Dancing Down the Moon

On Being a Total Whackjob for God

Religion is kind of a crazy idea.

Think about it.  In the face of all rational thought and essentially zero supporting scientific evidence, the vast majority of humans on this planet—creatures capable of coming up with calculus, space flight, and the seven-layer burrito—believe in some kind of invisible superbeing.  Why?

Lots of reasons:  because the world is too awesome to be an accident.  Because we had some kind of mystical (therefore illogical) experience that convinced us God exists.  Because we were raised to believe.  Because a book told us to. 

A lot of us talk to this invisible superbeing, or beings, or force.  Sometimes out loud. We make offerings to it.  We believe it grants us special abilities or favors.  Most of all we believe that it takes some kind of personal interest in our lives.

That is just flat out batshit nuts.

The only thing I can think of that’s nuttier is believing that said invisible superbeing wants us to kill people who believe in a different invisible superbeing.

But at its heart, the amazing thing about this kind of insanity is that it’s beautiful and, if properly applied, it can make us better people or at least help us live happier lives. 

We make the mistake of thinking there’s something inherently wrong with being crazy when, throughout history, “crazy” has been mixed up with “genius,” “creativity,” and “inspired.”  How do you know what’s what?

Personally, I know by looking at the lives of the people who make claims about their God.  There are very pleasant forms of crazy—I’ve been known to exhibit a few.  Despite the pharmaceutical industry’s belief that anything “abnormal” should be medicated back to baseline banality, the fact is, there are some great ways to be insane.  It all really comes down to what you and your nuttery are trying to do with your life.  

Kindness and love = good crazy.  Blowing shit up = BAD CRAZY.

I’ve said many times that if religion were rational, it wouldn’t exist.  Spiritual beliefs aren’t meant to be held up under a microscope and proven to the world.  They’re meant to touch something that in itself can’t be proven or disproven. If people could just accept that all religions are equally crazy—and therefore equally valid—the world would be spared so much pain.

There’s nothing wrong with sprinkling a little fairy dust on the mundane.  Life is a big ball of awful sometimes, and sometimes the only thing that gets me through is that fairy dust.  But I can’t prove my Goddess exists empirically any more than someone else can prove Allah or Yahweh or Odin or Isis exists; neither can we really prove they don’t.  That’s the neat thing about science, actually—in the end nothing can be absolutely proven, because all it takes is one contradictory piece of evidence to send a hypothesis back to the drawing board.

All we know is that we as a species don’t know everything; given the vastness of the universe we don’t know much at all.  The concept of subatomic particles would have been laughed at back when they were burning Witches and bleeding people with leeches.   Yet as backward as that era seemed there are still doctors using leeches in modern medicine.  (Burning Witches, thankfully, has not proven useful in modern medicine.)  No one person, time period, or school of thought has a monopoly on wisdom.  No one religion has the one and only direct hookup to the divine. 

That’s just my opinion, of course.  But then again I’m a total whackjob for God.

A Brief Check-In

Yeah, I admit it, I totally screwed the pooch on Vegan MoFo this year.  It's not my fault!  Um...space...monkeys...attacked, and I was fighting them off with an elite squad of warriors trained in anti-simian combat, and during the battle my left hand was bitten by a rogue monkey who got through my defenses as I was saving the lives of 144 civilians.  That left me, unfortunately, unable to type.  In fact I am now dictating this post to my personal slave-monkey Bananas, an adroit Capuchin who in return for being allowed to live and serve one of the Earth's most awesome humans, gave me his brand new Macbook.

Hey, it could happen.* 

But I do have a new Macbook.

YAY!

I was finally able to fulfill a smallishly large dream and get a Mac of my very very own this past week; she's one of the brand new 13" Macbooks with the crazy cool touch pad "mouse" and I have named her Shakti.  As soon as I figure out the whole wireless internet thing I'll be posting from her.  I feel like such a grownup.  Now I have a lovely portable machine that I can use to play Fishdom write my next novel from anywhere I want!

I'll have more interesting posts to come, I just wanted to apologize for slacking off on the MoFo. 

* - We here at Sylvan do not in any way endorse monkey slavery; not even post-monkey-apocalypse slavery. 

