there was a little girl

There was a little girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

That poem, composed by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow while trying to quiet a daughter for sleep, is a perfect narrative for my relationship with Trader Joe's.  Well, the Trader Joe's in Philadelphia, anyway.

I love Trader Joe's for a few reasons.  First (and possibly most importantly), they have an amazing 10-grain bread that makes amazing toast (it gets all crispy and chewy in the best possible way) and even Mister likes it.  I bought the multigrain bread at Whole Foods for years before he told me he didn't like it.  Second, and also important, is that I usually save a ton of money buying produce there, rather than Whole Foods.  Let's compare: $0.69 for a red bell pepper (when they're in season) versus $4.99/lb (meaning the average pepper is over $2).  $0.39 for a potato versus the seeming bargain of $1.99/lb.  You get the idea.  Finally, they have the most palatably store-brand soymilk.

So what's horrid?  Ever trying to shop quickly.  Which can be important to me.  Also, ever trying to shop between 5 and 6 pm.  It doesn't matter if it's a weekday or a weekend - trying to shop at that hour is maddening.  The lines literally run halfway down every aisle and I'll be in line longer than it takes to shop.  Also, since their low prices do rely on seasonal produce, they don't always have stock of what I want, where I know Whole Foods almost always will (even if it's $8 asparagus).  This is not a bad thing, per se, but when it's already inconvenient to go there (on the other side of town completely), I want to get as much as I can to make it worth the effort.

One thing they're hit and miss on is arugula.  This week, it was a miss, so I ended up with fresh baby spinach, even though I have two bags of frozen spinach in my freezer.  Why the hunt for arugula?

Pasta Della California from Veganomicon had cried out to be made one last time before I do a snow dance and hunker down with a wintery menu of stews and chilis and other impossibly hearty things to be cooked slowly and to warm my innards from head to toe (or... at least my belly).

When Mister and I were shopping at Superfresh last week, I saw a surprising thing for December - a sale on Haas Avocados!  So I gently poked a few, trying to find a ripe one.... then took one that looked a good size and let it ripen on my counter the last few days.  It is so rare to find avocados for less than a dollar here in Philadelphia (not exactly prime avocado-growing climate), I couldn't resist the urge for a flavor and texture that always brings me happy memories.

Failing to find arugula, I opted for a slightly easier-to-eat green and honestly, I may always make it this way now - it was really good with the baby spinach and its silkier texture.  It seemed a better match for the nice squishy, creamy avocado.  The arugula provides a bitter foil for that creaminess and it works, but this was so good even Mister commented on the flavor.

So, with this last delightful dish (before I continue pressuring my friend to go to El Vez for their unbelievable guacamole and delicious margaritas via facebook chat), I bid farewell to the last gasp of warm days in December and look forward to some snowy weather....

spice and rice and everything nice

I'm already thinking [dreaming] of autumn, my favorite time of year, and even the dead cold of winter.  No, it's not actually all that hot right now, no 100+ temperature heatwaves to complain of (although Mister and Angst are wilting and weeping like there is).  I seem to have a penchant for cooking spicier-than-I-thought-they-would-be meals in the middle of summer, when the last thing I want to do is overheat my body from the inside out.  So I'm thinking of how handy Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo is going to be come the snowy, bitter winter months, when all we want is something that will heat us from the inside out.  Or maybe just keep the inside warm.

Isn't that a fabulously trippy package?  I love all the colors that really ought not be combined - quite amazing, but I'll tell you, it's not difficult to locate on the shelf!

By the way, if the meat association I made last time wasn't gross enough for you, I'm just going to let you use your own colorful imagination on this next one.  Once I had freed the chorizo from its non-intestinal casing, I thought it looked super gross.  Good thing I already knew how it tasted...

ew.

Regardless, I chugged along, combining the various components of Granada Paella from The Urban Vegan and testing the true capacity of my 2.5 quart pot (because I was too lazy to clean up the pot I meant to use last night - Fridays are not good for my energy level).

I'm pretty sure if it could have overflowed, it would have.  I was kind of envisioning the funny moment in almost every sitcom or comedy movie in the late 80s, early 90s where the pot of popcorn pops too much and pushes the lid off of the pot and spills onto the stove and floor.  You do know what I'm talking about, right?

Okay, so stupid memories and poor analogies aside, it made for a very tasty and very innard-warming dinner.  Not the best thing in August, but at least I have another hot meal in my arsenal for that first bitter chill this fall.

