Citrus Avocado Spinach Salad

Now is the time of year when I like to remind my relatives, who live in The North, that I spent the weekend in shorts and flip-flops. But as I am breaking out the sunscreen, I am also beginning to avoid the oven.

We live in an old house with a suitably persnickety temperament; our air conditioning refuses to wage battle with the oven which, when switched on, will rapidly heat the kitchen to sauna-like conditions. So for us, "spring" often translates to "salads."

Citrus Avocado Spinach Salad, which I know I promised more than a week ago (that makes it taste better), accomplishes two goals. One, the oven remains untouched. Two, if you (like me) spend the early days of spring humming "Dayenu" and fantasizing about the perfect haroset, this salad contains no chometz.

What you need:
1 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 shallots, finely minced
6 oz. spinach
1 avocado
1 grapefruit, peeled and cut into cute chunks
1/3 cup raw pumpkin seeds

What to do:
Whisk the olive oil into the lemon juice. Pour the spinach into a pretty bowl. Use a small flatware spoon to scoop pieces of avocado onto the spinach. Add grapefruit, shallots, and pumpkin seeds. Add dressing and toss with your hands (for added fun).

Btw: Using your hands to toss everything helps keep the avocado from getting mushy.

Not Your Mimi's Cornbread

The first time I heard Carl call his grandmother "Mimi" I summoned all composure to suppress a torrent of giggles. I had no reason to laugh, since I grew up calling my grandmother "Bubbie." Still, "Mimi" seemed like an odd term of endearment for one's grandmother, although I couldn't explain why I thought so. Knowing when not to irritate Carl with my condescending Yankee-isms, I saved my giggles for the day I listened to him tell me all the words Southerners have to describe one's urine.

Those with good manners would deem my last sentence inappropriate table talk, but please continue reading.

My Bubbie "cooked" (and I use this word loosely) from boxed mixes she kept on dust-free shelves in her two-bedroom apartment that always smelled like Windex and moth balls. When we ate at the white Formica table in her dining room, my sister and I scanned our food for (a) flecks of tin foil that had escaped the pan to dust our food like specks of mica on dirt (b) errant red press-on fingernails that had enjoyed short-lived lives atop Bubbie's fingers and embedded themselves in the meals we ate.

While I was learning what Sweet'n Low tasted like in mandelbrot (like Tylenol), Carl was watching his grandmother work culinary miracles in the house where she had raised and fed four children.

To this day, everything Mimi cooks inspires my awe. Her date pudding remains my absolute, all-time favorite dessert and I am struggling to give this recipe a vegan makeover in time for Mother's Day, during which I plan to cook and eat the food our mothers and grandmothers passed on to us. I hesitate to tamper too much with date pudding, since the recipe originated with Mimi's mother, who served the dessert each Sunday at the boarding house she ran in Hickory, North Carolina.

For Carl, Mimi's cornbread is the golden foodstuff of legend, and I have only just begun to work my vegan magic on this dish. Carl's initial response to Not Your Mimi's Cornbread?

"It doesn't need butter." Perhaps, the best compliment he has ever paid me.

BTW: We ate Not Your Mimi's Cornbread with a Citrus Avocado Spinach Salad so watch for that recipe later this week. Oh, and I adapted the cornbread recipe from Alex Jamieson's The Great American Detox Diet.

What you need for Not Your Mimi's Cornbread
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup almond milk or soy milk
1 cup thawed frozen corn
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp sliced jalapeno, from a jar
1 serving of vegan egg substitute, whisked
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cast iron skillet

What to do
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Heat olive oil in the skillet on a low flame. Mix dry ingredients, then make a well in the center and fold in wet ingredients. Once mixed, pour the batter into your skillet and bake for 15 minutes.

Nigella's Chickpeas with Rocket and Sherry (with a Southern Twang)

While excessive apologies make me squirm, I should say "sorry" for vacating the blog. Sorry, dear blog, for the hiatus. Blame spring, blame school, blame spring quarter.

Now I'm back and have a story to share. It goes like this: When I found out this winter that I was teaching a noon to 2 p.m. class, my first thought was: WHEN AM I GOING TO EAT LUNCH??? (Yes, when it comes to meals I always think in capital letters and employ punctuation liberally.)

The first day of school snuck up on me last week, and that sucker found me feeling more jittery than pleasurable at 8 a.m. on a Thursday morning. So I did what any terrified, first-time teacher would do. I uncorked a bottle of cream sherry.

