Cooking

[pameladean]

At the beginning of this year I got tired of buying random vegetables and protein sources and hoping I could make them match up into dinners, so I started doing an abbreviated version of menu planning. I write the dinners I want to make down on a Post-It and then do the actual shopping. This week's Post-It says "Pad Thai (REMEMBER THE CABBAGE -- well, I did remember it but I didn't put it in), Grogan's Minestrone (frozen multigrain ciabatta rolls), ALL THE PIES."

I have saved, or more accurately, failed to recycle, a random assortment of these Post-Its, which I reproduce below for my own reference and possibly for your mild interest.

Tempeh Mushroom Stroganoff
Carrot Cashew Curry
Sardine Pasta (GET GREEN VEGETABLE)

Fish Masala, Aloo Gobi
SOUP, bread
hoisin explosion tofu (Tropp)
chickpea and sweet potato curry

Mimi's Spaghetti (Grogan again)
fish masala, green bean and potato curry
beans and kale (check to see if enough canned black-eyed peas)

Tofu Tacos
Tempeh Mushroom Stroganoff
Salmon, sweet potato, broccoli, frozen rolls

Carrot Cashew Curry
Sardine Pasta, green beans
MAKE BANANA BREAD
Curried red kidney beans with mustard greens

Vegan Lasagna (spinach mushroom Gimme Lean mock sausage)
Tofu vegetable quiche
Tofu fried rice

Very spicy delicious chickpeas (Jaffray), curried peas and mushrooms
macaroni and goat cheese, vegetable casserole (Grogan)
pasta with soy chorizo

Pasta with cauliflower, feta, and walnuts (add broccoli)
Tortilla casserole
lentil cassoulet (get mock sausage, price shallots)

Tuna curry, steamed broccoli
Lebanese/Canadian macaroni and bean casserole, add kale or else GET GREEN VEGETABLE
Vegan chili, ditto cornbread


That does look odd. Vegan food is always safe for me. I can't have cow's-milk products. I can have sheep or goat's-milk cheeses, but they are expensive, so we don't have them that often. I don't eat eggs or meat but I do eat fish and seafood, which are also expensive, except for sardines and canned tuna. Mock meat is fairly pricy too, except at Trader Joe's.

Cooking anecdotes welcome in the comments.

Pamela

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Ok, here's a question:

Sort of recently, I heard a radio interview with Mollie Katzen of the unbeatably famous "Moosewood Cookbook" and its fussier cousin "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest." Somewhere in the interview, it was remarked of the Moosewood books that vegetarians "don't cook like that any more."

Can you explain the change in how vegetarians cook? The starred reviews of "Moosewood" (new version) on Amazon point out that the revised version from 1992 is not as good, and that the food tends to be bland. So I guess people mean the food is too bland now?

K.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I'm interested to hear what actual vegetarians say, but my impression is vegetarian cooking used to be more of a genre than it is now. Overlapping with the ‘hippie-derived’ cooking genre, which also has declined.

I think cooking vegetarian used to be more of A Big Change, and cooks went vegetarian without a tradition and were open to trying new inventions of recipes because they were vegetarian. I can browse the cookbooks not looking for anything just because I have a soft spot for the vibe.

Or from another perspective, American Veggie invented some unnecessary things from too small a culinary foundation, when people could have drawn more directly from existing vegetarian traditions.

(I do cook from Moosewood and American Wholefoods, but I would feel too limited if I had to stay inside those.)

[pameladean]

I don't actually know what they mean. Lots of vegetarian food is quite spicy these days in Minneapolis, in all the little coffee shops and restaurants that grow their own herbs and vegetables or use locally-sourced products.

The difference I noticed between the two versions of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest is that the first one made very heavy use of eggs and dairy, and also of things like pickle relish and mayonnaise -- it had a strange '50's tinge to it, almost. The newer one uses less fat altogether and sometimes uses oil rather than butter. I don't find that either is a win over the other -- you have to try the individual recipes out to see.

Molly Katzen was always somewhat conservative with hot spices, though she usually said you could add them to taste. And I think she just had sensitive taste buds. There's a running theme in her books about how just a little olive oil and garlic and rosemary makes white beans taste divine. I don't find most of her recipes bland, but that one needs something, maybe just more of everything. Then again, there's a lot of recipes of hers I have never made because they have too much dairy to be readily convertible.

Bryanna Clark Grogan's vegan cookbooks certainly aren't bland. There are fads in vegan and vegetarian cooking, as in everything, and the ones I am noticing at the moment are a huge emphasis on coconut products of all kinds, a de-emphasis on soy, which annoys me, and a general desire to avoid fat, which also annoys me.

P.