Month: January 2021

vegan vegetable quinoa chickpea soup

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Sometimes you just need soup. And now that winter has finally hit with a good three or four inches of snow that I am forced to shovel, I am thrilled to come back inside the warm house to be greeted by this hearty, filling, vegan soup. Best part – like most soups, you can experiment and throw in whatever you like, whatever you have on hand.

Vegan vegetable quinoa chickpea soup

Ingredients (you can play with this as much as you like… this is just what I’ve done)
1 or 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion or two shallots, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
6 cloves crushed garlic
1 cup dry quinoa (I use tricolor quinoa)
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 teaspoon dry basil
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
2 or 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 container (about 15 ounces) chickpeas, rinsed and drained
28 ounces (about two normal-sized tins) of crushed tomatoes
6 cups vegetable broth
1 tin coconut milk
Any vegetables you want to throw in
Salt, pepper to taste

In a soup pot, saute the onions/shallots, and if you are using the carrot and celery saute those too. I have not always added these, and the soup is good without them. Add a pinch of salt and continue to saute until soft. Just before adding other ingredients, throw in the garlic and saute for half a minute.

Add the fennel seeds, basil, Italian seasoning, nutritional yeast, and stir. Add the rinsed quinoa and chickpeas. Stir and saute for one minute or so. Add the tomatoes, vegetable broth and coconut milk. Stir. Bring to a boil on medium-high heat. Once boiling, reduce heat to simmer and cook with the lid on for about 20 minutes.

Stir now and again to make sure the quinoa does not stick to the bottom of the pan. After about 15 minutes, throw in whatever frozen vegetables you want to add (I threw in some broccoli). Then at about 20 minutes, throw in the fresh veg that don’t need as long to cook; I added some quartered zucchini and a few cups of baby spinach leaves. Once you add the vegetables let it cook for another five or ten minutes until the veg achieves a consistency you like.

Love Song: I and Thou

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Love Song: I and Thou
–Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
     the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
     any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
     dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
     I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
     for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
     hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
     at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
     Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
     it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
     for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
     skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
     but I planned it. I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
     will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
     to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
     I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

strange kind of beautiful

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You are a strange kind of beautiful
–Rudy Francisco
The type of magic
foolish men run from

and run back to
when it’s too late.

Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash

andrea/andrew

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Andrea/Andrew
–Andrea Gibson
Your name
is a gift

you can return
if it doesn’t fit.

Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash

speech is a stream

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Speech is a Stream
–Inga Kuznetsova

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

orbital complexion

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Orbital Complexion
–Andrei Codrescu

The technology of soul restoration

is a clever dose of miracles, insomnia, drugs,
poetry and cannibalism

How do you put an old newspaper back
on the stand? Without losing
your grasp on the technology? Without
blunting the tools, and easily,
like a warm wind?

The great surprise is in having revealed
an exact prior knowledge,

so that each one, rooted like a smiling cheese
in a storm of knives, could lift
his or her snails from the cabbage leaves
and eat the world

Photo by C Drying on Unsplash

fabric in tribeca

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fabric in tribeca
–Megan Fernandes

We are buying curtains to cover up my life.
We are buying patterns to cover up my lethargia.
My sadness is very adult. You can bring it to places
in public and it will not make a scene.
You will not be embarrassed by it.
It will not act out, but only wander, slightly undisciplined.
Look at the red inverted enteric shapes spit across the silk,
endlessly unfolding into our arms. Six dollars for the uneven
pieces. This should do the trick, the leftover cloth that promises
to distort the incoming winter light into something bearable.
Who buys fabric in January?
Who makes curtains to give their sadness a perimeter?

The clerks speak Yiddish and look at us like pregnant dolls,
and we are all here deciphering each other in the drowsy New York afternoon.
Judith says we need to go. She needs to get to Mikveh by 5.
Twenty dollars to be cleansed.
The monthly baptism for women who bleed, for women who carry.
Even now, inside her, the baby is stirring to the ring of our voices,
the underwater radio where everyone sounds like they are choking.

I think she’ll be a tomboy and extend her childhood across
the universe, a little gender deviant for the stars.
All that matters is if you’re Jewish, the owner says and I smile
and press the yellow linen to my face.
We need to go, Judith repeats. I need to be clean.
I look at my treasures, neatly folded, and wonder if I am
talented enough to do anything worthwhile with these hands.

Photo by Ismail Elazizi on Unsplash

amazing vegan mashed cauliflower

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Finally, after much experimentation, I have achieved the perfect consistency and flavor for my mashed cauliflower. Side benefit: it’s vegan (although you could add a bit of butter if you wanted when you’re blending it). I wanted it to be flavorful and have the same consistency as fluffy mashed potatoes.

In the past when I’ve tried to make this, I used fresh cauliflower, which somehow didn’t soften up well enough, and I got something less than cohesive and almost grainy. The frozen cauliflower, added directly from the freezer releases liquid as it roasts, helping to soften it while still allowing the cauliflower to take on a nutty, roasted flavor. It’s also a lifesaver because this can be done on the fly if you have cauliflower in your freezer, as I always do.

I also added an onion to the pan because previous attempts to make mashed cauliflower didn’t end up having much flavor. Once roasted, of course, you don’t want the cauliflower to have too much liquid in it because it will be too watery/soupy when blended. Somehow I got the right ratio of everything this time, and the texture was just like the mashed potatoes I wanted to emulate.

The downside is… I couldn’t get a good photo (as if I ever do). I mean how can mushy, mashed-up, grey cauliflower ever look good? And when, frankly, I am a terrible photographer and the lighting in my house is bad (especially at 4 a.m. when I made this)? Try not to let the dull look of this dish as I prepared and photographed it put you off. I assure you, as much as this looks like slop (as many of my best-tasting meals do), this is amazing.

Ingredients
1 package (600 grams) frozen cauliflower florets
one small or medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt to taste
pepper to taste
pinch of cayenne pepper to taste, if desired

In a medium-sized roasting pan (or a medium cast iron skillet, which is what I did), add the oil, chopped onion and cauliflower. Roast in the oven at 200C for about 20 minutes, add a pinch of salt, stir, and return to the oven for maybe another 20 minutes at 180C. It’s ready when the cauliflower is completely roasted and soft/mashable.

Mash up the bigger pieces of cauliflower and add salt, pepper and cayenne before transferring to a bowl. Use a hand/stick blender to mix blend to a mashed potato consistency.

Taste to make sure you like the seasoning (and season to your taste).

 

maybe it is true

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Maybe It Is True
–Robert M. Drake
Maybe
we feel
empty
because we
leave
pieces of
ourselves
in all the
things
we used to
love.

Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash

garden

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Garden
–Octavio Paz

Screen Shot 2020-07-24 at 10.30.31

Original

Jardín

Screen Shot 2020-07-24 at 10.31.21

Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash