Paper Fruit

Not that it matters to VeganMoFo but I am super-busy and starting to feel a little stressed out. I’m preparing for a parental visit next week as well as World Fantasy Con, while slush reading for Fantasy Magazine, blogging every day, prepping myself for a still-in-the-works secret project, and trying to keep up my recent gangbusters pace on my novel (that part not so good this week, but that’s how it goes). Yeesh. Not that I’m complaining– this is the kind of work I love– but yeesh. So I guess what I’m saying is that today’s entry will be pretty bare bones, but there’s some recipe love in there.

I made myself hungry yesterday posting about Raechel’s bibimbap and so decided to make some for myself last night. Not wanting to be cooking for hours I decided to a “quick” bibimbap, rice with bap sauce and only three sides. I wanted the kitchen to be relatively un-crazy and I get really upset when I have more than a couple of pans going at once (Raech somehow doesn’t, but I am a very “focus on one thing at a time” kind of girl) so I settled on baked tofu, ginger/garlic/shallot bok choy (recipe follows), and modified Korean cucumber/daikon salad (recipe also follows). This way I would only have one oven recipe, one stovetop recipe, and one cold bowl-needing recipe. And the bap sauce. That said, even though it seems complicated, my kitchen was relatively un-destroyed and it took about an hour all told. Nice! The rice cooker helped. Here’s a general tutorial for my Stress-Free Bibimbap For Two:

Set your rice cooker to cook up two or three cups of rice (I used sushi rice and did not regret that decision). Then preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Cut one block of extra-firm tofu into strips and halve them, then set them in a 9×9 baking dish with 1/4 c. soy sauce and enough peanut oil to coat. Turn them over once while your oven is preheating then stick them in and forget about them. Flip them once, when you think you’re about halfway done with everything, but it’s not a science. They’ll be fine

Make your bap sauce, courtesy Fat Free Vegan.

I used less sweetener than the recipe called for, instead of a tbs. of sugar I used a tbs. of agave nectar, and added no additional sugar at all. The sauce was pleasantly sweet but I think I’d only do two teaspoons of agave next time. I also thinned it out with several tablespoons of water so it would be more spreadable.

Then make your salad-type dish. I riffed off this recipe.

This was basically similar to the above recipe, but I have a horror of raw onions and so used the following recipe:

Modified Korean Cucumber Salad

2 small daikons, cut into rounds

1 large hothouse cuke, seedless or seeds removed, cut into rounds

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp. peanut oil

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

the juice of one lemon

3 tbs. white vinegar

2 tbs. sesame seeds

Mix everything, cover, throw in fridge until ready to serve.

****

So after that was made, I started on the bok choy. I again riffed off of this ginger-garlic bok choy recipe, but I streamlined it and added shallots. When done, it looked like this:

Ginger-Garlic-Shallot Bok Choy

2 golf ball sized shallots, minced

1 tbs fresh ginger, minced

3 cloves garlic, pressed

4 heads baby bok choy

2 tbs. soy sauce (I used tamari)

2 tbs. peanut oil

Fry the shallots in the peanut oil until soft, then add the garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant. Then add your bok choy stems. I do my bok choy like this: I cut off the weird ends where you pull them off at the bottom, then slice off the leaves with a v-shape, leaving the stems. I chop the stems into half-moons (put the stem down horizontally, slice once vertically– just look at the picture, already! Throw the stems in with the garlic/ginger/shallot mix as well as the soy sauce and saute until the stems are tender. Chop the leaves into big pieces while this happens then add them until they wilt, then cut the heat.

****

That’s it! Everything worked out well, when my rice cooker beeped my tofus were ready to come out as well as my bok, and my salad had chilled long enough that the cukes were vinegary and crisp and lemony. I served up everything with the bap sauce and tucked in. Serious delish!

Sorry I’m such a wretched food photographer. So blurry! But anyways, I hope tomorrow to post pictures from a local Boulder Thai place that does amazing yellow curry. I’m going there tonight with my beloved husband for a date night that I’m sure will be wonderful as our plans currently are Thai food and then playing World of Warcraft. I’m a lucky girl, yes, yes I am!

