Only the best Macaroni & Cheese Recipe Ever.

At an end of the semester gathering, Zips and I were lucky enough to park ourselves in the best spot at a party: the kitchen. One of our favorite people to work with brought some homemade Mac & Cheese and promptly knocked my socks off. I kept going on about how this was like that episode of Bobby Flay's Throw Down. It has crunch. It has lots of cheese. It has complexity (a touch of garlic! Panko bread crumbs!). It feels homey. I begged and begged for the recipe, and took a photo so I could post it here for the world to enjoy. Believe me, I'll write again when I try this one myself. These are her instructions verbatim.

Macaroni & Cheese a la Diana

While 1 box of Barilla elbow pasta is cooking to al dente (5 to 6 min.) do the following.

3 Tablespoons of butter melted in a pan (a healthy margarine also works)

3 Tablespoons of flour into the melted butter

Stir until all the flour is incorporated into the butter as one usually does for a roux.

3 cups organic whole milk – add to the above, using a whisk, tiny bit at a time in the beginning so there are no clumps, until you get a smooth sauce. Keep stirring as you add the rest of the milk and while you cook the mixture over medium high heat to get it going to a simmer, then lower the heat to slow simmer to cook till completely thickened.

½ pound to 1 pound of American deli cheese, Dietz & Watson or Land O Lakes. Now is when Cheese is incorporated 3 slices at a time to the roux. Just keep tasting on a separate clean spoon till it’s cheesy enough for your taste and keep stirring.

Add ¼ to ½ teaspoon of dry mustard.

Dash or two of soy sauce (to taste) – instead of salt!

Dash of Worstershire sauce

Dash or two of white pepper

Tiny pinch of sugar

Taste and adjust as needed. Shut off heat. Drain pasta & put pasta back into the pot it was cooked in. Stir in the cheese sauce and let sit while you prepare crumb topping.

(save a cup of the pasta water to thin if sauce if needed after it stands in the pot while you make the crumb topping).

Crumb topping:

1 Tablespoon olive oil in a large pan

1 small clove garlic minced or from garlic press

1 Tablespoon or more if you like of fresh chopped Italian parsley

Handful of unseasoned Panko bread crumbs. (comes out to ½ a cup or so)

Heat olive oil gently. Add the garlic over low heat so it cooks very gently – but does not brown - and imparts it’s flavor to the oil. Remove the garlic with a slotted spoon and discard. Add the parsley and the Panko and stir till coated with the oil mix.

In a 13 x 9 casserole pan that has been greased or sprayed with Pam, pour the mac & cheese combo. Smooth down the top and then sprinkle with ¾ of the crumbs. Now use a layer (amount to taste) of Sharp Cheddar cheese either shredded or sliced to top the bread crumbs and then evenly put on remaining crumb topping. I used sliced Tillamook sharp cheddar and just covered most of the top with 4 whole slices and one more broken to fill in empty spaces.

Bake in 375 degree oven for 20 to 25 min. – you will see bubbling around edges. Then broil to brown the crumb topping – keeping a close eye on it so it doesn’t burn!

This is seriously the best mac & cheese I've ever had. Try it. It's worth the labor! You'll be hooked!

Oh. Diana supplied not only the Mac & Cheese, but also a lovely wine crate that I had big plans for. The kitties have taken it over, however, so I must be content to have a rather bohemian kitty bed in the window.

The cats also like the Mac & Cheese.

Happy Thanksgiving! Make Your Own "Tofurky"

It's that time of year again, and I can't help but gorge myself all day on foods I spent the previous day preparing. Lately for the holidays we've roasted two "turk'y roasts" by Quorn and a Tofurky. But no one ever eats that wild rice stuffing that's stuck in the middle of the Tofurky ball. Last year I made my own vegetarian "tofurky"-- using a recipe and video I can't find now, but the result is absolutely delicious-- technically a "gluten roast"-- we'll have to work on making that sound sexier.

