Vegan Baking Class

Last night I went to a vegan baking class with Doron Petersan, the owner of Sticky Fingers Sweets and Eats here in the DC area. It was put on by Living Social, which recently opened a location downtown, as a part of their new gourmet series. I didn't see much of the space, but they did have an art room and a phenomenal cooking class space. I felt like I was a student at the Culinary Institute of America! First we made S'mores Brownies. Here are my (and my partner's) brownies, fresh out of the oven:

We also made the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar Cupcakes with Spiced Rum icing that helped Doron to win Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. We used an ice cream scoop to make them all the same size (and to have less of a mess). I'll definitely be doing this from now on!

The class included drink pairings. We had a beer with the brownies and a dark and stormy with the cupcakes. I don't know why I haven't had a dark and stormy before, but I think that is all I might drink from now on! It's ginger beer, rum and lime. Perfection!

We took my brownies out of the pan first, so we sacrificed beauty for taste. I ended up with essentially a giant s'mores brownie cake (with deeeeeelicious Sweet and Sara marshmallows):

Here are the finished cupcakes. I need to work on my icing skills.

And here is me and Doron! What a great night! I would definitely go back and take other Living Social classes.

Whirlwind

These past few weeks have been something of a whirlwind! First, I celebrated my 30th birthday on February 10th. I took the day off from work, planning on just relaxing and not doing much of anything. However, Jesse booked me a massage, took me out to dinner at Agora and sent me these beautiful flowers:

We also had a fantastic Valentine's Day. Jesse again gave me beautiful flowers and we had a delicious dinner date at Oyamel.

Even though all of that was wonderful, the best part came on February 18th, when this happened while we were in New Jersey visiting my family:

I said yes! He proposed in the sweetest way imaginable and totally took me by surprise. We went out to dinner to Buddakan in Atlantic City to celebrate.

I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.

Love

Since today is a day to celebrate love, I thought I would share some things I've been loving lately:

-The adorable Valentine's votives pictured to the right, which I saw on Pinterest and are from the Homemade Serenity blog. I love, love, love how sweet these are. Next year, for sure.

-On Style and Systems from the Pink of Perfection blog.

-Gena's take on the disturbing PCRM "your thighs on cheese" ads. I had been waiting for someone to write a thoughtful and carefully laid out critique of these ads since I first saw them. While I love most of PCRM's work, these ads are really out of line. Here's to hoping they choose a different way to get their message across in the future.

-Kris Carr's new ebook, Crazy Sexy Juices and Succulent Smoothies. 80 pages of green drink goodness.

-The documentary "Life in a Day". At first I felt a bit like a creepy voyeur, but I came to appreciate this look at life on a single day around the world.

Just say no to horse diving

My heart is so heavy (and angry!) right now. I have just learned that Atlantic City is going to bring back horse diving, which was at its height of popularity in the 1920s but continued until the early 1990s, as a way to increase tourism this summer.

I grew up in a town just outside of Atlantic City, hearing romanticized stories about this time period. I watched the movie "Wild Hearts Can't be Broken" over and over and over again. I used to wish I had been able to witness--or even perform!-- such a feat.

And then I learned that the horses didn't just willingly jump. They are walked out onto a platform with their rider and then the platform is dropped out from underneath of them. Diving like this is NOT natural for a horse, so it causes trauma and fright, not to mention any injuries that can be sustained to both rider and horse upon hitting the water (such as retinal detachment or spinal cord injury). And all this doesn't include any mistreatment during their care when they are not performing.

The owner of the Steel Pier, where the diving will take place, has said: "We know the diving horse is controversial, but I think people need to look at the bigger picture. A diving horse is going to be iconic. It's going to be a small piece of the development project that will bring family entertainment back to Atlantic City." Please join me in telling the owners that NO, we do NOT want to see their "iconic" act. The Steel Pier website is here, which contains their phone number, address, Facebook and Twitter pages. You can also sign this petition, as well as boycott and not visit this summer should these plans go through.

