Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices

Not just for foodies anymore!

Today I prepared a recipe from America's Test Kitchen's Vegan for Everybody, "Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices." This is the first blog post that satisfies my contractual obligation under the "custom themes" clause of the VeganMoFo 2017 end user license agreement. I am not a lawyer.

Lightning FAQ!
Q. Am I being sued?
A. No.

I was so excited when I learned that America's Test Kitchen was publishing a vegan cookbook this year. This publisher strives to methodically determine the best way to cook something. They will repeat a recipe a dozen times, tweaking minor aspects with each iteration until they are satisfied. They will then meticulously describe the steps necessary for their readers to create the same perfect dish. Here is an illustration of their process.

My large sauce pan is a pot.

Foodies love America's Test Kitchen's recipes. Nothing beats knowing that you have prepared a dish in the best way possible, and sharing this accomplishment with your fellow foodies. If anyone protests or nitpicks your process, you raise your bourbon and wink, "that's how America's Test Kitchen does it." Point goes to the refined gentleman with the drinking problem.

I'm not a foodie because I'm vegan. One can't really prepare or ingest great food unless an animal suffered somewhere along the way. The best foodie experiences involve the least likely parts of the most obscure animals. Like an infant jungle bird served with sauteed bits of its nest. Or squirming cuttlefish. Or exploded goose liver. Offal.

My point is that I always envied the America's Test Kitchen books in foodies' libraries because I knew that they contained the truth about food preparation. It just wasn't the kind of food that I would prepare. Until now!

This quick and easy recipe is solid. While I love following rules, I tweaked a few things and it still turned out great. This is a strong contender for my top 10 recipe list.

Adjustments, hacks, and errors

• The recipe calls for a large sauce pan. Instinct recommended an 8 quart pot which turned out much better. There are 6 cups of liquid and 1 1/2 cups of dry lentils going in there FFS.
• The only broth I had is Better Than Bouillon's standard concentrate. It's darker than the chicken-style broth the recipe calls for. I think it turned out great anyway.
• I added all 4 tablespoons of olive oil at the beginning. I was only supposed to add 2, and reserve the other two for the spiced oil drizzle. So this recipe ended up with 5 or 6 tablespoons of delicious olive oil instead.
• I didn't rinse the lentils. They came in a hermetically sealed space bag looking perfect, so it didn't even occur to me. This resulted in some initial froth while simmering, but everything worked out ok.
• I didn't have any dried mint. I actually looked for it at Safeway, slightly skeptical that such a thing could be purchased. It couldn't. Instead, I got fresh mint and put it in a foil-lined lasagna pan and baked it for 10 minutes at 250 degrees F. Turned out great.
• Only needed a touch more lemon and salt at the end. 

This is a delicious soup. The lentils and onions had a nice bite. The spiced oil drizzle added some dark heat. Will do again.

Thank you, America's Test Kitchen.

Out of Retirement And Off The Rails #veganmofo2017

My last post on this blog was nearly six years ago. It was the first part of a series on brewing vegan beer (aka "beer"). I think the second part of this series is still in my drafts folder. I'll spare you further suspense: the beer was really good and it got me hooked on brewing my own! I have not brewed beer since.

I have announced a custom theme!

In a manic bout of web surfing over the summer I signed up for VeganMoFo 2017. I may not have been sober then, but I assure you I'm painfully sober now. So here I am, keeping my promise.

My theme this month is to prepare a daily recipe out of America's Test Kitchen: Vegan For Everybody, a book I'm excited about for a number of reasons. (I really can't wait to talk about it.) The screenshot from the very top of the VeganMoFo Themes page confirms that I have officially committed to this topic. So without further ado, I present to you Scrambled Tofu from the first edition of Isa Moskowitz's Vegan With A Vengeance!

Wat.

