Build a Better Bagel

If everything goes according to plan, this entry will post itself on Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving to the people who celebrate it! I'm not cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year and I have my blog posts set up in advance, so my Thanksgiving writeup will happen one day next week, probably to close out MoFo.

If I had a nickle for every time someone getting ready to visit or move to New York asked me where to get the best bagel, I'd have...at least a dollar. I spent most of my life confused by the idea of the "best" bagel because I grew up in Brooklyn, where (as far as I knew) all bagels were pretty much the same. And by "pretty much the same", I mean "the best thing in the world". In fact, I didn't even know bad bagels existed until I was in my 20s and working in midtown Manhattan. So instead of tips for finding the best bagel, here are a few ways to avoid shitty bagels:

• Don't buy them from street trucks.
• Don't buy them from (inter)national chains. This includes Starbucks, Tim Horton's and Dunkin Donuts. They may taste fine, but they're still not the same as a "real" New York bagel.
• Actually, to simplify, don't buy them any place that doesn't have the word "bagel" in the name. Or at least in big letters on a sign in the window. Or, failing that, carry at least eight different kinds and clearly does the bulk of its business in bagels.
•  Don't buy them if you're really far from NYC. Make your own, instead. It's not nearly as difficult as you'd think.

 This bagel breaks the first part of the third rule, since it's from Milk 'N Honey:

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Kelp!

I need somebody!

Sorry, that was a terrible pun. I would say I'll try not to let it happen again, but if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that's a total lie. Anyway, it's still Sea Life Week over here, so let's move on:

Today's plant: Kelp
Used in: Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes from Vegan Brunch

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Quiche Me, You Fool!

I love quiche. Now. I don't know if I ever had quiche, pregan. If I did, it would have been about sixteen years ago, and I probably didn't like it at all because I didn't like eggs. Tofu quiche, on the other hand is the stuff dreams are made of. In fact, the quiche section is one of the most awesome parts of Vegan Brunch (which has lots of awesome parts). So when a quiche recipe was posted to test for Vegan in the Sun, my excitement was palpable (to me).

In my excitement, I may have overcooked it a bit, but hell, no one's perfect.

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The Morning After

What do you do after you've spent days in the kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner for your whole family? If you're me, you get up early (relatively) and make brunch.

Back when I first learned to cook (and had stopped eating all animal products, though I still thought of myself as a vegetarian, not vegan) and my family was still eating turkey during Thanksgiving dinner, we came up with Flesh Free Friday: the day after Thanksgiving, I make brunch and dinner and the whole family goes vegan for the day. This year, the main attraction was the Coconut Orange Dessert Pancakes with Candied Spiced Coconut and chocolate ganche from Vegan in the Sun:

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Thanksthieving

Oh, holidays! Hope everyone had a lovely day.

This was my first time trying to do a somewhat traditional Thanksgiving (apparently, chili and a cornbread boat aren't traditional for Thanksgiving. Who knew?). My family doesn't really have many traditions (the only thing that seems to happen with any regularity in my house around Thanksgiving is the basement flooding), so I stole some from my friends and the Internet (and my friends on the Internet). Here's what I came up with:

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A Moveable Feast

I have a confession to make: Sometimes, when I'm going someplace, I look more forward to packing something to eat than to what I'll be doing. This is especially true of going to work. And so, here's a post dedicated to the food I've been packing myself for the last few days.

Behold! Today's lunch!

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I Knew I Forgot Something

Welcome to today's VeganMoFo trip down Memory Lane. Back in 2008, I offered to bake for everyone who sponsored me in that year's AIDS Walk. It ended up taking me ages to make something for everyone and even longer to remember to blog about it. Even longer = until today = over a year. Oops. Sorry, Internet! Better late than never, here's a small sample of what I made to thank the people who contributed.

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Pesto Rolls

If I had to pick my favorite herb, it'd probably be basil. It's not the most exotic herb around, but it's so pretty and fragrant that I can't help but love it and, by extension, love pesto. I'm always trying to find new ways to use the stuff. Most recently, I came up with pesto rolls, which are basically like a savory version of cinnamon rolls.

