Bonus MoFo recipe: za'atar foccacia!

This should really be part of my last post, but I'm typing on my phone and blogger's editing interface is causing me trouble.  So for now, I will post the recipe for last night's focaccia right here!



Za'atar foccacia
Makes a cookie sheet worth of bread

1 1/4c boiling water
2 tsp za'atar
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tbsp agave nectar
1 packet (4 tsps, I think) active dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
2 to 2.5c bread flour

more olive oil, coarse salt & za'atar for topping

1.  Pour the boiling water onto the za'atar and thyme and allow to sit until lukewarm.
2.  Strain the lukewarm water into a large bowl (if you have a stand mixer, use the bowl for that) and discard the used up herbs.
3.  Mix the agave nectar into the warm water, then sprinkle the yeast on top.  Let sit for a minute or two til bubbly.
4.  Start adding the bread flour by the 1/2c, stirring thoroughly by hand after each addition.  (I use a silicon spatula.)  Try to get all the flour hydrated.  This should happen around 2c.
5.  Now you will knead the dough.  I did as much in a stand mixer with a dough hook for about 5 minutes on medium.  You can also do it by hand.  You want the dough to have the consistency of pizza dough-- stretchy, smooth, not sticky, not dry.  Add the reserved half cup of dough as needed to get to the right place.
6.  Put a towel over the dough bowl and let the dough rise for about an hour, til doubled in size.
7.  Meanwhile, grease a large cookie sheet.
8.  When the dough finishes the first rise, punch it down, then stretch it out into a sheet so it covers the entire cookie sheet.  Use a rolling pin if you can't get it by hand.  Don't worry about little tears, they will self-heal in the second rise.
9.  Brush the top of the bread lightly with olive oil and sprinkle on za'atar and coarse salt to taste.
10.  Cover the cookie sheet with a towel (or two) and let rise for another 45 minutes.  Meanwhile preheat your oven to 350F.
11.  Bake for 25 minutes or til toasty and golden.  Eat!!

Vegan MoFo Day 4: Roasty Skordalia!

Hey internet.  I'm going to try to keep this brief today (right), because I really need to get back to studying for the midterm I have this evening.  My first exam of grad school round 2!  Oh man!  It's for a class in my specialization (computer networks) and it's material I know quite well AND it's multiple choice but-- I'm still super anxious about it.  Ugh!  Exams!

You know what doesn't make me say ugh?  Dips.  Dips never make me say ugh.  Except maybe delighted ughs, and uggggggghhhhhhh I'm so full I can't take another bite ughs.  Okay, dips make me make good ughs...

Day 4's dip is definitely, definitely a good ugh inducer:  skordalia!



I first had skordalia a year or two ago at a vegan potluck hosted by Amey of Vegan Eats & Treats.  If I recall correctly, we may have been having a dip party, and Alana brought this amazing bowl of what tasted like pureed garlic and potatoes.  Emphasis on the garlic.

Flash forward to uh, yesterday.  I finally look up the ingredients for skordalia and that's pretty much it:  supersmooth pureed potato and garlic with some olive oil and salt to round it all out.  It's sort of like dipping in mashed potatoes, if mashed potatoes were suuuuuuper creamy and wonderful and you put in as much garlic as YOU wanted and not as much as you thought your Thanksgiving guests could handle.  Mmmm.  Garlic.

I went a slightly different road than most recipes I read and roasted my ingredients.  I'll put a quick recipe at the end of this post.  We ate it last night with the muhammara (you can see it in the full table picture) and various dippers.  It makes me feel sorta dirty to dip bread into potatoes (omg carbs), but this is really good with vegetables too.

After roasting the potatoes, I had this huge pile of empty baked potato skins leftover, so I saved them and actually cooked lunch for once in a blue moon:



Fried baked potato skins with slivers of tofurky and kale.  I drizzled mine with a little leftover creamy buffalo dip (I KNOW! there is a lot of dip in my house right now guys!) and it was fantastic.  The Emperor said no to sauce but proceeded to eat 3 bowls full without-- kale, tofurky, and yes, even the potatoes.  Here he is trying his first bite of the kale:



(He absolutely wouldn't touch the skordalia though.  He thinks mashed potatoes are the devil's work.)

The Magician ALSO really liked the kale:



It's nice when I make a point of making E lunch and he actually eats it... While he's not nearly as picky as he got directly after last year's MoFo, he can still be a tough customer.

Well, I think that's it but for the skordalia recipe!  I've got two more middle eastern-y dips lined up and then we'll be through the first week of MoFo.  Whoa!