Bibimbap is a Korean dish that is basically a bowl of warm white rice surrounded by various side dishes, including sauteed veggies and tofu, all served with a specific kind of chili sauce. Raechel makes it (I want to try soon, but I am lazy) and her version is zawesome beyond belief. In particular, the bap sauce is. . . it is soooo good. It is spicy, and usually that makes my mouth cry, but something about the plentiful rice and veggies tames that beast down to the point where I can eat loads of it. Here are some pictures from Raechel’s last bibimbap masterpiece, first up, her baked tofus:

Veggies! Here, from top left to bottom right, are garlicy red peppers, sauteed winter radishes (daikon mostly), and bok choy. Oh. Yeah.

My plate, all arranged. Pickles are often a part of bibimbap so I used some of the leftovers from the ones I made earlier in the month, so the plate line up is, from beside the fork, the bok choy, pickles, daikon saute, bap sauce, tofus, and peppers. In the center, just plane white rice. I think Raech uses sushi rice because the texture is so lovely.

A recipe for vegan bibimbap can be found here at Fat Free Vegan, and a recipe for the bap sauce can be found here, on the Fat Free Vegan blog. I link to this recipe specifically because Fat Free Vegan is an awesome website filled with a ton of healthy, really delicious recipe ideas, the best part being its organization. You can search by diet plan (if you have one) or, how I usually do it, by region of food or by main ingredient. Check out the sidebar for all the ways you can find something simple, tasty, and nutritious to put on your table. I really like this recipe, for Three Layer Mexican Pie. Delicious, and the cheez sauce is really great.

As part of VeganMoFo a couple PPKers in the Colorado area held a pot luck! Yay! The theme was “Fall Foods” so we had a lot of tasty squash and apples.

Hosted by the lovely Becca and her husband Shawn in their condo in Denver, we had a nice turnout. Raech and Jesse, me and John, Becca and Shawn, Abbi and her boyfriend Danny, and Lacy all hung out yesterday and ate too much food. I didn’t get pictures of everything or everyone because I am rotten at taking pictures during events, but I think I captured the general awesomeness. Most notably I didn’t get a picture of my pumpkin pie, which needed. . . recipe tweaking. . . nor did I get a picture of Abbi’s caramel corn (omg so good) or Abbi herself. . . oops. But look! People happy that they are at a potluck (Becca’s going out to get more cider for hot toddies):

Left to right: Lacy, Shawn, Becca, Raech. On to the food! This was supposed to be the garlic-herb crusted brazil-but cheez ball from Vegetarian Times. . . but something happened. It didn’t come together at all. That’s OK, it got served as a spread and was fine, but it certainly didn’t come out for me the way it did for Kittee. Oh well! It was tasty.

John’s contribution was a tofurkey:

NOM!

So, OK. Raechel made this. . . dessert. It was apples and cream cheez and streusel topping and woahmigod. You can’t tell in this pic so much but when we cut into it it was pink as the devil’s own toenails! Woo! Above that is Becca’s delish butternut squash lasagna. I’ve never had a lasagna like this, it was really good! I used to make a regular lasagna with a butternut layer, but in this, the butternut really popped as the main flavor:

Mac and cheez courtesy me. I made it with sage and onions in the sauce (recipe follows), which made it officially a Fall Food and therefore part of the theme. I guess I should warn that my mac-n-cheez pictures always look terrifying, but don’t be scared. It would have been prettier had I put a breadcrumb topping on it and baked it but I ran out of time. As it is it was really really tasty, but BEWARE THE HORROR:

Abbi made phyllo pockets stuffed with delicata squash, rice, and greens, and won for prettiest contribution, at least in my opinion. Raech made a curried potato soup with mint flecks from Vegan Fire and Spice, and it was really really good:

Plated up: I shared my soup bowl territory between Lacy’s wonderful chili and Raech’s potato soup. My plate has everything pictured above, including gravy on the tofurkey. It was all so good! I wish I had gotten more pics, but ah well.

So good. As I said, unfairly, some of the best offerings went unpictured, like Abbi’s caramel corn (like fresh, meltingly-fluffy Cracker Jack) and the hot toddies. Oh gosh, those toddies. I’ve never liked them but I think it was that John always made them with some sort of reputable whiskey and what you really need is cheap stuff. Really. Anything else kills the apple cider flavor instead of complimenting it. I can’t recall what brand Becca and Shawn used but I’ll probably be making these with my beloved Lord Calvert Canadian Whiskey. I’m immensely happy this great secret has been revealed to me because I used to pick up a handler of LC in the summer to drink with lime and ginger ale (before you turn your nose up, try it), and it would sit all winter with nothing to do except acquiring toxins from the plastic bottle. So huzzah! New friends met, new drinks drunk, new foods enjoyed: a successful pot luck all around.

