This NPR report has little to do with food (although a men’s dessert tasting club is mentioned) but much to do with sexuality. It’s interesting how “herbivore” has become a synonym for girly man in Japanese culture just as “carnivore” now signifies the kind of woman who is competitive in the workplace. Without a hungry appetite for female flesh, these men are self-proclaimed herbivores, despite their actual food diets.

Somehow, I would have less of a problem with this effeminate stereotyping if the men were actually vegetarian. I guess “emo” doesn’t translate well into Japanese.

Plant based.

Real life herbivore, Yasushi Sano, tells it like it is, here in the Japan Times. Apparently, these guys are intimidated by the carnivorous women. It’s scary being young, cute, male and Japanese. At least in Japan. Life is easier being known as a herbivore than as a chikan.

Today is the official sixth birthday of my son. After 18 hours in labor, six of which were stalled, my sweetie boy was born, with three undrugged pushes, sunny side up. And it’s been true love ever since.

His birthday, which annually falls right around Thanksgiving (and on the same day as my in-law’s wedding anniversary) requires a bit of forethought for booking the party date. This year, we chose the Sunday before his birthday, to avoid Thanksgiving weekend and a Vaisnava fast day from grains and beans. Mmmwah Grandma flew in for the event, which took a week of planning to pull off. The crowd was huge; I definitely could have started earlier, despite getting started a full seven days beforehand.

Venumadhava chose the menu, which included barbecue gluten kabobs (the kids ate a ridiculous amount of these the week before the party), vegetable barley soup (which my son requested I add beans to the night before), tossed salad (my choice) and homemade bread, which was supposed to be croissants but the guest list got out of control and I knew I would not be able to pull that off. For dessert there was pound cake, way strong herbal coffee cheesecake, decorate your own cupcakes and very berry shrikand.

As a tot, Vm would eat lots and lots of shrikand, because when we were just a family of three, I made lots and lots of shrikand. But try keeping a family of four in shrikand! It ain’t easy. When I asked the boy if he would like some at his party, he told me he didn’t know what it was. Oh, the foodie offspring horror. I assured him he would like it, put 7 gallons of milk up to boil and went in search of persimmon. Tis the season, after all.

Well, somehow I missed persimmon this year, not tasting a single fresh local fruit. Rather embarrassing, I know. Thankfully, I have my persimmon jam, which I happily have been gifting around town at kiddie birthday parties to very little appreciation and modest looks of parental confusion. No worries. I will continue to proselytize  using my small jam gospel and not be attached to the results. I am not looking for converts. I just want people’s tongues to be touched by the taste of divinity.

So, a day late and a dollar short for persimmon, I headed to the local food store for my shrikand standby–frozen berries. Blue, straw and black, to be precise. One and a half cups of sugar per gallon mixed with extremely well hung yogurt and voila, shrikand perfection.

I love the look of berry shrikand in jadeite bowls.

Cookie bags were the parting gifts for our beloved guests and the children, many of whom did not take a break to eat during the party, save for the chance to decorate their own cupcake with mocha or blueberry frosting and  a range of brightly colored, completely artificial crunchies and candies, were very happy to receive their bag of sugar face, chocolate chippie, jam print and ginger cookies. I made, all in all, approximately 350 cookies, which was, unsurprisingly, way too much. Thankfully, cookies freeze well and my family will be enjoying the effort of my baking well into the spring.

The same goes for the kabobs, although I definitely didn’t make 350. More like 115. A four step cooking process, the kabob making is a lot of work. Worth it though, since it brought great happiness to my kiddies, who dirtied their face with sweet and salty barbecue sauce two days in a row before school. If you are my kid and want to make me happy, eat my cooking.

The guest list was big, reflecting our local Alachua compadres as well as all Vm’s new friends from his new school. A variety of ages were represented, but the majority of kids were in the 4-6 year old range. Because of the youngness of the crowd, I encouraged parents to please stay and attend the party. Thankfully, most adults stuck around. This definitely helped with the crowd control.

Knowing lots of kids would make my son happy but could also make things out of control, I put a lot of planning into the party. We had a wonderful teenage magician perform for the kids at the start of the party, which helped get everyone focused. I bought a 30 ft. parachute online and tried to recreated the fun of gym class with Mr. Lewis at Harry S. Truman School. Like I said earlier, we had a variety of ages represented amongst the kids so it made things a challenge, but the parachute was great fun and now we have it for future parties.

The party started with rain and a craft. Unfortunately I left the raw materials for the craft–pine cones–out overnite so they were soaked, making the pine cone avian a real challenge. Surprisingly, though, it was a great success with the older kids (8-12). We also played Steal the Beanbag (Steal the Bacon, but with a vegetarian name), but the kids had a difficult time remembering their number. They were into it though. Homemade pinata was a big success. It didn’t take too long to smash.

It took me less than five minutes the nite before the party to create the craft sample. After the pine cones were left out in the rain, the craft became all but impossible for a select few kids and the mommies patient enough to see it through. Even after I tried drying out the pine cones in the microwave the morning of.

My son was happy, guests were happy (note to self: need to put that we don’t wear our shoes in the house on Evite next time) and the day was a success. We didn’t get to play pass the orange, pin the tulasi leaf on Krsna’s foot or freeze dance during the main event, but me and a small group of hanger ons did during the after party. Pass the orange was way fun and I was shocked how much those kids were into dancing.

I don’t think everyone liked the eats, but I was okay with that. Maybe a bit sad, considering all the work, but I was expecting the non-vegetarians in the crowd to be a bit unfamiliar with our flavors.

Venumadhava wanted a terrarium for his birthday but all he got was this lousy vinaigrette (shown pre-blender whoooosh).

One of my favorite parts of the meal was the dinnerware. Paper plates NO MORE…I WON’T PARTICIPATE! From soup to salad, we used stoneware purchased from R.W. Beaty, the local restaurant supply shop in Gainesville. Really good prices on the stuff and lord knows we will continue to use it. I only wish we bought the stoneware 8 years ago. But then again, we would have had to pack it up and move it four times.

The party was a lot of work. The theme was “fun” and trying to create as little waste as possible. I managed to do go balloonless for the party, another feather in my imaginary cap (we did put two balloons on the mailbox to mark our house but that was it). Disposables were really at a minimum. Guests were requested to not spend more than five bucks on a gift and to keep it simple–legos, paperback books, bootleg cd’s, markers and colored pencils, etc.

Reusable stoneware dinnerware making it's way back to the cupboard. Clean up dragged on a bit because of the dishes but from an economic and environmental perspective, the minor inconvenience was worth it. Plus, real plates makes the dining experience more pleasurable. No weird taste transfer from the plates/bowls to the food.

I know spending a week on getting your kid’s birthday party together is not how most people envision celebrating turning six, but for me, a stay at home mom with two kids in school, what else am I going to do with my time? I see my job as giving my children the best childhood I can wrangle up, according to my abilities and our family values.

The party was so wonderful because we were able to share with our friends our love of simple pleasures in our life: home cooked food and home spun fun. Of course, doing things simply often involves more work, but the smiles on everyone’s faces is worth it.

The bread was very popular. Twenty-five cups of organic flour and still we ran out.

I didn't take many pics at the party because I was super busy blowing my whistle and directing the action. But here are a few pics of the start of the parachute. The kids went wild over it. In a good way.

birthday boy arriving on the scene

...showing off her climbing skills...

The headline says it all.  Check out the article @ NPR

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This morning I heard on the news that the Obamas would be having the Prime Minister of India as guest of honor for the first official Obama White House State Dinner. Immediately I wondered if the dinner was going to be vegetarian.

And then, I got on with my day.

Kulavira just posted on Facebook this NYTimes.com blog piece on the dinner, which is totally veg except for some jalphal…a shrimp course.

Good for India! Too bad about the masoor dal, though.

Also, although not very vegetarian, check out The Food Issue of The New Yorker. I particularly enjoyed Raffi Khatchadourian’s article, “The Taste Makers“. The link is for the abstract; I have a subscription to the print edition. Kickin’ it old skool. Having grown up 20 minutes from Rutgers University and their food science program, I was smitten at a young age by esters and artificial flavors. Fortunately and unfortunately for me, I sucked at regular chem. O-chem was always a few carbon chains out of my reach.

Anyway, if you are at all interested in processed foods and flavorings, it’s worth a trip to your library for a look at the entire article. A bunch of nuts, those scientists!

I’m going to try to corral all the fun foodie newsy news news I come across and dump it periodically on my blog instead of flashing it all on Facebook. The blog is way more accessible to me as an archive for my finds since it has a search feature and Facebook is a pain in the arse.

Blog 1, Facebook zilch.

