Here are my answers to the survey that everyone is taking from Liz at Food Snobbery. And also, a photo of our improvised long handle potato masher (patent pending.)

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

Vitasoy Creamy Original. It’s the soymilk that made me like soymilk. And although I still have a place in my heart the size of an 80s healthfood store for Edensoy Carob, I usually have some Zen Soy chocolate around.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?

a - Golbki (polish cabbage rolls) for Ryan MacMichael

b - Polenta Rancheros, which I’ve made before I just have to write the recipe down because I lost it. I have to stop losing recipes.

c - Super fluffy pancakes. I love my basic pancakes but I’ve been craving super fluffy ones so I’m working that out. It’s tough to make them not mushy in the middle.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?

Nooch and chili powder. Is there any other topping?

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?

I don’t know how to qualify most disastrous because there have been so many disasters. The most painful thing was being pissed at someone while chopping red peppers with a hatchet (!) and slicing off a finger tip. The most inedible was when I was 16 and tried to make this wheat gluten stuff from my favorite Chinese place without a recipe or any knowledge of cooking, really. It was basically vital wheat gluten and soy sauce with garlic powder that I fried. It was as nasty as it sounds. I’m surprised I ever cooked again.

5. Favorite pickled item?

Can I be a loser and just say dill pickles?

6. How do you organize your recipes?

In cookbooks. Ha!

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?

If it doesn’t go to my veggie broth stash it goes in the trash. I didn’t rhyme on purpose.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?

Olives, tofu and escarole but that’s just how I’m feeling right now.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?

Not the time I got a perm and ate Steak-umz.

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?

The Black Label stuff.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?

Tongs aren’t an appliance.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?

So many, but thyme if I had to choose one.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?

Tofu Cookery by Louise Hagler.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?

Blueberry at the moment.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?

Pesto is always a delicious safe bet.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?

Tempeh - the odd man out.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?

Brunch.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?

Where to begin? What isn’t?

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.

Lima beans, peas, sorbet from a hundred years ago.

20. What’s on your grocery list?

Nothing! I did all my shopping yesterday.

21. Favorite grocery store?

This is the wrong answer because they sell foie gras, but I really love the Fairway in Red Hook. The right answer would be the Park Slope Food Co-op. I also love the Union Square Farmer’s Market.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.

Meringue. Not because I miss it or anything but because I’m sick of people asking how to veganize it. I don’t get it. Is anyone seriously missing meringue?

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?

No one checks my blog, actually. Right now I’ve been liking Vegan Dad (even though he kinda disses me), Get Sconed (as usual), and Cafe Veg News. I also check Fat Free Vegan and What The Hell religiously. Oh, and my bff’s blog A Stranger In The Alps, but I just linked to it yesterday so I don’t wanna’ go overboard. Plus all the others I link to right there—->

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?

That rice milk chocolate. Dagoba, is it? Terra Nostra.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?

My olive oil is really expensive. Oh, smoked pistachios.

26. How did you get so pretty?

I am really sick of this question! It’s genetic!

The first time I had pasta puttanesca I was waitressing at a restaurant in Park Slope. A fellow waitress told me that it was the pasta that Italian whores ate. She was always saying things like, “I spilled ketchup all over my tits,” and pronouncing “mimosa” in a really suggestive way. I just figured she was telling me that so she could say the word “whore” while slurping down linguine, but it is actually true, pasta putanesca is the pasta of whores. And I can see why.

If you’re anything like me you always have a gigantic thing of capers and olives in your fridge (not to mention great bone structure and an impressive unicorn collection.) Puttanesca is a really quick way to put together a complex tasting - passionate even - dish with pantry staples. Succulent, salty and a little spicy, the ingredients and method are simple enough that you can prep it, cook it and clean up after yourself in a leisurely 30 minutes, and then get back to the matter at hand, whether that be sex with strangers for money or updating your blog.

I’m always on the look out for ways to incorporate quinoa and other grains into my lunches, so it’s pretty brainless to just make a traditional pasta sauce and toss it on a grain instead. I like to make a big batch of quinoa at the beginning of the week and store it for a few days. If you don’t have a few cups of cooked quinoa around then see directions below* and start your quinoa before starting your sauce.

Quinoa Puttanesca - The Quinoa of Whores

Serves 4

2 to 3 cups cooked quinoa

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 teaspoon thyme

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

generous pinch each tarragon and marjoram

1/4 cup white wine

1/2 cup kalamata olives, roughly chopped (sliced in half is great)

1/2 cup capers

20 ounce can crushed tomatoes

fresh black pepper

Preheat a sauce pot over medium heat. Add the oil and garlic and stir for about a minute, being careful not to burn the garlic. Add herbs, spices and wine; cook for about a minute.

