On a Boat

So, an intro.  I recently was very, very sick with big fat swollen tonsils, so big they were almost touching - so big I could barely talk, eat, drink, swallow my own spit...the doctor said he was afraid my airway would be blocked and my breathing would be impaired if they kept getting bigger!  Anyway, it was super scary and I was taken out by this illness for nearly two weeks.

All this is said not to make you feel sorry for me.  (Well, maybe a little.)  Mostly I bring this up to tell you of a horror that this illness directly caused...


A hatred for oat bran.
Oat bran, my favorite food in the world.



I ate oat bran twice while I was sick.  Pumpkin oat bran, to be exact.  I was on some meds that altered my taste and smelling perceptions, and nearly everything set in front of me seemed utterly revolting.  I was shocked.  Normally I have a voracious appetite.  I love food:  I have a food blog and a food-related bachelor's degree, for crying out loud!  So this oat bran aversion was a surprise to me and to everyone who knows me, the girl who basically sings herself to sleep with oatmeal lullabies.  (...not to mention I barely ate a single veggie in two weeks, and normally I eat at least five servings of vegetables a day!  Nutrition Nightmare!)

Once my throat inflammation subsided and I could swallow foods other than Gatorade, almond milk, and partial pints of Purely Decadent with coconut milk Cookies 'n Cream (this was essentially my diet for over a week), I tried to eat a real breakfast again.  For a few days, I became obsessed with sunflower seed butter/dried fig/grilled banana sandwiches on toast grilled with Earth Balance.  It was delicious.  But soon the oatmeal void opened in me again, but I didn't know how to fill it.  I couldn't and still can't stand the idea of a big mushy bowl of oat bran.

Chocolate-Covered Katie saved my life.  She posted about an oatmeal cake she made in the oven, lovingly referred to as a "boatmeal" cake, a hybrid word of "baked" and "oatmeal."



Katie inverts the bowl after baking, and a cake pops out!  So cute.  So delicious, as it turned out.  I knew I could swallow some oats if, instead of mushy oat bran, they were the thickest rolled oats I could buy.  So I got some thick cut rolled oats from the Whole Foods bulk bins, and I revamped Katie's recipe to suit my new dislike of pumpkin-infused oats and my obsession with dried Turkish figs and sunflower butter.  There's some granola included for added crunchy surprises and some measurements are by weight, because I am in love with my food scale.  But I shall not put you, dear readers, through further suspense.  Let's eat some cake for breakfast!  Here is my beautiful creation:


Ruby Red's Boatmeal Cake
Serves 1

1 Tablespoon ground flaxseed
3 Tablespoons non-dairy milk (I used vanilla almond milk)
60 grams sliced banana (about 1/2 medium banana)
35 grams thick rolled oats (a scant 1/2 cup)
1 dash sea salt
1/4 cup non-dairy milk (I used unsweetened soymilk - I am a weirdo and blend different non-dairy milks in a lot of my recipes)
2 big fat dried Turkish figs
3 Tablespoons granola (I used my favorite, Hemp Plus Granola by Nature's Path)

Earth Balance, canola oil, or cooking spray, to coat your cooking container

16 grams sunflower seed butter (about 1 tablespoon; I used the divine Naturally Nutty Pepita Sun Seed Butter, a pumpkin seed & sunflower seed butter with hints of cinnamon and allspice)

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flaxseed and the 3 tablespoons non-dairy milk.  Add in the banana slices and mash everything together with a fork.  Stir in the rolled oats, salt, and 1/4 cup non-dairy milk.  Chop the figs into medium-ish pieces and stir in.  Lastly, fold in the granola.

Grease a small oven-safe bowl (I used a Pyrex 2-cup glass bowl) with Earth Balance, canola oil, or cooking spray.  Pour the ingredients from your mixing bowl into the greased bowl.  Bake your bowl o' oats for 15 minutes.  Go do a happy dance while you're waiting, wash some dishes, or go stalk the archives of my blog.  Go ahead, you have my permission.

Once your 15 minutes are up, move the bowl to a position under the broiler and broil on high for 2 minutes 45 seconds.

Remove from oven and gently pry the oatmeal from the sides of the bowl.  Flip the bowl upside down onto a small plate.  Scrape any leftover pieces from the bowl and mush onto the top of your boatmeal cake.

