Fennel Files

New post at Fennel Files!

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:15:00 +0000

Hi,

Fennel Files has a new post about feeling dark blue. Don't forget that I've moved my blog. So if you want to continue receiving posts, change your subscription at the new site. Visit fennelfiles.com to subscribe. I look forward to seeing you there!

Fennel Files is moving!

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 03:37:00 +0000

Hi followers of Fennel Files!

After a bit of a hiatus, I have decided to revitalize my writing and focus more on my blog posts. With that comes a much needed redesign of my blog and a new domain (http://fennelfiles.com). There you will find a new post about baking and my family's tepid response to sweets. For those of you who received my posts via email, you can continue to do so by clicking the "sign me up!" button under "Subscribe to Fennel Files."

My goal is to write a post a week. HOLD ME TO IT PLEASE! And don't forget to post your comments on the site. Half the fun of a blog is the discussion that follows afterward.

See you at the new site!

Caren

My demanding taste buds

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:15:00 +0000

Food cravings have taken control of my brain. Vegan cinnamon rolls, vegan fried chicken with gravy, fried okra and mashed potatoes, veggie chicken taquitos. A random combination of flavors, I know. But ever since I discovered some new vegan restaurants, my taste buds have consumed my mind with flavor desires, and now I have food needs that won’t.go.away.

I love Davis. I could easily clog your ears with my endless list about what makes Davis great--the parks, engaged community, Farmer’s Market, trees, Delta breeze, proximity to the Bay Area and mountains, the way the hot air balloons drift across the farmlands early in the morning. I’ll stop there, because my taste buds are perturbed that I am not talking about their food cravings. They want instant gratification food, and unfortunately, I can’t always get that in Davis. If the buds want green curry or spinach and fried tofu smothered in a panang sauce, then Davis (with seven Thai restaurants to choose from and an eighth on the way) is my place. Our friendly neighbor Sacramento has a few standout vegan restaurants, including a great little vegan food cart in downtown called the Happy Go Lucky Veggie Cuisine parked on the corner of I & 8th, and my favorite Vietnamese place, Andy Nguyen’s. I do wish the options in Sac were more prolific--enough at least to tame my demanding taste buds and the beast that is my stomach. Sometimes, for self-preservation’s sake, I have to head west.

Which leads me to ask the question, when did the vegans begin the revolution to take over Bay Area dining? I know they were lurking about back in the early 2000s with a menu item here and a restaurant tucked away there. But in the last five years, the five years since we’ve moved, there has been some kind of creative vegan food explosion. VegNews magazine just reported in their July/August 2010 10th Anniversary edition that there are 15! vegan restaurants in San Francisco alone, which I don’t think even counts the fabulous recent additions in the East Bay. Thankful I am, but crazy jealous as well. Why can’t I have such a plethora of options a mere one hour east?

A trip to the Bay Area has now become a strategic event involving gastrointestinal timing and deliberate restaurant planning. The food negotiations with my hubby begin about 24 hours before we leave for the in-law’s house and commence somewhere in the middle of the Caldecott tunnel. He wants Ethiopian, always. I want tempura sushi from Cha-Ya, Indian curry pizza from Zante’s, creamy brussels sprout gratin from Gracias Madre, and a sundae from Maggie Mudd. Do we stay in the East Bay, or do we cross the bridge into the city? There are too many meals to consume and not enough time for digestion, not to mention that I have to forgo eating at my favorite places listed above in order to try out the new places. How many calories do we get to eat in a day? Not enough to handle my Bay Area eating marathons. If you vegan chefs could just spill over into Davis, a cool college town with good eaters and a great farmer's market, my taste buds and I would be so happy.

I still have a week to go before I get to drive to the Bay to finally try Cinnaholic’s cinnamon rolls and visit Souley Vegan for vegan fried chicken (*Sigh.* Two months later, and I still haven’t dealt with that craving.) Until then, the taste buds are just going to have to be satisfied with homemade chocolate cupcakes.

A letter to my leftovers

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:55:00 +0000

Dear Leftovers,

We’ve had a rough relationship. You provide good eats on some days, but too often you smack me in the face with some nasty smell you’ve kept tucked under your lid. Unless I consume you within a day of your creation, I don’t trust you to behave well towards my nose or my stomach. You’ve wronged me so many times that it's not easy picking between you and one of those freezer-burned burritos from Trader Joe’s...although you have been winning by a small margin.

Unfortunately, you and I have been forced to become closer this past month ever since Scott and I started tracking our expenses. Like counting my calories on the LoseIt App makes me not want to eat, tracking our expense calories in a spread sheet takes all the fun out of spending. That means you and I need to learn to get along. Normally I can bury you in the dark space of the fridge behind a suspect batch of refried beans and a bagful of veggies and try to forget about you. But ever since I instituted a ban on impulsive lunches, I’ve had to turn to you for lunchtime support.

Then yesterday, you helped me produce this:

Fresh lettuce, carrots, cilantro, mint, and rice noodles leftover from our vegan spring rolls the other night tossed together with a peanut sauce dressing and some cut up squares of marinated Wildwood Tofu made a fabulous salad. 24 hours later, I sit here in my cube eating leftover homemade panang curry (tasty but a losing second compared to that salad) and I am still thinking about you. In fact, I want to elevate your salad concoction to main course status so I can eat you again for dinner and then dream about you as my lunch the next day.

So thank you for the memorable meal and bless you for not rotting the noodles. Keep up the good behavior and you may start spending more time in the brighter side of the fridge.

Sincerely,

Your Reluctant Eater

Peanut Sauce Salad Dressing
This recipe is an adaptation to the peanut sauce we make for spring rolls. In your blender or Vitamix, combine the following ingredients:

2 heaping spoonfuls of smooth peanut butter (not the sweetened kind)
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 teaspoon of fresh grated ginger
1 medium garlic clove (remember it is blending up raw, so be careful about the quantity . . . unless you want to be tasting repeats the rest of the day)
1/4 cup tamari
A splash or two of mirin
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/4 cup orange juice

Blend together and adjust for salty and tangy. It is really hard to mess up a peanut sauce so don’t worry too much about the measurements. Serve with your favorite leftover Asian-style salad fixin’s.

Sandwich Cravings

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 03:24:00 +0000

I have a weakness for vegan sandwiches, especially hot ones, and much like a good vegan chocolate chip cookie, they tend to be hard to come by. Very few cafes make an effort to create an edible vegetarian sandwich, let alone a vegan one, and most assume that lettuce, tomato, pepperoncini, pickles, onions, avocado (if you are willing to throw down the extra $$) and sometimes if your lucky, hummus, is enough to satisfy one’s gnawing lunch needs. It’s not.

Two years ago, Scott and I spent a week in New York where we discovered the Candle Cafe, a chic vegan restaurant in the Upper East Side. It was there they served us a fried seitan chicken sandwich with a spicy chili aoli. The sandwich, smothered in sauce with bits of fried breading scattered around the plate and towering with red onion, lettuce and avocado, just begged to be eaten. We had always stayed away from seitan (pronounced like Satan), a chewy, nasty sounding, wheat-gluten substance with a propensity for causing unwanted bodily smells. But after that sandwich, seitan—all dressed up like a saucy hussy—seduced its way back into our lives.

Since our trip to the Big Apple, we’ve chanced upon other fabulously tasty hot sandwiches through our trusty advisor, Yelp. Armed with an iPhone and the Yelp App, you can strand us in a foreign meat-friendly state like Georgia, and most times, we vegans can hunt out a meal that doesn’t consist of salad with oil and vinegar, some kind of pasta with a marinara sauce, or portabella mushrooms.

In fact, Yelp helped us find the original “g” spicy po-boy at Green’s vegan oasis which happens to be hiding in a strip mall in Tempe, AZ—a location we would have NEVER found on our own. It also clued us in on the dirty sauce which belongs in bed with cranberry sauce on a hot vegan “turkey” sandwich at Ike’s Place in San Francisco—the only place I know of where you need to order your sandwich three hours in advance if you actually want to eat it at lunch time.

No thanks to Yelp, I’ve had a two month craving to try the BBQ/Southern Fried Tofu Burger at Souley Vegan in Oakland, CA. Until my schedule routes me back to the Bay Area, I will continue to pester Scott to make attempts at recreating the sandwiches already imprinted in my taste bud memories.

But back to standout veg sandwiches. I know I opened this piece by dissing the sub-standard “vegetarian” sandwich, but there is one place that not only gets those ingredients right, but makes a sandwich I want to continuing eating beyond comfortable fullness and into the realm of, “I’ve eaten so much I hate myself.” The Molinari Delicatessen, located in SF’s North Beach neighborhood, focuses primarily on Italian meats and cheeses but can dish up a vegan sandwich worthy of mentioning among the greats.

