Thanksgiving Bars

 
I decided we should close out Sweets Week with something that won’t send us all into a diabetic coma just by looking at it: raw bars.

My mother is still trying to watch what she eats and is doing pretty well. She balanced out a big cheesy portion of baked ziti one day with tofu and mixed vegetables over brown rice (her first time ordering brown rice!) the next. And she ate all the fruit and nut bars I made her last week (she liked them so much she was hoping to have more last night and was very disappointed when I told her they’d still be in the fridge, firming up, when she went to bed), so it was time for another go around.

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Mom's Fruit and Nut Bars

My mother and I are on a quest to get her to eat better. After having absolutely no luck getting her to read The China Study, she's currently reading Eat to Live and thinks it makes a lot of sense. I don't think she'll ever go vegan, but in the past month or so, she's definitely become a barelyanymeatatarian, which I think rules (she even ordered her first cheeseless pizza today).

While looking for healthier alternatives to the candy and snacks she usually eats, my mother came across an ad for Mrs. May's Trio Bars and wanted me to order them for her. I refused, saying we can make them better ourselves. I hit the Internet, bookmarked about 473892 different raw bars, figured out what the basic deal was and got to playing with food myself. Thus Mom's Fruit and Nut Bars were born.

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Passover, Post the First

According to Gothamist, hospitals see "an uptick in total patient volume during Passover...[largely due to] Dizziness from [cleaning] fumes, slips from highly buffed floors or wet bathroom tiles...knife wounds from cutting food, burns from stovetops, and even fingers chopped up in blenders." I only have two cuts and a burn, so I consider myself lucky. Doubly lucky since I did most of my cooking while half asleep.

I'm a sabbath observer, so I had to make sure most of my Passover food was ready by Friday night. I took Friday off from work and started my food prep Wednesday night. And, like all responsible people would, went to see Colin Meloy Thursday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg (side note: he is the cutest thing on two feet. I stood there the whole time wishing I'd baked him cookies). Due to transport issues and my inability to shut up and leave when I'm hanging out with friends, I got home at 2 AM. In case that wasn't bad enough, my mother was still in the kitchen, so I wasn't able to get to work until 3. I ended up not sleeping at all until after dinner Friday night. Oy vey!



Almost every recipe I picked for the holiday used vegetable broth or stock, so the first thing I had to do was make the vegetable broth. Naturally, I made the one from Vegan With a Vengeance. It's such a staple in our house that even my mother made a double batch of it to feed the family and to use in all her cooking (Wednesday night was dedicated to chopping vegetables for all the broth). You'd think after making the broth over a dozen times, I'd be able to make it without screwing it up, right? Wrong. Somehow, I'm unable to tell the difference between parsley and cilantro and ended up accidentally substituting the latter for the former. I didn't even realize it until it was time to use the cilantro in another dish and I didn't have any. D'oh! Thankfully, I like cilantro, and I was just using the broth as an ingredient, not eating it straight, so it didn't make a huge difference when combined with the other ingredients in my dishes.

While that was simmering for 90 minutes, I grabbed Tofu Mom's recipe and made matzo balls. Lots of lots of matzo balls.



And started the crust and the filling for my Raw Apple Pie. I don't have a Passover blender or food processor, just a Smart Chopper, and trying to do all those dates in there nearly made me want to stick my head in next. I hate that thing. Definitely getting something better for next year. But I got it done and had plenty of time to let the filling soak and the crust firm up in the fridge. I tried to get all decorative with a flower in the middle and some golden raisins to garnish, but I don't think it worked so well. It didn't really matter since it completely fell apart when we cut into it, but it was still tasty, which is the most important part.



And I prepped my portobello mushrooms, prepared my marinade and put everything together for Yellow Rose Recipes' grilled portobellos. It was so easy to put together that I forgot I don't have a grill pan for Passover. I decided to roast them instead, after they marinated for 24 hours.



While I'm on the subject of Yellow Rose Recipes, I need to talk about the Braised Cauliflower. I know I say this about everything, but it's really the easiest recipe ever. The aroma when the cauliflower was cooking in the margarine was amazing. My mother kept asking what was in the pan and refused to believe it was just cauliflower and margarine. I was almost disappointed when I added the broth and everything started smelling like it instead of yummy, popcorny, cauliflower. As the broth cooked off, the fragrance came back, better than ever, and joy was had. My family really enjoyed this. It's a side dish that's so simple it compliments everything. Even my grandmother ate one floret and deemed it good. She never eats vegetables, so that's high praise indeed.



I wanted to make the Indian variation of the Yellow Rose Recipes Green-Wa, but couldn't find kosher for Passover curry powder. Instead, I found this handy guide to making your own spice blend that could be deemed "close enough" by some people. Those people don't include me. Not because I'm so discerning, but because I only had red pepper flakes and no matter how much grinding I did with my new mortar and pestle, I just couldn't powder them.



I used that "curry powder", substituted the coconut milk for the soy yogurt and was about to start chopping my herbs for the Green-Wa, when lo and behold! I didn't have any cilantro! Oh yeah, it was all in the soup. So I chopped up the parsley and stuck that in the quinoa instead. And I completely forgot to even add the curry powder until the very last step. I made numerous mistakes with this recipe, but it's very forgiving. The current dish is somehow almost bland, in a good way, but still burns my tongue. My brother ate loads of it; he especially liked putting it on chicken. I can't say I love the recipe as I made it, but it gave me an idea of how it would taste if I didn't completely screw it up. Will definitely try again when I'm not completely out of it.



The last thing I made before the sun set on me was Herb Roasted Potatoes from Vegan With a Vengeance. Holy crap, those are good! I took the time to chop my herbs up nice and fine and got them really well done and my family went crazy for them. Even my grandmother ate a significant portion of them, and usually just looking at spices gives her "agita", and my brother didn't even pick out the onions. Victory!



A couple more pictures from Day One:






Stay tuned for Passover Cooking: Day Two!

Salad Days

Among my other lovely Giftmas presents, I received Vegan Planet, a huge (and therefore immensely intimidating) cookbook. The first thing I tried from it was the Tomato and White Bean Salad with Watercress.



Wow. The dressing for this salad is really simple, really tasty and really (REALLY) strong. It's pretty much just pureed shallots and garlic with a bit of oil and lemon juice, but it's SO yummy.

A note of caution: the fragrance is powerful. I don't know if they actually could, but I felt like everyone could smell garlic on me for two days after making/eating it. So serve it with mints if you're having a romantic dinner. Just saying.

Im a Hero!

Either I'm an ordinary person with an extraordinary ability, or I finally started playing with my Giftmas present from the awesome Paula Dines: How to Garnish by Chef Harvey. You be the judge.



I'm a huge dork, so the first thing I had to try when I got this garnishing book was the tomato rose. It got a lot easier when I used a sharper knife. It'd probably look even nicer if I'd broken out my good knives, but I didn't want to spend that much time on cleanup. It's a good thing to know for my next (first) fancy dinner party, though.

Next, I tried to make cucumber crabs. These didn't go so well. I don't know if I didn't cut the legs thin enough or didn't leave them soaking long enough, but they all snapped when I tried to bend them. Oh well. Another time.

The cucumber shark and zucchini whale were great fun and don't look half bad for my first try. They're sort of smiley, like Disney sea life. At my friend Lauren's suggestion, I had to float them out in a quinoa ocean. Good times.

Tonight's dinner will be the most oddly-shaped salad ever. Which is a far better way to end a long weekend than with a mountain of baked goods, really.