Vegan MoFo: A Feast of BFF Proportions

I haven't cooked much in the last week but I more than made up for it on Friday--as it was time for my BFF's birthday party extravaganza, she'd asked me to bring a pot of Oh, You Beautiful Dhal and the chai cheesecake I made forever ago.  I decided, in my insane way, that that wasn't nearly enough, and appointed myself official caterer of the party.

Because, as I said, I'm insane.

By the time I was done we had:

• Potato-pea samosas (baked, not fried)
• Basmati pilau with almonds
• Dhal (that's red lentil stew for the uninitiated)
• Chai Spice cheesecake from Hannah's My Sweet Vegan
• Pita triangles (storebought, for dhalish dipping)

Judging from the yummy noises and groans of delight, I did myself proud.  The cheesecake especially was fantastic--do yourself a favor and pick up Hannah's book, and while you're at it read her blog Bittersweet.

One thing I discovered?  A menu like this required chopping a crap-ton of onions.  My fingers still smell like onions three days later.  No lie.  I dreamed of chopping onions Saturday. 

Still, few things in the world will perfume your house as wonderfully as sauteed onions when they just start to brown around the edges.  The only thing better is a pan full of spices toasted until the mustard seeds start to pop and release their volatile oils.  It's such a simple thing, but it lends such complex flavors to whole spices.  The dhal recipe calls for mustard seed, cumin seed, fenugreek, cardamom pods, cloves, and coriander, all toasted together and then cooled and ground to powder along with a bit of cinnamon and chili pepper.

I didn't take a picture of the dhal itself because, frankly, it's not the most photogenic food in the world.  I meant to get pics of all the finished products, but I got so involved in getting everything done and ready for transport that I forgot, and once I was at the party I was distracted by something shiny (translation: booze) and missed the opportunity to snag some images of the sliced cheesecake or the bowls of lentils served over flavorful rice. 

I did, however, catch the samosas before they disappeared.  The cuddly little pastry packets are much like empanadas, pasties, hand pies, even ravioli--just about every culture has some variation on a dough pocket stuffed with either sweet or savory goodness.  Most traditional samosas are filled with potato mixture and usually deep fried, but I'm a bit phobic of frying at home, so I save the fried pockets o'love for when I make it to an Indian restaurant.  This recipe, which came from Vegan With a Vengeance, calls for baking the samosas.  It also suggests using edamame instead of green peas, but I'm a bit of a purist, so I stuck with the green pea-ness.

Here's the bright yellow filling, of which I have about eighteen tons left over, which does not displease me.

 I'm proud to say I resisted the urge to shove my face in the bowl and simply nom-nom-nom the day away.

You can make them in just about any side, but for appetizers I tend toward about a 3" diameter circle of dough folded around a couple of teaspoons of filling, pinched shut with a damp finger and brushed with olive oil before baking.  I like them best warm, but they kept well sitting out at room temperature.  They're just such happy looking little guys, tiny pillows of potato ecstasy. 

The only real pain with making samosas is that it takes forever to shape them.  There's really no way around doing them one at a time; if you're lucky you have a lovely assistant to help you with this part.  Otherwise I find what works best is to set up on the coffee table and watch a movie while I work.

If you're impatient and don't have a party to cater, just say to heck with it and eat the filling plain, or better yet, make "dosas" by rolling the filling in tortillas or spreading it between tortillas for a non-queso-quesadilla.  I imagine you could squish them into potato pancakes and fry them, too.  

Dessert, of course, was the aforementioned much-hallowed Chai Spice Cheesecake, and let me tell you, if I'd ever had any doubts that vegan desserts could be just as good (if not better than) their critter-laden counterparts, this recipe would have blown those doubts out of the sky.  Eyes rolled back in heads and English language skills were reduced to a series of vowel sounds as everyone had a piece drizzled with impromptu blackberry sauce (basically just a reduction of blackberries with some sugar and a little juice, strained and thickened with a bit of cornstarch).  One of these days I'll get a picture of the cake as it's served all sauced up, but today a shot of the whole cake fresh out of the oven will just have to do.  Imagine, if you will, the delicate scent of chai spices:  cardamom, coriander, ginger, cinnamon, allspice...thick and rich over a spiced graham cracker crust.

Don't you wish it had been your birthday?