Only the intense stare of my morally-superior husband prevented me from pouring that sherry into a crystal glass, and then taking a few generous sips. Why, you ask, did I have a bottle of sherry in my hands just after sun-up?

I wanted my back-to-school lunch -- the lunch that followed my first class -- to be special.

Lately, I am obsessed with Nigella's Chickpeas with Rocket and Sherry and claimed this recipe as The One. Btw: Stateside, we call "rocket" by the snootier name of "arugula." As a cheapskate who happens to live in Louisiana, I substituted turnip greens for the pricey rocket. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Hopefully, my students will never know how frequently I thought of the lunch awaiting me as I tried to make a good impression, teach them something useful, and stop myself from sounding like a crazy old person when I said things like, "Stop rustling your papers" or "Is it just me, or is it really hot in here?" and punctuated my sentences with a long, deflated um.

Super Sundried Tomato Squash Soup with Snaps to Nigella Lawson

I like to make sure Carl eats well. Despite how 1950s that idea sounds, I have not defected from the divine sisterhood of third-wave feminists, of which I am a lifetime member. To borrow loosely from Gail Godwin's vocational musings in her novel Evensong, cooking makes more of me (no pun intended). We should all enjoy what makes more of us.

On Sundays, I usually serve leftovers to save time, but last night's dinner of chickpeas and arugula simmered in cumin seeds, olive oil, and cream sherry was so fantastic that I had to begin from scratch today.

Btw: I thank my cousin Gail, a nutritionist, for teaching me how to make Sundried Tomato Squash Soup when she visited during Mardi Gras 2008. Thanks also go to my shero Nigella Lawson for the delish salad recipe.

What you need for Sundried Tomato Squash Soup:
1 butternut squash
1/2 8.5 oz. jar of sundried tomatoes in oil, rinsed and drained
1/2 white onion chopped
1 clove garlic minced
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
pinch of nutmeg
1 tbsp olive oil
6 cups water
2 cubes low sodium vegan boullion cubes (I used Rapunzel)

What to do:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Halve the butternut squash and scoop out seeds. (You may save them to roast for a snack.) Brush the squash halves lightly with olive oil and place skin side down on a cookie tray. Roast for an hour.

In the meantime, saute the onion and garlic in a stock pot. Add water and boullion, bring to a boil and let simmer for 30 minutes. Then add sundried tomatoes. Simmer until the squash has finished cooking, then allow the broth and squash to cool for another half hour.

Remove skins from squash with a vegetable peeler. Cube squash and add everything to the pot. Use an immersion blender to puree. If you do not have an immersion blender, transfer half the soup to a standard blender and puree in batches. (Times like these definitely make me wish we owned an immersion blender.) Transfer the soup to a heatproof bowl as you blend. Once finished, return the soup to the pot and add spices. Simmer until ready to serve.

Woman's Seed Savory Granola

Please excuse my super geeky title that alludes to Paradise Lost. I've had my nose buried in Milton's poem for the past three months and now it seems only "fit" that I name a recipe after my favorite bad-girl gardener.

If you've not read Paradise Lost, I apologize for my momentary lapse into social awkardness -- and for outing myself as a Milton-loving-vegan-English-graduate student. (I know, how original.)

Woman's Seed Savory Granola fuels my immodest appetite while I write, read, and write some more. A delightful cinnamon-chili powder spice mix makes this granola the greatest snack since sin.

What you'll need:
3 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
1/2 cup sunflower seeds, unsalted
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, unsalted
1/4 cup unhulled sesame seeds
4 tbsp brown rice syrup
1 or 2 tbsp(s) cinnamon
1 tbsp chili powder
a smidgen of coconut oil or safflower oil

What to do:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a 9 x 13 in. baking dish. Pour in the oatmeal. Then add 2 tbsp brown rice syrup. Use two flatware tablespoons to toss the oatmeal into the syrup, until everything coats nice and glossy. Pour in the sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds. Add 1 more tbsp of syrup and toss some more until well mixed. Add spices with the remaining syrup and mix again.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes depending on your oven.

BTW: Eat as an in-between meal snack, or while reading Paradise Lost, Areopagitica, Tetrachordon, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and De Doctrina Christiana.

Feels Like Spring Roll

Last week, four inches of snow covered our front lawn. Today, we wore shorts and t-shirts on our Saturday afternoon dog-walk. Louisiana weather loves to surprise.

I broke a light sweat midway through our walk, and my sun-fueled food associations went like this: "It feels like spring. I MUST make spring rolls!"

