Queer Vegan Kitchen

Matzoh Ball Soup

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 20:53:00 +0000

Matzoh ball soup is good for what ails ya, or, for that matter, what doesn't ail ya. Vegetable broth is warm, full of the distilled essence of its constituent vegetables, and easy to eat with a sore throat or indigestion. Matzoh ball soup is vegetable broth + dumplings; further reinforcing my theory that dumplings improve everything.

As I've said before, I am filled up with visions of dumplings, Professor Matzoh (above) is one such vision. Sometimes he has adventures, like adding a couple of chili peppers to the vegetable broth; this is very exciting if you're a matzoh ball (or me).
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It's a long time 'til passover, but I think this is a good recipe to have on hand for flu season. Also, the matzoh balls have tofu which, depending on who you ask, is not kosher for passover.This is definitely an autumnal vegetable broth, and near passover I like to put leeks and parsnips and springtime veggies into my broth. Above all, use what is in season, and if you don't know what's in season, just go to the farmer's market. Vegetable broth is very forgiving; I accidentally bought a watermelon daikon with my rutabagas and it still turned out lovely.

Autumn Vegetable Broth Requires:

3-4 Rutabagas, chopped
2-3 Carrots, chopped
2-3 Ribs of Celery, chopped (chop up the leafy stuff too)
4-10 cloves garlic, minced fine (to taste)
2 medium onions, chopped large
2 small chili peppers, diced small (optional)
Some fresh dill, to taste (dry is fine, but it's strong so be careful)
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
A bay leaf or two
8 cups water

The matzoh ball recipe I adapted from the Post Punk Kitchen, but their recipe always frustrated me because you can only get about two cups of matzoh from a box of matzoh crakers, so I reduced it proportionally, and added beer. Why beer? Because I'm from the Pacific Northwest and we have great beer; also, beer is good for what ails you. Recipe doubles.

1/2 box Matzoh Crackers ground into Course Matzoh Meal (about 1 cup)
3/4 Package of Silken Tofu
1/4 cup Oil
1/4 cup + 2 tbs Beer (pour a half cup and take a swig or two, you can also use vegetable broth)
3/4 tsp each salt and pepper
a little dill

I know it just leaves you with leftover tofu instead of left over matzo, but I use tofu for dips and things, and the recipe doubles more easily.

First get your vegetable broth going. Here's my mis en place with my stylish Sundance Natural Foods tote:

I peeled everything, which is unusual for me, but I think root vegetable and onion skins bitter the broth. They are full of nutrients though, so it is your call.

Add a good bit of olive oil to a very large stock pot and heat it over medium. When it is hot, saute your vegetables starting with the slower cooking veggies (onions) and moving to the quick cooking stuff (celery tops, garlic, and peppers). Salt liberally throughout the process.

When the veggies start to show signs of browning, its time to add your water. Toss in your bay, more salt, and pepper, and bring that mess to a rolling boil, then drop the heat down to a simmer. It will need to simmer for 2-3 hours, so in the meantime you can get your matzah balls ready. Here's the essentials (minus the beer).

First, crumble the matzoh into a food processor. You can also do this part by hand, but the food processor is much faster.

You want a meal that is mostly very fine, but still has a few bigger bits about the size pictured below. Variation is good because the finer meal is good for structure and the coarser meal is better for texture.

Empty the food processor into a bowl and stir the salt, pepper, and dill into the matzah meal.

Now it is time for the wet mix; drain your tofu, add it to the food processor or blender and puree until it's very smooth.

Add your oil, and beer or broth. It looks neat:

Puree again, then add that business to the matzoh meal. Mix well with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula.

Eventually you'll have to use your hands. Massage it until it is consistent; it will be quite firm.

So firm in fact that you can form it into a creepy matzah baby. Isn't it cute... or something?

Cover with a wet towel or plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge for 1 hour. Your vegetable broth should be progressing nicely now, so give it a taste and see if it needs salt. You could also add some tamari if you were feeling bold. I'd hold off on the fresh dill until the very end though; dill looses its fresh taste if it is over cooked.

After your hour is up, start rolling quarter-sized balls of matzoh dough. I feel like matzoh balls shouldn't take more than two bites, but ball size is a matter of personal taste.

Smoothness is futile with a matzoh ball, but it is critical that the ball have no visible cracks, is well compacted, and is roughly round; this will ensure even cooking, with minimal breakage. Here's a detail shot of what your after:

Those larger crumbs are a critical part of the finished texture. If you make quarter-sized balls, you should wind up with approximately 18 dumplings, which means that if you double the recipe you get a perfect square of 36 balls:

I like to let my balls hang out for another 10-20 minutes so the outside dries a little, which I think helps them to hold their final shape. This is just enough time to strain your vegetable broth.

The cooking process really brought out the pink of the watermelon daikon, and you can see a big piece right in the center. You could potentially boil your vegetable broth for six hours, but I like to have some vegetables with a bit of flavor left over so I can mash 'em and get in on some of that lost fiber!

In a large stock pot, bring 8-10 cups of water to a boil, and salt it liberally. Like a handful of salt. I'm serious. Add the dumpling dough-balls thus:

Boil 'em 'til they float, then boil 'em ten minutes more. Meanwhile, heat your freshly strained vegetable broth, and toss in some chopped fresh dill. Dill is strong, so be gentle. With a slotted spoon move the matzoh balls into the vegetable broth. They'll float for a minute, but unless you serve it immediately you'll need a ladle for broth and a slotted spoon to fish out dumplings.

A bit more fresh dill and some grated carrot are a nice garnish, but I didn't bother. This soup is so good, so simple, and so nourishing. Here's some bowls made up:

You may have noticed that I used alot of different spellings for matzah (מַצָּה), and I chose to do so because there are about 7 accepted spellings; this means, in tern that the only real way to spell matze incorrectly, apart from leaving off a "t" or other such typographical slips, is to be stylistically inconsistent. So you can think of my many spellings as a sign of respect to each of them for their individual merits, or as a "fuck you" to style guidelines that tell me I have to pick just one. I hate having to pick just one.

Some time in your life, a loved one will fall ill. If you have mastered vegetable broth, you will for a short time be able to make them feel better. And you will feel better. So learn now, before the winter illnesses take you too.

Abel volunteered to be my Guestmouth this week, and confirmed that the soup was deeply warming:

In the 5th century BCE, the Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates said "Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food." It is this sense of feeling nurtured and whole to which I refer when I say that matzo ball soup is a panacea. I hope you will try my soup, and be nourished by my balls.

Next week the dumpling mania continues with Steamed Buns! Remember to keep your kitchen queer.

Dango

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:00:00 +0000

I am consumed by visions of dumplings; the idea of something small, doughy, and a bit warm is absolutely the most comforting thought I can manage. It is like home, but tastier. If you're wondering what a dango (dahn-goh) is, they're little rice dumplings on skewers that look like this:

Except without the unnecessarily huge eyes; though I do think they seem uncannily friendly, but perhaps its just that they're balls. Read Wikipedia if you'd like to know more.

More...The dango themselves are very simple, you will need only:

1lb Glutinous or Sweet rice flour
1lb Silken Tofu (someone found a lot of the Mori Nu stuff in a dumpster)
a few tablespoons of water

Then there's a series of toppings! Specifically, I chose black sesame, kinako (toasted soy flour), peanut, and soy syrup. Their ingredients are grouped below:

4 tbsp black sesame seeds
2 tbsp sugar

4 tbsp kinako
2 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
a small pinch of salt (a scant 1/4 tsp)

2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp wine or mirin
2 tbsp sugar

(Yields approximately 14 skewers)
Here's everything:

First, you'll want to prepare the toppings. For the peanut, you can buy them pre-roasted, but what's the fun in that? Neila was peanut coordinator and peanut gallery for our dango operation.

Preheat an oven to 500°, then simply spread them on a cookie sheet, and toss them in the oven for 5 minutes, stir them, and then send them in again. It is advisable to roast more than a cup and a half, because they're rather tasty and it's difficult to avoid eating them. When its all said and done they look like this:

"Discard" (eat) any peanuts that are a little too brown, and grind the rest coarsely in a blender or food processor with the salt and sugar, and dump them on a plate or a pie tin, so that it will be easy to roll dumplings therein.

For the sesame seeds, simply grind them coarsely with a pestle or in a coffee grinder, like so:

You want a consistency like coarse sand. Mix the sesame meal with its sugar on another plate or pie tin.

The kinako comes pre-pulverulent, so you can mix it with its sugar straight away.

There is a traditional type of syrup dango called mitarashi dango, which are flame grilled and so called because they are eaten at the Mitarashi Festival in Kyoto. I didn't get any mirin (cooking rice wine) at the Asian imports store, so I improvised with a bit of red wine, which made these not-so-traditional-but-still-quite-delicious syrup dango.

Stir together the soy sauce, wine or mirin, and sugar in a small sauce pot, and whisk over medium heat until it bubbles like this:

Reduce heat to simmer, and continue cooking for five more minutes or until thick, stirring often. If it seems like it is getting close to burning you can just take it off the burner for a second, but make sure it thickens.

Now to the fun part: dango making. Drain the tofu, and combine it with rice flour with your hands until it looks like this:

Start adding water, a teaspoon at a time, until the mixture forms a stiff dough. When you see it cracking, like this:

You need to add more water. Continue adding water (it shouldn't be much more than six teaspoons) until the mixture is easily malleable and does not crack. You should be able to form it into a creepy alien baby, like this:

You can see it is still cracking a bit, so I added another teaspoon or two of water. If you wanted your dango to be pink you can add strawberry preserves or puree instead of water, for green ones, prepared, sweetened matcha (the drink not just the powder) is great.

Forming the balls is a bit of a trick, but start by squishing a small bit of dough (about two tablespoons) into a rough patty shape thus:

then rolling it into a smooth ball, thus:

Smooth balls are important, because smoothness effects their mouth feel, and unless you're covering them with something opaque, people will notice your inattention to detail. Irregular balls are also more likely to come apart when cooking.

Boil the dumplings. They'll start to float like this:

Continue cooking for about three minutes more and immerse them immediately in ice water.

Set them in the tray of the topping of your choice and spoon the topping mixture on to them, you may have to roll a bit to coat, but if you get the powders to wet they tend to clump, so keep rolling to a minimum, because clumps are not tasty.

Once you get three dango coated, gently skewer them, like so:

With the last one you want to push the skewer almost (but not quite) all the way through, so it looks like this:

From here the skewers can be transfered to a serving plate or stored in the fridge for about a week. They are better fresh, and I recommend let them warm to room temperature for a bit before you serve them.

Nate and his beard Carlisle agreed to pose with the dango.

So good it must be wrong.

Before I leave you, take a moment to consider the dango as a symbol. The beloved poet Issa (whose pseudonym means roughly "one cup of tea") wrote a great many poems mentioning dango, and he wrote praise for the dango as simple as the dumpling itself, apropos of a sweet that goes so well with tea:

Truth be told,
I prefer, rather than blossoms,
dango

While this translation hardly does it justice, this poem, to me, is about impermanence. Dango and blossoms (some dango are traditional for blossom viewing festivals) are both impermanent, and Issa uses a Japanese idiom, "hana yori dango" which stresses the importance of practical things over frivolous beauty. Dumplings satisfy us in a way that aesthetics cannot, and even we, in the end, are impermanent. I ask that you take this lesson from the dango, abandon your attachment to superficiality, and find instead what nourishes you deeply.

Especially if that involves balls in your mouth.
Next week the testicle puns and dumpling shenanigans continue with Matzo Ball Soup!

Jalapeño Bagels

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:22:00 +0000

Bagels are the most rewarding toroidal pastry. I'm not here to bad-mouth doughnuts, but I think they have received far too much attention; as evidenced by the Torus article on Wikipedia failing to mention bagels even once. This is a travesty! Keep a look out for the Facebook group to end Wikipedia's bagel discrimination (Bagels Are Toroids Too So Halt Internet Tacitness (BATTSHIT), or Toroidal Inclusiveness Coalition(TIC)). Of course anyone can edit Wikipedia, but why miss an opportunity form another Facebook group, and protest a bit?

There is a reason that most people don't make bagels themselves though, it is a tremendous undertaking and bagels of reasonable quality are available from bakeries (most supermarket bagels are wite-brehd™ rolls with holes in). However, if you are willing to work a bit, these bagels will reward your effort with interest.

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You will need some non-food stuff:

flat, smooth work area on which to shape and proof bagels
stock pot for boiling the bagels
two smallish mixing bowls for liquid and dry ingredients
one small bowl for mixing oil with jalepeños
flat pan or cookie sheet for baking bagels
A standing mixer, or a very large bowl.

You may also want:

a kitchen scale
cooling racks
big knife for dough surgery
~~victims~~, er assistants

The Bagels are made of:

3 oz oil
1 1/2 cups water VERY WARM (and maybe a little more)
2 TB sugar
2 tsp salt
1 TB active dry yeast (a little more than a packet of instant yeast)
22 oz flour(about 5 cups)

You may also want:

1 tsp tumeric
4-5 jalapeños

First you make a yeast slurry. Combine VERY WARM water, sugar, salt and yeast:

Mine were very excited right away, but its best to give them about ten minutes to warm up and get multiplying. Let your slurry hang out somewhere warm for about 10 minutes while you assemble your other ingredients.

Weigh out the flour:

Add it to your standing mixer (or large bowl):

Most of the "heat" from the jalapeño, like most peppers, comes from the white picante (placenta) surrounding the seeds; if you want spicey bagels you can leave it in, but I prefer my bagels mild. If you want more detail on how to remove this and slice the peppers you can see the step by step photo in my Gyoza post.

Dice 'em and mix 'em with your three oz of oil. If you want the color, now is a good time to add the turmeric. I tripled the recipe, but it should look more or less like this.

By this time your slurry should be foaming like crazy:

If you're using a standing mixer, dump the wet ingredients on top. If you've just got a mixing bowl, you should mix your wet stuff first.

Start on the lowest speed.

Until it comes together, like the picture below, then crank it up to medium.

Let that it rattle for at least 15-20 minutes. If you're using your hands this much kneading will take a really long time. I recommend kneading it until you're exhausted, then resting for 1o minutes, and repeating the process. It should look like this when its all done:

Shape it into a nice brain (I tripled the recipe to make 3 dozen, so don't be frightened if your brain is smaller).

Tuck it into an oiled bowel or some such vessel, keep it in a nice warm place (like an oven with a pilot light, or a couch with a bunch of cuddling people) cover it with a damp towel or tee-shirt, and let it sit for an hour.

'Til it looks like this:

Punch it down, which despite the name and the way this picture looks, just means pressing down gently and folding a bit until the bigger bubbles have gone.

Slice it into quarters, and then slice those into thirds.

Definitely use a cutting board though, that last picture is silly; I could have dulled the knife. You'll be reusing the t-shirt to cover all of your cute little pieces, to see that they don't dry out.

Then you have to do this thing with rolling and folding, here just watch this video. Put a large pot of liberally salted water on to boil, and let them chill out for another ten or twenty minutes under that tee-shirt, and they look like this:

Preheat the oven to 450°, then boil the little darlings, for about a minute on each side.

Place them on a flat surface, no cooling racks unless you want your bagels to have sweet grill marks. These bagels are not the innocent dough rounds they once were, they're grayer, emptier, and tempered by the relentless boil.

I love the color change with the turmeric here; especially on the bluish steel background. It reminds me of that one movie. You know the one, with the underground sparring society? I don't remember.

Now clearly these are flour dough balls that have been cooked in water, so let us pause for a moment to consider an important question: Is the bagel a dumpling? I think so, and I'm tired of bagel exclusion, and therefore I propose Bagel UNity with Toroids and Dumplings (BUNDT), Coalition Against Bagel Linguistic Exclusion (CABLE) or Bagel Advocacy and Support Society (BASS) to take action against the bagel's categorical disenfranchisement on Wikipedia and the world at large. If your wondering why I haven't posted in awhile, its because it takes a long time to come up with acronyms.

Now you bake them at 450° for 10 minutes and flip them. They should look like this when you put them back in the oven for 10 more minutes.

Remove them quickly to a cooling rack and try to resist eating them for 10 minutes so they will be solid enough to stand up to slicing.

(Note the sweet grill marks in the above photo) That is one fine looking whole wheat jalapeño bagel.

They stand up pretty well to those bagel-slicing guillotines, but you may just want to tear into them with teeth bared, à la this weeks Guest Mouth, Ashley:

Ah-hem, punk rock.
Happy baking y'all; remember to keep your kitchen queer. Next week Dango!

FEAST

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:43:00 +0000

I am disgusted that we annually minimize the continuing genocide against indigenous people with a celebratory feast that slaughters literally millions of turkeys (the National Turkey Federation estimates that 45 million were killed in the 2009 thanksgiving season alone). The myth of Thanksgiving is, by design, a tool to justify early European imperialism in North America, and excuse its atrocities.

I did, however, have a feast on thanksgiving day; it was delicious and considering that everyone there understood the implications of the holiday, an all vegan thanksgiving was kind of subversive. Now that its been a month and finals are over, I'mma finally post the photos.

Our theme was things shaped like other things. We had a full spread:
Cock Roast (made the night before, reheated the day of the Feast)
Sour Dough Stuffing (prepped the night before, baked the day of)
Mashed 'Tater Casserole (prepped the night before, baked the day of)
Rainbow Chard (day of)
Heart Biscuits (night before, reheated with roast)
Gravy (day of)
Cranberry Sauce (day of)
PIE! not pictured above; it'll get its own entry later

Recipes down here
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Hmmm... that thing in the middle looks kind of like a...

Cock-Roast (AKA Seitan's Penis)!
This does require a novelty penis pan, but I discovered that the recipe fit into one that was just lying around my co-op. I fudged a recipe from Bryanna's Vegan Feasts, it takes awhile so it might be a good idea to prepare it the day before your feast.

You will need:
2 c.gluten flour
1/2 c. bean flour (I blend about 2/3 a cup red lentils in my blender until it is a very fine powder, but you can use soy or chickpea(besan) flour with good results)
1/2 c. nutritional yeast flakes
2 tsp. onion powder
2 tsp. garlic granules (or more)
1tsp. pepper
12 oz. firm tofu (if you can't do soy 1 cup of cooked, mashed beans will work)
1 and 1/2 c. water
3 T. soy sauce (a little salt water, marmite dissolved in a bit of water, or diluted vegan Worcestershire sauce all work fine)
1 T. olive oil

In a blender or food processor blend your tofu (or whatever) with the other wet ingredients until very smooth. I use a little more oil than a Tablespoon of oil and I think it gives the roast more character.
Mix the dry ingredients well in a large bowl, or standing mixer with a dough hook.
Add in the dry ingredients and mix until a dough-ball forms. Let it rest for about ten minutes.
Knead for about 10 minutes, let it rest for a bit, then knead for another ten minutes. This is a lot of work to do by hand, but it pays off in the roasts texture.

Let it rest for about an hour and prepare a basting broth

preheat your oven to 325 degrees
Pinch your dough ball into a rough cock-and-balls shape and press it into your oiled novelty pan. A loaf pan will work, but you might consider splitting it in half and using two loaf pans; Bryanna also talks about using an oval clay cooker, but I've never tried.
Try to get as much basting broth on the cock as possible, without spilling to much on the sides of the pan, and put it in the oven for about 4 hours, basting heavily every 1/2 hour or so. If you're using a loaf pan, just pour the basting broth in, and there's no need to reapply.
If you have a novelty mold, flip out your roast onto a lightly oiled cookie sheet, baste heavily and put that bad boy back in for about another 2 hours, basting regularly. If you're using a loaf pan, just flip it.
When its a little lighter than the one pictured below, it is done.

Delicious. If you make it the night before, it only takes about 15-20 minutes at 350 to reheat.