Vegan MoFo: Silk, Tofu, Vodka

Sure, we'd all like to say we create magnificent culinary tours-de-force every night, and try a new cookbook every week; we'd love to say we've sampled all the weirdo produce at Whole Foods, and that we never, never eat out of the saucepan standing over the sink in our underwear.

But let's face it:  the average home cook has a repertoire of perhaps seven dinners.  If you do the vegan equivalent of meat-and-two-vegs you can come up with a lot of combinations, but that gets really boring really quickly.  So do beans and rice--even if you like rice, which I don't especially (except for appropriately spiced basmati like they serve at the Clay Pit).  The culinary possibilities in veganism are endless, but most people are creatures of habit.  We tend to have the same basic shopping list week after week unless we're cookbook testers.

For a typical shopping trip my list looks something like this.  (Note that the spiral's on the right--I'm left-handed.  This of course means I'm superior,  just FYI.)

(Click pic to enlarge.)

 

Notes:

• Honeycrisp is the awesomest apple.
• Toadfood = tofu
• EB = Earth Balance fakey butter
• Yes, "red" is a flavor. In Crystal Light at least. It's basically food coloring and chemicals, so who cares if it's "cherry" or "raspberry?"
• Observe my egregious abuse of the umlaut.
• "Fruity Oaty Bar" is code for "some form of breakfasty granola bar thing." Firefly fans will get it. Everyone else...what the hell is wrong with  you?
• If I am bleeding when I write a grocery list there are at least five chocolate items, a can of Bean Dip, and a bag of Fritos added.
• Shit, I forgot hummus.

I usually organize my list according to what area of the store the items are found in.  Mostly.  There are always wild cards and afterthoughts.  Note that I tell myself only to get two bananas--this is because no matter how many bananas I buy, at least one ends up going bad.  I can buy five and I'll eat four; I can buy two and I'll eat one.  To keep from wasting food I've had to cut back on how much produce I buy in one go; you can only freeze so many overripe bananas.  I try not to buy more than two of anything unless it's for a specific recipe. If I need to go to the store again, I will.  I'd rather do that than throw away food.

And yes, that's actually how I write things.  It's a family tradition to deliberately misspell items for the hell of it.  My mother knows perfectly well how to spell "sausage" but she's written "sauges" since I laughed myself hoarse over it twenty years ago.  We're just odd like that.

Although I do admit to being influenced by sites like GroceryLists.org, where found grocery lists are shared with the world--sometimes I insert something random in my lists, like "XXL Condoms," or "Tractor Tires" just in case someone should find it somewhere.

Grocery stores in Texas can sell beer and wine but not hard liquor.  If they could I imagine "vodka" would show up on my list a lot more.

What does your grocery list look like?

Vegan MoFo: Go Go Gadgets!

Operating out of a kitchen with very little storage space, I've learned to pare down the array of gadgets and cookware that I permit to clutter up my three drawers.   I keep a minimum of pots and pans, and store things on the walls (like my skillets and knives) when I can. There are definitely things I'd like to upgrade; I need better knives, for one thing, as I've been using the crappy IKEA cutlery that sells for $8 for a Santoku.  (Okay, I admit, I love that knife, and I'll love it a lot more after I remember to take it to my father to sharpen. Still, one day I'll have grown-up knives.) Every cook, however, has those gadgets and tools she loves regardless of price or practicality.

Here we see, from left to right:

1 - My favorite cooking spoon, which I think came from Target. It has a lovely handfeel and somehow has managed not to collect any gouges or burns so far.

2 - A Mario Batalli tasting spoon I got from Whole Foods. Drastically overpriced, but I just loved the way it felt in my hand, and the fact that it has a stirring end and a tasting end. The small end helps you take a taste without burning your tongue.

3 - A cookie scoop that S1ren gave me; the back is silicone, so you scoop up dough and then push it out the front. It makes perfectly sized lumps of dough.

4 and 5 - Pinch bowls, one of my weird little passions.  The top two are glass from IKEA and measure perhaps 1 1/2" across; the bottom two are silicone.  I hate silicone bakeware, but silicone definitely has its culinary uses.

If you look carefully on the right-hand side you can see Owen's paw.