Finally, place half of your sunflower seed butter on top of the cake.  Reserve the other half of the sunflower butter in a little dish for when you are halfway through eating the cake.  Reapply that butter and eat the last delicious half of your oat delight.

You can thank Katie and me later.


Oh, and the "I'm On a Boat" reference? Please see this video if you don't understand.

I'm fancy like that

***

It has been quite a while.

Just a few hours ago, I reminisced about the old times and began looking at some of my oldest Blogger posts. It was such an odd feeling, going back to the good old days: Looking at my sophomore year of college, trying to make it as a vegan for the first time. Today, I am incredibly impressed with my old self. I made extremely healthy and fresh meals from scratch all the time, at first using just the communal dorm kitchen. (Luckily, I was on the first floor and so was the kitchen.)

It brings back other memories, too: My frustration with my bathroom mate, who would smoke in and/or leave her uncleaned fish bowl in our bathroom - both incredibly gross. (I even reported the smoking bit to the Resident Advisor and two different Hall Coordinators... And nothing was done about it.) But I digress. I haven't been posting, although my life has indeed been moving on.

I think food pictures will help catch you all up on my life quite well, no?

Let's begin, then:



This is one of my favorite pictures taken from the week of my college graduation. It was the best week of my four-year school career, seriously. I had quit my job and classes were over. I was just waiting for graduation to come around and spend that free time biking all over the city, meeting up with my favorite friends, and for the first time in my whole life, doing a little of the drinking+dancing thing (but I don't do the "drunk" thing, just to clarify)...trying to figure out boy(s) and havin' fun. It was a relaxing and triumphant week.



One of my super-bubbly nutrition friends was rumored to be an incredible chef. She proposed a vegan meal amongst a few friends and I at her place. This was one of the last weeks I spent in my college city. She made herb-rubbed tofu (first seared and then baked), quinoa, and roasted asparagus. The tofu was so much better than the tofu I make, and it was her first time preparing tofu - I couldn't believe it. The quinoa was the star of the show - it was comprised of roasted tomatoes, pistachios, raspberry vinegar, and other unknown things because I never got the "recipe" out of her. In truth, there was no recipe, because the quinoa creation was composed inside her brain and she just threw it together without measuring. Daaang she's a great cook. I also made some margaritas with her uncle's perfected recipe and in my humble opinion did him great justice; I had 1,000 or two chips and a pound of my friend's guac (the best recipe in the world, in fact, which I do have but must keep top-secret); we had a dance party involving hats in her living room, and that was that.



The lasagne above was actually a school project, for my Food Science lab. I spell it "lasagnE" because I'm fancy like that. And because Isa told me to. This little project took me NINE hours in the class kitchen. I had to make the lasagne three times, and each time it took me three hours from start to finish. The title of the final product was Whole Wheat Cashew-Tofu Lasagne with Basil and Spinach and consisted of layers of whole wheat lasagna noodles, seasoned spinach, cashew-tofu-basil ricotta, and homemade marinara sauce, heavy on the garlic. It was inspired by and modified from the Veganomicon lasagne recipe. Typing this is a self-reminder to replicate the ricotta just to spread on toasted bread and eat for lunch this summer. Sadly enough, the day I presented the product to others for review, I forgot to bring the pan I had been testing with and had to improvise with a lighter-colored pan that was slightly larger, which of course threw off my lasagne and led to undercooked noodles. Boo.

Here we have some lovely chocolate-covered hazelnuts I bought from the Vosges chocolate shop in Chicago. They were great:



While on this Chicago trip, I took a fun friend (hello girlie, if you are reading still!) to a blogger meet-up, to see none other than Gena from Choosing Raw. I also met Jenn from Eating Bender, Chicago Marathon Val, and Mara. We ate at the Chicago Diner and I got one of my two favorite menu items: the Radical Reuben, of course with sweet potato fries. And a Peanut Butter Cookie Dough shake. I wanted to get the Tamale Corncakes, and had them on my mind for months, actually, but the diner had to be out that day. Come on, people!! You shoulda been prepared for Ruby Red & Co.!