Let me back up. I shuffled into the kitchen this evening while my wife (I married a woman since my last post) was preparing a tofu scramble for dinner. She was "going to wing it," a strategy that made me wince. We have an impending avalanche of cookbooks stacked in the kitchen specifically so that we never have to "wing it." She sensed my discomfort and assured me that she had quickly flipped through an Oh She Glows coobook looking for a scramble recipe, but failed to find one. Fine. This is the kind of suffering you must quietly endure to maintain a happy marriage.

While my daring wife was chopping an onion, some chitchat ensued and we settled on the familiar topic of whether we would ever feed the cats again. We concluded that it was possible they might eat this week, because we ordered special food promoting anal gland health and it was due to arrive on October 4th.  My wife looked up from the growing pile of onion bits and asked, "What's today? The 2nd?" "Pfffft," I replied, always a step ahead, "it's the 1st." This is when I realized that I had to write a blog post.

"I'll cook!" I quickly offered. "I wonder if there's a scramble recipe in the new America's Test Kitchen cookbook." The book was handy, having stood patiently on the kitchen counter since it arrived months ago. I flipped to the back and found two entries under "tofu": Tofu Scramble with Bell Pepper, Shallot, and Herbs; and Tofu Scramble with Tomato and Scallions.

"We don't have any of those things," my wife stated.

I looked at the onion pile that was clearly going to be the central ingredient in whatever we would make. Then it struck me: Isa's Scrambled Tofu. We almost always had the basic ingredients for that. It starts with a ton of onions and mushrooms and ends with satisfaction, every time.  There are plenty of other days in the month for ATC:VFE. Surely my faithful audience would understand.

I helped my wife tease the first edition of Vegan with a Vengeance out of our Jenga library. (We have the new edition, too, but this exact book is the one that taught me how to cook like a human back in 2005. It's special.) Scrambled Tofu was clearly marked by a pink post it and years of accumulated scramble splatter. I asked my wife to shovel the onion pile into the pan and bid her withdraw into the parlor. I was about to follow some rules.

Having made this recipe countless times, there were few surprises. I used Wildwood firm tofu, which is a bit dry and required adding about a cup of water while simmering. I added broccoli at the same time as the tofu, and it cooked nicely. I forgot to saute the garlic with the onions, a pretty rookie mistake. I added it early into the simmering phase and no one got hurt, thank God. I definitely missed the classic tang of hot, oily garlic, but the sweeter notes of simmered garlic weren't bad.  I served it with Field Roast breakfast links and grilled toast.

Looking back at my early posts, this recipe was also the subject of the 7th blog post I ever made, during the very first VeganMoFo. So it's a good recipe to come out of retirement with.

Vegan Home Brew: Part 1, The Wort

I got my shit together and completed the first step of my first batch of home-brewed beer. As I mentioned in an earlier post, several of my dearest friends got together and bought me an avalanche of beer brewing equipment. The only missing ingredient was... ingredients. For that, I went to the closest home brewing supply shop, San Francisco Brew Craft. The place was smaller than I expected, and I instantly found myself in front of the hirsute dude working behind the counter. He greeted me with, "hey, what's up?" and before I finished explaining that I needed ingredients he'd already started filling out a hot pink "Beer Recipe and Brewing Instructions" sheet. I told him I was thinking about a pale ale a little less hoppy than Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. He scribbled a couple more things on the sheet and started shoveling ingredients from bulk containers around the shop. This was a pleasant surprise, as I had expected to be handed a dense box of pre-selected ingredients. Instead, I was getting a customized set of ingredients and brewing instructions! I was out of there in under 15 minutes, a mere $42 poorer.

I had prepared for Brew Day by reading SF Brewcraft's brewing instructions and the first chapter of "How To Brew," which came with my brewing supplies. I also watched Homebrew Heaven's awesome "Getting Started Homebrewing" DVD, wherein Chris and Don demonstrate the rudiments of brewing and bottling your own beer. (I watched this video repeatedly, mostly for my fascination of the cheap porn production quality.) Finally, I talked to my good friend and brewing veteran Dave for reinforcement.

