Paper Fruit

I know I’m behind on VeganMoFo posting, but first I need to mention that an older and much-beloved story of mine, “How John Wilmot Contracted Syphilis,” is now up on Lacuna: A Journal of Historical Fiction. There’s also a brief Q&A with me on writing historical fiction, whereupon I make reference to how this piece grew out of a failed novel project. Said novel project involved time travel, S&M, famous dogs from Greek mythology, and John Wilmot, Aphra Behn, and Bathsua Makin teaming up to fight an anti-Royalist demon. It, unsurprisingly, never really came together. I wrote this story as an exercise and ended up liking it more than the book, though, so it all worked out in the end!

Lacuna is edited by Megan Arkenberg, who was one of my favorite writers even before she accepted my story for publication, so I was seriously honored when she took this piece for her ‘zine. You can check out some of her work at Fantasy Magazine: Recently, we published her “Lessons from a Clockwork Queen” and way back in February we put up one of my very favorite short stories we’ve ever published at Fantasy over the years, ever, “The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois.” That story is pretty much the best thing ever. When I think of writers who inspire me, Megan’s at the top of the list!

But! Enough about me. Here’s today’s VeganMoFo Post: Thoughts on Delicious Sandwiches:

Sandwiches are one of my favorite things to eat. They’re so versatile, so easy to reinvent endlessly, so wonderful when paired with sides. They can be fancy or plain, traditional or unique, easy or complex. Always delicious!

The sandwich above, for example, is just the Chili-Lime Tofu from Appetite for Reduction (buy the book! But the tofus above are basically slices of tofu (not pressed), coated in a mixture of lime zest, chili powder, salt, minced garlic and baked until tender and tasty) on a baguette with low-fat vegenaise and an easy slaw I made out of bagged tri-color slaw, dressed with more vegenaise, lime juice, salt, pepper, a little chili power and thinned out with a tablespoon of soymilk. The side pictured is cubed kabocha squash tossed with more chili powder and salt, then roasted until crunchy. Spray it every once in a while with cooking spray to get that crunch! So good. It’s like southern

But other sandwiches I love include the Vietnamese French Dip from Veganomicon, po’boys made from tofus coated in cornmeal and oven-baked, and always the easy-peasy “dump bbq sauce on tofu or seitan, put on a bun with some slaw, and devour.” So good! You can make most famous sandwiches vegan, too, I’ve done awesome Philly Cheesesteaks (watch out—cats love to steal those!), Arby’s-style cheddar-sauce coated roast beef (Raech made those, actually), and I dunno, a million other things.

Woo! OK, so “Sandwiches” isn’t the most inspired MoFo post, but on Wednesday I plan (if all goes well with dinner tonight) to talk about calorie counting, cooking take-out style food for one, and what a healthy day looks like for an active semi-athletic vegan. Maybe not that much more interesting, but I’m trying here! Next week will be more inspired, likely, as I’m co-hosting a Halloween party, turning 30, and having some dear friends coming into town to celebrate several exciting things, and thus will be eating probably ten billion pounds of interesting foods!

Also, next Monday I’ll be announcing something so exciting I can’t even. Woo!

Super-proud of today’s entry for VeganMoFo: The Vegan Month of Food!

For whatever reason this year I’ve really been on a pumpkin kick, so when I woke up on Saturday and the weather was a gross-out of cold rain and chill wind, I made some pumpkin scones.

The scones were just the basic scone recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, but with a 1:1 swap of pumpkin puree for the oil, and 2 tbs of flax seed meal added to the dough. Then I spiced it up with some cinnamon and nutmeg and other cold-weather “sweetening spices,” put some brown sugar on top, and baked them. Super good! They’re not too sweet, and completely perfect on a wet morning with a cup of tea. Also, they are a mere 115 calories apiece!

But that left me with a partial can of pumpkin, so I decided to go nuts and make some pumpkin ice cream. OH GOD. Let’s today start with the picture, mmkay?

 (pictured here with some of raechel’s spice cake)

Uh, yeah. It was delicious. Maybe my second favorite flavor after the salted caramel I made a while back! So here’s the recipe. Sadly, you do need an ice cream maker unless you’re one of those folks who will do all that stuff to make ice cream without one.

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

1 c soy creamer (the plain kind)

2 c soy milk (or your favorite nondairy milk, hazelnut would likely be delicious!)

