Zine Dining à la Maud

I found out about the world of 'zines' just recently (boy, was I out of touch). I had seen the term bandied about, but wasn't sure exactly what it meant. Well, that all changed about a month ago when Maud sent me two issues of her zine. Turns out that Maud's been creating her zine, Marmaläde Umläut, since 2007. A lot of you already know Maud and read her blog Food Feud, and, probably quite a few of you know about her zine. I'm writing to say that if you haven't yet checked it out, you should. This post is dedicated to Maud's zine along with  a couple of recipes from the most recent issue.

After reading the two issues from front to finish, I had to order the latest one too. She's a talented writer and cartoonist: witty, humorous, insightful with a bit of whimsy tossed into the mix. Some of the regular features include: "Wot's in Your Fridge?," "Fat! So?--Food for Feminists," and "Food Memories."
Oh, but you'll find so much more too, the pages are illustrated with her collages, you'll find cartoons, word games, and even a "Where Should I Go for Lunch??" flowchart (Issue17).

(Did you know that in old days before the advent of modern ovens with temperature gauges, they judged whether an oven was hot enough for baking by sticking their arms in and if the arm hairs singed, it was ready?... That's not a direct quote, just something I learned from reading the zine--a tidbit of the things there are to ponder.)

Maud uses a conversational tone, and while reading, I often wish I could just start gabbing with her about what she's writing. (And, that has nothing to do with my lifelong habit of talking to myself.) The title says it all really: creative and engaging--on par with a satisfying natter with a good friend.

With Maud's permission, here are couple examples of what you'll find inside.

One of Maud's cartoons:

Maud provides some new words for food groupings:

(I can't decide which is my fav, A Dunklette of Cookies or a Thinking of Mushrooms!!)

But, I haven't even begun about the recipes. Of course, there's no shortage of those: cakes, salads, dinners are interspersed and woven into the theme along the way. In honor of summer, I chose a couple salad recipes from the latest issue.  First up is Cabbage and Corn Salad. 

The recipe calls for red cabbage; I used both red and green because I had both on hand to use up. 

Again with Maud's permission, here's the recipe:

The sweetness of raw corn, the crunch of cabbage, and the richness of avocado make this a cooling, comforting, and refreshing slaw. This salad is as calming to the eye as it is cooling to the tongue. 

Next up is Peach Salsa/Salad, which is flashy, sweet, and has a good kick of heat, like a summer fiesta in a bowl.

Thank you Maud, for the great recipes and the segues into them!:

The Peach Salsa complimented the cool crunch of the Corn and Cabbage Salad.

We enjoyed them with lettuce wraps (also inspired by Maud of course). Both salads are all raw and oil-free, super healthy and delicious. Thanks again Maud--keep the zines comin'! 

Rose Tobin Seattle
Rosanne Tobin
Roseann LaPonte
Rosanne Marie Tobin
Rosanne LaPonte

Silk Road Cooking...

This is just  a quick post about some stuff I've been up to lately. First up are a couple of dishes from Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey, by Najmieh Batmanglij. I've had this cookbook for a couple years and have cooked from it only a few times. It's one cookbook that I really want to use more, so I spent some time with it this weekend.

Pages from Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey

The book is full of beautiful photos, historical narration, and intriguing recipes. It's vegetarian, not vegan, but many of the recipes are vegan, and the others are veganizable of course. Here's a link to some sample recipes to give an idea.

The Balkh Brown Lentil Soup (above) calls for fewer herbs and spices than I would usually add to lentil stews and soups, but it is so tasty in its simplicity. The recipe calls for toasting cumin seeds in oil, adding onions and garlic, then lentils and water to simmer. Towards the end you add some fresh orange and lime juice (it calls for Seville oranges, but if you don't have those, you can use a combination of orange and lime juice) and also angelica powder. According to the book, angelica powder is used as a souring agent in Persian cooking. I didn't have any, so I used a teaspoon of tamarind paste instead. From what I've gathered, angelica is nutritious and has many healthful properties; I really want to get my hands on some. Seasoned to taste, and topped with fried onions and parsley, the soup is more than the sum of its parts. 

