least one a week. We’ve made soup, chickpea stew, and an impromptu lentil concoction, but today’s recipe is Vegan Enchiladas.
Vegan Enchiladas fresh out of the oven.
This recipe is in the McDougall Program book (linked above), but I modified it to my own tastes. There are three elements to this recipe: the tomato sauce, the filling, and the “cheese” sauce.
Leftover tomato sauce.
For the tomato sauce, I just used what I had in the fridge: about three-quarters of a jar of left-over Trader Joe’s marinara sauce. I put this in a pan and added a bit of hot sauce, some ground cumin, a squeeze of honey, and about a cup of spicy V8. I reduced it by about half for a slightly runny enchilada sauce. I know the V8 is salty, so I watched my addition of salt in the other ingredients.
Vegan Enchilada filling.
Here’s what you need for the filling.
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 carrot, shredded
1 poblano chile, chopped (jalapeno would work well, too)
1 cup cooked brown rice (I used short grain because it’s what I had cooked)
2 cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup vegetable broth
2 tablespoons garlic, chopped (I like garlic)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
fresh ground pepper to taste
tortillas (I think I used 7 for this recipe)
Put enough water in the bottom of a pot to barely cover the bottom; put it on medium-high heat. Add the onions, celery, carrot, poblano, and garlic and cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the vegetable broth, rice, beans, and cumin and cook another ten minutes. I wanted the mixture to have a filling consistency, so I cooked off a bit of the broth.
Add a bit of tomato sauce to the bottom of your favorite lasagna pan. McDougall suggests dipping each tortilla in the tomato sauce to soften, but I found this only destroys them. Mine were soft enough to fill without dipping. Add enough filling to each tortilla (about 2-3 tablespoons), roll them as tightly as you can, and line them in the lasagna pan. Top with remaining tomato sauce.
Vegan "Cheese" Sauce.
Heat your oven to 350.
OK, this is gonna sound a bit weird, but the taste is surprisingly good. And it will satisfy that desire your body has for a bit of creamy fat. Here’s what you need:
1 cup raw cashews
3 tablespoons of lemon juice (I squeezed half a lemon into the processor)
2 teaspoons of onion powder
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1.5 roasted red peppers (I bought them in a brine)
1 cup water
Combine all ingredients in a food processor until smooth. McDougall’s recipe calls for salt, but the red peppers were already pretty salty, so I didn’t add any. I did, however, add a bit of fresh ground pepper to the mix. Spread some of it over your enchiladas.
Bake them for 30 minutes. I covered them with foil about half-way through to keep them from drying out too much. They were very tasty, but they fell apart coming out of the pan. I think next time I will make it like I would a lasagna: just layer the stuffing with the cheese sauce and tortillas. This would likely work better. Then, you can serve a slice, rather than a mound.
Looks like crap. Sounds like crap. Tastes like, well, Goetta.
I guess the best way to describe it is: a mildly spiced, case-less breakfast sausage. I’ve never seen it anywhere else in the country but Cincinnati. According to Glier’s Goetta web site,
Goetta was created in Greater Cincinnati’s German immigrant community in the late1800’s. It is a delicious blend of pork, beef, and whole grain, steel cut oats. Goetta is traditionally prepared like sausage patties but many people prefer the taste of Goetta.
Wikipedia adds: “Goetta was originally a peasant dish, meant to stretch out servings of meat over several meals to conserve money.” So it makes sense that Mom used to feed it to me when we’d visit her relatives in Cincy. She served it crispy, atop buttered white bread. Since it uses steel-cut oats, it has a creamy texture — like mixing meat in your left-over porridge.
I was able to prepare some this morning for breakfast because my mom brought me a supply from her last visit to Cincinnati. I put a fresh egg on top, and I used toasted sourdough bread for the base.
Damn tasty. Since you probably can’t buy Goetta locally, you might try one of these recipes. Don’t be put-off by my inept descriptions — it really is good.
Yesterday, we spent the morning touring the Georgia Aquarium. The weather was still rainy from the night before, so this was a perfect time to look at fishes and take some photos.
Speaking of the night before, we saw Ben Folds at the Tabernacle. It was a great show at one of my favorite Atlanta venues. We decided to stay the night, so we rented a room at the Daze Inn, just a couple of blocks from the Tabernacle and the Aquarium. I’m glad we did because Ben played until after 11:30. I didn’t take any photos from the show, but Autumn should have some posted soon.
After the Aquarium, we went to Rosa Mexicana for lunch. Yes, we had the guacamole prepared table-side. Yes, it was simply amazing. In fact, I would go just for that and margaritas, though the rest of the meal was also good. The day before, we went to Six Feet Under, a local seafood restaurant. I had blackened shrimp tacos, so it was a Mexican food kinda weekend. Thanks to BJ for recommending both.
After our wonderful guacamole, we checked out The Bodies exhibit at Atlantic Station. Though we had our ticket already, we had to stand in line for about an hour-and-a-half. Yes, then we had to walk through the exhibit. I think I would have enjoyed it more had it not been for the wait. The show reminded me of something out of a Wells novel: Victorian vivisection in all its grotesque detail. Cool, but probably not worth the wait or the ticket price. We should have just gone to the High.
Following another lead from Solution Watch, I have signed up for an account on Traineo. While I have been being better about my exercise and diet since the semester began about a month ago, I still need more motivation to do well, since I think I’ve only taken off about 10 pounds. Traineo keeps track of workout routines, nutritional consumption, and weight — graphing it all so I can see how well or poorly I’m doing. Perhaps since the world can see my progress, I might be more motivated to do better.
I know the British folks (who else calls chips “crisps” and fries “chips”?) who put Traineo together are smart. From their article “8 Tips to Get in Shape”:
As much as you may have heard about the infamous Atkins diet, carbohydrates are NOT the enemy. We need carbohydrates for energy whether for short burts or long-sustained energy sources. Without carbohydrates our bodies may find it hard to adjust to this inherent energy deficit. You may have heard of the glycemic index. Without going into too much detail, the GI is a ranking of foods based on their immediate effect on blood sugar levels. Higher GI foods (i.e. more sugary) are required after exercise to replenish drained sources and lower GI foods for the rest of the time. As a rule of thumb, stick to complex carbohydrates which take a long time to digest and have a more prolonged release of energy. Foods rich in complex carbohydrates include vegetables, whole grains, and beans.
My favorite food boy Alton Brown is quoted in Wired this month on natural and genetically modified foods:
Every bite that goes into our mouths has been genetically engineered, which is not to say that what we eat is unnatural. Odds are we wouldn’t have broccoli if some farmers in Italy hadn’t spotted a naturally occurring mutation in cabbage that they liked and cultivated. The way I see it, if something can happen in nature, it’s natural. Here’s the tricky part: Unnatural things can get into nature and change the order of things. Is that bad? We’ll see.
What, indeed, is natural? I’ve had students recently argue that heterosexual sex is right because it’s natural. Well, isn’t cancer natural, too? We do everything we can to fight that, but still cling to the notion that what is natural is correct. I would argue that humanity prides itself on being unnatural — i.e., noticing something about our environments that we want to change and inventing the technology to do so. Are those who argue for a natural way of life ready to give up their technology?
GRL Archive 