Celebrating an all-natural lifestyle

Foolproof Tofu Burgers and Phone Meltdowns

So I had a breakdown on the phone with Time Warner Cable last night.

Perhaps “breakdown” is a strong word. I burst into tears and uttered the words, “please, sir, you can’t do this to me,” when I was told that no technician would be available to fix my modem until next Wednesday. Does that count?

In retrospect, this little episode should have been a welcome, and perhaps a cautionary, signal of how dependent my life has become on the whims of technology. But it didn’t feel welcome. It felt like a breakdown.

Before you decide to stage a “Gena, you’ve gotten a little too attached to blogging” intervention, let me ‘splain: it isn’t just blogging. I take a lot of work home, each and every night, and a lot of it needs to happen online. My counseling practice is, at this point, almost exclusively via email, and there are other parts of my work life that depend heavily on internet access. So, not having a working modem means a lot more than having to update my blog from the office. It means falling way behind on a lot of things I need to do in order to make a living.

And it wasn’t just that. It had been a long week: my work schedule switched around again to the insane rhythm I was keeping up at the start of this past summer. I had fifty dollars stolen from my wallet. I got dumped (over email). And it’s that time of the month.

In short, not the optimal moment for my internet to go out.

Fortunately, my heroic mother was on the line when I got off with Time Warner, and she assured me that all would be well. (And it will be: thanks to my hysteria, I have an appointment with a technician on Thursday.) She also recommended I go to sleep immediately, which was the best advice I’ve heard in ages. I tidied up my little apartment, closed all of my books and manuscript pages, and went to bed at 9:57 pm. I woke up this morning, and for once I sipped my coffee without the distraction of emails and blog reading. Instead, I gazed out my window onto Columbus Avenue, and remembered that there was a time in my life (not so long ago, really) when my early morning ritual didn’t involve frenetic internet activity. It involved a quiet appreciation of the sounds of New York City waking up.

It was really nice.

I’ll never be a person who likes to “escape.” I like being plugged into the action at every moment. Even when I travel, one of my favorite moments in the day is the moment when I have some time to write emails and check in at the office. I can’t help it; it’s just how I am. There’s pressure aplenty in our busy age to unplug and go offline and empty our minds. This is fine, but it isn’t me: I like being “on.” Still, this morning reminded me that I am capable of appreciating quiet, if not constitutionally suited to enjoy it for very long. So in a way, I’m grateful to my internet for momentarily abandoning me.

Though if my modem’s not fixed by Thursday night, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.

On to the food. Recently, I saw that Brigid had made my tofu scramble, and that she really liked it (thank you, Brigid!). This reminded me of a reader request I’d recently gotten for “tofu burgers that won’t crumble and fall apart on the grill.” According to this reader, such things are a rarity. I’d never made tofu burgers before, but it sounded like an excellent challenge to me—especially since I’ve been on a burger kick lately (still haven’t tried my chickpea and sweet potato burgers? Do it!).

My goal was to find a way to bind the burgers together without making them too dense. My solution was to use a bit of whole grains (oats) and a bit of nut/seed butter (tahini). It worked better than I could have imagined. And the taste? Thanks to carrots, nutritional yeast, and a bit of nama shoyu, these were delectable. And not even a little crumbly. Here’s how it’s all done:

Gena’s Tofu Burgers (yields 4)

12 oz tofu, extra firm and pressed if possible
2/3 cup oatmeal
2 tbsp tahini
2 small carrots, grated
2 small stalks celery, chopped
¼ cup nooch
1 tbsp + 1 tsp nama shoyu, tamari, or soy sauce

1) Mix all ingredients in a food processor. You’ll want to begin by pulsing, and then let the motor go till it’s all well mixed and fairly uniform.

2) Shape into patties.

3) Heat a skillet or grill pan (or, if you don’t live in an apartment with the kitchen the size of a shoebox, heat up your grill), and grill the burgers until each side is crispy and golden brown.

4) Serve, if you’d like, with salad and avocado strips—because what isn’t made better with avocado?

These burgers were a shining example of how wonderful it is that I have readers who write in with requests for food. I’d never have thought to make them–usually, if I want a burger, I’ll make my sunshine burgers, raw or cooked—but now that I have, I imagine they’ll make a regular appearance in the CR kitchen. Thanks to all of you for continually challenging me to go outside of my routines!

And now, It’s back to work I go. I ask you all to cross your fingers and hope that I’m the proud owner of a new modem very, very soon. I already did away with my pride on the phone with Time Warner last night; I’d hate to think how pitiable I’ll get if there’s a “next time.”

xo

Curried Pineapple Salad with Tempeh

Ah, chia seeds. They never fail to elicit a reaction. Glad you guys are excited about Heathy’s pudding.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time at the Whole Foods salad bar in the last few weeks, sometimes out of necessity (lunches with friends or other publishing folk) and sometimes out of laziness (or rather, a failure to pack lunch). And then came the Summit, and two large salad beasts in as many days. One dish I’ve noticed at both the NYC and the Chicago WF’s is curried pineapple, cashew, and tempeh salad with quinoa. If I’m not mistaken, this is a whole lot like the pineapple-cashew-quinoa stirfry from Vegonomicon.

If you don’t have that cookbook, or you haven’t tried that dish, I suggest you remedy both oversights immediately. If you want to a dish that resembles Isa’s original—a flavorful medley of cashews, quinoa, pineapple, and curry—go to Whole Foods, and try their curried pineapple, quinoa, and tempeh salad. And if you like the sound of that dish, but you wish it were just a little more RAW, well then, you can try out the salad below.

See, I tasted the Whole Foods salad a week or two ago, and I was very impressed. But the raw veggie fiend in me couldn’t help but wish that it were more about the raw veggies, and less about the quinoa. (Not that I don’t love quinoa. I think we know that I do.) I wondered whether or not I might steal the trio of curry, pineapple, and tempeh, but turn them into a dinner salad, rather than a pilaf.

Mission. Accomplished. This killed two birds with one stone fed two birds with one scone (thanks, Mama Pea and Bitt!): 1) I created yet another fruity salad dressing and 2) I did justice to the Whole Foods dish while all the while upping the veggie factor at least threefold. I love it when recipe development is this easy.

I don’t much like pineapple, so at first I questioned whether or not to include it as an ingredient at all. But I couldn’t deny that the pineapple chunks had added a nice flavor to the WF dish. Rather than chopping up fruit and throwing it in the salad, I figured I’d make a pineapple dressing for my veggies: pineapple flavor, but not too much of it. As it turns out, this is one of my favorite new dressings, and an added bonus is that I got to use some of the lovely Spice House curry powder that I got in my HLS swag bag.

The salad itself, while perfect for this dressing, is a fresh and healthy mix that would work with any old vinaigrette (it would be especially fun with my spicy Thai dressing!).

Curried Pineapple Salad with Tempeh (salad serves 1; dressing yields 2 cups)

For the dressing:

2 cups pineapple, chopped
5 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp nama shoyu
2 tsp curry
1/4 cup cilantro

Blend all ingredients in a blender till smooth.

For the salad:

1 cup watercress
1 cup baby arugula
1 grated carrot
1/2 cup grated red cabbage
small handful pea shoots, chopped
4 oz baked tempeh (instructions below)
1 tbsp almond slivers

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Take 4 oz of raw, cubed tempeh, and toss it in 1 tbsp nama shoyu mixed with 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar and 1 tsp agave. Place tempeh in a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes, till cooked through.

2) Mix all salad ingredients, including hot tempeh, together. Dress with a few tablespoons of pineapple curry dressing, and serve.

See how full of green this salad is? Far more interesting than a uniformly beige sea of quinoa and tempeh:

This is a great example of a high-raw dinner: more focused on raw veggies than a typical dinner entree might be, but featuring one warm ingredient. If you’d like to make it all raw, you could simply add more almonds to the dish for density, or you could try crumbling a Larabar on top of the dressed salad. That sounds pretty amazing to me, and I think I’m going to try it out in the next few days! I always enjoy the challenge of taking an almost all cooked meal and making it just a little more raw. It’s an easy way to get more of the crispy fruits and veggies I love into my diet, and also to impose some creativity on my kitchen routines.