The next recipe I chose was a Bulger and Mung Bean Pilaf.  It's another winner, seasoned with cumin seeds, shredded ginger, turmeric, and chili peppers, it's so yummy topped with fresh lemon juice and fresh herbs. The mung beans and bulger go well together and create a great texture. I ate two bowls of the leftovers for breakfast this morning. 

The whole meal was a bit of a feast actually, we had the soup as a starter and then the pilaf with a spinach, mushroom, carrot salad and a tofu tart with roasted summer squash and tomato:

The tart turned out just "ok". The tofu filling was tasty enough, I added miso paste, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, almond milk, pine nuts, garlic, onion powder, kala namak salt,  and some ume vinegar, but it didn't cook through how I wanted it...I'm still trying to get a feel for the calibration of my new oven. 

For other news, the garden is thriving. I've been harvesting fresh greens galore.

So far, we've been munching on mustard-spinach ( a hybrid of the two and a less spicy than pure mustard greens), baby kale, spinach, and radishes. I'm waiting a little longer to harvest the dandelion greens and the lettuce. The chard and collard greens will be another few weeks before they grow into nice big plants. It's a bit overcrowded at the moment, but as we harvest, space will open up.

I keep the greens under a poly tunnel at night and on cloudy days, and it makes a phenomenal difference in how fast things grow. Here's the same bed about a month ago:

It's easy to make a poly tunnel. All you need is some rebar stakes, some pliable tubing that you can get in a hardware store, and some opaque painters' plastic. You can attach the plastic to the tubes with large binder clips. This works great in climates where the temps are cool in spring and fall.

Green juice from the garden: radish tops, parsley, mustard-spinach, celery (not from the garden) and sorrel:

Radishes are one of my favorite vegetables, and for any newbie gardeners out there, I highly recommend giving radishes a try. They grow quickly and easily...and, you get double for your efforts; harvest the roots for salads and what not (you can cook them too) and eat the greens in stir fries or juices. The greens are a bit stickery, but if you steam them or juice them it's not a problem. Radishes are just little turnips, so I wager that the greens are super nutritious like turnip greens. The radishes themselves are pretty nutritious too.

My tomato and pepper starts are some of the slowest growing little guys I've ever seen! Come on guys...get growing!

And finally, in some family news: my mom adopted a little dog from a K-9 death row rescue:

Her name is Lula, and she's super smart and sweet.  She adores my mom, and we all love her. I've been visiting a lot to get in on the walking action. I hope to post a video of her soon doing one of her happy dances, which are really adorable.

Shirataki Noodle-Mushroom Broth...and Kitty Cohabitation!

I swear I'm not a crazy noodle lady or anything like that, but here comes yet another post about noodles...I haven't posted in a while, but my last was about kelp noodles. This time, I branched out to try some shirataki noodles, and I can say unequivocally that I'm a fan.

I've seen people posting about them on various blogs for quite some time, and I bought a package that sat in my fridge for a couple of months...not sure why it took me so long to dive into them other than that through the package, they looked like they would be soft and mushy, which is not an appealing characteristic of noodles in my opinion. Looks can be deceiving though, because these cook up nice and firm.

They're made from the fiber of the Konjac plant, and like the kelp noodles, they're very low in carbs and calories. They smell bad when you take them out of the package, but once you rinse them and cook them the smell goes away.

I've made them a few times now. The first time I tried them in a stir fry with lots of veggies and a peanut-miso dressing...I wanted to post about that, but I accidentally deleted the photos. So, here's another dish I made with them; they're great in soup, just like ramen noodles.