Add olives, capers and tomatoes. Cook for about 15 minutes. You can serve either by scooping quinoa into individual bowls and pouring the sauce over it, but my way is to just mix everything into a bowl together and reserve a little sauce to pour over my serving, because I like it extra whore-y. There is no rosemary in the recipe, but my food porn was looking a little naked so I garnished it with some.

For some reason, Jason Das named all the capers in the photo on my FlickR, so if that thought entertains you then you can go check that out.

*Mix one cup dry quinoa with 2 cups water, bring to a boil then lower heat and cook uncovered for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until grain is tender and water has been absorbed.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if your stove is on a slant, but for things like pancakes and pan frying it really affects the outcomes. This is my most important asset. A bowl that perfectly levels my cast iron pan on my lopsided stove. I hate being a renter.

PS I just realized that Terry, I and Richard Dean Anderson all use our first, last and middle names professionally.

My leveler bowl in action

By popular request, I’ve created a bloglines feed for all VeganMoFo participants, and those that just like to watch. I think that since it’s an rss feed you can do other cool stuff with it, if you happen to know, please fill us in!

While putting this together (click. click. click. click.) I was able to see what everyone is up to and, I’m not sure if it’s because I have my period and I was listening to Simon Garfunkel*, I felt a burst of love that started in my heart, traveled to my shoulders and then funneled itself directly into the internet. So if you felt something awkward and uncomfortable about half an hour ago, that was my love.

I love reading about food, everything about it. I love to read what kind of food people hate, I love to read about emotional attachments to it, I love to read about the history of it, and of course I love to read about cooking and eating. I mostly have to get my fix from non-vegan sources, because even though there are lots of vegan blogs and lots of food porn, people don’t write about food enough to keep up with my demand. So that’s what VegaMoFo has given me so far, and it’s only 1/3 over.

I want to suggest to those of you that are having problems with the writing, instead of writing about the problems you’re having, how about link to a fellow MoFoer’s blog entry with just a few words about what you like about it. You can also stumble entries or add them to delicious or whatever people are doing these days. VeganMoFo is the vegan month of food, let’s force it on everyone else.

Here are a few must-reads I enjoyed this morning:

Vegan Chicks Rock writes about Mighty-O Donuts. Because I never tire of reading about donuts, especially Mighty-Os. Donut porn included.

Sarchan talks about being fearless in the kitchen. She also shares a recipe from her 7 year old self (so cute!) and a picture of my favorite pumpkin pie of all time, Myra Kornfeld’s from Voluptuous Vegan. I leave off the pecans, though. I like my pumpkin pie pure.

Bottle And Ball hates on celery. I hate celery, too, but she is much more thorough about it.

Vegan Dad grills polenta. To be honest, I just love this blog so you can pick any post and read it. Possibly because of my father issues, the very words “vegan dad” make me instantly happy. But his food always looks good and his writing is always honest. Plus, for everyone that thinks that veganism is too difficult, I would direct them to the description in his header:

“When you have kids, supper has to be on the table every night. And when you are a vegan, the drive-thru, the deli counter, and TV dinners/frozen convenience foods are not an option. So, you do the best you can. This blog is a record of what my family eats. It’s not always a totally complete meal, not always photogenic, and sometimes it’s leftovers. But, it is a realistic look at a vegan family in a northern Ontario city that is not always vegan-friendly.”

Makes your heart go pitter-patter, don’t it?

Vegan Hodge Podge teaches us a little bit of Korean. And a little bit about Korean vegan food.

Tips for eating on the cheap, from Pickled Treats. She’s actually been dishing out a lot of great advice on going vegan. I haven’t missed a day of this blog since MoFo began.

Amy discusses the intersection of mathematics and dinner with some romanesco broccoli. Also, this is my friend’s blog and my way of reminding her to update it. 3 days does not a month of food make!

*Does it go without saying that if you have your period you are also listening to Simon And Garfunkel? Sorry for the redundancy.

Brunch still piping hot 

Did you know that VwaV started off as a brunch book? The original book proposal was a pitch for “The Crack Of Noon: A Vegan Brunch Book.” Know why? Because I love brunch! Food just doesn’t taste as good any other day of week or time of day than the weekend at around 1 pm. Anyway, my publishers wanted an all-purpose cookbook instead and I’m happy it went the way it did, but I may revisit the brunch idea someday.

When I was a teenager I had this awful habit of making everything taste the same. Like, all the spices that went in the scrambled tofu would go into the home fries. Then I realized that the key to happiness was: if you put the fennel in this, leave it out of that. And also - not everything needs cumin! I needed to graffiti my kitchen cupboards with that one.