Molinari’s at lunchtime requires skills similar to wading through the Muni crowd on Kearny Street to secure a seat on the 30 Stockton, minus the dripping bags of fishy stuff and grandma bullies. It’s that crowded on a weekday. Once you’ve managed to make it through the door, take a number, pick your sandwich roll from the bread bin, and expect to wait at least 30 minutes for your turn. When your up, make sure the guy behind the counter slathers on their signature basil garlic olive oil spread. Ask nicely and they will add whatever veggies are marinating in the deli case—usually roasted peppers and onions, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, and mushrooms. They will garnish it with the usual lettuce, tomato, onion and pepperoncini which, on this sandwich, adds to the overall flavor. Take the greasy goodness to go with extra napkins and head over to Washington Square Park for a picnic. And while you wipe the olive oil off your face, think of me sitting in a gray office cube hours away from a decent vegan sandwich, and send up a little thought of thanks.

Right now, I don’t have a fabulous vegan sandwich recipe. After two years, Scott and I are still fussing and experimenting with flavors and textures. What I can say is, Tofurkey's smoked turkey lunch "meat", and served up with fresh basil, marinated sundried tomatoes, marinated artichokes, and heated up with vegan mozzarella and an aioli made from veganaise on a fresh ciabatta roll can go along way to curb a craving. Serve with a heaping side of my grandfather's potato salad. Or check out Yelp and find your own strip mall oasis.

A tragic lesson

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:11:00 +0000

I didn't know my cousin Rory nearly as well as I would have liked. It didn't help that we lived at least two hours away from each other at any given point during his life or that I was thirteen years his senior. I remember him being a spry and skinny little kid with a crazy dry wit at an obscenely young age. He motored around in that manic boy way, and if you got him to stop for a moment to talk, his raspy voice would spout a shocking amount of sarcasm wrapped around a dose of insight. Afterward, he would bolt away, all the while rubbing his hands together like a pint-sized mad scientist gearing up to do a touch of evil.

A lack of Generation Xers in my family forced me to learn how to interact with adults at a very early age. When the family baby boom finally began, I was already well on my way to becoming a self-absorbed teenager. As a result, I have a tendency to feel awkward around kids. My children are teaching me how to interact with other children, a skill I seemed to have missed learning while growing up. I feel a deep regret that I let my awkwardness get in the way of getting to know the Tomasello boys. A look through Rory's MySpace page tells me we would have gotten along well.

Rory died abruptly this week at 22 years of age when he was hit by an SUV while riding his bike. Somehow the death of my elders seems easier to handle. They lived a full life--death being the natural next step. But when someone young dies, well, a bit of my soul dies with them. Sequestered away in my heart, in that void that death created, is a vault that holds the stories of the people I've loved and lost. I will pull out Rory's story when I think about a bacon and white bread sandwich, hear the voice of a small child threatening to kick someone's ass, renew my license and check off the box that says "yes" to donating my organs, or when I reflect upon my missed opportunity to reconnect with my young cousins at the last family reunion.

Death is a harsh and demanding teacher. Grief pushes aside all of our filters normally clogged full of busy details and allows in a stark clarity. The lessons are immediate when death makes an example of someone we love. In the book, Journey to Ixtlan, The Lessons of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, the shaman teaches his pupil the importance of living life as an impeccable warrior. His lesson is, "In a world where death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death." So I get it, death. I hear you. My lessons are this: push past my awkward shyness and weakness for small talk and get to know people better; slow down and ask questions and make sure to listen to the answers; make decisions with the finality of death; reflect the best of myself; and always drive my car like a mindful Jedi knight.

Below is a recipe for a vegan BLT--a sandwich I am sure my late cousin would have shunned as a young boy for the lack of real bacon and written jokes about as an adult.

Vegan BLT

Ingredients
Sourdough bread
Lettuce
Tomato
Tempeh bacon (Yeah, it is a far cry from the real thing but the smokey flavor kind of makes up for the lack of bacon grease, kind of.)
Vegenaise (There are lots of other types of fake mayonaise out there. This is the only one that comes close to the real thing.)
Olive oil
Avocado (optional)

Directions
Heat a non-stick pan with enough olive oil to coat the pan. Separate and place the tempeh bacon strips in the pan and brown them. A couple of minutes on each side should suffice. While the tempeh is cooking, toast the sourdough and then slather with Vegenaise. Add a liberal helping of lettuce and tomato. If you need some extra triglycerides, Mash on half an avocado. Add the tempeh and cut that baby in half. Close your eyes and pretend you are eating the real thing.

No saints here

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:05:00 +0000

I broke my vegan vows and ate flaky, warm and fabulous cod while visiting Cape Cod. As I have always said, there is a time and place for breaking the rules, and well, when you are in Rome, eat the lasagna, when in Africa, eat what they give you, and when in Cape Cod, eat the fish and chips. When in Anaheim? Stick to being vegan.

Below is a link to a rerun of a post I wrote a couple of years back explaining why I choose to live a 95% vegan lifestyle. Yes, I am far from being a vegan saint, but I have never claimed to be.

http://fennelfiles.blogspot.com/2007/06/95-vegan.html

Four Advil and a peanut butter chocolate shake

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:39:00 +0000

As someone who is swiftly moving toward middle-age, my perception of who I am and what I am capable of doing physically, gets a bit more skewed each year. It is really only when I go to places like the doctor's office or am faced with recovering from an illness that I am reminded that my 30-something-year-old body doesn't necessarily reflect the youth I feel in my brain.

July was a rough month. Relatively, of course. My friends and family are dealing with much more difficult health issues than my out of office surgery and a follow up bout of bronchitis. But that doesn't erase the fact that my appointment with the periodontist to get a much needed gum graft and then a midnight trip to the emergency room to open my lungs left me feeling old and mildly depressed. To give me a sense of my recovery time for the surgery, my doctor compared the two-day healing process of my wisdom teeth getting pulled at 18, to the two weeks it would take to heal just the roof of my mouth alone. The graft itself would take six to eight weeks. He then kindly reminded me that I no longer had the body of a teenager.

Aging is sneaky. I don't pay much attention to the fact that my body is getting older because I feel young in my mind. I think that is a good thing, except when I am restricted from riding my bike and leaving my couch by two different professional men in white coats. Lying around the house watching bad daytime t.v. and movies is really overrated. I promise, it is. Sure, we all dream about rotting about the house after spending countless hours in front of the computer working on a bland report. But after a week of bad chick flicks and Harry Potter movies one, two, four and five, I began to feel restless for communication plans and email threads about LDAP servers. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating about the LDAP server part. But the bad t.v. left my brain feeling soggy, like an old bowl of oatmeal coagulating in the sink. I felt glassy-eyed and slow --certainly the Vicodin working its "magic."

I feel like my old self now--healthy and strong. And after a month's rest from cycling, I am ready to tackle hills. But mostly, I am reminded to be thankful that my body is back to performing those simple functions we all seem to take for granted--like eating and breathing, being able to walk down the driveway and take out the garbage without fear of falling, or in my brother-in-law's case, being able to make it through the day without the excruciating pain of a disabling migraine.

I keep wondering if the age of my brain will ever catch up with the age of my body. Probably not until I am forced to accept my old-age fate. I expect that I will grow crotchety, stubborn and unwilling to relinquish my car keys or submit to the fact that I can no longer physically function without a walker and a LifeCall. But I think we are programmed to not surrender to aging. It's what drives us to stay alive. To accept the fate of our age feels like growing old, and well, giving up. And really, who wants to do that?

While I was marooned on the couch, Scott kept my spirits from descending too far into the post-surgery, pit of pain by feeding me peanut butter, chocolate and banana shakes. The peanut butter and soymilk gave me a hit of protein, and the chocolate syrup and ice cream, well we all know the medical wonders of those healing foods. Four Advil and one of these smoothies and life with a mouth full of sutures hovered somewhere around bearable.

Peanut Butter Cup a' Love Shake

3 large scoops of vanilla soy ice cream
1 frozen banana
1/3 cup of peanut butter
1/4 cup of vegan chocolate syrup (give or take a squirt depending on how much chocolate you like. I like to use AH!laska.)
1 1/2 cups of soymilk

Before you begin, take some time to cut up a bunch of bananas into small rounds, place them in a ziplock bag, and stick them in the freezer. Once you have frozen bananas, place all of the ingredients into the blender and blend into a thick and decadent shake.

Lollipops and apple snacks

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:23:00 +0000

About every few months or so, the kids go through a mental growth spurt. The precursor is atrocious temper tantrums and attitude issues that make my insides shiver and speeds up the graying of my hair over the thought of the teen years. One would think that after 5+ years of these changes, Scott and I would have a grasp on how to handle the outbursts and boundary pushing. Silly naive me, thinking that because we figured out how to handle the last round of episodes that we would be ahead of the game for future rounds. But like most parents, we forget that children are mutating creatures with no owner's manual.

I think other people also forget that it is much easier to have the answers to why our kids are acting out and how us parents should be responding. Especially when they don't have to live, manage, handle and enforce the boundaries day after day after day. Even I forget what is like to manage a child hell bent on ignoring me when I see other parents reacting to angrily to their own child's crappy behavior. I think, "Yelling won't help," or "Wow, her kid is out of control, and she isn't doing anything." And then I stop myself, because I don't have the back story. I don't know how many times that kid pitched a fit before 7 am, or whether or not that parent just got off a full day of work dealing with adult-aged preschoolers only to have to come home to a fresh bout of tantrums.

