Gluten-free, check. Vegan, check. Eggplant free (apparently she doesn't like eggplant?), check. Lady Documentarian had a friend over a bit back who had a few things on her list of food sensitivities so here is a tasty, pretty allergen free dish. If you want to knock off the soy too, I would just sub out the tempeh for eggplant (though many people can eat fermented soy, i.e. tempeh, so this may not be 100% necessary), and tamari/Bragg's for 1 tsp toasted sesame oil, 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar and 1 tsp salt.

Super straightforward riff on the traditional ground meat and rice and tomato sauce stuffed peppers. Went with a mustard greens, tempeh, and brown/wild rice variant that backboned on apple cider vinegar and Bragg's liquid aminos (if you have access to no-gluten Tamari, i.e. San-J, it will carry the same'ish flavor) and mirin. And some daiya for fancy. Actually, I'm not that big into fake cheese, but if you are this recipe is definitely one you should take the time to go wild on getting your daiya fix with. Basically, you can definitely kick out a cheesy rice style stuffed pepper if you really dig in with the daiya. Again, not my gig, but I can see how it could be.

So first off you start your brown and wild rice. We used a ratio of 2.5 parts water to 1 of rice, with the water being part water, bragg's, mirin, and vegetable stock with a tablespoon of soy-free earth balance. If you have a steamer type pot that will fit the rice and a steamer basket insert on top (see pic), use this one. If you don't, (a) get one because they are the radness, or (b) steam however you usually do. Cut in half or thirds down the block, then into 1/8" slices; steam your tempeh.

Once that is going, clean your big ol' bell peppers by slicing off the top and scraped out the seeds and pith from inside. You can also boil these guys for a few minutes to further remove the bitterness, but I omitted that step this time and they came out great (they still get baked). 

Finely dice an onion, sautee in olive oil until translucent, add some chopped garlic and continue to saute. While onion and garlic are cooking chop up the mustard greens nice and smallish; once onion and garlic are done pull steaming tempeh and drop in saute pan. Dose the pan with hearty splashes (the more liquid left in the pan the more the rice will get to soak up) of mirin and Bragg's, toss chopped greens into steamer. Steam for five minutes while sauteeing the tempeh, add to tempeh, stir to mix, and turn off heat. Preheat oven to 350'f.

Once rice is done, combine with tempeh and greens and a nice splash of apple cider vinegar to make pepper stuffing. Grab your beautiful peppers, drop a respectable amount of daiya in the bottom (for fun!), maybe mix some in the stuffing itself (or not, I'm not that big a daiya-head), add stuffing to pepper up to the top, and top with a few shreds of daiya. Arrange stuffed peppers on some kind of baking sheet or casserole where they are standing up on their base, and pop in the oven for about 30 minutes, or no later than the skin scorching.

Timing for the recipe is very lenient, both in terms of the rice and tempeh/greens mix, but also in baking. Whether you cook for 10 minutes or an hour, the daiya should be melted and everything else will be cooked; baking longer will help the rice absorb more flavor but may make it starchier (for better or worse, up to you).

Enjoy!

Made some bricks of fudge. One with fresh toasted cashews and walnuts, the other with dried tart cherries and white chocolate chips. I set the fudge in bread pans. I put the tasty ingredients on the bottom, then poured the molten fudge over them.

I did a double batch and didn't realize until I was into it that the recipe was vague, also some of the sugar was granulated (one commenter tried the recipe with brown sugar, so I went with partly powdered granulated sugar) so I wasn't sure which how long to cook or at what temp. I could have googled but I was digging the double boiler, and it worked out pretty well at the end of the day.

We got to use with ice cream or straight-up mostly, and it worked somewhat because of grittiness in the fudge from the granulated sugar.

Does searing cause more or less oil to be absorbed than frying?

So I gave an answer with guidance on making tofu on the grill or skillet; but a side question came up, which was to do with the chemistry of frying for me. I can see this also being of significant importance to people who decide to go veg*n due to health or weight concerns as they would be more likely to want to min-max their benefits/flavor from oil to fat/calorie intake.

Do you know a definitive answer to this one? Is the answer neither more nor less, but equal? I don't know; that's why I asked the question. Head over to stackexchange if you know the answer!

So far I got one good one:

Higher temperatures, as a rule, mean less absorption of oil because the force of the steam trying to escape from the food pushes against the oil. Here is a link to a scholarly article discussing the mechanics of fat absorption in the production of french fries (complete with a table of results and diagrams). Interestingly, the author says that potatoes deep fried at more than ten degrees Celsius below the recommended temperature of 180-185C leads to 40% higher fat uptake. I expect pan-frying leads to a much lower total uptake of fat, but I am sure the principle is the same.

Standard tips for browning/frying/grilling tofu;

• Ensure that you press the tofu sufficiently to remove its own moisture, marinate if desired
• Lightly dust with flour or cornstarch
• Brush oil on the grilling surface
• Specific to the case of grilling, be mindful of the gap the tofu will stretch across on the grate; it may be crumbling because it isn't strong enough or thick enough to sustain wide gaps.

Someone also mentioned skewering the tofu as an option. While this would work well, I have found a spatula, thin and metal, to be prefereable as long as the grilling surface is clean and brushed.

In following Miss Kristin's lead, I made the porcini crusted tofu from ppk's recent post. A minor, but major difference in my tofu is the temperature of the cooking surface. Some people find a medium heat preferred, and for uncoated tofu I would agree. However, when you crust anything moist, a high heat with the intent of searing is my preference.

This is doubly the case for tofu. Caveat: your taste in tofu determines whether this will be more/less applicable. I prefer a more raw texture and taste with a crunchier shell. It should be warm, but I don't want it to be a wholly dried out bean curd carcass or soaked in oil. YMMV, I liked Pittsburgh Rare before I stopped eating steak and I think that sensibility has carried over.

Searing versus a more thorough frying will lock in less oil (not only can you use less oil, but the higher the heat the lower the absorption) and give way to a crisp out side and firm inside; medium heat will allow in more fat from frying and result in more doneness conformity through the slice of tofu.

