Kombu up.

Well, it's just about summer, and most of us girls are eyeing our bikinis with squinty, sideways glances and a raised eyebrow. Here's an idea for a nice bath soak to help your skin be smooth and glowing. Kombu (seaweed. Read: kelp.) is used in Japanese cooking for all kinds of things, including the ubiquitous dashi broth. Sometimes it's made into tea and used to break down fats in the body and flush them out. Soaking in a bath of kombu and salt is said to have the same effect, and it makes your skin really soft. If it happens to remove cellulite with regular use, then blessed be. The salt will draw toxins out of your body, so it's a good idea to rinse off when you're done soaking. By the way, get your kombu at an Asian market. I get huge packages there for 89 cents, as opposed to a package one-quarter the size for six dollars at the health food store. Seriously.

Kombu Bath

3 six inch pieces of kombu

one big handful of sea or Epsom salt

Put kombu and salt in tub, and run a bath as hot as is comfy. Soak for 10-15 minutes. You can rub the kombu over your skin for extra softness if you want. Do this once a week for best results. Rinse, dry and reuse the kombu up to three times.

How ironic. The UPS man just rang the doorbell and left my new swim suits waiting for me. Dun dun duhhhh!

Cheap Fun for Foodies

I just got back from my local Asian market, and OH MY GOODNESS it's so much fun! So many things that are hard to find at a "regular" grocery store are happily abundant, and for much less than if you were to purchase them elsewhere. The rice noodles for example, are $1.17 for 14 oz, compared to 3-5 dollars at other stores. Young Thai coconuts, kaffir lime leaves, vegetarian Tom Yum paste (yay!), egg less won ton and spring roll wrappers - notoriously difficult to locate - I could go on and on. Miso paste is also a great buy at these places...just check your ingredients...some of the miso had MSG and other grossness added! I found one brand that was made from organic, non-gmo soybeans, with no additives. It was available in red and white, and the large tubs are only 3 and a half dollars. I'm sorry I can't quit quoting prices, but for anyone who is on a budget and also buys unconventional ingredients, this is such an exciting thing. :)

They had plantains and I bought some just for fun. I've never fried plantains before and it's very simple and delicious. I didn't take pictures because Evi and I devoured them while they were nice and hot, dipped in agave-sweetened ketchup. Mmmmmmm.

Fried Plantains (hardly a recipe)

3-4 greenish yellow plantains
oil for frying (safflower or coconut if you can afford the luxury of frying in it)
salt

Wash the plantains before you slice them open. (Who knows where they've been.) Cut into halves or thirds, and score just through the skin, in three or four places down the length of the banana pieces. Peel off the skins. Cut the bananas into discs about an inch long or so. Heat a half inch of oil over med-high heat (to 350) and fry the bananas til golden, 2-3 minutes per side. Remove to paper towels, and smash the bananas so they become 1/2 inch thick discs. I used a bit mug for this; a meat pounder thingy would be good too, if you have one. (If they crumble, they need to cook a little while longer before you smash them.) Return the bananas to the oil and fry a few more minutes until crispy and golden. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. Eat hot with ketchup or salsa...mango or peach salsa would be just insane. Or try stirring a little chopped chipotle pepper into your ketchup.

You have to try this!

Evi's First Haircut! (aside from bangs)

This turned out cute, in spite of me. It must be the power of the Eves coming though my incompetent hair cutting skills.

Just so you understand the horror that normally is a Marcella Cut, here is a photo remembrance of The December 2007 Bangs Massacre:

At least my Evangeline had what it takes to rock a mullet.

A chip off the old block

There is certainly no shortage of vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes in the world, most of them very delicious. An advantage of vegan chocolate chip cookies is that many of the recipes are a lot healthier than the traditional one -- made with quality oil (such as coconut), whole grain flour, and so on. I will add, it's with no detriment to taste. HOWEVER! There are times when I need to go back to my childhood...to those gooey, soft, chewy morsels of love that are completely and utterly non-nutritive. My mom made the best ones. I remember coming home from a dance class or school soooo hungry I could eat 10 or 12. (Teenagers have such amazing appetites!) While I am no longer able to down them with such abandon, I am very happy that after a year of trying, I am finally able to replicate them to my exact memory with vegan ingredients.

Here is my delicious, vegan junk food, Mrs. Bartausky-style:

Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Preheat oven to 350. (My oven thermometer said 375, but I don't know how accurate it is)

Prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Cream together very well:

1 c earth balance non-dairy stick "butter"

3/4 c brown sugar

3/4 c unbleached sugar (Fair trade organic sugar if at all possible!)

Whip together in a food processor, blender, or cup with immersion blender til creamy:

1 1/2 T (4 1/2 t) egg replacer (tested with EnerG egg replacer)

6 T water

Whip the egg replacer mixture and 2 t vanilla into the "butter" and sugar until everything is very light and fluffy.