Despite all this preparation, the whole process seemed to take all day. It took forever to heat the wort, and then to bring it to a boil after adding the malt extract. Then it took forever to cool it down to "pitching" temperature, which was a little higher than ideal due to my impatience. Consequently, I rehydrated my yeast about an hour too soon, but assured myself that yeast is a hearty little organism and wouldn't mind waiting for all the delicious sugar I was about to feed it. When I pounded the lid on the fermenter and stuck the airlock into its hole I really had no idea if I had succeeded. I had to wait for a couple days to know for sure.

And man, did I succeed! The airlock was bubbling along happily in the second and third days (see the video!), and calmed down toward the end of the week. The beginning of the week enjoyed ridiculously hot weather (high 70s!), so the beer didn't hit ideal fermenting temperatures for a couple days. I left it near an open window with a temperature-activated fan to keep things between 68 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm pretty confident that this is going to turn out well.



Next episode: Secondary Fermentation.

I Made Chocolate Chip Cookies

There was no soy milk, so I ate them with beer.

I finally made something with my own two hands for VeganMoFo 2011.  I decided to cease posting boring, every-day fast food simply for the sake of posting something.  The rest of my October posts will discuss stuff that I made myself.  (Exceptional exceptions excepted.) Consequently, this is my last October post.  JUST KIDDING.  Probably.

So, back to cookies. I used to make chocolate chip cookies all the time throughout my adolescence. While my peers were playing sports and making out, I was getting high and chubby on cookies. My parents got a microwave/convection oven back in the late 80s and we all thought that it was the shit.  It came with a cookbook that showcased some of the amazing things you could do with this cutting-edge technology.  One of the recipes therein was an ordinary chocolate chip cookie recipe that exploited none of this technology.  It was a straight-up, dependable recipe that I used to pump out hundreds of perfect chocolate chip cookies.  (By "pump out," I mean, "pump through my digestive system.")  Then, one day, I grew up and became vegan.

Since being vegan, I've made chocolate chip cookies about three times.   The first time, I adapted that wonderful recipe from my youth.  The results were disappointing.  I tried a couple vegan-ready recipes after that.  Shrugworthy.  Finally, I tried the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking.  Oh, em, gee.  They turned out so well.  They were lightly crunchy on their perimeters, chewy at their epicenters.  I shaved a minute off the bake time with each of the three batches and the last one was the best.

I was curious about the Internet's opinion of this recipe, so I did an image search.  It's certainly popular.  But I'm surprised by their wild variation.  Mine definitely turned out darker than others'.  Maybe that's because I used golden brown sugar instead of light brown. Well, I don't care;  I'm just glad that I can resume pumping chocolate cookies through my digestive system.

Herbivore's Grilled Soy Chicken Sandwich on Focaccia

Did you know that Ansel Adams was a failed
food photographer?

Yes, another fricking sandwich. Hey, it's what I ate.  I'm just being honest.

The thing about living a couple blocks away from Herbivore for most my vegetarian life is that I have eaten almost everything on their menu.  That's bad because the menu no longer holds delightful surprises.  It's good because I have confidently isolated three menu items that rarely disappoint me: the Southwestern Scrambled Tofu, the Sandwich Featured In The Title Of This Blog Post, and a Third Item To Be Disclosed In A Future Blog Post.  This sandwich makes the list simply because the soy chicken is tangy.  It's coated in a delicious garlic-lemon sauce, and it's perfect.  It even comes with Herbivore's signature Absurdly Copious Side Salad!

Another Hand-held Meal

Tonight I made a variation on Eastern Capital Sandwich.  It's a real lazy person's home-cooked meal; all you really have to do is assemble some simple things in the right order and, before you know it, you're looking at a sloppy pile of delicious.  My secondary neighborhood rip-off health food store's green peppers looked like crap today, so I used red peppers and jalapeños instead. I grilled some Alvarado St. Sprouted Rye in place of a roll.  The fries were frozen Cascadian Farms; nothing special there.  It was very difficult to eat using conventional sandwich techniques, so I fell-back on a fork and knife.  Still delicious.