I posed a question that stems from my cast-iron skillet having been broken in by browning tri-tip steak for last September's ICS Chili Cook Off in Cincinnati. It also comes from my experience being unwilling to really ask to borrow a friend's dutch oven to make meatness a few months back. She hadn't used it for non-vegan food, and I just couldn't bring myself to ask to defile it.

So, the question is in three parts, principally, "How do I clean the porous cast-iron surface to prevent cross-contamination?" and "Is there some kind of feel good ritual (i.e. Kashering) that might give me the warm and fuzzies about serving vegan dishes from a previously treif skillet?"

Fortunately for me, the answer is YES, and I don't need to bury my beloved cast-iron in the backyard in some quasi-religious atheistic ritual. Click through to find out about libbun from a rabbi, or here to find out about the more practical approaches in addition to Parve compliance.

If Winamp really meant to upgrade us all to Pro for free, presumably for using Android, and perhaps realizing they'd have to cripple standard to make Pro worth buying, then I am happy boy.

As a long time supporter of Winamp on desktops (among non-open source competitors), I am psyched to have the equalizer feature on my Evo 3D.

Will it roll back to standard tomorrow? I hope not. They should capitalize on this. Winamp is the best music player on Android, integrates flawlessly with the desktop client, and has no bloated or inutile features.

I support whipping the llama's ass in spite of being vegan (I hearken to the economics and sustainability arguments the most, and free upgrades are coherent with this).

So, at the end of the day, it's a great app in the lite/free version. Pro support for no apparent reason is rad.

Try out Winamp on your phone, maybe you'll get the full version.

Forks Over Knives: A Year of Meals: 365 Recipes for Plant-Based Eating Every Day of the Year [Paperback]

Del Sroufe from Wellness Forum will be releasing a cook book soon in conjunction with the folks at Forks Over Knives and he requested some recipe testers from Vegan Columbus and I pushed the idea to Dreamsfood. Although I am unsure how many other feedback forms he got from the other Dreamsfood members, I know I got in five in a week and was pretty happy about that. 

• As an aside, I must admit that Del has definitely converted some of my cooking habits (no more sauteeing onions in olive oil as a matter of habit, using water from now on).

Here are some pics of my attempts to replicate the magic only Del can claim;

• http://www.nomfg.com/mfgeverywhere-pic-bin/recipe-testing-for-del/

So last time, we talked about how to make fillings. This time, we will be focusing on how to make the cups and fill and bake.

So first, if you don't have time to let some beer, flatten some in a stand mixer with the whisk on low. Preheat the oven to 350'f. Beating the bubbles out is what will be necessary. Once the beer is good and flat, you can use any beer dough recipe, I went with my fall-back of 4 1/2 cups flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 12 oz flat beer. Sift together the dry, mix them while gradually pouring in the beer. Don't over-knead, but mix until it gets nice and balled up.

Once the dough is done, each batch can make about three 12" shells. So if you're looking for a super easy ber dough recipe, that's it.

You'll start the same as if you were making a pizza. Cut the dough ball into 1/3s to make it easier to portion. Lightly flour a working surface. Gently roll out the dough a bit, toss for a minute in the air by hand, and roll it out some more. You will want it to be pretty thin. 

Cut into rectangules, at about 4x2". In a extra-jumbo muffin pan, wrap the strip around the outside. Once you get your pan(s) all loaded with potential shells, pop them in the oven. This is a multi-stage process.

It takes about 15 minutes to parbake the shells. However, you will need to punch them down about 5-8 minutes in. The shells will start to rise in the muffin pan, and will shoke out the middle area. With a large plastic serving spoon, press it back around the edges.

Bear in mind, this is baking dough, and depending on how you wrapped it around the edge, it may have seams. You can make them worse when pressing it back, and you can also make it better. Smooshing against the edges, directly back will be safest. pushing back against the wrap will smoosh the dough into the seam and possibly seal it. 

Once the shells are done baking (they will be soft and browned) pull them out of the pans to cool.

If you want to fix some seams, you can brush with coconut milk and bake again free-standing on a cookie sheet. There's probably a better way. Either way, they will fill nicely as long as there aren't gaping seams an your filling isn't too runny.

Now I'm not going to give away someone else's recipe, but I topped with one tablespoon of the corn bread biscuit batter form the Vegan Pie in the Sky Lemon-y Blueberry Cobbler batter. You can find a corn bread biscuit recipe other than that one, or use it.

So add 3-4 ounces of your filling, (add the smoked seitan on top for the Seitanic ones,) top with the corn bread biscuit batter, and bake until the biscuit is done. It's going to work, trust me. It is great.

Check out the gallery for the rest of the pictures.

Reverend Al Sharpton is calling for a National Moment of Prayer on Behalf of Whitney Houston. I don't have even a hint of sarcasm or irony in bringing this up. When I was a kid, I tried out for "The King and I" at the Playhouse singing "The Greatest Love of All." I did terribly, no call-backs, but I really liked her when I was eleven.

So hey there, we’re doing something special tomorrow. It’s a meetup at Global Gallery at 12:30 - 2pm (link to Facebook event invite). We’re going to have joining us Dreamsfood members Derek Lory from the Helping Hands Community Garden there, and Del Sroufe aka Del’s Baked Tofu, Thai Peanut Noodles, etc (and Wellness Forum).

To begin with, we can just get together and chat and discuss any ideas you have for Dreamsfood (i.e. bounties, outreach, etc). Enjoy some coffee and social interaction? Meet us there.

Derek will be there to help drum up some volunteers for the Helping Hands Community Garden Benefit Show. He’s going to come up with some ways for us to help and we’ll try to coordinate how we can contribute. The HHCG partners with the Beechwold-Clintonville Community Resource Center and donates some of its yield to them. Let’s see if we can help them make an awesome benefit show, and maybe even contribute to their overall mission.