{Image from The Press of Atlantic City}

28 Day Healthy Eating Challenge

This month I am participating in the the Whole Foods 28 Day Healthy Eating Challenge, which is affiliated with their Health Starts Here work.

For five weeks, I will attend a class at my local store, with sessions to include: Whole Foods core values and wellness lecture, a healthy eating demo and a healthy eating on a budget store tour, navigating your way through a healthy lifestyle change, a cooking class with the store chef and a supper club with a panel of experts. Additionally, they will be screening the film "Forks Over Knives", but since I've already seen it, I won't be going to that session (but you should see it if you haven't! Fantastic film!). All this, plus a book and a bag of healthy starter groceries (lentils, quinoa, steel cut oats, Lara Bars, digestive enzymes, etc!), for just a $30 donation to their Whole Planet Foundation. This is the third time the store near me has ran this program, so if you are interested I would suggest that you see if a Whole Foods near you already is holding the class or let them know that you are interested.

At our first session this week, we reviewed what we should be eating during this time period by learning about their four pillars of healthy eating: eat whole, unprocessed foods, lots and lots of plants, healthy fats and foods with a high nutrient density. They are stressing eating a plant strong diet, which could include eating meat or dairy as as more of a garnish to a dish, but stated they aren't there to make everyone into vegetarians. While I know they are trying to not push people away, they are basing their course on the work of Dr. Fuhrman and Rip Esselstyn, so I wish they would at least touch on the benefits of a plant-based diet. They also brought in an expert on wellness who talked about reducing stress levels for a healthier lifestyle. He taught us a breathing exercise to try to combat cravings and explained how chocolate, dairy and sugar all temporarily increase your relaxation response, which is why you want to eat them when you are stressed.

This is supposed to be a challenge and I am sure that it will be. This month includes the Super Bowl, my birthday, Valentine's Day and a trip to New Jersey to visit my family. All of these are potential pitfalls for a healthy diet. However, I am hoping to learn some new things (such as more ways to cook greens!) in this course and apply them for the long term. For the next 28 days, I plan to follow their suggestions as closely as possible. It's time to go from eating vegan junk food to really focusing on eating good, whole, nutritious food. So far, after just one class, I have a lot of new information and resources. I'm looking forward to seeing where these next few weeks of class take me.

(Picture from the Whole Foods website)

Revelry Review: The World We Found

Ever since taking a post-colonial literature class in college, I have been obssessed with Indian literature (both literature about India and literature by Indian authors). My favorites include Salman Rushdie, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rohinton Mistry and Thrity Umrigar. I've read most of Umrigar's novels and loved them all, so I didn't hesitate to pre-order her latest, The World We Found.

The synopsis from the Amazon page: "As university students in late 1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta were inseparable. Spirited and unconventional, they challenged authority and fought for a better world. But much has changed over the past thirty years. Following different paths, the quartet drifted apart, the day-to-day demands of work and family tempering the revolutionary fervor they once shared.

Then comes devastating news: Armaiti, who moved to America, is gravely ill and wants to see the old friends she left behind. For Laleh, reunion is a bittersweet reminder of unfulfilled dreams and unspoken guilt. For Kavita, it is an admission of forbidden passion. For Nishta, it is the promise of freedom from a bitter fundamentalist husband. And for Armaiti, it is an act of acceptance, of letting go on her own terms even if her ex-husband and daughter do not understand her choices.

In the course of their journey to reconnect, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta must confront the truths of their lives—acknowledge long-held regrets, face painful secrets and hidden desires, and reconcile their idealistic past and their compromised present. And they will have to decide what matters most, a choice that may just help them reclaim the extraordinary world they once found."

This was not my favorite Umrigar novel, but it was a quick and interesting read that contained great characters that will remain in my mind for a long time. You will definitely root for these characters and weep with them. The book's weakness, however, might be that it tried to deal with so many themes--friendship, love, belonging, the past, religion, feminism, same sex relationships, illness, women's rights, family, classism, politics, regret, modern day India--that it didn't settle on any one for quite long enough to do it justice. By the end of the novel, I still felt like there were a few loose ends that weren't quite followed through to their end.

Vegan Seafood

In my pre-veg early twenties, I very suddenly developed a severe shellfish allergy. I was forced to cut them out of my diet cold turkey (cold shrimp?). Now I wouldn't eat them even if I could due to ethical reasons, but I would be lying if I said there weren't times over the years when I missed shellfish. A few weeks back when I saw Sophie's Kitchen vegan seafood appear in our local market, I decided to give it a try, if only because my Mom developed the same allergy and I know she misses it badly.

They come frozen, so you simply thaw them out long enough for them to separate and then add them to whatever you are cooking.

For us, that meant a stir-fry with an orange sauce. I added them in during the last few minutes of cooking time.

We served our stir-fry over some brown rice. Since I accidentally bought prawns instead of shrimp, they were enormous. As for the taste, they were chewy and slightly gummy, but I think it's been so long since I had shrimp that I am not sure I was a good judge. Jesse really liked them, but I felt like I could take them or leave them. If I get them again, I think I will try the shrimp, which will be smaller.

I also picked up some vegan breaded calamari, which I will review here once I get a chance to give them a try.

Recommended Reading

Recommended reading from Gilt Taste: "When Being a Vegetarian Gets in the Way of Family"

by Allegra Ben-Amotz

Dinners Lately

Lately, I've been cooking lots and lots of bowls for dinner, meaning a grain or base of some sort, steamed veggies, a protein and a sauce. They are a perfect dinner, usually provide leftovers for lunch and are a great way to use up what you have in the fridge. I've been trying to cook gluten-free (more on that in another post) as well, so these bowls are good for that purpose too. If you pile on the veggies, it looks and feels like a ton of food for not a ton of calories. For great ideas, check out the section on bowls in the back of Appetite for Reduction (love, love, LOVE this cookbook!).

Soba noodles, black beans, steamed broccoli and zucchini with green onion miso vinaigrette from AFR.

Brown rice, steamed broccoli, sesame tempeh and peanut lime dressing from AFR (BEST SAUCE EVER!!!! I want to put it on everything everyday.)

Quinoa, steamed broccoli and green beans, baked tofu with spicy orange sauce (from a bottle).

Revelry Review: ShopHouse

This past weekend Jesse and I tried a new-ish fast food restaurant, ShopHouse, the latest creation of the founder of Chipotle. Touted as a "southeast Asian kitchen", you can either build a bowl or have a banh mi sandwich with a variety of possible fillings. I had been looking forward to checking it out for a few months now. If I had checked my expectations at the door, I might have liked this place better than I did. I had dreams of yummy warm green curry and firm chunks of tofu with a variety of delicious veggies.

However, as a vegetarian, there was no green curry for me. In fact, the only sauce that did not count fish sauce as an ingredient was the tamarind vinagrette. Okay, fine. I was disappointed but I figured I would just appreciate that they told me and move on. The tofu looked more like the tofu scramble I make at home than any tofu I have ever had at an Asian restaurant. It was very tumeric-y and SUPER spicy. I wish I had been warned.

When you are essentially eating a bowl of brown rice and tumeric-y tofu, it would be great if you were allowed to choose more than one vegetable. My sauteed long beans were delicious but I wasn't given that many of them. I would have loved to try the charred corn, eggplant and Chinese broccoli too. Chipotle lets me have whatever toppings I want and I wish this place did too. The saving grace was the green papaya salad, which provided some relief for my super spicy lunch.

Overall, I thought ShopHouse had large portion sizes and I appreciate having a new fast food vegetarian option, but I just wish it had been less spicy and contained more veggies. Hopefully they will refine their menu over time.

ShopHouse is located at 1516 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC.