The awesome folks over at What the hell does a vegan eat anyway? got me lusting last week, when they posted pics of a rib recipe (veganized, bien sur) from Gourmet magazine. Mmmmmm. But lacking the key ingredients (black vinegar, seitan, and the ability to deep fry things), I figured I’d take a stab at a baked tempeh version.
OMG. I bet the original version is even better, but these are yummy. The sauce reduces to a rich, savoury-sweet glaze full of ginger and caramelized shallots and garlic. I served them with steamed dandelion greens and garlic-celeriac mashed potatoes the first night, and balsamic mushrooms, cornmeal potato cakes, and a spinach/kale mixture the next. My omnivore housemate liked them a lot — he felt they really did have a certain ‘ribness’ going for them.
Damn, I’ve gone and made myself hungry.
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Yesterday I got my copy of the last Vegan Feast, Bryanna Grogan’s fantastic, recipe-packed newsletter….though at 69 pages it feels more like a small book than a newsletter! Due to personal issues she’s had to give it up and concentrate her efforts elsewhere. After five years of bringing us some of the best mock meats, faux cheeses, brunch foods, and more, that’s pretty sad news for the vegan world.
On the plus side, it looks like her blog will continue, and with luck she will also keep producing cookbooks.
Good luck, Bryanna — I hope things get better for you, and thanks for five years of such an inspirational and tasty newsletter!
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Last week C asked how my mini garden was doing. It’s doing quite well!
Let’s see…so far I have two* small planters (10×22″) filled with seeds and seedlings. There’s the spinach I started several weeks ago in one, along with a second round of spinach seeds and a mesclun mix. In the other planter I have seedling pots, which are also full of seeds — yellow beans, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, chard, turnips, coriander, chives, lemon balm, peppermint, and three kinds of basil. (Pretty ambitious given I only have a small balcony, hunh?)
The spinach are still quite wee given how long they’ve been growing — they’re just starting their first true leaves now. They seemed to stall last week, and I’m not sure why. They’re healthy-looking though.
The mesclun mix seems…eager. That third of the planter is dotted with a spray of different greens, mystery plants poking their way through to sunlight. The mystery element amuses me; I look forward to seeing what the mix actually contains.
As for the other planter, it’s also doing quite well. Both containers have clear covers, and every time I lift the one on the seedling plantery I’m hit with a wave of super-warm, moist, earthy-smelling air (which I love). The turnip and brussel sprout seeds went in last Friday, and they fairly leapt from the earth — they had seedlings up the very next day! The other seeds took a bit more time. The chard came up next, complete with glorious little red stems. The basil was next, and the opal basil seedlings are a 50-50 mixture of green and purple. Neat. =) Yesterday I saw the first hint of a bean seedling starting to emerge. Today the first tomato peeked back at me, and also the first lemon balm and coriander — a nice sight to start the day.
They’re all still tiny and young, but tending my little mini garden makes me happy each morning. They have three whole weeks to grow before it will (probably) be safe to plant them outside, so I expect to see a lot of growth in the next little while. Hmmmm…that means I’d better start sorting out permanent homes for them, doesn’t it? Otherwise they’ll have nowhere to grow three weeks from now. And I’ll be away for part of the month**. Eep!
* Of course there’s also the sprouter, which continues to produce weekly mini crops of salad sprouts. Does that count as part of the garden? And also my recently potted basil plant, and two pots of coriander and chive seeds that don’t seem to like the soil they’re in.
** Anyone know of good vegan restos in Boston?
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