When Matt and I kicked off this January’s challenge, we each made a list of vices. Originally, we planned to post them under the “About the challengers” page, but they just didn’t seem that salient. Here’s mine:

• Beer (!!)
• Honey on toast
• Morinaga brown sugar chews
• Free food
• Ethnic cuisines

I started this round with a few goals:

• Reduce my dairy intake (I learned from the last vegan challenge that I’m slightly lactose intolerant)
• Learn to refuse free food (it’s like I never graduated college!)

After a month of doing so well, only time will tell if I’m able to keep to both.

Anyhow, it’s down to the last half-hour, so I wanted to share a few things I’ve been thinking about. First, my thoughts on being vegan. Matt and I are talking about it right now, and something I notice in common rhetoric begs the question, why do we always pit ourselves against vegans? My thoughts on utilizing “vegan” as a label: Either people define themselves by it OR use its familiarity to explain their dietary restrictions but are not attached to the term. Sure there are folks in between, but the former is what makes most people uncomfortable, even resentful. Probably, too, that none of us come close to summiting the food pyramid, and vegans are perceived to be the closest to it.

Something I’ve been thinking about for quite a long time is that not every meal has to be a battle. Why not incorporate eating ethically into our personal definition of “eating” rather than qualifying how we eat? I really struggle with labels. To be honest, it was hard not to beat myself up during vegan challenge because 31 days is so short. I cheated. Twice. Although I suppose it can’t really be called “cheating” if it were unintentional:

1. Veganity violation #1: Repair stew
   I used Better than Bouillon mushroom, which apparently contains dairy for a buttery flavor. It was far too expensive of a stew – and with such precious ingredients – to throw out. And to give it away, well, it’s a tall financial order to cook two recipes worth five days’ meals in one week.
2. Veganity violation #2: Oh my dear! sandwich at Short’s Brewing Company
   I mean, really. Why would you need to put feta in your hummus?

If we took it beyond diet, then I violated the rules everyday with wool winter wear.

Anyhow, there you have it. My admissions. But that’s not to say that I won’t be sticking with something similar to veganism. People are always surprised to learn *GASP* I’m an omnivore, but I do have certain guidelines around food:

• I don’t cook meat at home (too expensive, too much disinfecting)
• I don’t buy cheese (outside of lactose intolerance, finishing cheese before it molds can be a chore when you’re single)
• I use very little oil and don’t use butter or milk (traumatic experiences with mayo and butter as a child. I kid, sort of)
• I rarely drink juice and don’t drink soda
• I only eat meat at restaurants if the eatery knows where their meat came from
• More or less, I stick to seasonal cooking
• I didn’t really eat my vegetables for the day if I didn’t have something green

While I don’t necessarily subscribe to veganism, I subscribe to very clean cooking. And, I suppose, if you adhere to a certain strain of food philosophy, you will find it resembles the assumed values of veganism.

I’m already excited for honey on toast and enjoying microbrews worry-free. Vegan challenge might be over, and the newest challenge is to stick to my goals despite that I don’t have a friendship challenge to lead the way. And what I loved most? Part of why I never got to the recipes above is because there’s just so much to make! It’s fun to realize there is still a lot of freedom once you look past the restrictions. All it takes is a little creativity.

One of my favorite things in Grand Rapids is Sunday Soup. It’s a mini-grant, potluck program of The Division Avenue Arts Collective, an all-ages sanctuary for artistic expression.

On the last Sunday of each month, diners file in and exchange $5 exchange for a ballot and bowl of soup. As they sup, grant applicants share grassroots projects for which they need a smidge of funding. After all of the presentations, diners cast their votes, and the applicant with the most votes takes all the proceeds from the event.

Although the only stipulation is that it’s creative, projects tend toward the arts.The first Sunday Soup took place in March 2010, and I haven’t missed one since. I emceed at the July Sunday Sundaes and presented three times for the short-lived project Nibs + Noms yet never won and have covered the last three events for The Rapidian.