The Plant Cafe's Beety Burger

For lunch today I got a Plant Burger to go from The Plant Cafe at 101 California. The Plant Cafe has three locations in San Francisco, but for as long as I can remember Google has not acknowledged this one. Try for yourself: go to maps.google.com and search for "plant cafe san francisco." You'll get the other two locations only. This is very frustrating, because I stopped remembering numbers, names, and places several years ago when I got my first iPhone. A rare alignment of luck and miracle helped me find it today, and the reward was significant; The Plant Burger is delicious. It's hearty in flavor, but light in matter. You could probably eat two and still be able to walk back to work fully upright. There's a bunch of other vegan stuff on their menu but I didn't really pay much attention; this is the go-to to go item. (Oh, and don't worry--that undocumented dollop of white stuff is Veganaise.)

A Vegan, Pre-packaged Starbucks Food?

Photo stolen from starbucks.com

A few months ago I noticed a new product in the Starbucks display case, a "Sesame Noodles Bistro Box." There were other "bistro boxes" from this new product line in the case, but this one grabbed my attention because it wasn't obviously vegan-hostile.  It threw a wrench into my daily routine.

Typically, I peek in the Starbucks on 2nd Street to see if it's ridiculously crowded.  If it is, I walk a diagonal block to the Starbucks on New Montgomery.  I usually stand in line for about 2 and a half minutes at the lesser-crowded franchise.  I play some Words with Friends while I'm at the tail of the line, but I gradually lose my tenuous connection to the AT&T network as the shortening line draws me deeper inside.  When my phone is rendered useless, I turn my attention to the broad array of vegan-hostile baked goods, sandwiches, and pre-packaged nonsense in the display case.  This exercise keeps my contempt for Starbucks at a healthy level. It reminds me that I have no affinity for the Starbucks "brand;" it's simply the most efficient source of caffeine available to me in the monotonous system that defines my professional existence.

Then there's this new "bento box."  I actually reached into the display case and withdrew the product for closer examination.  I scrutinized the ingredients.  It looked pretty damn vegan, though the "sesame peanuts" were questionable.  You can list sesame seeds as an ingredient, or you can list peanuts as an ingredient.  But "sesame peanuts" is suspicious.  What's adhering the sesame seeds to the peanuts, exactly? Dried cane sugar solution?  Kangaroo lactate?  Fortunately, Starbucks lists the complete ingredients on their site:

sesame ginger noodle salad (water, broccoli, semolina durum flour [niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], cucumbers, sugar snap peas, roasted peanuts, carrots, lettuce, red bell pepper, sprouted soybeans, sugar, 2% or less of: cabbage, soybeans, whole wheat, sesame seeds, salt, nigari [magnesium chloride (a natural firming agent), calcium sulfate], wheat flour, sesame oil, ginger, modified cornstarch, xanthan gum, lactic acid, spices, jalapeno peppers, green onions, cilantro, garlic, dried onion, tomato paste, cornstarch, rice vinegar, brown rice syrup, rice wine, vegetable oil [sunflower, palm and/or canola], lime juice, dried orange pulp, extract of mushroom, alcohol [to preserve freshness], sodium benzoate [preservative], guar gum). dark chocolate bar (cacao beans, cane sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin [an emulsifier], vanilla). 

Yet I still haven't tried this product, after all this time.  I think that, subconsciously, eating a pre-packaged Starbucks food would be a sort of communion.  I would be taking Starbucks inside me in a different way.  I'm not sure that I'm ready for that kind of relationship with such a big, powerful corporation.  On the other hand, I feel obligated to vote for this product with my consumer dollar.

Ok, I'll try it, and I'll post the experience here.

Vegan Beer Brewing

A few of my forthcoming blog entries for VeganMoFo 2011 will document my attempt to brew some beer.  I've been muttering about brewing beer for several years, but I never seemed to get around to doing it.  Many of my beloved friends grew weary of these mutterings and collectively shipped me a home brewery for my birthday this year.  It is now time for me to stop muttering and to start brewing.

The first thing I need to do is to figure out what's vegan and what's not.  Most beer, in general, is vegan.  There are many beers that use animal products in their clarification and filtering processes, but your average home brewer is not going to employ them.  (If you're curious about the vegan-friendliness of your favorite mass-produced beers, check out www.barnivore.com.)  So far, my home brewery contains two questionable products: BTF Iodophor and Super Grunge Remover (sodium carbonate).  My cursory Web research suggests that both of these products are pretty simple chemicals with no obvious animal origin, but I e-mailed the manufacturers for the final word.  If they turn out to be non-vegan, I can fall back Five Star Star San. Here's an e-mail exchange I had with the manufacturer:

Hi!

I'm interested in using your Star San product for home brewing. However, I prefer to use products that are:

100% cruelty free (not tested on animals)
100% free of animal by-products (no animal-derived ingredients of any kind)

Can you confirm that this product meets my criteria? 

Thank you!
Stephen

To which Jon Herskovits responded via his iPhone: 

All the ingredients in star San are on the GRAS (generally recognized as safe) list. This means they don't need bunny testing. You are good to use all five star products.

Jon Herskovits

Sent from my iPhone

"Bunny testing" sounded a little patronizing, so I thought I would press for more information:

Thank you very much, Jon, for your response.  Could you also respond explicitly to my other question, about whether your products (Star San specifically) contain animal-derived ingredients?  (I intend to share this information with readers of my blog, by the way.)

I really appreciate your time,
Stephen

To which I finally got a satisfactory, if terse, response:

No they are not animal derived.

Sent from my iPhone

 Thank you, Jon!  I feel bad about pestering him while he's on the go, but it's worth it to move forward with confidence in this long-overdue endeavor.

I ran a half marathon!

I can't say that it was easy, but it was a lot less impossible than I imagined.  The first two miles made it clear just how long the race was.  "I only have to do this six and a half more times," I  thought.  But one mile bled into the next and eventually I passed the halfway point.  I was grateful for the pacer groups, who were clusters of runners with times posted on their backs like "3:00" and "2:45."  If you ran with them you would finish close to their posted times.  I passed 3:00 pretty early on, but I didn't see 2:45 until the very end. The last three miles were by far the most difficult, as my quads were numb and my heart rate was over 190 bpm.  (Is that even possible, by the way?  I wonder if my monitor is accurate.)

I'm proud that I raised $740 to combat animal abuse.  I'm also proud that I finished my first half marathon. And while I didn't enter the race with any competitive aspirations, I'm proud of my performance:

• Finish time: 2:42:23
• Placement: 7338 (out of around 12,000) 

How does a vegan celebrate finishing his first half marathon?  He eats a mushroom, olive, and broccoli stuffed vegan pie from Paxti's, accompanied by some delicious Sierra Nevada Tumbler Ale.  And then he takes a 16 hour nap.

A Vegan in Worcester, MA

My friends Dave and Jo moved to Worcester, MA about a year ago.  At the time, Worcester offered them one significant feature: it was equidistant to two important places outside of Worcester. In the past year, however, they have discovered that Worcester offers them far more than a convenient geographical location.  They have grown to appreciate other important Worcester qualities, such as cheap rent, loud neighbors, vandalism, and theft.  I was eager to see what this special place was all about, so I forced myself upon them for 20 hours.

I made sure to eat plenty of food before I visited Worcester, hoping that a calorie surfeit would fuel me through most of my stay.  But eventually, hunger got the best of me.  When I apologetically mentioned this to my hosts, Dave reminded me that there was rumor of a vegan restaurant somewhere in Worcester--"Belmont something-or-other."  That rang a bell.  I vaguely remembered hearing about such a phenomenon through my deteriorating Boston area vegan network.  So off to Google we went.

