Putting the finishing touches on the salad

Thank you so much to everyone who came to the Let Live Conference benefit dinner and to everyone who helped prepare and serve it. Especially Katie and Jessie from Sweetpea and Lisa for lending the kitchen to us for the night. I learned so much about my cohorts. Like that Katie can lift the heaviest pans in the world, as if they are cars and her babies are trapped under there. And Emiko either really loves doing dishes or has a strong work ethic. It was really gratifying to work with such goddam competent people! Dinner went off without a hitch (except for a small grease fire) and I think a good time was had by all. I actually didn’t get enough pics of the food, but one of the diners, veganaddict, got shots of everything! If anyone else got pics let me know. I got some pics of us working on stuff on other ephemera here. Edited to add: Jess of Get Sconed has a wrap up on her blog, thanks Jess!

Katie and the brownie batter

And now down to business. This weekend the actual conference is happening and I am so excited about it! All of the workshops and speakers look incredibly enticing. And I don’t just say that because I am one of them, check these out: Organizing Grassroots Groups with Lauren Ornelas, Nathan Runkle and J. Johnson (because sometimes we’re sitting around with our friends doing nothing), Solo Activism with Veda Stram and Mark Hawthorne (cause sometimes we have no vegan friends!), Verbal Self Defense with Pulin Modi (because sometimes people are mean), Becoming the Media and Getting Creative with Jessie Duquette, Glenn Goetz Gaetz and one Josh Hooten (because making our own media is fun!), Researching Animal Abuse with Peter Young and Nathan Runkle (because information is power and Peter Young is cute!), Exposing the Green Scare with Will Potter, Lauren Regan and David Hayden (because skateboarding shouldn’t be a crime, but driving a car should! And I’m sure all the presenters are cute, too.) Food Fight has posted the entire schedule in PDFs in both long and short formats. Check them out and register today!

My workshop on culinary activism will be on Sunday at 2:30 in room 238. I hope to see you there!

Recipe plagiarism has been been burning up the internet lately, be it in the form of a VegWeb member submitting other people’s internet recipes as her own, or Cindy McCain claiming that a recipe from Hersheys.com were from a friend.

Copyright infringement and plagiarism aren’t the same exact thing, although it seems that here Cindy McCain has committed both crimes. The less interesting part is the legal stuff; that you can’t copyright food ingredients. Even if our recipes are identical in quantity, as long as the words were changed around a bit it’s fine because words, obviously, can be copyrighted. But the social ramifications go deeper. Taking someone else’s recipe and giving it a phony back story is frowned upon, whether the story is that you created it after having a feverish dream about butterscotch or that it was passed down a few generations. But it got me wondering, are these fibs particular to food? People don’t seem to lie as much about other things, like knitting or blacksmithing. Why do people lie about recipes so much? I don’t just mean bloggers who “forget” to attribute their recipes to someone else, or “forget” to mention that their entire knowledge of swiss chard is coming straight from Wikipedia.

For instance, my mom insists that certain things are “family recipes.” Like these tofu balls we’ve been making since I was a teenager. They are our tofu balls! We’ve eaten them for birthdays, we’ve rolled their little bodies between our palms after arguments, we’ve smothered them in sauce through the ages, since the eighties, and so they are ours. Well, yes. And no. They are from the Tofu Cookery. It was our first vegan cookbook, it was the first meal we cooked as a family and I can remember the day my mom came home with it and we passed it around, folding over pages, deciding what to make and finally coming to consensus on the tofu balls. My sister is now feeding them to her children and making a little gastronomical imprint in their psyches. For the whole of their lives, a whiff of these in the skillet is going to make them feel like they’re home. So, yeah, it really is a family recipe even if we didn’t invent it. But I think the truth is much more interesting than saying we made it up or it was passed down from our vegan Russian great great grandma.

On top of spaghetti…a pack of lies?

But why is my mom ashamed of admitting that it comes from Louise Hagler’s cookbook? That’s sort of a rhetorical question, and I think the answer would be really interesting so I wish I could give it to you. Why did Cindy McCain say that her Passion Fruit Mousse was a family recipe? Why didn’t she say she got it out of Better Homes and Gardens or where ever? Or even worse, that her people got it out of Better Homes and Gardens. It’s as if we all intuitively know this secret, but we don’t know what it is. Something about how our recipes make us seem, what they say about us. Would you rather have fresh baked cookies from someone who visits Hersheys.com or by someone who has a friend with a collection of vintage salt and pepper shaker and a box of recipes that goes back to the civil war? The cookies should taste the same either way, right? The fact that they don’t makes me think that there’s a secret ingredient here that’s a lot more esoteric than “nutmeg.”

My friend Brian (a PPK mod and medieval food historian) started a list of Spanish language vegan food blogs on the PPK forums and it got me really excited. Since he didn’t post it on his blog, I’m exploiting his mistake and posting them here.

