Paper Fruit

This month’s Films of High Adventure is up. Have you ever heard of the cinematic masterpiece Yor: The Hunter From the Future? Well, neither had I until Jesse made me watch it a few years ago, and then we re-watched it for the purposes of journalism. Enjoy!

Nick Mamatas is a smart dude, and he has written a book called Starve Better. From the Apex page: “Starve Better is a no-nonsense survival guide by a professional writer who knows how to use small press publications and writing for everyone from corporate clients to friends and neighbors to keep himself out of the soup kitchen line.” Good stuff, and needed—I’ll be picking up a copy! You can read the thoughtful introduction here.

Last night I made some awesome food, and I wanted to share the recipe! It’s Ethiopian-inspired, and was totally rad. It tastes really rich, but this is a low-fat, high-nutrient meal. You could definitely hit up your local Ethiopian place to get some injera to scoop, but I was too lazy for that last night, and this meal is perfectly good without! Also, this is good for busy people because it’s a crock pot dish, and the only active cooking when you get home is cubing the sweet potatoes and roasting them for half an hour. Plus, your house will smell insanely delicious when you come home in the evenings. WIN!

Ethiopian Yellow Split Pea Stew with Roasted Sweet Potatoes (serves 4 hungry people)

Put the following in a crock pot (except spinach), stir well, and let cook on low all day:

• 1 c. yellow split peas
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 shallots, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 3 roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 1/2 tsp berebere
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp. fenugreek
• 1/8 tsp. black cumin
• 1 “chicken” bullion cube
• 2 cups water
• 8 oz fresh baby spinach

45 minutes before you want to eat, prepare the sweet potatoes:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Peel 3 lbs sweet potatoes (I used garnet yams), then cube into 3/4 inch cubes and throw in a bowl. Toss sweet potatoes with the following:

• 1 1/2 tbs. olive oil
• 1 tbs. agave nectar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3/4 tsp. berebere

Roast for 35 minutes, tossing after 15. They will get all caramel-y and delicious. When the taters have about 8 minutes left to roast, dump the spinach into the crock pot and stir in. Let cook until it is wilted and tender.

To serve, put sweet potatoes in the bottom of a shallow bowl, and ladle the lentils and spinach over top. Eat like crazy!

x-posted to my LJ

Some interesting things I’ve encountered of late:

I can’t vouch for this as I haven’t read it, but my dawgg Jesse hooked me up with a link to a book called The Vegan Revolution…With Zombies, and while the whole “something…with zombies” trend is not perhaps my favorite, this looks kind of awesome. Apparently, much of the action revolves around vegans holing up in Food Fight! grocery in Portland, an awesome store in its own right—and if you click and look at the cover of this book, you can see Sweet Pea (maybe the best baked goods on the planet), Herbivore Clothing Company, Food Fight! (of course), and Scapegoat Tattoo, where I got the little demon-dragon on my wrist that was up on Suvudu a while back. Seems awesome!

Next up: Lately I’ve been cooking out of Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s newest, Appetite for Reduction. I tested for the cookbook, and so I knew it was pretty rad before it came out—but holding it in my hands and having a bit more time for cooking lately, I’ve been exploring a few of the recipes I didn’t get a chance to test. So far, favorites (new and old) have been the Sushi Roll Edamame Salad, OMG Oven-Baked Onion Rings, the so-simple and so-delicious Five-Spice Delicata Squash, Curry Laksa, Bistro Broccoli Chowder, Red Lentil and Root Veggie Dal, Sweet Potato Drop Biscuits (which should also have an OMG in front of them). There are, however, two recipes that stand out to me: Edamame Pesto and the Veggie Potpie Stew. That stew—fuck, I’ll just come right out and admit that if I could feasibly eat pot pie every day of my life, I would, and that stew managed to exceed my ridiculously high standards. So, so good.* There are 125 recipes in the book, and most come in at under 400 calories per portion. I can’t recommend it enough. I’m actually up at the coffee shop writing this, with my copy next to me, as I brought it up to menu-plan for the week. I love all of Isa’s cookbooks, but this one has me enthralled.

…but if you feel like splurging a bit, she did just put up her recipe for Orange Cranberry Nut Muffins up on her blog, and I think they’re the greatest muffins I’ve ever eaten.

