Bike fuel

I've recently started commuting on bicycle again after a two or three year hiatus. The new commute is 12 miles each way instead of 3, but back then I used to take a 30 mile detour two or three times a week. I've noticed a big change since I was 24, which is that I can't just have a sip of water, go ride 30 miles, and be ready for a nice lunch... Now I actually seem to require some kind of sustenance before I go!

For the most part, I have been making smoothies for my morning fuel (supplemented by a double-shot of espresso a third of the way into the ride). The base is banana, soy yogurt, cashew butter, soy or almond milk, and cocoa powder from Trader Joes. The last two days, I have also thrown in an apple, and ended up with a very thick, pudding-like smoothie which tastes great and keeps me going through the bike ride all the way until lunchtime.

chocolate tofu pie

I made a chocolate tofu pie the other day to serve at a party on Friday. I started with a store bought graham cracker crust, two bricks of silken tofu, and a bar of baking chocolate. I melted the chocolate and then blended it with the tofu. At that point, it wasn't chocolatey enough, so I added some cocoa powder and kept blending until it was smooth. Then I filled the crust and stuck it in the refrigerator.

It came out tasting great, but it was more pudding-like than I'd hoped. Actually, it'd make a fantastic pudding, but I was trying to make pie. I either need to put something in to thicken it up, or (as a friend suggested) try a different brand of tofu which may have a lower water content.

Also, next time I will go with my original gut (ha ha) instinct and get an extra bar of chocolate, in case the one is not enough for the amount of tofu.

Tonight's adventures: burritos & muffins

First, I made stuff to put in burritos... Leftover brown rice, a rinsed can of pinto beans, salsa, and "sour cream uncheez sauce," which basically consists of cashew butter, fresh lemon juice, and a touch of nutritional yeast. This mixture really hit the spot for me.

Unfortunately, the tortillas were a flat out (ha ha) disaster. I think I got the dough to the right consistency, but the recipe (basically 2 to 1 and a bit masa harina and water) said to roll them out between two sheets of wax paper, and I found it to be nearly impossible to transfer them from the wax paper to the skillet without them falling apart. I got ONE good one, which of course wasn't really ideal for a burrito anyway, because it was too crispy. I might try this again to make gorditas or crispy tacos, but it really didn't work for the burritos, so I guess I will have to get some store-bought flour tortillas to finish the burritos... It's too bad, because I was hoping to share them with a gluten-allergic friend.

I made some muffins, too, partly because I was annoyed at my defeat at the hands of the tortillas. Roughly 2 cups of flour, all purpose, brown rice, and almond, in some reasonable proportion favoring the first two, combined with some cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and soda, all vaguely like a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. I put a banana, some soy yogurt, soy milk, oil, and cashew butter in the blender and pureed it, and then stirred all that in to the batter. Filled the muffin cups and baked for 20 minutes at 400 and they came out quite nice... A little on the dense side, but tasty... I couldn't bring myself to use as much sugar as the recipe called for, so they're not as sweet as they could be, but I think with the banana and the cocoa they have a very good flavor. They stick to the muffin cups a bit too much; I'm not sure what to do about that.

I will probably edit this in the future and put in some links, but for now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow morning I plan to ride my bike at least part of the way to work, for the first time in a long time. It's an awful long and dangerous commute entirely by bike (15 miles each way, give or take) but I am excited about it... I need the exercise, I miss riding, and I will be burning less gasoline.

Dosa

I felt really inspired tonight; I had some leftover squash and I wanted to make a dosa to have with it. I used a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's book as a guide and it turned out pretty well, although not flawlessly, as I attemped to flip it too soon and it sortof fell apart... But it wasn't yet cooked enough that I couldn't stick it back together!

I combined equal parts all purpose flour, brown rice flour, yogurt, grated coconut, and water with a bit of salt in the food processor, toasted some mustard seeds and then blended it all again. I spread it around in my cast iron skillet and (should have) let it cook about 5-7 minutes over a medium flame, flip it and cook probably 3 or 4 more minutes.

When it was done, I folded it in half over the squash and ate it with some yogurt on the side. That's it! This one was a knockout success in the flavor department, and I'm anxious to make it again.

Pancakes, Pupusas, Soup

Quick post:

Saturday morning, I made pancakes for breakfast. Whole wheat flour, brown rice flour, baking powder, soymilk, vanilla extract. Awesome! Angeline chopped up mango and banana for the topping.

Made pupusas using masa harina and loosely following this recipe. For the filling, I made refried black beans and mixed them with leftover cooked acorn squash. Again, I felt it was lacking something, although the bean/squash mixture is extremely tasty on its own. I think cheese was the missing ingredient, so maybe I will try again in a few weeks and make an interesting sounding uncheese.

Finally, I made some soup. I boiled asparagus, broccoli, and chives until soft in broth with thyme and marjoram. Pureed that and set it aside, and made a roux with brown rice flour and olive oil, added almond milk and then mixed the puree back in. I thought it was too sweet at this point, because of the almond milk, so I added a bit of salt, more spices, and some basil. It was nice, a sweetish soup with an herbal finish to it.

Pseudopusas

Inspired by a recent post in Vegan Lunch Box, I modified the banana flop idea into pseudo pupusas. I made a batter of corn meal, chickpea and brown rice flours, baking powder, and soymilk and made a thick pancake-like object. Before flipping them, I put (previously cooked) sweet potato and mango on top and layered on more batter.

I'll be honest, it needs something. Salsa? Cheese? Spices? I'm really not sure, probably any of them would have done the trick. In spite of the sweet potato and mango, it came out a bit on the bland side. Actually, bland's not the right word. The flavor was good, it just needed to feature something.

Still, it was a worthy experiment. I'll be attempting it again at some point, but probably not before I try to make a more authentic version.

Risotto Rules!

Tonight I plan to use some of the great asparagus we received to make risotto. As a reminder to myself, I used this article from Arbor Food as my guide last time I made risotto and I was thrilled with the outcome.