As soon as I re-discover the video and link, I'll attach it here, but for now, I'll just re-copy my gravy-spattered recipe sheet:

Sage-Roasted Gluten Loaf (or Homemade Better n' Tofurky)

Bring 2 gallons of water to a boil while you do the following:

In a bowl, combine:

2 1/2 c. vital wheat gluten flour

1/2 c. nutritional yeast flakes

1 generous tsp. thyme

1 equally generous tsp. sage

1 tsp. salt

In another bowl, mix together

2 c. vegetable broth (1 can)

1/4 c. olive oil

1 Tb. soy sauce

Stir the wet into the dry until well-combined and can be roughly formed into a ball. Roll the gluten-ball out onto some cheesecloth. Wrap it with the cheesecloth (forming it into the shape you want your loaf), twisting the ends and tying them off with twine.

Don't wrap the loaf too loosely, or it'll have air pockets. Don't wrap it too tight either, since the gluten will expand. Put the cheesecloth-wrapped loaf into the boiling water and simmer for about 1 hour. Unwrap cheesecloth and the roast can now either be eaten or basted with olive oil and herbes de provence (mmmmm!) and thrown into a 325 oven for about 3o minutes.

Here's our spread (with fried green tomatoes!). The gluten roast is the larger, darker of the "meats" pictured above.
And here's my favorite parts: my gluten roast and mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberries, and green bean casserole!
And this year, Zipper pretended to be a kumquat.

We also made a pear tart with an almond pastry crust and the best pumpkin pie in the world. But I'll save those for another day! Happy Holidays!

New Fall Soup: Potage de Crecy

It's the time of year again when I could essentially live on a liquid diet. Soup weather! Accordingly I wanted to share an excellent Carrot Soup recipe. I know, I know, it doesn't sound that glamorous, but it's simple, silky and luxurious and fantastic garnished with croutons or eaten with some crusty french bread. And speaking of the French, apparently the carrots grown near Crecy are the most delicious in the country! (Which Crecy? I guess there are several villages with that name-- I don't know. It makes a good story, though). We're adding this to our Thanksgiving Feast this year. Unless I can convince everyone to try out the Butternut Squash soup recipe I've got!

Puree of Carrot Soup

In a big pot (I use my enameled dutch oven Zips gave me for a present), saute:

1 Tb. butter

3 Tb. olive oil

2-3 cloves of garlic (since they're cooked down, the flavor gets toned down and subdued)

1/2 onion, chopped

9 carrots, chopped (this isn't set in stone. If you use this many, you'll have a thick, hearty soup. If you use, say 7 skinny carrots, you'll have a thinner, but no less delicious soup)

Saute these together over medium heat, being careful not to burn the garlic or onions. Then add:

4 c. vegetable broth

1 c. plain soy milk

1-2 bay leaves

1 tsp. dried thyme

1tsp. - 1 Tb. grated fresh ginger (this depends on how ginger-y you'd like your soup. Even though I LOVE ginger, I use closer to 1 tsp. so it doesn't dominate)

Simmer all of these until the carrots are tender. Once they are, remove the bay leaves and carefully puree everything until smooth. I use an immersion blender. You could also do it in batches with a regular blender. Just be careful not to splatter the soup and burn yourself!

Return the smooth, pureed soup to the pot. Salt and pepper to taste. I don't usually add salt, just black pepper. Garnish with chopped parsley and possibly croutons.

Bon appetit!

The Glamorous Life of a Marathon Dissertation Writer and Cupcake Baker

I spent a lot of time in the late summer cooking, trying out new recipes, making pasta and home-brewed limoncello, knowing that before long, I would be in the middle of a new semester, swamped with student papers to grade and feeling the deadline to defend and deposit my dissertation loom large.

That's where we're at right now.

A year or two ago, I went to an academic conference and saw many of the scholars who populate my bookcases and essays. It was exciting. One of my favorite brilliant professors met us for sushi and sake (I'd never had sake before! I'm a complete lightweight!), and chatted with us as though we were people, friends, rather than as students. When we parted ways we spoke about the difficulties in writing, and I expressed anxiety about writing this dissertation. She hugged me and encouraged me to write, saying simply, "let's make a pact." This was a humbling and exhilarating moment for me-- thinking that someone I admire so much, whose work has helped shape the way I think about my own writing and critical approaches, could make a pact with me to write. This has been at the back of my brain, quietly urging me to keep going.