This morning I didn’t want the same old scrambled tofu, so I made biscuits with white bean gravy, tempeh and sweet potato hash and garlicky kale. The gravy was flavored with sage and thyme, the hash was spiked with fennel seeds and a little soy sauce and the kale was super simple and super garlicky. The biscuits were biscuit flavored. And now I’m laying in bed totally full, the heat finally came on and the kitties are snuggling with each other. I’m living the American dream.

VwaV Pumppkin Waffles healthified with whole wheat pastry flour and flax seeds 

I remember the first time someone told me they made their own waffles. I was shocked. I was dismissive. I remember asking, “But are they good?” I just couldn’t believe that something requiring such complicated machinery was within my reach. And once I tried it myself I was addicted.

I am at war with my current waffle iron. It has a gajillion settings and, if I were to still think in waitress terms, it cost a crappy night’s tips. A few years ago I found a whole slew of ‘fflirons (now there’s a portmanteau that won’t catch on) on sale for 7 bucks. I bought 4 of them. In my defense, I was doing a vegan brunch cafe at the time so they were needed. It ended up being perfect iron - the timer went off when it was supposed to, each session produced a fluffy yet crispy uniformly cooked gem and it was so easy to clean. Long, boring story short (but hopefully still boring), my friend Michael was staying with me and knocked them from their precarious perch on top of my fridge and broke every one. Thanks, Michael, that is how you will be remembered. And I don’t know why I thought I was moving up in the world with the new one, but you don’t know what you got till it’s gone. I haven’t been able to find those perfect cheapo ones at any price.

But honestly, the point of this post wasn’t to sulk over my losses, but to remind everyone how well waffles freeze. This morning I placed a whole baggie in the freezer and now I’ll have brunch at my fingertips for a few weeks. Obviously these Belgian sized waffles won’t fit in the toaster, but that is easily solved by cutting them into triangles. And then, according to 80s commercials, when they pop out of the toaster, if someone tries to grab it before you can, you get to curb stomp them.

You know how with sex there’s a couple of things that you simply won’t do? That’s how I am with cooking, although sometimes my “rules” feel like they have a lot more to do with ethical objections than personal preference. I’m not talking about vegan ethical objections, which are obvious, I’m talking about culinary ones. I’m talking about including Gimme Lean Sausage or Tofutti Sour Supreme as part of a recipe. And I am conscious of being just a little ridiculous in calling it ethical but that’s just how it feels.

My main problem with that kind of cooking, is that it stops being “cuisine.” It starts being 30 minute meals or semi-homemade cooking. And that is fine for a weeknight in front of the TV or just to get something on the table, but it doesn’t foster respect for vegan cuisine. And there is a difference between cuisine and food; cuisine is a style of cooking and food is stuff we eat. I don’t want vegan cuisine to be thought of as fake, or as that stuff that comes from the freezer section next to the frozen hamburgers or the weird dairy case. (Every supermarket has that weird dairy case filled with stunt meats and casein cheese, right?) I want vegan cuisine to be a real force, a real style - a contender.

When it comes to vegan cream sauces my “won’t” list expands. I won’t use soymilk, because it tastes like soymilk, not cream. I won’t use coconut milk in something savory unless I want it to be a bit sweet. I won’t use nooch for everything. I won’t use Tofutti brand anything because that is just plain cheating. So, my options are limited. But I am trying to broaden them.

The thing I will use is nuts; cashews, pine nuts, almonds, sometimes walnuts. But I still try to be careful, because even though vegans know not to exactly expect cream when they hear the word cream, omnivores don’t. And I really, for the most part, try to make my recipes omnivore-friendly. This usually means not using the word cream at all, unless it’s a dessert thing where I completely cheat and use Earth Balance, but that’s another story.

So when I set out to make Tofu Paprikas in honor of my friend Jason Das’ Hungarian heritage, I was a little nervous. Paprikas is nothing if not creamy, and god am I sick of everything tasting like nutritional yeast. I knew that I was going to have to work with the dreaded tofu cream sauce.

Silken tofu is great for texture but the taste has ruined many an otherwise scrumptious sauce for me. Some people describe the taste as bean-y, but it just translates as bitter for me. At some point in working on Veganomicon I stumbled on a possible solution that I used in a couple of dips and sauces; Horseradish Dill Sourcream, Cilantro Cream and Creamy Kalamata Spread. If you look at the titles of those recipes I bet you can figure out what the trick it. I suppose it isn’t such a trick at all, it’s simply overpowering the tofu with flavors that are strong enough to cover up the bitter taste, basically beating the tofu into submission.

Another thing I learned is to use the silken tofu that comes in a fresh package (like Nasoya) and not the vacuum packed kind (like Mori-Nu). It has a better taste and the beaniness isn’t as apparant. I also prefer the texture. As a bonus, it’s easier to find.