This is a brothy, gingery, sweet and sour soup with Thai flavors. The measurements are approximate... I didn't measure everything precisely, but can serve as a guideline:


12-inches worth of lemon grass, with tough outer leaves removed and chopped into fine rounds
3 or 4 kaffir lime leaves ( I use dried ones)
4 or 5 good slices of fresh ginger
1 hot chili pepper sliced
About 1/2 - 3/4 of a pound of mushrooms: I used shitake and alba clamshell
~ 5 cups rich veggie broth or mushroom broth ( I used a combination of veggie broth and mushroom broth)
1 package of shirataki noodles

carrot and/or other veggies of choice, thinly chopped 

1/4 cup tamari
1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar (if you don't use seasoned vinegar, you'll need to add some agave syrup or brown sugar to balance out the acidity)

1 generous teaspoon tamarind paste, or to taste

cilantro 

green onions

toasted sesame oil
fresh lime juice
daikon radish and sambal oelek to garnish

Put the lemon grass, ginger, chili, and lime leaves in a large sauce pan  and let them simmer in a little broth for about 5 minutes.

When the herbs are beginning to soften and become aromatic, add the shitake mushrooms and the rest of the broth and let it simmer gently for about 30 - 40 minutes.

The broth becomes flavorful from the mushrooms and the herbs. 

Next, add the tamari, seasoned vinegar and tamarind and stir through. 

Bring a small pot of water to the boil and par-cook the shirataki noodles for about 2 minutes. Drain the noodles and toss them into the simmering broth along with the clamshell mushrooms and some thinly sliced carrot and let it cook for another 4 - 6 minutes. 

Right before you serve it, stir in some cilantro (baby spinach would be good too) and the green onions. Drizzle a few drops of toasted sesame oil  over the top (not too much, or it will overpower the other flavors), and finally add a couple generous splashes of fresh lime juice. It's nice served with shredded daikon and some sambal oelek.

Now, on to some really exciting news: our kitties are beginning to like each other!  We adopted Lucky, the tabby cat, last September (I know that's a naff name, but it was his shelter name and it just stuck), and it has been a bumpy road in catville around here since then. Our longtime family member, Cheeky, didn't like the idea of having him around at all.  If Lucky came into a room where Cheeky was, she would leave and hiss at him every time she passed by.

We did everything to ensure that they each had their own space and places to sleep and eat...but it seemed like the best we could hope for is that they would ignore each other.  Well, over the weekend, I caught them napping together:

And more than once too...the sunroom is a favorite napping spot:

I'm delighted and hoping for the day when they actually snuggle together.  

Birdhouse Mania and Into the Garden

I must have a secret love of birdhouses that even I didn't know about, because while rummaging through the gardening tools recently, I came across three birdhouses..."Where did these come from?" was what crossed my mind.

Most likely, they came from impulse purchases at the garden center, which I put away upon getting home and promptly forgot about. Anyway,  a stash like that shouldn't go to waste, so I hung them out.

The northwest corner of my garden seemed like a good place; the houses are facing south/southeast, so they'll get the first rays of light in the morning, and when the leaves come on the trees, that corner of the garden is shady throughout the afternoon.

You can just barely make them out; it'll be fun to see whether there'll be any takers:

I think I'm probably a little late for this nesting season though. Some chickadees already have their nest well underway in the neighbor's nest box.

As for the rest of the garden, I had a nice surprise when I removed the row cover from the main bed. The greens I planted last autumn overwintered pretty well and have started growing again over the last few weeks:

There are some turnip greens, some parsley, a few kale plants, a few collards and a little bit of chard and mustard, as well as a few rows of beets...











and some raddichio.

They've been under 2 layers of row cover and a poly tunnel all winter, and along with the fact that we didn't get a lot of really cold weather, they faired pretty well. I got a pretty good harvest, and should get a couple more before I start spring planting in another 10 days or so. 

The garlic is doing its thing. This is a hard neck variety, and I'm looking forward to garlic scapes, come June:

If you're wondering what all the drinking straws are about, most of them have fallen over, but I stuck them in the soil upright when I planted the garlic to deter the cats from digging there. They seem to love smooth, freshly worked soil, but once there's an obstacle course of straws or sticks, they lose interest. As the plants grow, they become their own obstacle course...if that makes any sense. 