The End

Today is the last day of VeganMoFo. I only missed two days all month (of blogging, not veganning) and I think that's pretty respectable since I'm so new to it. I was going to make my last VeganMoFo post all about the things I've learned and how I've changed in the past month, but I'm no good at being poignant and shit (and really, the only change that will happen now that VeganMoFo is over is I won't post as frequently - especially on weekends - and probably won't include posts that aren't about food I've cooked, unless I eat someplace historically good or my friends cook), so instead I'll just follow up on my Misc. list.

1. I left the tofu to soak for four days before moving it to the dehydrator. I tasted one piece after it'd been drying for about a day. The outside had really firmed up and darkened in color, but inside was still softer and whiter, so I left it on. Will check it again when I get home. It's REALLY tasty, but the spicy pickle flavor comes out more the longer you chew it.

2. Got my groceries from peapod.com. Everything was...adequate. For produce, I had ordered Fuji apples, lemons, garlic, carrots, green grapes and Brussels sprouts. They were out of the apples (which was just as well since I just bought them to push my order over $50. Since it was their fault, I got away with placing a $47.50 order). The lemons, garlic and carrots look good. The Brussels sprouts are in those little cardboard containers, so it's possible that all the sprouts under the first layer are spoiled, but the tops look fine. The grapes aren't as pretty as the ones I try to pick myself, but I've seen and eaten worse. Overall, I'd give them 4/5 for produce.

Also, my mother was supposed to be home to take delivery of the groceries. My father's car broke down, so she had to go get him, so naturally the delivery came while she was away. The driver was very nice and came back to our house as his last stop of the evening, after my mother came home, without charging the extra delivery fee. Rock.

In a Pickle

I love pickles.

When I saw McClure's Spicy Garlic Dills at The Brooklyn Kitchen a few weeks ago, I had to have them. So I did. Those are damn good pickles. Spicy! They're almost a bit too spicy for me, but that's good because it prevents me from eating the whole jar at once (which I've been known to do).

When I got home, I looked at my receipt and saw the jar of pickles cost $12. $12! For pickles! I vowed at that moment that I'd use every single thing in that jar in some way. Hell, I'm even going to use the jar for storage and the label as a bandage.

Not long after I finished the pickles, I made something that called for one pound of extra-firm tofu. The tofu came in 14-ounce packages, leaving me with 12 ounces of extra-firm tofu to play with. I also have a dehydrator.

Brine + tofu + dehydrator = JERKY?!?!?!



I pressed the tofu for over an hour, then cut it into halfish-inch wide/thick, twoish inch long strips and threw it in a container with the brine, dill, garlic and some cayenne peppers (I still have a few untouched peppers). I flipped and rotated it after 24 hours (mostly to make sure it didn't get crumbly or something from sitting in the liquid) and will try to remember to do so again when I get home tonight. So far, they've been soaking for about three days. I think I'm going to take it out tomorrow night and attempt to dehydrate it. I will, of course, keep you updated on the status of my possible pickly jerky.

Fly By Blogging

Not even having to drive all the way to New Jersey in holiday traffic will keep me from updating daily during VeganMoFo (we'll ignore that I skipped Monday, OK?).

Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Raw Apple Pie. Details later.

Enjoy the season, everyone!

Sunac Sushi

This isn't really related to the point of this post, but I'd like to share an observation: around Thanksgiving, soft tofu is the first thing to sell out in this town. During the past two weeks or so, I went to Pathmark, Stop N Shop, Cross Island Fruit (Long Island), Sunac (Brooklyn), Klein's, Whole Foods Chelsea, Whole Foods Union Square, Trader Joe's and some other grocery store (Manhattan) before finding it in the Union Square Food Emporium. If you want soft tofu this week, get there by noon.

Anyway, I've obviously been cooking for myself lately and haven't really been eating much preprepared or restaurant food. However, when I went to Sunac for the tofu on Monday, I saw this sushi and it called me.



Please allow me to elaborate on the awesomeness of this sushi.

I was probably the only barbarian left who'd never had brown rice sushi before. It was SO GOOD. Despite being in the fridge case (probably all day), the rice was still fairly tender...or they put enough sesame seeds on it to hide what wasn't.

