Introvert in Fall

I woke up this morning and felt determined to bake first thing, before doing anything else. I'd also planned to go running, and since I don't eat before running I usually want that to be the first thing I do after getting up, before I get hungry. But sometimes I'm just compelled to bake. I have a recipe for Apple Pumpkin Cornbread that feels so perfectly seasonal, and I'd planned to modify it to use the butternut squash I had leftover from a recipe I made earlier in the week and the pears I got from my CSA. (and also to veganize it, which was easy) So I went ahead with it, figuring I'd put on my running clothes and stretch while it was in the oven.

While I was measuring and mixing the ingredients, I had some thoughts that I'll try to pull together here in a coherent way.

This week I'd been making a tad more effort than usual to connect with other people. I've been at my job for ten weeks, but the staff and the physical space are so big that I haven't interacted with most of the librarians more than a couple times per person. I have some ideas in my head of who I'd like to be friends with - the cataloger I ran into one morning as I was getting off the train, walked into work with and then spent half an hour at her cubicle talking, the new reference librarian who started just after me and who suggested we meet on a regular basis to share what we've each learned about how things work, the instruction librarian I often run into in the bathroom  - and thankfully the friend-of-a-friend who works in another department has already started to feel like a friend. But still, I've had so little interaction with any of these people, and I miss my old work buddy so much!

I'm pretty shy, and I don't push myself to do anything too out of character, because I'll just feel self-conscious doing it, but I try to push myself just a little bit. So one day when I saw that woman in the bathroom, instead of just saying hi, I commented on how we always seem to be there at the same time. She said she tries to go to the water fountain as an excuse to get up and walk, even though sometimes what she really wants is a brownie. I said I'd been drinking less tea since I started this job, because it's such a long walk to fill up the kettle. It was a brief conversation, but I was glad I'd started it. Later that day I walked by the reference desk, and the friendly new librarian was there and wasn't helping any patrons, so I stopped by to say hi. Go me, being outgoing!

That night I went contradancing and saw a friend-of-friends from college, which was great though disorienting since I hadn't seen her in so long, and the next day on the train I ran into one of my favorite classmates from my second master's program, and that was great, too. But that amount of interacting with people I don't know well wore me out!

I'm not always sure if I'm really an introvert, as I actually like spending a lot of time around other people. I think I'm a combination, but tilted a bit towards introvert. In particular, interactions that I don't feel totally secure about, like starting a conversation with someone new, can feel emotionally tiring. And when I get that way, cooking can really help.

Cooking feels to me like shifting my focus from the world around me and the people in it to focus on my small kitchen and my actions in it. It occurred to me this morning (and I've had this thought before, but I always forget it after) that it's meditative. I'm re-reading a little primer I own about meditation, and last night I read that meditation is the practice of doing one thing at a time. When the author says "doing one thing," he includes thinking as an act. So if I'm thinking about work while running, I'm doing two things. And if I'm listening to music, thinking about friends, and running (as I did after the cornbread came out of the oven), I'm doing three things. But when I'm cooking, I'm pretty much only cooking. I think this is why I like to cook multiple things at once, so that the process takes up all my attention. I'm such an overthinker, and it is calming to be solely focused on my actions for an hour or so.

The author of this book uses a lot of phrases that I don't quite understand to describe the effects of meditation (like restructuring your personality). But the bottom line, he says, is it's like coming home. Which is the perfect thing to do after being a little over-stimulated, even from a bunch of really enjoyable conversations with acquaintances.

 

I also made these oatmeal thumbprint cookies.

L'Shana Tova

Rosh Hashanah starts tonight, and I'm ready with food to bring to my synagogue's potluck tomorrow (pasta in a creamy, non-dairy sauce with chard). By chance I ended up making this recipe earlier this week for myself, a gooey raw dessert that calls for 2 1/4 cups of dates. So I told myself maybe if I ate it on the holidays my year would be full of dates :) I'm not sure I even want that, as dates with new people are not fun most of the time, but I amused myself.