Before I go, a survey: who’s already tried my dehydrator-free energy bars, and found that they turn into crumbly granola, rather than bars? A lot of you, I know, from recent feedback. Has anyone tried them and had the same results (solid bars) that I did? I’m polling because I want to tweak the recipe this weekend so that it holds together better, but before I do that I want to get a sense of the your home results. (Note that, if you added more fruit to the recipe, it definitely will fall apart, so your results probably aren’t representative if you did.) Lemme know, so that I can adjust things!

Have a restful evening, bloggies.

xo

Sweet Potato Chickpea Burgers

Thanks, as ever, for the sweet and thoughtful responses to my last post. Yes, my mother is a remarkable woman. And yes, there’s a faint resemblance!

A few days ago, I mentioned that staycation week featured one stellar dinner. This is it. I developed and tested the recipe a few days before heading to my mom’s, and I was thrilled when it held up to a second try. It’s delicious, filling, versatile, easy, and high in protein, and it’s perfect for omnivores. It features two of my favorite foods — sweet potatoes and chickpeas — and you can make it either in the oven or on the stovetop. Impressed yet? The recipe is for sweet potato and chickpea burgers, and it’s destined to become a staple for me.

Most of the bean burgers I’ve experimented with have been make with whole or mashed beans. This recipe features chickpea flour (I used the Bob’s Red Mill brand, but you can probably find others), so that the texture of the finished burger is crispy on the outside and slightly soft on the inside. Could you substitute actual beans? Probably, but you’d probably have to tweak the recipe in other ways, so if you want to make this particular burger at home, go ahead and invest in the chickpea flour. It’s very versatile; if you have leftover, you can make some socca!

Sweet Potato Chickpea Burgers (yields 2 burgers — enough for 1 or 2 people, depending on appetite)

2 small yams or sweet potatoes
1/3 cup chickpea flour
2 heaping tablespoons flax meal
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp dijon mustard (optional)
1/4 cup fresh parsley, or 1 tbsp dried parsley (optional)
Dash pepper

1) Bake or steam sweet potatoes till tender. Remove skins, and scoop flesh into a food processor fitted with the S blade.

2) Add remaining ingredients to food processor and pulse to combine. Scrape the sides of the bowl down and process again, adding as much water as you need to make the mix smooth and uniform. Careful here! If you add even a tablespoon too much, you’ll end up with a dough that’s too soft to form into patties. Add the water sloooowly.

3) Stop as soon as the mix is even, and shape it into two burgers. You can either

• bake the burgers at 375 for about twenty-five minutes, or
• spray a pan with coconut oil and grill them on each side till crispy and cooked through. I prefer the texture from baking, but either works!

4) Enjoy!

My mother was mighty dubious when I told her we were having sweet potato burgers for dinner; lord knows what she expected! So I watched with nervous anticipation as she began to eat. You can imagine how thrilled I was when she looked up, smiled, and, with a mouth still full of her very first bite, exclaimed “mmmm!” Success! It always makes me happy to feed my mom something that she loves.

The fact that I also loved the taste was a nice bonus.

If you’ve already tried and enjoyed my homemade sunshine burgers, I suggest you start rotating this recipe into the mix. It won’t dissapoint!

So tomorrow at noon I head out to the Windy City for the HLS. I can’t believe the weekend has snuck up on me so quickly! I can’t wait to see so many of my blogger friends, and to meet quite a few others with whom I’ve only corresponded so far. I can’t wait for the weekend to begin.

As you guys know, I’ll also be presenting at the summit on Saturday afternoon (the schedule is online here). Caitlin and I are moderating a talk called Stop Staring Over Your Shoulder. The focus of our presentation will be the danger of self-comparison in the blog world. Can reading food blogs make us susceptible to food fads or diet pressure? Can they instill a sense of pressure to undertake superwoman fitness routines? How can they be directly linked to such conditions as orthorexia? We hope it will be a tough and hard hitting presentation, with tons of audience feedback (so if you’re attending on Saturday, start thinking of things to ask me now!). For those of you at home, the summit will be streaming live. I’ll be sure to post info on that after a full recap of my first day in Chi-Town later tomorrow night.

For now, enjoy your Fridays!

xo

Vegan Blueberry Pancakes, Stuffed Peppers, and Well Lit Kitchens

Never invite me over to cook for you. I will take over your kitchen.

I will bombard you with grocery bags full of dark, leafy greens:

And exotic whole grain breads (Mom hates Ezekiel, so I brought French Meadow hemp bread):

And bizarre appliances (that’s my Tribest blender in there, get your minds out of the gutter):

I will spill nutritional yeast on your countertops, I will banish your Splenda, and I will replace your Smart Balance with Earth Balance. All in a days work.

My mother, on the other hand, greeted me with nothing but gentle kindness. Check out the kitchen spread that I arrived “home” to:

I love you, Mom.

I won’t lie: staycation hasn’t been all that restful. I worked later than planned yesterday, and I had to pop into the office today. It’s also hot as heck, which makes Mom’s and my enthusiasm for touristy stuff a little low. The solution, of course, has been to lie on the sofa all evening watching bad movies. And that is precisely what we’ve done.

Thank you for all of your wonderful dinner suggestions yesterday! I may not get to all or even some of these in the next day or so, but you can bet they’re all going into my vault of “must make soon” vegan food. I was also amused at how my readers and I seem to love so many of the same foods: hummus, tempeh, whole grain pasta, nooch, roast veggies, curries, etc. No wonder we all like to hang out virtually.

So what did I end up making for dinner #1? An old tried and true: stuffed peppers. What I wanted to do with this recipe was make it a little “cheesy”; Mom has cut down dramatically on dairy, and eats almost no cheese at all these days (go Mom!) but I sense that she still misses it. Since all raw vegans have made at least one “cheesy” sauce that involved nooch and red peppers, I thought I’d transfer that principle to a rice and bean medly, and then bake it in two bell peppers. It worked out well. Here’s the crowd pleasing recipe:

Cheesy Vegan Stuffed Peppers (serves 2)

2 yellow or red bell peppers
1 tsp coconut oil (substitute olive oil if that’s what you have)
1 cup brown rice, cooked
1/2 cup black or aduki beans, cooked
2 roasted and chopped red pepper halves (fresh is best, canned and organic is fine)
3 heaping tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp tomato paste (organic, por favor! I like Muir Glen)
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp Bragg’s (or 1/4 tsp sea salt)
Black pepper to taste

1) Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Chop the tops off of your two peppers, and then remove the seeds and any white pith. Spray a baking pan and put the peppers on it. Stick them in the oven so that they can begin to cook.

2) Heat coconut oil in a skillet and add the brown rice, beans, and peppers, stirring rapidly until they’re warmed through.

3) Add 3-4 tbsp water to the skillet, along with the nooch, the tomato paste, the cumin, the Bragg’s (or salt), and pepper to taste.

4) When everything is well mixed, it ought to look something like this.

As soon as it’s thoroughly warmed through, remove it from the heat. Stuff the mixture into the peppers and return them to the oven. Cook for another 15-25 minutes, or until the peppers are starting to look soft and a little brown at the edges.

The resulting dish is flavorful and comforting. It’s also filling and loaded with protein, which means that moms who are used to eating omnivorously will probably feel satisfied with the dish! I know my Mom was.

I put hummus on top of mine. Why? Because I put hummus on everything.

For our sides, we decided on a summery and slightly Southern theme, alliteration not intended. First, Mom boiled some corn, which we served plain with a touch of Earth Balance.

And to get our greens in, I decided to make my “cheater’s” braised collards. These are collard greens that taste sweet enough to have been cooked for a good long time, but actually take no more than a few minutes. The trick is to flash steam the collards before you give them a sautee — this allows you to retain some texture and brightness while imparting plenty of flavor (there is nothing that creeps me out more than dark green/brownish collards–ICK).

