Day in the Life of an Idiot

 So, today, I spent some time talking to a friend in need of cheering and then made and delivered a vegan shepherd's pie to her. I kind of made up the recipe, though I extrapolated some of it from a recipe I found online for a vegan casserole.  Here's the recipe that I started with: https://afrovitalityeats.com/recipe/vegan-meat-and-potato-casserole/


I greased a casserole dish with vegan butter (I have Earth Balance around)

• 1 tablespoon vegan butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil (yes, I used a bit of both. The crumbles are dry because they have no grease, so I added this much to mimic that texture.)
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1/2 of a bag of meatless crumbles of your choice (I had Gardein, which I like in my vegan chili)
• a splash of Worcestershire sauce, no more than 1 tablespoon 
• a pinch of savory (if you need measurements for whatever reason, I would say use your smallest teaspoon, 1/8, or less.)
• 1/8 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste (plus the same amount of water)
• random other veggies you might like (I had carrots and peas.) If you are making this for one or two, no more than a half or quarter cup of each. I thought of it too late, but you could add parsnips or corn or... really anything, I should think.
• enough mashed potatoes to make a nice topping-- I like potatoes and so if I were making this for myself it would be four or five cups, peeled and cubed? If you wanted, you could go full-on Midwestern and use tater tots instead.
• salt and pepper to taste.

Basically you fry up the onions and garlic with a bit of fake-butter and oil. Once those are nicely browned, add the non-meat. To that you add the Worcestershire sauce, savory, brown sugar, and tomato paste. Once that's nicely mixed you add par-boiled carrots and peas and whatever else you like in your shepherd's pie. Put the browned non-meat and veggies mix into the bottom of the greased casserole bowl. Top with mashed potatoes. Deliver to friend with cooking instructions (which are: heat the oven to 375 F and bake, covered, for 20-30 minutes or until heated through.)

I, of course, tasted a bit of the meatless mixture before putting it in the casserole and, if you're the sort of vegan who misses a "meaty" taste, I would say this one definitely could pass for grandma's tater tot ground beef hot dish. The brown sugar, tomato paste, and the Worcestershire sauce do it, I think. 

I have no idea if my friend will like it, since it's kind of low brow Midwestern comfort food, but, well, in this case, it really is the thought that counts. 

My subconscious isn't the least bit subtle.

I had a dream last night about my new novel. Let me preface this with the fact that my editor/publisher Cheryl Morgan told me on Friday, I think, that Locus Magazine had picked up the press release regarding my new novel. This is definitely a 'yay' because I do worry that I've been so out of the publishing game that no one knows or cares about my work any more. Apparently, my subconscious has a different worry. See if you can guess what it is...

My dream last night went like this. I am at a science fiction convention where I'm doing some kind of volunteer thing (which may have involved taking a class on James Joyce, but that's not actually important.) When the con is over, I decide to be silly and make a chalk "thank you" poem that I write on the sidewalk outside of the convention center. The next day, above the fold, the Star Tribune (our local paper) writes a huge article critiquing how BAD my poetry is and what I stupid idea writing a thank you in chalk was to begin with, complete with quotes from everyone involved, including people I thought of as friends, basically saying that it's such a shame that a former science fiction writer has become such a weirdo.

Seriously, brain? ARE YOU EVEN TRYING TO BE SUBTLE.

Clearly, I am terrified that the critics will hate the thing I am writing. I think it's a reasonable fear, so you don't need to comfort me and tell me I am awesome (I actually _do_ know this, but my subconscious is where the fears live, after all. My conscious brain is still mostly in charge, so no worries). I only share this with you all because it is truly hilarious to me the extent to which my dreams are so easily interpreted. Dr. Freud does not need to be paged. We got this one.

Otherwise, Sunday was lovely. We all slept in and then went out en masse to breakfast, my favorite meal. Mason had been agitating for a trip to Grandview Grill, so we went. It was crowded, but I had their delicious biscuits and gravy which pretty much sustained me until dinner time.

I also made some really good vegan sugar cookies, which, yes, I cut out in the shape of a turkey.



