I’ve plugged Isa’s upcoming Vegan With a Vengeance cookbook here a few times before, but expect the plugging to be even more pronounced in the coming months.

Why? Well, Isa kindly asked yours truly to pen the foreword. And so I did.

While I always hoped that I’d have a book published by the time I was 30, I’m perfectly happy having a foreword in someone else’s super crazy awesome book a month after I turn 30.

More fun announcements to come. But now, go pre-order!

If I tell you something really embarassing will you promise to keep it to yourself?

You know that book How It All Vegan? I’ve known about that book since it came out in 2003, but I didn’t understand the wordplay in the title until last month.

Man, am I dense.

That’s what happens when you worry so much about pronouncing the word “vegan” properly: you become totally oblivious to clever wordplay possibilities.

Here’s a question for you veg*ns out there: since you ditched meat/dairy/eggs, have you tried any of the substitutes for things that you never ate when you were omni?

For instance, I always turned up my nose at tuna. Yet, I bought Tuno because it intrigued me. Actually, I’ve bought it a few times and even made tuna salad with it, which would have grossed out a 20-year-old version of me.

And when my wife and I were in New York and had lunch at Red Bamboo, we ordered their calamari. I’ve never had calamari in my life, but tried the vegan version and enjoyed it (so did the wife).

Most recently—yesterday to be exact—I bought some Ricemellow Creme and made a fluffernutter for lunch. I think I’ve had one fluffernutter in my life previous to this, but how could I pass up a product like vegan marshmallow fluff? I mean, just by the very fact it exists, I was forced to try it.

(By the way, Ricemellow Creme is so good. Don’t tell anyone, but I was dipping my fingers into it last night and eating it plain. And it’s not even that bad for you… 2 tablespoons contain 40 calories, no fat, no sodium, no nothing, except for a little sugar. It’s made out of only rice nectar, soy protein, natural gums, and natural flavor.)

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but Herbivore issue 8 is out now. As usual, it’s a visual delight and has some great features including one with SHAC 7 defendant Josh Harper and another with Erik Marcus. And for the requisite self-plug, I’ve got an interview with DC-based reggae band See-I.

You can order your issue online for a mere $4.50. But, really, you should have a subscription. Really, you should.

Nuoc Mam (or fish sauce) is a standard condiment/dressing in southeast Asian cuisine. Indeed, it’s the bane of vegetarians existence when ordering in a Vietnamese or Thai restaurant since many sauces often have fish sauce in it.

The thing is, fish sauce is actually a very concentrated liquid that goes into making nuoc mam (which is Vietnamese; the Thai call it “Nam pla”). If you\’re interested in the actual process of making fish sauce (which is kind of gross, as you might expect), this page has some information.

In any event, when my mother-in-law visits and makes nuoc mam, she always makes a separate batch for me that leaves the fish sauce out of the mixture. “Khong nuoc mam” is how to say “no fish sauce” in Vietnamese, so I figured I’d call this modified version, Khong Nuoc Mam Fish Sauce.

The taste is very similar and can be used in all the same ways regular fish sauce is used. Dip spring rolls in it, add it to curries, etc.

It tastes best if you can let it sit for a day before using it, but it’s also fine using it right away.

Huyen wrote to tell me: “The Vietnamese dipping sauce is actually called Nuoc Mam Cham (fish dipping sauce) which has the nuoc mam (fish sauce) in it. I think people just shorten it but the real fish sauce is raw and unmixed and rather yucky by itself. Hehe, here’s a pronunciation.

Nuoc cham (Google search)

And since yours has soy sauce it would be called nuoc tuong cham (soy dipping sauce). Here are some different sauce recipes.

Hope that clarifies a little bit. I’m sure there are a million and one variations.”

Ingredients

• 2-3 cloves of garlic, mashed
• 1 cup Coco Rico (a coconut soda that can be found in many Latin and Asian grocery stores; it’s OK if you’re using flat Coco Rico you’ve had sitting around)
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup Maggi sauce, or to taste (standard soy sauce, tamrai, or shoyu can also be used)
• Pinch of dry hot pepper or 1 fresh hot red pepper, mashed
• Dash of MSG or MSG substitute (optional)
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• Juice of half or 1 whole lime

Directions

Mix everything together.

That was easy, no?

