meansoybean

Behold, the mountainous bounty from my cast iron pans!

I had some leftover orange juice and decided to make a double batch of my weekend pancakes for the freezer. This way, I’ll be able to have them for breakfast before going to work in the mornings. I don’t usually make them thick, that’s how the batter turned out, but since they’ll be re-heated in the toaster or microwave (yuck) this was actually a good thing. Half were plain, and I threw in some dehydrated blueberries into the remainder to mix it up a bit.

Another good thing is that I’ll be able to use up a little more of the organic maple syrup I acquired from my CSA last Fall. I didn’t notice until today that I still have a can leftover from 2008 and I have eight cans from 2009!

Speaking of maple syrup… see that swing-top bottle in the photo? I lugged that back (empty) from NYC last summer. It was an impulse beer purchase from Whole Foods’ crazy-ass beer store. I’ve got a thing for swing-tops, and it seemed like such a waste to leave it behind, seeing as it’s so nice and sturdy. Plus, as soon as I saw it I knew a full can of maple syrup would fit in it perfectly — and it does!

Not the season for beets, but they kept showing up in the organic basket last summer. So I shredded and froze them for the sole purpose of making this cake. It might sound odd to put beets in chocolate cake, but the end result is sweet, moist and a bit chewy. There’s so little oil you might be able to omit it, or sub for apple sauce, but there’s no reason to tinker with the perfect snacking-hour treat. They’re also good if you’re feeling a bit blue. It’s true!

I had some leftover Filthy rich pasta sauce and decided to make some calzones.
In the middle of each 8 inch circle of dough I put down several spoonfuls of sauce, some diced red peppers, a diced mushroom and a slice of Follow Your Heart mozzarella. Then seal it up, slice some vent holes and bake! Of course, I used my cast iron griddle to get that crisp crust. Yummers!

Look at what I made yesterday… the Sticky rice in lotus leaves from Chow Vegan’s blog.

In preparation for this, I took a trip to Hawai. Not the vacation spot, but the grocery store in Ville Saint-Laurent (1999 Marcel-Laurin). Have you heard of it? It’s a pan-Asian market that offers such a huge selection of foodstuffs that you have to visit to believe it. To give you an indication of what’s in store, they have an entire aisle dedicated to noodles — more than half of which contains ramen.Whenever I go, I spend about an hour carefully walking through each aisle — it’s that interesting, even if it’s not all vegan. (This is the place I used to buy vegan ready-to-eat, made-in-China, frozen sticky rice wrappers).

Anyway, lotus leaves and sweet rice in hand, I took a stab at making my own… sticky rice wrappers. Given that it’s a multi-step recipe, I think it went well. I neglected to soak the rice before cooking, chalk that up to not reading carefully. The leaves were a bit awkward to soak, as I didn’t have a large enough vessel to do it in. I used Yves Spicy Italian sausage, but next time I think I’ll use some sort of vegan asian “meat” instead, like the stuff found at Tiende Santé. If I could, I’d totally use a vegan chinese sausage, but the faux versions I’ve encountered have milk in them (why?!).

As you can see, I need to practice the leaf-folding, they look kinda funny, but it doesn’t affect the taste. I don’t have a bamboo steamer, so I just put a round cooling rack, without the plate, in the wok and used the lid. Besides being a little on the wet side, it turned out swell. Horray!