Sourdough Stuffing

Stuffing is self explanatory: toast the bread, saute the vegetables, combine and bake. It practically makes itself but breaking it down can't hurt.
You need:
4 carrots
4 stalks of celery
1 small onion
1/2-2/3 loaf sour dough (best if its a bit stale, bakery dumpsters often have a lot of this)
1 cup water, broth, or mushroom soaking liquid (from rehydrating dried mushrooms)
2 tsp sage
2 tsp garlic granules
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp allspice
olive oil for toasting and sauteing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cube the bread, smaller is generally better, but its definitely a personal taste thing.
Toss cubes on a cookie sheet with olive oil, and maybe a bit of salt and pepper.
Toast until golden, stirring regularly, no more than 30 minutes.
While your bread is toasting, dice your vegetables.
In a large sauce pan, saute the onions with the salt and pepper, until they start to become translucent. (be sure to remove your bread from the oven)
Add your carrots, and as they get to temperature add the celery.
When your celery gets to temperature, add your other spices,
When your mirepoix (vegetable mix) starts to become a bit tender, add the broth and stir until the broth is hot.
Combine everything in a mixing bowl and toss to spread the juices around.
Put it in a greased casserole, and bake for about 45 minutes at 350.

Do not expect leftovers

Mashed 'Tater Casserole
Or Casserole des Pommes de Terre au Rosemarin avec Duxelles Vegetalienne
Mashed potatoes are delicious, but dull; everyone loves them, but people are afraid of change and won't dare to tamper with tradition. Fuck that.

For the vegan Duxelles:
~1 pound of mushrooms
4-6 shallots
1 medium onion
5-6 cloves of garlic
2 tsp dry rosemary, measured then crushed (or 1 Tbl fresh rosemary, chopped)
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp sage
salt and pepper
~2 Tbl olive oil

For the 'Taters
~3-5 pounds potatoes
a handfull of rosemary
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup olive oil... don't judge me.

Set a large pot of salted water on to boil, not too salty, you might want to use the cooking liquid.
Preheat your oven to 375.
Chop the potatoes into course chunks, and when the water boils drop 'em in.
While yur 'taters are a-cookin', chop the onions, mushrooms, and shallots fine.
In a medium saucepan heat some oil, then saute the shallots and onions with a bit of salt and pepper until they become transluscent. (remember to keep testing your 'taters for mashability)
Add in your garlic, mushrooms and herbs, and continue to saute until the mushrooms are tender.
Drain your 'taters, reserve liquid for gravy (if you wanna). Mash 'em with a little oil, and herbs. They're a lot thicker than your standard mashed taters, it's a good thing.
Grease a 3 quart casserole (~13" x 9" x 2"), and put down a thick-ish (~.25"-.5") layer of 'tater, spread evenly.
Cover that evenly with your duxelle (the shallot-mushroom-onion stuff)
Repeat this process until the casserole is filled, make sure you've enough for a layer of 'tater on top.
Drizzle the top with a little olive oil, or place a few chunks of coconut oil if you're feeling really decadent.
Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top has nice hints of gold.

Mashed potatoes don't know what they're missing.

Rainbow Chard
The queerest vegetable!

You need:
2 bunches of rainbow chard
6-12 cloves of garlic
1 large or 2 medium onions
1 tsp of sugar
a generous splash (~3 Tbl) of vinegar (apple cider or balsamic)
2 Tbl olive oil
salt and pepper

Chop your onions and your chard into bite-sized bits. I separate the stems from the leaves 'cause they take a little longer to cook.
In a medium-to-large-ish fry pan or wok, saute the onions in the olive oil with some salt and pepper.
When the onions start to get translucent, add the chard stems and garlic.
When those are to temperature, add your leaves, sugar and vinegar. Stir, cover, and turn the heat down to medium-low.
Continue steaming for 5-10 more minutes, stirring fairly often. When the leaves start to get bright green, poor the pan's contents into a serving unit you can cover.

Heart-Shaped Biscuits
I used my general biscuit recipe, but I didn't have any coconut mylk on-hand so I used 1/4 cup hazlenut butter dissolved in 1 1/4 cups water (I also used more baking soda, I think ours gets less potent 'cause it sits out). I happened to have a heart-shaped cookie-cutter on hand, so I rolled out the dough roughly (if you mess with it too much it gets chewy, and hard) to about 3/4" thick and wiggled the cutter a little as I pressed so the sides wouldn't get all pinched together.

Food that is shaped like other things just tastes better.

Gravy
I doubled my gravy recipe, but I used olive oil and potato cooking liquid in place of water, which lends nutrition and nuance.

Cranberry Sauce
Like stuffing it practically makes itself; I like the stuff in a jar because it is novel, retro, and absurd, but tastewise, it can never compare to the homemade stuff; a hint of lemon and love make all the difference. Jesus I sound like fuckin' Martha Stewart... it's a good thing.

You Need:
1 cup some kind of juice (orange works great, water is fine, but you might want more sugar)
1 cup sucanat (or sweetener of your choice)
1 pound cranberries
a little cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and/or cloves

Put all your ingredients in a pot, bring it to a boil, reduce it to a simmer.
Let it simmer until all of the berries have exploded.
Pour into a mold and allow it to cool before serving.

Biscuits and Gravy

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:58:00 +0000

Gluten-free biscuits and gravy, served with a chard and kale salad and roasted romanescu.

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Gluten-free Biscuits:

4 cups brown rice flour
2 Tbs Xanthan gum (omit if you're using gluten-containing flour)
1 1/2 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp of rosemary and/or oregano (optional)
1/2 cup Fat; I like coconut oil or refrigerated olive oil.
1 1/2 cups of coconut (or some other nut) mylk + 1 1/2 tsp vinegar

In a food processor, combine the dry ingredients and blend for about 30 seconds
Run food processor and stream in oil. You may have to scrape down the sides a little, but keep running it until the oil is evenly distributed.
Stream in the soured coconut milk, and then quickly turn off the processor; overmixing will make your biscuits chewy and rubbery, and will interfere with their fluffiness.
Roll or pat out your dough, and cut it into squares or circles. A can is about biscuit sized and makes an excellent biscuit-cutter, but squares have a nice rustic feel.
bake at 400 for 10-15 minutes

I don't usually use a recipe for my gravy, but it looks something like this:

1/4 cup fat (coconut oil is delicious)
2 Tbs brown rice flour
1 pound mushrooms
1/4 cup tamari (or other wheat-free soy sauce)
1 1/2 cup water
Salt and pepper to taste
herbs and spices to taste (I like oregano, fennel, nutritional yeast, and coriander)

Whisk your flour into your fat, then heat it over medium-low heat, whisking almost constantly. Its important to add the flour a little at a time, or your gravy may be lumpy.
While your, roux is cooking, puree your mushrooms. Add water and tamari as it starts to pass minced. You should have a smooth liquid when your done, add more water as needed.
Continue to cook your flour in fat until it gets a nicely light gold color (this is called a blond roux).
Whisk salt and pepper into your roux, about a teaspoon each.
Slowly whisk your liquids into the roux; water has an enthalpy of vaporization of ~539 calories per gram, so it will burn the fuck out of you if you hold your hand in it.
Add herbs, salt, and pepper to taste.

