Southern-fried Thanksgiving.

I love it when I start a post with an outright lie. We didn’t fry all that much, and certainly didn’t Southern-fry anything, however one does that. We did, however, make a ridiculous amount of delicious food.

Red and I, along with my parents, flew down to Charlotte (remember when I went there?) to spend the holiday o’ gluttony with my sister at her new house. Yay, new house! All that lovely space. I am so jealous. She and her boyfriend have done an admirable job of filling it, though, with the aid of this handsome fellow:



This enormous beast is Sampson, and he is still a puppy. When he finishes growing, I am going to laugh and laugh because he will almost certainly outweigh my sister. He is the sweetest, mellowest dog I’ve ever met—and not even a year old! Lucy is that calm when she’s waking up from anesthesia. We had many snuggles and even let him get up on the couch, which, strictly speaking, he is not allowed to do. He is a beautiful boy.

The day before Thanksgiving, Red and I learned of a new vegetarian restaurant in town. We absolutely had to try it! It’s called Fern, Flavors from the Garden, and you’ll just have to Google it because they’re too new to have an actual website. It is really lovely:

Such a great use for Mason jars.

Felt pockets on the wall! With living plants in them!

They poured us glasses of cucumber water, which is totally delicious and I don’t know why I’ve never made it myself. We started with jalapeño hush puppies (with Daiya, for those of you who worship the stuff), which I loved and I am no great lover of jalapeños, believe me.


Look at my pretty First Chakra Juice:


I know it’s ultra-hippie to have a juice menu named after the chakras, but we just covered them in my recent yoga training weekend, and I have a chakra poster (this one, actually) on my wall at work, and I have a chakra ring that I bought in Salem with my friend Jess, so I guess I am a little ultra-hippie, no? And yes, I brought my yoga mat with me to North Carolina.

My entrée was already vegan, and they veganized Red’s easily. Feast your eyes:

Green Goddess Soup

Warm Kale Salad

It was good we fueled up, because we headed downtown to the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. Red and I can be very snobby East Coasters, but we’ve decided we can visit any city with a modern art museum. Well played, Charlotte. It’s right next to the Mint Museum (which, no, is not about currency), which I visited last time, so there was a nice sense of familiarity. I did not see the sign banning photographs, so I took some.

Me and Marilyn.

The rest of our visit was very domestic, as befits a family holiday. On Thanksgiving, my sister, Red, and I cooked up a storm—no, a goddamn tornado, and I had to stay sober the entire time because it was a very small kitchen for three people and I didn’t want to injure anyone (or, worse, spill my drink). But the day started off right, with these yummy vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls (made the night before, because can you imagine? you’d have to be up at 4 to have them ready for breakfast):



The recipe is here, and aside from its being a pain in the ass in the way that all cinnamon roll recipes are (knead! rise! roll! slice! roll! rise! KILL ME), I can’t say enough good things about it. The rolls were perfect. The icing recipe looked like it made a vatful, so we halved all the ingredients except for the spices and rum, because my family likes to party.

Release the Kraken!

Most of the day was pretty chill, and we played a very satisfying game of Monopoly. My sister has the set we used as kids, and man, it has survived some craziness. I’m pleased to report that I won, although Red did remarkably well for his first time playing Monopoly ever. We’ll civilize him yet.

Before we started cooking in earnest, we needed appetizers. The omnis had their own stuff, and Red and I made Tami Noyes’ Seitan Veggie Crowns. There’s a reason they were named Vegan.com’s Appetizer of the Year! Go, Tami! BTW, leftover filling mixed with a little extra vegan mayo makes for a delicious sandwich.


Once we started making dinner, it was on like Donkey Kong. We made garlic mashed potatoes (vegan and omni), green bean casserole, bourbon mashed sweet potatoes with pecans, Appetite for Reduction’s Sweet Potato Biscuits, stuffing from a bag (you know you love it too), and Sage and Pumpkin Seed Encrusted Gardein with Cranberry Cabernet Sauce (Gardein’s Thanksgiving menu is off the hook). We used malbec instead of cabernet, and it was a delicious substitution. Even my dad loved the Gardein!

We carved a V in our mashed potatoes so there’d be no confusion.

I was too stuffed to eat dessert, but the day before I’d made the Gingerbread Apple Pie from Vegan with a Vengeance. I made it last year, too, because it is easy and fantastic. Shout-out to Red for his peeling/slicing assistance. Actually, I made two pies—it turns out that the recipe makes one pie when you have a big-ass ceramic pie dish, but two when you’re using disposable grocery-store pie tins. So, a bonus pie! Who could complain? My sister didn’t have maple syrup, so I improvised and used a combination of molasses and rum. Again: Problem? Where? (I forgot to take a picture, so if you want one, it’s in here.) I ate plenty of it the next day, don’t you worry.