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Roasty Skordalia
makes like 4 cups

2 lbs russet potatoes, scrubbed and poked
2 heads garlic, top 1/4 inch lopped off
olive oil for drizzling

3/4c water
1/4c olive oil
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1 clove raw garlic, grated (optional)

1.  Preheat oven to 425F.
2.  Place the potatoes on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil to coat.
3.  Place garlic heads on a piece of tinfoil (or in a dish with an oven-safe lid), drizzle with garlic, then wrap tightly.  Place on the baking sheet with the potatoes.
4.  Bake for 45 minutes, then check for doneness.  Larger russets will probably take more like an hour-- but do check at 45 because the garlic may be done and you want it out before it burns.
5.  When everything's done, take it out and let it cool a bit.
6.  Scoop insides out of potatoes and put them in a large bowl.  Set aside skins for another use.
7.  Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the cloves, into the same large bowl.
8.  Mash thoroughly with a potato masher.
9.  Continue mashing while adding water and oil.  Add 3 tbsps of water followed by 1 tbsp of oil, mash/mix thoroughly, then add the next batch.
10.  Stop when you reach your desired consistency.  Add salt, taste for garlic-tastic-ness, and add that last clove of grated garlic if you need a bit of a kick.

Vegan MoFo Day 3: Muhammara

Continuing right on with the dips... today I continue my sub-theme of vaguely middle eastern dips with one I had never made before:  muhammara.

To tell the truth, I've only ever even had muhammara once or twice before.  I wonder why it is that some dips catch on like wildfire and are everywhere-- we've all had hummus before-- and then other ones like this just don't show up as often.  I read about six thousand different recipes and synthesized them into the one at the end of this post.

We all really liked it.  The Emperor ate a ton of it, which was funny because he tends to be pretty choosy about dips (he mostly likes hummus and nothing else).  With a jar of pre-roasted peppers, it only took about 15 minutes to bang out, and I now have a huge bottle of pomegranate molasses so yeah, I'll most likely be making it again.

We had cut vegetables (carrots, celery, French Breakfast radishes and cucumber) and whole wheat baguette as dippers, with olives on the side.  Here's a pic of the full spread:



While I was making this, I had the worst kitchen disaster.  See, I was making tomorrow's dip too which involved roasting garlic (mmm, roasted garlic).  I'm out of tinfoil so I roasted in a baking dish I have which has a pyrex lid.

Had a pyrex lid.



Clever me, I had no place to set down the super hot lid when the dish came out of the oven... so I put it in the sink.  And then I put the cold water on to cool it off... and as the realization that this was a bad, bad idea percolated through my head and my hand started to reach out for the tap, the lid exploded.  Oops.

Well, no one was hurt, and dinner turned out fine, so no big deal.  Besides, the first dish of MoFo has been broken... so now it's a party!

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Okay, here's the recipe for the dip:

Muhammara

makes ~2c

1 1/2 c walnuts

about 3 inches of baguette or 1/2c breadcrumbs (use GF crumbs and this is GF)

1 7-oz jar of roasted red peppers

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

2 tsps pomegranate molasses

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil 

hot paprika for garnish

1.  Toast the walnuts over medium heat for 10 minutes or until darkened and delicious smelling.

2.  While the walnuts are toasting, pulse the baguette into coarse breadcrumbs in a food processor.

3.  Add the walnuts to the food processor and pulse again until you've got a processor full of crumbs.

4.  Add all the other ingredients except paprika, and puree.  It will still have some texture, and that is fine.

5.  Sprinkle with hot paprika and refrigerate until ready to serve. 

Easy and delicious!  And really insanely rich.  In hindsight, I'd have left the olive oil out-- this is rich enough just from the walnuts without any oil added.

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And now the boys.  Here's a shot over my shoulder of the Magician on our walk to the farmer's market:



And here's the Emperor on the same:



He kept shouting VEGAN MOFO! at random people today.  It was kind of wonderful.

Vegan MoFo Day 2: Lebenah!

Remember yesterday when I showed a second mystery dip that we had for dinner but didn't say what it was? I'm sure no one on the internet lost sleep over this but just in case you did, this post is for you.

The mystery dip again:

During my college years, I lived in Worcester, Massachusetts.  At that point I was a long haul vegetarian but hadn't given veganism any real thought, though many of my favorite people in town were vegans.  My then-boyfriend (now spouse) and I used to go out for dinner every Sunday night with friends of ours at any of a fairly large rotation of restaurants.  And though we all liked to complain about how they never give you enough bread, we would often end up at The Sahara on Highland Street all the same.  It was there that I was first legally served alcohol (a glass of wine on my 21st birthday, for which they did not even card me, the jerks) and there that I embarked upon a lifelong love for baba ganoush and the whole idea of mezze, two things I can't live without for very long.