Here we have the rest of my favorite gadgets:

Across the top is another gift from S1ren, a Pushme/ Pullyu, which normal people would call an oven rack hook.  One side hooks on the rack to pull it out of the oven, and the other side is notched to push it back in. That way you avoid burning yourself, which somehow I always manage to do on oven racks even in a hazmat suit.

Second row, left to right:

1 - Contrary to expectation a potato masher is not a unitasker.  I've used it on potatoes, yes, but find it equally handy for beans, blending crumbly pastry dough, and squashing solids in a soup to thicken it when I don't feel like pulling out my hand blender.

2 - I pretty much never use my ice cream scoop for ice cream, being the "eat it out of the carton" kind. What I do use it for is cupcake batter. An ice cream scoop is perfect for portioning out cupcakes. 

3 - One of my oldest gadgets, a Graham Kerr branded "Bash N Chop," basically a bench scraper.  I use it for scraping up dough, yes, but it's also handy for crushing garlic, transferring chopped ingredients into a bowl or pan, and cutting bits of dough for rolls or cookies. This one has a ruled edge so you can measure portions accurately.

4 - Spice toasting pan - The screened lid flips up, allowing you to dry-fry whole spices without them popping all over the place. Was it a necessity? No.  But it's one of those little things that make life easier...the definition of a gadget, I suppose.

Front Row, left to right:

1 - Spoon holder - This nifty little doodad was in my stocking last Christmas. It's a clip for the side of a pot that holds your cooking spoon up over the pot, so you don't need a spoon rest.  It makes it easier to clean the stovetop since, even with a spoon rest, I'm forever leaving spoons on the counter and wiping up puddles of soup.

2 - Tea bag squeezer - Weird, eh? My mother got this back when she was heavy into Tupperware. I don't drink tea, but I do make a lot of things with chai, and this silly little bit of plastic is quite useful in getting the goodness out of the bag. (Yes, I know that when drinking tea you shouldn't squeeze the bags as you'll get bitter tannins in the cup, but this doesn't seem to be a problem with baking.)

3 - Salt cellar - I love, love, love my salt cellar.  It is of course the model used by geeky food genius Alton Brown, and it's very practical; the hinged lid can be opened with one hand and the lid has a silicone seal to keep moisture out.  The bowl comes out and is dishwasher safe; the base is weighted. It even came with a tiny spoon, which I don't really use, but being a sucker for tiny things (hence all the pinch bowls) I found it quite charming.

Not pictured is my hand blender, a Cuisinart Smart Stick that came with a chopper/grinder attachment and whisk.  I realize, of course, that the more things something can do the more likely it is to suck at all of them (if you have experience with copier/fax/scanner/printer machines you can probably testify to this), but in this case it worked out well; the Smart Stick is easy to use, easy to clean, and has thus far performed admirably.

One day when I have a huge kitchen and all the money in the world I'll have a proper Kitchenaid stand mixer and a Vita-Mix blender, but in the meantime, I enjoy my little gadgets and am pleased that they don't take up all that much countertop real estate which is at a premium in my little kitchen.

Vegan MoFo: Cookeh is Mahn!

I've long said that Whole Foods--or at least the mammoth WF flagship store here in Austin--is not a grocery store, it's an 80,000 square foot amusement park.  Known to many as Whole Paycheck, it's not the place to go if you're looking for a bargain.  It is, however, the perfect place to find new and interesting foods, especially if you're a vegan, and pick up those treats you love but can't get your hands on everyday.

This is doubly true for me, as I live at the far South end of Austin and WF is downtown. I make it there perhaps once every two months, usually when I need inspiration or am looking for something new and weird I've seen online or in a magazine...or when I absolutely have to have a Big John Cookie.

What can you say about a 99-cent, saucer-sized chocolate chunk oatmeal cookie almost an inch thick that eats more like a cake--or an entire breakfast--than a cookie?  Oh, yeah, here's what you can say:  YUM. OMG YUM.

Whole Foods also sells vegan brownies (delicious) and donuts (never tried them but I hear they're awful), vegan peanut butter fudge, and in the dessert cooler, vegan parfaits, mousse, and cakes. Today I was feeling frisky (and I made the mistake of shopping hungry) so I picked up a cookie, a pint of their wonderful pomegranate sorbet (store brand, so it's not as outrageously priced as, say, Nadamoo), and a slab of something called Cookies 'n Cream Cake.