In my mind, Sunday Soup combines a lot of what makes life wonderful: conversation, food, collaboration, ideas. And of course, since I like to cook, I’ve made something for most of the Sunday Soups. This month, I brought a vanilla sweet potato tart and a vegan French onion soup.

Ingredients

• 3 large red onions, sliced
• 1 T. olive oil
• 2 star anises
• 6 peppercorns
• 4 c. vegetable broth
• 1 T. flour
• 1/2 c. red wine

Directions

1. Coat the bottom of a heavy pot with olive oil and cook down the onions with the lid on.
2. Stir the onions often to caramelize. After about 30 minutes, the onions should be simmering in their own syrup.
3. In the meantime, bring the vegetable broth with the star anise and peppercorns to a simmer. Turn off the fire after 5 minutes.
4. Once the onions have cooked down to a quarter their original size, stir in the tablespoon of flour until it’s fully integrated into the mix.
5. Pour in the red wine and let it cook again till the mixture is syrupy.
6. Strain the broth into the soup.
7. Enjoy with French bread rounds!

Note: Flour tends to clump together when it’s dumped into hot liquid. Since this isn’t really a mash, it can be hard to integrate the flour. First ladle out a bit of the caramelized syrup and mix it with the flour to form a slurry and then pour it back into the pot.

I love pies, and more specifically, pie crusts. So when I botched a batch of vanilla mashed sweet potatoes, I decided to tartify it.

But before I begin, where I went wrong: Sometimes, substitutions don’t make for memorable dishes. The yams weren’t looking so hot at the grocery store, so I decided to substitute with butternut squash. I also skipped butter and cream substitutes. Originally, my plan was to add a skosh of almond milk, but butternut squash has higher water content than yams, so it would have been too watery (straight-up yams would have yielded a stiffer mash).

Anyhow, for a single tart, here’s what I did:

Originally: Vanilla mashed sweet potatoes

• 1/2 butternut squash
• 2 yams
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 1/2 t orange zest

1. Cut the butternut squash in half and spray with olive oil. Put it cut-side down on a baking sheet.
2. Wash the yams so they’re still damp and also add it to the baking sheet.
3. Roast for one hour at 350 degrees.
4. Once everything is cool enough to handle, remove the skins and mash everything together into a glass bowl.

Originally: NYTimes pie crust (for the flakiest crust, follow the NYT version)

• 1/2 c. bread flour
• 1/2 c. wheat flour
• 1 t. sugar
• 1/4 t. salt
• 4 T. shortening
• 2 T. apple sauce
• 3 T. ice cold water

1. Mix all the dry ingredients.
2. Cut in the shortening and apple sauce. Don’t mix in the shortening till it’s consistent – for a flakier crust, you want lumps and crumbles.
3. Add the water and knead into a ball.
4. Roll out the dough to fit a pie tin. Crimp the edges if you have more than you expected. If you’re waiting on the filling, put the crust in the freezer till you’re ready for it.
5. Spread the mash into the pie. Optional: Sprinkle with 1 T. chopped pecans and 1/2 t. salt granules.
6. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then 350 for 30 minutes. Remove to cool. Optional: Sprinkle with 1 T. dried blueberries.

Drats.

Also crucial has been Barnivore, a website that lists which beers and liquors are vegan. Befuddlingly, there is a lot of non-vegan alcohol. Barnivore explains:

When making the product, dairy, honey, and other things (including, in one case, a whole chicken dropped in the tank) are ingredients in the final recipe. When filtering the drinks prior to bottling, companies can use things like isinglass (from fish bladder,) gelatin, egg whites, and sea shells, among other things. These products grab onto the impurities and make it easier to catch them in the filters, though there are many animal-free alternatives in use.

