the truculent vegetable

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So head over HERE. Please and thank you! =)

Or some approximation of the above. Basically, my idea of a Korean pancake is to make some type of batter, put kimchee and mushrooms it in and cook it.

I still have kimchee hanging around my fridge so I really wanted to use it up somehow.

The first time I did these things I used this lovely recipe here. I really liked the idea of using mung beans instead of flour. My only mistake was using beans that still had their hull things on them. Once ground up, it didn't affect the texture, but it made them green.  Which was totally fine by me but yeah.. .some people get turned off by the green colour. Can't imagine why.

Anyway, today I wanted to do them again (because I STILL have kimchee hanging around) but I didn't have nay beans (besides, even if I did, I couldn't make them today because the beans take forever to soak. Forever = over night). BUT then I remembered that I saw THIS recipe here. This one called for flour, water, eggs and assorted other stuff. Having flour, egg replacer stuff and assorted other things, I decided to go with this recipe. And can I say, I love this method for flipping big pancakey things over. It works so well (even if I nearly burned my hand off).

And hey, look! I remembered to take a pic of it!

I'm not a huge fan of spinach in general. Raw spinach tastes bitter to me and cooked spinach looks.. gross...

But then I saw THIS AWESOME RECIPE recipe and I had all this left over spinach because people keep buying spinach in my house so....I decided to try it.

OMG IS IT EVER GOOD.

So good that I've now had it two days in a row and I ate it all up before I could go find my camera to take a picture of it.

I know this is a rather lame post but I just HAD to share my enthusiasm for this super awesome and simple recipe. Now I need to go buy more spinach! Whooooooo!

I even had all the pictures ready and I promptly forgot to post them. Silly hockey getting in my way again.

ANYWAY!

First off is crisp dulse! Dulse is this awesome seaweed that sort of resembles bacon almost once it's been fried. Basically when you buy it, it's a little smooshy so you just put some oil in a frying pan, turn the heat to around medium, put the dulse in the pan and fry it until it's (a different shade) of brown. Takes a couple of minutes. I initially used the dulse with these twice baked potatoes (the recipe's from the Conscience Cook) but then I discovered that the dulse is still super awesome by itself. If quite salty.

I also did this potato recipe which comes from SeasaltwithFood. (the link takes you to the recipe). Was super pleased to find out that you could boil and fry (erm, attempt to fry in my case) potatoes in the same pan!


AND FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm a huge fan of smoothies (just not a huge fan of having to haul out all the ingredients to make it all the time). I made this one using cashew cream (another "recipe" from the Conscious Cook which involves blending pre-soaked cashews) and a bunch of frozen fruit I had in the freezer. SO GOOD. And such an easy way to down those otherwise mostly yucky nuts!

So I found a cat. I can't keep the cat 'cause everyone has allergies and I have a lot of non-cat compatible animals. Anyway, being the responsible person that I am when it comes to my animals, I took this cat (who I dubbed Anze after Anze Kopitar of the LA Kings) to a new cat near me. Now, I'm not exactly picky about my vets. I feel that I don't have to like them on a personal level a lot, but as long as they do an adequate job with my animals, I will keep going to them.

Well... when the conversation runs thus:

Vet: (after some lecture on how cats can't eat venison or salmon) venison tastes really gamey. I'm sure you know...?
Me: uh, I'm a vegan.
Vet: I live with a vegetarian and let me tell you, if she ever went vegan, I would kill her.
Me:  *sits and listens to a whole spiel on killing vegans whilst wondering if the vet is ever going to look at the cat*

... needless to say, I wasn't a happy camper after this conversation. I'm thankful the cat isn't staying with me so I won't have to deal with this vet ever again.

I get a little tired and irked by these lectures I get some people. Particularly people who have no business giving me a lecture about it. You're not my doctor, or my parents or anybody who should give a hoot about what I eat. If you want to eat meat, that's fine. I don't hate you because of it. I don't judge you because of it. I might judge you for acting like a jerk and charging me over $200 in mostly needless vet fees... But I'm not about to judge for your eating choices.

I saw this while zipping through my latest copy of Newsweek. I was surprised and interested to see that many people who called themselves vegetarians would go back to eating meat that they determined was "ethically raised". I'm not about to get on my soapbox about this. People are vegetarians for many different reasons, but this doesn't really help the cause of vegetarians who chose not to eat meat because they feel that it's wrong to eat another animal - regardless of how it's raised. 

No More Sacred Cows
By Jennie Yabroff | NEWSWEEK
Published Dec 31, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 11, 2010

The latest cookbook by Mollie Katzen, author of vegetarian bibles The Moosewood Cookbookand The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, includes recipes for spinach lasagna and vegetable tofu stir fry with orange ginger glaze. It also includes a recipe for beef stew. No, not "beef" stew, in which some soy-based protein substitute is dressed and spiced to look (and sort of taste) like meat. Beef stew. With real beef. From a cow.
Considered one of the chefs most responsible for the mainstreaming of vegetarianism in the 1970s and '80s, and a vegetarian herself for 30 years, Katzen began eating meat again a few years ago. "Somehow it got ascribed to me that I don't want people to eat meat," Katzen said. "I've just wanted to supply possibilities that were low on the food chain."