No trip to Charlotte is complete without a visit to Lebowski’s, so we made a family pilgrimage there on Black Friday. Vegan White Russians and french fries, you have my heart. I was committed to not buying anything that day, so I guess I failed, but it’s not like I got up at 3am to stand in line with hostile strangers jonesing for a discounted Xbox or something. That shit scares me.

Bar lighting is so flattering.

On Saturday, it was home again, home again. I am so thankful to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with people I love, in a city that cares about its vegans at least a little, remembering what really matters.

I am the queen of cupcakes. Or at least the duchess.

So I made my first-ever cupcakes over the weekend. I am pretty sure they were my first cupcakes, and if they weren’t, they were most definitely my first vegan cupcakes. I used to be scared as hell of cupcakes because they are so dainty and precious and nicely decorated, not like cookies that you can plop onto a pan and if they’re lumpy, you can say they have character and if no one likes them, it’s their loss. No more! Now I am all, “Bring it on, cupcakes! I can take you.”

Backstory: My parents had a Memorial Day cookout with various neighbors and family members, and my sister and her lover-man were visiting, so it was kind of an occasion. I asked my mom what to bring, and she whipped out the Tiramisu Cupcakes recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (she found it online—my mom is awesome, but not yet awesome enough to have her own vegan cookbook collection). I was like, “Really, woman? Those are some involved cupcakes.” So we compromised. I baked the cupcakes and made all the fixings, and we gutted/filled/frosted/decorated them together. That way, if they sucked, I only had to take half the blame. Red took pictures:





When we were finished, I was amazed by how good they looked. I was expecting some malformed, poorly frosted cupcakes, and they came out beautifully. I couldn’t wait to try one.

You will not be shocked to learn that they were ROCKIN’. These are epic cupcakes, y’all. They are sweet and boozy and filled with delicious cream cheese frosting. It was well worth the time we spent delicately hollowing them out, soaking them with Kahlua, and carefully placing those chocolate-covered espresso beans on top. Afterward, I wanted to fall asleep on a bed of clouds and dream of dancing biscotti while a choir of baby angels sang opera. I am a cupcake convert.

However! My dessert adventure was not over. As I was baking the cupcakes (this is the day before the filling/decorating extravaganza, in case you are creating a timeline of my exploits), I began to worry that guests would outnumber cupcakes and called my mom to ask her opinion on this important mathematical problem. She suggested that if I wanted to make something extra, I should go for it. As I like to show off the delights of vegan desserts, I made Caramel Walnut Bars from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (they are supposed to have pecans, but I had a huge jar of walnuts and no pecans, so you know). Props to Red for making a crucial brown sugar run mid-project. They were much easier than the cupcakes, for which I was grateful, but no less decadent.


Two words can sum up these babies: SUGAR. BOMB. Holy tooth decay, that caramel is some serious stuff. Serious and awesome. (And of course all the walnuts = healthy, so you can have two!) Several minutes after I crushed a cupcake and one of those bars, all the sugar plowed through my brain and I spent the rest of the night bouncing around like I haven’t done since high school. Good thing I’d already done yoga.

So, to sum up: Dessert was a success (so was dinner because my mom made this pasta salad), cupcakes no longer intimidate me, and my dental hygienist will have her work cut out for her at my next visit.

Finally, brownies.

Remember when I told you how I got drunk and tried to bake brownies, only I didn’t have any of the ingredients, so I made those shitty peanut butter cookies instead? Yeah? Well, I finally got my chocolate-craving ass to the store for brownie fixings. Let me tell you, it was worth the wait.

Eat me!

The recipe makes 12 brownies; I took this after giving four to Red’s folks.

These are Chocolate Chip Deluxe Brownies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. The photos may not look like much, but that’s because their sheer mega-awesomeness defies any feeble attempt to capture it for posterity. Indeed, I soon regretted giving any to my in-laws and began scheming for ways to steal them back.

Darlings, I have not baked brownies for years, and even then, they were the boxed kind. These brownies are…I don’t have the word. Delicious? Amazing? Orgasmic? Yes, yes, and yes, but I’ve applied all those to foods before. These are something else. They are scrumtrulescent. (My heart breaks that I can’t embed that, but I beg of you, click through. A baby panda will cry if you don’t.)

Even my husband, who likes chocolate but does not share my slavish devotion to gooey, rich, dark confections, adored these. My chocoholic dad-in-law raved about them. Here’s one à la mode with Soy Delicious Dulce de Leche ice cream:

Melty.