If it weren’t for Barnivore bookmarked on my phone, it would’ve been like walking through a vegan minefield during happy hour (though I admit, I emergency-texted Denise to look up the vegan status of a beer for me once or twice). Imbibing vegans, stay educated!

I have this weird thing about waste. Stray seeds at the bottom of empty cracker boxes, water strained from a can of corn – guess what? I use them all. I might as well have grown up during the depression.

I like to think of myself as the queen of canned food cooking. It’s not always good, it’s often improvisation but it’s almost always an exercise in creative thinking.

Tomato soup

Last week while I was making my mole, I accidentally opened a can of crushed tomato instead of diced. What to do, what to do… I pureed half the can (14.5 ounces) with a few cloves of roasted garlic. Then I added one can of diced tomatoes, one cup almond milk, half-cup of frozen corn from the summer, half an onion, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1/2 t oregano, salt and pepper to taste (note: not so good with the leftover avocado chunks, very good with almonds).

Chili

But I still had half the crushed tomato. So I combined that with the leftover kidney beans I’d soaked from a prior week’s bean puree, the rest of the almond milk, 1/2 round of Taza chocolate for depth, one pulverized dried ancho, the last of the carrots from Mom’s repair stew, 3/4 cup of a mix of navy and pinto beans, a can of diced tomatoes. At the end, I added a cup of frozen corn and a jar of Kalamatas that desperately needed to be eaten.

After eight hours in the thermal cooker, I had a somewhat sweet chili with mild spice in all the right places. I was hoping the olives would really balance things out a bit more than they did, and because these were soaked beans, they were a little firmer than the canned variety. Thought about adding ginger to the mix but it was pretty sweet and warming already.

Stacy’s salsa

Stacy is one of the bariste at MadCap, and after tasting her clean and simple salsa at the barista competition birthday bash on Saturday, I stocked my grocery basket with one pepper of every color. I diced half of each along with a full jalapeno (seeds removed; this is not a spicy salsa), mixed in a can of corn, a can of black beans, 1 T apple cider vinegar, .5 T vegetable oil and 1 t sugar.

Bell pepper hummus

Which left me with the corn water and four pepper halves. I roasted the red, yellow and orange halves and added them to a hummus made from one can of chickpeas, 2 t tahini, 1 T lemon juice, 1/4 cup corn water, 3 cloves of garlic, and salt and Secret Aardvark to taste.

Next items on my leftovers list: beets and spinach. Perhaps something with pine nuts and thinly sliced konnyaku? Oh! And a pound yet of blueberries that I froze from last summer’s bounty.

Monday - Oh my dear!

• Guest sammy from Short’s: ”Vegetarian sandwich with portabella mushrooms, artichoke hearts, radish sprouts, red onions, tomatoes, and Swiss cheese with a Kalamata olive-feta hummus. Served on whole wheat cold or grilled, your choice.” Mmmm… Hold the dairy!

Tuesday - Tempeh deli salad

• Recipe from The Kitchn – I skipped the veganaise, used cannellini beans in place of garbanzo (way softer, creamier texture that makes up for the veganaise)

Wednesday - Mole pulled jackfruit

• Mole is always so time consuming to make, but when I saw that this one uses star anise, I jumped. My replacements: I used golden raisins, only ancho chili, hazelnuts in place of almonds, 14 oz. canned tomatoes instead of fresh (trying to empty the cupboards). I stewed a can of young jackfruit in the unstrained mixture for eight hours.
• Verdict: I’m no expert in mole, and my enchantment with it has always been with purposing chocolate for a savory dish. Mole usually has a heavy flavor, and this one was one of the fruitiest I’ve ever had. Young jackfruit has the consistency of pulled pork, but don’t let it sit too many days in the fridge – it’ll break down into mush.

Caturday - Smokey miso tofu

• I love VeganYumYum, and in the eight months since I first read this recipe, I’ve made it countless times. Easy, tasty, perfect.

I often say that Biking + Beer = Love, and hand’s down, Short’s Brewery is my favorite brewing company in Michigan. PB&J, Cup o’ Joe, Bellaire Brown, S’mores… It’s not only toothsome, it could go head-to-head with Oregon’s best.

When I learned that Short’s is not planning on distributing outside of Michigan, my heart skipped a beat and I wondered whether I could move out of Michigan after all.

Alas! Bellaire is too far to bike in a day’s time, especially in the winter. Lucky for me, lovely Ms. Miriam signed on as fellow adventurer and chauffeur on this holiest of Michigan beer pilgrimages.

We took off on a crisp MLK morning and arrived around noon. We fully embraced the tourists within us. The pub is set in a former hardware store, and there are two rooms. The main area is warm in light and decor. A mosaic is stamped near the front entrance and most of the furniture, from the bar to the tables to the bathroom stalls, were whittled by Joe Short, who was in college to be a shop teacher before leaving to pursue brewing. A fleet of vintage bikes are set higher up, and near the kitchen is the mitten and a super-imposed UP several inaccurate bricks’ distance away from each other.

Short’s is the only Michigan brewery whose beers I consistently love. Simply put, it’s tasty. I often come across beers that boast real honey or raisins, chocolate and figs, but once I twist open the bottle, I can hardly detect the flavors. It’s quite the gamble to challenge tastebuds.

Grocery shopping is a goldmine of inspiration, Ryan, Short’s brewer, told us. Short’s used to puree all the ingredients they added – cherries, berries, peanuts – and it would take three hours to mush. They have nine fermenting tanks that feed the pub with up to 20 draught beers at a time. Spied on the fermenting list during the tour: carrot cake and Almond Joy.

We were in the basement brewery for 45 minutes asking questions about yeast, roasts and sour beers. When we emerged, the pub was still hopping, now with more mug club members. Surprising for a village of 1,000. Turns out that the customers we saw earlier were mostly ski enthusiasts. In the summer, it’s vacationers at the lake. What’s been awesome to see, Ryan told us, is that Short’s presence has actually attracted more commerce for local businesses.

Of the 20 beers on tap, there were only five I had not sampled, either at the brewery or before our visit. I had emailed ahead of time and learned that they use powdered lactose (milk sugar) in a few of their specialty beers: Key Lime Pie, Strawberry Short’s Cake and Cup o’ Joe. I avoided the beers that had ingredients made with dairy, and I had tasted most of them prior to vegan challenge except for the turtle stout:

“Reminiscent of the classic treat, real caramel, milk chocolate and pecans give this beer a wonderful balance of initial sweetness that leads to a roasted and slutty nutty finish.”

Boohiss! Such is the vegan’s dilemma.

Six hours, 79 photos, 13 beers sampled and one brewery tour later, we headed home with two six-packs and a couple of pint glasses. And as for leaving Michigan, I have quite some time to grow my friendships so I can expect to receive regular care packages of Short’s six-packs.

Volunteers?

The filling was good, though (and not nearly as hard to get right). It’s just wrapped in an inedible travel container.

Edit: I made the onigiri too, and they turned out awesome. No baking involved.

It’s my go-to when I want something crunchy, something light but filling. It’s what I munch on not to throw off meals and it’s what I eat by the spoonful in place of them (sometimes even breakfast). And now that I’ve figured out how to pop kernels without oil, I might as well be floating on a cloud nine of popcorn.

Do not be mistaken: Popcorn is not my last resort.

Yes, it’s embarrassing. It’s a vice and something I’m not ready to confront. But I suppose it’s just as good a snack as any for the winter, so let’s get down to it.

It seems like there are as many varieties as there are Pantone swatches. For all you popcorn addicts out there, we have Mark Rumsey to thank. Last week, he gave me this little mental cheat sheet. From least to most crunchy, biggest to smallest popped kernels, cheapest to most expensive:

Yellow >> White >> Red >> Black

And there ya go! Come to the dark (black jewell) side.