The romanescu was roasted in the oven at 400 degrees, with a bit of salt, pepper, and nutritional yeast. The salad was just kale, chard, and over-sized lemon cucumber with a tahini (sesame-seed paste) dressing. I'm pretty ball-park about dressing usually, but the dressing went something like this:

3/4 cup tahini (raw and roasted are both delicious)
1/4 cup olive oil
3 Tbs tamari
2 Tbs vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
herbs and spices to your liking
water for consistency

Whisk everything together except the water, then add water until you have a nice salad dressing type consistency. Its awesome.

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:40:00 +0000

Zucchini can get really huge if you let them; and in the midst of a zucchini glut, zucchini bread is a gardener's best friend. Vegan zucchini bread is sexy as fuck. The end.

Recipe is scalable but it goes like this:

2 cups grated zucchini
3T Flax Meal
3T Starch (I used Arrowroot Powder)
3T Oil
3T Water
1 cup Sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 T baking powder
1 T cinnamon
1 tsp salt

(optional spices)

2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp ginger

(~400°F)
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First, you've got to get your zucchini down to gratible size.

Then, recruit some graters, anyone hanging around on the roof of your cooperative at about 1AM ought to do. Don't have a cooperative roof from which to recruit? We're accepting applications.

Get some cheesecloth and squeeze the fuck out of your zucchini bits. Be sure to extract at least three cups of fuck for a zucchini of this size.

We had approximately 13 cups of zucchini; which meant approximately 20 flax eggs. A flax egg is:

1T Ground Flax (x 20 = 1 1/4 cup)
1T Starch (arrowroot is what I use)
1T Oil
1T Water

Whisk your flax eggs together, then add your sugar. It is a good idea to whip some air into it if you have the technological capacity. Add spices (including vanilla), and well, you know...

Sift your flour, salt, and baking powder together, and mix it in to your flax egg, but only for a second 'cuz you don't want to overmix your flour and end up with zucchini bricks, lovely though they are as architectural accents.

Its time to start mixing with the dough hook (though a wooden spoon works well in small scale operations), add in your zucchini.

Sharing is caring.

Stir until just mixed.

Grease your pan and ladle it out. We had enough to make eight GIANT loaves, and our ultra-bread pans can do 4 at a time.

This shot is from about half way through; 4 at a time they took about an hour (actually our oven is cold so it took a bit longer, but it got quick when we turned it up.

If you have a wooden skewer or a toothpick, stabbing it into the middle to see if it comes out mostly clean is the best way to know its done. Also, it should be fucking beautiful.

It should be golden brown and it should smell like awesome.

The bottom should get pretty dark; if you flour the pan after you grease it it will probably come out easier. Use the back of a butter knife to loosen it once its cooled a little bit.

Eat with espresso, sunrise, and a sad song. Its the breakfast of interesting people; the champions are counterrevolutionary.

Homemade Tortillas

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:53:00 +0000

It has been a minute since the last time I posted, however two new recipes have been photographed and are in the works, so more deliciousness to come. This one doesn't have a guestmouth, but it does feature cute old people; making it the first installment in my two part series on cute old people and flat breads.

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Wheat tortillas are simple, require no special or hard-to-find ingredients, and are cheap as hell even if you use really high quality flour. I used chemical treated crap, but the tortillas still came out decently tasty.

So the recipe is highly scalable but the ratio is about:

1 cup of flour to

2/3 tsp baking powder

1/3 tsp salt

1/3-1/2 cups water; more of a guideline, just add enough so you can make a soft dough

2 Tbs oil (high heat oil like rape seed, olive not reccomended)

It works best with multiples of three, but as long as you get your flour : oil : water balance right, and mix carefully you can do no wrong.

Mix the dry ingredients together fully, then add your oil. I used grapeseed, which tastes a little odd by itself and comes from Argentina and Portugal (I don't understand how exactly that works), but again it was just what I had on hand. When school rolls around we'll make more sustainable food choices.

Your flour mix should get kinda crumbly, kind of like cornmeal. Its ok to really mix it in there; don't worry about the gluten getting over developed because its just fat.

Add your water in small additions and mix carefully.

If you add all the water your dough may well be too sticky, so treat it as a guideline. When you've got a good dough going, knead it for about ten minutes. I made this recipe with 9 cups of flour, so kneading was a serious workout; but hopefully it will help me fend off that carpal tunnel syndrome.

Your dough should be so soft that you can make it into a baby.

Cover your baby in a clean, wet towel (or a clean, wet teeshirt if no one has done laudry for your kitchen cloths all summer) and let it rest for a good 15 minutes. This will let your gluten relax, and will make the dough more manageable when you're rolling it out.

Knead your dough baby for another minute, then lovingly cut it to small pieces. You want them to be a little larger than a golf ball, but much smaller than a tennis ball.

Roll them into nice even balls, then watch this cute little old lady show you how to roll them:

This is what the internet is for.

At about 29 seconds in you can observe her technique:

1. she rolls it out one direction

2. she flips in and rotates about 45 degrees

3. she repeats this process.

The key wisdom from grama is to not roll from the center, or rotate your pin mid-roll, but press ever onward, and flip the tortilla around when it needs new direction.

Then heat 'em up. We have well seasoned cast iron so we didn't really need to oil our pan. Don't let them get as brown as the picture, or they'll crack when you try to roll them.

Eat them with whatever you like, but nothing beats beans, greens, and rice in my book. The collards were straight from the garden and almost sweet, I sautéed 'em with some onions and garlic, and I threw in some beans from a food box that had been laying around for over a year. I made the rice with a little salt, lemon pepper, and nutritional yeast in the water from the start. It was delicious.

Like grama said, you can also shallow fry these to make some killer fry bread. I added a little cinnamon sugar, and I ate almost 4 to myself. Dangerously tasty.

Lasagna

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:28:00 +0000

Vegan Lasagna. Easily one of my favorite foods, but making it is a bit of a time commitment (so. fucking. worth it.) , so be sure that you've budgeted a good couple of hours, or make your tofu ricotta, and saucey vegetables ahead of time.

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You will need:

Sacucy Goodness any jar of tomato sauce will do, and I made a vegan bechamel once that worked great for this
~2 16oz packages of tofu (buy local, Surata is awesome)
Nutritional yeast
Garlic
Apple cider vinegar
Seasonal vegetables (I used sweet peppers, zucchini, and rainbow chard)
Mushrooms!

First, you chop your veggies:

The easiest way to stem in and seed your peppers, in my experience, is to halve them, then yank out their placenta with your bear hands. Its easier to use your fingers for this, I promise; your hands are the best tools you've got.

I like to halve my halves, halve those, then halve them once more. I like to use the verb halve, but this means cut them into sixteenth-strips if you find multiple fractions challenging.

Dice 'em up. I do them small so I can throw them in with the greens, if you overcook them they get bitter.

