A Promise

This is my pledge:

To be a “fair-weather” vegan, in the following manner:

I will not eat dairy because I am lactose intolerant.

I will not eat meat unless it was killed by a hunter, and killed and butchered by the same person or someone they know. Read The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine if you have any questions.

I will not eat fish unless it was caught locally by a small-time fisherman. We’re talking in the morning, off the pier type of fish-purchasing here. No tuna nets for me.

I will not eat eggs unless they are from a family farm or personal chickens, and preferably raised organically. There is a reason egg baskets exist, after all.

I will not eat highly refined food products if avoidable, with the exception of maybe sugar because it’s really hard to get around.

This might not sound like veganism, but when you’re stuck in a city with extremely limited access to farms and local sustainable agriculture, it might as well be. I want my food to have a personal connection to the earth, to where we all come from. I believe that is the socially and environmentally responsible and sustainable way to eat and consume.

You can hold me to it.

Strawraspraisinana Oatmeal. What?

First of all, I need to start out by saying I hereby rescind all previous oatmeal-hating sentiments previous espoused. I am a convert. No thanks to Cereality. I have now mastered its preparation and oatmeal with a banana, maybe some strawberries, cinnamon, and brown sugar is now a necessary part of my morning routine.

Today was no ordinary day, however. Instead of staring my day with oatmeal, I am ending it with oatmeal. I have crafted, from the depths of my shelves and freezer, a decadent yet nutritious (unfortunately) dessert oatmeal. A handful of frozen raspberries, a handful of frozen strawberries, a small handful of raisins, and the better part of a banana makes up the fruit quotient. Then there’s the oatmeal. Oh, and then my secret ingredients: a seriously generous “dash” (and I use the term quite liberally) of cinnamon, nutmeg as I like it, and – to mix it up a little – cardamom! At first I hesitated over the addition of the cardamom, but then I realized that I love cardamom strawberry shortcake, and I figured since there were strawberries in my oatmeal, why not add cardamom? Then of course, the requisite spoonfuls of brown sugar on top … mix it all together … and voilà!

Seriously pink and full of complex flavors - the cardamom really came through – this dessert oatmeal is one for the ages. Although there’s no reason why it couldn’t be for breakfast. I just happen to be eating it at night.

And in the Morning, I'm Makin' Waffles!

I experienced a heartbreaking culinary disaster yesterday.

I really wanted waffles, because it was Saturday, which is clearly a weekend breakfast kind of day. I have a fancy-pants Belgian Waffle maker from Williams-Sonoma and it came with a booklet that has some waffle recipes, so I figured I would try one of those instead of doing what I usually do, which is make it up as I go. (Although in my defense, that tends to work out pretty well.)

So this recipe was one of those annoying ones where you have to whip your egg whites until they’re stiff. And being the lazy personal that I am, I decide I don’t want to dirty my hand mixer so I opt to whip them by hand. BIG MISTAKE. Yeah, I got them to whip up, but they weren’t exactly stiff or firm. They were more of what we in the business (ha) might call soft peaks. But my arm was tired, so I stopped. My other problem was that I tried to combine water with melted butter, and when I realized the idiocy of this I attempted to rectify my mistake by adding milk. But that didn’t really work either. Anyway, I decided to just go for it and mixed it all together.

When I poured the batter into the hot waffle iron, it rose immediately, like it was supposed to, but then after a couple of minutes of cooking it collapsed. I guess my waffle iron was too heavy for the not-quite-stiff-enough egg whites. I figured I should probably just let it keep going. I wasn’t about to start cooking a whole second breakfast at this point, after all. After a few more minutes, I started to smell burning, so I peeked (oops). It was getting a little burned, but it also looked a little uncooked – so I took a little piece and lo and behold, the insides were totally wet! I let it finish its cooking cycle and smothered it in brown sugar and fresh banana slices to try to mask the mushiness of its innards, and it kind of worked.

It didn’t taste terrible, it actually was pretty good, it just didn’t exactly work out the way it was supposed to. Alas, now I know for next time. I am just better at experiments than I am at recipes, at least in the morning when I am tired.