Picture: A muppet-y sort of shocked looking, turkey-shaped vegan cookie.

Very tasty, however. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised, I guess? You can make amazing cookies with margarine and/or Crisco, so it stands to reason that the expensive version of those things would work just as well. This terrified turkey represents my biggest vegan success, so far. However, I have not yet tried out all the recipes that y'all have passed on. I am looking forward to those.

I do have to say that I appreciate the crowd over here on DW. I am _still_ getting advice on how to fix my vegan gravy, despite not asking for any. I do understand that my friends are literally just excited to help, but "cornstarch?" makes me laugh. Yes, my friends, I have heard of it, thank you for assuming I had _not._  This is literally the bonus of longer form, however. I guess I should just get in the habit on social media of writing a longer explanation, but, to me, that isn't how FB is supposed to be used. 

Anyway, that was my weekend. My big plans today, besides continuing working on the novel (that the Star Tribune will apparently hate, in my dreams, at least,) I have to take Willow to the vet for some booster shots at 11 pm. I should probably dig the carrier out of the basement now, actually. Her BIG appointment is in a couple of weeks... sometime after my birthday (which is coming up! Nov. 18!)

Hope you all are well!

Halloween was a crappy day for me, mostly because I spent almost all of it shuttling my various family members to places AND I had to work at the library. I ended up feeling too physically exhausted to carve pumpkins.

Just to give you a recap of all the stupid: In the morning, I had to drop Shawn off at the dentist, come back home and take Mason to school, go BACK to the dentist's to get Shawn, deliver her to work, and get my a$$ all the way out to Shoreview where I worked for four hours, on my feet. Then, immediately after work, I went back to pick up Mason at school and deliver him to his college class, from there, I swung back over to the History Center to get Shawn and take her to her hand PT in downtown, where I sat around and waited in a waiting room. After that, I took her home so she could start handing out candy, went back to get Mason at college, and brought him home. All this, and I forgot to pack my OWN lunch, so I didn't eat for the FIRST TIME until 4:00 pm. No breakfast, and only a handful of chips found in the break room at the library for lunch. NOT VERY SMART, FYI. To say that I was hangry was probably an understatement.

Also? This may be the first time, ever, for me not to have carved pumpkins for Halloween in my entire life. :-(

Halloween is one of my major holidays and I never even dressed up. Mason did, at least, and that cheered me greatly. He feels too old to go out trick-or-treating (which I would argue, but it's up to him,) so he dresses up to hand out candy to the littles who come door-to-door.


Picture: Mason with a zombie mask over his face. His glasses are over the top of the mask making him look like a weird, old man.

He actually mostly wore a devil mask most of the night, but I find this particular mask on him to be kind of hilarious. It was his idea to dress-up in a suit coat, because he's going for the "gentleman monster" look, which I also found amazingly charming. Honest to all the god(desse)s, Mason's whole thing last night was what cheered me up and turned my day around.

The day before, I started trying out some vegan desserts.

As I mentioned previously, we have a contingent of vegans who come for (American) Thanksgiving, a holiday centered around the consumption of MEAT.

To be fair, I personally consider it a holiday to celebrate made-families (to which our vegan friends 150% belong), but, you know, the turkey is still central to many people's conception of Thanksgiving. We long ago discovered vegan roasts for them that I can buy pre-made, so that part is no longer the issue. I also have a number of easy substitutions for many of the sides that I would normally slather in butter, drown in milk, etc. So most of the sides on the table they can eat (without having to be shoved onto a vegan-only table, which, I mean, the point is to make everyone feel welcome...) My French bread is almost vegan to begin with; I just need to not put on the egg wash at the end to make it so.

So... the thing I continue to try to improve every year that they come is the desserts.

Vegan baking is tricky.

You are bereft of most of your leavening (obviously soda and baking powder are still on the table, but eggs are out,) and, of course, chocolate. I did, this year, manage to find vegan chocolate chips. I discovered a recipe for "chocolate and orange vegan crinkle cookies" in a magazine devoted to vegan cooking, which I bought because it was their "holiday special" and promised not only baked goods, but also a vegan egg nog.