Other stuff that has been in the media lately and of interest to vegetarians (and hopefully non-vegetarians, as well) is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, which would make a nice birthday gift for me, hint hint. This book is getting a lot of attention. In one article earlier this week, Michiko Kakutani writes:

He asserts that “we have let the factory farm replace farming for the same reasons our cultures have relegated minorities to being second-class members of society and kept women under the power of men.” And in another section he talks about “the shame” he felt as an American tourist in Europe when “photos of Abu Ghraib proliferated” and then speaks in the very next sentence about the “shame in being human: the shame of knowing that 20 of the roughly 35 classified species of sea horse worldwide are threatened with extinction because they are killed ‘unintentionally’ in seafood production.”

Damn, Jonathan, you sexy with all that socio-political talk!! I totally agree and find vegetarianism to be a basic tenant of being human. Not that I’m judging anyone and everyone who eats meat. Okay, I am. But I try to keep it to myself.

Ahhh, this I just came across when looking up the link for Jon-Jon’s piece. Okay, maybe old news to most of you but I was grossed out to read that Mollie Katzen made the switch to the carnivorous side…years ago. Check out the link here. This Food & Wine article illustrates the whole “humane” meat thing that people have sold themselves, and uses Katzen as the not too shy poster child. Thankfully, I never owned one of her hippie cookbooks. It is just so Drew Barrymore of her. Apparently, 2002 was a very sketchy year for vegetarians.

Okay. I know I sound mean and judgmental. But it is just one side of my very complex personality. And besides, it’s my blog.

I post a lot of newsy things I come across on Facebook, so I thought I would try to, every so often, gather those things here on ye ol’ bloggo. I’ve done it with my kitchen hates a few posts back and have decided, in the spirit of hating Thanksgiving, to do it with food consciousness.

The first link I am depositing here is for a brilliant NYTimes.com Op-Ed by Gary Steiner.

Gary Steiner: Deeply Philosophical

The slow food movement has given way to a kill-your-own mentality as a feel good way to know your dinner, as if slaughtering the animal yourself somehow makes taking a life for your supper unproblematic. Steiner confronts this much neglected moral dilemma, which has fallen out of fashion amongst thinking eaters. His piece, Animal, Vegetable, Misserable, can be found here.

PETA serves up an impressive Thanksgiving grace in it’s current Thanksgiving ad campaign:

You may have noticed that I am still working on my sidebar links. Did you see the new blog linked under Edibles: Scott Winegard? Scott is a real life NYC veritable vegan chef and has lots of fun food stuff going on in his life.

How Very: Hubba Hubba

Jessica Claire Haney’s Washington Times Op-Ed had some Facebook friends all in a dither about the merits (or lack thereof) of processed vegetarian food touted as healthy alternatives to meaty school lunches. Sure, I get the point, but if one sees nutritious choices as a continuum of bad, good and better choices, as opposed to a dichotomy of good and bad, then I don’t see the problem with Michelle Obama’s soyburger idea. Again, check out Steiner’s piece and add ethics of eating to the discusson.

Finally, I want to clue you into two things that are not necessarily related to conscious vegetarian living/eating (wow, that sounds so hokie pokie!) but, in the way I live my life, totally related. Like, totally.

Stephen Bezruchka’s Health & Capitalism addresses not health care necessarily but rather the issue of taking car of one’s health. I especially appreciated his appraisal of the role of the stay at home parent: way important. Thanks, Stephen, for giving us SAHM’s props.

Taking that idea and Googling it, here is a link estimating the monetary value of stay at home mothers. Sure, depending on how you look at it, it can be either right wing Christian or post-feminist. Hey, whatever gets you through the day.

Lately, I have been basking in my stay at home mom-itude (yes, based on the word “servitude”), despite not having a new kitchen. Hopefully I will post soon on the sheer pleasure of my son’s recent birthday party and all the warm happy fuzzy mommy realizations the event spawned in me.

Feel free to add your vegetarian friendly news finds in the comments section below.

Who’s calling the shots? Tom, Katie or The Church???

These pics show Suri eating a lolly for breakfast while wearing a hand-me-down frock and mismatched socks. Apparently, Suri cannot even tell the difference between cast offs and couture, causing much alarm amongst the media. Is she really Tom’s daughter? Are recycling clothes appropriate values for the child of a-listers? Do Suri’s parents really think she can live the life of a normal child amidst the media circus and candy aisle breakfast?

I, for one, would never let my child have candy for breakfast, wearing freebie new-to-you clothing. Never.

Face cookies are a recurring request from my kids’ for their birthdays. Previously, I have always made little Hare Krishna faces (click here to peek). But in the past, I have always used Dec-a-Cake or whatever crappy tube icing I could get my hands on. The white was always homemade–just powdered sugar and water. However, the last time I made sugar cookies (cute little ghosts for Halloween), I wasn’t pleased with the consistency of the icing–which can be so tempermental. Also, a friend of mine made a little ha-ha at my expense about how I don’t make my own decorative frosting.