If you’ve been to the Clintonville Community Market’s prepared food cooler any time in the last however many years, you’ve probably been tempted away by the likes of Del Sroufe’s offerings (personal disclosure: who’s hooked on spicy peanut thai noodles? this guy.), or maybe you’ve had his food at the Wellness Forum. Either way, he’s putting together a cook book and we’d like to help him test his recipes! Join up and we’ll give out cooking assignments to the willing, then meet back up to share the dishes, compare cooking experiences, and fill out the feedback forms to help Del out.

So seriously join us tomorrow around 12:30 at Global Gallery Coffee Shop for coffee, talk, and volunteering! (Click through to join the Facebook event so we have an idea how many to expect, pretty please.)

No real good reason. It's kind of pretty.

I bet it says something about me. Or just as likely not.

I

Self-Promotional Quickie:

Hey I'm a funny(*), secular, divorced guy with a handful of solemnizations of weddings under my belt, no fear of public speaking, and cheap rates. If you need a solemnizer to say the words, then I'm your man! 

• Need a ceremony in a jiffy? Just give me an hour and I can probably figure out how to get there!
• Want some custom ceremony with a bunch of your own stuff woven in, original research done, and stuff like that? Let's get coffee and go over some stuff, or we can just collaborate online!
• I know experienced photographers! Real ones with crazy electronics and websites and stuff, I can refer some if you don't have one yet.

Minimal and easy or well-thought and personal, email me at mfg@nomfg.com and we'll get you married.

Kristin said there are some people out there that just need some person to stand there and solemnize them. I've been at it a few years, had a great time with the ones I've done whether they wanted a ceremony heavy on details or one that was quick and painless.

Anyway, if you or someone you know needs a Reverend in the Church of Whatever (Universal Ministeries to be specific), I have a certificate from the internets and am ready to hitch some folks.

(* I think I'm funny anyway)

Saturday there was a chili cookoff. This is my first chili cookoff, and first time making chili at all (I know, QQ...) since, since turning vegan. 

Frankly, I have been intimidated of relying on my newer skills to attempt something like this. Chili was my favorite meaty meal. In the few months of being vegan I have encountered many tacitly solicited opinions on the things people could never give up. Obviously at the top are bacon and cheese; personally, it is over-medium eggs for me, and I still have longings when I see them. 

But the thing that, before the jump, I thought I could never give up cooking was chili. Just flick through that tag. I have made every variant of chili worth making. Ham Stock (the Youngstown Brown), Brisket, Pulled Pork, and Venison having been my favorite mediums, I have nonetheless almost always had a vegan counterpart when bringing a crock somewhere. At the Huffman's chili cook off, I had a Texas Red, French-Onion & Mushroom Brisket chili next to my vegan Curried Pumpkin Chili.

While I have always loved my darling vegan chilis, and given them every ounce of care and attention I gave to the meat chilis, they were always simpler. Fewer steps, less prep, less clean up; easier. There is an obsessive demon in me that would pursue tesselated and 3-d flavors in the meat chili that was never satisfied by the gastronome's admonition that ingredients should taste like what they are. It exorcised itself when working with meat, but not without.

I have a kind of discomfort with not going everywhere and saying everything all at once with my chili. Granted, working with Paul for the ICS Fire Fest and being with Beth has taught me to improve my sense of what urgently goes with what, and to be sympathetic to having a very clean palate (rather than bland, mine usually take a turn for muddy or hyperactive).

So what's wrong with veg*n chilis? Nothing. In most cases they're as good as most meat chili; terrible.

I am a snob sometimes. I am as egalitarian as it can get frequently. But I can really be a fucking snob on occasion, especially if I have some inordinate love for whatever it is. It's not a good thing and it makes it difficult to just do some things. And one of those things is making chili. 

So I came up with an approach to chili that can engage me. Here's the rough sketch; Red Pozole styled chili, using a smoked seitan 'meat' to sub for pork; it didn't pan out exactly in that way so here goes.

The Clintonvillain's Pozole (Vegan; sorry, no human flesh like the traditional recipe calls for);

I.1) Begin by making your chili paste. Put 8-12 dried peppers (ancho, pusilla, mulatto, guajillo varieties) in a hot iron skillet and toast on each side until they start to get really fragrant. Cover with water and simmer for 30 minutes. Pour off water, reserve; put peppers in a colander and remove the pith, seeds, and stems.  

I.2) Dry out your cast iron skillet and heat back up, dry toast your spices for your chili paste. I relied on ancho powder, paprika, cayenne powder, cumin, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon, clove, mustard, turmeric, and cumin.

I think in whole there was something like a half cup of spices toasting up nicely in there.

When done I added it to some additional no-pepper chili powder I had made earlier in the week. It was similar, but had a cup of toasted pepitas and two tablespoons milled flax seed (omega 3s and thickening agent).

I.3) Now you will puree the peppers to a nice thick paste, adding some of the reserved 'bitter water' from the simmering to keep it smoothing out. You should end up with something like this depending on your water to pepper to spices ratio. Add the toasted spices to this.

As for the chili itself, I started with a pretty standard build;

II.1) Begin - Saute a few cups of diced yellow onion until soft and translucent. Add a few cloves (I went with six large) of fresh diced garlic. Once all of this is good and gooey an lovely, add a nice big dollop of the chili paste so you can get your bearings. Then cover with 6-8 ounces of Yeti Stout (oak-barrel aged, chocolate and espresso infused stout). Definitely take the time to taste this stuff; do yourself a favor. Pour over a cup of strong coffee and a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. Bring to a simmer and let those stickey strands get going.

II.2) Build - I used one large can of skinned, whole plum tomatoes (crush and shred in your hand then drop in), one large can of tomato puree, and one large can of diced tomatoes (drain then add). Stir it up and cook it down.

II.3) From here you are going to get the herbs and seeds started. First taste to make sure the chili paste is still kicking. Add more as necessary. In all I think I had about a cup and a half of it in 6 quarts. After, add some fennel (aids indigestion) and bay leaves (mine were all very small so I shoved them in a cloth teabag and add them, could also have added some whole cloves this way). Add 3-4 whole dried cayenne peppers, and 3-4 cups tart dried cherries, and 1/4 cup of dried bird's eye peppers.