People often comment to us about how great our kids are. And they truly are (pat, pat, pat). They don't always realize that our kids are good because we set rules, teach manners, and provide guidance on how to behave. My children may be young, but they are old enough to learn how to become respectful members of society. As responsible parents, it is our job to teach them what it means to be respectful. Our children are well behaved because we taught them to be that way. This society has way too many self-entitled, disrespectful people walking around, and I won't ease up on teaching my children how not to become one. Some may think we are being strict, I call it taking my job seriously. Sure, we can yell less. Us parents are human, and we sometimes forget that the best way to get our children to listen isn't by speaking louder. It is important for us to remember our own boundaries.

My little petunia called me into her bedroom the other night for the umpteenth time to delay her inevitable sleep. Her excuses to put off going to bed can get lengthy and cliche. Most nights, her requests for water, potty trips and favorite stuffed animals are a prelude to me taking a tedious, cement-footed trip down the hall. But more often than not, her requests are random, creative and remind me to relish her sweet, precocious personality. Calla called out her usual, "Mommy, I need you." When I arrived at her bedside, she said, "Can we go to the zoo right now?" I told her no, a night trek to the zoo was not in her near future but that we could go soon. Easily placated by fun to come, she said, "Okay. And when we go, can you pack lollipops and apple snacks and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?"

Tonight both kids caught a terminal case of the sillies. Lennon, the dancing comedian, got out of his bed five or six times just so he could stand in the door to make me and his sister laugh. His enthusiasm at watching us giggle radiated through his smile. Sure it was way past their bedtime, but the laughter was infectious, and the memory-making opportunities were prolific. Sure they needed their sleep but tonight's fun trumped protocol. There is a time and a place for lifting boundaries.

I don't have a recipe that involves lollipops and apple snacks, but I do have one for a lovely and moist apple cake handed down to me by my mom, who received it from a kind woman named Mrs. Vlamis--who I am sure taught her kids the importance of respect...and maybe yelled once or twice in her lifetime.

Mrs. Vlamis's Greek Apple Cake (this is a "prepare the night before for the next day" kind of cake.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Dice and peel 3 1/2 cups of apples (any kind will do) and set aside.

Combine in a bowl and then set aside:
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (I usually use canola)
juice of half a lemon
2 tsp vanilla
3 tsp egg replacer whisked together with 6 TSP water

At this point, the mixture will be thick. Then add:
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Fold in:
the diced apples
3/4 cup of golden raisins (regular raisins work nicely too.)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Bake in a greased and floured 9x13" pan for one hour. When it is ready, an inserted toothpick should come out clean.

When the cake is almost done baking, mix together:
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soymilk
1 stick of Earth Balance margarine
2 tsp vanilla (I like to substitute in brandy here)

Mix in a pan and stir continuously while the mixture boils for two and a half minutes.
Pour the mixture over the top of the hot, baked cake and let it stand overnight.

Try hard not to eat it for breakfast the next morning.

Not vegan for a day--a call for recipes

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:20:00 +0000

A co-worker of mine was recently diagnosed with cancer. And while she waits for her surgery to be scheduled, she is feeling stir crazy and would like to stock her freezer with tasty meals for her son that are easy to reheat post surgery. So for this post I am calling out to you for help. Please take a moment and post your favorite recipe (vegan, vegetarian, meat-filled) in the comments section so that my co-worker can gather some ideas on what to make. Think simple, home cooked, freezable, kid-friendly, comfort foods that make you feel taken care of. Quick breads, muffins, baked goods are also welcomed. Her son is particularly fond of Italian and Mexican foods but don't let that limit you. If you have some time, send a little inspiration wrapped in the directions of a good meal. I know your contributions will be much appreciated!

A vegan calzone love affair

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:05:00 +0000

I don't make friends easily in new situations. Every time I start a new job, place my kids in a new school or move to a different town, my ability to engage people in meaningful discussions or even hold something resembling a conversation diminishes. I can't even manage small talk. My vocabulary dwindles down to one syllable words, I struggle with thinking up questions to ask, and my tendency to make snarky, inappropriate jokes about my children increases monumentally. If my first impression doesn't offend or frighten people away, I eventually start making friends, but only after a lengthy period of time has passed and I have had a chance to redeem myself of that first encounter. My friend Erin on the other hand, is the Pied Piper of friendships. She could coax an agoraphobic recluse out a cave if given the opportunity. The community that has taken me three years to create, Erin can replicate in a foreign country with a language barrier in about six weeks. She is charming, extroverted, feisty, and funny. She walks into a room and people love her, almost instantly.

I would not have survived my six months of stay-at-home status without Erin. Only she could welcome and appreciate a desperate, "my child awoke at the crack of dark and if I don't get out of the house, someone is going to die" 6:30 am phone call and request to meet at the park. Especially because she herself had most likely already been woken up by 5:00 am. I can always count on Erin to be up for a bit of spontaneity, just as long as it is before the sun sets, which is fine because really, at this point in my life, late night outings cramp the little sleep I get, and I am not going to sacrifice the precious bits of rest I do get for a cheap drink on the town.

Over the last few years, we've taken to gathering our friends and their kids together for spontaneous Friday night dinners. They are spontaneous because we generally don't start inviting each other over for dinner until about an hour before mealtime. We've nicknamed these evenings "Noodle Nights" because after a full day of work, pasta and a sauce bar (vegan alfredo, pesto or marinara) is about all we can throw together in the 20 minutes between arriving at home and receiving hungry children and parents at the front door.

But lately, Erin has been rocking the homemade pizza dough and creating calzones. Vegan calzones. And now I want to eat those. all.the.time.

I had never really understood the point of the calzone while growing up. Who wanted pizza fillings wrapped in dough when you could just eat the pizza? So I skipped the calzone section of the menu and chose its cheesier, greasier, more popular cousin. But for the past 13 years, that popular cousin has shunned me. Most pizza, when you omit the cheese, becomes a dry, cardboard-like meal. I always end up eating copious amounts of vegan pizza in hopes that the more I eat, the more flavor I will taste. Oddly enough, that strategy never works.

Oh how I love vegan calzones. They keep the veggies hot, flavorful and moist all wrapped up in a blanket of soft dough. And the steam inside that tasty pocket of goodness actually melts vegan cheese. When you add grilled zucchini, caramelized onions, homemade pesto, and mushrooms, well, I could continue to gush annoyingly or you could just make one yourself. After a long week of work, nothing tastes better than a calzone (vegan or not) with a seasonal salad tossed with a rich, local olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and a cold beer with your best friends. Really.

The Best Pizza Dough

Ingredients
3 1/2 cups flour
1 cup warm water
2T honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp yeast (1 package)

Directions
Combine water, honey, salt and yeast. Leave it to rest for five minutes until it gets foamy. Add to the flour and oil and mix until fully moistened. Knead two or three times and then cover. Let rise for 45 minutes.

At this point you can either start creating pizza or calzones, or if you have more time and people aren't clamoring at your door, you can punch down the dough and let it rise again for another 45 minutes. Erin says punching down the dough makes an even better pizza dough, but I say it is fabulous either way. She also recommends using this recipe for foccacia.

Vegan Calzones

Ingredients (makes enough for four adult-sized calzones and four kid-sized)
One batch of "The Best Pizza Dough"
One jar of marinara (or make your own with a can of tomatoes, 3-4 cloves of minced garlic, salt, pepper and a dash of dried basil and oregano if you are feeling chef-y)
Pesto (one bunch of fresh basil without the stems, 3-4 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper to taste, a handful of pine nuts and about 1/4 cup of olive oil thrown into a food processor and blended to a moist paste. Add more olive oil if it seems too dry.)
St. Ives Vegan Pepperoni (should be able to find this in the deli section of your local Whole Foods or natural food store)
Grilled zucchini
Caramelized onions
Kalamata olives
Mushrooms
Whatever else you like on your pizza or in your calzone

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Take a fist size of pizza dough and roll out into a flat circle similar to a small pizza. Load up one side with sauce and yummy stuff (I like to do a pesto/marinara combo). Fold the other half of the dough over the ingredients to make a pocket and cinch the edges so that they are closed together (almost like folding a pie crust).
Lay on an oiled pizza pan that is sprinkled with a little corn meal and place in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until the dough is golden brown and baked completely.
Once baked, sit down to a nice homey meal and give thanks for your friends.

An unexpected question

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:09:00 +0000

My child alarm clock woke me promptly at 6:27 a.m. with the clearing of his throat. He stood there near my head in the dark morning, looking at me expectantly. “Mommy,” he whispered, “I have a loose tooth! Look!” He jammed his finger into his mouth and wiggled his bottom tooth back and forth. I mustered up the appropriate, “That’s great honey,” and groggily managed to cover up my distaste for all things teeth related. For someone who has had dreams of her teeth crumbling, loosening and falling out her whole life, the thought of transitioning into the phase of watching my son Lennon lose his teeth was not a comforting one.

Lennon’s loose tooth came right on the heels of teeth week at his preschool. He loved learning about his “exposed bones.” All week long he chatted about roots and cavities and drilling and gums and grinding. Lennon colored pictures of teeth, answered trivia questions, and talked about the importance of brushing and flossing. So it came as no surprise that he was excited to discover his first loose tooth.