Finally, it needs a little heat and a little sweet. No heat and it tastes like blended tofu. Too much heat and it tastes like rubber. I found that sauteeing garlic in oil and adding it still hot to the sauce gave just enough warmth, with a little wiggle room for a gentle heat through at serving time. And since sweetness counteracts bitterness, just a touch of agave or maple syrup will do the trick. Although I didn’t actually end up using any in this recipe because the sweetness of the onions worked wonders.

From looking at a few Paprikas recipes, I deduced that the dish was really rich, calling for not just cream but sourcream as well. I decided to toast a few pine nuts to blend into the sauce, not only because I have 5 pounds of pine nuts in my freezer but I thought that would give the sauce some body and “depth of flavor.”

Justin and I ended up really enjoying this, maybe a little too much as there were no leftovers. I honestly meant to save some that I could give to Jason the next day. He lives only a few blocks away so I could even have walked it over. But I didn’t! I would consider it a cream sauce success, although I think there are a few more things I’d like to try before I declare it perfect. It’s definitely good enough to share, though!

I made this with frozen thawed tofu for a chewier texture, and I really wanna’ get to the recipe so let me just quickly tell you what I do for frozen tofu. Freeze overnight then thaw on the counter the next day. Don’t heat it up to thaw, just leave it out. It usually takes 10 hours to thaw. Once completely thawed, wrap it in a kitchen table towel and press it overnight in the fridge. That makes it really nice and chewy but without the freezer burn, discolorization or sponginess sometimes associated with frozen tofu.

Click below for the recipe. And damn you VeganMoFo, for making me write so much!

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For all of us who would rather raise our whisks and spatulas than write a novel, VeganMo(nth of)Fo(od)! For the month of November, we will write about food as much as we can. As if we weren’t doing that already. The rules are pretty loose, in fact, there are no rules. But we did come up with a bunch of ideas to inspire us on the PPK forums, and then yesterday they crashed. Fortunately, Katie wrote some out on her blog before black Thursday happened.

My first contribution is a Flickr group I set up so that all of our food porn, or whatever, can be in one place and we can add it to our RSS feeds if we so desire. So go join that.

Here is a partial list of participants, if you don’t see yourself here, let me know and I will add you.

A Stranger In The Alps

B36 Kitchen

Get Sconed

Lentil Penguins

Yellow Rose Recipes

Don’t Eat Off The Sidewalk

Bottle And Ball

Pickled Treats Last Longer

While You Were In Kenya

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

Have Cake, Will Travel

Just The Food

Seitan Said Dance

Strawberry Rock

Food Snobbery Is My Hobbery

One Chubby Vegan

But Did They Eat It?

Vegan Chicks Rock

Vegan Kid

Vegan Pit Bull

VegMoFo Meta-Writing

Rites Of Passage

Punctuated Equilibrium

The Village Vegan

Rocket Ship Go!

Julie’s Kind Kitchen

Baby In Broad

Vegan HodgePodge

Vegan Guinea Pig

Defashionista

The Vegan Librarian

Where’s The Revolution

Fairly Odd Tofu Mom

Utopian Kitchen

Kittee: Cake Maker To The Stars

Pie Pet Blog

Vegan Road Trip

Sugar Skull

Clever Nettle Kitchenette

No Whey Jose

The Kitchen Debate

Plants Plants Revolution

Hope Sinks

Another Vegan Blog

Parsnip Parsimony

Veganista

Apples And Twigs

Veg Bitch

Wandering Contessa

Super Carrot

What The Hell Does A Pink Haired Girl Eat?

Fueled By Popcorn

The Hook and I

Veg - AM

Your Vegan Mom

Here’s What You’re Missing

VegChic

Bigmouth Strikes Again

Vegan Man

Eating Well & Eating Well

The Place I Like Best In This World Is The kitchen

VeggieSue’s Veggie Adventures

Walking The Vegan Line

So What Do Vegetarians Eat Anyway?

Waiting For The Bus

Vegan*asm

Vegan Pr0n

Kimbelina

Unhealthy Vegan

Vegan Hodgepodge

Vegan Vanguard: Charging Ahead Of The Mainstream

Hugger Food

Siri’s Corner

cheezyvegan

Parsnip Parsimony

One Frugal Foodie

Maybe Pigs Can Fly

Vegan Bean

Vegan Dad

It’s Easy Being Vegan

Hippie Girl 

Happy writing! Or, if you prefer, miserable writing! Just so long as you’re writing.

Edited to add: I’m getting a lot of email asking if you can join if you’re not vegan/joining late/not usually writing about food. The answer is yes! If you’re writing about vegan food or taking photos of vegan food or whatever you are doing, you can join. Especially the people who aren’t vegan but intend to try it out this month. Sorry if I’m not answering all the email personally, I’m trying but it’s just too much!