These brownies are so easy to whip up that it’s only by dint of sheer willpower that I haven’t made them every weekend since. Though they are small, resist the temptation to eat more than one at a sitting. These are meant to be savored, one soft and warm bite at a time, and melted chocolate licked off fingertips (by whoever you choose, as long as it’s not your dog. Chocolate’s bad for them, you know).

Okay, that took a turn for the smutty, didn’t it? Whatever, chocolate does that to me. There, my secret shame is revealed. Brownie porn for everyone!

Cooking under the influence.

Red was away for work this week, so once again I was left to entertain myself. I didn’t burn the house down, but I did decide to combine two activities that are usually better done solo: cooking and boozing.

On the menu was Appetite for Reduction’s Potato-Spinach Curry. But first, allow me to issue a brief PSA: Finish all your chopping before you start drinking. Safety first, darlings.

What was I drinking, you ask? Oh, I had a few bottles of Sam Adams in the fridge. My girl Liz came over the other night, and we went out for sushi and then came back for some frosty adult beverages. West Coast, do you have the deliciousness that is Sam Adams? You probably do, but I don’t want to fall into the East-Coast trap of thinking we’re the center of the known universe. Anyway, it’s mighty fine beer and I enjoyed it as I cooked.

This is a delicious curry that comes together very easily. As Isa notes, it’s extra-fun because you get to pop the mustard seeds at the beginning. Dodging the little bastards as they tried to escape the pot challenged my coordination, but it does that even without an assist from my friend Sam. Once you manage to corral your mustard seeds (now toasty and even more delicious), the rest is a snap. What am I telling you this for? You’ve probably made hundreds of curries.

I did tweak the recipe a little. It called for a pound of frozen spinach, but we only had a 10-oz. bag in the freezer. So I used that, then added a few handfuls of fresh baby spinach. The hippie grocery only had russet potatoes (no Yukon gold), but I couldn’t tell the difference. And I have an irrational dislike of chopping tomatoes, so I used a 14-oz. can instead of the two fresh tomatoes listed. Also, I had a few scraps of tofu hanging around from another recipe, so I added those too. Still, for all that, I think the finished product was pretty close to the original.


While the curry was simmering, it occurred to me that what I really wanted was chocolate. I wanted chocolate bad. I started scouring cookbooks and cupboards to see if I had enough of anything to make brownies, or half-assed cookies, or anything. Surprise: I didn’t. No chocolate chips, and only a measly quarter-cup of cocoa powder. Oh, the humanity. I had a fresh chocolate bar in the fridge, but I wasn’t feeling creative enough to smash it into chips or grind it into powder—besides, we all know that would have been a really bad idea. And I was psyched to get baking.

I did, however, have plenty of peanut butter. Jars full of it. Therefore, I would have peanut butter cookies. Red called me at that point, and I (drunkenly) hollered that there would be peanut butter cookies when he came home. I imagine that his dining companions were amused.

I ate a little bit of the curry (trying to save room for the cookies-to-be), then switched to wine. It seemed classier. I gathered the ingredients for Vegan with a Vengeance’s Crispy Peanut Butter Cookies and got to work. With only eight ingredients, how hard could it be? Clearly, this recipe was made with drunk bakers in mind.

I’m gonna cut to the chase: Sweet God Almighty, what a horrible failure these cookies were. I know you’re thinking, “Of course they sucked, you stupid lush. You probably added vinegar instead of oil.” No, I swear to you, it wasn’t me. I did everything right. I hopped on the PPK to check it out, and I am far from the only person to have had piss-poor results with these cookies.


After 12 minutes in the oven, I checked them. Too soft. Three more minutes. Still too soft. Three more. Not working. Grumpily, I set the timer for a final five minutes, determining that those cookies would be done or there would be hell to pay. After a grand total of twice the recommended baking time, they were still mushy and crumbly—the mere touch of a spatula made them fall apart. Their bottoms were also mildly scorched. I didn’t bother transferring them to the rack to cool, but after a few minutes, I took a nibble of one anyway.

It wasn’t good. Still, my anticipation had been building for a few hours, and I really wanted dessert. I placed three of the misbegotten cookies into a bowl, then poured chocolate syrup over them in an attempt to salvage a sugar high.


It will not surprise you to learn that the chocolate syrup resented being dragged into this atrocity, and refused to help the cookies taste better. I sadly sipped my wine and texted Red to say that both Leonard Nimoy and Stephen Root had cameos on TNG that evening. (Aside: I adore them both, and I think Nimoy looks like he’d give an excellent hug, but I find myself channeling Root’s Office Space character Milton more often than I do Mr. Spock. I’m working on it.)

In a last gasp at optimism, I put the cookies in the fridge, hoping that they’d firm up overnight and that my taste buds would recover from any booze-related trauma. When I woke up, the cookies would be magically delicious.