On Wednesday night, I tried out the crinkle cookies.

At any rate, I hunted down and assembled all my vegan baking needs:


Picture: all the vegan things in their drab, sad earth-tones.

What I love about the peppermint crinkle cookies that Shawn makes for Christmas is that they're chewy. The top is a little crinkly-crisp (hence the name), but then you get that great "mouth feel" when you bite into them and get all the chocolate-minty goodness that's just so chewy and yummy. It's sensual experience.

I was really hoping that I might be able to duplicate that.

Alas, not so much. I believe the main critique from my family was a very Minnesotan: "They're not bad, but..."

They looked promising all the way through the process. I thought the batter was weirdly fudge-like, but Shawn reassured me that that's how hers are pre-baking.



Picture: very dense, chocolate batter.

I followed the recipe precisely, which is often a thing I'll do the first time I try something, even if, at the time I'm thinking, "Really? That much orange extract??" Because I go under the assumption (possibly a false one) that these things have been taste-tested and perfected in some industrial kitchen and maybe there's something about vegan chocolate that I don't know about that works really well with that much additional orange flavor.

No surprise, my instincts were right. Next time I try these I'm going with a teaspoon less of the orange extract, possibly even reducing it down to just a hint (like a 1/4 teaspoon.) Because, I know from experience that is POWERFUL stuff. One of the other consistent complaints I got from my taste testers (aka my family) was that the orange was "a little weird."

The end result was also less chewy and more granular, which is something I'm not sure quite how to fix. I am considering also trying a little bit of a baking soda/baking powder mix (as offered on a vegan website devoted to "fluffy" baking,) to see if that addition will get the desired consistency. I'm going to freeze all these attempts in separate baggies so that, should they want to play taste tester, too, my guests can try out a sample from each batch. This one is going to be labeled, "too orange-y, cake brownie texture."



Which, you know, isn't terrible. So, I do, at least, consider these a partial success. 

Now the question is, do I subject my family to vegan egg nog, or do we try vegan sugar cookies (which I plan to shape into turkeys, for the IRONY.)

 I would apologize for not posting here in a while, but we've had a house full of guests.  Before that, I was cleaning like a fiend to be ready for them.

Thanksgiving has become my all-time favorite holiday.  I don't even quite know how it happened that Shawn and I decided that Thanksgiving belonged to friends, made-family, rather than our families of origin, as it were, but it was by far, the smartest thing we ever did. 

I feel so sad when I hear people talking about how they dread Thanksgiving because it means Yet-Another-Family-Gathering where they're not accepted for who they are, or where they have to suffer through crazy, drunk uncle Bob's horrible racist/homophobic/misogynist politics. I wish I could give them all the fortitude or means or whatever it would take to say, "So, don't do it. Make this ONE holiday yours." After all, it's not like so many of these same people aren't going to end up having to go back to the same awful situation a month later for Christmas.  And even if your family doesn't celebrate Christmas there's usually some other 'can't miss' holiday that's basically required family gathering.  So, why give them Thanksgiving too?

I absolutely love having my house filled, once a year, with the people Shawn and I picked--our friends and their family.  I love cooking them a huge meal, even if, this year, I had to figure out how to make a bunch of my staples vegan.  I love putting together the puzzles, having the competitive board gaming, etc., etc., etc.  I even love that my crazy guests always make a pilgrimage out to the Mall of America for Black Friday. (Hey, you know, if I were in Dublin for some uniquely Irish Cultural Event, I'd want to participate in it too. Even if my native friends were like, "Nope. No way.") 

So that's the sappy way of saying, I had a great Thanksgiving.  Our friends and their family are now coming from both ends of the U.S. and Ireland (one is in Oregon at Reed College, two are in Virginia at William & Mary, and two live in Dublin.)  They all arrived en masse on Wednesday.  Luckily, they were able to find an Air BnB just up University.  They've stayed in a downtown hotel before, but that isn't nearly as homey--and this was very convenient (I picked some of them up there on Saturday to take them to the airport.)  Funny story about that, though. I was given the wrong address at first and so I ended up knocking on a door two doors down. Thank GOD no one answered, though I did spend a lot of time wondering why no one was letting me in.... this is where cell phone are actually a GOOD thing.