It wasn't easy to find Belmont Vegetarian Restaurant's eye-watering Web site, but along the way I did find http://vegworcester.com/, which I initially assumed to be a squatted domain.  According to this site, there are quite a few vegetarian-friendly restaurants in the Worcester area, though only 3 or 4 seem to be exclusively vegan (including the ubiquitous Loving Hut). So my culinary prejudice diminished.  We departed for Belmont Vegetarian Restaurant.

From the outside, it looks like any sub shop store front you'd find on a busy, gritty, New England "city" street. Inside is a bright, spartan dining area containing two booths and an order window, which is flanked by a chalkboard displaying the day's menu.  The chalkboard listed: "Curry, BBQ, Veggie Stew, Black Bean + Soy, Pepper Steak, and Mac + Cheese."  Eventually, Steven, the proprietor and cook, approached us with an offer to try a sample plate.  "You try everything.  If it's not for you, you can go on your way," he offered, amicably.  "Go on our way?"  I thought.  That's like saying, "If the water is too cold at this oasis, you may crawl 46 miles to the east for an alternative."  But we humored him and tried everything, while listening to light reggae.

The food is generally differently-prepared soy or tofu chunks, like you might find at a buffet. You have three options when you order: small ($6.50), medium($9.50), and large($11.50).  You get a bed of rice upon which Steven will scoop any combination of chalkboard items.  I ordered the pepper steak and curry, and was quite pleased; the pepper steak was especially good and spicy,  the curry was pleasant and mild.  I considered getting one of the "patties" displayed behind the order window, but the medium bowl had stuffed me a bit too much.  Maybe next time.

UPDATE:  I only thought that vegworcester.com was a squatter domain because it came up in Google search results.  I couldn't believe that such resource existed. I assumed that some crafty Search Engine Optimizer has mashed the word "Veg" with every city he or she could imagine, and sat back to enjoy the long tail traffic.  It's a great site and I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone in the Worcester area--and beyond--visit it to find out what's edible in the region.  Thanks, Drew!

Gardein Again, Including Limited Edition Collector's Meal

I don't think I've ever bought Gardein products for myself.  They're very similar to their meaty counterparts (well, what I remember of their meaty counterparts) and that makes me uncomfortable. The less my food resembles a corpse, the more eager I am to eat it. But whenever I visit Back East, my Mom stocks the fridge with all sorts of booty from the remote Whole Foods, which I appreciate very much.  Invariably, there are a few Gardein products in the haul, and I don't mind trying trying them because God damn it, I'm in the middle cultural nowhere and lucky to eat anything that's not iceberg lettuce.

So, Gardein product the first: Tuscan Breasts.  Uncanny meat-like texture under a tasty, tomato-based sauce. This seems to be the "no frills" Gardein product, and it performs exactly as advertised.  I think a transitional omnivore would really dig it. It's shown here with a variety of Whole Foods buffet sides.

Gardein product the second: Limited Edition Savory Stuffed Turk'y.  (They're too snooty to call it "Stuff'd Turk'y," unfortunately.)  This was really good. It's a Gardein orb stuffed with celery, onions, cranberries, and bread crumbs; coated with a light, crispy breading.  It's like a croquette.  It comes with a delicious gravy that gives Tofurky's a run for its money.  This is my favorite of the few Gardein products I've tried thus far, due to its under-emphasized meatiness. It's all about the breading, stuffing and gravy.  And that's really what Thanksgiving is all about, anyway.  Well, that and smallpox.