I love the parfaits, but the cake slice...well, it tasted good, but it was throat-searingly sweet.  It's two layers of somewhat dry dark chocolate cake sandwiched with buttercream and cookie bits, and like I said, it tastes great, and overall had a good texture, but was so sweet it nearly turned my face inside out.  I think maybe one layer of buttercream would have been sufficient, maybe with a dark chocolate ganache in the center.  I think in the future I'll stick to the parfaits, which are chunks of chocolate cake, raspberries, and a luscious vegan chocolate mousse (probably the same general formula as the filling for my Mooless Mocha Pies**).

Never go to Whole Foods hungry unless you're planning to sit down in one of their food courts and enjoy something from the many prepared meal bars.  I understand the tofu breakfast tacos are to die for, and I've had several tofu dishes from the buffet line as well as the hot bars and they've all been fabulous.  Occasionally they offer Field Roast's hazelnut crusted cutlets, which are in my opinion one of the best vegan foods on Earth; they didn't have any today, but they did have at least half a dozen vegan main courses in addition to the international selections, taco bar, sandwich bar, and pasta bar.  

I also advise against going to WF when you're in a hurry.  It's best to take your time, wandering the aisles and looking for exciting new ingredients.  Wear good shoes, bring your reusable bags, and get into the flow of the crowd, seeking the Zen of grocery shopping (and ignoring the screaming yuppie larvae who tend to run around the Healthy Living section chasing each other with organic cotton stuffed animals). Make a list, otherwise you'll forget half of what you came in for, overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the selection. 

And above all, set a spending limit.

** - Mooless Mocha Pies, along with many other tasty recipes, are available in my ebook Bell, Book, and Spoon, available for $5 from Lulu.  This is a shameless plug. But I'm quite proud of my little cookbook, so please check it out.

Vegan MoFo: Songs from the White and Nerdy Kitchen

Better late (and short) than never, right?

As with ritual, the right music can turn cooking from a chore into a celebration. Not to mention the mood you're in while cooking can influence the outcome--from a strictly mundane perspective, if you're in a bad mood while cooking you're more apt to make mistakes or injure yourself, and from a spiritual perspective, cooking with love and care in your heart means the food will be infused with those emotions. 

I generally opt for lively, singable music rather than slow or meditative.  Anything that gets me dancing around the kitchen will keep me chopping, kneading, and rocking out for hours.  The right soundtrack is even more important for cooking marathons or anything involving multiple cooks--jostling for elbow room doesn't seem to happen nearly so much if everyone's dancing.  The music brings everyone's energy into synch in the kitchen just as it does in ritual.

That in mind here is a track list of my favorite music to cook by.  If you have trouble getting into the mood to cook for yourself, try making a CD like this one to help you shift your mind to culinary consciousness.  It doesn't matter if the songs are about food (how many times can you listen to "Eat It", anyway?) as long as they get you moving, grooving, and stirring.

I've been known to put on my mix of the Beatles, Madonna, a CD of 80s pop, or Pink, but here's a more diverse mix I'm rather fond of.

1. The Proclaimers - 500 Miles
2. P!nk - Bad Influence
3. Alanis Morissette - On the Tequila
4. The All-American Rejects - Move Along
5. B52s - Love Shack
6. Barenaked Ladies - One Week
7. Bowling for Soup - Ohio (Come Back to Texas)
8. Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On
9. India Arie - Private Party
10. Indigo Girls - Hammer and a Nail
11. Jill Sobule - I Kissed a Girl
12. KT Tunstall - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
13. Liz Phair - Polyester Bride
14. Mary Chapin Carpenter - Down at the Twist and Shout
15. Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend
16. MC Yogi - Ganesh is Fresh
17. Nelly Furtado - I'm Like a Bird
18. Paul Oakenfold - Starry-Eyed Surprise
19. Rihanna - Don't Stop the Music
20. Sinead O'Connor - Daddy I'm Fine
21. Sophie B. Hawkins - Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover
22. Tina Arena - Now I Can Dance
23. Weird Al Yankovic - White and Nerdy

(Hey, I never said I was cool.  *laugh*  I could lie and tell you I like stuff like Death Cab for Cutie or the White Stripes, but I think my mid-90s-inspired dorkdom is quite awesome, thank you.)