You should know by now that I don't hold to times very much. Especially in the case of chili. It's done when it's done, and you just need to learn that. That said, if you're not sure and you have time, go longer.

II.4) I added the hominy about two or three hours into cooking, with another 90 minutes to go. I like to add beans at the last minute, so that they retain their natural texture (i.e. don't turn to mush, especially if it is going to be in a crock pot for three more hours). Hominy is resilient enough to hold on despite hours of cooking.

III.1) Salsa - This is a vegan chili, so it is not high in fat. I used olive and toasted sesame oil while building i up, and there is some fat in hominy, but relative to your run-of-the-mill ground beef chili, it has next to zero fat. So what? Well, that means you have little buffer against the capsaicin. Adding sugar and starch to the chili masks it, vinegars can carry and cleanse it (there were Apple Cider Vinegar, Bragg's aminos, and White vinegar in there); but you need oils (esp. solid ones) to dissolve the capsaicin. Combining these things allows you to enjoy more hot without being overwhelmed by it. We add it with healthy fats via a salsa.

The salsa was simple; three plum tomatoes (fresh), one lime, and one red onion diced in nice big chunks, with four fresh avocados cubed up nice. [Beth taught me this: If you want nice clean cuts to your avocado, slice it in half, twist and remove the seed; with a knife cut a grid into the meat while in the shell, then scoop out with a spoon.] Pour over some apple cider vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice, a smidge of toasted sesame oil, some olive oil, and finish with a generous splash of the Yeti Stout. When tossing avocado in salad or guacamole, best practices would have you add lime juice to prevent browning; however this oxidation process can be prevented by coating it with any mildly acidic liquid.You are going for a thick dressing to the salsa, not some runny water-y scurf. Finish with additional herbs as you see fit, best practices for any salsa include a generous helping of coarsely chopped cilantro (which I omitted from the chili itself for the sake of any tasters who hate cilantro).

IV.1) Finishing - So the chili should be chugging along pretty good. When you are nearing the end of the stove top time and are getting ready to transition to the crock pot, start adding your herbs and verify that the chili paste is still topped off. The crock pot can be a good place for this as well, but I like to have it pretty much in forget-about-it mode by then. The big punch for both the salsa and the chili is to take some ground up plantain leaf and add a tablespoon or two to the 6 quarts of chili and a teaspoon or so to the salsa (after which put some saran wrap over the top of the salsa and refriegerate). Add a 1/4 cup of some oregano to the chili and transfer t crock pot.  

IV.2) Plating - For taster size portion about 4:1 is the ratio of chili to salsa you're going to want to hit. Too much salsa and it's too tart. Too little and they get robbed of those tasty avocados and their soothing fat. Top with sour supreme if you so desire and a twist of pepper and some smoked salt. 

This chili is not your garden variety chili. It is a bit awkward and utterly unexpected. But in spite of everyone's trepidation, there were a good many surprised grins that slid out from under the weight of furrowed brows. That's my favorite reaction, where you can watch someone go from wtf to omg to holy shit. This stuff is hot hot. and its bitter and tart and sour, its sweet and more toothy than any veg*n offering you've likely ever had before.

Here's a link to the gallery of pics

I surmounted my fear that veg*n chili is just bean stew, and so can you.

The moment that we believe that we have never met | another kind of love, it's easy to forget

When we are all alone then we do both agree | we have a thing in common, this was meant to be 

Here's the gist; make shells | make soup | fill shells with soup | top with corn bread biscuit batter | bake | top with hollandaise sauce

Of course, being the Alpha Dreamsfood project, this is Columbus centered and vegan. The hope is to spread the message and open it up to more locations and flavors. Anyway, I'm hoping you are here for the recipe, because that's what I've got -

To begin with we will address the soups.  The first one, "Soothing Savory", had apple-smoked sweet potatoes, peas and charred corn. The second one, "Sassy Savory", had some apple-smoked seitan, leaks, butter beans, and smoked turnips. 

For the Soothing Savory, you first need to roast the potatoes (I recommend doing so at the same time as the turnips). Once you roast them and get them hot and sweaty, throw them on the grill for about two hours with some apple wood smoke and indirect heat (you will want to smoke at the same time you do the seitan). As the smoking is winding down, saute an onion, then add some garlic and build up a good soupy base. In a cast iron skillet, powder the bottom with paprika and ancho powder (and cayenne if you want some more heat) and dry toast the spices on medium then edge it toward high. Once the skillet is hot and the spices are done, drain a can of corn (actually use fresh if you can, but it's January in Ohio so...) and add it to the skillet and char the skins. Add along with a can of peas to the base of the soup. Add the sweet potatoes and *boom* you're basically done. From here on out you will be acting like a custodian more than anything. Spice it how you like it, I did my general tex-mex thing. The vegetables are the focus here, and not some spice blend so just keep in mind accenting.

Note: Using fresh corn would have been ideal, same for the peas. You can decide to drop some corn starch slurry into the mix if you'd like a thicker soup for your pies. Smoked salt, however, is one stand-out seasoning that I would say you should invest in for this and the next soup.

Sassy Savory is a smidge more intensive. For the seitan I made basically the same seitan as I had with the Seitanic Panic in the Oven Shepard's Pie. I used the same basic recipe from before, and a similar stock for simmering the seitan and for the rub. Smoking the seitan was nice and easy and done at the same time as the sweet potatoes and the turnips. So basically once you drop the seitan in the stock to simmer, cut up your sweet potatoes and turnips and put them in the oven at 350'F.