Well, not to make this all about Isa, but last Friday she talked about veganism on NPR! It’s an interesting listen; I always think it’s nice when actual conversations about diet and ethics occur; I think sometimes it’s really hard for people to talk about the politics and ethics behind consumption, the environmental impact of our choices, and all that goes along with such things—but the more we do it, the easier it will get! Bonus: they played my favorite vegan anthem of all, “Be Healthy” by Dead Prez. Woo!

Finally, I’ll conclude with an article that was in The Washington Post called “You’ve Come a Long Way, Vegan,” which is one of the best recent writeups on veganism I’ve seen. That it came out through a major media outlet makes me even happier. For me, the best part was finding out there’s a vegan guide for Afro-American women out there called By Any Greens Necessary, which has to be my favorite title of anything (after Veganomicon, of course, but that’s a given, no?).

Yay! Happy Monday, everybody!

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*I’m allergic to mushrooms, so I subbed seitan in my version. It turned out great! I know a few folks who aren’t so very fond of fungi, so I recommend the switch for them, and for people like me, who get the dreaded Mush Mouth.

x-posted to my livejournal

I sold a story to Crossed Genres! Many thanks to the editorial team over there. I’ll post about the inspiration for “The Red Terror of Rose Hall” when the publication gets closer, since it came out of some unusual places.

I recently watched a completely fantastic movie, The Draughtsman’s Contract. Wowza-bo-bowza and holy fucking shit. I really cannot recommend this film enough—doubly so for anyone who thought Dangerous Liaisons would have been so000 much better were it about English people being horrible to one another instead of the French. What? Is it news to anyone that I’m an unrepentant Anglophile? Anyways, it features fops, more fops, foppery, wigs, a soundtrack by Michael Nyman (the guy who did the soundtrack for Ravenous), more fops, and people being unrepentantly terrible to one another for dubious reasons. Also fops. If for some reason you need more convincing, here’s the first scene. Tell me that’s not wonderful.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Appetite for Reduction is out! I tested for this cookbook thus may vouch for its awesomeness.

Thanksgiving came and went with food and relaxation and me learning to (at long last) play Magic: The Gathering. Wow, it’s fun! Also, I made really excellent pumpkin pie, and have put that recipe at the bottom of the post.

Things with Lightspeed and Fantasy have been going really well! There are some great stories coming out at both venues during December, so make sure to keep checking on Mondays and Tuesdays for delightfulness! Or, alternatively, why not buy the ebook version of Lightspeed and be the cool kid who’s read everything before everyone else?

As you may have noticed, Films of High Adventure is on hiatus. It’s temporary! But we’ll still have a December installment up at Fantasy.

OK. Time for noms!

Molly’s Vegan Pumpkin Pie

I wanted to take advantage of the pie pumpkins at the farmer’s market this year. I’ve never made pumpkin pie from scratch, and felt it was High Time. It ended up being something of an emotional roller coaster. It began with feeling smugly domestic as I put the pumpkin in the oven to roast, panicking when it didn’t taste particularly great, getting friends on the internet to calm me the hell down by reminding me that pumpkins are not delicatas and need sugar before tasting good (thanks, Erin, and everyone on the PPK!), risking ruining pie by making up my own recipe, and then feeling as triumphant as an objectivist setting her oil wells aflame as I bit into a perfect slice. Well, not quite perfect. It was a tad overbaked, but I think 5 minutes fewer in the oven would have produced The Perfect Pie.

There are as many vegan pumpkin pie recipes as there are vegans, and the unique challenges involving making the perfect pie are heatedly discussed every holiday season on vegan message boards. The main issue is that unlike say, a chocolate mousse pie, tofu in the batter can often give the finished pie a tofu-y taste, and while I’m pretty inured to tofu-taste, something about pumpkin pie really brings out the bean. And yet! Adding a different binder in the form of soaked cashews really makes the tofu invisible in this version, for real. I baked it in the morning and by 5 or 6 at night it had completely set up and sliced beautifully. It did crack, as you’ll see below, but not much, and wasn’t at all watery.

My only caveat here is that I live at high altitude and thus I upped the oven temperature and baking time. I’m pretty sure that those below 5k feet could get away with an oven temperature of 350 and the standard 50 minutes to an hour baketime!

Ingredients:

2 cups home dry-roasted pumpkin (see instructions below)

¼ c cashews

¾ c silken tofu (water-packed, NOT vacuum-packed)

2/3 c natural sugar plus more by the tablespoon if you want it sweeter after you make up the batter

1 inch fresh ginger, grated

1 ¼ tsp real Ceylon cinnamon (ooooohhhhh)

mace and nutmeg and cardamom to taste

Instructions:

Dry roast the pumpkin the night before. I roasted it at 350 for about 90 minutes, all told. Before roasting, I prepped it by cutting it into thirds, scooping out all the guts and seeds, and putting it on a baking sheet (sprayed) w/cut sides down. When it was super-soft I took it out let it cool. It was perfect and didn’t need to be strained. It also tasted completely filthy so don’t worry if you try it and it’s horrid.