Vegan MoFo: What's a Mulligan With You?

Not to thump a subject too terribly hard, but in my reading about Indian cuisine I came across a food philosophy that had never occurred to me but sounded like a great idea.

In India vegetarianism is seen as normal; most people have at least one veg meal a day if not more.  Few are full-on vegan what with all the yogurt and paneer, but still, when cooking vegetarian, the Indian cook's aim isn't to replace meat, or substitute for it.  There's no "this is a vegetarian version of such and such."  Veg food is just veg food, and doesn't attempt to be like anything else; as such the plant foods are given a chance to shine without being compared to critter-based cuisine.

A lot of meat analogues exist in America, ranging from the ordinary (veggie burgers) to the downright weird (vegetarian shrimp?!?).  Such things would be given funny looks over in India where the idea of not eating meat is, well, not to eat meat.  Why eat something that looks and tastes just like what you don't want to eat?

Now, I love a veggie burger, and I'm quite fond of a few other analogues, but I think it's dangerous to consider them "substitutes" for meat.  That leaves people with the idea that there's something fundamentally lacking in a vegetarian diet, which simply isn't true.  I think the idea of focusing on vegetables as an end in themselves is an excellent one.  Sometimes I think if I see one more recipe for vegan macaroni and "cheese" I'll go stark raving naked.

The power of food to connect us to our family and history, however, means there are exceptions.

I thought about this recently when I was looking back at foods I ate as a child.  We all have those comfort dishes Mom used to make that make us feel loved and cared for, and it's always delightful to find compassionate versions of those foods that evoke the same emotions.  There are, however, some things I ate as a kid that I wouldn't even try to veganize.

For example, I grew up eating this concoction called Mulligan Stew.  I have no idea where my mother got the recipe, but it's good old fashioned down-home working-people not-quite-payday food.  It consisted of a sauteed onion, a can of Ranch Style beans, and a can of diced Spam simmered until it formed something stewlike.

Yes, I ate this.  In mass quantities.  Sometimes over Fritos.

Needless to say there is no way in hell to veganize this in an appetizing way.  Ranch Style beans are made with beef, and while I've seen veg versions (there's a very close cousin available at Whole Foods, I think they're called Ranchero Beans or something similar in the store brand), the only thing I can think of to sub for the Spam would be tofu, and can you imagine?  GROSS.  There are few things in this world less appealing to me than tofu pretending to be Spam, because Spam, like Velveeta, is already pretending to be food. 

So I won't be attempting to recapture that childhood memory.  Fortunately there are better candidates.

One of my mom's tried and true side dishes is what she calls Potatoes on the Half Shell; it's simple, economical, and goes with everything.

Take Russet potatoes and wash them, then slice them longways in half.  Make several slices down the inside of each (don't cut all the way through).  Lay the potatoes out on a baking sheet (with sides) and spread Earth Balance buttery spread over each, then salt well.  Bake at 450 for 45 minutes. 

What you end up with is a baked potato, yes, but the "butter" bakes into the crevices you created with the knife, and creates a golden brown veneer over the top of the potato as well as dripping down just a bit onto the peel.  I mash them up in the middle and add a bit more butter; others in my family add sour cream, chives, fakey bacon bits, whatever you'd put on an ordinary baked potato.  You can eat them skin and all.  I guess you could substitute olive oil or something healthier for the butter, or use less to make them lower in fat, but this is Southern cooking at its Paula Deen finest.  When I want healthy I make regular roasted potatoes; when I want the comfort of my childhood kitchen memories, I turn to Potatoes on the Half Shell.

I suppose the point here is that not every vegan dish can be a meat-free version of something omni, nor should it.  The world of plant-based food is so diverse and delicious that we do ourselves a disservice by trying to stick to the critter-laden Standard American Diet, even veganized.  I think "substitution" recipes work best for newcomers to veg cuisine, and for those recipes that mean more to us than just dinner on the table--those dishes that bring back fond memories for which there is no substitute.

Turn, Turn, Turn

The beginning of October was so chaotic and weird that it has only just occurred to me that it's actually October.  As in, Fall.  Really, truly, and honestly Fall.  Good God. 