So for the past two months, I've been essentially living at my desk doing nothing but reading, re-reading, and writing (and rewriting!). I drink a lot of coffee. I eat trail mix and ramen and nori (omega 3's for my brain!). I obsess over my word count. I go through post-it notes like there's no tomorrow. I keep a pitcher of water and two sets of headphones by my side at all times. I wear wrist bands to stave off carpal tunnel.

(I feel like I should take up smoking, since all the best writers seem to chain smoke. Since I don't I've developed a habit of munching on mints as I type-- until I discovered that the icebreakers I've been downing mostly contain sugar substitutes called malitol and sorbitol, which, if you have too much in your system, can cause great g.i. distress!)

In any case, it's glorious. The cats stay up with me until all hours.

Here Mini implores me to quit typing and go to bed.

Here is one of my 2 crates of research (it is no longer in this fastidious order.) not to mention the piles of books on my table, floor, and bookshelves. Or the library books I have. Or the inter-library loan library I've accumulated.

And yet, in the backyard, I'm reminded that life continues on, that new life is growing even as I'm sequestering myself away so that I can finish writing my dissertation and finally graduate with my Ph.D.

We transplanted a patch of grass about 5" square, and it's sitting at the edge of our backyard patio, at the margin of our zero-scaping. Under the sod, we put down a layer of our own compost that's been accumulating and cooking for forever. And in the corner of this box of grass (that we call the "pet patch") emerged a cantaloupe vine. That has SIX cantaloupes on it. We didn' t plant them. We had no idea what they were for the longest time (watermelons? cucumbers? squash? pumpkins?) It's miraculous. Sometimes in the evenings, Zips goes out to water the plants, including the pet patch and the melons.

Since I've churned out 3 out of 4 chapters that will constitute the body of the diss, I've eased up a little bit. I've made vegetarian spicy sushi. A wonderful new puree of carrot soup that I'll have to post here.

Last night, Zips found and followed an awful (awful) recipe for carrot cake that was on the back of a raisin container (it called for shortening. it ended up with the texture of cornbread and tasted salty). So I threw it away and pulled out the vegan cupcake book. Every recipe I've tried, I swear, is amazing. The carrot cake cupcake is FREAKING DELICIOUS. The recipe makes literally 8 cupcakes, so there's no danger in overindulging (but you'll really really want to).

Carrot Cake Cupcakes (accidentally not vegan...)

2/3 c. flour

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon (I used closer to 1/2 tsp)

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

(I also added 1/4 tsp. ground cloves and 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg... why not?)

sift together dry ingredients

2/3 c. sugar (I'm out of white sugar, so used brown, and it tasted FINE)

1/3 c. veg. oil

1/3 c. plain soy yogurt (I'm out of soy yogurt, so used plain dairy yogurt, and it turned out FINE)

1 generous tsp. vanilla

Mix wet ingredients together until completely combined. Then add dry ingredients. Then fold in chunky bits:

1 c. shredded carrots (I grated one large-ish carrot)

1/4 c. raisins (and dry cranberries if you want to trick it out)

1/4 c. chopped walnuts (I skipped this)

Distribute into cupcake liners (fill 2/3 of the way) and bake for about 25 minutes, until they pass a toothpick test.

When they cool, frost with Cream Cheese Frosting (which you can also make!) Take a load off and eat one. Save one for breakfast (since they have carrots in them, they're healthy!)

So I have something to eat as I get back to work. Hopefully I'll post happy news soon. Either when I finish writing... or when we eat the cantaloupes!

Can you boil milk? Then you can make Chocolate Mousse!!

Easy Chocolate Mousse

1/2 c. soy milk

2 tsp. vanilla

2 tsp. (or more) brandy (or other liqueur of your choice)

1 Tb. instant coffee powder

10 oz. semi sweet chocolate chips

12 oz. silken tofu

Blend silken tofu until smooth.

Heat the soymilk in a pan. When it boils, turn off the heat and add instant coffee. Pour chocolate chips in a bowl and add heated milk to it. Add vanilla and brandy and stir until chips melt into glossy melty deliciousness.

Add melted chocolate to blender and blend until completely incorporated. Pour out into serving cups and refrigerate at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours before serving.

Kettle Style Potato Chips... in your Microwave?!