They weren’t. They found their end in the compost bin. I was crestfallen.

However, this weekend I plan to indulge in a fit of brownie baking like no other. I will not be denied again! I think I’ll bake sober this time, though.

As American as Mama Burnout’s birthday pie.

During my work-induced blog hiatus, I baked my first apple pie. I was excited, because I’d never baked an apple pie before and it was for my mom’s birthday. I was also nervous, because my dad, while always a good sport about vegan food, is an apple pie snob nonpareil and I didn’t want my sweet little vegan pie to be disdained.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time, even for me, choosing the perfect recipe that would result in a pie to render the pickiest omni swoony with delight. Nothing with whole wheat. Nothing involving additional fruit. No crumbly crust. This would not be a “vegan” apple pie: It would be THE BEST GODDAMN APPLE PIE EVER.

In the end, I went with a classic: Betty Crocker. Even better? It’s naturally vegan (well, except for the butter)! In your face, Dad!

The bottom half of the crust went easily enough. I freaked out the entire time I unfolded it into the pie dish, but the pastry gods smiled upon me and the crust didn’t fall apart. Hurdle 1 cleared!

(Note: I am so, so glad we finally bought a pastry cutter. You may think it’s a bullshit kitchen gizmo that you will never need, and that if you do need it the old “use two knives to cut your shortening and flour together while trying not to stab yourself” trick will work. It won’t, and you will never regret buying even the cheapest pastry cutter. It’s worth it for that one pie a year.)

Faced with a pile of Granny Smith apples (my favorite kind), Red and I pondered for a while how best to slice them for maximum apple-iciousness. Genius that he is, he hit on using our mandoline to slice them super-thinly, the better to layer them with! We learned that slices stick together and are a little more difficult to toss with the sugar and spices, but we got it done. Into the crust they went, tucked in as snugly as possible. We even had too many, and cooked the leftovers later for a snack.

The top crust was the real challenge. Have I mentioned that I’d never done this whole top-and-bottom-crust thing before, and that I’m clumsy in the kitchen? Our pie pan was ever-so-slightly larger than Betty Crocker’s, so we had to get creative with stretching and patching the top crust to make it fit as we draped it over the apples. Next time, we’ll make extra dough so we don’t have this problem. Once we got the crust situated, I was feeling artsy and wished for tiny cookie cutters to cut out sweet little leaves or something to decorate the crust. Say it with me: Next time.

After that, we cut slits in the pie and popped it in the oven, praying for perfection. Partway through, there was some wonkiness as we tried to cover the edges with strips of foil to keep them from browning too much, but Red saved the day. When the pie finally came out, it looked beautiful:



The next day was my mom’s birthday, and the pie’s moment of truth. Would my parents wish I had bought a crappy grocery-store cake instead?

Darlings, I can happily report that they loved it. The crust was appropriately crusty, and Red’s apple-layering technique was a huge success. Not only do you get more apples, it creates a more evenly distributed internal surface (like lasagna), so the pie is easier to slice! We left half the pie with my parents, and took the other half home for noshing over the next few days.


I am now officially over my fear of baking pies, and Mama Burnout had a happy birthday indeed.

Close-up for maximum layering action.

C is for cookies!

As promised, here’s the recap of the first two batches of tasty treats from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Why two batches? Because I couldn’t decide on just one!

The guy who sold me the book highly recommended the Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles, so I started with those. I don’t even know what a snickerdoodle is (shocker: Wikipedia does), but I know that these were easy and baked up beautifully. I was excited about the chocolate-cinnamon combination, and it didn’t disappoint. One caveat: Next time I make these, I’ll probably only add half the cayenne pepper. I liked it because it meant I had to savor each cookie one bite at a time instead of inhaling three or four, but if you like your cookies with less heat than sweet (painful rhyme, I know), go easy on the cayenne. The weekend I made these, I couldn’t find chocolate extract, so I doubled the vanilla. However, this weekend, the hippie grocery had a single bottle of chocolate extract that had clearly been left for me by the baking fairies! I’m looking forward to seeing how much of a difference it makes.


Pregan, some of my favorite cookies were pignoli cookies from Vaccaro’s. Sweet almond paste and pine nuts? Heaven! As a matter of fact, Red had brought some home for himself the week before I made mine, so I was very curious as to how VCIYCJ’s Pignoli Almond Cookies would compare. They were easy to whip up, and pressing the dough balls into the pine nuts was easier than I’d anticipated. They’re probably the prettiest cookies I’ve ever made! I thought they were delicious, but I was afraid they wouldn’t be a match for Vaccaro’s. “Are they as good?” I asked Red nervously. “No,” he said, chewing thoughtfully. “They’re better.” I did a happy dance around the kitchen as he explained that while Vaccaro’s pignoli cookies are indeed fabulous, they’re too rich and heavy to enjoy more than one. These, on the other hand, were light and flavorful without being overwhelming. Veganism for the win! (However, almond paste and pine nuts aren’t cheap, so these will probably be special-occasion cookies only.)