Once the seitan and turnips (which upon roasting will still have their bite, though a bit mellowed; upon smoking will mellow out entirely but still have a great punch of flavor) are done smoking it's time to build the soup. The soup starts the same as pretty much any other one I do, but in this case after you finish off the onion and garlic sauteeing, you can stock the stock with the simmering stock you used for the seitan (upcycle that salty water). Mire-poix is utterly your friend on this one, so grab some carrot and celery (and hell, add it to the other soup if you want). Originally I was going to use butter beans only but some black beans made their way in there as well. Add the sweet potatoes and corn starch slurry (if appropriate). Spice and season as you like. Reserve the smoked seitan for making the cupcakes, or just add toward the end of stweing.

Note: When/If to add the smoked seitan is an interesting problem. If you've ever baked seitan before adding it to a saucy stweing dish, you will know the effect you get. The surface becomes nice and resilient and the texture more durable. It is less likely to soak up massive amounts of liquid, and consequently flavor. I chose to preserve the acute smokiness by topping with seitan before serving (and I like the presentation aspect better); you could diffuse it (a) if you prefer, or (b) if you can't stand sharp smoked food, or (c) if you over-smoke those bad boys.

Next time, how to make the shells and build these bad boys...

Here is my February through April road map;

• Start planning meals for the entire week or starve
• Miss Kristin reminded me of my budgeting motivation having lapsed by mentioning mint.com, Beth doubled down on that and I realize I need to get back into using that. I used to use it for a while and it was quite the benefactor in keeping me on the skinny and narrow
• Make something. In keeping with my new year's resolution to make myself some furniture, I think I should start by going to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and sourcing wood
• Pay attention to a calendar, fill up the dates with good things to do
• Kick out the jams with TWO MORE Bounty Dinners for Dreamsfood.org and a Clintonville Chili Cookoff!
• Find excuses to be outside
• Game of Thrones in April; something to count down to!
• Buy clothes! Nothing beats away winter blues like marginally responsible consumerism (I mean. I can't go to work naked... ever again) veiled by the rationalizations of "can't make a second first impression"
• Keep warm and dry
  • take up knitting, 
  • or sewing
• ...More suggestions and ideas and your tactics for staying sane in the Season of Zoloft? Comment below so I will know

Pizza #1: creamed spinach and shallots and walnuts?

New Gallery up from my recent entry for Dreamsfood's first bounty, vegan comfort food. It is an attempt at creating a pot pie using a cupcake format. The first one, "Soothing Savory", had apple-smoked sweet potatoes, peas and charred corn. The second one, "Sassy Savory", had some apple-smoked seitan, leaks, butter beans, and smoked turnips. Both were served in pizza dough shells with corn bread biscuits and a nice dose of vegan hollandaise.

So the Bounty of comfort food also included Shepardess Pie and four varieties of Spanikopita (one of which Portia had spontaneously created with some leftover mix and some leftover smoked seitan). It was a big success in terms of people loving the food prepared as well as the turn-out and feedback provided by our Dreamsfood Alpha group members.

Very excited for the second bounty, which was announced this week. It's focusing on Latin Foods and we're hoping for some foods inspired by our Western hemisphere neighbors. So far we have an enchilada entry and a flan (vegan flan? for science!) and I'm hoping for a ton of additional recipes.

I will get the post up soon detailing the how of making these exciting monsters! And YES, smoking seitan is utterly worth every ounce of the effort.

Enjoy!

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What is a Dark Night without an Early Dawn?

"What Does the Darkest of Nights Mean?"

It might be better to use both halves in answeering your question. The first half, "Dark Night" refers to period of personal upheaval or crisis. Both halves: Dark Night, Early Dawn (DNED) is a phrase whose usage probably best elucidates the fuller context behind what a Dark Night exactly is.Transpersonal Studies usage can be summed up in the following;

"Dark Night...", as in Dark Night, Early Dawn typically can be used to refer to a period of great spiritual testing and, when coupled with "...Early Dawn", transformation. For more you might gloss over the book Summary of central metaphor in Dark Night, Early Dawn

Frequently a Dark Night is a period in which the mettle of a given subject is tested to such an extent as to not only unwind the topical or superficial egoic structures of the person, but when harnessed the crisis energy can additionally be utilized to unwind and deconstruct the foundational and subterranean structures.

Also, the actual crisis or context may not objectively warrant such a description, but the diligence and energy channelled into the situation and egoic structures involved would be sufficient to be a Dark Night experience to the subject.

When used in the superlative, there is an understanding of the Darkest Night laying bare the subject's entire self as a collection of dis-integrated parts. There is, in the sense of the Early Dawn, an opportunity to collect these fragmented elements of the person and to integrate them into a more cohesive personhood.

I'm sure I will go back and edit the answer, tweak it, coax a bit more from it. But that initial draft was awesome. So excited to finally use something from my Bachelor of Arts days. It only took 6 years!

Actually, I referenced DNED throughout the entire structure of my whole 28 hour BaconCamp qua Chili, the rundown and the recipe. I am glad to have had the kind of meltdown I did that week. I am also glad that I got to have such a foundational experience cooking before I gave up cooking at the expense of animals' lives. I don't like to pontificate much on it, but I hit a mark now where it smells wrong. It no longer looks or smells like food for human consumption.

It's a weird place and all my prior photos of meat-based dishes look like some kind of abstract culinary art. Anyway, DNED. Get there.

I figure, I am so bored of those vanilla installs breaking my computer, let's add a bit of sadism with an extra convolution:

How to port VMs to physical disk  and a live install

I guess I wasn't really setting out to become better, or really much of anything at all. Mostly I just wanted to get out with my head still attached to my shoulders.

I don't recall what I did last year, I think I was at my friends' house and we played video games and I probably drank too much. My just-yesterday-finalized-ex-wife was there.

There are a little over a dozen deadlines I did not meet at all at work, another dozen that were partially met, and a few dozen that were in the clear.

Time to clear out some dust bunnies. Grab the popcorn, mfg is about to have an old-fashioned itty bitty pity committee.

God, my throat is backed up with frowns and my brain is pregnant with a panic baby. I can't reach out and I can't feel anything right now.