Now here, as promised, my favorite mac n cheez recipe, with added instructions for the best way of making it, which is baked with breadcrumb topping.

Yet Another Vegan Mac Recipe, or Thanksgiving Mac (more charitable title)

8 c. rotini noodles, cooked, drained, tossed with 1/2 c. yellow mustard (yes, yellow, don’t use anything classy here with visible grains or anything, save it for your Tofurkey brats or something)

While the noodles cook, sauté one large yellow onion in a tbs. of olive oil until the onion is soft and clear. Add cracked black pepper to taste as well as 1/4 c chopped fresh sage and sauté one minute. Reserve 1/4 of the onion mixture (if making this with breadcrumb topping, if not, don’t reserve anything), take the rest and dump it into the cheez sauce after blending everything.

What cheez sauce? This cheez sauce. In a blender, combine the following:

8 oz tofu

1 c water

1 c plain, unsweetened soymilk

1/3 c soy sauce

2 tsp. paprkia

2 tsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. salt

1/2 c nutritional yeast flakes (or more, if you really like it, which I do)

While blending this, pour in a scant 3/4 cup of olive oil. You could go as low as 1/2 c. After blending, dump in the onion mixture, stir. Pour over hot noodles and mix thoroughly. THIS WILL THICKEN UP. It will look like soup, but wait 10 minutes and it turns into a thick, rich mac sauce. Trust me!

If making baked mac n cheez, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Mix 1 c breadcrumbs with the reserved onion-sage mixture. Prep a lasagna pan with cooking spray and pour our the sauced noodles into it. You may have more mac than will fit, but who cares? Eat it later after you finish eating the bake. Sprinkle the breadcrumb mixture over the top and do that thing where you put your (clean) thumb over the top of the olive oil bottle and drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil over the breadcrumbs. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the breadcrumbs are brown and tasty-looking. Eat with extreme prejudice.

Not the most erudite blog post title but really, seriously, I think I found the food I would serve to an important or royal person if he or she were coming over to dinner. I know, I know, it just looks like pizza, but I, uh,  VEGANIZED GOAT CHEESE, PEOPLE. Well, Vegetarian Times did.

Goat cheese and I. . . when I was vegetarian, I loved it. A lot. It was my favorite. I haven’t really missed it since going vegan but when the PPK and other internet folks were raving about this VT recipe, I had to try it. It is so worth it. I got the inspiration for pizza from C’est La Vegan who made a log of it into a tart.

I didn’t want to do the puff pastry thing last night so I got some pre-made pizza dough from Whole Foods and went to work. Instead of doing the whole “drain for 14 hours” I just made the cheeze and kept it like a spread. I kneaded out the pizza dough into a sort of rectangle, set it on my baking sheet, and covered it with torn, fresh basil leaves. Then I spread the cashew cheeze over it. I forgot to take a pic of just the basil so here’s it halfway spread with the cheeze:

Then I ground some fresh black pepper all over the cheeze. As in the tart linked above I seeded organic tomatoes and arranged them attractively:

I drizzled olive oil over the top and baked it for 16 minutes at 425 and voila. Pizza.

If you try one recipe from my blog this whole month, let this be it. Seriously. We ate the hell out of this, while this was happening outside:

And I woke up this morning to this.

So pretty! OK, now I have to go because I made the mistake of reactivating my World of Warcraft account and I need to level my druid. FOR THE HORDE!

I only have a few weeks left of the Boulder Farmers’ Market, so I figured I’d dedicate today’s post to the amazing produce available every Wednesday and Saturday downtown in my fair city. I’m really lucky to live so close to such a great market, I’ve been munching out on tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, onions, shallots, bok choy, the list goes on. I’ve tried to make the most of the market while I’ve had it: my freezer is full of red lentil pasta sauce with fresh veggies, two loaves of zucchini bread, and a few tubs of pesto for when basil becomes disgustingly expensive in the supermarkets.