So late one night a couple weeks ago, I had a serious jones for potato chips. Which we didn't have. Nothing else really does it if all you want to crunch down on is some chips. So after Zips did a little web surfing, she announced that we would make our own. right now. ...in the microwave.

I was seriously skeptical. I thought potatoes would be floppy and perhaps eventually leathery if left in the microwave too long. But eventually, I gave in, and sliced a potato as thinly as humanly possible.

Then coated them with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and arranged them in a single layer on a microwave-safe plate.

We microwaved the plate for 2 minutes, flipped the chips over and gave them 2 more minutes. Then again. After about 6 minutes or so, the slices started to yellow. I gave it another minute and a half, then drained the chips on a paper towel.

When they cooled, they were crunchy. But more importantly, They Were Potato Chips.

We ended up making 3 batches, which isn't terribly energy or time efficient. But we just couldn't believe it! They were delicious. The thicker slices ended up tasting and crunching like kettle chips. The thinnest slices, the translucent ones I was sure would adhere to the plate and burn in the microwave ended up crisp and identical to original Lays. Curse my skepticism. Point: Zips.

Oh yeah...

... we also made graham crackers (though, not technically, since we didn't use graham flour)...

They're actually pretty easy and don't require any special ingredients you don't already have.

...and black and white cookies. I even purchased an old school ice cream scooper for these so they would be perfectly round and uniform in size (although I didn't realize they'd be as big as a cookie at a Starbucks!

Both were huge hits in the household (even though the chocolate half of the b/w cookie isn't as smooth as the white half). Oh, and both are from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar! You may as well just buy the book. Vegan or no vegan, everything in this is freaking delicious! (see also the carrot raisin cookies). I'm going to miss summertime cooking!

Vicarious Trips to Italy and Accidental Lowry's Seasoning

Another major project this past week has been a back-to-school care package of sorts for some of our favorite colleagues-- one of whom went to Italy this summer. Since I'm trying to become proficient with my beloved pasta machine, we decided to go all-out on a Little Italy extravaganza. I made a batch of spinach fettuccine (we bagged some and ate the rest!),

and an amazing raspberry vinegar, some of our home brew limoncello (which Zips has started referring to as moonshine),

some raspberry/strawberry syrups (not italian, but it goes well with the moonshine-- ooh, and you could use to make italian soda!), and some biscotti. (Chocolate and Almond Cranberry. I have the best recipe from a holiday issue of Vegetarian Times. I'll probably come back to this when we make it again in the fall!)

We got some cardboard boxes that looked like suitcases, so I painted and tricked them out to look like well-traveled steamer trunks.

Then packed the goodies in-- (this is before I had decided to make up a batch of the spinach pasta)-- Zips also made a great retro Franco-Italiano music mix that we dubbed "limoncello lounge".

In the process, we tried several other recipes for this and that homemade goodie, one of which was a "spice blend"-- that I realized, after whipping up a batch, tastes almost exactly like Lowry's Seasoned Salt. So much so, that after snapping this photo of it (with the Lowry's in the background), I literally dumped the entire homemade batch into my already opened Lowry's to top it off. (I decided not to gift it-- I didn't want our friends thinking I gave them a little glass jar of store-bought seasonings, pretending it was homemade!)

If you're interested, here's the recipe. It tastes fine. In fact, I will be happy to use this, since it is very flavorful and has no salt. Maybe I'll see if I can't whip up some Mrs. Dash's seasoning next!

The Accidental Lowry's

1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder

3/4 tsp. thyme

1/2 tsp. oregano

1 1/2 tsp. onion powder

1 1/4 tsp. paprika

1 tsp. ground celery seed

1 1/2 tsp. white pepper

1 1/2 tsp. ground mustard

1 tsp. black pepper

New Projects

I've been holding onto this window pane ever since I was an undergrad in northern California. My senior year, I lived (along with several other intrepid art majors) in one of the (poorly insulated, abandoned) bungalows at what used to be the Aetna Springs Resort, built in the 1870's and adjacent to a golf course (that I once snuck onto in the middle of the night for a picnic), and formerly occupied by the Moonies. The buildings on the property were all abandoned, filled knee-deep with molding books and rusting furniture. The cottages that were live-able still often contained baffling artifacts like a hatch from Lost-- I remember once crawling underneath the bungalow I lived in, finding a cache of mildewing cardboard boxes filled with slide carousels from what looked like a presentation about alcoholism. If I lived there now, I'd have to become a video artist and re-stage scenes from '80's slasher flicks!

In any case, it was a paradise for photographers and collage and assemblage artists. (Once my entire assemblage sculpture class visited for an impromptu field trip/scavenger hunt for materials for a group sculpture-- we all ended up making 2 nearly life-size elephants.) I've kept a ton of old books from there (literally, they're very heavy), the occasional salvaged antique doorknob and keyplate, and this wonderful old window pane with three original panes of glass-- intending to do something with it, especially after seeing several similar windows used as picture frames in different places over the years.

Zips finally compelled me to finish it. I cleaned it, painted it, collaged the gold from joss papers on the edges, and had some photos printed especially for this. Each of the photos evokes the time we stayed in a log cabin for the weekend in Brown County, Indiana, and most of them were taken that weekend.

There's a birdhouse washtub, and a slate board that says "Nothing Matters More than This Day", a snapshot of the koi pond, and the red metal rocking chair from the front porch of the log cabin.

I'm really happy with it. It reminds me to be serene. Here and on the other side, I've included a "double happiness" from the joss papers.

Farmer's Market Feasting

Nearly a year ago exactly, Zips and I discovered the Albuquerque Downtown Grower's Market. And on a spur of the moment flash of madness, on Saturday we got up at 6 in the morning, to drive three hours to visit it again. We were reminded how much we love farmer's markets with their crazy abundant variety.

We picked up a dozen ears of corn, carrots, peaches, grapes, potatoes, lavender...

A basket of these adorable pear-shaped yellow tomatoes...

And if you go, you must swing by the booth belonging to Black Bird Pies. They often give out sample bites of pie (this time it was their sweet potato pie)...

...and they have the most amazing fruit juices. Again, Zips chose watermelon papaya and I picked the thai basil lemonade and the raspberry sage lemonade. They were all equally awesome (and inspired Zips to concoct Sweet Basil Watermelon Water with our feast).

When we got home (after swinging by Bella Luca on the way home. I'll have to write about their cannellini and greens that I ordered!), we decided to gorge ourselves to celebrate the end of another summer, and rather than just fix the usuals for our Sunday dinner, to make everything with some new recipes.

I already have a great recipe for peach pie, so decided to branch out and make peach galettes. The peaches we got were the size of plums, but they actually yielded more fruit than I expected (I could have more than made a pie!)

Peach Galettes

I used a different dough recipe for the crust-- but now that I've tried it, I think I'd just stick with my usual pie crust recipe, just roll it out a bit thinner. The dough recipe was 1 1/4 c. flour with 8Tb. butter and 1/4 c. ice water. It only gave me 2 crusts, so I had to half it and make a third galette when I had excess filling. If I did it all over again, I'd just use a regular pie crust recipe that would probably give me 4 galettes.

The filling was 6 c. of sliced peaches tossed with

2/3 c. sugar

big dash of cinnamon (1 tsp.)

small dash of ground cloves (1/4 tsp.)

small dash of nutmeg (1/4 tsp.)

1 Tb. flour

juice of 1/2 lemon

Place the peach filling in the center of each crust about an inch from the edges and then curl the crust around the filling. If you get greedy like me, you can stack the peach filling a bit more after you've created the edges of the galette. You can even drizzle in a little of the juice. Just don't over-do it like I did and get the bottom of your crust soggy even before baking it.

Then bake at 400 for about 30 minutes.

Zips sliced up the yellow tomatoes, sprinkled some of our sweet basil over it and drizzled it with olive oil. Then scooped out some of our locally grown watermelon before juicing the rest of it and adding some chopped sweet basil to the juice (it was delicious!). I cubed the potatoes and carrots and roasted them with some olive oil and rosemary from our garden.
But another high point and new discovery was corn pudding. Corn Pudding. Two words I never imagined together. I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I had no concept of what it would taste like. But nothing about it looked bad, so I gave it a whack and am so glad I did!