1 c brown sugar

1 c pumpkin puree (I used canned, but go ‘head and make fresh!)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground ginger

1/4. tsp. mace

1/4 tsp. nutmeg (fresh ground is best)

1/4 c room temperature vegan cream cheese

1 tbs. cornstarch

3 graham crackers, broken into chocolate-chip sized chunks

To make the base: Reserve 1/4 cup soymilk, whisk together with cornstarch. Set aside. Beat together the cream cheese, sugar, and spices until it forms a runny-but-goopusy texture. I just used a fork to do this. You want to make sure to do this step because sometimes the cream cheese will form lumps in your base if you just add it straight; incorporating it with the sugar provides a smoother finished product.

In a medium sauce pot on medium heat, combine the goopus and pumpkin with a whisk, and then keep whisking as you pour in your soy milk/soy creamer mixture. Keep beating the mixture until it’s rich and golden and vaguely frothy. When it starts to steam, add your cornstarch slurry (keep whisking!). Let this come to a simmer and simmer it for maybe 5 minutes, until you can’t taste cornstarch any more.

Then transfer it to a bowl and let it cool on the counter and then let it chill–completely–in the fridge. Then add it to your ice cream maker as per manufacturer’s instructions. When mostly frozen, add in the graham cracker bits so they can incorporate. Then pack it into a tupperware and let it harden in the freezer for a few hours. Voila!

When it gets cool, and if, like today, I’m feeling a bit under the weather, this is my go-to recipe for instant comfort! It’ll get your stuffy nose running with lots of garlic, soothe your troubled tummy with some grated ginger, or warm you up with spicy siracha. Yum! Nourishing, simple, and delicious, this soup is good even if you’re not sniffly.

Udon Soup (Serves 2 hungry people or 3 with a side)

6 oz udon noodles, cooked according to package directions and rinsed with cool water (essential—do not forget!!)

8 cups water

4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed (I like to press them)

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated

1 shallot, sliced thinly

2 cubes beef-flavor bouillon cubes

2 tbs siracha

2 tbs soy sauce

1 box vacuum-packed tofu, extra-firm, cubed

1 bag frozen spinach

cilantro

green onions

After preparing the noodles and rinsing them until they’re cool (all brands are different!), put 8 cups water, pressed garlic, grated ginger, shallot, bouillon cubes, siracha, soy sauce, and cubed tofu into the same pot and bring slowly to a boil. Once it’s hot, add the white parts of your chopped green onions and the frozen spinach, and let come to a boil again. Toss in the cilantro and most of the green parts of the chopped onions just before serving. (Reserve a few onions to sprinkle on top, for prettiness’ sake.)

To serve, put 1/3 of the noodles into a deep soup bowl, and ladle over the top the broth plus a bunch of the tofu cubes. Sprinkle with onions. You’re done! Eat with chopsticks and slurp the broth straight from the bowl. Also, serve with lots of extra siracha. It’s good for what ails you!

Perfectly Delicious Kabocha Squash

1/2 kabocha squash, peeled and cubed

1 tsp. Shichimi Togarashi

1/2 tsp. salt

Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss kabocha squash with spices and salt, dump on a baking sheet prepped with cooking spray. Spray the squash, too. Roast for 30 minutes, occasionally taking the squash out, stirring, and coating anew with cooking spray. Pieces will be all dark brown and crunchy on the outside, and perfectly melty-sweet on the inside, when done. Enjoy!

My girl Raechel and I went in on an ice cream maker this summer, and have been making all kinds of crazy things! Pineapple upside down cake ice cream, salted caramel ice cream, strawberry oreo ice cream … just about everything you could imagine. But we’ve also made a bunch of sorbet, and this Triple Ginger Chocolate Sorbet was particularly delicious.

Triple Ginger Chocolate Sorbet (serves 4)

1 c sugar

1/2 c cocoa powder (I used Ghirardelli)

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1/8 tsp. salt

1 thumb-sized knob of fresh ginger, grated well

2 c water

1/4 c freshly-brewed strong coffee

1/4 c candied ginger, chopped very fine

In a saucepan, mix sugar, cocoa, ginger powder, grated ginger, and salt. Pour in 2 cups water and the coffee. Cook over low heat until the ingredients are dissolved. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until very cold.

Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker using the manufacturer’s directions; in the last five minutes, dump in the candied ginger and churn until incorporated. Place soft-frozen sorbet in a plastic container and freeze for 1 hour or overnight, until firm enough to scoop.

You could probably make this Quadruple Ginger Chocolate Sorbet by putting in a shot of that Canton ginger liqueur, but I didn’t have any and it’s plenty gingery like this!

Today I’m headed to Florida to hang out with my family for a few days. Likely it will be too hot to enjoy a nice steamy pot of chili, but in Colorado and many other places it is certainly chili weather!

Recently, Mr. Nathan Crowder mentioned on his twitter feed that he was going to make a batch of pumpkin chili. What! I was immediately curious, and he was generous enough to share his recipe with me. It looked pretty veganizable, so I decided to try my hand, and oh my god oh my god this is my new go-to chili recipe. It’s also calorically reasonable for a large bowl of autumn goodness, coming in at a mere 251 calories per serving, with only 5.5 grams of fat. It also has 10 grams of fiber per serving, and 10 grams of protein. Nutritionally sound!

I elected to replace the ground turkey with Soyrizo, a vegan chorizo product available at most grocery stores these days, and definitely natural grocers. The rest was pretty 1:1, except I bulked up the flavoring elements. This is always a good idea when you veganize recipes: meat tends to add flavors to food, so with vegan stuff, you often have add in additional flavors for the same richness.

The original can be found here. Mine’s below!

Pumpkin Chili, Vegan Style! (serves 6)

Ingredients:

1 tsp olive oil

1 large chopped onion

1 large chopped red bell pepper

6 clove garlic

6 oz soyrizo (1/2 package)

1 (14.5 oz) cans peeled and diced fire roasted tomatoes w/green chilis

1 (15 oz) can pure pumpkin

1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce

1 (15.25 oz) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

2 fresh green chiles (4 oz) or 1 4 oz can diced green chile

1 can whole kernel corn

Spice Blend:

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 teaspoon whole cumin

1 teaspoon whole coriander

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon thyme

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions:

Heat oil in a decently-large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion, peppers (chiles and red), and garlic. Sauté, stirring frequently, for 5-7 minutes or until tender. Add spice blend, sauté for a minute or until fragrant. Add soyrizo, cook until browned.

Add everything else on the ingredient list, plus (after dumping in the tomato sauce) fill the can ¾ of the way with water and add that, too. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Cover; cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or longer. I did mine for about an hour as I got a wild hare to make cornbread and thus it cooked for a million years and tasted delicious!

The chili is pictured with a slice of the scallion cornbread from Appetite for Reduction!

Today is October 1st, which means it’s the first day of VeganMoFo: the Vegan Month of Food! Woo!

My “theme” this year will be Health & Happiness, so I figured a delicious, vegan, low-fat muffin recipe rich in Vitamin A and fiber would be a healthy, happy kick-off.

I know when I started doing low-fat baking it seemed intimidating, but it’s actually really easy. Part of the trick is knowing what can easily be made low-fat (or no-fat!) so you don’t get frustrated by failed first attempts. Yeasted breads are definitely delicious without added oil, and so are most quick breads, like muffins, scones, and things like banana or zucchini loaves.

You do have to account for the reduced liquid volume with low-fat baking, but the substitutes are many and easily available. My personal favorite is tried-and-true applesauce, it’s cheap, and if you get the unsweetened kind, it doesn’t add a lot of sugar. You can also use prune paste or mashed banana. I do a 1:1 ratio, most of the time, so if your recipe calls for half a cup of oil, use a half cup of applesauce.

It is good to keep in mind that with lower-fat baking, muffin- and scone-tops won’t usually get as crisp (though I have found adding in a few tablespoons of flax seed meal can help with that) and the shelf life of just about everything will be reduced. Muffins baked with applesauce will go hard much faster, but if you make room in the fridge for a tupperware, that’s easily dealt with.

As for the vegan aspect of low-fat baking, it’s pretty easy to “veganize” most simple baking (and not-so-simple baking, too!), but there’s also a wealth of recipes already on the internet. Vegans love to take traditional recipes and make them vegan so if you have a favorite muffin, make sure to check to see if anyone’s done your homework for you! For example, this recipe for Cranberry Orange Muffins was based off one from the Fanny Farmer cookbook.

This recipe I adapted from one by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, of Vegan with a Vengeance, Veganomicon, and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World fame. The original can be found here.