After finishing the roasting bung 1/4 cup of cashews in a bowl w/enough room to cover them with three inches of water. Let sit over night.

For the batter, drain and wash the cashews, then whiz them in a food processor until they’re thoroughly whizzed. Add the tofu until it’s puree. Add pumpkin and sugar. Blend until looks like pumpkin pie batter and you can see absolutely no tofu chunks or cashew grains. This will require scraping the bowl using a rubber spatula to get everything that’s settled to the bottom to incorporate. Add spices and ginger. Taste, adjust sugar. I added about two tablespoons I think but I would add a full quarter cup next year depending on how sweet the pumpkin is.

Then all you do is pour the batter into a pre-made crust and bake at 350 or 375 for 50-60 minutes! Woo! Let cool until totally cool.

So, yay! Pumpkin pie! Stuff! Woo!

High altitude baking kind of sucks to get used to. You have to do a bunch of stuff to recipes, like adjusting baking powder, flour, liquids, temperature, baking time, ugh ugh ugh. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what is the fail-safe formula. None of them work all the time.

I can’t offer a fail-safe formula, but I can offer this high altitude cornbread recipe. It’s the one I use either for just baking up a batch to go alongside whatever, or I spread it evenly on top of some chili to make a baked chili pie.

I based this off the Post Punk Kitchen’s cornbread recipe, which has never ever done me wrong. It’s the one I use allatimes, but I like my cornbread full of corn and cilantro and other stuff so you can see the differences. Also, as I said, this is only for high altitude baking! If you like the sound of my flavor alterations, do those but use the PPK recipe for baking powder, cooking times, etc.

High Altitude Savory Cornbread

2 c cornmeal

1 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/3 c canola oil

2 tbs hot sauce like cholula

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

½ tsp salt

2 c non-dairy milk (I like either soy, almond, or hemp)

3/4 c corn kernels, drained

1/2 c cilantro, chopped

1/2 green onions, chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 375. Spray the bottom of a 9×13 baking pan with non-stick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the non-dairy milk and the vinegar and set aside.

In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt).

Add the oil and hot sauce to the ACV/milk mixture. Wisk with a wire wisk or a fork until it is foamy and bubbly.

Pour the wet ingredient into the dry and mix together  until just barely mixed using a large wooden spoon or a firm spatula. Fold in the corn, cilantro, and green onions.

Pour batter into the prepared baking pan and bake 35 minutes (always check at 35, but depending on the weather and all that stuff, you may need to give it 5-10 minutes more), until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Slice into squares and serve warm or store in an airtight container.

OK OK OK. I was going to stay out of the whole Lierre Keith getting a pie in the face thing because (1) Lierre Keith is probably (and hopefully, gawd) at 14:54 in terms of her 15 minutes of fame, and prolonging that seems like a disservice to critical thought and also the world as a whole; (2) I’ve admittedly only read of her book what’s available free on the internet and/or been quoted on the PPK; (3) I’m not entirely convinced the whole thing wasn’t simply a publicity stunt and, finally, (3) I have a reasonable suspicion she has Google Alerts set up for herself and in case she’s a reader of FM/thinking about purchasing Running with the Pack I wouldn’t want to discourage her. Don’t second-guess yourself, Lierre! The werewolf story I wrote has an ex-vegetarian as a character! You’d love it!

But! A member of the PPK has put up a .pdf of an elegant, devastating critique of some of the silliest claims in Lierre Keith’s junk-science manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth, and I couldn’t resist plugging it. Here’s a sample:

The Claim: “Understand: agriculture was the beginning of global warming. Ten thousand years of destroying the carbon sinks of perennial polycultures has added almost as much carbon to the atmosphere as industrialization, an indictment that you, vegetarians, need to answer. No one has told you this before, but that is what your food—those oh so eco-peaceful grains and beans—has done.” (P. 250)

The Reality: Much of Lierre’s book is borrowed from Richard Manning, a well-respected environmentalist and author. Manning understands that human dependence on grain monoculture is not a result of the small percentage of concerned people who decide to be vegetarian, but is rather a historical mistake of which we all share the burden of repairing. Despite Lierre’s insistence, vegans do not need to eat grains nor any sort of annual crop. Why did she target vegans when compared to average corn-fed Americans, vegans consume much less grain?

On the topic of climate change, Lierre fails to address that regardless of type of feed or forage, ruminant animals emit an abundance of methane. She, along with other grass-fed proponents, point out that growing pasture sequesters carbon in the subsoil and claim that farms like Polyface are carbon-neutral. However, she ignores the fact that soil only retains a limited quantity of carbon—once pasture is healthy, it is carbon stable. Any pasture-based livestock production contributes, pound-for-pound of meat, to climate change as much (if not more) than conventional livestock production—an indictment that you, Lierre, need to answer.

Yeah. I think the best part is how reasonable the authors are while discussing the outrageous misinformation presented as fact in Lierre’s Weston Price-sanctioned screed (a “fair and balanced” source to be sure, coo-coo-claiming as they do that the ideal diet contains such things like brains ground up into your casseroles and adding heavy cream to infant formula, no joke). So check out the link above of the first chapter of her book. Read it for yourself. There’s all sorts of wisdom-nuggets like:

Despite what you’ve been told, and despite the earnestness of the tellers, eating soybeans isn’t going to bring [chinooks, bison, grasshopper sparrows, grey wolves] back. Ninety-eight percent of the American prairie is gone, turned into a monocrop of annual grains.

Shit. Pretty much every single vegan site promotes that fundamental tenant of veganism: eating soy brings back extinct/endangered species! With such a devastating critique of “the vegetarian myth” I think I’ll go right out and eat a burger! See, before I discovered Lierre Keith, I thought that a ton of the grains grown in America fed livestock, not people. . . oh, wait, that’s actually true. But who cares? Moving on:

By turning from adult knowledge, the knowledge that death is embedded in every creature’s sustenance, from bacteria to grizzly bears, they [vegans] would never be able to feed the emotional and spiritual hunger that ached in me from accepting that knowledge. Maybe in the end this book is an attempt to soothe that ache myself.

Probably so, Lierre. In the meantime, I’ll remain here in childlike-reasoning-land, where I make a distinction between living creatures who cannot feel pain (bacteria) and living creatures who can (um, grizzly bears), and make informed decisions based on that infantile assumption. Actually, why am I even still talking about this? The folks who wrote the above .pdf already covered it:

The Claim: “I built my whole identity on the idea that my life did not require death…Did the lives of nematodes and fungi matter? Why not? Because they were too small for me to see?” (P. 18, discussed throughout the book)

In Reality: This is a straw man argument. These views are not held by most vegans. The goal of veganism is to eliminate direct, unnecessary suffering at the hands of humans–not to magically end all death. Why shouldn’t the cow with its undeniable ability to suffer take precedence over plants and organisms with limited or non-existent nervous systems such as the nematodes Keith frets about in this book?

Yeah, well, so. ‘Nuff said.

John and I consider our veganniversary to be February 14th, but that’s not entirely accurate. It’s only part of the story. The truth of the matter is that we decided to go vegan on Valentine’s Day, then spent the next few days eating up the non-vegan perishable food in our fridge. But the decision was on the 14th, and thus we honor it every year with a small celebration.

Well, this year, time got away from us, so we’re celebrating today! The 14th just had too much going on: Jesse’s b-day, Valentine’s, and I’ve been less than energetic due to the sore throat I’ve been nursing for a week now (going to the doctor tomorrow if it’s not better, ugh). We had planned to go to the local Chinese vegan buffet over at TsingTao, but then I got a Facebook message that our beloved vegan-friendly pizzeria, Sun Deli, is launching its new lineup of vegan bestitutes, thus prompting a need to go and eat there, instead. Now they don’t just have vegan ranch dressing, vegan cheezy breadsticks, vegan Caesar dressing, three types of vegan cheese (the ubiquitous Follow Your Heart, the melty-soy-free-wonder that is Daiya, and a house-made almond ricotta), house-made seitan pepperoni and sausage, but starting today they will also have tempeh, Gardein “chicken,” and maybe some other stuff! We thought we had it good in Tallahassee when our local pizzeria would make us cheeseless pizza–and we did–but we had no idea.

I guess that’s why I love celebrating my veganniversary (four years!) so much–it’s so fun to be vegan!