And here, I finally duplicated my salad that I enjoyed at One Lucky Duck in New York City:


Mary's Gone Krackers (Herb flavor) crumbled over a bed of kale dressed in olive oil, sea salt, and lemon; dulse; sliced avocado; and hemp seeds

A random yet delightful lunch one day, in the last months of school:


Toast with sunflower seed butter, ginger-roasted butternut squash, cinnamon-lime bulgur (I think), raw kale salad (+lemon, olive oil, sea salt, tomatoes, and dried cranberries), and grilled tofu (House Foods brand Tofu Cutlets)

Here be my favorite chocolate bar in the whole, entire world:


Francois Pralus's Cuba bar

Good ol' Francois is a French chocolate maker who sources his cacao beans from the highest quality cacao farms from different origins across the world. I have tried a handful of his origin bars, but the Cuba is by far my favorite, and it, of course, is incredibly hard to find in the United States. It is best to order online, but this method is even more expensive than finding it in a store. I went to a wine store to get my bars, but I bought all of them and now they are gone and now I moved away.

I am trying to justify spending $20 on 2nd-day shipping and $7 to $10 on a cold pack to buy some more of these $9 chocolate bars online. I think I would need to buy at least five bars for it to be worth it?

Anyway, Francois Pralus procures the beans and then roasts and processes them in Roanne. His website states, " 'I make everything myself,' explains Francois, 'instead of buying ready made ingredients from specialized manufacturers.'" This is what sets his chocolate apart from the mediocre stuff. He is a French bean-to-bar chocolate maker (not chocolatier, who gets ready-made chocolate from an outside source and then makes truffles and bon bons) and mostly makes single-origin dark chocolate bars. Each bar has tasting notes that are distinct to the region in which its respective cacao is grown. (U.S.-based bean-to-bar maker, Askinosie Chocolate, makes my second-fave chocolate in the whole world, its single-origin 77% Davao, Philippines bar.)

Although I have moved away, I was reunited with my dear friend Jess (she has a blog, too!). Of course, we had many food adventures together during this visit, one of which involved the brownie marked with a *** at the very top of this post. It was our favorite brownie from our favorite spot in my ex-college city, but this time they add homemade graham crackers and some other stuff to make a S'mores Brownie. Yes, it was vegan.


Jess and her hubby (Lucas) had a World Cup party at their housey, and Jess and I made "our" food while Lucas made food for the rest of the party animals. Our goodies:


Sandwiches on sprouted grain bread with mozzarella Daiya cheese and tempeh marinated in lime juice and Lucas-made chimichurri, raw massaged kale salad with fresh figs, and grilled corn caressed with Earth Balance

Later added to the plate were chunkies o' watermelon and grilled veggies. Mmmm... Thanks for having me over, Jess and Lucas!! And for putting up with me taking a nap during the soccer game.

I hope you enjoyed my life update. If anyone is cruising through or lives in Atlanta and wants to do a blogger meet-up of some sort, give me a holler in the comments! I have also been wanting to make a day-trip out to Athens, Georgia, so if any of you feel like steppin' your wonderful selves out of the darkness, I may use you as my excuse for my li'l day trip.

Peace 'n Love,
Ruby

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate

Photo used with permission from amanochocolate.com

Head on over to Amano to enter a contest to win free chocolate for a year! That's ten bars of bean-to-bar chocolate every month for 12 months straight!! Um, yes?!? The direct url to enter the contest: click here.

I would also like to use this as opportunity for a little education about fair trade, chocolate, and coffee. Many people think they're doing a great thing by passing up certain coffees and chocolates in favor of fair trade choices; however, some of us are uninformed or under-informed about very real issues. There are some great small-batch chocolate companies that work with and/or source their cacao beans directly from farmers in other countries that are not fair-trade certified: flavor and quality are the prime factors in deciding which beans to buy, not price. And for premium cacao, a premium price is paid - these small companies are dedicated to their craft and pay farmers significantly more than, often many times over, the established fair trade price for cacao. Both organic and fair trade certification are costly and lengthy in duration, and many small-time farmers cannot afford these formalities if they are not a part of a larger co-op.

So the labels we, as responsible consumers, are told to look for can be misleading. Organic and fair trade are noble programs and ideas, but they are not the be-all and end-all of responsibility. There are unlabeled and differently-labeled programs and efforts that strive for the same (and further) goals: we see this in the farmers who do not use pesticides but aren't financially positioned to afford organic certification yet (or ever), and we see this in companies that opt for direct farmer relationships rather than going through a fair trade middle-man of sorts. The point of saying all this is that we can feel okay with ourselves if we look beyond fair trade in the world of chocolate. (Many companies are calling their farmer relationships "direct trade.") Examples of such chocolate makers include Taza Chocolate, Askinosie Chocolate, Patric Chocolate, and as mentioned at the beginning of this post, Amano Chocolate. I also just read a cool blog article about a company whose chocolate I've not yet tried - which fits into the "bean-to-bar" category: Rogue Chocolatier...two years ago, the owner started his own dark chocolate laboratory...at 22 years old (my age!!!). That's so inspiring! For any inquiring minds that wish to know a little more about chocolatey indulgences, Amano has some great chocolate articles and FAQ's about chocolate. If you do not know and would like to know such things as the different between a chocolatier and a chocolate maker, I suggest the latter link.