Decapitate your zucchini.

Halve them and cut them into little half moons; I do them thin so they cook fast.

Mushrooms take forever, so I like to dice 'em up real fine.

Run your knife down the sides of the chard stem to remove the leafy bits, which you'll chop seperately 'cuz they cook fast. Cut off the skinny tops of the stem, then cut the thick bits in half so you have spears of about the same width.

Dice up your stems kinda small, and halve your chard leaves and cut them into quarter inch by half leaf-width strips.

Sautee your mushrooms in a little olive oil over about medium heat, if you're using onion, add it here. Just sautee until they get a good brown, then add salt.

Throw in your zucchini moons, and your chard stems and let them get kinda soft (we're gonna bake 'em too, so don't make 'em mush just yet).

Toss in your chard and your peppers and bring them to temperature. This takes less than a minute.

Add in your saucy goodness until it just starts to get hot, then kill the heat.

Now press about 8 cloves of garlic in there; there's no such thing as too much.

Mash your tofu together, but don't use a spatula, it doesn't work. if you have a potato macher they work pretty well.

Season up your tofu with a little vinegar, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and if you have any, a little bit of miso makes it taste really good.

This is after we gave up on mashing with a spatula, and just blended it in the food processor; it was ok, but the texture was almost too smooth.

We were in a hurry so we added some water to the sauce and didn't boil the noodles. I reccomend at least soaking the noodles in warm water first. I put down a layer of noodles, spread on my tofu mix...

Add saucy veggies add more noodles and repeat.

On the top layer, just stop at the tofu mix step; we were running kinda low on noodles at this point.

Sprinkle some nutritional yeast on that.

And its ready to go into the oven. About an hour at 350. If your not boiling or saoking your noodles, I reccomend covering it with a lid or some foil.

It is important at this point that you dance to appease the lasagna goddesses. Neila is an athiest, but she was willing to indulge in the tradition for anthropological purposes.

Let it get all brown and awesome on top, like so.

Cut into cute little squares and eat quickly, or it will disappear.

UPDATE: Sean(Davenport) is the guestmouth for this blog and did a bunch of the footwork and was generally indespensible in the lasagna process, but I'm not linking to his blog because he was so snarky about it :-P. You're welcome.

Gyoza

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Baked potstickers. I'm not going to apologize for not ranting anymore, because it implies that I intended to rant and not just make food.
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From right to left we have:

2 packs Gyoza wrappers, thick

1 bunch Chives

>8oz Smoked tofu>

3 cans of "mock duck"

chili peppers for the sauce

Sesame oil

2 packs Tofu shirataki

Soy sauce

~9 heads Baby bokchoy

~12 green onions (3 bunches)
The chilis in the middle are just for aesthetics; you use 'em in the sauce.

Small things are cute.

Pull off their legs and chop them fine. It is best at this point to stop thinking about how cute they are, or referring to them as babies.

Squeeze out some of the liquid. Danger: prolonged exposure to bok choy may lead accute cabbage infection; I'm now 4% cabbage by mass.

This photo makes it look pretty ok, but I compared it with the image on the can so y'all won't be as disslolusioned as i was the first time opening a can. It is vegan, but also a product of Taiwan so I don't have any illusions about its sustainability; its ingredients don't seem scary, but there is some mysterious "salad oil" in it, which I hope isn't petroleum.

Mince the mock-meat and mix your mock-meat-heap with the gyoza making mix. Then, repeat that sentence 4 times quickly.

Tofu shirataki; it even says vegan in the ingredients. Shirataki are chewy yam noodles; these ones are made with soy. I probably eat too much unfermented soy, but I don't really mind the breasts so I'm ok with that.

Rinse your shirataki, then massage them with some soy sauce, a dash of sesame oil, and some apple cider vinegar. Sorts like your making a cold noodle salad; these noodles are great for a very filling cold noodle salad; asparagus, cherry tomatoes, and a tahini pesto... mmmmm

You don't really want any noodles longer than a few inches, so chop 'em accordingly. Then, throw them to the cabbage.

Some delicious P-town-made, smoked tofu. It tastes kinda like a tofu dog, but with less mysterious chemicals.

Cut the tofu into spears, then cut the spears into little cubes. Throw your smoked tofu boxes in with the cabbage mix.

Time for no-recipe chili carlic sauce:

Soy sauce

Apple cider vinegar

Oil to cook with

Starch!

Sugar

1 head Garlic, all of it

~12 little Chilis

Every queer should know the importance of using protection!

Pepper montage! Decapitate them, halve then quarter them, and finally, scrape out the placenta and seeds.

Slice the quarters; this is just so you don't get big hunks of skin in the final sauce.

Denude a head of garlic, and process until sorta smooth; add a little oil so you don't have to scrape down the sides so much.

Mix in the sugar, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar. Add some starch and water; the above is a picture of what too much starch looks like; keep it to about a teaspoon and a half.

Apply heat 'til it bubbles and gets gooey. Add about half to your cabbage mix, reserve the rest for dipping.

Hand chives!

Mince chives; I only used a buschel about the size of quarter. Throw them in with the cabbage mix.

Slice the scallions, the thinner the better; this knife sucks so they came out kind of thick. Mix them in quickly or they start to taste funky (a little like soap?), and season your filling with soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, sesame oil, and a little sriacha. Its important that the mix tastes a little salty 'cuz the cabbage sorta sucks up that flavor when they cook.

To keep juiciness to a minimum, you may wish to drain your filling mixture. Add a tablespoon of starch if you want your insides to be gooey.

Go with the thick wrappers unless you know for certain exactly what you're doing; they don't tear as easy. Evergreen is made in Portland too.

They look a little like starchy tortillas.

Pick 'em up carefully or they can tear.

Always aim to underfill your potstickers, or they're impossible to seal.

1. Add filling to the center of the wrapper.

2. rub a small amout of corstarch dissolved in water (approximately 1:1 by volume) around the outside; try to keep moistness to a minnimum or you'll get leakage.

3. Fold your gyoza in half and press the edges together tightly; don't fuck around, it likes it rough.

4. fold the corners up, about a half centimeter.

5. make a series of crimping folds along the edge, like the picture. Make a little z, then squish it.

6. Press your folds together.

Isn't it cute? Repeat ad nauseum. I made about 80 last night.

Baste 'em with a little olive oil before they go in. I normally steam them, but my wok and bamboo steamer are lost in the move at the moment, when steamed the outside is a lot chewier and I really like that. These are probably less healthy too.

Into the fire!

All done.

Golden brown on the crispy side.

They're great for parties. I served them at my wedding-of-convenience.

Neila is our guestmouth today, is she lending queer authenticity, or just being reduced to discrete sexualizable objects? You decide.

This recipe gets the seal of approval.

Get Saucy! in 37 Easy Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:36:00 +0000

Another non-rant, please forgive me, but I really like food:

Soooo much.

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Tomatoes!

Cut in half.

dun! dun dun dun,

dun dun DUN, dun

dun dun, dun dun

dun duh-duh-dun

dum TETRIS SONG!

All halved-up! I had to add a couple of non-roma tomatoes to even things up, making about 20 in all.

"You don't have to help me peel garlic mom... really, its fine I don't mind... alright, then I'm putting you in the blog"

"What's a blog?"

I sliced the garlic thin like one recipe suggested. Seasalt and pepper liberally.

I pressed garlic for the other one, to see if it made a difference.

Ow, garlic fingers. I guess my skin is sensitive.

Vertical cut.

Horizontal cut. I used two medium-to-large-ish onions.

Finished up the dicing and onionized both pans evenly.

Rosemarinization. I also drizzled some really good olive oil over the top + more salt and pepper, a little dry oregano, and the last of the herbs de provence.

Roasted for about an hour at 375, this is at the 40 minute mark.

All roasted.

Detail shot; Food Network, eat your heart out.

I then conducted a study of the to pans to see if the garlic strategy made a difference. It didn't; I reccomend pressing because its alot faster.

I scooped it into a bowl and hoped I could mash it so I didn't have to run the blender late at night.

I'm not stirring, I'm agitating.

Denuding the basil.

Basilicious.

Basilfetti!

Chiffonadization.

Tongue's-eye view of the course sauce.

No dice on the mashing, but the blender didn't even take 30 seconds.

It was a little chunky and the smell was fucking out-of-this-world.

Naturally, I had to investigate. It was amazing.

FINISH! Or, well, almost there.

A little basil-love to garnish.

Then, reality set in. It did need a little more salt, but I usually feel things need a little more salt.

Om-fucking-nom. A little time-consuming, but it was worth it. I was really surprised at how sweet the sauce came out, it was like condensced summer.

I hope you all abandon your jars, and celebrate the late-summer tomato glut with sauces of your own.

"Six Reasons God Exists"

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:21:00 +0000

This is a response to an ad I keep seeing offering "six reasons that 'prove'" God's existence. You can find it here: http://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html?gclid=CM2bh_3i1JwCFRgSawodw2RNEA

I'm not here to disprove God's existence, as that is pretty much impossible, but these claims to evidence are demostrably false and misleading. God's existence isn't provable, some religious people say that this is the point. Further, this advertisement posits the existence of the Christian God specifically, but I'll deal with its egocentrism later in this post. I think for clarity's sake it would be best to address the claims in the order they were presented:

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1. "The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today."

The Earth... The author suggests that the earth's size and distance from the sun are "perfect" for humans, because it keeps the planet at a livable temperature and holds a thin atmosphere of gaseous Nitrogen and Oxygen. This begs the question: "Why did this same God make the fossil record appear as though life was responsible for creating these livable conditions?" The fossil record suggests that most of our atmosphere's gaseous Oxygen and Nitrogen are byproducts of the metabolism of primeval bacteria, algae, and fungae, and further suggests that life adapted to these conditions and not the other way around. The author also suggests that without the moon the oceans would "stagnate," which simply isn't true; ocean currents might be different without lunar tides, but they wouldn't go away.

Water... The author has transposed cause and effect again; she notes some of the remarkable properties of water which allowed life to develop, as though water was made to suit life. Even in the bible God makes the waters first, before he even gets to people. The author also notes that

"Ninety-seven percent of the Earth's water is in the oceans. But on our Earth, there is a system designed which removes salt from the water and then distributes that water throughout the globe. Evaporation takes the ocean waters, leaving the salt, and forms clouds which are easily moved by the wind to disperse water over the land, for vegetation, animals and people"

This begs the question though, why make 97% of the water marine? Why, if land life is so special, not make more land and more fresh water. Why make the seas saline at all? It seems rather inconvenient if we're supposed to have dominion over the whole earth.

The human brain... The author points out that the human brain is extremely complex, and that "[t]he brain functions differently than other organs. There is an inteligence to it..." Why, in all its complexity, does our nervous system have all of these apparently vestigeal bits? Why are there so many substances capable of immitating neurochemicals and impairing or altering the brain's function? Why would we hallucinate? And while it is complex, the author points out a great deal of information that the brain receives it ignores; why were we not designed with a prefrontal cortex capable of cognizing more information per second?

The eye... Which "can distinguish between seven million colors" and processes millions of messages per second. The eye certainly handles a lot of information, most of which the brain ignores, which begs the question: why doesn't the eye only perceive relevant stimuli? As for the millions of colors; colors are not categories which exist objectively in the world, they are constructions of the human mind; the eye can dectect very subtle differences in light wavelength, but this seven million number is meaningless. The author goes on to suggest that evolution cannot fully explain the "initial source" of the eye or brain, or the start of life from nonliving matter. Assuming that the assertion about evolution "not fully explaining" is true, suggesting that there is not an adequate explanation does not mean God is the explanation, it merely means that there is not currently an adequate explantion. However, evolutionary biology can model very well how the eye might have originated as a simple light detecting cell or cluster of cells like the maggot's eye, which they use to avoid light by bobbing back and forth. For a video of a rather handsome young Richard Dawkins illustrating such a model click here.

2. "The universe had a start - what caused it?" The author points out that science has yet to answer this question and then quotes several scientists out of context about how powerful the big bang was, and how we cannot fully know its cause. The problem with her suggestion is two fold: 1. If there is no explanation for the cause of the universe coming into being, it does not mean that God is the only explanation, or even that God is a good or probable explanation. 2. If God did create the universe from nothing, what caused God to come into being. While the cause of the universe is unknowable, and conluding that it must be due to God without providing an explanation for God's own existence is patently ridiculous.
3. "The universe operates by uniform laws of nature. Why does it?" The author points out that the same natural laws apply everywhere, and quotes Richard Feynman "The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle." Bringing up Richard Feynman (by quoting him out of context) undercuts the author's assertion fundamentally, because Feynman is talking here about the fundamental strangeness of quantum electrodynamics; there aren't definite particles in specific places, and the forces that apply on the scale that we're used to, cannot be easily reconciled with the strong and weak forces. Why aren't the uniform laws of nature on the quantum scale, the same on the macroscopic scale?
4. "The DNA code informs, programs a cell's behavior." The author simplistically explains that DNA is a "programming code" for the cell that are "chemicals that instruct" the cell, dictating its behavior. "Natural, biological causes are completely lacking as an explanation when programmed information is involved. You cannot find instruction, precise information like this, without someone intentionally constructing it." First of all, DNA codes for protein. Period. Protein synthesis is pretty well understood, and while it does dictate much about the cell's behavior, the programming language analogy is erroneous, because DNA is does not code for behaviors, but rather, components. Secondly, if this precise code so clearly points to an intentional constructor, like God, why would DNA have so many blunders like genetic disease, transcription errors, mutations, and DNA for unexpressed proteins? Finally, even if natural, biological causes were inadequate when "programmed information" is involved, that does not mean there aren't any sufficient natural, biological explanations that have yet to be proposed, and it is utterly absurd to conclude that because one does not understand any natural, biological explanations for natural, biological phenomena that the only alternative is a supernatural explanation.
5. We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him. The author suggests that atheists are interested in refuting religion, because God is present in their thoughts. She posits further that God created us with the intention of having us know him. I am interested in refuting religious claims, because the onus of proof for any claim lies on the one positing the claim, and religious ideas dominate every major institution in society, with no evidence to speak of. I am bombarded constantly with theist propaganda, and every media representation of Atheists paints us a amoral, bitter curmudgeons. On that note, if God created us with the intention of having us knowing him, why require this irrational faith business; why not simply make himself known to everyone by manifesting conclusively in everyone's lives (booming voices from the sky, burning bushes, impregnating virgins, dictating stone tablets and the like). Why does God appear to Christians as Jesus or YHWH, but to Hindus as Shiva or Krishna? Why didn't Jesus, when resurected, just go tell everyone his good news, and why, if he controls everything, did he prevent testimonies of his acts from being written until at least 30 years after his death. It seems to me, that if God wanted to be known, he sort of confused things a bit.
6. "Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God revealing himself to us." What? Why are their contradictions between the gospels? What the hell is with this God, but the son of God thing, and how the hell could something so essential to God's nature only be described in the vaguest terms? If it is a revelation from God, why wasn't it written sooner, and what makes the testaments of the bible more legitimate than their contemporary gospels. Really, most other religious texts are equally aged and ambiguous, but the claim to the uniqueness of the bible in clarity, or specificity is plainly a contrivance.

PIZZA!

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:10:00 +0000

Ok you got me, this isn't a rant at all; I just like Pizza. I will say, though, that nothing fills me with more righteous rage than frozen pizza, and ready-made dough. Pizza is one of the easiest, cheapest, and most fun doughs to make at home. So here's a couple of pizzas I've made to inspire you to take back pizza from the delivery trucks:

First, dough:

3 cups flour, sifted (I like bread flour best, and barley works well if you don't do gluten)

2-2 1/2 tsp yeast (the living kind, that's ~one of those little packages)

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 and 1/2 cups VERY warm water

(optional = 2tsp gluten powder for a chewier crust)

1 Tbs oil (I like olive, canola and soy work fine)

1. In a big bowl sift together the flour (or flours if you like to mix things up, I had success with a 2/1 barley/buckwheat mix ), and gluten (this is optional, I like to add it in if I'm making a deep-dish thing).

2. Make a well in the middle of the flour mix (imagine that the flour mix is mashed potatoes and your making a gravy well; try not to go all the way to the bottom) this is your yeast home.

3. Add a half cup of VERY warm water to your well and add the yeast, salt, and sugar, and stir just the well. Its ok if a little flour mixes in, but at this stage your just trying to "wake up" the yeast. Let the well alone for about five minutes, or until it gets nice and foamy.

4. Slowly stir in flour from the sides and add the rest of the VERY warm water and the oil. A wooden spoon is your best friend. You want the mixture to be as smooth and lumpless as possible and you shouldn't feel pressured mix in all of the flour; just stir until you have a nice, slightly sticky dough.

5. Flour your hands (and the dough/bowl if your dough is really sticky) and knead the dough for a good ten minutes.

6. Cover the bowl with a towel and let it stand in a warm place for an hour or so (until it doubles in size).

7. Punch it down and knead it for another ten minutes. If you want to make your pizza later in the week you can put it in the fridge at this point, and if your going to make it in the next three months,f freeze it.

8. If you froze your dough, let it thaw overnight in the fridge. Let your dough rise again in a warm place for about an hour (it might take a little longer if your dough's been in the fridge).

9. Punch it down and role it out.

But what to top it with? Well, I've got two examples. One's for when your feeling really aventurous and the other is a little more "traditional":

First, ADVENTURE!

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This is a Rosemary Mashed-Potato Pizza with Vegan Bechamel and Artichoke Hearts. It looks a little funky, but its delicious. I stumbled on some restaurant food blog, and I happened to have recently "borrowed" a jar of artichoke hearts, so I decided to expiriment.

First, you boil potatoes (you could also try baking them, but I haven't yet) then drain and mash them, add a lot of rosemary, salt and pepper, and about 8 cloves of garlic either pressed or minced fine. Next make a bechamel (which is just flour and a little nutritional yeast cooked in oil, then a little mylk (coconut mylk is killer) salt, pepper, and nutmeg stirred in; the ppk has a recipe with onions, but you could do the same thing with garlic). Then, slice your artichoke hearts thin. On you rolled-out dough, spread your mashed potatoes, embed your artichoke hearts (really press 'em in there or the tips will burn), and then cover it with your bechamel sauce. Bake at 400 for about 12 minutes.

Next, TRADITION!

Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and a Shit-Ton of Toppings Pizza, not actually very traditional at all. Many people have warned me that overloading one's pizza with toppings will make your pizza soggy in the middle, and confuse the pallet; to them I say "FAH, I tire of your lies!" In all seriousness though, lots of toppings means that you cant really pick up the pizza without it flopping a little, but the crust was not remotely soggy.

For the pesto we used about three handfulls of slivered almonds (we were making 2 pizzas, so adjust accordingly), which we blended with a little olive oil until they were smooth. We soaked about 2 cups of sun-dried tomatoes until they were soft, then drained them and reserved a little of the liquid. We blended them in with almonds, and added enough of the reserve liquid to make it smooth, but still a thick paste. We spread that on the rolled out dough, then loaded the pizzas up with toppings: Basil, Zuchini, Crimini Mushrooms, Red Onion, Bell Pepper, Garlic, and Tempeh that I seasoned with a little soy sauce, in that order (Basil on the bottom so it doesn't burn). We baked this bad boy at 400 for about fifteen minutes.

In closing, free your pizza from corporate rule.

Really? Really?

noreply@blogger.com (Sam Bennington) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:48:00 +0000

So I have white privilege. I know that I come from a place of privilege when I speak about race, but this shit is fucked up:

First of all, referring to the Jim Crow South to make a political point is pretty damned insensitive on a good day. Trivializing the experience of segregation into a division of water fountains, is also pretty messed up. Then on top of all of that, and here's the key thing, the experience of gay Americans is not comprable to segregation in almost any regard.

Additionally, racism is still very real in America (e.g. this fucking cartoon), and a biracial president does not mean that race based discrimination is over; I feel that this cartoon trivializes racism on several levels.

On top of that, most of the stuff that happens to the gays, happens to the rest of the queer community, and we all got left out.

Dear Center for American Progress,

Get fucked. I hope the experience is so liberating that you stop saying fucked up shit.

Regards,

Sam