Wherein I Blog About Making A Recipe That Someone Else Had Blogged About Making

We take a lot of the Internet's magic for granted.  A talented recipesmith can put together an interesting dish way out in the middle of nowhere, and the next day I can follow her instructions and produce the same dish, 1665 miles away.  (Well, not the same dish; there are some minor components that can't yet be conveyed over the Internet, such as skill, experience, and technique.) By comparison, it took about 770 years for the first cheesecake recipe to travel from Greece to Great Britain.  What's more, I'm certain that my version of Isa's Butternut Rancheros is far more genetically similar to the original than the British cheesecake was to its Greek ancestor. (Though it's clear that the attractiveness gene did not make it into my remote manifestation.) Welcome to the future.

Two elements of this recipe will forever remain in my culinary arsenal: the charbroiled squash, and the ranchero sauce.  Ok, those are the two core elements of the dish.  My point is that they are independently delicious, and can be used to great effect in separate dishes.  But now that I'm thinking about it, you could cube the roasted butternut squash and wrap the whole thing in a tortilla.  It would probably blow a mind.

Red Lentil Soup [sic]* from Allrecipes.com

Among the 14 tweets @DomesticVegan produced back on October 25, 2010, was:

Dinner: Red Lentil Soup! One of my favorites! So easy, healthy, and delicious! http://bit.ly/98iVG8

For some reason, that stuck with me. It's such a sincere tweet.  She seems so darned wholesome, this Minnesota girl.  Surely I, too, would enjoy this easy, healthy, and delicious dish, despite my flaws and sinful lifestyle.  I could just go to the store to get the ingredients, assemble them according to the recipe, and experience a brief but deeply gratifying period of simple perfection. Enjoy some clarity.  Maybe lapse into some optimistic thoughtfulness, should the moment get a hold of me.  Who knows, I might even plan for my future a little bit, maybe refill a prescription or two. Wouldn't that be swell?

Well, dear reader,  it turns out that Day 3 of VeganMoFo 2010 is the first day of the rest of my life.  I just birthed myself into a bright, hot, thick-and-delicious bowl of red lentils and squash, and by golly it's a beautiful place to be!  My one departure from the rules was adding more cayenne pepper than suggested, and using hot curry powder instead of not hot.  Otherwise, I think this recipe's a winner out of the gate.

Now go simmer yourself some salvation.  (Goes well with beer.)

* "Soup" is not the word I would use to describe my results.  "Stew" is more accurate.  But stew is also more delicious than soup, so I'm not complaining.

Pick A Pita

What is up with the names of falfel shops in New York City? Pita Hut, Pita Pan, Pita Like a Racehorse... There's a falafel/shawarma place on 8th Ave. between 39th and 40th that makes a pretty good falafel for $6. Pick A Pita. (Why they didn't call themselves Pita Picked a Peppa, I don't know. Maybe the sign would be too expensive.) They're kosher, so they don't put any dairy in their toppings, which might adorn something off the the rotating meat column as easily as they would a few falafel balls. If you're vegan, that's great, because the vegan and non-vegan stuff are well segregated.

All of their sandwiches are served in pita pockets, as their name suggests. You can pick one of two pitas: regular or whole wheat. The whole wheat pitas fall apart easily, so be sure to grab a fork if that's your preference. Or you can screw the pita altogether and get the "platter," which is a salad version, but more copiously appointed and a couple bucks more expensive. Whatever route you go, you're sure to be stuffed by the end of your journey.

They have a wide selection of toppings: hummus, tahini, cucumbers, tomatoes, cucumber and tomato salad, red cabbage, pickles, tabouli, fried eggplant, and hot sauce. I hate eggplant, but they season and deep-fry theirs in such a way that I was able to tolerate it in my first few sandwiches. After that, the novelty of its preparation wore off and I stopped adding it.

If there's one thing I've learned in my brief blogging-about-food career, it's that I'm really good at making food look less appetizing than it really is.The above photo is no exception. Don't let it turn you off; Pick a Pita delivers a solid falafel sandwich that I've returned to more times than I can count.