Zipper's Corn Pudding

2 or 3 ears of fresh corn-- de-kerneled

2/3 c. milk (most recipes call for whole milk. I used soy milk. It was delightfully light and fluffy. Perhaps when I try this again with the southwestern variation, I'll use whole milk to get the full effect before experimenting more)

1 egg

1 Tb. flour

1 tsp. sugar

salt + pepper

Handful of basil or cilantro (I used basil-- about 8 or 9 leaves chopped)

Pulse half of the corn kernels in a food processor. I did this until I had a kind of sweet corn mush. Then add the processed corn to the rest of the kernels, the dry ingredients, and the basil or cilantro.

In another bowl, mix together egg and milk, and add this to the corn mixture. Then pour into a baking dish and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. I finally got to use these little individual pans for like the second time in ten years!

It was an amazing feast-- that has left us both plagued with food ennui. I'll have to think up something quick to make life worth living after having eaten this sumptuously! Isn't that what summer's for?

Just Like Berry Pie a la Mode (without the hassle of making a pie!)

Summer is ending too quickly. In just two weeks, we'll be back in school and then it's just full tilt until Christmas. Of course one of the best things about summer is fresh berries (even though we don't have access to a u-pick farm anymore), and Zips had a memory about vanilla ice cream with berries in a swirl of Chambord (black raspberry liqueur) syrup. There's literally no way to mess this one up!

Chambord Berries and Ice Cream

2 c. fresh strawberries

1 c. blueberries

1 c. raspberries

1/3 c. sugar

combine berries and sugar and simmer over low heat until sugar dissolves.

Add 1/2 c. Chambord

simmer for 3 minutes (don't stir too much...those raspberries are delicate!)

Spoon berries and syrup over vanilla ice cream. It tastes like the best berry pie a la mode!

New Art: Pop Culture Ikons

One of the charming features of the new house we're renting is built-in nichos. We've got one on the front porch, one in the entryway, and one in the back hallway. But we haven't had anything to put into them until now. I've finally completed a project I've had in progress since we lived in our downtown 3rd floor apartment in Indiana. We've kept a running list of our favorite musicians and actors (mostly musicians) past and present, and created our own set of ikons.

The original set were images I had photoshopped to remove the backgrounds and heighten the images. But since I'm finishing this project several years later on a newer computer without photoshop, I did it old school and copied pictures into microsoft word, made them black and white, tweaked the contrast, printed them out, cut each image out, then photocopied them onto watercolor paper.

The rest is just some clever gold and copper paint, acrylics, and a red ballpoint pen.

We had many mutual loves (Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in Ab Fab, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Shabana Azmi, George Michael, Margaret Cho), but believe me we also did some serious bargaining (I got Andrew Bird and Bjork; Zips demanded Catherine Deneuve, Marlene Dietrich, Yoko Ono, David Bowie, Marianne Faithfull, Nina Simone, and at one point, Freddie Mercury). We've decided our overflow favorites (younger vintage pop culture loves) will be cherubs instead of icons. We're starting a new list; Zips gets Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lady Gaga, and Daft Punk. So far all I'm getting are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (and they'll only count as one), and maybe I'll get the use the Lauryn Hill image I made. Yeah, guess which one of us usually buys all the music and movies...?

Happy Limoncello and Strawberry Syrup!

It's been a week and a half since we parked our lemon rinds in the cool, dark pantry to marinate in a liter of vodka. The rinds did, in fact, lose their color and imbue the clear liquor with a nice yellow tinge (that this photo doesn't quite capture). I did a blind taste test of it against some Toschi lemoncello that we've probably had for too long. Our fresh limoncello was yellower, clearer, and had a lovely floral bouquet, while the Toschi smelled a little turpentine-y.

Ours is so lovely and fragrant and sweet. We ended up with about a liter of infused vodka that we added simple syrup (2 c. water + 3 c. sugar) to. Then strained and filtered into whatever glass receptacle I could find.

And then Zips had the genius idea of making some simple strawberry syrup, following the recipe by Vegan Dad. It was really easy (although we halfed his recipe. Had some leftover strawberries that I had cleaned and parked in the freezer about two weeks ago).

Since I'm a lightweight, Zips knew this would be ideal for sweetening the limoncello for me even more. We've dubbed this Zips Hard Strawberry Limonade!