The weather's gone schizo and can't seem to make up its mind what season to be in, but today it's cool and gloomy and the high this week is scheduled to make it to 86 or so with quite a bit of rain and another front coming through on Thursday.  Autumn.  It's in the wind, the rain.  Go outside and taste it every time you breathe.

Such a paradox, Autumn.  It's life in death.  All the rain has made the lawns and flowers come alive, and there's something vivifying in the air, but it's an exhalation, not an inhalation. 

There are cooler weather, lots of birthday parties, new seasons of TV shows, my favorite clothes, and Halloween candy.  There are wonderful memories.  And there are also very unpleasant ones.  Autumn is emotionally heavy and edged with the ache of loss.  It's the Witching Season and the Weeping Season and the season of looking in and the season of looking back.

As they say, you can't step in the same river twice; each year that Autumn turns around again I find I'm a slightly different person in a slightly different place.  

Almost ten years ago at a job I hated, I got a small pothos ivy that eventually grew to five feet long on either side.  When I took it home I placed it on what would become my altar to the God, and for years it grew on top of my entertainment center as the focal point of that altar.  I've never been able to keep plants alive, but this one thrived for a long, long time.

This past year it started dying. Strand by strand of the ivy turned yellow, then brown, and shriveled.  I trimmed it back to the pot to help it retain energy, and finally changed the soil and fertilized it, but still, one leaf at a time, it died.

There is one leaf left. I can't say whether I want it to survive or not. That ivy is a deeply layered symbol of my past, and I think it's time for me to start over with a new plant, perhaps even in a different pot. The timing of its death is not lost on me.

There are a lot of things in my life that are coming to a head--nothing external, really, but changes that have been on a slow burn for, in some cases, years.  My Saturn return is about to officially end and I can feel the energy of my life shifting, as it has been an inch at a time for months now.  I feel like a cycle that started when I turned 30, that frightening night and the upheaval that followed, is completing this year, and whoever I've been has only been the barest shadowed edge of who I'm starting to become.  

Maybe in a couple of months I'll have some idea what all of that means.

Vegan MoFo: Peace is in the Pudding

 

This is one of my favorite easy desserts, based on a Hawaiian coconut pudding recipe called Haupia. In honor of our President's call to action today, I give you,

Nobel Peace Parfaits

(also known as "Suck it, Haters!")

What You Need

1 14oz can unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 c sugar
1/3 c cornstarch
1 c nondairy milk (vanilla flavored is best)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp salt

Several crushed gingersnaps
Chocolate syrup or vegan caramel
A few shreds of toasted coconut, if desired, for garnish

Let's Get it On

1. Combine everything but the vanilla in a saucepan over medium-low heat and whisk until combined.

2. Keep whisking as you bring to a boil, then cook for about a minute, stirring constantly. Be sure you get to where there are bubbles breaking the surface; cornstarch doesn't thicken to its full potential until it reaches a boil. The pudding will thicken very quickly once it gets to that point, and if you're not careful it'll scorch. The whole process should only take about five minutes.

3. Remove the pan from the heat and add the vanilla, stirring well. Let cool a few minutes and try not to dive into it facefirst.  Chill for one hour with a sheet of plastic wrap pressed against the surface to prevent a skin from forming.

4. In a wine goblet, glass, or other see-through dish, sprinkle a layer of crushed cookies, then spoon in some pudding.  Drizzle a bit of chocolate syrup, then add more cookies, more pudding.  On top drizzle a bit more syrup, and garnish with a half-cookie and some coconut, if you like.  Serves 3-4 depending on size of dish and appetite.

Some vegan puddings taste a bit soy-ish, but this one doesn't--the coconut flavor covers the soy. I often make puddings with almond milk instead of soy, and that would be great with the coconut too. This recipe isn't too incredibly sweet, so it would lend itself well to embellishment. You could also make a parfait with layers of banana, pineapple, or berries. 

I see the pudding as the soft, gooshy sweetness of world peace influenced by our Commander-in-Chief, with the crunchy spiciness of dialogue and the occasionally bitter but ultimately delicious syrup of cooperation. 

Okay, I just made that up. But trust me, peace never tasted so good.