From the monthly archives: November 2009
Alongside the Christmas decorations going up in New York’s Westchester county this Sunday was a gentle dancing breeze and an ample dose of sunlight. It was a glorious autumn day that felt more like spring, a perfect day for a walk in the woods. After a quick ride north from New York City, the Z-unit hit Tarrytown, New York for some familial fall fun.
Sitting pretty between Irvington (named after author Washington Irving) and Sleepy Hollow (named after author Washington Irving’s short story) , Tarrytown is a quaint town that feels miles and miles from Manhattan. It is also home of the gorgeous Lyndhurst mansion, once the estate of Jay Gould, the dapper finance hotshot. The grounds, which included a separate bowling alley and observatory, were used in the filming of the Gothic television cult classic Dark Shadows.
Although most anything would look beautiful in the foreground of such a delicious blue sky, the mansion was certainly so.
The castle is right on the Hudson river, on which the northbound commuter rail, Metro North, originating from Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, crawls along. 
The Croton Aqueduct Trail sits upon an old aqueduct which used to bring water to NYC. It was in use until 1955. These structures along the trail were used to aerate the water on its trip south but now serve as large mile markers.
Summer and autumn’s timing was a bit off this year so likely winter’s will be too. Many trees still had bright foliage and the rustling leaves under my feet sounded more like October than December.
Of course food was in order after our hike. We hit a Mexican restaurant called Tomatillo in Dobbs Ferry, where the tofu-lin burrito and a mango marguerita hit the spot.
I am hardly ever in Queens, though it is a just a few blocks from my apartment. Unlike most of Kings county, Queens county is better traversed with an automobile. In fact, it is covered in expressways and wide boulevards. Brooklyn’s entire center, on the other hand, is devoid of highways. The Belt Parkway runs along the southern shore of Brooklyn, the gateway to JFK, Coney Island and the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island, while the Gowanus/Brooklyn Queens Expressway runs its perimeter on the north side, linking motorists to Manhattan 
before quickly spitting them out in Queens. Queens, with its gems far and far between, is a criss-cross of asphalt. I really don’t have much cause to visit Queens often, besides the occasional airport run or bike ride, but that makes my Queens expeditions always exciting. Like a visiting a new city.
“All-vegetarian” and “dim sum” are quite persuasive beckons. And in light of my recent borough-scourings for real ethnic flavor, I thought I’d start my search for New York City’s best dumplings (coming soon) in the heart of Chinese-New York: Flushing, Queens. As with any task, you start where you know: Buddha Bodai‘s dim sum.
Dim sum is kind of tricky. The majority of vegetarian offerings are glutinous, heavy, stomach-expanding… and absolutely delicious. It’s essential to not let plentiful all-veg offerings and rock-bottom prices fool you into ordering too many plates. Having suffered dim sum comas myself, I have come up with a helpful equation in deciding how many plates to order: take the # of people, multiplied by 2 and minus 1. This’ll guarantee you a satisfying meal and not an overly satisfying meal.
Recommended at Buddha Bodai is their BBQ vegetarian meat plate. It’s a tender wheat gluten covered in sweet barbeque sauce.
Their spinach rice roll is so good. It’s cooked spinach wrapped in rice noodle with a yummy dipping sauce wading pool underneath.
Of course no dim sum is complete without a huge bun filled with heavenly veggies (or “pork”). Let’s take a zoom on this one.
And dim sum is also a time of experimentation. We tried the shredded turnip pastry. A flaky pastry stuffed with kinda slimy tofu and turnip.
Yeah, I kind of forgot to order dumplings. Oh well, I’ll just have to brave the 7 train again.
The great thing about Buddha Bodai is that it is right across the street from the beautiful Queens Botanical Garden, which is a short walk to the wonderful 1964/1965 World’s Fair grounds at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. On this unseasonable warm November day, we hit the swings and the sights for a well-rounded Flushing excursion.
I am thankful to survive, and thrive, through the love and support of friends.
Thanksgiving plans changed drastically at the last minute due to reasons a trained psychologist will need to help me understand. Luckily, I was able to find a place to feast. Here are the highlights:
CP‘s almond pignoli cookies. With a hefty bite of almond paste, these Italian delicacies hit the spot.
My Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie cupcakes from VCTOTW were delish! I piped them full of Soyatoo from my score last weekend.
But since I am the kinda person who loves the insides of things, here it is.
My bountiful plate including roasted kombucha squash, potatoes, canned corn, Swiss chard and chick pea frittata/quiche/tart, sweet potato mash with ground nuts and lotsa agave and roasted daikon, acorn squash and shallots.
Not the most flattering picture of the Swiss chard and chick pea frittata/quiche/tart. 
Kombucha squash, spread-eagle
Shallots and green onion. Bless the five pungent spices!
1. Break a comfort zone. For the most part, we exist safely in the parameters of our comfort zones. By design, they don’t challenge us. Year after passing year, growing boundaries can keep us comfortable– but should that be the goal of our time here? Today I’ll have a meaningful conversation with a stranger, parallel park a car until I can do it blindfolded and strip the decorative but concealing shawl off the facts and face them.
2. Clean up. Swindle one of those huge industrial-sized garbage bags that my Dad coveted from his job, in bulk, before his retirement and perpetrate a massive turnover on… stuff. Clothes, shoes, books, etc., etc. Fill the bag and donate it. List bulky items on Craigslist. Collect a box for the old women packrats down the street who host weekly curb sales come Spring. Give away one thing you love; learn that it holds no bearing on your life, that you’re resilient. You’re not ruled by inanimate objects but the emotions you insert in them… which look much better elsewhere.
3. Give Yourself Away. Online. Complete and submit two assignments from Learning to Love You More. Send in your closetal skeletons to PostSecret. Share your journal. Start a blog to tell the world how you feel; disable the comment function so you don’t have to hear what it thinks in return.
4. Make something. Make an iTunes playlist: be specific: songs I’d date if they were people, songs I’d meet with in secret behind the backs of the songs I’d date if they were people, songs that know me better than my co-workers, etc. Empty those sentimentals brimming from your bottom desk draw and incubate them for the test of time: make a time capsule. Combine “make something” with “clean up” and find a recipe for that almond flour you bought for $7.00 but only needed 2 tablespoons of a few months back. Make a pact with a friend to supply evidence of the afterlife if you’re the one to go first, and vice-versa. Start making Valentines for senior citizens in a home nearby. Make love. Make a smoothie. Then make the bed.
5. Simplify. Remove your name from the Direct Marketing Association’s national mailing list, stopping 75% of the 50,000 monthly direct mail pieces they supply. Print stickers for remaining junk and return to sender. Go here to stop unsolicited credit card offers from all three credit bureaus. Unsubscribe email subscription sale alerts. Whew, that feel better. Remember, if you don’t know that a handheld garlic mincer with a vacuum attachment exists then you can’t spend money on it.
6. Archive the day. There won’t be a day like this again- ever. Record its highlights for prosperity. Photograph your face every quarter-of the hour. Strap a tape measure around your waist, your bicep, your neck. Ask everyone you know the same question and graph their responses. Accrue as much data as possible. Make this an annual tradition and reflect on the previous years’ results with a loved one (or several).
7. Write a letter. I like the concept of Thanksgiving, pilgrim and ButterBall bullshit aside. A day to give gratitude to those in our complicated lives who makes things easier, to whom we tacitly burden with a portion of our well being. This help comes in so many forms, some as elusive and self-serving as a idealized memory: a face to a feeling that feels good to feel sometimes. And others in the very tangible: the reach for the goods high in cupboard which my tiptoes fail; the synergy of another’s words and thoughts against my own, growing like new life. This unspoken condition often goes unthanked, maybe because we are simultaneously reciprocating, maybe because of other things. Today, write a letter, a real one on paper, to say thanks.
8. Love. It’s so easy. Free. Rewarding. It’s what all the movies and the songs are about, don’t you know? Today, let yourself love what you love without shame. Those people, places and things that hide in the striated muscle of the heart’s walls, bring them out. Watch cartoon hearts expand and burst, like bubbles, and rain down like those little hammers that the Hammer Brothers throw in Super Mario Brothers or like the end of a Flaming Lips show. Love every noun you have the heart for. Just call to say ‘I love you’. Keep these loves in mind for number 10.
9. Budget. For some darn reason most of us have to spend 5 out of 7 days a week working all day, all of our lives, much to the sacrifice of our hobbies, loved ones, creative energy and personal sanity. To ensure this is not a total waste of time and energy, get the most from your buck by divvying it up. Budget your income to the dollar. Tally your credit expenditures and cry at their utter uselessness and frivolity. Pay down those debts to increase the pool for your discretionary spending (e.g. thrift store wall plaques, $7 tree nut cheeses, Sailor Jerry Spiced Navy Rum).
10. Make a list. Ten things to do instead of shopping. 100 Things to do Before I Die. Little Things List of Things I Love. Little Things List of Things I Love, Part II. Purchase Incubator list. Groceries. Netflix. Then do it.
Wordful Wednesday features bon mots, quibbles and spiel I encounter that make me feel something enough to take out my pad. In conversation, in passing, in email, or my own writing prompts, inspired by lord knows what.. Kind of like a Texts From Last Night for the more articulate and uninebriated. Without further adieu… the Words of Wednesday.
“If love was a line I would be grid paper.”
So there is this guy who bakes cookies. He makes them and sets up an inflatable green couch somewhere in New York City and gives them out the strangers. He is the Free Cookie Guy and I am a stranger. It’s a match made in heaven! Further, all his cookies are vegan. He doesn’t advertise this but I received this information through a reliable channels of vegan foodies. So yeah, this mysterious fellow has been just that since I learned of him a few weeks back. Though I tried, it never worked out that we were in the same place at the same time (He gives updates on his status and location on Twitter and Facebook)… until last night.
Scott, the Free Cookies Guy, was at Bell House in Gowanus. And I sat in his famous green couch, ate his amazing still-warm buttery chocolate chip cookies and shot the shizer about cookies, veganism and free. We’ll meet again, Free Cookies Guy. And next time, I’m bringing a to-go container.
Can you tell I had a couple of vodka and pineapples before he arrived?
Not the greatest pairing with chocolate.
I am thankful for the ability to put my ideals in action.
This past weekend I had the chance to partake in a very special event hosted by Long Island Food Not Bombs. I helped share thousands of pounds of packaged foods, hot, prepared vegan dishes, fruits, vegetables, clothing and books with the people in Hempstead, Long Island. Though LIFNB share healthy vegan food three times a week on Long Island (in Hempstead, Huntington and Farmingville), November 21st’s Thanksgiving Food Share Bonanza was their biggest in history. And though I am always a bit apprehensive about a day spent on Long Island, I left feeling very thankful I was there.
To explain a bit of my L.I. apprehension (and to get all David Copperfield), I was born and raised on Long Island. As a Brooklyn resident for the last seven years, I still am geographically upon that same stretch of that very long island. Though I have often thought Long Island and Brooklyn to be worlds apart, it is on Long Island where I became who I am, where I established my ideals and values… where, out of the alienation of suburban sprawl, I rebelled through music, doing zines and acquiring a passe of misfits all similarly stifled by the lack of substance we saw in the maze of strip malls we were trapped within. (Now, these misfits are still my closest friends. We’re ex-pat war-buddies who made it out of the oppressive trenches.) I hated Long Island. So much that when I first left my parents’ house, my new home would be on the other side of the country in Seattle, Washington.
But meeting the amazing volunteers and seeing the passion of the LIFNB gang, I realized that this Long Island was different than I remembered. This Long Island was solidarity, change and ideals in action (as opposed to ideals running away across the country, in my case). It was humbling and inspiring and I was glad to have the opportunity to give back to my old home.
Below is some of the fruits and veggies handed to the eager line of folks, ready with bags and shopping carts. 
I’ll admit, it was vegan food that had brought me out this Sunday morning to the Hempstead Long Island Rail Road station. And in this capacity I was even more taken aback by Long Island’s finest. The amazing hot plates of food we shared to the community were ample and delicious and all-vegan. Food that volunteers cooked, baked and simmered for hours on end to distribute to a community in need. When I went vegan on Long Island 12 years ago, I had to travel far, far away in my rusty old hatchback, covered in stickers, to get to the only Trader Joe’s that existed in the NY-metro area. Or to Wild Oats in Stony Brook between thrift shopping excursions. This was the pre-Whole Foods explosion. Vegan eats were slim then and not as tasty… and finding another vegan, who wasn’t wearing it like a badge on their Long Island Hardcore boyscouts uniform to prove his righteousness (emphasis intended), even harder to find. (Ah, the inherit sexism in the ol’ liXhc scene. This birthed my zine.)
Anyway, I keep digressing because these are my roots. Mmmmm, root vegetables. Yes, food. We served soy chicken wings, chili, quinoa pilafs, stuffed peppers, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes with Sweet & Sara strawberry marshmallows, mac & cheese, spanakopita, portobello mushrooms, soy chicken nuggets, bean taquitos, cookies, tofu cream pies… My goodness it was hard to not sample all the delicious vegan foods. 
So SuperVegan reported this event here and that LIFNB was bestowed a massive quantity of Soyatoo Whip, 2,000 pounds worth, just in time for the holidays. That is how I found out about the event! Though I headed back to Brooklyn with five containers of Soyatoo, I left with so much more: a love for this new Long Island the folks at LIFNB are helping create, the synergy of action and ideals and inspiration to help me be the change I want in the world. What are we tackling next?
I am thankful for friends who value food.
Holidays, like Johnny Dangerously, are just another excuse to gather the gang and to eat… and eat well. The hiatus-ed FoodSparrow and her dapper gent hosted a wonderful vegan Thanksgiving potluck over the weekend in their gorgeous Park Slope apartment and we all managed to knock each other’s respective socks off. Conversations sounded a bit like phonics class: mmmmmmm like “My gosh this is delicious!”
Here is the spread: a medley of radishes from The Greek‘s very own garden.
Maple-roasted root vegetables in all the shades of autumn.
My plate may look like a mess but each pile was distinctly scrumptious. A broccoli and sun-dried tomato side with a zing of apple cider vinegar, a delectable seitan and cabbage main course with mushroom gravy, My crazy ravioli that did not stand the test of time, presentation-wise, yummy cole slaw and beet greens. So good!
My poor ravioli fell apart. Note to self, homemade pasta should be served immediately. But still pretty.
Small, dark and handsome, Em’s chocolate-chocolate-cherry cookies were absolutely divine.
CandyPenny‘s vegan version of grandma’s cheesecake was just perfect. And I usually am not a fan of tofu cheesecake! But this dame nailed it with a soft, delicate tofu base with zing of lemon and blueberry topping on a yummy cookie crust.
Dear Beets,
I like the way you stay on my hands for hours, how peeling your earthened skin reveals the most vibrant purple-red. I think you invented purple-red. If I were born a root in the ground I, too, would grow the most vivid innards, like yours. I’d let my color bleed and ooze in pattern, in contrast, with all the bright, shocking life I could. I’d take over a dish, too, because I could.
I think if you bit a heart it’d have the feel of a boiled beet, like soft wood.
These photos are not enhanced in anyway but look! Look at how gorgeous they are. I have an irrational love of the beet. I’d like to wear one around my neck.
So these are the two fillings for my autumn ravioli for FoodSparrow’s Thanksgiving potluck. On the left, buttercup squash and sage filling, blogged here, and on the right, Vegalicious‘s beet ravioli.
Digressing from my beet love to get down to the nitty gritty, let’s talk making pasta. It is really, really easy but very time-consuming. Semolina flour makes a soft and bindy little blob of dough.
And it’s super easy to stretch this blob thin.
Not having a ravioli cutter, I used a regular old cookie cutter to shape my ravioli after dropping teaspoons of filling on the stretched dough. Jeez, this took a while. In order to avoid hasteful waste, I had to take 10 minute breaks, rating songs on iTunes and posting nonsense to facebook.
Wishing on many semolina stars, I wished for time and energy in heart and mind: The time and energy to extend their beat and pulse beyond the epidermis.
Some of the seams were thin so my fork did the trick and also made my ravioli look like bloomed flowers and a sunbeams. Sorry this is such a corny post.
Instead of immersing these delicate little babies in boiling water, I used Vegan for the People‘s method of steaming them in a small puddle of water and olive oil. This worked quite well!
I forgot to mention the sauces! On the left: roasted garlic and walnut sauce (here again) and on the right: fava bean sauce (here again). Both were delicious and easy to make! And fava beans, I never had them before. Hannibal Lechter kinda turned me off to them.
Finally I get to eat! AFter a really log morning of prepping this dish, I was able to eat some of the “irregular” ravioli and still have a ton for the potluck. Hope they are well received!
I haven’t been in the kitchen much at all these days. But that will change very, very soon. The holiday marathon of cooking, pot lucks, food shares and Christmas cookies begins this weekend. And for the first time ever, I will be responsible for the entire Thanksgiving meal at my parent’s house. This is a colossal challenge I am ready for with my a-game. So to carve my intentions in stone, I offer my holiday menu.
Gastronomical delights to all, and to all a good night.
Thanksgiving potluck:
Autumn ravioli medley (butternut squash & sage ravioli and beet ravioli with fava bean sauce)
Pecan and date blondies
Thanksgiving at the family’s:
Seitan en Croûte
Dandied Candied Yams
KZ’s Thanksgiving stuffing
Cranberry sauce not shaped like a can
Garlic-sauteed greens
Tomato Rosemary Scones
Chocolate pumpkin pie
Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cakes (from VCTOTW)
Christmas cookie assortment:
Cashew coconut joy
Chocolate chip cookies
Rocky road cookies
Caramel pecan bars
Vegan Samoas
Cranberry white chocolate biscotti
A note about my holiday cookie selection: All but one of my carefully-selected recipes are from Isa and Terry’s amazing new book, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. All but the cashew coconut joy, which is a My Sweet Hannah recipe. And by carefully selected I mean that I personally find them delicious. There are no peanut butter nor banana-infused treats as these domineering flavors often takeover the entire assortment when combined.
See the rundown on last year’s holiday cookie-a-thon here and below.
Vegan Reporting By Location
