Seventeen Miles Out

Goodbye Blogger

2010-07-14T00:29:00.000-05:00

So I'm pretty horrible about updating this blog, and decided it was time to move on to something more straightforward. Tumblr came to my attention and seemed to fit the bill for a simple yet flexible blogging platform, so I'm going to give that a try.

The plan moving forward will involve less witty banter and more recipes, which is really what I should have set out to do in the first place. So, without further ado take a trip over to my Tumblr blog. Enjoy!

First box of the year, or how to dismantle an atomic bomb

2010-05-07T00:38:00.003-05:00

The first true signs of spring appeared today in Minneapolis—our first CSA box of the season from Harmony Valley Farm has arrived! There is something wonderful about opening up a the first box filled with the best things that the spring in Minnesota has to offer. Alive and green, it is such a refreshing treat after the cold months of winter officially draw to a close—despite the prospect of snow tomorrow night.

One of the challenges I look forward to each Thursday evening after we've picked up our box is trying to find a way to combine all the bounty contained inside into a week's worth of meals, all without having to make too many additional purchases at the Co-op. It's like solving a big puzzle, taking note of what we have on hand in the cupboards and hanging around in the fridge from the week before, then mapping it all out for the meals across the entire week. Despite how procedural my brain might be, I usually like to keep things spontaneous in the kitchen. The problem is, if we don't have a game plan stuff ends up going to waste—something I found out the hard way when we started this the whole CSA thing two years ago.

So, this week's box contained the following items:

Ramps
Asparagus
Chives
Parsnips
Rhubarb
Sorrel
Spinach
Sunchokes
Sauté Mix
French Breakfast Radish
Red Russian Kale

After some quality time spent with my favorite cookbooks, I turned that list into:

Chickpea and Spinach Curry with Black Jasmine Rice (spinach, sauté mix)
Maple Mustard Glazed Root Vegetables and Green Beans with Brown Rice (parsnips, sunchokes)
Oven Grilled Pizza with Sautéed Ramps, Grilled Asparagus and Spring Green Pesto (ramps, asaparagus, sorrel)
Stir-fried Tofu and Kale with Miso Soup (kale, chives, radishes)
Indian Spiced Red Lentils and Rhubarb with Curried Baked Rice (rhubarb)

To allow myself a little bit of the freedom in the kitchen that I enjoy, I always allow a little flexibility in the assignment of meals to specific days of the week. Plus, it always turns out that we don't have time to cook one night or we've got a fridge full of leftovers, so I usually only end up plotting about 5-6 meals per week to be safe.

My system might not work for everyone, but it works for us and frankly that's what matters right? We're certainly in a different boat from many people anyhow, since we're not just making a bunch of vegetable side dishes to throw along side a big hunking piece charred animal flesh.

So, if you too are beginning your CSA adventure this week and need a little guidance sorting out all your produce, try my method out. It will only become more helpful when you find yourself face to face with the ultimate challenge, the summer harvest CSA boxes of August. Until then, experiment with what works best and don't feel bad if you let something go, it's all a part of the CSA experience.

Keep your elbows on the table

2010-03-17T00:43:00.003-05:00

For whatever reason, when we started up our CSA two years ago the amount of pasta we were eating at home went down. Way down. I guess the vegetables were so good we just started making them the centerpiece of the meal—not merely a side. The fact the we had just gone vegetarian obviously had a huge impact on this change as well.

Finally it hit me—two years later—while browsing the aisles at the Seward Coop, how long it had been since I'd made a pasta dish at home. At this point we were vegan, and of course the first thing I thought of was everyone's childhood favorite: macaroni and cheese. So, with a little help and guidance from the eternally awesome tome Veganomicon (and a failed veganization of a Mark Bittman recipe), I set about bringing those fond childhood memories back.

Isa's recipe—Mac Daddy as she calls it—is a good one, but I had to jazz things up a bit and tweak the "cheese" sauce recipe a little to get things just right. And to make things easier on people like your relatives or your friends at work who freak out when you talk about eating "macaroni and cheese" and being vegan, I decided a name change was in order too. Needless to say, the rediscovery of this comfort food favorite has brought pasta back to our table again.

Midwestern Macaroni Hotdish

Makes 4 servings

Sauce

2 cups water
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 tbsp vegetable oil
½ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp dried thyme
1 tsp paprika
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground black pepper
¾ cup nutritional yeast flakes
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp yellow mustard
1 tbsp ketchup

Hotdish

1 8 oz. box quinoa macaroni
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 cup frozen peas (optional)
1 tomato thinly sliced (optional)
Fresh or dried parsley for garnish

Start a large pot of water boiling and preheat the oven to 325° F while you gather all your ingredients together. When it reaches a boil, cook the pasta according to the instructions on the box. Meanwhile, begin preparing the sauce.

Whisk together the flour and water in a bowl, while you wait for a saucepan to preheat to medium-low heat on the stove. Add the oil to the saucepan, followed by garlic powder, thyme, paprika, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring regularly until it becomes fragrant, about 1 to 2 minutes.

Add the water/flour mixture along with the nutritional yeast to the saucepan, raising the heat to medium. Continue stirring regularly as you bring the sauce to a simmer. It should begin simmering after a few minutes, but feel free to adjust the heat accordingly if it's going crazy or doing nothing at all.

Once the sauce has thickened up nicely, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vinegar, mustard and ketchup until combined. Cover to keep warm while you assemble the hotdish.

