pub fare, take one

Exactly two weeks ago was Mister's and my 4th wedding anniversary.  It was also one of the nights I worked until close (9pm) so we just ate leftovers and sniffed pretty roses and gave each other some kisses.  We actually had our anniversary dinner the following night.  In the absence of our dear departed (and ardently missed!) Horizons, the only place in center city Philadelphia (or anywhere within decent driving distance to my knowledge) for vegan fine dining, we made some calls, reviewed some restaurants' menus online, and eventually settled on this plan: we'd start at Front and South Streets and just walk until we found somewhere we wanted to eat.

I hate South Street.  This was Mister's brilliant idea, because he seemed to think we had heard of a bunch of restaurants about to open on South Street.  I think we might have been thinking ahead on that one because what was on South Street was a lot of recently closed restaurants, as the Street continues its slow decline.  Regardless, we started our menu-gazing at Downey's, an Irish bar & restaurant.  We ultimately decided it probably wasn't the best bet for a "quiet" romantic anniversary dinner, so we kept going, but not before Mister whined a little about why no one has yet undertaken to veganize Irish/UK pub food and mourned that he hasn't had Bangers and Mash in about 9 years.

So, for my mister, tonight I made Savoury Shepherd's Pie from How It All Vegan.

First, I took my time slow-sauteing carrots, celery, tomato, and some garlic standing in for onion, then added in the lentils.  The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of mashed lentils, but that's no fun, so I cooked 1/2 cup of French de puy lentils and didn't bother mashing them.  It came out just right, and far more attractive than it would have been (and has been) with mashed Goya lentils.

In my pretty Martha Stewart Blue bowl, I mashed together 3 Yukon Gold potatoes with a generous tablespoon of Earth Balance, a quarter-cup of Earth Balance soymilk (we're all about product placement tonight, folks!), and a generous sprinkling of salt.  It is such a simple recipe, yet it's one of the tastiest recipes I have for mashed potatoes.

While the pie went into the oven, I opened my Happy Weekend bottle of 2009 Beaujolais-Villages because I'm ramping up for next Thursday, which is the third Thursday of November.  To celebrate the introduction of this year's Beaujolais Nouveau, there will be a street festival right outside where I work next Thursday, complete with complimentary tastings, sales at the retail establishments, and two things that I feel utterly compelled to try: Beaujolais jell-o shots because I cannot figure out how that works, and Beaujolais lip balm, because that's freaking awesome.

Once I had smoothed on a thick coating of mashed potatoes to top the pie, I was a little disappointed in how bland it looked, so I sprinkled some Mediterranean Sea Salt blend on that puppy and it was absolutely the right choice.  It added just a little....je ne sais quoi (someone take my French away!)

Stay tuned for tomorrow's menu, which should include at least one other attempt at making Mister some pub fare and other recent requests.  We might end up with A Menu For Mister, part two...

green beer goggles

I don't actually like beer.  I think that is both a blessing and a curse.  On the one hand, beer is normally pretty cheap and easy to come by (although it takes way more beer than can fit in my belly to have any effect on me).  On the other hand, it doesn't taste very good, and by avoiding it I am also avoiding pointless calorie use and involving myself directly in scenes like this:

Apparently, shortly before I arrived home from work, there was a huge Irish band across the street, complete with a bagpipe choir and a marching band drumline.  Mister said the drums were making the apartment shake, which did not make our wee kitty happy.  They started up again while I was cooking dinner.  Mister started moaning but honestly, they weren't that bad - I kind of got a kick out them, as long as they kept it brief.  They did.

I never had the traditional corned beef and cabbage before I stopped eating animals, mainly because my family is not Irish and we didn't eat cabbage.  I don't even know what you do to beef to corn it, but it sounds kind of gross.  Nevertheless, I did feel the need to do something Irish and cabbagey for dinner tonight, so I made my own version of vegan corned beef and cabbage (with a little help from my friends).

That's some pretty purple cabbage just steam-simmering away with some garlic and caraway seeds right there.  While it was cooking, I reflected on a memory I might have made up, but I think I remember my mother telling me about the time my sister, as an adult, wanted to make some traditional German meal that involved cabbage and how it stunk up the whole house.  As I inhaled the sweet scent of my cabbage, I wondered just what a person has to do to cabbage to make it smell as bad as other people think it does.  I think the answer is: boil it.  I think as long as you refrain from boiling it for hours, it is just fine.

In place of the corned beef, I sliced a package of Tofurky kielbasa on the bias and then did a quick saute in a bit of olive oil.  Once it was lightly browned, I turned off the heat and finished cooking the cabbage.  Finally, I artfully arranged the "beef" over a bed of Red Cabbage with Caraway Seeds from The Urban Vegan.  

It was a delightful combination of sweet and savory, a little crunchy and a little chewy.  We happily finished it all up while discussing how some famous people manage to have long, fruitful, and relevant careers (think Madonna, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Steven Tyler) while other celebs enjoyed a phenomenal career until the had some kind of major meltdown and never quite make it back to normal (for example, Mel Gibson, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Mariah Carey).

