When I visited mom earlier this year I made seitan and didn’t eat it all while I was here. It’s the vcon recipe and I froze it with the broth and all.

Merry Christmas!

What to make at mom’s…cutlets, mustard sauce, corn, baked potatoes…oh yeah. Now where the heck did she put her copy of the Veganomicon? In the end I couldn’t find it, so I had to pull out my awesome Amazon Kindle where I have yet another copy of the vcon for just such travel emergencies.
I wanted to make the vcon chickpea cutlets, but despite mom’s wealth of pantry goodies, there were no chickpeas to be had. So I subbed some kidney beans. The wheat gluten might have been a billion years old and the breadcrumbs a little stale, but in the end I got something resembling a cutlet. I thought I’d give the vcon mustard sauce a try and I’m so glad I did. Mom didn’t have any sherry, so we found some dry vermouth (probably older than me) which worked just fine.
Mom stocked up on vegan goodies for me. There’s some vegenaise, follow your heart cheddar cheese, earth balance and soy milk! Surprisingly, all came from the local supermarket not known for exotic ingredients. I’m impressed.
Merry Christmas Eve and have a wonderful holiday!

Yeah, this little disaster was brought on by Vogue. I was opening the magazine out of it’s plastic packaging when it burst out onto my keyboard cracking off the letter I. Veg News would never do this to me.

Um, it does make 12, but I had to test one before sending these puppies out to take over the world. Yum.

Fastest meal ever.

Celebration field roast with mushroom risotto, mushroom gravy, and squash.

OK, so according to google maps King Arthur Flour is 247 miles from my house, so we’re going with a local food shed of 250 miles! Rock on. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I want to use the vital wheat gluten to make seitan count as local. I love KAF anyway because it is a great company.

I also joined a CSA for 2009 and will be picking up a surprise package every week of all kinds of locally grown veggies and fruit when it’s finally in season-OK around June. It’ll be like an iron chef challenge every week!

A CSA (community supported agriculture) is where a farm sells shares of produce before the season starts. Then when the produce is harvested, the farmer packs up a box of whatever is picked each week of the growing season and gives it out to the participants. I pay money in December so the farmer can buy the seeds and stuff, then around June, I’ll pick up a box of fruit and veggies each week. It works out to about $40 a week for veggies, fruit, and corn. Find one near you…http://www.localharvest.org/

So today’s local meal is going to be pizza! Since I don’t have any tomatoes saved from summer, I’m going back to my trusty pesto that reared it’s head in last week’s spaghetti squash. Also roasting a carnival squash.

Basic pizza dough recipe

1 cup water
1-2 TBS olive oil (optional)
1-2 tsp sugar (optional)
3 Cups all purpose flour
3 TBS vital wheat gluten (optional)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp or 1 packet yeast

Mix all ingredients together and knead until smooth elastic ball forms. Coat large bowl with olive oil and place in kneaded dough. Let rise until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down and knead briefly into ball. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. For 4 personal pizzas, divide dough into 4 pieces and roll out to desired thickness. Place on baking sheet, top with sauce and (vegan) cheese and desired toppings. Bake 10 min.

Pesto
1 Heaping (Lovin‘) Spoonfull each
Chopped basil (mine was frozen with olive oil)
Nut butter (I used almond from Tierra Farms)
Olive oil
Big pinch or so of salt
1 clove of garlic

The lighting in my kitchen bites, but pizza 1 is mashed squash spread on the dough and dollops of pesto and pizza 2 is the bizarro version with pesto spread on the dough and pieces of roasted squash on top. Both are sprinkled with Penzey’s Pizza seasoning.

Yeah, I just ate fried spaghetti for breakfast. It was kinda awesome. I made the pasta for lunch yesterday by mixing the artichoke dip with the sauce from the lasagna. The combination made both better.

I heart New York. I just had two days of fun with friends.

Followed up by watching my friend sing Iberian Christmas songs in a chorus at St. Patrick’s cathedral on the lower east side.

Then we went to see Spring Awakening. It was really good, but let me just say, don’t see this with your parents or on a first date. I’ve seen Avenue Q, and the uncomfortableness of puppet sex is nothing compared to the teen lust of the first few songs of Spring Awakening. The performance was great. The main guy was Hunter Parrish from Weeds. Duncan Sheik won a Tony for the music. Every time I go see a show, I can’t believe how I don’t do this more often. There are tons of ways to get cheap tickets in New York and with so many shows closing, I’m going to have to make more efforts to support the arts. Next, I’ll have to go see Harry Potter naked in Equus.

I was given the coveted proximidade award by Joanna and Pixiepine.Here’s a little info about this award:
“This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY – nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

Last week when I was defrosting my ancient freezer, I forgot to put back the bag of artichokes, so they’ve been thawed in the fridge all week. They’re still good, but I needed to use them now.

I found the artichoke sunflower spread in Robin Robertson’s Vegan Planet. I had some raw sunflower seeds and the time to soak them, so this was a snap.
The only thing is that the recipe calls for 2 cloves of garlic, and I wasn’t thinking that this isn’t cooked, so I picked 2 giant cloves of garlic. Tastes yummy, but I am definitely keeping the vampires away. Hopefully, I’m keeping a cold away, too. Anyway, err on the side of 2 smallish to normal garlic cloves for polite company. I also used celery salt for the salt since I have that giant overdog salt from the snarky vegan. I spread it on some crackers and topped with a little smoked paprika to make it pretty. This would be great to take to a pot luck or holiday party!

In addition to the giant Vegan Planet, Fire and Spice, and other books, Robin is seeking testers for her new cookbook of 1000 vegan recipes. I hope she picks me to help out! Check out her site Vegan Planet for the details.

Sometimes I do plan ahead. I had chopped up some summer basil with olive oil and stashed it in the freezer for just such an occasion. This is my first attempt at spaghetti squash, and although clearly it’s meant to come out in strands like spaghetti, it was kind of hard to get a good pile that actually looked like spaghetti in a photo. The pesto squash is paired with some fresh local off the stalk Brussel sprouts and a local Cabernet Franc from Millbrook winery.

My squash was already warmed from baking, so I just mixed it with the pesto and voila; lunch.

The brussel sprouts were roasted with some olive oil and I just added a bit more oil and some fresh local rosemary, sage and seasoned salt to dress them. They’re just as good mixed in with the pesto squash.

As I said before, the dark days challenge is not vegan, but locavore. Vegans are representing in the East (me), South (Brett and Jennifer) and 2 from the West Chessa and Bethany. The challenge is to try to make and write about 1 meal a week that is 90% local during the dark days of winter.