It's Just a Chunk of Metal

A group of vegan and vegetarian friends and I go out to lunch once a month. We call ourselves The Veggie Five. We're like super heroes, but without special powers, and we don't fight crime. We just get together occasionally and eat vegetarian food. Today we ate at Pukk in the East Village.

Pukk is another "pan Asian" vegetarian restaurant, like Zen Palate or Gobo, but with an emphasis on actual vegetables over meat analogues, in a Thai style. They offer $6 lunch specials which come with "vegetable clear soup" and your choice of an appetizer and an entree. I chose Spicy Spring Rolls for my appetizer, and Pepper Garlic Chicken for my entree. The spring rolls are fried, and wrapped in eggless egg roll wrappers. The Pepper Garlic Chicken has a few chunks of fake chicken and a good helping of vegetables. The "vegetable clear soup" is much tastier than it sounds, and saltier than one would expect. All-in-all, it was a filling and tasty lunch, but nothing amazing. It was better than Zen Palate, and cheaper.

Our pal Ravi ordered Pad See-Ew Duck, which he claimed tasted very duck-like in both flavor and texture. (We were a little concerned about Ravi's familiarity with authentic duck cuisine.) It even came with a surprise chunk of metal that looked like a twisted stainless steel suture. When he brought this to the attention of our waitress, she said something vaguely apologetic and retreated to the kitchen for more information. She eventually returned and assured Ravi that the metal was nothing to worry about, and mumbled something about a free dessert, should he be interested. We eventually pressed her further on that point and he got a free chocolate cheesecake mousse, which he shared with all of us. It was delicious and metal-free.

The bill for all five of us was around $73, gratuity included. I would definitely go back, but would scrutinize my dish for foreign matter.

Video: Primal Pain In The Ass

Wow, I'll post anything!

Inspired by supercarrot's comment on my previous jerky post, here's a very orange and yellow review of Primal Strips' (hopefully) experimental packaging.

Maybe someday I'll figure out how to use Final Cut's color correction capabilities. Or move out of this basement.

Scrambled Tofu

I dropped the ball Friday, missing a weekday of VeganMoFo blogging. To make up for it, I took a picture of my brunch. Well, my lunch, really. I just don't think it qualifies as a "brunch," as I made it myself in the privacy of my own dungeon-like apartment. And I didn't make mimosas.

The recipe is basically Vegan with a Vengeance's "Scrambled Tofu," to which I added cayenne pepper and broccoli. The English muffins are spelt, from Rudi's Organic Bakery.

OK, you can go back to bed now.

I made something!

Well, "threw some shit together" might be more accurate. But it was delicious: Barilla whole grain spaghetti, grilled Field Roast Italian sausage, steamed broccoli, and homemade vegan pesto. Minimal effort for maximum satisfaction. I'd buy it, if I could.

(After I took the picture, I defiled its beauty with a fistful of nutritional yeast.)

Jerquee

When I lived in San Francisco, it seemed that you could buy Stonewall's Jerquee from anyone. Dudes offering you great deals on expensive watches down at United Nations Plaza would whip out a consolation bag or two of Stonewall's when you declined their initial offers. Midas mechanics would find ways to work Stonewall's Jerquee into the bill for your catalytic converter replacement. You couldn't check out of the UCSF's emergency room without signing an agreement that you would consume several bags of the stuff during your recovery period.

When I moved to Boston, Jerquee was no longer accessible through conventional means; I had to order it online. Even when I moved to New York City, I didn't find Jerquee until I'd been there for several months and came across it at a West Village deli. Today, I found Jerquee at my current favorite lunch spot: Green Symphony. I was thrilled. I scooped up a half dozen bags from the bottom-most shelf of their prepackaged food display, plopped them on the counter, brushed off the dust, removed the expired bags, and then purchased the remaining four. Delicious stuff. Recommended. You, too, can get it online at amazon.com. Just click the image to the right, disgorge some credit card numbers, and wait patiently for the postperson to bring it to you.