I love Mister's and my dinner conversations.

black-eyed Irish

When we came to check out what is now our new home, there was really only one thing that gave us a moment of hesitation.  As I'm sure you picked up, we were not enthusiastic about the restaurant/bar/nightclub that opened beneath our old home and annoyed us every single night until we moved.  So, we had a few qualms when we looked out the bedroom window of our new home and saw a bar.

Not just any bar... No, we find ourselves in the slightly unenviable position of living across the street from an Irish bar.  In March.

Thursday should be amazing.  You can't see completely, but it's a Jameson sign and it says "Get your Irish on with an Irish Ginger."  While I will admit I'm a little curious about an Irish Ginger, Jameson and I have tattered past, and although I'm Irish, I really don't dig the St. Patty's day bar scene.  Aside from the first St Patty's day after I turned 21 and my dad and I went to this nice local bar/restaurant and drank green things and no one spilled anything on us.

Anyway, I figure Irish folk and black eyes more or less go together like PB&J, so that should be a relatively good segue to our dinner: Pasta Shells with Black-eyed Peas and Artichokes from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook.

This "Italian" dish had some of the most bizarrely matched ingredients.  I don't know if they even have caraway seeds in Italy - I'll have to look if Mister and I really do make it to Tuscany next year for our anniversary like we planned three and a half years ago.  In any case, I kind of feel like the only thing that made this dish "Italian" was the presence of pasta and the artichoke hearts.  We added a little southern charm with black-eyed peas and I'm not sure what the deal was with the smoked tofu, but you never have to ask me twice to include that stuff in a recipe!

It was an interesting result.  I thought it was a little bland at first and I thought Mister was probably going to play that old game of pushing things around his plate and trying to just eat the shells and artichoke hearts.  I ended up being quite wrong!  Mister had two and a half helpings and I had a little more as well, although I do think it benefited from the Mediterranean sea salt I sprinkled over top.  I don't know what I would do without that stuff, honestly.  Mister commented that it was creamy, yet a little acidic.  No good at keeping culinary secrets, I explained the creaminess came from the beans I had mashed into a paste and then combined with the vegetable broth to make a sauce, and I can imagine the acidity came from the apple cider vinegar.  Yes, of all the variations of vinegar in the world and on my shelf, this recipe wanted apple cider vinegar.  Another bizarre twist, if you ask me.

So, happy weekend!  I'm thrilled to be done with the week at work, even though I'm teaching tomorrow.  I've constructed this week's menu and I'm hoping that if I stop stalling and start cleaning up dinner, I can get to bed early enough that I can get up and go food shopping before lessons tomorrow.  Honestly, very little is more irritating than trying to do your grocery shopping near a major social hub on a Saturday night.  Besides, I'd rather spend my evening getting a jump on unpacking - I really want this weekend to see the end of unpacking so we can start spending our weekends actually enjoying our new home...watch a movie, just screw around on the computer without feeling like I should be doing something more productive, or *gasp* reading! 

You envy my exciting social life.

Wanna see the new menu?  It got an "OooH!" of approval from the Mister, so I must have done something right.  A lot of the recipes are from The Urban Vegan, so maybe he is as big a fan of Dynise as I am.  Truth be told, I haven't had the chance to test any new recipes since the moving process began and I found myself missing her style, so I figured I'd make some of the old recipes to get back into the groove.  I do have some baking projects in the wings, though, now that I've figured out how to turn on the oven.

1. Sweet and Sour Stirfry from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook.  Yes, this was on the menu last week - I managed to forget two vital ingredients.

2. Greek-Style Rice Pilaf, also from VTCC and last week's menu.  Going to Cedars threw us off a day...

3. Sloppy Joes from The Urban Vegan.  I have a bunch of sloppy joes recipes, but I've never made this one, which uses Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), unlike my other recipes which either use a meat analog or lentils.  I'm interested to see how the TVP works out and it's kind of a fun, weird thing to buy and cook.

4. Cauliflower-Chickpea Tagine, also from The Urban Vegan.  I can't remember if I've made this before, but if I haven't, it's high time.

5. Red Cabbage with Caraway Seeds and Tofurky Kielbasa, also from The Urban Vegan.  Can you guess which night we're eating this?  I think the flavors will be pleasantly complemented by an Irish Ginger...whatever that is.

6. Spaghetti con Salsa Fresca, also from The Urban Vegan.  I chose this recipe because it will make Mister happy and because I made a little error in my shopping last week and came home with two pounds of plum tomatoes....instead of the two plum tomatoes I needed for the curry last night.

7. BBQ-Flavored White Beans with Sausage and Spinach from Vegan Express.  Ordinarily, I make this recipe as part of a cycle that begins with Isa's Pomegranate BBQ tofu.  This recipe allows me to use up the leftover homemade BBQ sauce that is way too good to waste.  This will mark the first time I make it with store bought BBQ sauce, but I figured that since I had to get some for the Sloppy Joes recipe, I may as well use it to make this recipe.  It's been quite a while since I made it last.