Even though, as usual, I've done a lot of cooking lately, and a lot of it has been unusual, I woke up this morning and wanted a traditional honey cake. Part of me is superstitious. We're supposed to eat apples and honey for a sweet near year, so what happens if I don't eat them?! Part of me just really likes ritual and tradition and didn't want to miss out on a holiday tradition. And part of me just never wants to miss out on fun other people are having, and other people are eating honey cake today!

Needless to say, this is not vegan. I don't have a problem with eating honey, mostly because I don't know what mistreating bees would mean or what it means for bees to have a comfortable life. Though most vegans don't eat it, so there probably is a good rationale that I don't know about.

To make a single-serving cake, a ramekin is really useful. Or you could use a mug, or maybe a silicon cupcake holder by itself. I've never used those, but I assume they are sturdy enough to stand up on their own without being in a muffin tin.

Single-Serving Honey Cake

3 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1 Tbsp honey, plus a bit more if needed for moisture
1 Tbsp apple sauce
sprinkle of cinnamon

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl, then add the wet. If too dry, you can add a bit of milk - or more honey. Pour into a greased ramekin or mug.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until the middle is puffy and firm.
Eat, and have a sweet new year :)

Birthday Cake, a Two-Part Story

I love cooking for parties, and I get excited to host my birthday party each summer. I usually make myself a checkerboard cake, which looks something like this:

My 2014 cake

I first made checkerboard cake in 2009, and I made it into a tradition after that. I make a different flavor every year. I used to make two different recipes for the two colors, but one would always rise more than the other, or they'd be different textures, and it didn't quite work. For the lemon lavender cake above, it wasn't until my third attempt that it occurred to me I could just make one big batch of lemon lavender batter, divide it in half, and add different food coloring to each half. It was a helpful realization, but I was tired enough after making the same cake three times last year that I thought maybe I wouldn't do a checkerboard this year.

But people kept asking about the cake, and I thought "Alright, I can handle one more checkerboard." This year's cake was almond mocha. I used a hazelnut recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and substituted almond meal for the hazelnut meal. I doubled the recipe, then divided the batter in half and added instant coffee and some cocoa powder to one half. I added a little extra flour to the other half so I wouldn't have one part wetter/drier than the other. The recipe had a chocolate mousse filling with chocolate ganache on top, so I did that, too. Put some almonds and marzipan on top and came out with this:

Yum!

Because I have so many friends with birthdays in August or early September, I decided to make marzipan letters for the guests, too. The party itself was a picnic in the park with eight friends, and it was very nice.

The following weekend was Labor Day, and I had some free time and thought since it was so fun to bake the birthday cake, I'd use my time to bake another cake! ... I discovered that it's not as much fun to bake a cake when you don't have a birthday party to look forward to, but luckily I did have a mini-party: lunch in the park with a friend who had missed my party and who had also just had a birthday a few days after mine. And I invented an interesting recipe that I thought was worth recording and sharing.

Oreo Cake
For the cake itself, I used this recipe Skinny Vanilla Cupcakes, from Chocolate Covered Katie.
Chop 3/4 cup oreos into small chunks and mix into the batter after the other ingredients are all mixed. Pour into a greased cake pan and bake for 35-40 minutes. The cupcake recipe says 18-20, but mine took much longer. I'd start with 30 minutes and keep checking on the cake until the center is puffed and firm.

The frosting was adapted from the mousse I made for last week's cake.
1 package firm silken tofu
1/4 cup nondairy milk
2 Tbsp agave syrup or maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp confectioner's sugar
1/2 cup crumbled oreos

Put all ingredients except oreos into a blender and puree. If your blender is not very strong, blend the tofu, milk, syrup, and vanilla in the blender, then scoop it out and mix in the confectioner's sugar by hand. Stir in the oreos by hand.

Wait until cake is well cooled before frosting.

I brought two pieces of oreo cake to my picnic, plus a marzipan R that I'd made for my friend. He put the R on the cake and ate it in two bites. I wish I'd taken a picture.

 

Coconut Lime Cake

This cake is not very photogenic. Its best features are:

a) a lovely crumb, and

b) green frosting, courtesy of some food coloring.

I hope you can at least see the texture. The green doesn't show up so well in the picture.

There's no great story about it, either, except that I was looking to use up some zucchini and some limes, and once I had this idea I just had to make it!

I started off thinking I could make zucchini brownies. I'd noticed I still had some coconut flour in my cabinet, and I remembered that the recipe I just linked to uses both coconut flour and zucchini. So that might be a good option to make. Then I thought the brownies would be good with frosting, and since the recipe uses coconut flour, it reminded me that I'd recently seen a cupcake recipe for coconut lime cupcakes. And I had some limes to use up, too! I bought them and then couldn't remember what they were for. (I think they were a mistake.) But coconut + lime + chocolate seemed like too many different flavors, so I subbed out the chocolate and made some other substitutions to give it a stronger coconut flavor. Eventually it got to be different enough to count as its own recipe, so I am sharing it.

One thing you need to know in advance is that for this recipe you'll need to buy canned coconut milk and then leave it - open - in the fridge overnight. The fatty part will sink to the bottom, so you'll have coconut water on top and something almost as thick as butter on the bottom. You'll use both parts in the recipe.

Ingredients

Cake

1/2 cup zucchini, shredded
1/3 cup thick coconut milk (the part that sunk to the bottom)
1 cup coconut water
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 tbsp flaxmeal (i.e., ground flax seed)
1/2 cup canola oil (you can use coconut oil, but it's higher in calories, and this has enough coconut flavor without it)
3/4 cup white flour
1 cup coconut flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup sugar

Frosting

1/2 cup earth balance (can also use thick coconut milk)
2 cups confectioner's sugar
2 Tbsp lime juice (about 1 lime)
lime zest from 1 lime
1/2 tsp vanilla
green food coloring

Preheat oven to 350, spray an 8" brownie pan.

Mix first six ingredients (through oil) in a medium bowl. Let sit for at least 5 minutes.
Mix dry ingredients very well, in a larger bowl. Pour wet into dry and stir well.

It should be thick but still pretty wet. Thin enough to pour into the pan, and you should be able to spread it easily, but it won't spread by itself. You can adjust the consistency with water or flour if it's not right. Pour into greased brownie pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until the top is just starting to brown. Let cool well before frosting.

For the frosting, mix the earth balance (or butter) with a hand mixer until creamy, then add the other ingredients, minus the food coloring. Add sugar until it is thick enough to stand in peaks. Then add the food coloring. When the cake has fully cooled, spread the frosting on it.

Coming Home

It is Saturday night, and I am happy to be home baking. I'm trying a yeast dough, which never quite works for me the way it is supposed to, but is never all that bad, either.  I don't know enough to say which part I'm getting wrong. The yeast is supposed to be room temperature and the water lukewarm, so it's possible I'm usually not letting my yeast warm up enough after taking it out of the fridge, but often the problem is just that the yeast is old. Anyway, I will tell you how it turns out.

Being in the kitchen often feels to me like returning to or reconnecting with myself, and I definitely was not myself today. A co-worker had encouraged me to come to an event with the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I thought it would be a cool thing to try. She lent me an outfit of medieval clothing, which was fun. It was all linen, and involved a lace-up front and an apron. Luckily it wasn't hot out today, as there were a lot of layers!

We'll pretend I'm incognito in the scarf and safety goggles, since this is supposed to be an anonymous blog.

There were a few things that surprised me. One is that it did not feel like people were reenacting the Middle Ages. It was more like modern people enjoying learning about the Middle Ages. Despite the period-appropriate names (which were mostly things like Elizabeth, Alison, and Michael anyway) and clothing, nobody walked around saying G'day or pretended they didn't know what a phone was or anything like that. There were plastic buckets, blow torches, Tupperware and many other modern tools. It felt more like a high school fair where people could demonstrate what they'd learned.

The second surprise was just how mellow the event was. I don't know what I expected: more of a crowd, maybe, or more jousting and ceremony. It felt more like people who liked weaving were sitting with their friends and weaving, and people who enjoyed glass beading were sitting with their friends making glass beads. I think it's the sort of thing I'd find fun if I were friends with the people or were more serious about any of the activities. But nobody seemed to be having the kind of conversations you have with close friends. It felt very quiet, except for the people who were explaining their crafts to me.

I got to learn about and experience many interesting crafts, though. I spun a small ball of yarn, made a glass bead, and poured a plaster mold that could be used to make ceramic plates. I got to watch weaving, jam-making, and calligraphy. I held a (dull) sword for about a minute.

But there's a lot up in the air in my life right now, and it wasn't quite the right time for me to spend the day around people I didn't fit in with, not fully understanding the etiquette of the group, doing a lot of tasks that I don't know how to do and wasn't very good at. The day just felt like more uncertainty, I guess.

It's hard to say why baking would help with this unmoored feeling, especially since I'm pretty sure this yeast dough is not going to turn out right. But it doesn't matter so much. I feel connected to something very basic - the flour, the big leaves of chard, all these ingredients come from the earth. And after the dough rises (or rises as much as it's going to) I will be able to immerse myself in the dish I'm preparing - the act of rolling out the dough, the smell of food in the oven, the thought processes of judging whether my dough is too wet and whether I've chopped enough onion. The task focuses a lot of my senses and also anchors me physically in my small kitchen, one of my favorite places in my home (or in any home). I am somewhere I know I belong.

 The dough rose, but not as much as it was supposed to. But it still made enough for 24 burekas.

They aren't the most photogenic food, but they taste good.

They are filled with chard, onions, walnuts, tahini, and tomato paste.

Cooking When Exhausted

I had an exhausting day on Thursday. It involved talking to a lot of people over the course of a long work day, and afterwards there has been much wondering if I said the right things, or if (when) I didn't, whether my statements were within the margin of forgivable imperfection. [edit: This post makes more sense if you know that I was at a job interview. I couldn't say that publicly at the time I wrote it.]

I got home around 6 and wanted to collapse. I tried to do so. I lay down on my bed with my eyes open for awhile, but I soon realized my mind was too active for me to be still. I was thinking that I did not want to fall asleep yet because it would mess up my sleep during the night. I was thinking I should contact my friends about our possible plans for Friday night, except I might be too tired to keep those plans. I was thinking that now might be the only time over the next few days that I'd have time to cook up my CSA vegetables into something I could eat over the next week. And that maybe I ought to have dinner. So I did.

What I made for dinner was more or less this salad, with some substitutions based on what I had in the house. The recipe is an arugula and fennel salad with quinoa and tofu, in an orange dressing. I had green lettuce, fennel, and spring onions in my CSA box, so I used the green parts of the onions in place of chives and the lettuce in place of arugula. Bingo - one recipe that uses 3 of my CSA vegetables! I also roasted the fennel, just because I thought it would taste better that way. I had to buy oranges to make the dressing. Mostly I want to avoid recipes where, in order to use up the produce I have, I need to buy just as many new items. But this only required one additional produce item, and I didn't mind having to buy tofu and quinoa. I liked having the salad turn out so high in protein.

To some extent, cooking despite being exhausted and fit to collapse is just a sign of me being restless and agitated. But I also like to think it's a suitable response to exhaustion in a way, because I'm doing something to take care of myself. The salad was healthy and nutritious, and preparing it did make me feel taken care of, which was a relief after a day spent trying to impress other people. I also think sometimes cooking (or preparing food, I should say, as parts of the salad were raw rather than cooked) helps calm my mind so I can then sleep better. It gets me focused on something, and gets my mind away from wherever it was racing to before, but now I'm thinking about something that isn't going to keep me awake. I mean, how much can you think about chopping lettuce and squeezing oranges once you're done doing it? It doesn't leave one with a lot to ponder.

Because I was in restless multitasking mode, and because I also had strawberries and rhubarb in my CSA box, I made muffins while the tofu was marinating. Look how bright those strawberries are!

 Now in addition to my nutritious salad, I have a somewhat healthy treat, for breakfast or snack.

Recipe here. I used brown rice syrup instead of brown sugar (a little healthier, but less sweet, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend this substitution) and decreased the milk by 1/3 cup to account for the liquid sweetener. I left out the cardamom because I didn't have it and left out the oat topping because I was a little lazy. I had, after all, had a long and tiring day.

Teff Lasagna, a Belated Passover Post

Ten years ago, I decided to host a Passover seder with two friends. Hosting was very significant for me, as it helped me internalize the fact that I was really an adult now, with my own traditions and decisions about life. I think previously I'd had a vague sense that you don't start hosting holidays until you're married and own a house, and I wasn't sure if or when the former would happen. I did buy a home later that year, though. Hosting a seder was a way to claim that adult autonomy despite being single, and it was also really fun!

At first I offered to be in charge of the cooking, and my friend would be in charge of the Haggadah. The third friend was in medical school and was basically offering us her space but not her time. She was useful for keeping us calm, though. I ended up helping with the Haggadah as well, and we compiled a mash-up booklet that we have used ever since. It's very liberal and social justice-y, with alternate words for G-d, an appreciation of all the women's roles in the Exodus story, a note that we will use the term Mitzrayim (the Narrow Place) rather than Egypt to avoid the implication that we are in any way holding a grudge against modern-day Egyptians, and discussion of contemporary sources of oppression. Our seder plate gets very crowded, with an orange to symbolize the role of women in Judaism, an olive to show our hope for peace in Israel-Palestine, one year a tomato in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and another year a small bag of peanuts to show our support of airport workers fighting for higher wages.

Back in the day, I used to insist that the seder could not be a potluck, because I wanted to do all the cooking! I got a little more tired each year, though, until this year I didn't want to host anymore at all. My friend offered to host on his own, and I brought three dishes, including the kale brownies that inspired the title of this blog. My favorite was the dish I invented myself, teff lasagna. It's the kind of dish where even on the third day I'm still excited to eat the leftovers. Unfortunately, there was very little left for me after the seder! This one is a keeper, though, so I'll be making it again.

As a little background, I'd bought teff with the intention of making injera, an Ethiopian bread. My first attempt at injera failed, and I didn't feel like trying again as it had involved letting the dough sit out for three days to ferment. I had a lot of teff left over, though, and I noticed the texture was like cornmeal, so I tried substituting it for cornmeal in a casserole, and it worked fine. Then I got to thinking ... I had a recipe for polenta lasagna, so why not make a polenta recipe using teff and then make it into lasagna? You can get it at Whole Foods, or order it online. (I love Bob's Red Mill! I have visited the mill, outside Portland, OR.)

I try to eat mostly vegan, so the next step was to find a vegan cheese recipe that did not involve nutritional yeast, which I assume is not Kosher for Passover. I have a cashew ricotta recipe that I like, and the nooch is optional, so I left it out and added a little extra lemon juice and salt for zing. Lastly, I decided to use store-bought tomato sauce. I figured, what with making my own noodles and cheese, I had to allow myself one shortcut!

So, here's what I ended up with:

Teff Lasagna

Ingredients

"Noodles"

• 1 cup teff
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup milk (I use almond milk)
• 1/4 cup tahini

Cheese

• 1 1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked
• 1/2 cup water
• juice of 1 large lemon (1/4 cup)
• 1 garlic clove
• dash of onion powder (or 2 Tbsp fresh onion, minced)
• salt and pepper, to taste

1 jar tomato sauce with Italian spices

1 eggplant

1 zucchini

salt

Instructions

First, set the cashews to soak. Cover them with water. This isn't the 1/2 cup that the recipe calls for; it is water you'll discard later so you don't need to measure it.

Slice the eggplant and zucchini lengthwise into thin slices. Set on a cutting board or plate and sprinkle with salt. Let sit for 10-30 minutes, until beads of water appear on top. Preheat the oven to 400.

In a medium saucepan, mix the teff, broth, and milk. Whisk well and heat on low until it's almost too thick to stir. Turn off the heat. Stir in the tahini.

Spray a baking sheet and pour the teff mixture onto it. Cover with plastic wrap and use your hands to spread it out into a thin layer, aiming for 1/2" thickness. Put in refrigerator to firm up.

Rinse off the vegetables. Spray another baking sheet and put the vegetables on it. Bake until just starting to blacken, about 20 minutes?

Drain the cashews and put into a blender with 1/2 cup new water and the lemon juice, garlic, and onion powder. Blend well. It's ok if it's a little lumpy, as real ricotta is, too. Add salt and pepper. Taste, and add more lemon juice or salt if you need to.

Take the teff out of the fridge and the vegetables out of the oven. Lower the temperature to 350. Get out a lasagna pan. Cut the teff into strips roughly the size and shape of lasagna noodles. You probably want to make them shorter, since they fall apart easily and will be easier to transfer if they're short.

Swirl just a little bit of sauce into the pan first. Then layer half the noodles over the sauce. It's ok if they fall apart a little as long as you can get them into the pan. Spread half the cheese over the noodles, then half the tomato sauce, then the vegetables, then the rest of the noodles, then the rest of the cheese, then more tomato sauce. The important part of the order is to put sauce on top. If you have noodles as your top layer, they'll dry out.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Here it is

Welcome, and What I Love About Cooking

Hi! Welcome to my new blog, where I will post about food I am cooking. I've been tossing around the idea of blogging for awhile now, since I realized that people seem to like my Facebook posts about food, though it was much earlier that someone pointed out to me how much I like talking about cooking. I was on the phone with my sister W, and she asked, "Are you going to tell me about what you cooked this weekend?" I said why do you ask? Apparently every time we talked on the phone, I had been reporting on what I was cooking, and I hadn't noticed the pattern. I'm not always very observant.

The name of this blog came to me one day when I served a group of friends a vegan lasagna made with teff "noodles" (that will have to be my first real post, after this introductory one). They were all raving about it, to the point where I felt bad for the other people who had also brought dishes (but not that bad) and I thought, "You know, this dish is really weird. I think people are willing to eat it because they've eaten other foods I've made, and I have a reputation, and they trust me." I then proceeded to test that by serving them kale brownies. haha!

Then, once I had a name, it seemed like it was time to start a blog!

The focus of this blog will be a little different from the food blogs I read. For one thing, I am not a good photographer and usually take pictures in my messy kitchen where you can see the food processor or the stove in the background. For another, it is not that often that I invent recipes, though I sometimes combine things in unusual ways, so I may be doing a lot of linking to other sites. If I do invent something, I'll write it out, but mostly I expect I'll focus on stories. Besides loving good food, I also care a lot about what the food means in context.

I love cooking for myself when I'm feeling down; it makes me feel so taken care of to have healthy and yummy food! Plus concentrating on cooking gets my mind off whatever is upsetting me. I also love cooking for friends - the art of planning a menu that balances different colors and textures and nutrients while including flavors that feel connected yet varied, and the way food can bring people together. Food provides a way for me to help people out - if they've just had a baby, or their spouse is dying, or some other emergency. A friend once told me she'd forgive me not coming to her father's funeral if I made her my homemade Twix. One of my favorite compliments I got was from an acquaintance whose wife was in her last week of life. I'd brought them tamale pie, and he wrote to me two days later to say "Your food continues to nourish us, body and soul." <3

I also enjoy the challenges of cooking with limitations. I once cooked a seder meal where one of the guests could not eat nuts (nuts usually feature heavily in Passover cuisine), and at another seder one of the guests had celiac and said this dinner was the first good meal she'd had since her diagnosis. About a year ago I was having issues with stomach acid and was not eating citrus, chocolate, garlic, onions, tomatoes, mint, dairy, or alcohol. It was terribly stressful, but it taught me a lot about food substitutions, and now I get over-eager to make suggestions to other people when they need to go on elimination diets.

As I have time in the coming weeks, I will post some pictures of food I've made recently with stories about what occasion it was for and why it was meaningful to me. And then we'll see how it goes!