There was never any question that Red and I would keep all these cookies. We ended up with four dozen, and we certainly didn’t need that many! I had originally planned to send my sister and her boyfriend a cookie care package (she loves pignolis, too), but even after that, we still had more cookies than we could eat. Into leftover Chinese takeout containers they went, and both sets of our parents received special cookie deliveries as well.

Sweet success. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a snickerdoodle.

What’s better than cake?

Free cake! That’s what Red and I had this weekend, courtesy of the lovely Tamara at Brunie’s Bakery. Tamara made our wedding cake and our wedding reception desserts (cake plus bite-sized goodies), and because she is wonderful, she offered us a complimentary mini anniversary cake. On Friday, I brought home the sweetest little Chocolate Peanut Butter Awesome cake.


Let me say that I have never had a bad dessert from Brunie’s. They’re all vegan, and they’re all delicious. That said, I think the Chocolate Peanut Butter Awesome may be my favorite. I really liked our wedding cake, too (Strawberries and Cream with chocolate ganache), so that’s saying something.

Gluttonous though we may be when cake is involved, Red and I decided to make Mr. Chocolate Peanut Butter Awesome last for more than one evening, so we divided him into six pieces—three for each of us. Also, I can’t believe I just anthropomorphized my anniversary cake. Lucky for me, my husband likes being married to a lunatic. Anyway, six pieces was definitely the right move, because the cake was so rich that four pieces would have been suicidal. The cake itself was light and the peanut butter filling was just salty enough. Tamara had told me that Chocolate Peanut Butter Awesome is a favorite of most of her clients, and now I see why. My own attempts at chocolate ganache and peanut-butter caramel have been fumbling in the extreme, so whatever she’s doing, it’s perfect. Amazingly, our willpower held out, and the cake lasted the entire weekend. It was a sweet anniversary gift indeed.


Thanks, Tamara!

Voracious chocolate.

As you all may know, I love me some chocolate. The darker the better, with just a little bit of sweetness. I eat a few squares almost every day at work, and that indulgence helps keep me happy. It surprises the hell out of people to find out that I’m vegan but that I can, miracle of miracles, still eat chocolate! I delight in dispelling the myth of the sad-faced, chocolate-deprived vegan.

When Tasha at Voracious Vegan posted her Chocolate Pots de Crème, I knew that I was in for something amazing. I can’t create a recipe to save my heathen soul, but with the ridiculous number of vegans working their culinary magic and sharing the spoils with the rest of us, I don’t need to! On Sunday, I whipped up the Pots de Crème and set them in the fridge to chill. Seriously, have you looked at that recipe? That’s all the procedure you’re getting from me, because unlike the Smlove, these babies come together in two sassy shakes of your sweet ass.

Five hours to the minute after I’d left them to chill (my husband does not mess around with dessert), we pulled the Pots de Crème out and had a ceremonial tasting. It was a pretty quick ceremony, because this is all that was left to photograph:

Do you like how I tried to arrange the tablecloth to make it look arty? Yeah, me neither.

“It tastes like a Snack Pack!” Red declared, and now you know which one of us got good dessert in elementary school and which one got apple-and-cheese toothpick kebabs. (Thanks for instilling healthy habits from the beginning, Mom.) My memory of Snack Packs and other non-vegan chocolate pudding is dim, but let it be known that I just spent several minutes trying to poetically describe the flavor palette or whatever of the Pots de Crème, and I failed. Everything I wrote sounded like amateur food porn, so I gave up. It was so good that my tongue-brain connection short-circuited. So good…so good that….

It was so good that, if Tasha and I were in the same time zone, I would totally make out with her.

Put that on your spoon and lick it.

It’s Friday and this is not a real post.