Today here’s what I got to see. First up, the market itself. Hope none of you are in the witness protection program. . .

It’s fall! Did you know? How can you tell? Oh right, squashes!

If I were to nominate a vegetable for “Prettiest Veggie that I Can’t Stand” it would be radishes:

Beets!

This stand still had more summery stuff: peppers, fairy-tale eggplant, fingerling potatoes, summer squash:

Gosh! I will miss the market when it’s gone, but good times I have had there yes indeed. This post doesn’t include the glorious plum jam I’ve been buying too much of for weeks, nor the bread, nor the popcorn, and yet look at the amazing variety of delicious produce! I love being able to have such variety in my diet, and I’m very curious to see just what the market will have to offer me this spring, when it re-opens.

Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed by the problem of “what to make for dinner” I take a moment to stop, breathe, and reconsider my approach to cooking. Instead of looking up some complicated recipe and buying ingredients to make it, instead I look into my fridge and see what’s up, and let the ingredients guide me. Last night I saw that I had green beans from the farmer’s market, a mix of organic potatoes (French fingerling, baby reds, and purple), and some Gimmie Lean sausage. OK– breakfast-for-dinner time. Why go out to buy a bunch of stuff when I can just make the veggies the spotlight through roasting?

My friend Brad has a theory about breakfast foods: they’re good in the morning, unacceptable at lunch time, really good for dinner, and best during the hours of midnight to 3:00 AM. I happen to agree. I think my favorite breakfasts have been had at dinner-time or later, and last night’s meal was no exception.

The lineup:

The pretty-pretties:

I let the potatoes roast at 425 for about 20 minutes with their coating of olive oil, rosemary, salt, and pepper, and then stirred them. I added the green beans to the same pan and roasted for another 15 minutes, during which time I put on the snausage patties. The smell of them caused some interest in the household community:

Everything assembled:

Serious nom-noms.

Hannah Wooley is one of those women from the past that history, privileging things more “important” than mere household management, tends to overlook. She lived in 17th century England, and spent most of her life as a housewife, though she also was a schoolmistress, a governess, and an author. After her husband’s death she made money writing books on embroidery, managing as a wife, etiquette, medical advice, and cookery, and along with Aphra Behn, was one of the first women to support herself as a professional writer. A few of her books have been digitized here, but today I am going to focus mainly on her recipe for pickles, published in 1762 in her work The Queen-Like Closet, or Rich Cabinet, Stored with All Manner of Rare Receipts for Preserving, Candying and Cookery: Very Pleasant and Veneficial to All ingenious Persons of the Female Sex.

Here’s the original “receipt” as it was published:

To pickle cucumbers: Take the least you can get, and lay a layer of cucumbers, then a layer of beaten spices, dill, and bay leaves, and so do till you have filled your pot; and let the spices, dill and bay leaves cover them, then fill up your pot with the best wine vinegar and a little salt, and so keep them.

Okay. Using era terminology, according to my Stuart England book, “least” here means smallest, and the author interprets the meaning of “beaten spices” to be a blend comprised of mace, pepper, and fennel seeds, all spices relatively available during that era. Mace, for those of you troublingly unacquainted with this tremendous spice, is related to nutmeg, and I learned about it long ago from the Two Fat Ladies, a (very) British show that ran on the Food Network during its early days but is now obscure, not even available on DVD as far as I can tell. Sad times. The Fat Ladies taught me that nutmeg is the seed, and mace is the ground outer husk. It’s not used so much today, but it was once a very common preserving spice (cheaper than the nutmegs themselves), and I always keep this pumpkin-hued delight on hand to add to recipes that call for nutmeg. I find that adding it along with nutmeg brings out a different spice “chord” than nutmeg alone in things like pumpkin pie or zucchini bread or whatever. Anyways. Setting up to make pickles, here are my ingredients (ignore the sugar sitting there, I thought I needed it but did not):

Next I layered them, as I was told to do: sliced pickles in a “pot” (here a lovely empty jar of Bhakti Chai, a delicious chai locally micro-brewed here in Boulder), with two bay leaves and about a teaspoon of each the various spices and dried dill just kind of dumped on top:

Then I poured in equal parts white vinegar and water, with about a tablespoon of salt dissolved in it:

I did not “preserve” these pickles by canning them, as you find pickles on the supermarket shelves, because such methods were simply not in existence back during the Restoration. Most households would have instead possessed a root cellar beneath the ground floor to keep apples, root vegetables, onions, carrots, and preserves very cool during the leaner winter months. Thus, this jar got a week in the fridge:

I was genuinely surprised how delicious these were. They were outrageously tasty. I was afraid the fennel would overpower everything with its licorice taste, but it was really just a pleasant note along with the dill, mace, vinegar, and salt. Really, really crisp and fresh and clean-tasting. I will make these again, probably in the summer, to put on tempeh burgers and such. I’m not even that much of a pickle person but these shocked me. Everyone should make these. They’re so easy, and wow are they good.

So there we go! Before I conclude, however, I am going to continue my interview theme with a little bit of time spent with my cat Penelope, who wanted to have her day in the sun during this Month of Vegan Food.

Q: Penelope, VeganMoFo is the month of vegan food. I know what goes into your cat food, and it is not appropriate blogging material for this endeavor.

A: I like vegan food!

Q: What? What vegan food do you like?

A: SEITAN SAMMICHES!! Please can I have a bite? PLEASE?

Q: Penelope, that is Jesse’s seitan sammich, so– hey! Keep your paws to yourself!

A: GIVE IT TO ME!

Q: OK, you are grounded. Sheesh! And you, Lemmy– you’re not supposed to be on John’s desk and you know it! Cut it out!

A: It’s only my toes! At least I’m not swatting a sammich! Can I have a sammich?

This interview is cancelled! These cats are not well-behaved enough to be interviewed. And I think, despite Jesse’s protestations on the subject, that photo above shows conclusively that his face really is, as I said, too terrible.

Everyone on the internet is interviewing Jesse Bullington these days, with more to come, due to the imminent release of his keen debut novel, The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart. The book is causing quite the ruckus in the world of literary reviews, and so not wanting to be a Molly-Come-Lately, I figured I better jump on the bandwagon and talk to Mr. Bullington about, well, something. Yet since Jesse is one of my best friends, and also my next door neighbor, I’ve already talked to him at length about The Grossbarts, so for VeganMoFo I’ve decided to interview him about guacamole, instead.

Q: Your face is too terrible. How do you prevent hairs from falling into your guacamole?

A: I have it on rather good authority that my face is nothing of the sort but I suppose I’ll humor you: Macomb Evelyn Jackson’s Muttonchop Bibs are available by mail order for any concerned gentlemen.

Q: When is the best time to eat guacamole?

A: ALLS OF TEH TIME

Q: What ingredients do other people put in guacamole that you find to be wrong or nonsensical?

A: Mayonnaise. Even imagining James Mason enunciating the word in Lolita fails to soften the blow–one may as well drain a boil into the bowl. That said, I’m a bit of a purist–anything beyond avocado, lemon, salt, peppers, spices, and occasionly garlic and/or tomato strikes me as being overkill.

Q: What do you feel are common guacamole-related mistakes?

A: Like thinking it’s a pear in leather armor? Or like keeping the seed in the bowl to prevent it from turning brown? (This is a common myth! Alton Brown debunks it somewhere in his “dip” episode so at the end of here, and then here. But Jesse’s recipe (following) is better than his. Sorry Alton!)

Q: How do you feel about nutritional yeast in guacamole?

A: The same way I feel about nooch in every dish–are you really going to use that much?

Q: What about mayonnaise?

A: How could you not forsee this being included in your what-not-to-guac section? Na-nay-naise.

Q: Is there ever a time someone is making dinner and you feel that guacamole would be an inappropriate appetizer or side dish?

It hasn’t happened yet.

Q: How do you make your guacamole?

-five avocados of appropriate softness (I tend to go for three really ripe ones and one or two that are the slightest bit firmer)
-one lemon
-salt
-garlic powder
-onion powder
-white pepper
-random spices as I see fit
For pleasantly spicy guac add to this:
-chiltepan pepper and/or
-One or two large, fresh jalapenos or fresno chilis

Wash the exterior of all produce, including the avoacados because we are all OCD. Slice the avocados in half from top to bottom, removing the seed in that cool fashion Molly knows (it’s Alton’s! See above). Remove avocado from skins and place into bowl. Add a pinch of salt. Quarter a lemon and squeeze one quarter onto salty avocado, then set to mashing with a fork or a pestle.