After a day full of tooth wiggling, Lennon crawled into bed that night and blindsided me with the question, “Mommy, is the Tooth Fairy real?” Oh, are you kidding me? The kid had not even lost his first tooth yet and he was already asking me about the validity of the lady with the wings who goes around collecting teeth. Sure the story is hard to fathom, but I thought we might at least get to pretend for his first loose tooth.

“What did you say, Lennon?” I asked, thinking that by making him repeat the question he would think twice about asking questions with unfriendly answers. Of course he repeated the question. Unsure how to proceed, I stranded him in his bed with a “Hold on a second, I will be right back.”

Last summer, Lennon asked Scott and me if Spiderman was real, and when we explained to him that all the superheroes were fun pretend stories, he collapsed into a small pile and wept mournfully. I did not want a repeat of that day. This current situation required back up support. I ran into the other room and in a frenzied whisper, asked my husband what to do. He gave me a long look and said, “Don’t lie to the kid … but let him down gently.”

I went back to Lennon’s room and began drawing a parallel between Spiderman and the Tooth Fairy. But apparently the kid already suspected who collected the teeth and doled out the cash. He even had his trip to the toy store planned and his tooth money spent — so much for me being concerned about childhood devastation. Now if only he would figure out this Santa business …

Frosting leftovers

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 06:50:00 +0000

This week I had a container full of homemade coconut butter cream frosting languishing in the fridge leftover from the most patriotic act I have ever partook. Sure, I care about politics, but I have never been particularly patriotic. In fact, I have been known to be somewhat caustic and cynical when comes to the state of our country. But something about that Obama guy has me feeling all hopeful and proud. Anyway, on Tuesday night in honor of our new President, we threw an inauguration party, and I made homemade vanilla cupcakes and topped them with blueberries and strawberries and coconut frosting in an attempt to make a replica of the American flag (yes, I forgot to take a picture.) I was inspired by this crazy cupcake decorating book called hello, cupcake! that Scott got me for my birthday. And while the flag in their book was styled professionally and looked beautiful, mine was a pathetic smattering of out-of-season fruit thrown onto the cupcakes in a manic attempt to get dessert decorated in five minutes.

Not wanting to waste good frosting and not feeling like consuming another batch of cupcakes, I figured I could use it on something else, or eat it straight out of the container like my mother-in-law. But really, I am not big on eating frosting with a spoon. I flashed on a distinct, not-so-good memory as a kid eating red frosting on saltine crackers with my sister and quickly decided that there are infinitely better ways to consume frosting. Though my mother-in-law may beg to differ, frosting really needs to be cut with something like cake or black coffee—preferably both at the same time.

So last night after dinner, Scott challenged me to make vegan cinnamon rolls. A true quest since I have always shied away from making anything that involves active yeast. For some reason, yeast mystifies me. Anything that requires some kind of chemical reaction, bacteria and the careful following of steps is bound to throw me off. Yeah sure, baking is science but adding yeast to the mix takes it all to a whole new level. But I had wanted to make cinnamon rolls for a long time and wasting good frosting is criminal so I got to work.

After mixing all the ingredients together and meticulously following the directions, I waited for my dough to rise. And I waited, and waited. Yes, the yeast was active, I could see some puffiness, but as I wrapped my scarf around my neck for the umpteenth time, I decided that we kept our house too cold during the winter to be expecting dough to rise.

What’s a baker to do? Kick up the heat? Or clear off space in the laundry room in hopes that the heat from the washer and dryer warms up the dough? I cheaply chose the latter, because that is just how I am. For some reason, I couldn’t justify turning the heat up a measly three degrees to get the place warm enough to activate my sluggish yeast.

In an attempt to be somewhat sanitary, I pushed aside the laundry soap and made room next to the random hair clips, rocks, coins and shreds of tissues fished out of pockets and the lint collector to make room on top of the dryer for my cookie sheet. I just needed to make sure that the whole thing didn’t shake to the floor while the washer jumped its way through the spin cycle.

While my pretty pinwheels did grow some while sitting in the laundry room, my dough never really got to a yeasty out of control mass of dough begging to be punched down. I guess that means I still have something to strive for, but that said, for a first batch of cinnamon rolls, mine were pretty good. I smeared them with the coconut butter cream frosting and fed them to my favorite people, and we sat at the dining room table, unraveled the gooey rolls and dunked them into hot cups of fresh coffee.

I am going to hold off on posting a recipe for vegan cinnamon rolls. While these were tasty, they don’t quite measure up to Cinnabon status just yet.

Yes, we did.

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:27:00 +0000

We spent the first part of election night at a potluck with our friends. Scott stayed glued to his laptop, watching polls and that ubiquitous map while the rest of us wolfed down bowls of chili and hunks of cornbread and cheered each time a state turned blue. With Obama's prospects looking good and six minutes to spare until the polls closed in California, we hustled home when our kids began to meltdown.

We had the media coverage humming on the t.v. before we turned on the house lights. And before I could drop my handbag into the chair and pull off my boots, the networks announced that Obama had won. We hollered and high-fived each other, but it wasn't until McCain called Obama to concede that I started to feel emotional and relieved. I didn't realize how much the Bush years had stressed my soul until Obama's win seeped through the barriers in my brain with the message, "it's over. It is finally over."

I sat on the couch and listened to McCain--the man I used to like and respect, not the weird body-snatched campaign McCain--give his best speech in two years. And I sobbed and purged the pain, cynicism and disappointment of the last eight years before falling into an exhausted deep sleep.

As a nation,we finally got it right. The images of people celebrating all over the world was like watching the final scene in the poorly remastered version of Return of the Jedi. It was like we said, "see world, we get it. We know. We screwed up and we are so sorry. Please forgive us and trust us again."

I believe the hell of the Bush Administration did one good thing. It galvanized our normally apathetic nation into action with a genuine desire for change. I do not believe we would have been ready for a black man with the name Hussein if we hadn't collectively hit bottom. It took a massive terrorist attack, two wars, a botched disaster relief plan, economic meltdown, a nation-wide mortgage crisis, soaring oil prices, the patriot act, self-regulating of major corporations, Enron, the roll back of many environmental policies, the destruction of the world's trust, numerous scandals from the administration that touted its "family values" platform, and Dick Cheney before we could embrace any kind of significant change. Did all of that really happen in only eight years?

For the love of God, it is finally over. Hunker down this fall, make some good food, give some serious thanks to your fellow Americans, pat yourself on the back, and plan a fabulous party for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. And if you have some political adrenaline still left in you, rise up and help plot out the repeal of Prop 8. If we can get it right once, we can do it again.

Election night chili and cornbread to follow later this week...

Vegan MoFo: Gravy Season

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 04:38:00 +0000

This weekend was beautiful, cold and blustery. We spent most of Saturday at the pumpkin patch harvesting pumpkins and gourds to decorate our front porch. A hay bale pyramid, little playhouses and a "swim" through a large pool of dried corn kernels kept us busy for hours. And that didn't include the massive corn maze that we definitely stayed away from. Four kids lost in a 40+ acre corn maze didn't really sound like a whole lot of fun. But the acres of pumpkin patch filled with classic Charlie Brown style pumpkins, warty, knobby gourds and smooth butternut squashes served up a spectacular autumn egg hunt.

I love fall. The weather, rustic colors and of course, the food. Winter squashes make tasty boats for rice pilafs, apples provide easy kid snacks, and stews and soups give us new inspiration for dinner meals. And we all know I could use a little inspiration in the dinner department. The best part about the food is that most autumn dishes taste even better with a side of gravy.

Scott makes the best vegan gravy. I am not talking about some wimpy mushroom sauce involving a box of soup doctored with a touch of nutritional yeast and some mustard. That's my attempt and while it does the trick, it doesn't even touch Scott's gravy. Scott's mushroom gravy tastes rich like old school gravy made from turkey drippings, but without the meaty bits.

If we hadn't gone out to our favorite vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant to celebrate Scott's Birthday, I would have created a nice rustic Sunday dinner as a nice end to a great weekend. So instead, we waited until tonight to smother rice pilaf and butternut squash in Scott's gravy recipe.

Vegan Mushroom Gravy

Ingredients
-3/4 cup flour
-1/3 cup olive oil
-1 heaping teaspoon of marmite (Scott's secret ingredient)
-1 box of mushroom soup
-1-2 squirts of prepared yellow mustard
-1-2 teaspoons of dried sage or thyme
-splash of soy sauce or salt to taste

Directions
In a small sauce pan, heat the olive oil and whisk in the flour to make a light brown roux. (make sure the roux is not too dry.) Whisk in the box of mushroom soup, marmite, mustard and salt. Keep whisking the mixture the whole time to avoid lumps. Keep on low heat until the gravy thickens. Pour over mashed potatoes, pilaf, tofu, collard greens, biscuits...anything for an excuse to eat gravy.

Vegan MoFo: Don't knock the salad

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:10:00 +0000

My hubby is at a conference for three days, and he is my saving grace when it comes to feeding me. I truly have a hard time coming up with palate inspiring meals when he is out of town. Sure, I can crank out a healthy, bland kid meal, but I can’t say that it is a meal I want to consume myself. One can only eat noodles with vegan cheesy sauce and broccoli so many times before losing all interest in food. After an eight hour work day ending with the task of negotiating two dirty kids away from school and into a car, it is really hard to muster up the energy and inspiration to create some totally fabulous vegan meal in the time equivalent of one Dora the Explorer episode. When Scott is gone, my food ideas dwindle down to burritos and noodles. Someone save me from bland self!

Last night I really wanted try out the new Italian Tofurkey sausages I had just purchased. I thought they would go nice with a box of rice pilaf and a tossed salad. But after wrestling the kids to bed, I didn’t have the energy to cook. So I settled with just the tossed salad. That tossed salad became my saving grace. Literally. Otherwise I might have made some nasty concoction involving a can of baked beans, corn and a cup of soygurt. Or a can of refried beans and leftover polenta. Really, it's happened before. I shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen when I am cooking for one.

Hobo Tossed Salad—your mealtime friend made from whatever you have leftover in the fridge

Ingredients: (what I used last night but really, don’t hold back on the creativity)

Romaine lettuce (I like to mix in some leafy greens so there is some variety and crunch)
kidney beans
corn
avocado
cucumbers
carrots
fake bacon bits
vegan Parmesan cheese
ground pepper
Annie's Goddess dressing

Directions (I am being lazy here…)
Tear it up, cut it up, add it to a bowl and toss. Really, there is no excuse not to fall back on a salad when you are tired and need to eat something filling (she says, scolding herself.)

Enjoy!

Vegan MoFo: Mexican Hot Chocolate and an apology

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:25:00 +0000

My brain is dry. The words that normally twist and wind like a river through my mind have deserted me. I think they might be slightly offended by my blatant neglect and have left me with blank thoughts and little creativity. I will try to coax them home with a cup of vegan Mexican hot chocolate, an apology for being too preoccupied with the state of the union, and a promise to be more diligent with my writing.

Vegan Mexican Hot Chocolate
Ingredients
Soymilk
Nestle's Abuelita Mexican chocolate (vegan by default and available in the Mexican Food section of most grocery stores.)
Dash of cayenne pepper

Directions
Heat up one and a half cups of soymilk and a third of a round of chocolate in a small sauce pan. Whisk together until milk is thoroughly heated and the chocolate is melted. Add in a miniscule dash of cayenne pepper for a little extra spice. Give a little shout out to your creative muses, drink it all and immediately start thinking about another cup.

Vegan MoFo

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:52:00 +0000

October is Vegan Month of Food, and I am accepting the challenge put forth by the Post Punk Kitchen to write about vegan food 20 times over the course of this month. This is truly a challenge for me considering I am good for about two posts a month and have nothing to show for myself for September. But in my defense, I have been consumed by the presidential election, and I have spent more time reading up on policy and checking campaign facts than thinking about my next recipe or post. So for the month of October, I promise to focus more on food. And you might hear a bit about my political leanings. After election day is over, I plan to go back to my usual story telling. Until then, look for frequent sound bites about vegan food and the state of the nation.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:12:00 +0000

Our friends just had their first baby and their experience so far, from our limited perspective, seems to be much more difficult than most newly-minted parents. Like most of us, they are struggling through the exhaustion of caring for a newborn and the instantaneous identity change of becoming parents. Nothing quite prepares a new parent for the overnight transformation from being an independent individual with no major responsibilities into an adult in charge of keeping another human being alive. Parenting can be painfully tough. The labor and delivery process leaves you completely drained and you never fully recover from the sleep deprivation from the initiation of that first night. While the exhaustion and struggle during the first few months are hard for everyone, for most parents it is cushioned by the fact that they fall in love with their baby the moment they hold it that first time. Unfortunately, our friends didn’t experience that instant magic.

I conducted an informal survey of all my parent friends and concluded that most first-time parents hit a low point sometime during the first 6-8 weeks of their newborn’s life. My dark night of parenting came in the form of anger at 3:00 am when I couldn’t possibly fathom putting my exhausted, weary body through yet another round of excruciating breastfeeding. But even during those dark moments, I knew I loved Lennon dearly, and with a lot of swearing, a whole lot of crying, lots of Advil and a deep resolve to step up and embrace my role as a responsible mother, I had no doubt I could muscle through.

When our friend hit his lowest point, he called Scott up and accused us of “drinking the Kool-Aid.” In his eyes, we are the sheep who believe in the magic that is our children. While we are blinded by the preaching of the fanatic parents who say that rearing children is the best thing that ever happened to them, he is no fool. He was having a dark night of parenting magnified by some serious bonding issues. Apparently, in our few phone conversations before his wife gave birth, we spent more time talking about our immediate fascination with our kid’s toes instead of describing our feelings of inadequacy when we couldn’t figure out how to stop a crying jag. By leaving out the negative, we inadvertently helped to perpetuate his expectation that he would fall instantly in love with his daughter. Those first few months are scary, and I can only imagine how difficult they could be when compounded by the possibility of never feeling the love that we Kool-Aid drinkers keep talking about.

We talked about the Kool-Aid phenomenon with another friend who also had bonding issues when both of his daughters were born. He too, had felt trapped and angry. A needy blobby baby incapable of interaction at a basic level can wear down even the most resilient parents. But as he said, once you become a parent, it becomes imperative that you drink the Kool-Aid. There is no going back to the carefree lifestyle you had before. Of course you could leave, but as a marked individual who carries a heavy weight of shame. People don’t forgive those who walk away from the responsibility of parenthood.

Last Wednesday evening we went to the Farmer’s Market to buy our usual fare of summer basil and warm peaches. With bouncy houses on the mind, Lennon was in shiny golden-child mode. After a stroll through the vendors we headed over to the row of inflatables for a bit of fun. While waiting for Lennon to finish up, Calla noticed the merry-go-round was running and wanted to take a ride. I strapped her on to a painted wooden cow and while she circled around, I stood behind the bars and watched her face. She radiated a happiness that was infectious and tangible. There she sat, upright and holding tightly to the pole, yelling “Hi Momma!” each time she circled around. And at that moment there was no other place in the world I wanted to be than watching her discover pure joy.

I have thought quite a bit about this notion of drinking the Kool-Aid and came to the realization that Kool-Aid comes concentrated but is intended to be diluted to taste. You can drink it strong and straight and give yourself a sugar high that compels you to tell complete strangers that “parenting is the best thing that ever happened” to you and that your “life is positively perfect and your kids are angels.” Or you can drink a diluted version that satisfies your thirst but doesn’t always taste great depending on the flavor. Scott and I drank the latter version; our friend was under the assumption we drank the former.

Sometimes it feels like the tedium of parenting outweighs the joy. I have good days and bad days. I am positive and negative. I falter plenty, especially when it comes to parenting. I know who I am, and I have traveled a long journey to this place of understanding. On those nights when I have the pleasure of watching my kid find delight on a merry-go-round ride and she thanks me with a smile and hug after the ride is over, well, that is enough to refuel my tired limbs and make me feel like a mommy hero. And yes, my friend was right; I drank the Kool-Aid. Sometimes it makes me feel sick; other times it gives me a crazy high. I can’t possibly imagine drinking any other elixir.

As my friend’s daughter develops into a little human being, I expect him to grow to love her with the same fierceness that I feel for my kids. While the exhaustion, helplessness and identity crisis of having a child shocked his system a bit harder than the rest of us, I have experienced and witnessed his capabilities for love. I expect no less from him with his own child. I don’t doubt he too will succumb to the drink, eventually.

Since we are on the topic of tasty drinks that can leave you happy or hurting depending on the ingredients added, below is Scott’s recipe for Limeade.

Limeade
-Go to Costco or your favorite grocery store and buy a five pound bag of limes
-Juice them into a measuring cup
-Measure out the sugar at a 1:1 ratio (example: if you have three cups of lime juice, use three cups of sugar). Organic sugar is best, of course.
-In a saucepan, dissolve the sugar at a 1:1 ratio with water. Using a whisk will help the sugar dissolve faster.
-Mix the sugar water in with the lime juice.
-Dilute the sweetened lime juice into cold water (use bubbly for some kick). We use about a 4:1 ratio of water to juice but you can adjust it to your taste.
-Or use the lime mixture as a base for margaritas. A little splash of tequila can help mellow even the worst case of frayed nerves.

The bad food chronicles--volume 1

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:50:00 +0000

Today, I never managed to get a decent meal for lunch. For no good reason other than lack of planning on my part, I was left to choose from the unsatisfying selection available in the downstairs cafeteria (a.k.a, the office vending machine). Any office worker knows that the choices in a vending machine are slim and scary. But frighteningly enough, there are quite a few items that are vegan by default. I say by default because I can’t imagine the creators of food devoid of any nutritional value had vegans in mind during the developmental stages.