As I mentioned, I'm waiting another 10 - 14 days to plant the bulk of my spring crops, but I've put in peas, favas, and potatoes already. 

I haven't had much success with potatoes in the past.

Two years ago, I built a potato cage, which was fun and rather spectacular, I had high, high hopes, but I got a small harvest.

Last year I switched to these "grow bags", which are containers made out of a thick black cloth that allows some air and moisture circulation. I got a very small harvest.


But, I'm trying again...who knows maybe third time's a charm. Anyone have any potato-growing tips?

The good thing about the grow bags it that they save on real estate in the garden beds.

Hanging bird houses and planting spuds is hungry work. This was a a yummy lunch of curried tofu salad (tofu, curry powder, lemon juice, celery, red onion, green olives, Bragg's aminos, nutritional yeast, 1/2 an avocado and some hot sauce):

Bookmark Swap Fabulousness!

Last month, Cassie of Vegan Fox in the Snow hosted a vegan bookmark swap and I jumped in to participate. It is such a good idea: swappers exchanged homemade bookmarks with a vegan or animal theme.

I received my bookmark yesterday, from Michelle and Lilly of DirtyDuck blog. And it's extra-special because Lilly generously contributed some of her errant feathers...anyone who reads Michelle's blog is smitten with Lilly and the rest of the household over at Michelle's place, and so I'm sure can understand how special and fun this is. The feathers are attached with beautiful white ribbon and pretty beads:

This is a deluxe bookmark; the three ribbons allow you to mark your place in the book on three separate pages, and you can even adjust the lengths by pulling on the beads at the top:

And, it's attached to a special dealy-bob so you can use it as a bookmark or a hair pin! It's fabulous! Thanks Michelle and Lilly, you're a clever and creative pair.

I forgot to take a picture of the bookmark I sent, but you can see it over at Molly's blog as well as her fab bookmark creation too.

Thanks again to Cassie for hosting this fun swap! 

Broccoli Corn Muffins

Is it bizarre to put broccoli in corn muffins? Mr D thinks so...his exact words were: "that's beyond bizarre". 

...he might be right, but I think you could add almost any veggie and it would be innocuous at worst. Actually, the broccoli didn't add a lot of flavor, but it was fun. I used about 1/2 cup corn kernels and 1/2 cup chopped broccoli, but if I were to make them again, I'd add in about 1 cup of each...they disappeared into the batter somehow. 

Needs more corn and broccoli!

Corn Muffins (makes 6)

1 cup sweetcorn kernels (this is upped from 1/2 c. I used above)

1  cup other veggies of choice, (blanched if desired), chopped small (upped from 1/2 cup used above)

egg replacer for 2 eggs (3 teaspoons egg replacer + 4 tbs water if using EnerG brand)

1 cup non-dairy milk + 1 tablespoon lemon juice (vegan buttermilk)

1/3 cup oil or melted Earth Balance or other vegan margarine

1 1/4 cups unbleached flour

3/4 cup yellow corn meal

1/4 vegan sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400 F. Grease and flour your muffin tin. 

Whisk together the egg replacer and water until well combined, add the vegan buttermilk mixture, oil, and whisk. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, corn meal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Toss in the veggies to coat. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and fold in gently until the moist mix is just incorporated. The dough will be thick and lumpy.

Fill muffin tins...I filled mine to nearly full because I wanted a large cap...(didn't work). Bake for 20 minutes or until a wooden stick comes out clean.

Bizarre as they may be, they're pretty tasty with a little red pepper jelly.

As I was taking the muffin photos, this guy came running along the sun roof:

View above the corn muffins

(Please ignore the dirt...that's on the outside of the glass and I don't have a ladder tall enough to get up there and clean it, plus I'm afraid I might fall through or something.)

Cheeky watches from below: