The Queer Hipster Kitchen

Hers and hers aprons. It is the last weekend of "freedom" - Karen starts her new school year on Monday.  That means that while it's definitely *not* the last week for experimental cooking, we'll have a few weeks of mostly tried-and-true recipes as we truly enter the swing of things.  So we set aside a little time for kitchen adventures today, particularly adventures that let us try things out from scratch. Our style of vegetarian-ish eating involves a lot of recipes where you don't miss the meat because, well, there never was meat.  Loads of cuisines don't use it, or use very little.  However, we like an occasional "faux meat" - crumbles or strips - particularly for some recipes.  And some nights you're just running late, or tired, and you want something quick and easy.  No matter how inventive you are, sometimes you're just not inspired. There's just one challenge: we are a pretty much soy-free household due to food sensitivities

This one is sort of like a polenta, but seems to be firmer - and, of course, it uses chickpeas.  We've modified our version from Jennifer Schmidt's . The Ingredients: 1 cup chickpea flour 1 tsp salt at least 1/4 spice (we used ground ginger) 3 cups water (divided) Cooking spray or a neutral oil. The Process: Grease a pan or baking dish with the neutral oil.  An 8x8 is about right, but you can go smaller for thicker pieces or larger for thinner ones. Put 1 1/2 cups water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. While your water is getting to its boil, combine chickpea flour, salt, and spice in a bowl.  Mix in 1 1/2 cups water and whisk until smooth. Reduce heat on the saucepan to medium-high.  Add in the chickpea and water mixture, stirring constantly.  Continue stirring until the mixture thickens.  (Schmidt claims this will take 8 minutes.  It took more like 15.  Also, if you stop stirring, your tofu mix will bubble and spit at you.) Your mixture should be glos

This recipe is gently modified from the one available at Connoisseurus Veg .  The ingredients: 1 cup vital wheat gluten 1/4 cup chickpea flour  1 cup water 6 cups stock (veggie or otherwise) 1/4 to 1/3 cup soy sauce spices - whatever speaks to you The process: Mix wheat gluten with flour and add 1 cup water.  Stir to form a dough. Turn dough out onto counter and knead for at least 5 minutes.  (More is good, too.  You can let it rest, then come back to kneading.  Definitely give it more if, like me, you are not a super vigorous kneader.) Let dough rest for at least 5 min, then cut into pieces (at least 4). Combine stock, soy sauce, and whatever spices you'd like and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer and add your dough pieces.  Be sure your dough pieces are fully submerged. Simmer your seitan for an hour.  Try not to let it get to a full boil, but be sure it is a hearty simmer. Remove from broth and cook/use as you would a store-bought seitan. Pro Tips:

Today is a bulk cooking day - we're a few weeks away from the start of new school years and semesters, which means it's time to start rebuilding our usual routines.  This involves setting back the alarm clock (which I hate already), getting our morning walk on, and, perhaps most importantly, picking up the batch cooking in earnest once more. One day of each weekend, our kitchen becomes an epic, delicious mess.  We take a couple of hours and do as much pre-preparing as we can stand.  This is a really crucial part of our ability to prepare healthy meals from minimally processed stuff during the week.  So today was the day to make rice ahead, pressure cook beans, whip up some hummus, make ice cream (a house staple!), and more.  It's a quiet weekend without too many other commitments, so it's also a good week to get our pasta and pizza dough on.  (Both freeze really well.) A few weeks ago, we bought carrots at the co-op that had really substantial greens attached.  Th

The past several weeks when we picked up our CSA veggies, two curious kittens have wanted to know what's in the big green bag.  So today, we made an extra stop at the market - to visit Piggyback Treats , a company that works to "treat sustainably" by making treats and toys from rescued material.  They work with farms to use human-grade meat from things we don't eat - liver and heart and fish skin, among other bits - and prepare things safe for pets. After learning about the company and chatting with the vendor, we thought we might give it a try - or, rather, that Freddie and Xander, our two feline family members, might like to give it a try.  So we bought an ounce of tongue jerky and put it to the test. I should note first that everyone was very curious about this bag.  Very, very curious. After extracting Xander's head from the goodie bag, we were able to get it out and open up the package.  If you thought everyone was excited before, yo