Today’s vegan options were a bag of original Sun Chips, pretzels, granola bars with a caloric intake rivaling a Snickers bar, and a puny, expensive bag of nuts, seeds and raisins. I have always found pretzels unsatisfying, the granola bars too fattening, and I couldn’t bring myself to pay $1.25 for a pathetic bag of gorp. So I settled for the Sun Chips to eat with a small container of tofu egg salad I left in the fridge from the day before.

As I gave the vending machine a once over in a desperate attempt to find something decent and new, I discovered a new junk food low.

Burger King, in an attempt to branch out beyond grilled burgers and greasy fries, has capitalized on the desperation of hungry cubicle workers and created “Ketchup and Fries flavored potato snacks.” WTF? Intrigued, I bought a bag for my colleagues and me to inspect.

“What’s better than ketchup and fries?” the back of the package asks. Well, I can think of a lot of things. Unfortunately, the bag answers itself with, “How about a mystical merge of ketchup fries and snack chips . . . A flavor that pairs the yin flavor of your favorite BK side with the yang crunch of a chip. Keep on chippin’ on.”

I can’t imagine wanting to eat dried ketchup on anything. But apparently that won’t be happening. Even though the snack is called “Ketchup and Fries” there is no ketchup listed in the ingredients.

Each of my colleagues tasted the chips and deemed them nasty in look and flavor. Though to give Burger King some credit, an open back of Ketchup and Fries does smell like the inside of a fast food restaurant. Our impromptu focus group decided that's a bad thing.

If the goal was to give customers some semblance of French fries in look and taste then Burger King failed miserably. If the goal was to create an enticing snack, well they failed there, too.

Baseball--no longer just a great American pastime in my house

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:49:00 +0000

I’ve become obsessed with fantasy baseball. Or perhaps it is that I have become obsessed with my current standings in the fantasy baseball league that I have played in for the past five years. I am in last place. First place for me is a lofty dream, and while I aspire to climb that high, I am realistic about my capabilities. But last place, LAST PLACE is totally unacceptable for me.

I have spent the last few weeks combing through ESPN articles and reading up on statistics on hot young rookies hoping to discover a handful of power house batters and ace pitchers amongst the free agent bench warmers. Too much tequila on draft night got me into this loser position. It doesn’t help that I am playing in a league full of guys who spent their childhood scoring games, collecting baseball cards and dreaming of playing major league ball. It’s like they have lines of stats on sheets of paper right behind their eyes. I expect that when they are old and feeble and dementia finally takes a hold of their minds, they will still be able to name every Cy Young winner for the last fifty years standing.

Needless to say, I am up against some tough competition. And being a girl in a male dominated game means I have an extra something to prove—to myself and them. In this game I can’t be scrapping around with the bottom dwellers. It’s not my style. Not with this bunch of smack talkin’ stat spinning group of boys. In this group, I have to prove my worth and hold my own. I have to show that girls can kick some baseball booty just as hard as boys.

Now back to reality. It is only after five years of playing fantasy baseball that I can finally read a line of statistics and understand what it says. For me, learning how to read baseball stats felt a lot like learning a new language. I love words, not numbers. My unimpressive math skills are a constant joke in my family, so I am impressed that I can finally look at a line of stats and make a decision for my team based on what those numbers say. There are nuances to stats—something that I didn’t fully grasp until my fourth season of playing the game. A numerical biography of a player, they can tell a story of injuries, spell out a random yet phenomenal effort during a contract year and then conclude into a predictable finish towards the end of a career.

Baseball didn’t start out as an obsession for me. While I grew up with the rhythmic hum of a baseball game as the background music of my childhood, I only paid enough attention to the game to be able to talk about the players with my dad. I never truly understood the game beyond what I could see happening on the field, but I absolutely loved going to games with my dad and my grandmother at Candle Stick Park to watch the Giants play a doubleheader.

True baseball fever hit our house about six years ago when Scott joined his first fantasy league on a whim. Stats on the computer his summer bible, Scott would sit for hours surfing the internet and strategizing his next move. Baseball had become his hobby obsession. He fretted over free agents and listened to games on the radio constantly. After a while, I figured out that if he was having a bad day and didn’t want to talk, I could always get him to discuss baseball. So if I wanted into that part of his world, I needed to learn the game.

Five fantasy teams later, I have gone from being a girl with a mild interest in baseball to a full-scale, competitive, stat-slinging phenom. Okay, so I can’t sling stats, and I forget a bulk of what I learned the year before as soon as the season ends . . . but I can talk shop and dish out advice to rookie fantasy players during the regular season like any seasoned manager. And I love baseball. Truly I do. For a girl in a boy’s club, I kick butt.

I’ve thought for a long time about which recipe to tie into this story but I can’t seem to get beyond traditional ballpark food—popcorn and hot dogs. So go forth and eat hot dogs (preferably the veggie kind located in sections 123 and 219 at the Oakland Coliseum) and popcorn, sing “Take me out to the Ballgame” Harry Caray style, and go catch a game. And start rooting for my fantasy team, already!

Old age and a mean potato salad

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:08:00 +0000

I have such vivid and fond memories of spending the night at my grandparent’s place. A weekend trip to their house was a celebrated event. My grandparents would drive out to the country and pick us up in the evening and my sister and I, seatbelt-less in the back of their huge yellow car with white leather upholstery, would fight over who got to lean forward in between the front seats and chat with my grandparents during the half hour drive to their house. My sister, who is five years older than me, always won the coveted space by quickly bumping my thin frame out of the way with her shoulder, and I, defeated and annoyed, would slump back into my seat and pout.

My grandfather took his grandfathering job very seriously. He and my grandmother would plan out our week or weekend events down to the menu selection. I loved my grandfather’s cooking. His meals were kid dreamy—simple and tasty. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, baked spaghetti with Parmesan cheese, homemade potato salad—my grandfather’s cooking repertoire was small but consistent and just perfect for my kid palette. Shrimp Louie, and grapefruit sprinkled with powdered sugar, and shredded iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing—these were my grandmother’s specialties. But since she always seemed to be on a diet and would routinely try to convince us that a handful of raw almonds constituted a tasty snack, we looked to grandpa to hook us up at mealtime.

My grandfather would plan our schedule around the daily menu and each meal was planned right after the other meal was consumed. We would finish up a massive stack of pancakes smothered in butter and syrup with strips of bacon and a fried egg vying for space on the plate, and afterwards, while nursing a bulging stomach and languishing in the big black arm chair in their living room, Grandpa would come out of the kitchen, clap his hands together and say, “So, what are we going to do for lunch? I was thinking…” My sister and I would groan, complain that we couldn’t possibly think about lunch after such a huge breakfast and then easily come up with a plan to consume another massive meal in three hours.

Sometimes he would take us through the Burger King drive thru. Other times we would get super burritos oozing sour cream, shredded cheese and ground beef from Jimboy’s Tacos. But my favorite lunch was when he made homemade hamburgers and chocolate shakes. Vanilla ice cream with an overload of chocolate syrup--to this day I am still trying to perfect that shake.

When I hit my teen years I grew out wanting to spend the night at my grandparent’s house. I could drive to their place, visit for the day and still manage to make it home for an evening out with my friends. It didn’t help that they sold their home and moved into an apartment right around the same time that I was growing out of sleepovers. I was too busy with the self-absorption that comes with the teen years to take a weekend off to spend the night with my grandparents, and on the flip side, it didn’t feel the same staying with them in a cramped apartment with no yard. Something changed when they moved—they began to acquiesce to their age, and so did I.

At this point in my life, my grandfather and grandmother are really old—91 and 87 respectively—and both are suffering from memory loss. When my grandfather wonders aloud why walking is so hard or how he can’t remember what he had for lunch, I can only respond with, “Well Grandpa, you are just old. It sucks and that’s okay. It happens.” It saddens me to watch them sit the days away in their arm chairs in front of the t.v. waiting for life to pass, especially when my childhood memories of spending time at their house are so bright and spirited.

I have no idea what it is like to be pushing ninety and feel trapped in an old person’s home like my grandmother or waiting patiently to die like my grandfather. My grandmother, once a vibrant and feisty woman is crotchety and edgy around my kids. Her visible discomfort over her routine being compromised and her constant monitoring of the time makes it difficult for us to visit. I alternate between feeling guilty that I don’t visit enough and feeling relieved when she wants us to leave.

The other day while I was getting my haircut, my hairstylist’s mother came into her shop, bike helmet strapped on and carrying a stack of books. “Barbara” she said, “look what I just picked up from the library.” In her arms were books on how to make jewelry and design with beads. She had decided that after seeing some handmade earrings she wanted to learn how to make jewelry. So she rode her bike to the library and checked out some how-to books. When she left I mentioned to Barb that I thought it was great that her mom was checking out books from the library and that she was even cooler for riding her bike around town. Barb replied, “Yes, she’s pretty spry for eighty-three.” After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I marveled at her spryness. Four years younger than my grandmother and she was riding her bike over to the library to read up on a new hobby.