Fortunately, I'm prepared for such out-of-the-blue food cravings, and I keep a stocked fridge/freezer/pantry. This is how anal retentive I am: Once a month I grate 1 head of red cabbage, 3 carrots, 10 mushrooms, and 1/2 red onion in the blender, just in case I may want potstickers, spring rolls, or dumplings at some point in the next 30 days.

I mix everything with 1 tbsp. sesame oil and 1 tbsp of Bragg's Liquid Aminos. Then I divide the mixture into four pint-sized freezer bags. I add other ingredients depending on factors as random as, you guessed it, the weather.

The dirty little secret of spring rolls is that they look difficult, but require minimal to no cooking depending on the ingredients. Figuring out a "roll" technique (especially for weirdo lefties like me) presents the greatest challenge.

Fortunately, I will overcome all challenges for food. (The photo doesn't lie).

What you need:

1 cabbage/carrot/mushroom/onion mix, thawed

1/2 bag frozen peas, thawed

1 bunch of cilantro, chopped

1 package of rice paper (I bought mine at an Asian grocery)

soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Amino's

1 jar of red or green curry paste

1 bowl hot water

2 plates

What to do:

Saute the cabbage mixture in a wok, until the liquid evaporates. Turn the burner off, then add peas and cilantro.

Take one piece of rice paper and stick it in the bowl of hot water. The paper will soften and become pliable. Once this happens, remove the rice paper to a plate. Add a few spoonfuls of veggies about two inches from the bottom edge of the rice paper; spoon the veggies so that they form a thin vertical line. Roll up like a burrito, making sure to fold and tuck the edges as you go. Move the rolls to your second plate.

Mix a tablespoon or two of the curry paste with a few tablespoons of soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Aminos for a dipping sauce.

BTW: I served my spring rolls with Dal with Cilantro and Coconut Cream.

Some Serious Breadage

This morning I read this not-so-shocking New York Times article about sugar supplanting tobacco in American life. Not so shocking because, if you're a hardcore label reader like me, you'd know that sugar saturates the Western diet.

Sugar, in fact, has slapped me back into the bread-baking saddle, which I abandoned in September when school started. But during recent trips to various grocery stores around town, I discovered sugar lurking in the most unexpected of places, namely bread and crackers.

I LOVE bread and crackers. In all vegan honesty, I can say: I'd devour a NYC street pretzel over a cone of Milanese gelato in a heartbeat. Dairy has never been my vice. On the other hand, I regularly dream about bread. Sugar, however, gives me nightmares since my mom died from type-1 diabetes. My Dad, bless his heart, manages type-2.

Bread baking became a passion of mine in 2006, when I struggled to perfect a friend's challah recipe. Veganism has upped the stakes, since I now eschew eggs, milk, and other animal-based unmentionables. My commitment to a no-cane sugar, no-refined carbs diet has made bread-baking quite the challenge in our home. But, since it's impossible to buy vegan sugar-free bread where we live in the culinary badlands of northern Louisiana, I must bake the bread I want to eat.

And if I care about anything, I care about bread. Each week I will experiment with new recipes and post what I consider "successes." Btw: "successes" represent bread that I would serve to the most discerning of eaters, my sister. (This analogy doesn't quite work, since she's gluten-free, but you get the point).

This recipe comes from Mark Bittman's October 8, 2008 New York Times article: "No-Knead Bread: Not Making Itself Yet, but a Lot Quicker." I adapted the "Fast No-Knead Whole Wheat Bread" recipe by doubling the rise time; allowing bread a longer rise time enhances the rich flavor of whole grain wheat and rye flours that cut to the heart of Some Serious Breadage.

What you need:

2 cups stone ground whole wheat flour

1/2 cup whole rye flour

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 tsp instant yeast

1 1/2 tsp sea salt olive oil as needed

a nice big glass bowl

damp kitchen towel

What to do:

Mix the flours, cornmeal, yeast and salt in the glass bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour and add 1 1/2 cups of water. Use a wooden spoon to combine the ingredients, until the mixture forms a shaggy dough. That's it! Cover with a warm kitchen towel and place in the warmest room of your house. (For us, that's the living room.) Come back to the bowl in four hours and punch down the dough. Then oil your hands with olive oil and shape the dough into an oiled loaf pan (any size). Cover with a warm towel and go do something else for four more hours.

An hour before dinner, stick the loaf in a 350 degree oven and leave it there for 45 minutes.