Stop when the guac is still pretty chuncky and add another pinch of salt, as well as pinches of pepper and garlic and onion powder, and then squeeze the juice of another lemon quarter onto the guac. This is when you should add a pinch of chiltepan flakes or a diced hot pepper, de-seeded depending on how hot you want it, or a de-seeded tomato or two (OK, time out. Editorial aside: in my opinion this guacamole is so much better without peppers and tomatoes– they mask the taste of the avocado! Include them at your risk). Resume mashing, or mixing if you prefer a chunkier guac, and taste–as if you haven’t been tasting the whole time.

Add more salt, pepper, powders to taste in small increments–I usally use an entire lemon, but it’s best to add in wee little quartered increments to prevent overseasoning. Same goes for other additions like hot peppers or tomato–guacamole is very forgiving of late game additions, but few people have an extra avocado on hand to add if things get too salty or spicy. Enjoy with chips, on a salad, or straight out of the bowl with your fingers.

Thanks Jesse!

Alright, faithful readers, MoFoers, and Spambots: you should all be getting excited about the release of Jesse’s book–really, I’m not just saying that because he is my friend–and you should also be excited about applying his guac methodology. Seriously, he convinced me on the lemon-over-lime thing. I was an unbeliever, but he showed me the way. Anyways, I’ll probably take tomorrow off for MoFo-ing, but Monday I will come back atcha with the best recipe for refrigerator pickles I’ve ever tasted– maybe the best pickles I’ve ever tasted, ever. Excited? Of course you are.

Chili is one of those foods I never really thought about until meeting Raechel, mostly because I never make it. I feel like chili is one of those foods that if you don’t eat it as a kid you don’t think to cook it as a grown-up. I ate it on chili dogs or whatever in the school cafeteria, and I think on a whim I once ordered it a Wendy’s, but I can’t really recall my parents making it. So never what Whoopie might call “chili chili.” (Too soon?)

Anywayz, when Raechel said she was making chili last night, I knew I needed to blog about it for VeganMoFo. Her chili is epic, both usually in quantity cooked, and deliciousness. Thus, I present you, the internet, with an interview with one Raechel the Chili Master, followed by her chili instructions.

Here is Raechel, eating guacamole:

A: My dad worked a lot when my sister and I were young, and though he really enjoyed cooking, he rarely had the energy to make anything fancier than a one-pot dish. So, he’d make a delicious chili to last a few days.

Q: There are lots of different chilis out there, how did you come by your recipe?

A: Well, I’ve never really used a recipe since chili is kind of a throw-things-in-a-pot kind of dish. I actually didn’t start loving chili until going vegan and realizing that it was a quick and inexpensive way to make a vegan meal to for a bunch of friends.

Q: Do you measure stuff out or do you make it more with whatever’s around? What ingredients MUST be a part of your chili for it to be OK for you?

A: I don’t measure anything out– chili is a great opportunity to use up soon-to-be-bad veggies! As for must-have ingredients, well, you know I love hot things. (She does, I verify this.) If I’m cooking for myself I tend to use three or four times as many peppers than if I’m cooking for friends. Blame my dad.

Q: OK your chili is done. How do you serve yourself a bowl? What toppings do you like?

A: I top mine with vegan sour cream and grated Follow Your Heart cheese. I hear nutritional yeast is a delicious topping, as well. (This is actually true, nutritional yeast is an essential chili topping.)

Q: Do you put anything underneath, like rice? What role does bread play in your chili consumption, typically?

A: I don’t really like rice with my chili. I love a good french bread, though. I’ll dip bread in pretty much anything.

Q: What would be your advice to a novice chili-maker?

A: It’s really hard to screw up chili. Beans and canned tomatoes are the standard base. From there, add whatever you think tastes good!

Q: Do you feel comfortable sharing a version of your personal recipe with VeganMoFo? This is for posterity, so be honest.

A: Sure!

Good! Picture tutorial and Raechel instructions, activate!

I typically chop up a yellow or white onion, a bell pepper or two, 4-5 cloves of garlic, and some hot peppers (habaneros are my favorite, but jalapenos are a bit gentler) and throw them in the pot with a little oil to cook. When the onions are turning clear, I add spices– I like cumin, salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, and oregano– and 1/4 cup of water or so to keep it all from sticking while I stir.