The Best (Lower Fat!) Pumpkin Muffins

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 cup pureed pumpkin (Fresh or from a can; do not use  pumpkin pie mix)
1/2 cup non-dairy milk
1/2 cup applesauce
2 tbs flax meal
2 tablespoons molasses

Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin.

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, soy milk, applesauce, flaxseed, and molasses. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until just combined.

Fill the muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

They’re amazing! Whip up a batch and enjoy yourself on a chill fall morning.

Cheers!

It’s that time again! Time for VeganMoFo: the Vegan Month of Food. (Yes, it’s a shout-out to NaNoWriMo).

I did VeganMoFo a few years back, but I’ve been recently inspired to participate again. So, for the month of October, I’ll be regularly blogging about veganism!

Since this year I’ve taken the time to incorporate a lot of positive, health-conscious changes into my life, my theme will be (unsurprisingly, perhaps) “Health & Happiness.” Twice a week I’ll be posting about positive, health-centered eating, and then once a week I’m going to post pictures of Cheat Sunday. (Cheat Sunday is a new tradition in my family where for dinner/desert on Sundays, we don’t worry too much about calories, fat, you know, all that sort of thing.)

That said, I’m amenable to blogging about just about anything veganism-related, so if by some strange chance anyone out there has any requests, let me know in the comments, on twitter or facebook, or via email at emollytanzer@gmail.com.

The RSS for the whole project is here, and the master site for the whole project is now just veganmofo.com. Last year I think over 800 bloggers participated, so this is huge and awesome and I’m superhappy to be involved again. Woo!

1. I went camping last week. We hiked a little bit, and I read, ate snacks, sunbathed on rocks. The first night I cooked some stew over a campfire in my dutch oven, the second night we toasted tofu pups. I saw what I think was a long-tailed weasel (that’s not my photo, but I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of creature I saw), a mouse (who was trying to creep on our snacks), a bunny, and a bunch of birds. It was pretty awesome, except lots of the free campsites around Nederland have been trashed by careless assholes who leave toilet paper and broken glass everywhere. Pack it in, pack it out, folks!

2. The Book of Cthulhu is shipping! I received my contributor copies and it’s really beautiful, heavy, and filled with so much excellent Lovecraftian fiction! And my story.

3. I finally read Ender’s Game and came away with mixed feelings. I really liked the ending, which I should have predicted but didn’t, but getting to that ending wasn’t all I’d hoped. After reading a bunch of Card’s short stories I had high hopes for my first novel-length trip with him, but it just wasn’t my thing. Also some of the discussion of Jewry, which I think was also maybe supposed to be a comment on affirmative action, made me deeply uncomfortable. In terms of “awful stuff done to children” and “military SF” books I was more into Shade’s Children and Starship Troopers, but I have to give credit where credit is due. The ending of Ender’s Game got to me big time. Even if the pacing, the plotting, and all the female characters (all meaning, um, two) left me a bit cold.

3. I watched Drive Angry and The Expendables. I enjoyed Drive Angry, even though I thought it could have been a better film with just a few mild tweaks; The Expendables was a big pile of turds that disappointed me in every way. I just don’t know what to make of action movies these days. ::shakes cane:: Seriously, though, if your lady characters make me long for the liberated, progressive days of, say, The Running Man, you’re doing it wrong. The Expendables, as was pointed out to me, was less a movie and more “a patent attempt to capture the audience of middle aged men who wanted to reprise the films of their youth,” and “meant to be set on the mental mantlepiece and admired by those who are prone to gulled by it.” Fair enough, maybe, but I dunno. I’ve seen a lot of those aforementioned films, and many of them had scripts where the lady characters had better roles than that of “holy saint who drives a pickup truck” or “cheating slut.” On a different note, I’ve heard a lot of shitty action movie dialogue but never anything as bad as “I’ll have to have you over for dinner sometime … IN ABOUT A THOUSAND YEARS” or whatever it is that Arnold says to the bizarrely swollen-faced and blush-enhanced Stallone. Ugh.

4. I’m finishing up a short story and within sight of the finish line with my novel.

5. To console myself over being unable to attend WFC this year, I’m making an epic Halloween costume. So epic I already started on it so it will be done in time.

6. I will be attending MileHiCon, with more details to come as I receive them. Not sure if I’ll be involved with programming or not yet, but hopefully I will!

7. I’ve switched up my exercise routine lately, and now have started working on endurance, body strength, and addressing a few long-term issues with my body, such as my weak spine/lower back. The new routine includes a lot of different kinds of pull ups, push ups, squats, lunges, core work, and cardio. I’ve also started running a mile a few times a week, for the first time in my life. Running is still not my favorite, and I’m not sure if I’m actually getting better at it, but whatever! Maybe I am getting better, since today I ran a mile in 12 minutes 13 seconds, which isn’t the worst. Still. Ugh.

That’s … about it.

I got behind on Boot Camp blogging, but as I just finished up my final workout for the program I wanted to commemorate it, because wowza! I don’t need a scale or a tape measure to tell me how good I feel or how proud I am of myself for sticking with it. I conquered this Boot Camp, even with my week off to go hiking and play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with friends.

Speaking of, though, before I talk Boot Camp, during that week of hiking, I totes summited a 14er. Here’s me with the mountain:

Woo! Mt. Bross is on the far left of the photograph, and obviously that’s me in the stylish hat. The hike was beastly beyond reason, 8 hours of sweat and glory.

Anyways, over the course of this eight weeks, I completed every single workout I was assigned, and I also:

—Hiked Green Mountain (my goal for the summer–ticked off the list weeks ago, actually)

—Summited a 14er

—Swam a mile

WOO. So now that I’m at the end, I’m looking forward to new goals and new kinds of workouts! Since 5 out of my 8 weeks of Boot Camp were circuits, I’m really looking forward to lifting weights again. Though I confess I did come around to the circuit training, in the end.

But alas, I am super-busy and that is all for now, except for a few pictures from my stellar vacation, and also the cover of The Book of Cthulhu (plus bonus banner by the inimitable John Hornor Jacobs, whose book, Southern Gods, I am currently very much enjoying–I got an ARC, that’s right!)

Check it:

ME ME ME:

Fun Times:

I went on a hike for my cardio today, and it occurs to me that as hiking was one of the main motivators for my recent foray into fitness, I should probably talk about that for one of these Boot Camp posts.

Hiking, man. I live in Colorado, and so I have plenty of mountains everywhere to hike around on, up, and down. Since moving here I’ve conquered a few trails of note, some of which I’ve even bothered to take pictures of, but there are many I have yet to explore. Some of them, however, are beastly to the point that I’m intimidated to start them, so I’ve been focusing my workouts on building up my strength in my legs and increasing my cardiovascular capacity.

When I moved out here, the landscape awed and inspired me, which is why I’ve been writing (and, uh, rewriting) this novel set in the Rocky Mountains. But I had this moment of clarity a while back, as I was hammering out something about my protagonist making her way through the wilds, when I realized she was more of a badass than me when it came to hiking. I had one feeling regarding this: Total bullshit. I have no problem with her being more of a badass than me when it comes to any number of things, since obviously she is the protag of my novel and I am not competitive with my imaginary creation when it comes to any of the more ridiculous things she can do well … but hiking? Come on, I live here! It was time to remedy this imbalance. It was time … to become more of a badass.

In the fiction I enjoy consuming, writing, and editing, characters routinely do all kinds of crazy stuff. They might cover many, many miles in a day through serious terrain, solve crimes, conjure demons, invent in time travel, accomplish various feats of strength, slap a ghost, talk with beasts, wield heavy or at least challenging weapons with expertise, raise the dead, or really anything at all. Badasses are awesome, and badassery comes in many forms. And while I’ll likely never solve crimes, talk with beasts, invent time travel, or heaven forfend, raise the dead, I can get strong and flexible, hike up mountains, and even become skilled in martial arts.

Right now I’m more focused on getting strong and covering distances (though I have a guest pass to my local YMCA and I plan on checking out kickboxing and/or kendo), but still—badassery. It’s become more of a priority for me, and I’m enjoying my newfound confidence and abilities! It’s a challenging process, but totally worth it, and I recommend it for everyone who feels they have to experience being a badass on a purely vicarious level. So not true!

I just saw the preview for the Captain America movie and there was a line about how “a weak man knows the value of strength.” This is likely probable, and we lovers of genre fiction could, I suppose, extend it laterally to apply to us: “the nerd knows the awesomeness of badassery.” Hellz yes.

x-posted to my LJ