Dearly beloveds, I’m sorry I’ve been such a flake. Work has been busy (it hasn’t really, but doesn’t it sound better if I say that?) and Mercury’s in a retrograde. Here’s a look at what I’ve been checking out lately:

• The Humane League of Baltimore/Open the Cages Alliance participated in last weekend’s Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale! I drove my sweet ass down to the Station North Flea Market and bought chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks, chocolate-chip cookies, cherry-cocoa-coconut cookies, and two muffins: strawberry (for Red, who’s never met a strawberry-flavored thing he didn’t like) and blueberry. Thanks, ladies!
• Michael Vick’s back in Baltimore. (You mean he missed the warm welcome he received at the Ed Block Awards?) With the HSUS in tow, he discussed dogfighting with a bunch of juvenile offenders. Press weren’t allowed in on the talk, which bothers me and ramps up my skepticism. He also copped to attending a dogfight in my fair, broken city, which is sad but unsurprising. As a friend who’s active with B-More Dog pointed out in the comments, it’ll be interesting to see if any indictments come from that revelation. I’d love to see some local heads roll.
• Sweet, ferocious Tasha of Voracious Vegan has been going hungry this week as part of her Souljourn to illuminate the causes and possible solutions (hint: more meat ain’t it) of the world hunger epidemic that victimizes 1.2 billion people. (Her entries are crossposted at Conducive Chronicle.) I can’t tell you what it’s like to be chronically hungry, but I can tell you that Tasha’s writing has made me think differently about the way I encounter my own incidental, and blessedly temporary, hunger.

Click, read, and pass it on. And be grateful this retrograde ends next week!

That Smlovin’ feeling.

I am not much into baking. Baking generally requires time and accuracy, two things I have in short supply. Plus, it inevitably results in copious amounts of baked goods. While I’d be happy to eat muffins and cookies all day, I try to have more self-control than that. My self-control generally begins and ends with not having things around I know better than to eat. (See: potato chips.)

This is to give you an appreciation of what an insane idea it was for me to attempt this post’s titular confection. Red and I had a dinner date planned with a friend and her fiancé. Said friend was going to make vegan spanakopitas, and we’d sit around and drink wine and talk shit about people, which is pretty much my Wednesday night even when I’m home alone. I offered to bring dessert, but what kind? Since she was going to the effort of making spanakopitas, I couldn’t just show up with a quart of Soy Dream and some spoons. No, no, no. I had to show off. Her fiancé is omni (she is vegetarian), and I wasn’t going to let him eat half-assed vegan dessert.

Enter the Smlove Pie. The Rosemary’s baby of Veganomicon authors Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, it was allegedly spawned by the conjecture, “What would Paula Deen make if she were vegan?” And unholy it is, tempting the unwary with its potent combination of chocolate and peanut-butter caramel, punctuated with candied pecans and drizzled with extra chocolate. Also unholy is the Paula Deen impression that Red labored to perfect during the Smlove odyssey, squawking, “BUTTAH, Y’ALL!” at random moments.

So, how to make this beast? A graham cracker crust was the first order of business. Our hippie grocery does not stock vegan graham crackers, so I snagged a box of Annie’s chocolate bunny grahams. It took the whole box, plus two stale graham crackers I had laying around for s’mores, to make the crust. I had, in an unusual fit of foresight, borrowed my mom’s ceramic pie dish, which is heavy and handmade and deep enough to accommodate the heftiest of pies. The Smlove would prove to be a worthy adversary.

The bulk of the pie was easy. Blend melted chocolate and silken tofu, stir in the blood of virgins and a few other secret ingredients, pour into delicious chocolate crust, bake, and chill. There did not appear to be enough room left for the toppings, but I tried to keep the faith. I took a day off from Smlove-making, since it needed to spend a good few hours in the fridge. It lurked back there, though, hiding beneath its innocuous foil cover.

On Monday night, I tackled the rest of the Smlove. The candied maple pecans made me nervous, as I had never candied anything before and feared ending up with a molten lump of ruined nuts, but I prevailed. The peanut-butter caramel? Sticky and gooey and utterly delicious, spreading out over the pie like benign sugary lava. I tried to make a fancy symmetrical design with the pecans, but I suck at geometry and my mosaic turned into everyone’s favorite game of, “Oh, just shove them in wherever they’ll fit.”

Victory approached! I had but one step left, and I almost forgot all about it since the pie looked so damn pretty: chocolate ganache. How hard could that be? Boil soymilk, add chocolate chips, stir, and drizzle. Well, perhaps I added too much chocolate, or my soymilk didn’t boil enough, because while what I made was delicious and chocolatey, it drizzled about as well as Play-Doh. Frowning, I scooped it into a Ziploc baggie, snipped a corner, and tried to squeeze it out in graceful ribbons. I’ll refrain from describing what it originally looked like as it plopped onto the pie, but clearly I needed a Plan B. In desperation, I squeezed the mess out in the general shape of a circle, nudging it into place with a spatula. It looked better, but like a five-year-old had taken over my pie-making. In a last-ditch effort at artistic achievement, I gently scored the ganache with the spatula, hoping it would look vaguely intentional.

© World's Worst Photographer.