When I told Mister it was the same chorizo I used to burn my face off with the tacos, he laughed incredulously and asked me why I used it again.  I explained my expectation that the basmati rice would calm the flavor a bit.  It did, actually - it was still quite spicy and hot (if I haven't made that clear yet), but the rice dispersed the heat and made it tolerable enough that although my face still turned red and my nose still got sniffly, I only needed my Apothic Red and a little TJs Belgian chocolate to sooth the burn this time around.  Which is fortunate, since I didn't want to test my luck trying to get ice cream home from TJs today.

So, in the interest of saving money (and showing Whole Foods they aren't the only game in town - I'll let you know when the post is up), I'm making a habit of doing my menu and grocery list on Friday night or Saturday morning, then stopping at Trader Joe's on my way home from teaching.  Since I was doing my best to get everything I would ordinarily get at WF, my bill was a bit higher than it's been...but it was still well under $40, so I consider it a total victory.  I filled my basket with many tasty things to make:

1. Panang Cucumber Curry from the new Vegetarian Times magazine that made my mailbox happy a few days ago.  I don't know if I've ever actually cooked cucumber, so this should be interesting, to say the very least!

2. Braised Cabbage with Seitan from Appetite for Reduction, which has been feeling a little left out lately, so the rest of the menu is also sourced from that amazing cookbook...since I know I can count on Isa to never let me down!  This is actually in a section of the book some people might consider appetizers or side dishes, but it looks substantial enough to me - protein, veggies, served on Basmati for a starch...we're good to go!

3. Forty-Clove Chickpeas and Broccoli, which I intend to serve over mashed potatoes, because that's awesome.  It's also awesome that at Trader Joe's, they call russet potatoes "The" Potato and only charge 29 cents apiece.  Compared to other produce prices at Whole Foods, I'll admit that $1.79/lb sounds like a great deal for potatoes...until you realize that most russet potatoes are nearly a pound each!

No, I'm probably never going to stop being awed by how much I'm saving by shopping across town.

4. Pasta Con Broccoli to make up for the blandest meal I've ever made.


5. Ginger Bok Choy and Soba.  Maybe.  If I can find soba and bok choy.

6. Moroccan Chickpeas and Zucchini which I realized, as I was flipping through the pages, I've never made before.  I scanned the ingredients and discovered that this may be the first recipe I'll make that has the word "Moroccan" in the title and does not include fake ground meat.  So, of course, I needed to try it.  Let's see if Moroccan food can be tasty when it's only vegetables!  (I'll bet it can.)

TGIF (PS: I'm lazy)

What a week for writing - I feel like I'm full of words but completely lacking in the energy to tackle the monster posts I want to write.  I'm hoping that at some point this weekend I can just settle in with a nice big cup of Blue Bottle Coffee and type my way to carpel-tunnel.  And as long as we're on the topic of how awesome it would be to post from Pure Fare with a hip cup of pour-over and a vegan pastry at the ready...who wants to buy me a MacBook Air?  Labor Day is coming - that's a gift giving holiday, right?  No?  Okay, fine - Mister's birthday is in a week and a half and when I was little, my parents used to give me a gift to open on my sister's birthday so I wouldn't feel left out.

You wouldn't want me to feel left out, would you?

So, back in RealityLand, it's quite fortunate that I have a bag of Blue Bottle beans in my cupboard and a whole weekend of errands ahead of me.  I'm presently eating my Trader Joe's belgian chocolate and drinking Apothic Red and doing my best to resist a nearly irrepressible urge to construct a To Do list for the weekend.  I'm also managing to avoid constructing my menu, which is kind of key to the To Do list phenomenon.  I will need to tackle that shortly - I've decided to embark on a predictable experiment: I am going to attempt to shop primarily at Trader Joe's for the month of August to see how much money I save.  According to last week's math, 1 bag at Trader Joe's equals 50% of a bag at Whole Foods, price-wise.  I regularly spend $50-$70 at Whole Foods for a week of groceries; I have not yet crested the $30 mark at TJs - it's kind of like living that question from the VeganMoFo survey every week.  The point is, unless I want to participate in a total PublicTransitFail, I need to know what I'm shopping for before I leave for lessons tomorrow, since I'll want to stop at TJs on my way home.

Before I leave you to go poke through my dust-defying cookbook collection and make this week's menu, let's talk briefly about dinner:  Orecchiette Con Broccoli from The Urban Vegan.  I made this at least once before because Mister (and I) like pasta and broccoli is a fun vegetable (my nephews and nieces call florets "little trees").  I have to admit, I was a little disappointed in the outcome.  First things first, though - let's talk about my solution to the Miso Issue.