For as long as people have been foreswearing meat, they've also been sneaking the occasional corn dog. The difference is, vegetarians used to feel guilty about their sins of the flesh-consumption. Now, thanks to the cachet attached to high-end meat, they are having their burgers without sacrificing the moral high ground.
The word "flexitarian," meaning someone who mostly eats vegetarian with the occasional cheesesteak thrown in, has been around for a while. But only recently have former vegetarians been so smug about their forays to the dark side. "There is something almost primal about it," writes lapsed vegetarian Tara Austen Weaver, describing her first meat-buying expedition in The Butcher and the Vegetarian. "I haven't actually hunted dinner myself, but I set my sights and claimed the prize I sought." The "primalness" of the meat-eating (or meat-purchasing) experience comes up a lot in these conversion narratives, which inevitably take place at a quaint, family-run butcher shop. Some of these shops are even run by former vegetarians and vegans, such as Fleisher's, the upstate New York store where Julie Powell (of Julie and Juliafame) learned to carve up a steer for her forthcoming Cleaving.

Buying only grass-fed, sustainably raised (and incredibly expensive) meat allows former vegetarians to maintain the same sanctimony they expressed with their old "I don't eat anything with a face" T shirts. In response to an article by Jonathan Safran Foer about his decision to give up meat, a Brooklyn meat moralist wrote, "lovingly raised meat is not as hard to find as [Safran Foer] seems to think—at least not if you have the good fortune to live near a farmers' market. Almost all the sheep and cattle and most of the pigs and chickens raised by the farmers who sell at those markets have spent their lives in the fields, free to run, graze and root as their natures dictate." This is the argument used by born-again carnivores like Katzen: eating meat is not ethically wrong. Eating ethically wrong meat (i.e., the cheap, mass-processed, hormone-stuffed burgers and steaks that constitute 80 percent of the meat sold in the U.S.) is wrong.

While it's true that sustainably raised, grass-fed beef may be better for the consumer, it's hard to argue that it's ultimately better for the cow. What these steak apologists seem to be missing is that no matter how "lovingly" the cow was raised, no matter how much grazing or rooting he did in his life, he gave up that life to become their dinner. Carnivores who only ate the flesh of animals that had died of natural causes at the end of long, satisfying lives might have a claim to moral superiority, but what to call them? Corpsevores? And if these organic farm animals have such great lives, isn't the more humane thing to eat a cage-raised, industrially processed chicken? At least we'd be putting it out of its misery.

Find this article at
http://www.newsweek.com/id/228720
© 2010

Yesterday I still felt super inspired to cook so I made a few things...

First up was this random soup thing. I sautéed shallots, garlic and ginger. Then I added the vegetable broth and Korean chili paste (I bought some for kimchi. Will have a post about that once it's all fermented and ready to actually eat). I then put in reconstituted mushrooms (reconstituted in soy sauce), normal mushrooms, broccoli and cabbage. After a minute or so I added the noddles.



Around 4:30 I got really hungry so I just threw some tofu into the oven.



This is supposed to be like fried tofu only it's baked to make it healthier. Just pre-heat the oven to 400C, cut the tofu into squares, toss it in a bowl with some oil (I used peanut oil) and a bit of salt then put it on a pan in the oven. Flip them over after 10 mins and wait another 10 mins and then presto! Serve with soy sauce.

Now actually, I kinda lied. I was going to make couscous for dinner and I thought the tofu would be great with the couscous. only, the tofu finished cooking first and I left the couscous until later when I was following one of my multiple hockey teams.

THE COUSCOUS


(I promise i'll get better at plating my food before I take a picture of it. I'm still not used to making it actually look presentable)

What I used

1/3 cup veggie broth
1/3 couscous

Cut up veggies (red onions, red peppers, broccoli, mushrooms in my case)
minced garlic
cayenne
lime juice

olive oil for frying the veggies

Start off by cooking the couscous. It's very quick. Boil veggie broth. When it's boiled put the couscous in. Turn off the burner, put the lid on the pot and leave the pot on the burner until we need the couscous later.

While the couscous is sitting there soaking up all that veggie broth, fry the veggies (and the garlic). I really like the veggies not-mushy so I cook them at a fairly high heat until the veggies are quite brown. Add the cayenne at some point in there. Once there veggies are pretty fried, add the lime juice. Fry another min or so.

Once done, take your couscous, fluff it up a bit, put in a bowl and add the veggies on top. Voila.