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Food and Friends

Whenever I see a food-related quote I like, it almost always says one of two things: Food is better when you share it with people you care for or food is a great way to show people you care.

Because of this, I try to cook and get people together for a picnic at least once a year. We spend loads of time together doing other things, including eating in restaurants and one another's homes, but it's not the same. Being outside on a nice day makes people happy and enhances the whole experience. It's an opportunity to eat and chat in a completely relaxed environment, without even the structure of table and chairs (if you sit in a different spot on the blanket when returning from the restroom, no one cares, but if you do that at the dinner table, your former neighbors will probably sniff their pits and check their breath).

My favorite type of picnic is brunch. For one thing, I just love brunch foods. I love to make them and I love to eat them. Another reason is that it's probably the most relaxed meal around. You eat brunch because you woke up too late for breakfast and are too hungry to wait for lunch. Late to start the day but eager to start the eating is my kind of deal.

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Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale Wrap Up

We held our second Brooklyn bake sale on Sunday and a wonderful time was had by all. We ate, drank, made merry, sang, danced and raised over $1000 for Farm Sanctuary and Sea Shepherd (and we're not done yet, so if you'd like to contribute, keep reading).

Oh yeah. There were also some cakes and things.



Photo by Ronit Tal

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Vegan Bake Sale Day 1

We held our first bake sale on Sunday and things went surprisingly smoothly. We started a bit late, the weather sucked, chocolatey things got a bit melty due to the humidity and we had a small coffee accident, but other than that, smooth as silken tofu.



Before I talk about the past, a quick reminder about the future:

Our next bake sale is going to be even bigger and better*, and it's this Sunday, June 28, starting around 11 AM**.

Open Source Gallery
Park Slope, Brooklyn
251 17th Street, right off of 5th Avenue, one block east of the Prospect Avenue M/R station and convenient from the B63 bus

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Please Note:

This post may be slightly blithering.

VEGAN BRUNCH IS HERE!!!



AND IT'S GOT MY NAME IN (spelled correctly!)!



AND VINTAGE PYREX!



AND LOTS OF YUMMINESS SO YOU SHOULD GO BUY IT!

I don't make commission off of it, I swear. It's just really fucking good. I have access to most of these recipes online and I'm STILL excited to have it in hand. And I'd sell my little brother for some carmelized onion quiche right now, but I'm only supposed to cook tester recipes for Isa and Terry's upcoming books right now. At least that's what I've been telling myself until this fabulous book showed up. So many pretty pictures!

This is my advice to YOU for free. No charge. Gratis: Get this book and make some quiche, lemon poppy seed muffins, beer battered tofu, and pain au chocolat. You're welcome.

Oh Hi

Wow, I'm really crap at this blog thing, huh?

Hmmm....what's happened since my last post of any substance? Let's see.



(please excuse the crappy photo. It's taken with my BlackBerry and apparently TwitPic* doesn't let you embed photos without shrinking them. This picture really isn't worth reuploading to Flickr, but we'll make do since it's all I have from the past few months and this post needs something. You can click through to see it in it's larger, overbroiled, glory.)

Vegan Brunch testing ended. Pre-order your copy today! (thus concludes the shameless plug portion of this post)

I successfully completed about a week doing Eat to Live really hardcore. During that week, I made loads of non-photogenic soup, which was not worth posting about.

I spent two months doing my own modification of Eat to Live, which basically meant making more ugly (though tasty) food and not eating any Luna Bars. Success!

I gave up fried foods for the period of time known as Lent (also chewy candy, but that's not relevant to what you see here).

I baked a lot of chocolate chip cookies. They didn't come out anywhere near as pretty as Isa's.

Testing began for Terry Hope Romero's Vegan Latina. WOOHA!

So far, I've made Tropical Pumpkin Soup, which uses Calabaza pumpkin instead of the kind you usually use on Thanksgiving. It's really good and creamy and kind of thymey. Yum.

Locro, or Creamy Potato Soup with Avocado, might be my new boyfriend. My whole family loved this. It's so thick and rich and creamy. The avocado adds a nice touch to your usual potato soup and it's garnished with lime juice and raw red onion which give it a nice kick.