I haven’t posted about food-related stuff for a while, so let’s get down to it. First, I want to give a shout-out (the “big ups corner” spot for the week) to Divvies, a company I just discovered because they had a big basket of their cookies at Whole Foods. They are completely awesome! I tried the choco-chip cookies, but I’mma try others next time I go back, to be sure. I really like their slogan: “made to share!” Friendly, and much appreciated I’m sure by anyone in an office or at a party who’s vegan or has egg, dairy, or peanut allergies. They make cookies, candy (chocolates, jawbreakers, and gummy stars, to name a few), and cupcakes. Check ’em out!

As for me, I haven’t been cooking as much variety as of late– mostly I just do rice and tofu and veggies for dinner these days– but I did make a kick-ass pizza the other night, with the cashew goat cheese I made during VeganMoFo, thinly sliced pears, black pepper, and some seitan browned with some shallots, and that was fucking delicious. That said, I actually bothered to document a food experiment last night (!) that eclipsed pretty much anything I’ve made of late. I got the base recipe here, after doing an internet search for seitan satay, but I modified it and used a different methodology, which I’ve outlined below:

Seitan Satay

1 large shallot or two small, peeled and cut into chunks

4 garlic cloves, ends cut off, maybe halved if you care to

2 tsp canola oil

Equivalent of 4 tsp ginger, peeled and cut into chunks

4 Tbs tamari

The juice of two limes

2 Tbs toasted sesame oil

4 Tbs agave nectar

2 Tbs siracha or other asian chili sauce (I use the kind with the rooster on it)

24 oz seitan, cut or torn into chunks (I used 2 boxes of the WestSoy kind from the supermarket)

Preheat oven to 45o degrees F. Take all ingredients except for seitan and throw into a blender, blend until smoothish. Put your seitan in a 9×13 baking dish (lasagna-style) in a single layer, then pour the slurm over everything. It will look like this:

At this point, let the seitan marinate for about 30-45 minutes as you make your rice (I used jasmine), and then bake it for about 15 minutes in the marinade– what I mean is just throw the whole thing in the oven and let it go. While it’s baking, make your vegetable. I made some green beans sauteed with minced garlic (about a teaspoon), 3 cloves of pressed garlic, toasted sesame oil, and salt and pepper:

Pull out the seitan, it should be bubbly and the exposed parts of the seitan should be browned and luscious. I plated everything together, rice, seitan on top, green beans off to the side, and for extra deliciousness I put some cilantro leaves on top, and I also added two condiments: a lime wedge for squeezing, and some peanut sauce out of a jar for adding a touch of peanutty sweetness. OMG.

I really can’t say enough about how utterly delicious this was– I struck gold with the original recipe (the marinade is delicious on its own) and the saucy-method pleased my curry-loving self. So today, wanting a redux of those flavors, I used my brand new To-Go Ware lunchbox and packed myself a feast. Layer one, rice and seitan:

Layer two, green beans. I used the dressing cup to hold my cilantro:

Ready go go:

And speaking of, it’s lunchtime! Posting all this has made me hungry.

Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. Can we just begin with that as a given?

Here’s a news-item simply fascinating in its utter stupidity: PeTA– you know, the organization whose acronym means People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals– well, it turns out that PeTA just spent about ten thousand dollars of its donators’ money to aid in the killing of 1800 lobsters.

When I heard about this, my reaction was “Excuse me?” My second reaction was “Jesus Christ, I’m glad I never donated to them.” My third reaction, fueled by having to go through the task of return-addressing my own Christmas cards this year (the humanity!) was “Man, I miss those address labels they used to send me for free.” I used to cut the PeTA logo off of them, though.

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I’m back from World Fantasy, looking and feeling haggard, exhausted, and ready to eat meals not at restaurants for a while, but overwhelmingly happy about the experience as a whole. I met many, many lovely people, made a few new friends, interviewed Garth Nix (who is every bit the gentleman I’d been led to believe he is), hung out, got maybe a little tipsy my last night there, and came home with a bag full of books from the con and from Borderlands in San Francisco, thanks to the awesome efforts of Jeremy Lassen who was so patient with me and knowledgeable and recommended more things than I could fit into my suitcase. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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I have less than no time for VeganMoFo these days (my parents just left 20 minutes ago, less than 1 week until I interview Garth Nix, Thursday I leave for WFC) but here are some pics from Tasty Harmony, a lovely restaurant in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Tasty Harmony is not all vegan but it is very very vegan friendly (including all their desserts). John, me, Raech, and Jesse met our friends Becca and Shawn up there. Not all the pictures came out, but here are the highlights.

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