(And examples of coffee companies with direct trade programs include Counter Culture Coffee, Intelligentsia Coffee, and Stumptown Coffee.)

Oh, yay! Yay for coffee and chocolate! Haha, somehow I managed to work coffee into this post! Kinda like eatliverun's Jenna squeezes wine into every post...

Summer reporting, and a recipe to change the heart of a black bean hater

Coconut espresso, anyone?

I am kind of in love with that picture right now. I do admit my friend did the latte art on this one; I was just the lowly photographer. This is the result of messing around with espresso and finding a random coconut out and about.

Shot numba two:


Summer has been pretty boring and slow. I am somewhere semi-new, living at my parents' for a few months out in the middle-of-nowhere-South. I just graduated college, but it wasn't supposed to be sad. However, life as I know it has disappeared and I have to start up almost everything new. It's depressing. Training for my new jobbie starts Saturday though, and that's 30 hours a week. I'm actually excited about getting busy. It took extreme boredom to get me to this point - excitement about being productive!?! This is a foreign concept! I was anticipating finishing school so I could get a moment to breathe. Guess I've had enough?

In the last couple months of school I stumbled upon the self-serve frozen-yogurt-with-toppings trend. I would flock to the yogurt joint - along with eager middle schoolers, because they all hang out there too - to get my fill sorbet and load on the fresh fruit, coconut, assorted nuts, and Oreo crumbles. I got really good at convincing almost anyone to go with me, and if I couldn't, I could bike 4.7 miles there, get my icy fix, and then bike back for a nice little outdoors breather/workout! Unfortunately, my location of delightful frozen bliss has been stolen from me since I graduated and moved, and all the frozen yogurt joints here are lame-o and don't have anything dairy-free, so I took matters into my own hands...

...and created this at home:

Ciao Bella mango sorbet, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, bananas, hemp seeds, raw cashews, and crumbled mini Oreos

Yuuuuuum! The hot weather has me wanting this stuff all the time. And it's such a filling snack too!

I don't have much interesting to say, other than that today and yesterday has had me bored out of my mind, literally to the point of craziness. I am ready for something exciting to happen!

A recipe I made up a few months ago was sitting in my Blogger draft posts list, so I decided to reveal it to all of you, thus benefitting the rest of the world with my random food creations. I wrote the rest of this text a few months ago, which explains the change in voice from the rest of this post. (Please don't kill me for not having a picture!) Here goes:

I can never find ways to use up entire cans of black beans and end up throwing them out after leftover beanies sit stagnant in my fridge for seven days. I'll try a recipe, not really like it, and then tell myself I'll figure out a way to use the rest later. It never happens.

Until now.

Here my friends, I have had a momentary instance of culinary black bean genius. It's actually really simple and not much of a commitment:

Quick Open-Faced Black Bean Sammie
Serves 1

Heaping 1/2 cup cooked black beans (rinsed if canned)
1/3 medium sweet potato, cooked (in microwave on potato setting or in oven; remove skin after cooking and eat it! Fiber is good for you!)
1/4 red bell pepper, chopped
1 Tablespoon vital wheat gluten (optional but yummy)
Salt to taste (I used 2 dashes and 'twas perfecto)
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin
Dash garlic powder (or fresh minced garlic if you want to get messy)
1/2 teaspoon olive oil, divided (*see very end of instructions for clarification)
2 slices of your favorite bread

Toast the bread before or during prep. Ruby Red tip: I don't have a toaster, but I buy fresh sliced bread and freeze it; when I want a few pieces, I will "toast" each side by sliding them right onto the middle oven rack preheated to 375 degrees F. I will "toast" for four minutes on each side. Perfect.

Okay, now for the real recipe. Mash your sweet potatoes. Mix all other ingredients with the sweet potatoes except olive oil. Microwave for 1 minute 30 seconds. (This is a fast meal and it tasted great nuked, even though I can be a snob if I feel like it when it comes to microwave cooking. Most of the time, for reheating, I use the oven instead.)

Mix ingredients again. Plop half of the mixture on each slice of toasted bread. *Finish this open-face sandwich with a drizzle of 1/4 teaspoon olive oil over the bean mixture on each slice of bread. SO GOOD. Try this recipe now and thank me later. Serve with a side or two and call it lunch!

What went down in new york

So, here's the story. I went to New York City over spring break. I was there three days and got one exquisite meal each day. (The other two meals each day were run-of-the-mill and don't really deserve screen time.) See my previous post for the daily coffee adventures, which wayyyy exceeded my expectations. Yeah, with four W's, yo.

Day one: Lunch stop was One Lucky Duck, also cleverly referred to as 1LD, known for its juices and raw vegan takeaway. Le food is all made in Pure Food & Wine, its parent restaurant.


S&m salad: Mesclun greens, dulse, hemp seeds, avocado, rosemary quackers, and lemon-argon dressing, with a side of delicious and subtly-sweet manna bread

Best salad I've ever, ever, EVER had. No joke. I immediately bought packages of dulse and hemp seeds when I got home, in order to replicate this salad. (I have made it about six times now. Expect photogs in a future post.)

And don't mind the to-go ware. My family is insane and didn't want to indulge in any delicious vegan food on the trip. I had to order every meal to go. This whole to-go thing was so annoying and so frustrating (not to mention environmentally unfriendly)...but at least they bought my meals for me! (The only exception to the to-go phenomenon when we all agreed to eat at Jamba Juice for breakfast - three yay's for carrot juice and blackberry steel-cut oatmeal.)

A treat to have throughout the week...



I'm a chocolate snob and almost hesitated to buy this. These days I only buy bean-to-bar single-origin or direct trade dark chocolates, but I decided to keep an open mind and was fairly impressed with this bar.

Day two: Lunch, to-go again, from Candle Cafe on the Upper East Side. Got to enjoy a long walk along Central Park en route. (Okay, I almost enjoyed the walk thoroughly - I just had to ignore the bitchnmoanin of my sister...who hates walking but was dragged on 17+ miles of NYC steppin' over our few days there. Hahaha Ruby Red wins.)






BBQ Tempeh & Sweet Potato Sandwich: stuffed with "wilted kale and grilled red onion on toasted multi-grain bread. Served with a shallot sage aioli and a mesclun salad drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette."

Dia tres: Blossom for dindin. I complained and finally the fam let me have one vegan sit-down meal. This is a fancy place, you probably can't get this to go anyway.



My dad's choice (and lovely hands too):


Handmade ravioli in a delicious finger-lickin' cashew sauce

My entree:


Phyllo Roulade: "French lentils and root vegetables baked in a phyllo crust, served over a carrot-cream sauce. Caramelized onions and swiss chard complement."

The roulade was pretty good, but better when my dad's cashew ravioli sauce was dumped on top. I'm a genius for coming up with that. (Okay, fine, it was his idea...I won't lie now. All the credit goes to pops.) Yeah, Blossom was the least impressive of all my meals, but I had it coming because I already knew that the place gets mixed reviews.

I would go back to 1LD and Candle Cafe in a heartbeat. If my parents would have let my 22-year-old self explore to my soul's content (I am naturally an independent roamer/wanderer and need that typa freedom desperately!!), I would have eaten at 1LD for lunch every day, complemented by Candle for dinner. And I would have met up with some NYC bloggers at Pure Food & Wine. But I was not about to tell the 'rents that, on our family trip, I was gonna go wander off into the city with some people from the internet. They wouldn't understand. But I know you guys and ladies are supa cool. We'll have to make it happen some other time.

I didn't get to try Candle Cafe's famous Chocolate Mousse Cake, or the vegan shakes at Lulu's Sweet Apothecary...or Vegan Treats cakes or 1LD Almond Butter Cup ice cream... Or Everyman Espresso, and not Gimme Coffee, either. And I did not get to grace Angelica Kitchen or 'Snice with my presence. And the chocolate makers at Brooklyn-based Mast Brothers Chocolate did not get to impress me with their dark choco bars yet because I just didn't have enough time in New York. I didn't get to ride bikes through the new experimental cycling lanes... Dang, I really regret that... But this is all to say that there is so much fun to be had in the city, and I can't wait to get back.