Empanadillas de algas from El Delantal Verde

El Delantal Verde
Sin Huevo
Veganatura
Rinc?n Vegano
Gastronom?a Vegana
Recetas Veganas (Spanish and English)

As American vegans and foodies life can get kind of insular and we often need to go to “the other side” for inspiration from other countries. These blogs kinda flung the doors wide open for me and my awful awful Spanish that is 80% curse words. Post more if you know of any!

I was recently the victim of a bad potluck. Well, in sense, a potluck is a success if everyone shows up and has a good time. But only in a sense. The true measure of success is how stuffed you get and how many leftovers there were. But what happened at this one was by the time I was done putting out the food, there wasn’t really enough of anything left for me to put together a decent plate.

So, yeah, a few potluck rules of thumb.

1) Coordinate with others so that not everyone is bringing sweets.

2) There has to be at least one lasagna.

3) Bring your A-game, spend a few hours in the kitchen, now is the time to impress, not to cut corners.

4) Bring something! And not a little bag of chips, either. If you absolutely can not cook something, then call the host and see what is needed - drinks, fresh fruit. Something. But if more than a few people are doing this, that makes for a crappy potluck.

5) Don’t plan on cooking at the host’s house. What the hell is that about? If you have to do that, then call the host and see that it’s okay. Warming up is absolutely permitted, but preparing your whole dish there without warning? No. Just no, never, no.

6) Bring big portions. Some people have said they bring enough for 6, but why? Is it really that much harder to cook for 12? Like I said, now is the time to go all out. Make time in your schedule, prioritize the potluck. Mean business!

7) Help the host clean up. Or at least offer to. They will probably say no.

8- The host should not be doing most of the cooking. As the host it’s your job to really bring it because it’s your kitchen, but it isn’t your job to bring…all of it.

Potlucks are so easy! I didn’t even realize that any rules were needed for one. But I guess I struck the jackpot of potluck faux pas here in Portland. I mean, bring a bunch of something delicious. Now is the time to break out the comfort food; the mac and cheese, the tamale pie, the BBQ tofu, the potato salad. It’s not the time to wow the crowd with the latest in sliced cucumbers. Unless they’re accompanied by a tupperware full of roasted garlic hummus, then we’re good.

Okay, done bisqueing. Now I want to share a great potluck dish that is going to be in the upcoming brunch book. It’s a quiche!

Everything about quiche is appealing, from its spelling (it’s got a Q!) to its shape (it’s a pie!) to its color (who doesn’t love the seventies?) I also like that it’s delicious served at room temperature and reheats wonderfully, so it’s perfect for a potluck. It doubles well, too. I’ve been using these great prepared spelt crusts from New Seasons here in Portland, but you can use whatever crust you like. It’s wheat free if you have a wheat free crust. It’s a tofu base and cashews make it deliciously creamy.

I love using baby tomatoes of any sort to decorate the quiche with. While they do taste great baked, my main objective is to bring a little color to the dish. You can also use thinly sliced tomatoes, red pepper rings or roasted red peppers.

Tip: The broccoli pieces should be tiny, anywhere between the size of a pea to the size of a dime. As you chop, the florets might become crumbs. That’s just fine! Scrape them up with your knife and use them.

Classic Broccoli Quiche

Serves 8

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups finely chopped broccoli (see note)
1 teaspoons dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1 teaspoon salt
healthy dose fresh cracked black pepper
2 tablespoons water
1/2 cup raw, unsalted cashews
1 pound extra firm tofu
1 teaspoon prepared mustard (dijon or regular, most anything will work)
a handful or cherry or grape tomatoes for decorating (optional)

1 9 inch prepared pie crust

Preheat oven to 350 F. Bake pie crust for 10 minutes, then remove from oven. In the meantime, start preparing the filling.

Heat a large heavy bottomed skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium heat. Saute the onion and garlic in the oil for about 3 minutes. Add the broccoli, thyme, tarragon, tumeric, salt and pepper. Cook for 10 minutes, until broccoli is soft. If it starts to look dry add a tablepoon or 2 of water.

Meanwhile, process the cashews in a food processor into fine crumbs. Give the tofu a squeeze to get rid of some of the water, then crumble it into the food processor along with the mustard. Process until relatively smooth. When the broccoli mixture is done cooking, add one cup of it to the food processor and pulse a few times to combine.

Transfer to a mixing bowl, add the rest of the broccoli mixture and combine. Taste for salt. Use a rubber spatula to get everything into the pie crust and smooth the top out. Place cherry tomatoes around the perimeter of the pie and one in the center for maximum Good Housekeeping adorableness. Bake for 40 minutes, until edges of the pie are lightly browned.

I suggest letting the quiche sit for 20 minutes before you dig in. I think it tastes best when it is moderately warm, not piping hot. It’s also great at room temperature.

EDIT: This event has sold out, thanks everyone!

There’s only 5 tickets left at the community table for the Let Live benefit dinner. Stop shuffling your feet! Get in there so that Jason Das has someone to sit with.

Fizzle says not to miss this!