Chinese Food! by Mollie

*Sorry it's really late... I wrote this post a long time ago and then forgot the password :P.*

I picked the month of January for Chinese food month because the Chinese New Year was on January 23^rd this year, so I figured it would be an appropriate time. Well, it turned out to be even more perfect than I had intended. From January 17-23, about twenty students from our sister school in Nanjing, China came to visit, and we had the amazing opportunity to host one of them! Her English name was Alice, she was smart, friendly, loved to read, and her English was very good. And one of the first things she told me when we met? “I can cook for you.”

You don’t get that very often… The first day she was here, we went to the grocery store to get some vegetables for a Chinese dish. She made us something very simple and very tasty – white rice cooked with peas, carrots, corn, and broccoli on the stove, without any oil or seasonings. We had soy sauce to put on at the table, but that was it. And this was delicious. See, I guess you don’t need all those fancy, who-knows-what-they-put-in-them sauces, do you?

A couple of days later, we went to a Chinese restaurant along with a friend of mine and her Chinese guest. I know it sounds odd, but as both my friend and I went to China last summer, we learned that American Chinese food is very different from authentic Chinese food, and we wanted our Chinese guests to experience this. (After all, we ourselves found that even Pizza Hut is different, and better, in China.) After working through some menu item confusions – they couldn’t tell what anything was until they got the Chinese version – they devoured their food, seeming to love every bit of it. Alice said with a satisfied nod that it was “different, but better,” and I believe she was describing a difference in the sauce.

Mainly what I took from this month was that Chinese food is simple. It’s about eating vegetables and rice, and having a balance of it. And another thing I’ve learned, sort of gradually, is that Chinese people eat a lot. I think they have better appetites than Americans do – probably because they don’t feel compelled to always be on a diet since their natural diet is healthy enough.

Soup Season

It's the end of March and I love the warm weather we are having, but I'm sorry that soup season is almost over! We eat soup all winter and it's so easy to make when we get home from school and work. We usually have a pot of beans read to go and all we have to do is add various vegetables for a meal in a bowl. A few favorites:

1. kidney beans, onion, canned tomatoes, corn

2. chick peas, canned tomatoes, onions, a little curry or just turmeric and cumin

3. tomato base, potatoes, carrots, peas, corn, onion, and some rice noodles

Often we make some of our wonderful gluten free biscuits and we are good to go for a delicious meal. I just love sitting down in front of the fire with a hot bowl of soup and a biscuit. Perfect winter food.

With the warm weather we can start looking forward to our next meal-in-a-bowl item:

SALAD!

Authentic Chinese Food

In January we hosted a student from China for a week and it was a perfect opportunity to cook some real Chinese food. Bau Hon cooked us a meal of rice and vegetables that was so simple and delicious. It was just white rice with some carrots and peas. That's it. No fancy soy sauce, no deep fried tofu, no oil, no garlic or onion or sweet and sour sauce.

And it tasted great! I mean really great. The vegetables weren't overcooked so they tasted like they were still alive. The food wasn't weighted down with a bazillion flavors, so we could actually taste what we were eating. I really kept thinking Bau Hon was going to add something else to it, but she just kept it very simple with no apologies.

I realized how Americanized our "Chinese" food is in this country and how much healthier we would be if we tried to eat food that is more authentic to a particular culture. As vegetarians we would pass on some of the more - ahem, interesting - meat products that are eaten in China!

Winter is Awesome, by Mollie

Yeah. Enough said. Lots of people complain about winter - the cold, dark, and transportation difficulties... But it's really a great time. Just think about: you get to enjoy so much good food and not feel guilty at all! Besides, since winter is so cold, our bodies need more food anyway - so we get to eat more - and eating helps us warm up. The largest reason for all this good food, it seems, is that there are LOTS of holidays in the winter months! As I've discovered through a bit of research, it seems that all cultures have some sort of celebration around this time. It makes sense - winter would have been a really hard time to get through without heaters, lighting, ovens, TVs, etc, so people would have needed something they could count on. Holidays come around every year, so they're a perfect time for bringing people together and helping them to forget the harsh circumstances they're faced with.

However, as your stomach is probably still recovering from, most holiday food - nowadays - is not so healthy. Okay, not at all healthy. My parents were a little ambivalent about having a month focusing on holiday food, seeing as we're trying to eat healthier. I continually assured them that the point of having a holiday food month was to discover healthier versions of the foods we're used to. And I think we did a very fine job.