Source: VegBlog.org’s mother-in-law

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Ingredients

Topping:

• 1/2 c. all purpose flour
• 1/2 c. packed brown sugar
• 1/2 c. quick cooking or rolled oats
• 1/2 c. vegan stick margarine

Filling:

• Ener-G Egg Replacer equiv. to one egg
• 1 c. sugar
• 2 Tbsp. flour
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3/4 lb. rhubarb, chopped into 1/2 pieces
• 1 pint strawberries, sliced into halves or quarters, depending on size
• 1 unbaked pie crust

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. For topping, Mix flour, sugar and oats together in a medium bowl and then cut in margarine with two forks or a pastry blender until crumbly. Set aside. (You may have more topping than you need.)
3. Put egg replacer into large bowl. Add sugar, flour, and vanilla extract and mix together well.
4. Stir the rhubarb and strawberries with the sugar/flour mixture until the sugar has dissolved (about 1 min.).
5. Pour this immediately into the unbaked pie crust and sprinkle the top with crumb topping. It is very important to get the pie in the over right away once you mix the fruit with the sugar; if you let it sit at all, it will produce too much juice and be too runny.
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350 and cook another 50 minutes or until the filling has puffed up evenly.
7. Cool pie, then refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.

Source: Terry Cummings at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

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Sorry for the quiet around here lately… I’ve had problems with MT and my web host (others have as well), and unfortunately, the problem for me hasn’t been fixed yet. In addition, the c: drive on my home PC has crashed, which has made meeting deadlines on certain articles difficult. However, lots of cool stuff is happening.

With that aside, I wanted to add on a bit to my post from Friday about my wife’s family’s visit last week. In addition to trying a bunch of great new recipes (by the way, I posted the Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Pie recipe), I worked with my mother-in-law on writing down the recipes for vegetarian pho and not-fish fish sauce. I’ll be posting those this week, as they are two of the most frequently requested recipes I’m asked for in e-mail.

Lastly, is there anyone in the DC/VA/MD metro area that might be interested in doing a little volunteer farm work? Let me know.

My in-laws have been in town for the last week and we’ve been doing lots of cooking and baking, almost entirely with new recipes.

Last weekend was the real kitchen marathon where we made a tofu “filet”, chocolate chip cookies, Indian-spiced Quinoa with Raisins and Pinenuts from the Compassionate Cooks site, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and our go-to picnic dish, a cold spaghetti salad. This weekend I’ll be adapting a recipe for Fennel Slaw from Gourmet magazine.

The tofu filet was surprisingly easy and quick. The topping was really tasty and fried up fast. This would have been even better if we had marinated the tofu in a fish-like broth for a day or so (maybe one with seaweed?). One note: we had a lot of the dry mix left over. You can probably half that portion of the recipe and still have plenty to cover your tofu.

The cookies came out wonderfully and I ate way too many of them the first day after making them. I brought a batch of these to a fourth of July block party and half-considered labeling them “VEGAN COOKIES!” just so that no one would eat them and I could have them to myself. But I didn’t, and everyone ate them without exclaiming, “Wait! I don’t taste eggs in these cookies!” They even impressed my hard-to-impress sister-in-law, who I schooled on the many ways to bake without eggs.

The Indian-spiced quinoa was simply awesome. A lot of times, recipes I find on the web don’t have enough spice in them and are left tasting kind of bland, but here the balance was perfect. None of my in-laws had ever even heard of quinoa, but they dug this dish.

The pie recipe came courtesy of Terry from Poplar Spring. She had mentioned this recipe a few weeks ago when I was at the farm and I decided to give it a shot since I don’t ever recall having eaten rhubarb before. The pie was deliciously sweet thanks to the fruit’s natural juices and a brown sugar topping. The only weak point was the crust, which was store-bought.

I’ll let you know how the fennel slaw turns out. I was surprised by the fact that it called for anise and fennel, which I had always thought were pretty much identical. The Post Punk Kitchen taught me to never think for myself on food matters.

Isa and friends over at the Post Punk Kitchen are running a new contest, the Tofu Container Challenge.

I hate when I get a package of tofu in one of those plastic containers and all that packaging goes to waste, and I know you do, too. So let it be known that this is THE TOFU CONTAINER CHALLENGE! Use your creativity to come up with fun/functional/decorative ways to use those things.

First prize: a PPK t-shirt and DVD
Second Prize: A Food Fight! Grocery totebag - carry your vegan wears in style!
Third Prize: Breaking up the band, an awesome fabric covered zine from oh, blast! with break-up stories from 9 bands.

The contest will last until July 15th. Post pictures between July 11th- 15th. Post your entries on the PPK boards here. After your studious panel of judges has evaluated all the entries the winners will be announced on July 18th. Not only will you gain fame and notorioty, you will be saving the landfills (for the time being anyway) and inspiring a generation to do the same.

Rules:
1- No violence. If you use threats or intimidation to distract your opponents you will be disqualified.
2- Use as many containers as you like!
3- Don’t try to bribe the judges!