I cook for a few more minutes then add canned chili beans and diced tomatoes (drain the water off of these unless you like watery chili), then turn it on low, cover it, and let it sit for forever (seriously, anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours), stirring occasionally.

If you use as many veggies as I do, you’ll want to make a big-ass pot. I think tonight I used 6 cans of beans and 3 of tomatoes. Use fewer veggies for smaller batches so that it doesn’t taste too oniony. Then again, I’m a stickler for proportions. Except for where hot peppers are concerned because you can NEVER HAVE TOO MANY! (This is frightening, since waving a jalapeno over food makes it too spicy for me.)

ALRIGHT! Thanks to the lovely Raech. And for posterity, here is a properly suited-up bowl of chili, complete with vegan sour cream and plenty of nutritional yeast:

Thanks everyone! Tune in soon for VeganMoFo: Guacamole Edition, wherein I attempt to interview Jesse about the one dish he makes: Guacamole! If he won’t do it I will just make up answers for him.

Hippocras was a spiced wine drink consumed frequently in Stuart-era England. Spiced wines aren’t so common today, but in, you know, days of yore and stuff, spiced wines were considered both delicious and medicinal. Alcohol on the whole was more widely consumed on a daily basis simply because water supplies were often impure and water had no nutritive value, and so people added interest to their daily alcoholic drinks by adding other ingredients. Ale could be combined with apple pulp, sweetening agents, and spices to make a popular beverage called lamb’s wool, and sugar and spice were added to wine to make hippocras (you can tell it was supposed to be healthy due to the name referencing Hippocrates).

To kick off VeganMoFo I am kind of cheating– this recipe was already vegan, after all– but hey, it is cool to make things from the past. Here’s the recipe I used (pared down, since I didn’t want a gallon of this stuff), from Gervase Markham’s The English Housewife, published in 1615:

To make hippocras: Take a gallon of claret of white wine, and put therein four ounces of ginger, an ounce and a half of nutmegs, of cloves one quarter, of sugar four pound; let all this stand together in a pot at least twelve hours, then take it, and put it into a clean bag made for the purpose, so that the wine may come with good leisure from the spices.

OK. Well, thankfully, my trusty book Life in Stuart England did the math on pairing down this recipe to be more in line with what would go into one bottle of wine. Here’s my lineup:

Sugar, wine verified vegan by Barnivore, mortar and pestle for grinding cloves, nutmegs to be ground by an oh-so-Stuart-era microplane grater (not pictured) ginger on the cutting board, and a big old glass jar (in lieu of a “pot”). I prepped everything and then let it sit for twelve hours, then strained it with a mesh strainer covered with a clean napkin, in lieu of a “bag made for the purpose” or whatever.

I asked my friends (pictured here, clockwise: my friend Raechel, my husband John, Raech’s husband Jesse) to be taste testers and tell me if they had an ailment that might be cured by this medicine we were drinking.

Raechel said she had allergies, John has a bad back, and Jesse claims to suffer from not enough eyelashes, or possibly insanity. My brave patients try their medicine:

Mmm! Ambivalent faces all around. The taste was described as “alcoholic Kool-Aid” and “huh.” Universally we decided it would be better hot, but if I’m making hot spiced wine I’d rather channel my efforts into making Smoking Bishop, a vastly superior beverage all around. None of my patients seemed to think the hippocras cured their ailments, but they did seem to think it was highly effective at getting them drunk, especially when paired with gin and tonics in Raech’s case, beer in Jesse’s, and absinthe in John’s. So maybe they weren’t the most reliable test subjects. Oh well! It was an experiment, fun to make, and easily disposed of down the drain where it belonged. Take that, Stuart-Era England!

And, if you are a vegan blogger is is a fact universally acknowledged that you must include pictures of your animals looking cute, here, for your edification, are my beasts:

Tubby Mc Mungus aka Telemachos aka Lemmy:

Me: What do you have to say about your new internet stardom, Lemmy? Will you be the next Maru?

Lemmy: Pie?

And my amazing, spoiled and beloved friend of eleven years, Penelope aka The Pod:

Me: Penelope, what do YOU think about internet stardom?

The Pod: zzzzzzzz

Well! Cats. And hippocras. Wish me better luck on my next experiment: Pickles!