After that, I told the Smlove to go to hell and put it back in the fridge. I had neglected to eat dinner, preferring instead to lick all the bowls, pans, and spoons and rationalizing that the addition of a few handfuls of tortilla chips and some hastily gulped orange juice qualified as a balanced meal. As you might imagine, not only was my stomach unhappy, but I was totally pie-eyed with sugar. I snarfed a random Trader Joe’s Vegetable Masala burger (why did we only have one in the freezer? The world may never know) and brown rice, and slowly my glucose returned to its pre-Smlove level.

The Smlove waited, patiently anticipating the havoc it would wreak.

Last night, my friend called me. Could we possibly postpone our dinner plans? she asked. “I’m not making this goddamn thing again, but I think I can freeze a few pieces,” I told her. She agreed. No sooner was I off the phone than Red headed for the fridge, gleefully unwrapping the Smlove. With the ceremony befitting such a dessert, I carefully cut two of the smallest slices I could manage. They fell apart a bit as I pried them out, but that’s pretty much any first piece of pie. Red tried to give me the bigger piece. I laughed at him and took the one that looked less likely to kill me.

Reader, the Smlove lives up to its hype. (In case I haven’t hyped it enough, there are Smlove-eating contests on the PPK. The current champion ate more than three-quarters of one in about an hour. She is still alive.) It is rich and chocolatey, with a texture similar to that of chocolate cheesecake, a sassy saltiness from the pecans, and yummy peanut butter notes from all that caramel. I struggled to finish my sliver, and Red put the rest of his back in the fridge. I’m not exactly a girl who obsesses over the nutritional content of everything that goes into her mouth (TWSS!), but I found out how many calories are in this motherlover, and it is extreme. I refuse to feel guilty about food, however.

That suits the Smlove’s dark ambitions just fine.

More baby steps.

I totally forgot about World Vegan Day yesterday. I’m a terrible vegan, I know. Please read Stephanie’s piece here, because she is not a terrible vegan. Anyway, I already told you my vegan story.

Last night, Red and I had dinner with my parents, my sister and her boyfriend, and an old family friend. It was lovely—we had wine, pumpkin martinis, and a delicious vegan pistou soup. We caught up, shared Halloween stories, and played with the kitties. Then they had dessert.

I did not.

As you may recall, I sometimes have difficulty saying no. When my sister unveiled the adorable Halloween cupcakes she had brought, I knew I had to be strong. I wasn’t even tempted, really, which surprised me. “Can you eat these? I know sometimes you’ll eat them when I make them,” she said. She really wanted me to enjoy them. I took a deep breath, then explained that while they looked great, I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors by eating one and giving the impression that my principles are negotiable. She pouted. “You had that rehearsed,” she said. Indeed I did, because I don’t do well on the spur of the moment. I wanted so much to make my sister happy, but I couldn’t do it. The cupcakes were beautiful, but they just weren’t food to me. They were chicks tossed into a grinder and calves wailing for their mothers. I hugged her, and I hope she understood. Once I get a cupcake pan, I’ll bake her some vegan cupcakes.

Many thanks and blessings to Marla at Vegan Feminist Agitator, who challenged me to think more deeply about my accommodating behaviors and how they prevent me from living as truthfully as I want to. It gets a little bit easier every time.

Ramble on.

This will probably be short and nonsensical, as I’m trying to memorize the text of my friends’ wedding ceremony. It’s hard to do this quietly at work, since I can’t read it out loud, so I’ll probably resort to typing or writing it out until I can get Red to practice with me. Ahhh, takes me back to high-school theater. Only, you know, I’ll be marrying two of my friends, not fumbling my way through A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I’ve also been twitchy and jumpy lately. My skin itches, and I have a hard time concentrating. It will pass soon, but it sucks to be in the middle of it.

Politely declined a piece of strawberry shortcake for a coworker’s birthday. Not as hard as declining cake made especially for me, but no one seemed to mind.

I am loving Rescue Ink’s book. Kudos again to Jill for running the contest and for keeping up with this grassroots tattoo pledge movement thing we’ve started! So far, three coworkers have come up to me asking, “Was that you in the paper?” One has asked to borrow the book when I’m finished. She’s a cat person and has opted to not get a tattoo, but is more than willing to donate when Rescue Ink comes to town. Her favorite rescue is Best Friends out in Utah, where Red and I would love to go someday.

Red and I attended an information seminar hosted by B-More Dog, a newish non-profit that has a special love for pitbulls. We learned a lot of new things about dog body language and social skills. We’re also going to try target-training Lucy—getting her to touch a hand, toy, whatever. It’s a good way to get your dog’s attention, and a neat trick to show off. The more we work with her, the better prepared she’ll be for more formal training and (fingers crossed) her CGC test.