Cheater’s Braised Collards (serves 2 people who really like dark leafies)

Begin with a small head of collard greens. Wash them all, remove the toughest and thickest stems, and then slice them into ribbons, like so:

Next, steam the collards in a colander or simply a sieve that’s been placed over boiling water until they’re still bright green, but still a little crunchy.

Heat a teaspoon or two of coconut or olive oil in a large pan. Swirl it around to coat, and add your collards. Once they’re coated with oil, you want to add a generous tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, a very generous tablespoon of agave nectar (or maple syrup) and tamari or sea salt to taste (I actually used about 4-5 squirts of Bragg’s). Continue to swirl them around till they’re well coated and taste salty/sour/sweet. Yum.

All together, it was a perfect summertime dinner. And Mom even loved her collards. (If I can get her to love kale next time, I’ll really celebrate.)

In the meantime, I celebrated with corn on the cob, and Mom celebrated by stealing my camera for embarrassing candid photos.

Thanks Mom.

The next morning, I awoke to the cozy and welcoming sight of my Mom’s lovely, light-filled kitchen. I love my little kitchen, and I’d never trade it in, but I have forgotten how nice it is to cook in the light of day (my kitchen window looks out onto a stuffy air shaft).

I had also forgotten (since I’m a French press snob) how nice it is to make coffee by flipping a switch.

And I had forgotten — but was grateful to remember — that Mom also likes coffee that’s strong enough to burn a hole in your stomach wake you up quickly.

After a brief gym gaunt, I got to making some blueberry vegan pancakes. I am not a baker or pancake maker by nature — I usually mess up — but these basic vegan pancakes have always given me a pretty generous margin of error.

Vegan Blueberry Pancakes (yields 6 large pancakes, or 2 servings)

2/3 cup spelt or whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tbsp flax seed dissolved in 1 1/2 tbsp water (this is what vegan bakers call a “flax egg”)
dash salt
2 tsps agave nectar
2 tsps coconut or olive oil
3/4 cup rice, soy, or almond milk (I like rice milk in this recipe)
1/4 cup blueberries

Mix all ingredients but the blueberries together till wet and incorporated, but not over mixed.

If you’re a perfectionist, you might want to add the blueberries to the tops of your pancakes as soon as they hit the griddle. If you’re not (I’m not, at least not with pancakes), add them once the mix is mixed.

Heat a griddle over a medium flame and spray with coconut oil or olive oil cooking spray. Drop the batter in 1/4 cup blobs onto the griddle.

The key to making perfect pancakes — or at least, pancakes that aren’t a giant mess — is to really try hard not to touch them for a bit once they hit the griddle. As soon as you see lots of air bubbles rising to the tops of the side that’s facing you, you can test the edges. If they feel solid, carefully pry your spatula underneath the pancake, and flip!

Leave it on side #2 till the pancake is obviously cooked through, and continue till batter is used up. You should have six large pancakes.

Serve with earth balance (if desired) and agave (Mom’s plate).

Or, if you’re me, smother them in banana and a touch of real maple syrup (yum).

My opinion was that the pancakes were pretty great. Mom liked them, but thought they had too many blueberries. I sort of agree, but then…the blueberries are my favorite part

Coffee, vegan pancakes, and a heated discussion about French literature. It was a standard morning in my Mom’s house.

After our chat, my Mom paused and said, “you made food you thought I’d really like last night. I appreciate that.” For a moment I wondered what she meant–don’t I always try to make her stuff she’ll like?–and then it was obvious: as much as I love to cook for my Mom, I do have the habit of infiltrating her apartment with heaps of raw kale, raw soups, and raw zucchini slices filled with cashew cheese. She’s pretty open minded, but some of my more “out there” uncooking–though dear to my heart–is a little hardcore for her. These crowd pleasers are better offerings to make, and Mom, I’ll be happy to make many more.

But you’re still getting massaged kale salad every Christmas eve, Mom. Sorry.

Stay tuned for more staycation 2010, and have a great Friday!

xo

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