When I've made this before, I've always done my best to force the miso paste to blend with the hot, garlic-infused oil without the assistance of another liquid (or a rancid one...oops).  I even bought a special flat-whisk from Williams-Sonoma to help, but alas - miso paste has no interest in blending with hot oil.  This time around, I thought I'd be tricky (forgetting about that whole oil-and-water thing) and I blended the miso with hot water until it was pretty much dissolved into a thick liquid, then poured that into the hot oil to blend with my magical whisk.

As you can see, that worked out perfectly.

Nevertheless, it did seem at least a little easier to break up the big undissolved chunks of miso than it did when I didn't dissolve it in water first.

I don't know if I've ever made this 100% correctly, but I am in the habit of sauteing the broccoli in the infused oil and miso, rather than parboiling it before the pasta, then collecting it from boiling water to add to the saute pan while I cook the pasta.  Seems like too many (messy) steps to me and just sauteing it seems to work just fine anyway.  The only thing that troubles me is this: it seems like the broccoli immediately absorbs all the oil and any water I add to moisten the skillet, which is possibly the culprit for the complete and utter lack of flavor tonight's dinner had.

It's a shame - it was really quite beautiful.  The broccoli steam-sauteed to a beautiful shade of green without taking on an iota of the 15-minutes of garlic infusion that occurred just prior to the little trees being added to the pot.  I don't remember if it did that last time, but Mister and I both added salt at table, and that is only a semi-annual occurrence (not bad, since it's already August, actually).

Alright - I need to go plot my menu and grocery list for next week's meals.  Good thing the new issue of Vegetarian Times just arrived!

diversity for dinner

So, over the weekend (when I wasn't writing my novel about Bay Area Eats), I got to construct and shop for my full week menu.  I definitely had another one of those ILoveTraderJoe's moments and each time I go there I find myself more willing to go out of my way to shop there.  I'm still getting used to the layout and the much smaller size than Whole Foods, but I pay about half of what I do at Whole Foods and I'm still working out that budget thing.

On Friday, I made Aloo Gobi from The Vegan Table because Mister Loves Curry, especially with two favorite veggies.

It was quite a bit more chopping than I anticipated, but by the time I crammed all 4 potatoes, 6 tomatoes, and head of cauliflower into my miserable little saute pan (near fail!), it smelled too good to think it wasn't worth the work.  I steamed some brown basmati over which to serve it and then called a very happy (and by then, very hungry) Mister to the table.

After dinner, I made up my new menu:

1. Granada Paella from The Urban Vegan, which is one of the main reasons I had to at least drop in to TJs, but the whole $25 for a bag I'd pay $50+ for at WF was also pretty alluring.

2. Bean and Bulgur Tacos, also from The Urban Vegan.  I've passed this recipe a dozen times, each time wondering exactly how that would work, but being unwilling to take the chance of finding out.  Carpe Diem, friends!

3. Orecchiette con Broccoli, also from The Urban Vegan.  Hopefully this time I won't make myself sick.  I do anticipate this will be my easiest and tastiest attempt because I bought a convenient and inexpensive bag of pre-cut broccoli florets at TJs and I plan to dissolve the miso in something that isn't rancid this time.

4. Fusilli with Lentil Sauce from Vegan Italiano.  I was poking through some old posts and came across the first time I made this and thought, Hey, that was pretty good - let's have it again.  So there you go.

5. Penne with Cannellini Beans and Escarole, also from Vegan Italiano.  I'm still finding my way around TJs, but for all I could see, Whole Foods is still the only place to go for escarole.  Not that it's a huge, irreplaceable part of my life.  There may or may not be a post soon on Pretty Woman in an Ugly World about a recent customer service encounter at Whole Foods that may or may not be fueling my search for an alternate organic grocer...  maybe.  

Anyway, with a fridge full of food and well-stocked cupboards, I did the logical thing and made Sloppy Joes from The Urban Vegan.  Nothing exciting - they were as fabulous as they always are, which unfortunately makes for seriously boring blogging, so we'll move on to last night's dinner: Fusilli with Lentil Sauce.

This makes an absolutely delicious sauce, but I'm not thrilled with how soupy it comes out.  I think 2 cups of broth + 14 oz undrained diced tomatoes might make a little too much liquid, especially when you include about 4 Tbsp of liquid condiments.

I think where I go wrong with the sauce is following the directions.  That whole Tyranny of the Recipe thing again... the recipe instructs me to cover the pot while the lentils bubble and boil their way to plumpy-tenderness, presumably so that the steam helps the process along, but I think they will still plump up just fine if I leave the lid off and allow the liquid to evaporate and concentrate a bit.  I think Mister will appreciate that, too, since puddles at the bottom of his pasta bowl make him a little sad.

As long as you ignore the puddle beneath this pile of pasta, it's really a very attractive (and super easy and tasty) dinner.  I really should make this more often.  I used de Puy lentils this time around and I think I probably would have done better with regular old Goya brown lentils.  The way they held their form was a little distracting - I would have liked them to blend in with the rest of the sauce a little more.

Tonight, Mister and I were both pretty starving by the time I got home from work, so ignoring the good sense that told me to save my fastest cooking meal for tomorrow night, I sped through the prep for Bean and Bulgur Tacos tonight.

In the little square of plastic, you see something you could easily mistake for very creamy guacamole.  You would only be half right...it's Trader Joe's Guacamole Hummus - 50/50 blend of avocados and chickpeas with various seasonings mixed in.  You can also see the little corner I dug out with a flatbread and part of a red pepper...quality assurance, you know.

It was a bit spicy, owed to the blended jalapeno and at least a little garlic, as well as some cilantro and lime.  It was an unusual color.  Does anyone like Fiona Apple?  On her first CD, Tidal, she sings a gorgeous song called "Pale September."  For some reason, the opening line (Pale September - I wore the time like a dress that year) always made me think of a pale chartreuse chiffon dress, gossamer against sunlight and a gentle breeze.  If I had married in September, rather than October, I would have hunted that color down and made it my wedding color...and promptly made enemies of my bridesmaids, at least three of whom would not have been flattered by the shade, but hey - it's my wedding, right?

Fortunately for everyone, I married in October, so they wore crimson instead.  My point?  The Hummamole (that's what Mister and I are calling it) was that color.

I shredded a big bowl of romaine lettuce and sprinkled it over top of a generous smear of the Hummamole on each tortilla, then topped it with the bean and bulgur mix.  It was light yet filling and really hit the spot with a variety of tastes and textures.  I guess in that way it was very much like the dinners in this post.  The heat and tanginess of Indian curry, the savory toothiness of pasta with a rich Italian sauce, and a new take on a familiar Mexican taco recipe, replacing the brown rice with coarse bulgur.   

how low can you go?

[note: Blogger crapped out on me mid-post last night, so "Part I" will be last night's post, leading to "Part II" which is tonight's dinner adventures.  Look it as a bonus post!]

I have pretty low blood pressure.  I have since I was a young teenager.  The same way that some people (ahem, Mister) need to eat a certain way to manage their blood sugar levels, I sometimes have to eat to manage my blood pressure.  It's actually a fairly enviable position in which to find oneself - I fear, though, for the day Mister's family history of heart disease threatens our little family because we love salt.  Although I am good at enhancing the flavor of foods without adding salt, I would not be as happy a little chef if I couldn't add my precious Mediterranean Sea Salt to roasted vegetables.  In fact, my world might stop turning if I couldn't sprinkle roasting broccoli or asparagus or potatoes with this magical mixture.

I don't have any pictures because Mister and I were in quite a rush to eat (hungry, hungry hippos), but dinner really wasn't anything especially attractive tonight anyway.  I made Pasta Puttanesca from Vegan Express and roasted some broccoli with olive oil and the sea salt blend as a side dish (gotta get some green in there, right?).  For you to truly understand why I love this blend so much, I want to clarify that there are plenty of other flavor elements besides just the incredible chunks of sea salt that catch themselves in a floret to deliver a satisfying crunch when you bite down.  The ingredients on my blend are: sea salt (really?), garlic, basil, oregano, lemon peel, red bell pepper, and the ever ubiquitous "natural flavor."

Speaking of red bell peppers, I don't know what happened to the one I was supposed to slice for tonight's dinner!  I know I got one, but I'm wondering if I accidentally used it for a different recipe.  In any case, I ended up substituting my orange bell pepper for it and I don't think it mucked up the flavor too much.  The pasta was good, but not as good as I wanted it to be and not as incredibly tasty as the roasted broccoli.

Speaking of broccoli....  When I was at Trader Joe's, I saw a bag of broccoli florets for what looked like a pretty decent price - probably a better deal than anything but frozen.  I looked around a bit and discovered that I would get a lot more broccoli for my buck if I bought the convenient pre-cut bag of broccoli than if I got a couple of spears and spent all that time separating the little florets from one another.  Score one for convenience!

[Part II]

Ever since our "celebrity chefs" came to visit and put on a little show a couple of weeks ago, I've been craving chickpea burgers.  Chef Michael Solomonov (Zahav, etc), made turkey burgers, served on the burger thins I love.  They looked so much like chickpea burgers, I kept hoping that if I wished hard enough, they would be.  Alas, they remained little beige patties of ground-up birds, so I had to DIMyself.

I didn't take a picture of the burgers because a) they were not even close to as attractive as Chef Solomonov's turkey burgers and b) burgers just aren't all that exciting to photograph.  Even though the turkey burgers looked very tasty, I would not have whipped out my camera if I'd had it with me.  I might have just had a small inspiration, though.  We'll get back to that later.

Along with the Lemony Garlic Chickpea Patties from Vegan on the Cheap I made the Middle Eastern Chopped Salad from Vegan Express.  This was most definitely worth photographing:

Local cucumber, tomatoes, and a yellow bell pepper came together to make a colorful and festive looking salad, sprinkled with fresh parsley and lemon juice, enriched with olive oil and oil-cured black olives.  I love cucumber-tomato salads dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.  I think I would have been happy to include some garlic as well, so I'll keep that in my mind for the next time I make this salad, but I will freely admit that I am sorry I've never made this before.  It's a lot of chopping, so between that and the made-from-scratch burgers, dinner took well over an hour to prepare, but it's nearly Friday, right?  A little sleep deprivation never hurt anyone, right?

a little piece of a national treasure

It is rare that I spend all day fulfilling my grocery shopping list.  Of course, it is also rare that I go alllll the way across town to Trader Joe's - in fact, it's been about 3 years since the last time I set foot in there.  It's not that I don't want to - I would love to be a more frequent shopper, but after today's adventures, I am more convinced than ever that I will not be able to indulge in that fantasy until one of two things happens:

1. I get a job in center city that allows me enough time on weeknights (purely by virtue of reducing my commute by 2 hours) to stop in after work, instead of trying to navigate SEPTA's horrendous and never-on-time bus schedule on a Sunday, when the buses run half as frequently as they're supposed to which is already on a 75% reduced schedule.  When you do the math, you should probably be able to figure out why it took me all day to go shopping there and Whole Foods.
2. Mister and I move closer.  Not out of the question, but not likely.  Even if we do, it won't be until March[ish] of 2013.

I'm hoping for #1, but I'm sure I've kind of given that away already.  In any case, after today, if I had foursquare, I'd be the SEPTA Queen.  Forget about Mayor - I passed over that with the third connecting bus.  Granted, this was all kind of a public transit fail, but I did get to and from Trader Joe's twice (I had to go back because I realized when I got home that the cashier keyed something in wrong and overcharged me quite significantly).  Speaking of which, the service at TJ's is pretty stellar - the girl who rang me up was cheerful and conversational and the lady who corrected my payment did so with a smile and without asking for some kind of proof that I didn't buy $25-worth of Blue Danishes (whatever that might be).

In case you're wondering, the purpose of my trip was to get the only vegan chorizo in Philadelphia for one of the recipes I'm making this week.  I figured, though, that as long as I was there, I may as well see if I could score some lower-priced, still-high-quality produce, etc.  That seemed like a good idea when I thought, "hey, the store is on Market St and dozens of buses come down Market St, so I'll just hop on one with my bag o' groceries to get back home."  Refer back to my comments regarding the frequency of bus service on Sunday afternoons if you don't feel like reading about how I carried my groceries about 15 blocks without the assistance of a bus.  And to think I've been complaining about the 7 blocks I now must walk to return from Whole Foods....

Anyway, with a fridge full of veggies, I decided to make the Vegetable Chili Bowl from The Low GI Cookbook.  It was actually written by Margaret Fulton and then contributed to the cookbook.  I had heard her name before, but they say you learn something new every day and today I learned that Margaret Fulton was made a National Living Treasure in 1998.  May we all strive for such lofty goals!

Mister and I dug into our bowls of chili with the help of organic corn chips from TJ's that cost less than the multi-grain Tostitos I usually try to use to assuage my guilty conscience.  It was a tasty little combo and the chips had a lot less salt than Tostitos, which I didn't realize was so overwhelming until I realized how subtly perfect these chips are.  We were pleasantly surprised by this chili.  I have begun to approach the recipes I chose from that cookbook with hesitance and an expectation that it won't be as exciting as I want it to be.  

I'll admit - I'm relieved to be coming to the end of these recipes, but I appear to have saved the best for [almost] last!  The fresh parsley was a nice touch and I was really happy with the way the two beans came out - I don't think I've paired chickpeas and kidney beans in the past.  It's a good, light, summer-appropriate chili, since the peppers make it sweet and the zucchini lightens up the flavor significantly.

With 20 cookbooks, it's no wonder Margaret Fulton is considered a treasure - especially if half of them are as good as this summertime chili was!