To really get cliche and self-indulgent and to amplify/exaggerate how I'm feeling and bring it up by one order of hyperbole magnitude: (1) I need distance from myself and the faster I run the quicker I catch up to me, (2) My emotions need a break, they have been working overtime telling me what I need; yesterday, they were taken hostage and strapped into the front seats of a car and rammed into a wall at eighty-and-five miles per hour.

Everything swells and feels like a threat.  Every last thing. My job, my house, my friends, my life. Everything contracts and shrinks from view and becomes rigid and fixed and obscured. Everything has been checking in for eight months straight with those emotions and it seems like they just aren't getting any easier.

I am in a mind to run around and tear all the posters off my walls. I don't have any posters on my walls, and am afraid of breaking shit, so instead my mind turns inward on itself and attacks healthy nodes because it doesn't want to go anywhere near the panicky nodes.

I stand by the vapid designation of 2011 being the best year of my life so far. And insofar as that can be a state of affairs, rather than some fixed notation pertaining to a range of dates, the state of affairs still obtains. Vapid, as in 'best' doesn't really specify much, yet designates much. When I say 'best' I mean that I have become more present in more moments. I have been able to integrate disparate elements of myself and suffer less acute attacks of person-fragments.

Still I am left feeling old. Old like ripped off, time wasted. If I ask myself generally or specifically have I made any choices or decisions that were a waste of time or that I regret my guts always return an emphatic no. I don't know if it's that they're committed to some sense of pride or if they truly mean that they just don't regret anything. All the same, paperwork in hand there was a sadness that I was overtaken by yesterday as we had the last bits of our marriage dissolved and I officially (with certifications, judges, and notaries involved) became 'divorced.' 

Many things that I had taken for granted at 7:59 am became irrevocably rattled by 10:59 as I had just finished buying some coffee beans and was waiting for a bus to take me home; both things that were new about me and the post-April life I'd led, and things that were old and from before April.

I found myself talking to Beth last night from a very far away place. It was around 8:30pm, she had taken me to dinner and we were back at her new place. I haven't "needed" a drink in the 8 months of sobriety but fuck me a joint would have been nice. In the clothes I had been wearing all day I was buried under a small burial mound of blankets trying to sort out where was my mind. I was in a room covered in white. Every surface. Every molecule of air was carrying around some dusting milky house paint, each surface covered in a white canvas. 

Here I am not.

Or: "Nothing means nothing / Everything is fleeting / Don't get used to it / I say, look upon the ruins" ("Ancient Questions", Mount Eerie)

So now I begin today and moving forward to survey the ruins. I had time to survive. I had time to deconstruct and rebuild and test and try. I began again and feel good and now it's time to bring me back to where I am and take the time to look upon the ruins. This is necessarily an isolated trip. I must question all things but only be concerned with me.

Looking upon the ruins, what is that? As far as I can tell, it happens after you figure out how to get out alive. Which takes place before you figure out how to escape with some of your shit. Which precedes how to escape with a shred of dignity. Which is a necessary condition to ever begin to figure out where you're going with any of this. And like a poorly planned move, it's only once you get a decent enough distance away that you even figure out what you even should have brought of yourself, your shit, and your dignity.

Looking upon the ruins is a solitary thing to do. Like Macchu-Picchu overrun with tourists, no one wants to feel crowded in the ruins of their life. Down in the sealed catacombs that create the foundation for the obelisk that is self, we don't want people breathing up the limited ambient air supply. Sometimes the catacombs are haunted and you need to ask for back up, but ultimately there will eventually be ghosts only you can see, much less exorcise.

I already know many of the ghosts down there. It isn't overrun with assholes trespassing in the private parts of my life. The ruins are a place of memoriam and respite. The ruins are where we survey who we are, how we cultivate who we become; they serve as a memorial in a way that the morticians table cannot. Here the dust has settled. Yesterday morning I added my final relic to the chapter titled Amanda. A large, granite tablet fell from the sky and flattened a portion of the earth kicking up a last substantial clod of dirt into the sky. These last particles will take some time to settle, and when they do I suppose I will in some way move a little further down the road with a little less of me left back there.

How do I feel twenty-five hours later, or 10.5 days through the new year? I have ruins. I have sadnesses associated with my ruins. Sometimes, when a fragment of myself is acutely crying out I am prone to feel remorse for something that was undone. I have learned to expect more, rather than less. I have done without and found it wanting. I have a pervasive covetousness for security that would insist upon only the surest assurances.

Yet I feel constructive on the whole. No grand realization, no consolation and I can't be consoled as there's nothing to be sorry about. My boots are dragging a bit leaving the ruins, and I choke up turning my back on them, still after a certain hour a graveyard is no place for the living.

"forgot about the state of the world / so I'll just fall in love with girl / I've got too many years left to spend / she's all I think about in the end" ("five and dime" Port O'Brien)

My hair is long this morning, my nails clipped. I am stained with ink and pushing into new territories. I am excited and enlivened and afraid and overrun with fearlessness. Fears are pushing in saying that I am toxic, and I push back and say we were toxic. Fears are pushing in saying that all is doubt, and I push back and say I am sure.

So for a second leg of the Dev Cycle posts, and a nother I want to put an emphasis on another "Why?" behind Dreamsfood. This time, it is to do with Experimentation. The emphasis on charitibility is to do with the community at large; experimentation is for the benefit of the cook.

Recently, Beth Binkovitz described the Dreamsfood model as one where cooking competitions are turned on their head and made accessible. Here, you try to win money to fund cooking food using a great recipe. With most competitions, you spend money to cook food to maybe win money to maybe cover the expense of cooking the food.

Dreamsfood is a model for investing in cooking experiments and fantastical food; it helps cooks craft competitive ideas that win them money to cook

I participated in the 2011 Cincinnati ICS Fire Fest Chili Cookoff. It was a lot of fun, my friends Paul and John were involved and the camaraderie of such an event is definitely one to be appreciated. As a social event it is a boon.

As a culinary event, my impression (disclosure: partially flavored by a big, round zero for a score) was that it was a boondoggle. In spite of how well the event was run, and how fun the different elements were, and in spite of the recruitment of some fantastic judges, the event left little leeway for creativity in one's entry.

Entries not conforming to a standard Midwest Conception of chili were not only not rewarded, but to an extent punished. When we got to go upstairs and see our score, and check out the other chilis, we were nonplussed. Every chili was within such a tight standard deviation that our chili by comparison looked like some alien baby. We were not surprised that we got a zero; we were confused by the devotion to a salty, cumin-dependent (and yes, I love cumin), Red Hot inspired recipe that was refined to the point of inbred. Were we a surprised our alien baby couldn't compete with the samey soups? No, and we don't think they were bad either; each of the other chilis had their merits.

The problem with that brand of competitive cooking was that you were effectively punished for experimenting.

I also competed in the Local Matters Grilled Cheese Throw Down. And the Bacon Camp competition put on in part by Wild Goose Creative. (Both before I went vegan.) These two experiences were much more rewarding. In the case of the latter, I just went way the hell out on a limb and made a few gallons of some crazy pulled-pork chili. It was hella expensive, but it was my first comp and I didn't care. In the case of the Grilled Cheese Throw Down, it was less expensive, but still on the costly side because of the amount of food that was ultimately used up in R&D.

But the Local Matters competition helped me exeriment and come up with a truly novel soution to the age old question; "Just how do I make a grilled cheese with mac 'n cheese?"

In the course of this experimentation my friend Kate expressed an interest in competitive cooking, but with the caveat that it is too expensive to just jump into - especially if you have no idea what your chances at a payoff might be.

And that is one of the points around which Dreamsfood crystallized; my ROI for the Grilled Cheese Throw Down was high, even if a dime was not won in the process (ha; even if I didn't qualify to compete, my sandwich just wasn't Grilled Cheese-y enough, even though it was crazy good). This was not due to some monetary reward, but rather to engaging a challenge and finding a unique solution. With that as a starting point, I wanted to find a way to fund the individual discovery of cooks and remove the barrier to entry.

One of the key ingredients to an amazing Recipe Card is the willingness to go out on a limb with a concept. To try to re-compose a standard as something new and innovative is hard-coded into Dreamsfood. So, to all the cooks out there, do your damnedest to make some crazy proposals.

Deep-fried vegan grilled cheese tiramisu? If you can dream it, we'll help you bring it.

As one of the two cooks with a winning recipe card (mine was the pot pie cupcakes), it's partially up to me to post updates on the status of my Dev Cycle and maybe get everyone excited! Be that as it may, I am going off on a tangent about the "Why?" behind Dreamsfood.

A few years ago, before I had a job that had insurance, before I had a job with a desk, before I moved to Columbus, before I graduated from Youngstown State University, way back then in 2003 round the eve of Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), I had a job as a dishwasher.

I worked for a place called Station Square. It was my first restaurant experience. As for a backend it was a great place to work, as for the front they got the paychecks into accounts effectively. Still, even between myself and my girlfriend at the time, pockets weren't deep and a bill is a bill and a paycheck just doesn't always stack up. Despite decent work hours for a full time student, and budget skill and dedication, and doing most shopping at Aldi, we had to rely on a church in the suburbs for food a lot of the time.

We weren't wholly desperate, and rarely went hungry, but this allowed us that necessary modicum of flexibility in our budget that kept gas in the car and the rest of the bills paid on time. If it weren't for some luck and a food bank, I have no idea if I would have had the luxury of caring about finishing school.

Years later, when I came to have some small scratch to donate, a fondness of remembrance for that church came to mind. Having relocated and forgotten the name and location of the church, my donations went happily by proxy to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. 

A part of the Big Idea behind Dreamsfood is, ultimately, charitability. I want Dreamsfood to step out eventually and have community events where the cooks prepare food at give-back events. My hope is that fund-raising can be done for charities. Hopefully Dreamsfood will catch on because people enjoy investing in a cook and her or his vision. What would be even better is if the individual groups can then mobilize as little dynamos of outreach.

That is the reason for the model being a Co-Op. My grasp of Dreamsfood may have had Food Banks in mind, but each group should look at the community's needs. Maybe you have steam-roller food banks and need to support local agriculture or slow food. Each community has different problems, and better and worse solutions to those problems.

"Dreams Food" isn't just about experimental food that comes from the wild dreams of cooks; it's ultimately meant as a vehicle to reach out to people for whom their daily bread is as often a dream as a reality. Dreamsfood wants to feed the person that dreamsfood.

Anyway;

Sunday my mind hatched an evil scheme. I bided my time, and executed it Monday night.

• For anyone who knows me or has been following nomfg for a minute, it comes as no surprise to hear me profess my adoration of the Jolly Pumpkin brewery. From their beautiful packaging, to the pour and the sniff and the taste and the swallow, each one of their beers is a call from the ethereal beyond.
• For anyone who knows me or has been following nomfg for a minute, it also comes as no surprise that I can't drink anymore. I'm not the best when it comes to being able to drink responsibly and deal with life; my proclivity for emotional self-medicating is quite effective.

So how does beer and not drinking make for do-no-goodery?

Los Luciernaga Pizza: Beer dough crust made with Luciernaga, with a Carrot-Cardamom flavored Parsnip Puree, topped with Carmelized Shallots & Bosc Pears, and dressed with a Roasted Garlic Luciernaga Glaze

Well;

We went down to Columbus' arena district to get some vegan lunch, but the special at the place was pulled (and has subsequently been added back, indefinitely; grats!). So we scampered over to North Market. I'm a fan of the place; no devotee to be sure, but who doesn't love a good bazaar? Anyway after a Brezel and a few samples of Cajohn's hot sauces (that Vicious Viper is aawwwesome), I headed in to Barrel & Bottle where the Braiden works to check it out. I have a habit of assessing stores by the shelf space afforded Jolly Pumpkin. I'm not sure why, I guess as some mark of familiarity.

They had a few, including one of my favorite go-to's;

Luciernaga

"The Firefly"

An artisan pale ale brewed in the Grand Cru tradition. Enjoy its golden effervescence and gentle hop aroma. Coriander and Grains of Paradise round out the spicy palate, melting o so softly into a silken finish of hoppiness and bliss! Make any season a celebration!

(yum)

It came to me in the middle of some conversation. I don't quite recall about what, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. The rest of Sunday was dedicated to figuring out how to bring this sin to manifest.

Beer Dough. It is a dirty, dirty trick. And I love it. Normally I use malty lagers and Mexican beers, or whatever I am unafraid of wasting. Instead of water and yeast being used to wet and bind up the flour for the dough, you just use flat beer and ground salt. Easy peasy.

But what happens when you take an uber unflat beer whose directions indicate that you should pour like champagne? Well for one, you get a dried out crust. The excessive air really doesn't to the dough any favors. So let it go flat, but don't skip out on the foam collar in pouring. Flatten it (8-12 ounces worth) but be sure to pour correctly to unlock the beer.

So once you've poured a beer to use in the dough, here's where we go from there; 

• Pre-heat oven to 400'f; Cut the top off a bulb of garlic, peel away papery skin, place in tight fitting oven-proof container and douse with olive oil, cover container with foil and pop in oven for ~30 minutes until cloves are delicate and easy to smoosh
• Peel and trim 10 parsnips and 1-2 carrots, cut into 1-2" segments and place in a pot, cover with water and simmer until they are soft (15-20 minutes); pour off all but 1/2 cup of water, continue simmering until garlic is done (don't turn off oven)
• Remove parsnips and 1 carrot from pot, put in food processor with three cloves of the roasted garlic, 1/2-1 teaspoon ground cardamom, black pepper, ginger
• Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon miso paste or other vegan soup base to simmering stock from parsnips, bring to a boil and give a go until it has some kind of yummy flavor
• Add 2-4 tablespoons butter and the simmered stock to the food processor and puree everything
• Halve and thinly slice two shallots. Core and thinly slice 1 bosc pear. In a cast iron skillet, start sauteeing shallots in oil (from roasted garlic = yum) until translucent, Add a pinch of cardamom, add three cloves roasted garlic and mash and stir, then add sliced pears. Toss pears until they start to soften, then pop in the oven covered with foil to continue softening.
• 
• Time for dough; sift together 4 cups flour with 1/2 teaspoon each salt and baking powder, drop in stand mixer and turn to low with bread hook. Take flat beer (put in a pouring container if it isn't in one already), pour it slowly into the flour and let it all come together (recipe works easily by hand too; just mix with your hand while pouring).
• You should have some kind of a dough ball; you can break it up into halves or thirds, either way roll out what you've got to a nice flat shell. Rub both sides with olive oil (extra points for herbs), sprinkle corn meal on what will be the bottom and flip so that side is down.
• [Working on a  peel with parchment is a tidy option; if so, preheat oven to 450 with pizza stone inside]
• Remove pears and shallots and goodness from oven and transfer the big bits to a bowl but reserve as much liquid as possible. Continue with heating the liquid goopiness on the range. Once you start to get nice little bubbles, pour on some of that Luciernaga, first the flat stuff. Let it bubble down and reduce. Add a hit of flour too and work it in for a thicker sauce. Stir frequently while dressing pizza. Be sure to use a flexible spatula to scrape the bits from the bottom.
• Spread puree over dough shell. Top with the pears and shallots (toasted walnuts or pecans would have done well at this point too).
• Once pizza is dressed you are going to home stretch that sauce or glaze or reduction, whatever you call what you make, you're going to hit it with a nice final splash of the Luciernaga and make sure it isn't to liquid-y (you want a glaze at minimum). Then transfer to a pourable container and dress the top of the pizza.
• Bake until done. (You should be able to put a spatula under the dough and spin it without it sticking, toppings should be browned slightly.)

The pizza has a lovely peppery sweet taste that at once lulls and spices. Changes I would make? Make sure beer is more flat than it was this time around; the beer itself has an incredibly collar not to be ignored, but that must be compensated for.

Making beer dough yesterday I poured the beer out into the standmixer and set it to low for about ten minutes then let it sit for about an hour. This time I was using a stout (Shell's Stout, from a brewery in New Ulm MN); it fell flat in a magnificent way. Lesson learned. 

Additional changes/adjustments? I used a bit too much cardamom. It was basically a new spice to me so I went a bit overboard and assumed that it would disipate or distribute more evenly than it did. Tasty and over the top? Yes. Ready to tame, maybe toast while glazing the pears? Peut-être.

Anyway, a sixteen dollar bottle of beer, with only 7 ounces drunk by mouth from a glass and the rest consumed in the cooking process; it may sound a bit sinful. Or maybe it sounds like a waste of beer without the gluttony. Either way, I will say it was a great pizza and the parsnip puree cardamom candied pear combo was wth the effort alone.

Anyway, a question popped up on whether it was worth stuffing a bird if you aren't going to eat the stuffing (answer: yes). I chose not to answer that question but rather to address her indirect concern;

How do you partially sanitize the yuckiness of stuffing and unstuffing a carcass?

Obviously if you are into eating animals, but find dealing with them a bit yucky but still want to play the wo/man behind the curtain, you probably might choose aversion altogether and skip the stuffing.

I say, if you're down with killing things, do them some respect and put some effort and forethought into cooking, and be willing to overcome your own obstacles to do so. That said, a workaround for the eww-factor goes as follows;

If you're interested in stuffing the bird, and consuming the stuffing, but not interested in the yuck of unstuffing the thing, you could fill an improvised food-grade net (i.e. cheesecloth, muslin wort/hop bag, grain sock, etc) that would be permeable AND allow for you to remove the stuffing more easily.

In this way, you get all the benefits of the stuffing flavoring the bird, you get a side dish, and both the act of stuffing and unstuffing will leave your hands reasonably clean.

(If you like my answer or think it's useful, go upvote it!)