Sweet Lucy needs a tiny bit of surgery. (Sad panda.) For the past few weeks, she’s had a callousy, scab-like bump on her elbow, and it’s not going away. It doesn’t seem to hurt her, but she’s rubbed it raw a few times and it’s in a really awkward spot. Her vet recommended that it be removed, then biopsied just in case. Since the bump is still small, probably about a half-inch in diameter, it’s better (and cheaper) to remove it now, before it gets bigger and requires more stitches. Lucy is a good patient—twice last winter she cut her paw on buried glass in the backyard, and took the repairs and pills like a champ—but is not so good at convalescing. She wants to run and play like usual, not understanding that she has to stay quiet and rest. One day last winter, I gave her a doggie pain pill in the hopes that it would zonk her out, but it did not. So far, the only thing that does the trick is full anesthesia. So we’ll have a dopey dog for one day, then a frustrated, full-of-pent-up-energy dog for the next week or so. Oh, and she won’t be allowed to lie on hard surfaces, so our house will be carpeted with blankets and cushions like the aftermath of some skanky swinger party.

Thanks to this third medical incident, Red and I are seriously considering buying her insurance. She’s only two, and if she keeps this up, either she needs to get a job or we need to get insurance to cover some of the costs. Good thing Springsteen tickets sold out before we could get them.

Coming up: The conclusion of Red’s vegan challenge, our vegan-friendly wedding reception, and the end of Yoga Month.

Please don’t feed me that.

Warning: ungrateful wretch on the loose. If you’re not into behavioral inconsistencies and awkward social situations, hie thee to a nunnery. Or someplace cooler, like Vegan Feminist Agitator.

I love everyone who has ever offered me a tempting, lovingly made dessert. It’s always desserts, too, which is the hell of it. No one ever offers me something ultra-foul like liver and onions. But, y’all, I’m stuck between animal products and a hard place here. I love desserts, and I want to please you by enjoying the dessert you made for me. But I really don’t want to eat it if it’s made with eggs or butter.

I know this completely contradicts last week’s birthday cake rant. So? I took no vow of consistency. I’m sure I will continue to struggle with this until 1) everyone in the world becomes vegan, or 2) I magically develop the willpower to say no to dessert, no matter who made it. If, on my next birthday, my mom has not disowned me for my brattiness, I can assure you that, as I’ve been doing, I will eat a piece of whatever non-vegan dessert she makes for me. Unless, of course, she makes it vegan. Then, I will eat many pieces, and buy her a bottle of vegan wine for being the best mom on Earth.

I did it again yesterday. I was at a coffee shop with a friend, happy that they had soymilk for my coffee. “You want dessert?” she asked as she paid. I didn’t. “Well, I got a big cookie for us to share.” Sigh. It was a molasses cookie, soft and chewy with sprinkles of sugar on top. I felt trapped, and guilty for feeling that way. She bought the cookie to share with me! She paid for my coffee! So I nibbled about a quarter of it (and she wasn’t kidding—it was a big cookie). I tried to get her to eat the last quarter, but she pushed it back to me, urging me to finish it. So I ate the rest, rather than throw it away. I think that unconsciously, I figured it would look ungrateful to throw it away, too, so better to just eat the damn thing and flay myself later.

The flaying, as you see, has commenced.

I engage in all sorts of psychological gymnastics in order to eat that cookie or piece of cake or whatever. But she made it for me. It’s only one cookie. It’s not like I put eggs in it. They already think I’m weird. It’s a party. I don’t want to seem snobby or ungrateful. As Marla from Vegan Feminist Agitator pointed out, it’s rationalizations like these, good-intentioned though they are, that keep me complicit in my own uncomfortable situations. I need to commit to this as strongly as I’ve committed to other, more visible aspects of my vegan lifestyle. I need to not worry so much about offending people. Unequivocally refusing meat while tacitly accepting baked goods made with animal products only serves to reinforce the idea that eating eggs and dairy is somehow “not as bad” as eating the bodies of chickens and cows. And as we all know, that’s a damn lie. Cake just looks better, that’s all.

I think I’m making baby steps. I have a delicious-looking loaf of raisin challah bread, given as a wedding present, sitting in my freezer. “You can practically smell the eggs,” my friend Jess remarked as I scrutinized the bread, wondering what to do with it. Ordinarily, Red and I probably would have just eaten it, but we had too many wedding desserts left over, and with Red doing PCRM’s vegan kickstart, we had to lay the smack down and consign it to the freezer. Anybody want? I’ll throw in a loaf of (frozen, vegan) zucchini bread to sweeten the deal.

Photos of sinfully delicious vegan Mocha Midnight Madness Cake (top) and Coconut Cream Pie (bottom) from Brunie's Bakery. The awesomeness of Brunie's desserts cannot be overestimated.