Archive for June, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that a stop sign near my house had been hit with the classic AR sticker (not my picture). I smiled and wondered who living so close by might have put this up.
The next time I walked by it was gone.
I have a handful of those stickers, too. Maybe I should put one back up there in a show of solidarity with my unknown AR neighbor.
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A new recipe site that takes what you have in the pantry (and lets you store info about it!) and suggests recipes based on the contents. Neat. Linked here are the recipes tagged “vegan.”
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This is why Gary should be President. Or at least write a book.
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Incredibly powerful. The image at 1:52 hit me like a ton of bricks.
Summer’s my least favorite season, but there is one thing about June that makes it all worthwhile: the start of CSA season. I’ve loved the CSA concept from the moment I heard about it and have enjoyed the fresh, organically grown local vegetables year after year.
One of the plentiful herbs we get during the summer is basil, but during the first few weeks of the CSA, basil’s not as copious, but scapes are. Scapes, or garlic curls, are “are the tender flower stalks that grow out of the middle of hardneck garlic, before the garlic below is full grown.” They have a nice, intense flavor, but can be a little tricky trying to figure out where to use them. Our favorite use is in a modified pesto that uses garlic curls instead of pesto. I’ve posted the recipe because it’s just that good… it’s a biting pesto that has a sharper flavor than you’d expect but is absolutely perfect spread on a piece of toasted crusty bread with a slice of fresh tomato on top. There really are few things finer in life.
This week, the basil started coming in, which means several months of more traditional pesto. Pesto on bread, pesto on pasta, pesto on veggies… maybe summer’s not such a bad time after all…
A biting pesto that has a sharper flavor than you’d expect. Absolutely perfect spread on a piece of toasted crusty bread with a slice of fresh tomato on top.
Ingredients
- 1 bunch garlic curls (scapes)
- 1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts or walnuts or pine nuts
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup vegan parmesan cheese
Directions
Chop garlic, puree in food processor or blender. Add nuts and puree. Add oil and cheese and puree.
Adapted by Potomac Vegetable Farms from Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables — A Common Sense Guide by Elizabeth Schneider.
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Matthew Kenney’s (formerly of Pure Food and Wine) new veggie restaurant Heirloom has shut down. Interesting article covering the roller coaster of Kenney’s career. At least he’s not flashing people on the subway. [via Johanna]
The Glad Cow Cookbook
Summer Keightley
Glad Cow Publishing, 2005
Summer Keightley’s The Glad Cow Cookbook would be easy to overlook if it were on the shelf at Borders. It’s a small, unassuming book, coming in at just 64 pages, with no pictures and a very simple layout. One might mistake it as a bookmark for Vegan Planet.
And that’s why I like it.
We all have loads of cookbooks with tons of recipes that may or may not have been tested as fully as they should be. But when you flip through The Glad Cow Cookbook, it’s clear that Summer has taken time to develop and test these recipes. Each section (Baked Goods, Biscotti, Dips and Spreads, Main Dishes, Sides, Soups and Salads, and Sweets) is tiny, with less than a dozen recipes in each, but it’s easy to tell that what’s there is what you’re likely to find in Summer’s own fridge on any given day.
I was stoked to see a section on Biscotti, which features four recipes. My wife and I made up the almond biscotti and the oatmeal chocolate chip biscotti, put it in a nice jar and gave it to my mom for her birthday along with some Newman’s Own orange dark chocolate to melt and dip into. She loved them and they were gone quickly.
The Lemon Garlic Pasta is a delicious and simple alternative to the standard spaghetti with marinara sauce. It’s a perfect go-to dish on those busy nights. Another favorite is the Road Trip Quinoa salad, a very bright and light summer salad. This is the type you can make on a Sunday night and have for the rest of the week for lunch. Great stuff.
For a little something different, give the Tofu Piri Piri a try, a veggie take on a classic Argentinian dish. It came out a bit sour using all of the lemon and lime juice called for, so considering cutting back a little.
In terms of sweets, you can’t beat the Miracle Creamy Coconut First Try Pie, an experimental recipe of Summer’s that turned out right on the first try. It calls for a pound of silken tofu and a 16 oz. can of coconut milk, but it turned out just fine with 13 oz. of tofu and a 13 oz. can of coconut milk. It lives up to its name… it’s plenty creamy and is miraculously easy.
About the only place where Glad Cow came up short was on a black bean casserole recipe. It wasn’t bad, it was just kind of bland compared to the other very flavorful dishes we’d made from the book. It may have been the subbing of beet greens for kale on my part that did it, though.
While $12.95 may seem a bit steep for a 64-page cookbook, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to recommend it. There’s more variety in here than you’d expect and the recipes are inspired and unique. Plus, you’re supporting a fellow Veg Blog reader and a small press. So, really, it’s a no-brainer.
You can pick a copy up directly from Summer or through our friends over at Food Fight. And if you’re reading this and it’s still June, you can enter to win a copy!
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As a vegan and a diner geek, I cannot tell you how much this excites me. I’m all tingly.
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Vegan items in Amazon’s new grocery store (veg blog affiliate link)
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Not quite sure how I missed this developing story, but it’s an important one.
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