My grandparents are frustrated. Frustrated that they are confined to a small apartment in a place and surrounded by “old” people, annoyed that they can’t remember things, angry over the loss of their car. They may be losing their memories but they are acutely aware of the fact that at one point they had the freedom and dignity to move through life without having to rely on others to take care of them. I could say that they chose this path that has led them from a well-kept house with a trimmed and loved backyard to this decrepit life of living in a couple of worn arm-chairs in a hot apartment in front of the t.v. But being that I am only thirty-four and I have no idea what it feels like to be the last of the living among my friends and to lose the functioning of my mind, I don’t really get to do anything but speculate vaguely about the kind of life they chose to live and the kind of life I want to live as I grow older. I think that at some point, we all give up. It just so happens that Barb’s mom, be it luck of health in body and mind or sheer gumption, has more energy for an active life than my grandparents. But in the end, there is no way around it, getting old sucks.

Below is the best potato salad ever because it embodies the spirit of two people in my life whom I love dearly. I think about them every time I make this recipe. I don’t know if it was my grandmother or grandfather who perfected this potato salad or if it was handed down through the generations or stolen from an old Betty Crocker recipe book. I am sure my mother knows the answer. But I do know that the sweet pickles make this salad, as my cousins would say, absolutely fabulous. The original version calls for real mayonnaise and hard boiled eggs, but of course I had to bastardize, I mean veganize it. I think memory loss has spared me some grief from the family patriarch over my adaptation.

Grampa’s Potato Salad

Ingredients
1 Bag of Yukon Gold potatoes
1 bunch of finely chopped green onions
1 bunch chopped celery
1 small jar of baby sweet pickles—chopped (It is important to use sweet pickles and not sweet pickle relish. Also, save the juice for the dressing.)
1 ½ cups of Veganaise
2 big squirts of mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Boil potatoes with skins on until soft. Let cool and peel skins off. (I usually run them under cold water in the pot and peel at the same time.)

While the potatoes are boiling, chop the onions and celery into fine pieces and put in bowl. Chop pickles and add to the mixture.

Cut potatoes into good bite size chunks and add to onion, celery and pickles. Add Veganaise and mustard and half of the pickle juice and mix together. Salt and pepper to taste. Feel free to add or subtract amount of mustard and Veganaise to reach right consistency and flavor.

Chill the salad and share with your people.

Spring vegetables--loyal space hogs

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:14:00 +0000

We ate at our favorite Mexican restaurant tonight and the heartburn spreading evenly through my chest cavity is a constant reminder that refried beans covered in a rich mole sauce are not my true friends. Instead they are fickle, superficial companions that coax me into believing they won’t hurt me. I fall for their enticing smells and salty flavor every.single.time. I love the New Mecca Café in Pittsburg. Really I do. But seriously, the pain their food causes me afterwards leaves me feeling old. When did I get to the age where food hurts me?

It is after meals like tonight’s greasy potato tacos and refried beans that leave me yearning for a simple vegetarian meal. Brown rice, lightly braised tofu, a mess of collards and kale all covered in nutritional yeast and sprayed with a bit of tamari—these are the foods that make me feel healthy and cleansed after a weekend of decadent New Mecca tacos.

Last fall we signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box from our favorite organic farmers at Full Belly Farm. Once a week, on the way home from work, we pull into the hippy subdivision in town and pick up our brimming box of organic, seasonal fruits and vegetables.

I look forward to our weekly box of produce, but lately the bounty has started to wreak havoc on our refrigerator. Oranges and potatoes dominate the crisper boxes. Leeks, piled high on the shelf, enough for two to three batches of potato leek soup (that I can’t seem to make time to create) rest in a pile against the refrigerator wall. Bags of winter greens, sweet carrots and beets spill over onto the shelves, pushing out the soymilk and other staples. The vegetables in our fridge are threatening to take over the kitchen. They scream “Eat me! Create with me!” And every week I bring home more, dreading only slightly, the need to make room for the new additions in the fridge.

I try to stay on top of the vegetable madness by combing through our recipe books for menu inspirations on Sunday afternoons. A habit I picked up from my mother, weekly menus have helped to remove the dinner guesswork that religiously happens in our house. Even Full Belly Farms tries to help out by printing out recipes for people like me who need ideas on how to cook with Jerusalem artichokes.

If I don’t take the time to develop a weekly menu, the late weekday afternoon rolls around and inevitably Scott or I will IM the other at work and ask what the evening’s meal should be. On the weeks that I create a menu, the dinner decision is so much easier. Coming up with a meal on the fly after a long day of work can be difficult—my brain immediately pushes all creative meals out of my conscious mind and all I am left with are burritos, pasta with red sauce and take out Chinese food from Ding How.

Tonight, after eating a triple dose of Tums for dessert, I feel inspired to cook simple, tasty foods for the rest of the week. Organic, seasonal vegetables harvested from a local farm, though they may clutter my fridge like a messy roommate, will never mock my age and leave me reaching for relief.

Below is a recipe that is very adaptable and open for whatever seasonal vegetables you happen to have in your fridge. This time we used fresh chard still growing in what is left of our summer garden, asparagus from the Farmer’s Market, Romanesco broccoli from our CSA box, crimini mushrooms from the back of the fridge, and of course, lots of leeks.

Spring vegetables with penne in a white wine sauce

Ingredients
-two to three cloves of minced garlic
-two leeks (the white part only), chopped thin
-two heads of broccoli cut into small trees
-one bundle of thin stemmed asparagus cut into 2 inch segments (I prefer the thin stems to the thicker ones. They tend to be more tender and sweet)
-a handful of mushrooms, sliced thin
-one bunch of chopped chard
-one cup of white wine
-half box of vegetable broth
-a healthy dose of olive oil
-a couple of big shakes of thyme and marjoram (or your favorite herbs—fresh is always good)
-salt and pepper to taste
-one bag of organic penne pasta

Directions
-Bring a large pot of water to boil
-While waiting for the water to boil, heat the olive oil and sauté the leeks and garlic
-Add mushrooms and herbs, salt and pepper and sauté for a few more minutes
-Pour in white wine and vegetable broth and add in asparagus, broccoli and/or any other vegetable threatening to turn in your fridge and simmer
-While the pasta is cooking (don’t forget to add salt to the water), add the chard to the vegetable medley and cook down to a wilted state
-When pasta is finished, drain and pour into a past bowl or a large dish
-Smother with vegetables and serve with a warm crusty artisan bread and a lightly tossed salad

Mushy millet and warm mayonaise

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:30:00 +0000

When I graduated from college I was antsy to travel. Young, liberal, and idealistic, I was ready to leave the United States for a dose of worldly reality. I had no real understanding of life outside of my comfy home and it was time for me to gain some perspective. So Scott and I left with only a few personal possessions shoved into a couple of dirty backpacks and a rough sense of where we wanted to travel.

While we didn’t have our backpacking trip planned out completely, I knew I wanted to visit my friend Leanne in Mali, Africa. I was drawn to Africa—lush, colorful, harsh, and severe. It was the polar opposite of the world I was used to and seemed like the perfect place to start our trip.

When our jet landed on the single dirt runway of the Ouagadougou airport in Burkina Faso, and I saw the bright red landscape and shanty houses of the city, I thought that maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea to visit sub-Saharan West Africa. Leanne eased us into the country by having us stay in a decent hotel with running water, clean beds and air conditioning our first night. The second day, when we left the city and moved into the countryside, that was a different experience altogether.

On our second night, while sitting in a decrepit little room with a jagged shard of glass for a mirror and roaches the size of small house cats, I freaked out. The foreign scariness, grime, and the possibility of permanent insanity from the Malaria drugs all began to mess with my nerves. Two days earlier I lamented the short amount of time we would be visiting Mali, and after we landed I was terrified at the notion of being there close to a month. Rocking back and forth, knees pressed to my chin, I schemed about how to catch the next flight out to Europe. This was no sheltered safari. We were four “rich” white kids in our early twenties in a very black, impoverished country. With my pale Irish skin there would be no blending in. Children swarmed us, touched our clothes and spoke to us in their native dialect. I felt like I was trapped in a National Geographic photo, only not the glamorous and romanticized image that the glossy pictures depict in the magazine. I wasn’t prepared for Mali or the realities of a third-world country. It was the poverty that rattled me. A quick visit to Mexico a couple of years beforehand did nothing to prepare me for the dire conditions.

Leanne planned out our visit with stops at several different villages throughout Mali after crossing the border from Burkina Faso. About half way through our stay we spent four days at the village she had been living in for two years. Temperatures in Mali topped out at 120 degrees in the shade--this was during the cooler, rainy season. I spent the first day in her village alternating between lying on the clay floor of her hut and staggering to the well to pull up buckets of water to pour over my hot body. Mali is a Muslim country so even though the heat was deathly, we had to keep our legs covered.

Leanne warned us before hand that we would be taking all our meals with the dougatigi, the chief of the village, and that each meal of the day would consist of millet porridge (commonly known as bird seed in the U.S.) and a green baobab leaf sauce, the color and consistency of vending machine slime. Fully aware of the affect of baobab sauce on the psyche, Leanne purchased a bag of humanitarian-grade rice (usually laden with small inconspicuous rocks to be discovered later during mealtime) to give to the dougatigi’s wife and asked that we be fed it for breakfast. It was Leanne’s idea to start the day off with a rice meal and then struggle through the mashed millet and baobab sauce the rest of the day.