Pastel de Choclo, or Sweet Basil & Corn Pot Pie, is kind of like shepherd's pie gone south o' the border. The filling is made up of vegetables, raisins, tempeh and yuca and the topping is a sort of batter made of corn instead of the usual potato. So. Good. The picture above doesn't really do it justice because I broiled the hell out of the top (I've said it before and I'll say it 74289 times more: I like my shit burnt).

In addition to getting to make all sorts of tasty awesomeness, working on this book is allowing me to try out a bunch of new flavors. In one week, I've already added two new spices to my list (annatto, which I used to flavor an oil that was to be used in the potato soup and many other things, and epazote, sort of like Latiny oregano). So much fun!

I think that's all I've got. Now that I'm testing again and Passover is coming, hopefully you'll see a bit more from me in the coming months.

So how've you been?



*Yes, I'm on Twitter, but I don't bother to link it here because I'm not one of those interesting food-related Twitterers who posts all sorts of useful links and stuff, it's mostly just my friends and I bullshitting.

Im a Bad, Bad Girl

Or maybe just a terrible blogger. Christmas is over (happy holidays, everyone) and I haven't even discussed Thanksgiving yet. I suck. I also suck for not getting a shot of my whole Thanksgiving table. Lacking that, I'll open this post with our centerpiece:



That there is the Edible Mayflower (higher res on Flickr).

You may ask yourself "Where is that large automobile?" "Why the crap would anyone make an edible Mayflower?!" I don't have a good answer to that question. But I do have a story.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (i.e. about a year ago, on the Internet), my friend found the Meat Ship (insert rather obvious Gross Out Warning here). I was struck by both its grossness and it's awesomeness (hello there, edible BOAT) and decided I had to make a vegan one. My friends were kind enough to gift me a pirate ship cake pan to aid me in my quest, and the rest is history (or dinner).

Once I decided to make the ship itself from cornbread, I took to the Internet to find out what people enjoyed most with the stuff. After polling the constituents, I ended up with sails made from Veganomicon style sauteed collard greens, Pilgrims made from mini Spicy Pinto Sausages wearing sauteed mushroom hats, sailing the seven seas of Yellow Rose Recipes Better Than Basic Chili. Perhaps not the most traditional of Thanksgiving foods, but damn tasty just the same.

Here's my first plate of the night. Yes, we went classy and ate Thanksgiving dinner on disposable plates. Don't judge me!



Clockwise from that poppy-seed covered ball of awesome, we have:

Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls (Vegan Brunch). Harvest Vegetable Medley (Vegetarian Times). Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans and Raisins (Veganomicon). Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes (Yellow Rose Recipes). Thanksgiving style polenta seitan (Parsnip Parsimony, The I-40 Kitchen). Gravy (my friend Sarah). Grilled Asparagus (Veganomicon).

I had another plate after that with chili, collards, stuffing, cranberry crumble and I don't even know what else. My foodbaby was enormous.

I made the Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times for Thanksgiving dinner, substituting Isa's Spicy Pinto Sausages from the upcoming Vegan Brunch for the store bought ones. Everyone loved it. My mother has some sort of sausage aversion and asked me not to put sausage in the stuffing, so I only put in two and she really liked it. Yet again, vegan food has proven her wrong!

That was my first time eating chestnuts. I don't think I'm a fan. I won't pick them out of anything, but I won't go hunting down chestnut-based recipes either.



I enjoyed the Harvest Vegetable Medley from the same magazine a lot more. Everyone loved it, even my vegetable-phobic grandmother. This was surprising because it's really just plain, old roasted vegetables. Then again, it's not so suprprising because it has almost thirty cloves of garlic in it and who doesn't love metric assloads of garlic? Please note that if you make the recipe as written, you will be able to feed at least a dozen people for two days. I suggest halving it unless you're having a platoon over for dinner and/or really love leftovers.



Thanks to Parsnip Parsimony, I now know about the joy that is polenta seitan. This is not something that would have occurred to me to make, so I'm really glad she thought of it. It's got great bite and I can easily eat a whole batch of it at once if I don't stop myself. Sadly, it's not very photogenic.



Don't let that put you off, though. It's still awesome.

Let the record show I don't like sweet potato. And I don't like tzimmes. I like my vegetables savory, my fruit sweet and never the twains shall meet. My family, however, loves both, so I made them the Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon. Since I made it, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and take a taste and actually liked it. Holy crap. That's the sort of word eating I can get behind. I think the pecans may have been what converted me. I love me some pecans.



The Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes are pretty amazing. How amazing? Amazing enough to get my little brother to eat mushrooms. That's borderline miraculous. These potatoes are stuffed with broccoli and mushrooms and win. Mine don't look so great because they're a bit over baked, but that's how we like them.



Here's a shot of the full pan of Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming Vegan Brunch. They're good for brunch or any damn time. I obviously thought they'd make good dinner rolls and I was right. However, they are crazy with the poppy seeds. Be prepared to make a mess with these babies.



No SSD family dinner is complete without grilled asparagus. Is that weird?



For dessert, we have leftover birthday cake, my friend Sarah's Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Not the prettiest desserts ever (I ran out of decorating time), but they more than made up for it in tastiness. Especially the cake. I can't get enough of it and neither can anyone I've ever made it for.





And that's a wrap. Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe. See you back here in 2009.

Menu Planning

It's the time of the season for cooking.

Thanksgiving is upon us and we're doing it at our house this year. And I'm in charge of the cooking. The family is still undecided about whether or not my mother will make some turkey parts for the two people who will actually eat it, but there definitely won't be a whole bird on the table and that counts for something. Also, my whole family goes vegan for the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm cooking for that too. And the day before Thanksgiving is my grandmother's birthday, so I'm also making her cake.

I've decided to post my planned menus for the next few days, in order to keep myself from giving up on anything. And so if I completely destroy any of the recipes, I won't be able to deny it.

Wednesday
Apricot Glazed Almond Cake based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Thanksgiving Dinner
Note: I was told we don't need soup, salad, gravy or rolls, so they're not missing because I'm lazy.
Grilled Asparagus
Harvest Vegetable Medley from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes
Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch
Polenta Seitan from a recipe that will hopefully be posted on Parsnip Parsimony soon, with seasoning suggestions from The I-40 Kitchen
Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon
My friend Sarah's gravy
My mother's Cranapple Crumble, which I made into mini pies for last winter's challenge
My friend Sarah's pumpkin pie
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
And something I'm pretty certain I'm going to screw up, so I won't talk about it yet.

Friday Brunch
Pesto Scrambled Tofu with Grape Tomatoes
Paprika Rosemary Potatoes
Raised Waffles with Baked Cinnamon Apples all from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch

Friday Dinner
Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons
Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits both from Veganomicon
Leftovers and fresh fruit for dessert

And if I have nothing else to do, I think I'm going to attempt home made English Muffins on Sunday. One more thing from Isa's amazing book of amazingness (AKA Vegan Brunch).

Happy holidays!

Ummm...Hi

It's been a while. My only excuse is that I'm lazy. That, and most of what I've made over the past couple of months hasn't been all that photogenic. How can one possibly read a post without pictures in it, right? Over the weekend, I was actually rebuked by a friend for slacking off on this whole blog thing, so here I am.

So what's been cooking lately? Good question. I barely remember.

I've tested some more recipes for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch, and they pretty much rule. Hopped on and off the raw bandwagon a few times (currently dangling off the side). Baked some brownies. And some blondies. And some brandy fruit cake stuff. And some cookies. In short: lots of baking happened.



That there is a Lemon Poppyseed muffin from the aforementioned brunch book. I don't usually like lemon baked goods, but these muffins are great. They're both sweet and lemony and the crumb is perfect and I love them. While this may not be saying much, these are probably the best muffins I've ever made. My mother went so far as to say they're the best things I've ever made. Seriously good stuff.



I baked for Election Day. I decided to be non-partisan and just go with a patriotic red, white and blue...ish. Red and white came from the Raspberry Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance and the blue came from the Veganomicon Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownies. Yes. I know. They're brown, not blue, but they have "blue" in the name and they're tasty and one of the many things we've all learned from this election is that color does not limit what one can do or be.

Also, I think I've said this before, but I love those blondies SO. DAMN. MUCH. I've made them with different berries and they're always great. It pains me to share them. Really.

(OK, not really. The fun part of baking is the sharing.)

Close up shots of the brownies just looked like a load of brown (not so appetizing), so here are the blondies in all their chocolate raspberry glory.:



And then there's this: Sticky Spiked Double-Apple Cake with a Brown Sugar-Brandy Sauce. It's kind of ridiculous.



Baked in honor of my friend passing the bar (actually, Little Miss Genius Pants has now passed not one but two bars).

It was really easy to veganize. I used one tablespoon ground flax seeds dissolved in three tablespoons water and 1/4 cup applesauce to replace the eggs and MimicCreme for the heavy cream in the sauce. The recipe made me kind of nervous. When it said "Add the eggs and beat on medium speed until thickened and pale" I got jumpy. What if flax and apple sauce won't make it thicken and pale? What if I end up with a thin, dark mess of grossness? No worries, though, it totally worked. The cake was really interesting to make because it was more like a pan full of batter covered fruit and nuts than a batter with some fruit in it. It was cool to see how it all expanded as it baked and turned into a cake, not a mess. I didn't think I would like this much because I'm not a fan of brandy, but I was wrong. Some of it bakes off and the fruit and nuts overpower the alcohol enough for it to be tasty goodness.

I think that's all for now. Thanksgiving is coming and I'm in charge this year, so all of my food-related thought is going into that at the moment. I will report back on that before January, I swear.

The Brunchening 2.0

I know I said my next post would be about cake, but I don't have pictures yet, so you get brunch instead. Sorry!

I celebrated Labor Day with a brunch picnic in Prospect Park. Almost all recipes came from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming brunch book Crack of Noon. I cannot express how much love I have for most of the recipes that will be in this book. The sausages, waffles, scones and scrambles are some of the best food I've ever eaten.



I don't know how I managed to eat almost nothing but brunch for three months without a waffle maker. I didn't realize I had that much restraint, but my period of deprivation is over. To celebrate, I made Cornbread Waffles With Pantry Mole Rojo And Seitan and Buckwheat Waffles With Red Wine Tarragon Mushroom Gravy.

Cornbread Waffle with Pantry Mole Rojo and Seitan:



The cornbread waffle is great. It's almost like a waffle-shaped corn muffin. I love corn muffins so much. The seitan is so simple, but incredibly tasty. I made the Simple Seitan recipe from Veganomicon, and sauteed it with some red onion and yellow pepper. Easy and delicious. I actually ate most of it without the mole or the waffles and think it'd be great over rice. This was my first mole and I found it really interesting. I don't think I've ever made anything with such a wide variety of ingredients before. Chocolate, chili, raisins, peanut butter, tortilla chips and other things all came together to make a really nice sauce. It was so nice some of my friends at it alone and one did a little dance with her waffle:



Buckwheat Waffles with Red Wine Tarragon Mushroom Gravy:



That waffle looks a little odd because it was the last one, made with the leftover batter. It was the only one to get eaten at the picnic because we were full and it was small. The buckwheat waffles are good, and feel kind of healthy, which is nice. The gravy is rich and awesome. I'd love to put it over mashed potatoes (actually, that may be dinner tonight) or seitan steaks. I'm definitely going to make it again in the winter.

Wallowing in Waffles:



Of everything I've made for brunch so far, I think I've had the most fun with sausage (get your minds out of the gutters, people). The recipes are so easy: make dough, wrap it up like a Tootsie Roll in some foil and steam it. In less than an hour, you have tasty sausages. This time, I made Cherry Sage Sausages. Dried cherries in sausages never would have occurred to me, but I'm glad it occurred to Isa because they freaking rule.



You know what else is kind of awesome? Tofu Benny. Seriously. Have you ever had homemade vegan hollandaise while sitting on the ground in Brooklyn? I have. It'll be something to tell the grandkids. Someone else's grandkids.



Yup. That there is marinated tofu over a slice of tomato with smoked salt, on a bed of Diner Home Fries from Veganomicon, smothered in hollandaise. It tastes even better than it looks and sounds, I swear. And the cute little circles sit so nicely on top of the tomato slices (the tomato in the picture is hiding; you can almost see it on the right). It's one of those fairly easy but impressive looking dishes I love so much (it looks way more impressive when it doesn't spend an hour on the train, honest).