Well, I sure showed her! I found a sugar cookie icing recipe that got rave reviews on-line, made a small adjustment of subbing water for milk and got frosting. Quickly I grew tired of sifting the powdered sugar with the flour sifter that was cramping my hand and I felt too much like I was exercising for guitar (I don’t play). So I came up with this totally genius little kitchen tip which I will pass on to you. I used my food processor to sift the powdered sugar!

Now, now. A standing ovation is not necessary. Just throw your sugar in the food processor (plastic blade), turn it on and rock it back and forth, side to side every few seconds. It takes a little while to get it all nice and soft and powdery but it sure keeps your hand from bulking up with unsightly muscles. I buy my powdered sugar in bulk so it gets kind of crunchy. If you are working with smaller quantities, you may not have these issues. Good for you. No really. I am happy for you.

Back to the icing. First of all, let’s say that this icing is kind of gross. To put it nicely, it’s “vegan” (code word for “the main ingredient is….god, I can’t even say it!”). I couldn’t do many colors because I only bought a tiny canister of the vegetable lard, made too much red and blue and had enough for only one more color. The boy wanted me to make vampire cookies but white fangs wouldn’t show so well on white faces. His other suggestion was tiger faces. But really, it was too late in the game for that. So it was a toss-up between tilak and mustaches (that was my clever idea). He chose mustaches, amidst much laughter.

Let me just say that handling the food coloring was a weird experience. Spoontula-ing the colored icing into clear pastry bags really drove it home–i was voluntarily putting poison on my beautiful, organic, flax speckled sugar cookies. And my kids were loving it. Eh, once in a while won’t totally cancer them.

These cookies are kind of ugly and not so cute compared to my previous expedition into the world of edible faces. Hopefully the kids won’t say mean things to me about them.

The Assembled Mustachios

Adolph Hitler on the Right

 

Peter Sellers Face Cookie

My husband helped out by bringing me some Acqua di Nepi.

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to eat a thing. Thank goodness for mineral water; 6% of my daily calcium per glass! Okay. I have been eating. Gross, gross things. Like too much gluten and raw cookie dough. Barf.

Egg Replacer: Mashed Tofu

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m really trying to maneuver this crazy kitchen the best that I can, using whatever is in reach. I had a bowl of ground and slimy flax eggs whipped up but after about 20 dozen cookies, ran out. Instead of reaching for the spice grinder, I just opened the fridge and grabbed a few unused pieces of tofu. Mash, mash. That’s my egg replacer. The resultant chocolate chip cookies were nice and puff.

Eggless Chocolate Chippies

Seitan in BBQ Sauce Ready for the Oven

Right now the gluten is in the oven, taking over all three racks. Thank you, convection. Many jammie cookies have been made and are awaiting a sprinkle of faerie dust before entering their paper sack where they will hide until the party is over. At that time, they will be passed out to all the departing children who will excitedly open the bags expecting candy and party blowers and an assortment of useless plastic crap. Instead, they will be met by an assortment of organic, homemade cookies. That will be the true test of their good manners.

Harriet's Thumbprint Cookies Adorned w/Sabjimata Strawberry Conserve

Yesterday, on my way out to pick up my kids from school, I stared myself straight in the mirror and thought, “No way.” No way was I leaving the house in my bandana and fry clothes. I switched outfits but still felt ugly.

I put on mascara and red lipstick and still felt ugly. I trimmed my hair, but still. Remembering the O Magazine article I read the day before in a doctor’s waiting room, which swore that once a woman reaches a certain age, bangs help, I contemplated going deeper than a trim with my cut. I decided to go for it. So what if I was a little late picking my kids up from school. At least I would feel good when I got there.

Back in college (Temple U/first time around), I sported the look. A girl in my modern dance class told me it looked like a wig. A tall, skinny boy named Branko who read too much George Bataille told me I looked like Lara Flynn Boyle in Twin Peaks. The bangs were a passing trend for me, a mere prelude to the shaved head.

This time around I think I will just grow them out when I tire of them. But then again, I am of a certain age. Doesn’t seem like the cut makes me look 10 years younger, like the O article promised, but 24 isn’t a year I am nostalgic for anyway.

 

Bangs & Flip

Self cut, cowlick semi-under control–I’m feeling pretty this morning, even though my kids are not a fan. The husband likes it, citing my hair’s 1950’s reference the moment he walked through the door.