Our first meal with the dougatigi was somber. We stooped around the common bowl and carefully stuck our hands into the steaming hot food. I felt awkward. I’ve eaten family style before but not with strangers with whom I didn’t share a language, eating out of the same bowl with dirty hands and crouched on the ground in a squat. Eating millet and baobab sauce required an element of skill. After inserting your hand into burning hot food, you had to dip it into a pool of slimy baobab goo sitting in a well of millet. In order to keep the baobab from running down your chin, you needed to swing it around your fingers a few times and then insert more than half of your hand into your mouth.

The dougatigi’s wife, aiming to please us, added a dried fish to the baobab sauce for “flavor.” Even Leanne, who had spent most of the last two years eating the same meal everyday and had grown accustomed to baobab and millet, was not enthused by the fish flavor. By the third day, the mere thought of dinner caused my stomach to cramp up into a little ball of protest. Scott and I had put our vegan eating habits on hold during our travels, especially during our stay in Africa, and I almost wept with relief when Leanne sacrificed one of her chickens for our last meal.

It was for the best that our hosts didn’t understand English because in all honesty, the millet and baobab sauce was foul. We crouched there forcing back hot millet with the sole intent to not offend our hosts by shunning their food. “Just keep eating” I grunted at Scott with a smile on my face to camouflage my real feelings. My mantra, "just keep eating, just keep eating" was broken intermittently by Scott’s request to cease the meal. We were like two kids, forcing down cold, canned vegetables, praying that our parents would take pity and excuse us from the table.

Eight times in four days, we repeated this task of eating millet. We’d sweat in the heat and focus on pushing past the gag reflex. On the last day, as we sat quietly swearing, encouraging each other through gritted smiles to continue with the meal, the dougatigi, normally a stoic and quiet man, addressed Leanne. She replied in his native language, turned to us and chuckled.

“What did he say,” I asked, mouth brimming with food, hoping we hadn't done anything to shame Leanne or offend his family.

“He said your friends are good eaters.”

Our trip to Mali put my cushy life at home into clear focus. All of a sudden the slew of things I had been taught to fear all my life seemed trivial. I watched a three-year-old girl, her mother somewhere working the fields, play with a rusted, jagged-edged metal box that someone had thrown away, and it dawned on me that we worry way too much about hurting ourselves. A stop for street food to eat an amazing fried egg sandwich made with hot mayonnaise that never saw the inside of a refrigerator felt exhilarating and risky. Eating from a common bowl didn’t make me sick, but instead taught me humility and the importance of respecting a meal, no matter how modest the food or surroundings. Africa helped me shake off the comfortable, overprotective cloak of home and it was a liberating experience.

But after three weeks in Mali, I was ready to leave. For all the lessons I learned, it wasn’t easy to adapt to that country. I escaped drug-induced insanity (but not the hallucinations) and embraced a flexible approach to life that I never had before. And today, when I start to fret dirty little hands, and feel the urge to overprotect my kids, I stop and remember my time in Mali.

Below is not a recipe for millet and baobab. Instead I am leaving you with my favorite Malian dish called tiga diga na. This peanut stew was my street meal of choice. It is easy to make and, unlike the millet and baobab dish, kept us full and happy long after our jet left the country.

Tiga Diga Na- serves 6

Ingredients
-12oz peanut butter
-¼ cup of tomato paste
-one cube of vegetarian bullion (or the African bullion of choice)
-½ head of cabbage cut into four large pieces
-one to two sweet potatoes cut into large chunks
-Any other random vegetables cut into big pieces (cauliflower, broccoli, etc.)
-three cloves of garlic (or more depending on your love of garlic) cut in halves
-Enough water for desired consistency (I like it thick and soupy)
-Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

-Blend peanut butter, tomato paste and water together and place over low/medium heat (be careful, the sauce can stick to the bottom of the pan easily so make sure that the heat isn’t too high and stir frequently)

-Immediately add all the remaining ingredients and let simmer until the vegetables are cooked (the longer the better, at least for 45 minutes)

-Serve over white rice, preferably not humanitarian grade

If they only came with a handbook

noreply@blogger.com (Caren Roma) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:46:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around the mind of my four-year-old. And I can’t say that I am doing a very good job at it. I am constantly trying to stay ahead of my clever little boy, and it is exhausting. He keeps me honest, routinely tests freshly laid boundaries and knows where all my soft spots are located. If I didn’t know better I would think he was sent to me by a past nemesis with the sole purpose of bringing a little bit of hell to my every day. Cunning and crafty, mind-bogglingly frustrating yet charming, funny and incredibly lovable—he can drive me insane and then two seconds later, bring me to my knees with a simple “I love you mommy.”

Our pediatrician once said that kids are like farm animals who every now and again like to press up against the fence to see if it is really electric and solid. Sometimes I think Lennon is a goat with the brain of a goldfish that doesn’t stop at pressing up against the fence but instead attempts to chew through the wire—again, and again and again.

Lennon is going through a period right now where he is making bad choices and testing boundaries, and it kills me to watch him struggle over learning a lesson. I never understood the reason behind making a bad choice when it was much easier to learn from others so as to avoid the pain of having to go through the lesson myself. Yes I know there are wonderful character building moments in learning through failure and mistakes. That is great for other people I am sure. But as a parent, you get to experience your child’s poor decisions almost as if you made the choice yourself. At this point in my life I have enough character. Any additional “character building” experiences learned by myself or through my child, are just a stomach sickening icing on the proverbial cake.

Books on raising children haven’t been that informative and the internet is not any better with helping me navigate the child-rearing years. They are good for providing a general outline on what stage my child may be in. But they don’t go into detail. What I need is a survey with questions specifically tailored to analyze my child. And then at the end I get a horoscope-like synopsis that provides me with a solution and a future forecast for the coming weeks. But there is no survey, just daily trial and error attempts. Parents who have weathered the child-rearing years sit languishing on the other side with quiet, knowing comments and little smiles. “Caren, this too shall pass,” they say. Okay whatever. So in the meantime, how do I help my kid move through this latest intense phase of unpleasantness?

I want to enjoy my time with my children and for the most part I do. But sometimes I find myself wishing for them to be a bit older for one reason or another. I don’t want to wish their childhood away; it’s just that once in a while I want a break from the intensity of raising kids and to step out of the parenting silo that keeps me isolated and makes me feel like I am sucking at the most important job I will ever hold.

Am I the only one in the world who gets angry and yells when she is frustrated? It is a touchy subject, talking about weaknesses with other parents and friends, especially when it comes to raising children. No one wants to admit they lose their cool and occasionally scare the crap out of their kids. For me the first thought that runs through my head is, “have I scarred his memory? Will this be the first thing she thinks about when she recalls her childhood?” Not every memory is going to be a good one, I realize this. I just hope that in the end, my kids remember more good than bad. I guess I should be thankful that the reason Lennon doesn’t like us to yell is not because it scares him, but because it hurts his ears.

A colleague of mine recently said he believes that if as parents we provide a constant beat of love, boundaries and support, the repetitive rhythm will create a foundation throughout our children’s lives and, if consistent, will eventually prevail over the quick outbursts of anger, and the moments of weakness that all parents experience. I can’t choose which events my children will remember and which they will forget. I have no doubt they will remember times when they got into trouble, but I hope the consistent attention, games and laughter will outweigh any remembered moments of anger and grief.

Raising kids is intense. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just let things slide for a bit. Would Calla still be biting kids at school? Would Lennon still be in diapers? As much as I would like a break from feeling like the bad, boundary-setting parent, I know those are questions best left unanswered. The creation of little minds, the constant focus, the huge manic emotions from our kids and us weary parents—I say, this too shall pass.

The recipe below was invented by Lennon and used by me as a reward last week when he made the right choice. I haven’t worked out the visual kinks (meaning they aren’t the cutest things you will ever make) but they are super tasty and worth trying.

Vegan Peanut Butter and Jelly Thumbprint Cookies
Makes a ton—like 30-40+

Ingredients:
-2 ½ cups organic unbleached flour
-1 ¼ tsp baking powder
-½ tsp salt
-½ cup canola oil
-2/3 cup peanut butter
-1 stick of margarine, slightly softened
-1 1/3 cups of sugar
-Egg replacer, enough for two eggs
-2 ½ tsp vanilla
-jam-your flavor of choice

Directions:
-Whisk together dry ingredients
-Beat together canola oil, peanut butter, margarine, sugar, egg replacer and vanilla until well blended
-Add dry ingredients to the peanut mixture and blend until smooth
-Cover cookie sheets with parchment paper
-Scoop a soup spoonful of dough and roll into a generous ball
-With your knuckle, press a well into the center to hold the jam (this is where it gets tricky. Unlike the thumbprint cookies in the last post, these will crack more and flatten out while baking. Not necessarily a bad thing, just don't be surprised when it happens)
-Pour a small spoonful of jam into each cookie
-Place sheet in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes or until cookies start to look golden around the edges
-Once baked, remove the sheet from the oven and let the cookie cool on the sheet for about five minutes
-Transfer cookies to a rack for further cooling
-Pat yourself on the back for being a good parent