Does Scrambled Tortillas sound odd to you? It sounded odd to me, but I soldiered on and I'm glad I did because this is easy comfort food. It's sort of like Mexican Matzo Brei. The flavor took a few bites to grow on me, but I totally dig it now. I swear it tastes better than it looks.



Scones are required eating for brunch, right? How about Berry Lavender Scones? Those should be required eating for all the time. The recipe calls for marionberries, but I've never even seen one of those, so I made mine with a mix of raspberries and blackberries. I can't say anyone complained! These were my first scones ever and they came out quite well. Sadly, they got squished under the rest of the food on the way over (but they tasted fine, just the same):



We also had Polenta Rancheros with Cashew Sour Cream. I love polenta. I'd put it on anything. This is a nice, beany way to have it. I've eaten it for lunch every day this week and am not sick of it yet (which is sad because I just ate the last portion). I have to say the Cashew Sour Cream doesn't really taste like sour cream, though. Instead, it tastes good. I've always hated sour cream, but I'm throwing this cashew stuff on pretty much everything. Both are really easy, make a lot and reheat well, so this is a definite not-miss recipe.

All that was great, but a meal is nothing without dessert. Lucky for me, Lauren (pictured above with waffle) brought the Veganomicon Strawberry-Plum Crisp. Even after all that food, I had two large helpings. She managed to keep it warm the whole time and it was one of the best desserts I've ever had. I will definitely have to make it myself soon. Like weekly.

Despite that, when getting together with a group, I can never resist the urge to bake something (and the scones just weren't enough), so I made donuts. Yes, donuts. I got the recipe from VeganYumYum, the mini donut pan from Amazon and had a grand time.

The chocolate ones came out very similar to the ones from Entenmann's, just a bit more bitter because I used semi-sweet chocolate. I think I may try these again using rice milk chocolate.



And with sprinkles. Like Homer Simpson, but more awesome:



Hopefully, my next post will be cake!

Buncha Brunch

Testing is still going strong for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming vegan brunch cookbook, Crack of Noon. Most recently, I've been getting down with the muffins, artichokes and quiche.



As I think I've mentioned before, I'm not very good at making muffins. Despite passing the toothpick test, they almost always end up underdone in the middle when cut open. Until now. Enter Isa's Bakery Style Berry Muffins. They baked perfectly, puffed up nicely and taste amazing. They make bakeries completely obsolete in the morning.

From the outside:



Showing off the raspberries, blueberries and strawberries:



Being the savage muffin failure that I was until now, I would totally buy the book just for this recipe.

If sweet, fruity, yogurty muffins aren't your thing, how about Zucchini Spelt Muffins? They're one of your healthier muffins, but that doesn't prevent them from being damn tasty. I had to overbake them a bit to get them right, but that may just be due to my muffin disability. Despite being healthy, they're all kinds of sweet and awesome. The homeless guy in front of Grace Plaza really seemed to like them.

They're so cute and round:





If "real" food is more your thing, check out this Caramelized Onion Quiche:





When I first read the recipe, I thought "Onions? That's it? No garlic or anything? Snooze." I was so wrong. This stuff is so good. I've been eating it for lunch every day, so it's almost done and that makes me sad. It's very easy to make, though prepping the onions does take quite a while.

If you want something that looks (and sounds!) a little more impressive, how about Simple Stuffed Artichokes With Ginger And Chervil?

Ooooo steamy!





For those not in the know (like me a week ago), chervil is fancy pants, fairly hard to find, parsley. Look for it at greenmarkets. It tastes sort of like a cross between parsley and licorice (it's not strong; I hate licorice but like this anyway), and is smaller than regular parsley.

Artichoke prep is always a pain in the ass, but this isn't too bad. Removing the choke is definitely easier when you're artichoke is cut in half, but this still doesn't take a huge amount of time. It just looks like it does. The steaming definitely takes longer than the prep, and that's inactive, so if you're me, you can spend that time picking choke bits off the floor. The stuffing for these things is so good. I think I'm going to try stuffing zucchini or something with it. Something slightly less spiky than artichokes.