Of the Sahara's vegetarian mezze, there were only two items I didn't like back then:  their tabouli (still not my favorite thing, though I've had much better versions since) and their lebaneh.  Well, I would eat it, but it just never really moved me... a big bowl of sour yogurt dip?!  WHY?  And so it was an utterly bizarre bolt of nostalgia that provoked me to scribble 'lebaneh' on my list of dips to make during MoFo...

But I'm really pleased with the result.  Is it sour?  Yes.  Is it yogurty?  Yes.  (Despite not having any yogurt in it.  More on that in a sec.)  It's not as smooth or as pale as the Sahara's, but the flavor is highly reminiscent-- so I guess my palate's changed because I literally used my fingers to get the last bit out of the bowl.  I used the recipe from one of my favorite blogs from last year's MoFo, One Arab Vegan, with a bit of apple cider vinegar instead of citric acid (which is somewhere in my house, but I didn't want to dig yesterday).  It's actually much easier to make than dairy lebenah (faster, anyway) and really good-- highly recommended.

Originally I thought the men would have leftovers of this & the hummus tonight without me-- but the lebenah is all gone.  So they're just having leftover hummus with the following dippers:

Baked falafel, based on the recipe in Appetite for Reduction.  These go like hotcakes (if hotcakes were made out of chickpeas, and love) in my house so I always do a double batch, and rather than putting the ingredients in my pathetic food processor, I grate the onion with a box grater and then mash everything that's supposed to be pureed.  Oh, and I put a little garam masala in this time because I ran out of cumin...

 

And of course, a big bowl of vegetables.  Tonight's dipping veg include cauliflower, celery, and carrots (plain old boring baby carrots).

Finally, my lovely boys.  The Emperor waved me away every time I tried to get his picture today-- because he was busy playing with this birthday present from his aunt and uncle:

It's a toy power screwdriver, and I think they're BFFs now.  (Also, he turned 3 last week.  How can this be?)

And here's the Magician, always thinking of how to get the next celery stick:

Tune in tomorrow for another dip!

Vegan MoFo Day 1: Hummus!

It's heeeere! It's heeeeeeere! Vegan MoFo is here at last!

As promised, I'll be celebrating this year's MoFo with a paean to that most wonderful of food forms, the dip. Who doesn't love dipping? Sitting around a table with a big bowl of something yummy and plenty of interesting things to poke into it... perfect. I love the informality and friendliness of a dip-dinner. For some reason, it always seems to lend itself to conversation and long lingering spells at the table, and I love that.

I'm kicking things off with a simple dip that pretty much every vegan everywhere likes (and if you're the vegan who doesn't, SORRY!): HUMMUS! Here's tonight's batch:

 

 The garnish is olive oil, za'atar and bittersweet paprika, and yes, it is a nod to Sabra. I feel churlish for admitting it, but I adore Sabra hummus and if it wasn't so expensive compared to homemade hummus, I would probably never make my own. THERE. I said it.

With that off my chest, may I just say that this is actually a really fine batch of hummus. I like to use the recipe in Veganomicon with some tweaks of my own (more water, more lemon juice, slightly less oil, chop the garlic with the blender before you put in the chickpeas, etc) because it really never disappoints. Even after all these years, we're still together, this hummus recipe and I.

*cough*

Anyway, I can't blog about dips without blogging about the accompanying dippers! Here's a (blurry, sorry) shot of our full table for tonight:

 

We've got rainbow carrots, cucumber, and celery in the white dish, then some (canned) dolmas in the black dish in back, and of course a big plate of whole wheat pita in the middle. But what is that other dip you see?! Oh, I guess you'll have to tune in tomorrow to find out... On Tuesdays I'm out of the house for 10 hours at a stretch so this week I'll be double dipping, as it were. (Har har.)

Last but not least, look who is here! Here is the Emperor this morning when I was refreshing him on the whole idea of vegan MoFo:  

Looks skeptical, no?

 And here's the Magician after one celery stick too many. Buddy, we've all been there...

 

 Tomorrow I hope to sneak in a few minutes to read other people's blogs and start commenting! I can't wait to see what everyone else is doing for MoFo!

Almost MoFo!

Guys! It's almost MoFo! Are you excited? I AM SO EXCITED.

I am also very busy this year, though. Okay, I am always busy during MoFo.

Let's look at my past few years:
1st MoFo - 2008 - in grad school - aaaaaaaah so busy.
2nd MoFo - 2009 - the Emperor was a little over a month old (it was November that year) and I was sooooo busy.
3rd MoFo - 2010 - I guess this was my least busy MoFo year but I was traveling a ton and stuff. Still busy!
4th MoFo - 2011 - working full time, gestatin', and MoFoing with a theme. So busy!!

This year - I'm back in grad school! Different program, different university, same full schedule, oh boy. Twice a week I head over the hill for about 10 hours at a stretch... the rest of the week I do the full-time mom thing and try to cram my grad work in where it'll fit. Do that math and you'll see, this is probably my busiest MoFo ever!

So I've been struggling trying to work out a theme that will fit into my super busy schedule while also being something I actually want to do/think is cool. I've been trying to make this idea of a virtual travelogue work out.... a trip through Asia on my blog.

You know that nagging feeling you have sometimes when you have an idea and it seems pretty good, but you know it's just not quite the *right* idea? (Like-- I really like the name Cyrus, and considered it heavily for the Magician. But while it's a great name and it's the right name for someone, I just knew it wasn't quite the *right* one for M.) Well, that's how I felt about this one. I went ahead and signed up for MoFo with that one listed even though I wasn't 100% dedicated, and then of course like 19 hours after I'd signed up I had THE ONE pop into my head:

31 DAYS OF DIPS.

Dips, guys, dips. Are you with me? Dips are everything I like about food. They're fast. They're delicious. They have variety. THEY ARE FUN TO EAT. I can make them in the morning and leave them in the fridge and other people can figure out how to pull them out and eat them for dinner without my guidance.

So watch this space. We'll be in dippin' days soon.

 PPS: These guys are still super cute, and will feature in MoFo again this year:
 

An update! (not in a series!)

Hey look internet! It's aliiiiiiiive!

Sorry I haven't been blogging. Long story short, I am working really hard on losing the end of my baby weight (and working on approaching my long-term body health goals) and it just doesn't make for the most interesting food-related conversation. Basically every post would look like:

Hey guys! Today I ate some healthy food. Plenty, but not too much. Here's a picture of it, it's mostly green. Okay bye!

More or less, anyway. I had a revelation when the Emperor was a baby and I was losing the weight from him (which I did, all 55 freaking five pounds of it!) which went like this: oh man! I don't have to be hungry all the time when I'm trying to lose weight! I just have to eat mostly healthy food!

Lemme unwrap that a little. I'm not saying that I could, say, eat 3000 calories of healthy food in a day and lose weight. I couldn't. What I'm saying is: if I eat mostly healthy, mostly unprocessed foods, I can cram a lot more food in for the same amount of calories. OH MAN. For me this is huge, because I a) love the physical process of eating and b) hate feeling hungry for any sustained period of time.

I guess maybe this is the sort of thing that lots of people know their whole lives, but really, it didn't hit me until I was 26 ya'll.

So I've been having a lot of dinner salads, fruit and small servings of nuts for snacks, huge platters covered in raw vegetables with various dips/spreads (including this phenomenal and phenomenally easy Cashew Queso from the PPK blog... it is surprisingly healthy and goes with everything, even cucumbers), beans, oats, stuff like that. It's working well, I'm not feeling frustrated with food tracking over a month into it (whoa!), and I've lost just over half of the 20 lbs of baby weight I was looking to drop. Woot.

On top of that, I just came back from going for my third run in a week! After not running at all for um... four years? Not counting one time that I went when the Emperor was like 8 months old and which I never did again. Running makes me really happy... it makes me feel all strong and powerful and capable. I am not at ALL a natural runner-- anyone who knows me knows that my body is built about the opposite of how you want your body to be if you're going to run. Which makes it all that much more satisfying when I do it and accomplish my goals.

I had been planning on starting again after I lost the baby weight and then maybe a week and a half ago I thought: why the hell wait? Why not see if I can do it now? And while it is not easy, it is happening, and it is just making me feel so damn good.

Anyway, that's my update. I think I'm going to try to blog more but you know... we'll have to see what comes up that's interesting. (Oh! I do want to blog about what nutrients I am surprised to find I'm getting/not getting on a regular basis... maybe next time.)

In closing, some pictures of some food and some kids:



Quinoa Caesar Salad - an Isa tester. I have made the tempeh & avocado topping for like six other salads since then because just look at... if that combination doesn't make your mouth water, I don't know if salad's ever going to do it for you.



Hot & Sour Soup - so pretty.



Bagels... the Emperor and I have been baking healthy-ish treats together once or twice a week. (He asks to bake pretty much every day now, but I try to keep it to 2 times/week or less!) These are whole wheat with a variety of toppings. He was so amazed that we could MAKE bagels... it was so fun to do with him.



Speaking of which, he's as wonderful as ever.



And so's this little (drooly) guy.

And that's what's up with me.