Add the salt, pepper, oil, vinegar and cooked pasta to a 9" x 12" baking dish and stir to combine.

Pour your prepared sauce over the pasta and fold it in along with the frozen peas.

Finish everything off by neatly arranging your tomato slices on top of the pasta and then bake for 30 minutes. By then the sauce should be nice and bubbly and the tomatoes beginning to color on the edges. Broil for a few minutes if you like your tomatoes with a little more color to them, being careful not to burn the macaroni.

Allow to cool a few minutes before garnishing with the parsley.

Throw on your pajamas, dish up some hearty portions, flip on the television and relive your childhood.

Beverage pairing: Pabst Blue Ribbon

Rainy day waffle party

2010-03-12T17:29:00.005-06:00

A couple weeks ago, someone broke the carafe for our office coffee maker and all hell broke loose. Since we have a lot of serious coffee drinkers in the office and it was a Monday morning no less, the crisis had to be resolved quickly. A new coffee maker was purchased at everyone's favorite downtown shopping hotspot and the daily grind returned to normal. Or so we thought.

After about two weeks we came to the conclusion that the new coffee maker wasn't quite up to snuff compared to our last model, and was brewing some pretty sub-standard coffee. Considering the fact that we have awesome beans on hand from Peace Coffee, it seemed almost sacrilegious to commit such an act. On top of it all, we have some folks in the office who insist on making coffee without reading the posted guidelines for the number of scoops to use. Yes, we do actually have posted guidelines (believe it or not). Desperate times call for desperate measures, so we scrounged amongst ourselves and were able to assemble a killer pressed coffee station right in our department.

So, what does this have to do with waffles? Well, we decided that our great accomplishment required a little celebration to get everyone acquainted with our new little corner of awesomeness in the department, and what could be better than a bunch of delicious waffles. So I crammed our waffle maker and a batch and a half of waffle batter into my Ortlieb Velocity messenger bag and headed to the office.

Waffles work great because they can be easily divided among several people. And even though waffles take a little while to cook, the timing of fresh waffles to arriving staff members turned out about as ideal as possible. We topped them with some tasty homemade blueberry syrup that was brought in, drinking our coffee and conversing jovially. To say that it helped brighten the gloomy gray day outside is an understatement.

Later in the day one of my coworkers said to me, "We should do this every Friday." I couldn't agree more, but maybe someone else wants to get up extra early and make the batter? Here's the recipe, adapted from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

Rainy day waffles

Makes 4 six-inch waffles

2 cups almond milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp canola oil
3 tbsp sugar
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornmeal
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp cornstarch

Heat up your waffle iron while you get all your ingredients together.

Combine the wet ingredients with the sugar and mix thoroughly.

Add the dry ingredients and mix until the batter is smooth. You can prepare the batter up to this point a few hours ahead of time if time requires.

Cook according to your waffle iron manufacturer's directions and enjoy.

Beverage pairing: Peace Coffee Pollinator blend

Two shots of awesome under one roof

2010-02-25T16:34:00.004-06:00

This past weekend, after what seemed like a never-ending shopping trip at Bloomington's biggest eyesore, I made a point to stop in at a cool new coffee shop in south Minneapolis that I've been wanting to visit for a month or so, The Angry Catfish Bicyle & Coffee Bar.

Arriving a little closer to closing time than I would have liked, I managed to have enough time to get my order in and spend some time cruising the cool open space and (more importantly) drool over the sweet bikes. I was resolved to the fact that I would likely be drinking a cup of long past its prime coffee brewed hours before. What I ended up with was one of the best cups of joe that I've had in quite some time—worth the few extra moments it takes to get your cup in hand.

Angry Catfish does things right, brewing their coffee one cup at a time using the nifty apparatus in the photo above. This artisanally brewed cup rivals a pressed cup in my humble opinion, allowing the drinker to appreciate the taste of the single origin beans from Chicago's Intelligentsia Coffee to the fullest.

Not only can you enjoy three choice selections of single origin beans brewed to perfection, unadulterated black coffee in my book, those of you who like to indulge in the occasional espresso based drinks or perhaps a fine tea (also from Intelligentsia) can do so too. To top things off, they've got sweets from A Baker's Wife—another Minneapolis favorite.

Of course, it goes without saying that they've also got some great bikes to ogle while you're in for your morning (or afternoon) cup. Keeping their handcrafted trend in mind, they've got some great locally built rides from All-City and Capricorn, as well as Colorado based Moots. A pristine shop also awaits the cyclist in need of an overhaul, component upgrade, or just a simple repair.

As the weather starts to warm up, keep Angry Catfish in mind as you pedal around the Grand Rounds through south Minneapolis. It's location just a few blocks north of Lake Hiawatha and Lake Nokomis on 28th Avenue makes it an ideal stop for a quick jolt of caffeine mid- or post-ride.

Under construction

2010-02-22T15:40:00.004-06:00

Inspired by one of my co-workers, I'm going to give this whole blogging thing another try. I was really bad at it before, but I think I can do a better job at it now.

Mainly it will chronicle my vegan culinary adventures and how they revolve around our fantastic weekly CSA boxes from Harmony Valley Farm. It is my intent to keep the content somewhat limited to this portion of my life, as I could easily fill it with an endless supply of cycling banter.

So, in a nutshell, tasty and hopefully picturesque food adventures are coming soon. And, because I can't resist it: Do your grillin' without the killin' folks.

If you really want to read all the cycling banter, follow me on Twitter.