Anyway, we ordered pizza from Pizza Luché because they have tons of vegan options, and even make an in-house vegan cheese, while also serving plenty of delicious carnivorous options as well. I think we were off to a good start with the vegans since at least one of them was actually a little overwhelmed by all the choices... since, more often than not, restaurants have only one or two.  

Turkey day itself went very well. It took a bit of planning to have vegan options and/or adapt existing recipes. I'll be honest. A big part of my secret skill as a chef is that I'll put bacon drippings and cream in ANYTHING, given half the chance.  But, we managed to find a good butter substitute and we'd been trying out various dressing recipes for months. Shawn even made a vegan pumpkin pie (as well as two types of cookies and a vegan cranberry-orange sweet bread), and, after several trips to a number of different stores, I managed to find a commercially produced vegan soy whip as an alternative to my homemade whipped cream. It was a lot of work for two out of eight eaters, but, in the end, we could feel good about our hosting skills.  In exchange, I heard no complaints about the dead bird on the table and there were no attempts to proselytize about the vegan lifestyle's superiority. So, I think that was a fair trade.  ;-)

On Black Friday, they all went about their separate ways, but took Mason along.  That meant Shawn and I had a chance to physically recover (I napped... A LOT! I'd feel bad, but it's a full day in the kitchen, since I get up early to make French bread from scratch) and, according to Mason, they all checked out the Herbivorous Butcher for lunch. We had a little snafu about whether or not we were going to brave the Black Friday Mall of America traffic, but in the end everyone hopped on the light rail (Mason always carries his Go-To pass, so he flipped the bill.)  So, it all worked out, plus our Irish guest got to check out what passes as public transportation in Minneapolis/St. Paul. (He and I actually extolled the virtues of trains.)

Saturday, people started drifting off to various airports, though we kept our Oregon guest at our place one extra night. That day was spent playing with the Nintendo Switch and he's ONLY a vegetarian, so cooking for him was much easier. I made my favorite broccoli-curry soup, which I will type out below because another friend has asked for it:

From the Ovens of Brittany Cookbook by Terese Allan:

6 tablespoons of butter, divided
1/3 cup flour
3/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/2 cup finely chopped carrots
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
2 cups of coarsely chopped broccoli stems and tops
1 teaspoon basil
1 (or more) teaspoon of curry powder (I use Penzey's "sweet" curry)
1/2 teaspoon of paprika
1/2 teaspoon of thyme
1/2 teaspoon of celery salt
1 cup of milk
1 cup half-and-half
2 1/2 cups of vegetable (or chicken) stock
1/4 teaspoon of ground white pepper (though black will do in a pinch)

They want you to make a roux with three tablespoons of the butter, heated, to which the flour is added.  I've found you can do this, their method is not that hard, but if the idea scares you, you can just skip the extra butter and mix flour with a little water to make a paste and add it in place of the roux.  Both methods work equally well, IMHO.

Melt remaining 3 tablespoons of butter in a large, heavy pot. Add onions, celery, and carrots. Cook until tender.  Add broccoli and spices and cook a little longer. Add the stock to the vegetables, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, add milk and half-and-half. Once that's warmed add the roux (or flour mixture).  Simmer until thickened and the flavors have mingled, but the broccoli is not overdone--10-20 minutes.  Adjust seasonings to taste and serve.

You can see why the vegetarian can eat this, but not the vegans.

On Sunday, we shuffled our last house guest off to the airport, and the had Mason's GF over for our traditional post-Thanksgiving wild rice soup. Of course, she's also a vegetarian, so she got the same soup, only minus the shredded turkey bits.  I made popovers.  It was wonderful.

But, oh my gosh. I'm not normally the sort of person who needs a vacation after a vacation, but this might be an exception. However, I wouldn't have traded a minute of it. Such a good time was had.