It's just limoncello + strawberry syrup to taste over ice. MMmmmmm... happy happy strawberry limoncello!

C is for Cookie...and Coconut and Carrot and Cinnamon...and Crumbles!

Since all of my adult life has consisted of being a graduate student and teaching, I associate summertime with being on a TIGHT budget. Since I have foodie ambitions, I'm learning to combine having no income with being creative in the kitchen. Since a staple for us is a vegetarian version of ground beef (for tacos, chili, spaghetti, lasagna, etc.) I've worked out a recipe that replaces what we usually buy (Morningstar Crumbles) that uses TVP. TVP is just soy-based textured vegetable protein. It's the major ingredient in a lot of veggie burgers and veggie sausages, and can be found (dehydrated) in the bulk sections of groceries and health food stores. (Not much to look at, I know. Just wait.)

"Ground Beef" Style Crumbles:

2 c. TVP

2-3 cloves minced garlic

2 c. boiling water

2 Tb. Kitchen Bouquet

3-4 Tb. soy sauce

garlic powder

onion powder

salt

black pepper

cayenne pepper

Measure out TVP and put it in a large mixing bowl with the minced garlic. When you water comes to a boil, turn off the heat and add Kitchen Bouquet (this makes it a nice brown color without adding too much sodium), soy sauce, and spices. Combine thoroughly and then pour it into your tvp bowl (if you don't mix these together, the Kitchen Bouquet will turn some of the tvp--whatever it hits first-- a very dark brown and leave the rest of it rather blonde). Be sure all of the liquid is combined with the tvp and leave it to absorb the liquid (about 15-20 min).
Once the liquid has been absorbed, the tvp should be evenly brown. Now heat a large frying pan with a little vegetable oil. When hot, add the tvp mixture and heat it. Adjust the seasonings. For me, the onion powder (or granulated onion) is what evokes a kind of beefy flavor. Oh, and I didn't list it, but I use Fiesta brand fajita seasoning in everything. Depending on what you intend to use it in, you may also want to add oregano and other italian seasonings, or cumin and chili powder. Once the tvp has been heated through and browned even more, turn off the heat and let it cool. I did a double batch (4 c. tvp, 4 c. water) and made about the equivalent of three or four 12 oz. packages of crumbles from the store. HERE'S THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP: Once you've got your crumbles tasting the way you want them, let them cool, put them in a freezer bag, and FREEZE IT! It affects the texture once you're using it in a recipe. You can use it "raw" no problem, but if you freeze it, and then cook with it straight from the freezer, it seems more toothsome.

And for a new treat we have a new cookie recipe! These are AMAZING. Like carrot cake. Only better. With a great lemon glaze icing. It's adapted from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, which, like its sibling, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World has the most amazing, creative, delicious treats. (including tiramisu cupcakes, which are the single best cupcake I've ever had in my life. Vegan or not).

But back to the cookies... These are the second recipe in the book. Second only to chocolate chip cookies (which I'll probably be trying out tonight). They deserve this position. They are soon to be classics in this house.

Carrot Raisin Cookies or as we call them Get Your Own

(Preheat to 350)

1/3 c. unflavored soy milk (or any other non-dairy)

1 Tb. ground flax seeds. (I didn't have this, so used 1 1/2 tsp. Ener-G egg replacer mixed well with 2 Tb. water)

1/2 c. canola. oil

1/3 c. dark brown sugar

1 c. sugar

1/2 tsp. orange zest

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

mix all these together. In another bowl, sift together

1 3/4 c. all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ground ginger

1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp. salt

mix these dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Then measure out:

1 c. finely shredded carrots (I used about 2 medium carrots)

1 c. raisins

1/2 c. shredded coconut

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

mix the chunky bits into the cookie batter and spoon out onto a baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes (I did 18 minutes). Let them cool on a wire rack. The lemon glaze that I overdid it on (to GREAT effect) is made up of 1 1/2 c. powdered sugar, zest of 1 lemon, and juice of 2 small lemons). I drizzled mine on WAY too early when the cookies were still hot (couldn't wait). But then I drizzled more when they were cooler (too much of a good thing is even better).

This makes two dozen cookies. I made them at about 10:00 last night. They were GONE by about noon today. You do the math.