Backcountry Vegan!

I've just returned from Maui & Kauai - I went backpacking on the Kalalau Trail.  After reading through a huge pile of backcountry & backpacking cookbooks - I came to the dismal realization that most of them really don't meet my needs or my style of cooking (or sharing!).  I am going to be refining my thoughts on backcountry cooking - focusing on using whole ingredients, prepping with a dehydrator, and cooking quantities based on need (little or very hungry, how many people are sharing?) and available ingredients and other resources.  It seems more of a process than a recipe.  I don't like the idea of schlepping a ton of plastic bags out to the wilderness, "cooking" in plastic bags or hoarding condiment packets.

In the next couple of weeks, I will put together a list of the food that I prepared in advance, what I bought locally, descriptions of some of the meals and what worked.  I'll also be discussing some other ideas I have for vegan, whole foods cooking - that is more like the way you cook at home.  None of this "spread peanut butter on a flour tortilla, roll up, eat" as a recipe -- I'll also write up reviews of the backcountry cookbooks that I read and point you to the single book out of more than half a dozen that I think is worth buying.  So - stay tuned!

A Cooking Course - CHALLENGE!!

For years, I have cursed myself for buying cookbooks and then not ever feeling like I have properly exploited their benefit. I thought about cooking my way through one or two, recipe by recipe for ages and then several years ago came across the book "Julie & Julia" but the sort of "chick lit" bent didn't appeal to me greatly. My friend Cris agrees with me - she also wants to "do" a cookbook. Everyone in food blogs seems to be writing cookbooks - how about cooking your way through a really good one?

I'm planning to tackle "The Millennium Cookbook" and my friend Cris is going to tackle "The Gluten-Free Vegetarian Kitchen" by Donna Kein (212 pages) AND "Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet" by Raman Prasad (224 pages).

Anyone else interested in this challenge?

Vegan & Wheat Free Desserts!

Ricki at Diet, Dessert & Dogs has just announced the completion and impending release of her new cookbook Sweet Freedom. She's been tempting us for months with photos of delicious looking desserts and is also offering a give-away of several copies of her books - all you have to do is got to her blog entry and leave a comment. You can get additional entries by e-mailing the information to friends or posting it to your own blog. I'm determined to win a cookbook, so I've done both. :)

Getting SPICY!

COOKING & SHOPPING: As you probably know, you should always use organic herbs and spices, and you should ditch anything older than 6 months. In refreshing my pantry, I came across two amazing websites.

One site only offers 1#, and on the other, it was nearly as cheap to get 8oz as 4 oz.

It's all pretty cheap, and I have a scale at home and am happy to split off part of my order – here is the list of what I bought and the cost per pound (or half pound):


From SF Herb & Natural Food Company (http://www.herbspicetea.com/)

• 1# Cinnamon Sticks (5" Ceylon) $8.00
• 1# organic coriander seeds $7.25
• 1# organic cloves $11.00
• 1# organic sweet paprika $8.35
• 1# organic super blue lavender flowers $11.00
• 1# organic cut/sifted spearmint $7.00
• 1# organic cut/sifted peppermint $5.90
• 1# organic garlic powder $8.25
• 1# organic white pepper, whole $7.80

TOTAL: $74.55
w/Shipping: 86.24


From Mountain Rose Herbs (http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/)

• 8oz Anise Star Pods organic $5.25
• 1# Cinnamon Sticks (cassia cinnamon) organic $5.00
• 8oz Cardamom Pods organic $9.50
• 8oz Fenugreek Seed organic $3.50
• 1# Black Peppercorn whole organic $7.50

TOTAL: $30.75
w/Shipping: $39.22

Millennium - Winter Mushrooms Cooking Class

COOKING CLASS AT MILLENNIUM: After two mushroom foraging trips, I finally made it to my first cooking class at Millennium. I was worried about being late but I was the first person to arrive! The private dining room was set up with a table, recipe packets and name tags. Everyone had a cook's jacket over her chair. There were 10 people plus Thomas and Allison (from Monday mushroom hunting), Aylene (from Friday mushroom hunting). We got a packet of recipes -- and the the group was split into two to work in 2s and 3s... in my case, my group was comprised of a married couple and a pair of friends so they worked together and Eric has me work on the main parts of the recipes myself. I ended up making the candycap brownie myself, as well as the entire "Soup X" and the Chanterelle Stroganoff. Here's a list of what was on the menu:

• Chanterelle Butter
• Black Chanterelle Pecan (or Walnut) Pate
• Button Mushrooms done right
• Pickled Clamshell and trumpet mushrooms
• Soup X
• Grilled Oyster Mushroom and Kale or Radicchio (or Endive Salad), Truffle Vinaigrette
• Chanterelle Stroganoff
• Candy Cap Blondies (or brownies if you mix the chocolate chips before the stuff cools and melt them)
• Truffled sorbet

The things I really would have wanted to do - I got to do! The soup was really fantastic -- we had a "team meeting" to discuss the direction suggested by Eric and then he tasked them with their button mushrooms and pickled mushrooms and took me to the pantry to collect ingredients for the soup.

Soup X

• 2-3 T olive oil
• 4 stalks of the Devil's Weed (aka celery - ok, it wasn't bad)
• 3-4 smallish (smaller than fist size) yukon gold potatoes, peeled & cubed
• 6-9 parsnips of many colors, peeled and sliced at an angle
• 1 red onion chopped
• 1# black trumpets, cleaned, triple rinsed and chopped
• 1 qt (give or take) of dark mushroom broth
• cumin, allspice, oregano
• 3 dried chiles, toasted, seeded and pulverized -- add half to the soup, reserve half
• pebble beans
• chestnuts
• garlic
• salt
• pepper

Toasted Pumpkin Seed pesto garnish:

• 2 c toasted pumpkin seeds
• 1 bunch flat leaf parsley
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 3 T minced garlic
• pumpkin seed oil
• salt
• pepper

At first, it was peculiar being in the kitchen with so many people. That really threw me at first and made a mistake. When I mixed the ingredients from the double boiler with the dry ingredients for the Candycap blondies and threw in the chocolate chips before the liquids cooled, turning them into brownies (they were still edible). I was pretty disappointed and thought I ruined them and wanted to redo (I really do like blondies!). I think I would use less grapeseed/cocoa butter -- that would lighten them up a bit. I will start using parchment paper more often for those sorts of things -- it works miracles in getting stuff out of a pan.

We made the first several dishes for lunch -- the pate, chanterelle butter, mushrooms, soup and pickled mushrooms. Then we went back to make the stroganoff and the salad. Folks on my team prepped the salad and a biscuit-like crust to go on the stroganoff which I prepared. My stroganoff came out a lot better than the other group -- I actually got my onions carmelized and know how to cook with chanterelles. The other team used too many chanterelles and didn't get enough liquid out, and also did not start early enough or use a big enough pan to carmelize their onions properly. They made cracked black pepper papardelle which came out really amazing and yummy.

And I just have to say - the truffled sorbet and the blondies/brownies were to die for. I just thought I was going to explode from eating so much delicious food. It was utterly unfair that we should have so much yummy food and my friends should not have it.