I love inari so much. The bigger the inari, the happier I am. Look at how big and puffy those things are! And they were full of brown rice too! I was ever so much the happy camper.

I adore asparagus in sushi (and other things, but especially in sushi). After avocado, it's probably my favorite sushi filling, so consider me joyed. I'd never had sprouts or broccoli in it before either. The sprouts were a nice touch, but the broccoli was a little dry (and I don't use soy sauce on sushi. I'm considering trying Nama Shoyu on it one day, but really, I like it as is, so why add the salt?).

Two points for cheap, tasty, healthy, fast convenient vegan food.

I Do Cool Shit With a Little Help From My Friends

This is not at all vegan-related, but I saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at Studio B Wednesday night. "Satan Said Dance" was the second song they played, which gave my friends and I joy.

Anyway! It's been about a week since I last mentioned my dehydrator, so let's discuss that a bit more, shall we?

Since then, I put up another batch of cucumbers, left them on too long, then did a small batch of carrot and parsnip slices. The absolutely coolest thing of all is that my carrots and parsnips are now CRINKLE CUT because my friends bought me the coolest wavy chopper thing I've ever seen in my life (and an ass-kicking serrated peeler). Not only does it make my vegetables look all fancy, but the edge is really sharp. It was actually easier to cut the carrots and parsnips with the chopper than a real knife.



Just so you know, if you leave cucumbers dehydrating too long, they get really thin and taste funny. By funny, I mean borderline gross. Most were OK, but I almost spit a few out. Next time, I'll dry the cucumbers on the weekend so I can be around to observe them.





A few days ago, I actually read the little book that came with my dehydrator instead of skimming it and noticed something important that I hadn't read before: in order to properly dehydrate carrots and parsnips, you're supposed to steam them first. Oops. I'm not a raw foodist, so that's no BFD for me, but I wonder if they dry carrots and parsnips. If so, maybe they soak them in something instead of steaming before drying (I don't actually know if that'd help since it's, you know, drying).

This was an excellent opportunity for me to use the steamer basket I'd bought a couple of weeks ago, making this a two-new-tool night. I'd never used a steamer basket before, so I didn't really know how to use it and therefore got it all wrong. My first mistake was I thought the basket was supposed to sit in the mouth of the pot, not on the little legs (they seemed to short to me to hold enough water, since it evaporates during steaming). Since the basket obviously didn't just suspend itself in mid-air at the top of the pot, I improvised:



That, of course, lead to my second mistake: steaming the vegetables uncovered. This took eons and the larger pieces never really got tender. I waited until they got rubbery and threw them in the dehydrator for a little over 24 hours.

When I took them out, a few pieces were OK, but most were hard as rocks. However, even they weren't a total loss since I could just suck on them to soften them up, yielding long-term parsnippy goodness.

A friend and I stopped at The Brooklyn Kitchen on our way to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Wednesday, and they explained what I was doing wrong with the steamer. Armed with that knowledge, I will go forth, steam and dehydrate more carrots and parsnips. Stay tuned to see who will reign supreme, in the me vs. parsnip dehydration event of the year.*






* I have no idea why I wrote that, but I laughed while reading it over, so I'm not deleting it!

Vegan =/= Healthy

In my experience, there are three types of vegan food (OK, there are lots more than three, but please bear with me for the sake of simplicity): Healthy Food, Last Resort Food and Holy Crap This is Real Food Food.

Healthy Food - I think this is the food most omnis think of when they think vegan. It's often raw, is basically just processed fruits and vegetables and may contain grains most omnis have never heard of. Usually tastes "healthy" and may smell like hippie.

Last Resort Food - How many servings of mashed potatoes have we all eaten, not because we love potatoes (though I do!), but because there was nothing else without meat in it on the menu? French fries? Onion rings? "Garden salads" consisting of a plate of lettuce and three cherry tomatoes? This is the food we eat because there's no other alternative where we are and it begs the question "How many side dishes does it take to make an entree?"

Holy Crap This is Real Food Food - Veggie dumplings. Jerk seitan. Hearty soups. Sesame tofu. Stuffed mushrooms. Curries. This is food that's awesome, regardless of your nutritional preferences. Put it together and you get real meals, with courses and everything.

When I prepare and eat the Healthy Food, I almost feel virtuous. Here is tasty food that I can eat without any fat and calorie-related guilt. Not only that, but in many cases, it's pure, unadulterated food. I can look at what I'm eating and know exactly what all the components are. I can even identify the herbs and spices. They're not hidden under thick sauces or breading. The vitamins and enzymes are largely intact. It makes me feel like I'm getting the most out of my food. It also makes me feel like a "real" vegan; omnis probably don't have much use for raw lasagna. I get a lot of my Healthy recipes from the message board on therawfoodsite.com. If you're in NYC, Quintessence is a nice raw, vegan, organic place. The food is both tasty and presented well. You don't walk out thinking "Shit, I could have not-cooked that at home and saved $20".

Last Resort Food can sometimes be pretty great; I've had many a fabulous emergency salad. But for every good salad, I've had three that were just lettuce and too much dressing (or worse, overpriced, bitter greens and too much dressing). And let's not forget the places that don't even make salads (or if they do, they all have meat in them).

This past Sunday, I went to Saint's Alp Teahouse with some friends to celebrate a birthday. The first bummer was remembering they make their milk teas with actual milk, so my favorite taro was out (Gobo uses soy milk. Vegans and lactose intolerants rejoice!). I ended up with jasmine green tea, which was actually really good and I'll definitely get it again. Most of the bubble tea I drink doesn't actually taste like tea. This did. I like tea.

The next bummer was the realization that everything on their menu was either a beverage, had meat in it or was deep fried. I guess I should be thankful there are any vegan options on the menu at all, but really, who wants to eat spring rolls and "crispy bean curd" when they're minding their health? Not me. I ended up with the samosas, kind of hoping they'd be baked, but they weren't (duh). They were pretty tasty, but I've definitely had better.

Holy Crap This is Real Food Food practically makes life with living. Without places like Red Bamboo Soul Cafe and Buddha Bodai, I know I'd personally feel rather out of the food loop. The food at these places is so tasty that my omni friends suggest going there instead of the other way around. And it's not all about the "fake" food. Dishes like Black Bean Ginger Stir-Fry and Bean Curd with Organic Mushrooms and Basil are filling and wonderful without even a hint of wannabe meat, fish or dairy.

There was only one thing I disliked about my favorite restaurants: the knowledge I'd never be able to come even close to making anything like what they serve at home. Then I got Vegan With a Vengeance and Veganomicon. Now I can make "real" food like Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh, Chickpea Noodle Soup and samosas at home. This fills me with unadulterated joy. I don't know how to artistically "plate" a meal yet, but I'm getting there!

And I think it should be noted that there really isn't much healthy about (for example) General Tso's Mock Chicken. Sure, it's tofu, but it's deep fried and smothered in a sugary sauce (mmm....sugary, sugary goodness). A lot of people are under the impression that food must be healthy if it's vegan, but a quick flip through the Veganomicon will tell you that's not the case. An egg and dairy-free chocolate cake is still a chocolate cake (a yummy, yummy chocolate cake). It's important to be careful about what we eat, vegan, vegetarian, omni or whatever. We won't be much help to the animals we're trying to protect if we OD on fried vegetables, after all.

And now I'll hop off my soapbox.

Dehydrated is the New Black

Back when I was on the Master Cleanse, I started researching healthier alternatives to my vegetarian lifestyle and got very interested in raw veganism. On the message boards I read, it seemed like everyone and their grandmother had dropped about $57889205 on a fancy dehydrator and it felt like I just couldn't be healthy without one (I'm impressionable!) so I got one similar to this on eBay for $30 including shipping. I wasn't going to drop $200 on a machine I might use twice and get bored of!

Well, I've been using it for about a month and I'm not bored yet.



So far, I've used the dehydrator for fruit, vegetables and even to make crackers with varying degrees of success. Apples, plums and other fruits all came out fine. The crackers stuck to the drying racks and were a total mess, so I think I'll spray them with a bit of oil next time. Vegetables have been far more difficult than fruit.

Many moons ago, I was stuck in Penn Station, waiting for a train at some stupid time of night and absolutely starving. I found a place that sold celery chips and bought them out of curiosity while completely expecting them to suck. They were awesome. I loved them. And haven't been able to find them since.

So, of course, when I got my dehydrator, my first thought was "OMG I'M GOING TO MAKE CELERY CHIPS AND IT WILL BE THE BEST EVER! HOORAY!!" (this was closely followed by "OMG! I can BBQ tofu (or maybe gluten), stick it in there and make my own pseudo-Jerquee!)

So I dried some celery (among other things) and it kind of came out looking like potpourri. Tasted all right, but didn't look or feel particularly appetizing. So I checked the original celery chips' website and noticed the other ingredients in the chips were canola oil and sea salt, two things I happened to have on hand! So next time I loaded up the dehydrator with celery (and carrots and cucumbers) I brushed half of them with oil and sprinkled with salt and kept half of them plain.

The celery still turned into potpourri, but now it was REALLY salty potpourri. The carrots got very hard and chewy, which I liked since I've been off gum for a while, but again, the salt + oil didn't really benefit them much. The cucumbers were by far my favorites. They got sort of leathery but very tasty, but the salted ones were still too salty. One day soon, I definitely want to load the whole thing up with just cucumbers and let it go.

All of the vegetables finished drying at different times, depending on what they were and how I cut them (I'm not very consistent), so I couldn't get a picture of all the dried stuff together (I kind of ate quite a bit of it straight from the dehydrator instead of putting it away). If I just do cucumber next time, that should be more uniform and I'll get a photo then.

The Joy of Not Cooking

I'm starting this blog with entries about what led up to me wanting to keep it. This post is backdated to approximately the date it happened.

The two fabulous people my friends and I threw that shower for got married. It was lovely and I had no idea what to give them. I wanted it to be something special that showed I truly care. Something that was both very "them" and very "me", not just another set of cutlery.

Neither of them are vegetarians or vegans, but they recently decided to explore the raw food lifestyle. They left for their honeymoon right after the wedding and I was pretty sure that after being abroad for two weeks, the last thing they'd want to do when they got home would be prepare food. The only thing that might have sucked as much would be going out to eat again. So I decided to make a raw vegan dinner and some snacks, load it all up in a superhero cooler and leave it on their doorstep for when they got home.

I wasn't sure what to make, but Italian seemed like a pretty safe bet (who doesn't love Italian?), so I ended up with Dole Italian Salad with Pine Nut Basil Dressing (scroll down to last recipe), Italian Wild Rice Pilaf, and Raw Lasagna for dinner, Raw Apple Pie for dessert and Buckwheat Crackers with Veggie Mac Cheese Spread (second recipe) and freshly dried fruits and vegetables to snack on.



Most of what I made had at least one element that needed to be soaked in advance. Some for one half hour, some for five days. I started dehydrating the fruits and vegetables about a week before they needed to be ready so I could make enough. My family absolutely loved having the dehydrator and soak bowls sitting around for a week...only not really. Despite all the advance prep, I ended up staying up all night making the food to take them (I blame my sleeplessness for forgetting to photograph some of the food). I know that sounds awful, but it was actually fun; the time flew by, but I certainly felt it at work after dropping off the cooler! And, of course, the irony was I still wasn't eating and had to go by scent to decide whether or not it seemed palatable enough to give people.

Basil Pine Nut Dressing: Could not have been easier to make, smelled fabulous (though I have a weakness for basil) and made quite a bit. It made enough to fill the dressing bottle I bought them and leave some over for my family to try. It's very similar to pesto sauce (which I love), but smoother and milder. It also stores well. Definitely something I'd make again.

Italian Wild Rice Pilaf: The rice had to soak for five days to soften and the water had to be changed twice per day, which isn't that big of a deal, but between that and making the lemonade for the Master Cleanse, I felt like I was moving in to the kitchen. I didn't use the flax oil, but did everything else according to the recipe. Again, I don't know how it tasted, but it looked beautiful. I loved the colors and hope to make it again for myself.





Raw Lasagna: The recipe says it makes 1-2 servings of lasagna and four of marinara sauce, but that's nonsense. I used 3/4 zucchini instead of 1/2, all the marinara and the whole avocado and still kind of felt like I was skimping, but I didn't have enough ingredients (or time) to make more. Beyond that, I really don't think I could have messed it up, aside from not being very good at the thin slices yet. I'm working on it!

Raw Apple Pie: This was significant because I goofed and I improvised, but one was not relevant to the other. I remembered to soak the (poorly sliced) apples in the lemon juice/cinnamon solution, adding it to the growing collection on the soak table, but didn't realize I was supposed to make and refrigerate the crust the night before too. Not only did I make it that night, but it was also one of the last things I made. I made it, filled it and only got to refrigerate it for a couple of hours before moving it to the cooler. However, as far as I know, that was all right. No one has told me the pie fell apart or anything. My big improvisation was adding some of the golden raisins I had left over from the stew to the pie. I saved the best apple slices for the top and arranged them as a pretty feeble flower, then drizzled the excess lemon juice/cinnamon sauce over them. The pie still looked kind of plain so I tossed some raisins around it and arranged a few in the center of the "flower". I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I like the whole apple/cinnamon/raisin combination. Don't you?





Buckwheat Crackers: This was another recipe that required two days of soaking, for the buckwheat groats. Then the crackers themselves spent about a day in the dehydrator. I went according to the recipe, but I omitted the carrot pulp. The recipe says to coat the dehydrator tray with a small amount of olive oil, but the instructions for my dehydrator specifically say not to, so I didn't. I regret that now. The crackers stuck both when I tried to flip them and when they were done, so they came out in all sorts of crazy shapes. I hope they tasted better than they looked. The batter was about the consistency of babaganoush and had a lovely, garlic scent that made me want to dive right into it without even drying it out. I definitely want to make these again, but I think I'll double the recipe: I'll dehydrate half on oiled trays and use the other half as a dip with carrots (it'd be way to carb-heavy to put in pita like real babaganoush).





Veggie Mac Cheese Spread: I did everything according to the recipe, using sea salt instead of vinegar. It was more nights blending and draining, but well worth it. I used two pint containers of macadamia nuts and it made enough cheese to give my friends a container of it and keep a container for my family, who LOVED it. It has a nice bite to it from the garlic and onions without being too overpowering. My other family members are all omnis, so they're kind of freaked out by the idea of cheese made out of nuts, but they adore the cheese. My mother (who initially didn't even want to taste it) craves it. Victory for the veggies!





Dried Fruits and Vegetables: I included sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans, pluots, celery, apples, pears, peaches and kiwis. I tried skinning the kiwis before drying them, but the ones I bought were stubborn, so I decided to wait until after they were dehydrated, hoping the fruit would pull away from the skin as it shrank. No such luck. The skin ended up totally stuck to the fruit, so I gave it to them with the skin on. I wonder how that turned out for them.



Overall, it was quite a bit of work, but very much worth it. The bride called me when they got home and she seemed very excited because they hadn't eaten and neither of them wanted to cook. The crackers, rice and pie were all successes but eating lasagna cold seemed kind of weird. I can't say I blame them.