Bangs&Pony Side View

Full Frontal Bangs & Pony

Not even a day into the bang cut, I’m finding it quite practical. I can wear my hear down without having to push my hair out of my face. And my hair remains much more controlled while driving with the windows down. Now back to the kitchen to see how it holds up under heavy heat.

Here I am. @ WordPress. Finding it difficult. If I was anything near a perfectionist, I would try harder with these pics I am posting, but here today, archived tomorrow so I am not going to worry about it.

Venumadhava’s birthday is approaching. Grandma should be packing her bags for her flight out of Newark into JAX. Today I turned 35 cups of gluten flour into brains and have my muck clothes on for the fry off. Seven dozen cookies baked and I am not even thinking how many more to go. Not thinking because I ran out of sugar. Thankfully Ward’s has a 50lb bag of evaporated organic cane with my name on it.

I am not the only one who has been busy these days. The babu built a storage loft in the office room. Now I have a place to stash the 100+ saris I never wear anymore. Also, he mowed our acre for happy kid fun play at the birthday party. Just watch out for those pine cones!

Surprising myself, I broke the rhythm of party cooking and put up a pot of soup for my lunch and the husband’s dinner. My newest fave in the flavoring department is creamy faux chicken. Basically, I boil a few peeled potatoes, drain (saving water), finely mash, mix in a half cup of spelt flour and then add the boiled water + more to equal 8 cups of liquid.

Carrots, celery, tomato and potato go into a hot pan with olive oil and butter, until they sweat it out. Oh, did I mention yellow hing, yellow mustard powder, thyme, black pep, paprika and basil are added to the mix? Well, I just did. Add that, along with some barley, tofu, nutritional yeast and a tablespoon of salt to the stock pot and let it boil until you just can’t handle not eating it!

It’s important to stay fed when cooking up a storm, but sometimes difficult. Especially considering the level of disorganization of moi kitchen. Last nite I did the best I could with what I had (that is the theme lately), serving the husband a dinner of zucchini and tomato with fettuccine in a brown butter sauce along with a good share of fried. Because the butter just wasn’t enough fat for one meal.

The tofu fishsticks turned out well, although I did thin out the batter after I fried the first batch, which kind of was a mistake. Batter was yellow cornmeal, sour cream, water, minced fresh tarragon, nutritional yeast, yellow hing, black pepper, cumin powder and salt.

Now it is off to laundry until round two of today’s kitchen duty.

Please don’t mind the picture layout…I am still learning WordPress. It’s going to take me a while. I’m no teenager, you know.

Hey there! I am back…although you probably don’t even know I left. Returning to the post to fix a typo (which I can’t find now, grrrr) I realized I didn’t mention the awesome pinata Vm and I made for the party. He wanted a volcano pinata, and I didn’t want to spend money for something that was just going to be smashed to bits, so I broke up some Perrier case boxes and got taping. Super cheap and easy (hey, I was talking about the pinata!), I began decorating it with crumpled construction paper. Vm couldn’t resist and tore some tissue paper up for the lava flow. We just used what was in the house, so our materials (and colors) were limited. The volcano looks kind of nuts but I like it. And my boy is happy, which is what this whole party thing is all about.

I have finally made the move from Blogger to WordPress. I miss the ease of use Blogger offered (and the cheesy 3rd grade layout). I never wanted to look sophisticated, but I am sick of Blogger’s glitches…esepecially the search box thing. I mean, it’s owned by Google but can’t manage a simple keyword search? That was too much for me.

So here I am, hanging a new shingle on the internet. I still have to learn how to play nice with WordPress, but not much time for it this week. Lot’s of kitchen prep work for my boy’s b-day party is on the to-do list. Plus, Mmmwah Grandma is flying in for the weekend. List making, shopping and pinata making are all on the agenda for the week. I need to figure out what games we are going to play and hope that the 30′ parachute I ordered arrives in time.

Slated for the menu: croissants, salad, vegetable barley soup, barbecued gluten kebobs, persimmon shrikand and lots of baked yums. Kids will decorate cupcakes, adults will stuff themselves with brownies and cheesecake and pound cake. And little ones will take home goody bags filled with an assortment of home baked cookies.

Here are some pics to whet your appetite in anticipation of what’s to come:

barbecued gluten kebabs

Harriet's thumbprint cookies

shrikand yum

whoops…i need to work on my WordPress skills. I didn’t mean to post an “actual size” pic of the cheesecake