Some things we've discovered:

Chocolate is absolutely necessary. (I read recently that eating a square of dark chocolate in the morning provides you with just enough caffeine to get a kick-start but not too much to cause a crash later, along with antioxidants. I am definitely taking advantage of that. I also discovered that some chocolate (and coffee) really helps my ailing shoulder. Oh yeah.) Okay, that was really just my discovery.

Baked potato latkes can be better than fried ones, because they get cooked all the way through and, if left in the oven long enough, get crispy around the edges. Greek yogurt is also a perfect replacement for sour cream to have with the latkes.

Candle wax is fun to play with. (I know, not food related. Shush.)

An alternative to our usual cinnamon roll Christmas breakfast is a mango, pineapple, and banana fruit salad with mango cream dressing (made with Greek yogurt!) with shredded pineapple and raisins on top. (The recipe can be found in the cookbook The Green Way to Healthy Living, and a picture of it can be seen in my last post, "Happy Bean Day! and Some Pictures.")

If you like peppermint, adding some to a drink or some brownies is a great way to really holiday-ize your food and make it a little more exciting without adding a ton of whipped cream or ice cream to it.

I came away from the break feeling full but healthily so, and with lots of excitement for what next year's holiday season can bring in the way of food!

Holiday Foods - Hummus and Tabbouli

I just had to write about this one because the plate looked so beautiful! We made traditional hummus, but the tabbouli is made with quinoa instead of bulgur wheat. The bread is millet bread, so we were able to eat a beautiful and nutritious meal that fit within our diet. We made potato latkes for Hannukah, but we get a little tired of the traditional latkes for 8 nights, so this year we also made them with grated carrots. The combination of grated potatoes, grated carrots, and onions is really good! We don't use any eggs to hold then together - we must add a little flour to the veggies and cook them. This year we tried baking them instead of frying and they turned out wonderfully! For New Year's Eve we made Chinese food - veggies and some spring rolls. So much good food, so little time...

Austrian Pancakes

This one is a winner with all of us! Mollie's friend, Cora, is Austrian and raves about these pancakes so she gave us the recipe and we adapted it to our vegan, pretty much gluten free diet. It adapted beautifully and now we have a new holiday tradition! The original recipe uses eggs, wheat flour and butter. Our adapted recipe is below:

2 cups oat milk (soy milk would work fine)

1 1/2 cups spelt flour

Ener-G Egg Replacer for 3 eggs

pinch salt

coconut oil

Mix milk, egg replacer and salt together, then slowly add flour. Put several teaspoons of oil in pan, melt, and spoon enough batter in to cover pan. The pancake is a thin pancake that has to be cooked on both sides until golden brown. They have to be turned carefully - we used 2 spatulas to turn them over so they didn't break. Inside the pancake we wrapped raspberry sauce with some vegan whipped cream and a little maple syrup. What a delightful mixture of flavors and such a lovely new holiday tradition! Oh yum, yum - I don't think we can wait for another holiday to make these!

Fat Pants Cake - Happy Birthday to Mollie!

OK, so there are several holiday foods we made that I want to talk about - the first of which is FAT PANTS CAKE! Oh My Gosh - is this good or what??? It is vegan and gluten free - believe it or not - and it tastes like a little bit of heaven for those of us who can rarely eat baked goods. This one is to die for and it totally competes with any cake that has flour and eggs in it! It is a combination of brownie-like chocolate cake, yummy, yummy frosting made with coconut oil, agave nectar, and soy milk, and chocolate chip cookies. Yes! You read correctly - those are chocolate chip cookie bits spread over the cake (and layered in between with the frosting). It just tastes unbelievably good - I can't even put it into words. Think explosions of chocolate, velvety vanilla frosting, crunchy cookies, and the varying textures of cake, cookies and chocolate chips. And the ingredients are so good you don't have to feel any guilt - fava bean/garbanzo bean flour, brown rice flour, applesauce, coconut oil, arrowroot powder, vegan chocolate chips - it's very wholesome. It is called "Fat Pants Cake" for a reason - it weighs a ton and I'm sure has plenty of calories, but it is so good who cares?? There comes a time to indulge, eat cake, and relax. This cake is the one!

The recipe can be found in the book, "Babycakes: Vegan, (Mostly) Gluten-Free, and (Mostly) Sugar-Free Recipes from New York's Most Talked-About Bakery"