Sift together:

2 1/2 c. all purpose flour

1 t baking soda

1 scant t salt

mix into the sugar mixture until a nice dough forms, and then stir in:

1 1/2 (or 2 if you want) chocolate chips (fair trade and organic again, if possible)

1 c chopped toasted nuts, optional

Drop dough by tablespoonfuls onto prepared baking sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes, until barely, just golden. Let sit on sheets for a minute and remove to racks to cool. Enjoy with your favorite non-dairy milk. Makes about 45, depending on how much dough you eat while you're baking. Oh, you don't do that? Must be just me....

Sprinkle some love!

One of the ingredients I missed most when I became vegan was Parmesan cheese. It wasn't necessarily the flavor I was most lamenting, but that finishing touch. Something rich to sprinkle on top of pasta or soup...

Of course, you can buy vegan Parmesan substitute, but it's so easy to make your own and avoid those highly processed cheese substitutes. An old recipe standby is 1 to 1 toasted nuts or seeds and nutritional yeast, ground together with a pinch of salt, but I wanted something a little more hearty and crumbly. Here's what I came up with:

Cashew Sprinkle

3 T olive oil

1 t mild miso

1/2 t umeboshi paste

1 c. small cashew pieces

1 c. nutritional yeast

Heat oven to a slow temperature, about 250 degrees.

Whisk the oil, miso, and umeboshi paste together in a medium sized bowl. Add the cashews and nutritional yeast, and stir to coat everything with the oil mixture. Spread onto a parchment lined baking sheet, and let the mixture dry out in the oven 40 minutes or so. Everything should be smelling nice and toasty, but obviously, you don't want it to burn. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Grind by pulsing in a food processor until the mixture looks like coarse sand, but don't let it turn into a paste! Store in the refrigerator in a covered glass jar.

Sprinkle on salad, soup, or pasta. You could also use this mixed with breadcrumbs to fry eggplant and make eggplant "Parmesan".

Spelt Bread

Mmmm...fresh bread. Warm and sweet and cozy. I don't want to give it up when I'm pressed for time, so I turn to my bread machine. I know that, for bread snobs, a bread machine is the stuff nightmares are made of. Yet I beg it's reverence as a tool that busy people can use to keep homemade bread consistently available. Whatever you do, though, please try and bake it in your oven. There is (In my humble opinion) something scary about the dice-shaped loaf that emerges from "the machine". So when I don't have time to make bread the old-fashioned way, I use the dough cycle on my bread machine and at least bake it the old-fashioned way! Then I have the best of all worlds: time for homemade bread, a house that smells like heaven, and lovely, burnished brown loaves that are the proper shape for slicing into sandwiches.

Here's my favorite recipe for the bread machine:

Spelt and Whole Wheat Bread

1/2 c + 1 T water

1/2 c soy yogurt or 1/2 t vinegar mixed into 1/2 c non-dairy milk and left to curdle for a few minutes

1 T olive (or other) oil

1 T "butter" or coconut oil

2 1/4 c spelt flour

3/4 c whole wheat flour

2 T dark brown sugar

1 T + 1 t gluten flour (for best texture)

1 1/2 t salt

2 1/2 t yeast

Place in bread machine according to manufacturer's instructions. Set to dough cycle. During the cycle, check and see if you need to add a touch of water if the dough is crumbly, or a little flour if it's very wet. When cycle ends, press the air out of the dough. Form it into a loaf and pinch the seams. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Let the dough rise for about 45 m. in a well-oiled loaf pan (it should slope gently just over the top of the pan when it's ready to bake). Bake for 35 m. When it's done, it should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool until warm and devour, preferably with tasty jam.

I like to use white whole wheat flour for my bread baking. It's available from King Arthur Flour Co. and Bob's Red Mill.

Creative Endeavors

My recent fun includes making a little rubber duckie cake for my niece Jasmine's first birthday party, and also sewing a little doll for the same event. The duck is banana cake and the recipe comes from talented Hannah Kaminsky's book My Sweet Vegan. The frosting is just plain "butter"cream. I used licorice for the eyes and a vegan jelly candy (by Sunspire -- I got mine in Fred Meyer's bulk dept) for the beak.






The doll was made from leftover scraps of this and that; I was most happy to find a perfect use for the black eyelash yarn my mother-in-law gave me...hair! It made the perfect little fuzzy 'fro. I hope to make more of these little dolls for Christmas presents...I have lots of little ones in my life, and this doll was so fun to make. I used this pattern, but I did the doll's hair differently than the instructions suggested. Using a needle and thread, I made "ladders" of stitching on the doll's head, and then wove the yarn into it. I thought it would be sturdier this way.


Fun times!