Buckwheat has a wonderful sweet, earth flavor and aroma that makes everything smell so home-y. And it’s completely gluten free, which is confusing, since the word “wheat” is in its title. I’d been toying around with a gluten free pancake recipe for awhile and nothing really sang to me, but this morning I struck gold with these babies. They’re hearty pancakes for sure, but they’re also light and fluffy. I think the main difference in texture between these and white flour pancakes is that they’re a bit grainier and less flexible. But who cares if they’re less flexible because you’re not gonna’ bend them, you’re gonna’ eat them.

The recipe has quite a few ingredients that you probably don’t have laying around the house unless you’re a compulsive grocery shopper (like me) or follow a gluten free diet, so if you like, you can replace the quinoa and corn flour with whole wheat pastry flour (or regular flour) and leave out the tapioca flour and flax seeds. You may need to thin the batter with a bit of water in that case. The recipe is below.

Gluten Free Buckwheat Pancakes
Makes 8 five inch pancakes1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup quinoa flour
1/4 cup corn flour (NOT cornmeal, corn flour is lighter)
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds (or flax meal)
2 tablespoons tapioca flour (cornstarch or arrowroot would be okay, too)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I used soy)
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons canola oil
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In a large mixing bowl, mix together all flours, flax seeds, tapioca, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Create a well in the center and add the remaining ingredients. Use a fork to mix well for about a minute. Let the batter rest, and preheat a large, non-stick or cast iron pan over medium-high heat.

When pan is hot, spray with a thin layer of cooking spray and use an ice cream scooper to pour batter and form pancakes. I did two at a time, but do as many as you can fit. The pancake should start to form little air bubbles, but not as much as “normal” pancakes do, so don’t worry. Cook for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes, then flip and cook for 2 minutes more. Keep warm on a plate covered with tin foil until ready to serve.

Serve with Earth Balance, maple syrup and fresh fruit.

This is my favorite way to construct the edges of a pie crust. It’s easy, you don’t have to trim anything and it looks rustic yet professional. Alls you do is press the crusts together, roll the edges inward, then take a knife and firmly score the roll at an angle, all around. Try it. It’s better looking than pressing with a fork and easier to pull off than pinching.

This particular pot pie has homemade seitan plus the usual suspects; peas, carrots, shallots. I used the seitan simmering broth to make the gravy, so nothing was wasted. Except for, like, my entire afternoon.

2 years in the making, Veganomicon has finally gone to print! It’s all incredibly surreal, and probably will stay that way until I have the actual book in my hands. It almost did swallow our souls, so it is aptly named.

Some fun facts:
1) It is hardcover and although you can’t tell from the photo, the cover has a shiny/matte texture that will look very fancy shmancy.

2) There are 32 color photos inside, some of which you can see here.

3) There are around 250 recipes, plus lots of variations on recipes. There is also a whole section on basics; roasting, grilling, sauteeing, steaming. These aren’t exactly recipes, more like guidelines.

4) The Chickpea Cutlets will rock your socks.

5) It’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon and Powells and it will be shipped in November.

6) There are user-friendly icons, so that with the flick of an eyeball muscle you’ll be able to determine if a recipe is 45 minutes or under, gluten-free, soy-free, supermarket friendly and/or low-fat.

We hope it lives up to its name as the “ultimate” vegan cookbook! We really tried to give you some new and exciting things to cook, without using too many esoteric ingredients. And along with our dedicated team of testers we tested our collective butts off. We hope that you all have as much fun reading it and cooking from it as we did writing it, only minus all the pain, suffering and third degree burns that we endured.

I’ve been gone for most of the summer. I’m sure you missed me. The purpose of my trip was to attend Vegan: The Gathering, a gathering (duh) organized by the PPK message boards. So I will bore you with the details of that in the following days, but right now I will just bore you with the details of my too brief pit stop in Seattle.

Last time I was there I was just a poor gutter punk, sleeping in parks and on stranger’s floors, getting my boyfriend out of jail for shoplifting cigarettes at Safeway, and what have you. That was 14 years ago, but still, I liked it there. It seemed to me as east coast as a west coast city could possibly be, from the way the actual city looked - bricks, big urban parks - to the way the way the people were - they walked fast, talked fast (or at least faster than people from Oooooooregoooooon), and wore black.

I would love to spend more time there, but we really only had time for a drive by veganing. So we stopped at Wayward Cafe for brunch. Wayward is a collectively-run restaurant that serves vegan home cooking. I loved it so much in there that they could have served me a cold block of tofu and I would have been happy; bright orange walls, flyers everywhere, stuffed panda bears - if someone made a play about a collective vegan cafe the set would look just like Wayward cafe. And they were playing the Smiths, so I was in heaven.

Luckily, the food was good, too! I had fried tempeh, scrambled tofu, hummus and veggies with a side of biscuits and gravy. The biscuits were more cakey than I’m used to, but still wonderful, and even if anything wasn’t wonderful the rich, luscious gravy would make up for it. And they aren’t stingy with the nutritional yeast, they even trust you enough to leave out shakers so you can sprinkle it on all by yourself. Seward Cafe in Minneapolis does that, too. No place in Brooklyn would ever do that, but places like this aren’t really a possibility in Brooklyn these days because Brooklyn just wants people to come here, spend all their parent’s money and run back home to the midwest once their dreams are crushed and all of the bodegas have been turned into French restaurants.

Our next stop was, of course, Mighty-O Donuts.

My heart turned into a ball of mush when I saw the place, it was like a real donut place. Like, this is what the vegan revolution will look like. Like, you could take your grandma here and not have to apologize for anything. And the donuts reminded me of my grandma, too. Old fashioned cake donuts, the kind that I longed for even in my pregan days. Not sickly sweet, not sticky and deliriously fluffy, but still light and “toothsome.” We got a dozen and ate them over the course of the next few days for the long ride home through Canada. And thank god we did because if I didn’t have a vegan donut while driving through Saskatchewan I might have dirven of a cliff, if there were any cliffs. But there weren’t, only A&W drive-thrus. I think my favorite, if someone held a gun to my head and made me choose, was a chocolate donut with cinnamon sugar.

More pics here, if you so desire.