I've been contemplating something for my book but the days have just spun by and I haven't opened a Word document to record anything, so maybe it'll work here. I don't know why this format works for me so much better, inspires me so much more than the totally insular MS Word or pen and paper in a real journal; something I haven't done in so many years, I sincerely doubt I can....I've lost the ability to write with a pen anything more complex than quick notes and grocery lists. It's as if my creative pathways need my ten fingers and both my hands to express. And I think that's OK, just another of life's mysteries to ponder, but I digress (she says as she sees in her mind's eye a Maddylion circling around the subject that wants to be at hand.)
I've been thinking about food; cooking vegan food in particular. I make amazing food. It is my artform and I know that everyone isn't as easy in the kitchen as I am, nor do they run as high of a success percentage as I do. I read stories of cooking flops on the veggieboard regularly and I watch my nearest and dearest fumble in the kitchen to create something that I perceive as rather simple. And I know I am blessed with a talent and an ability, in terms of creating food, to see in three dimensions, maybe four and I know this is a gift. So I'm allegedly writing a book of my journey to weightloss and maintenance including a cookbook and I doubt my ability to reach a wide audience because this comes so easily to me and I know it doesn't to everyone or even most people.
So I've been looking at the mechanics of what I do with food and keep circling back to this pre-preparing thing that I do. If I do something almost every day, there are always base ingredients already prepared in my refrigerator or pantry for me to easily draw on to create a meal. I totally believe in the maxim Work smart not hard, and let my wonderful kitchen appliances do most of the work. I'm a great proponant of letting the stove or the oven cook dinner while I do something else. Standing over a stove to "stir constantly" is really something I don't spend a whole lot of time on. I also think that preparedness can create a Saturday night "for company" quality meal on a Wednesday night after teaching drum class until 5:00. So here's a list of some of the things that I regularly have on hand and what I do to have or create them. Not all of these things are or need to be home made. I just like home made things better because I get to choose what's in them and what they taste like.
Bread crumbs: I love making gratins. Breadcrumbs are essential for gratins. If I don't happen to have stale ciabatta bread around, then I'll just take out 4 slices of Rudi's multigrain oat bread, let them sit out for the day and get stale, or cut them into cubes and bake for 30 minutes in a 200 degree oven and then let the cubes sit out until all the bread is hard and crunchy. I do the same with stale ciabatta, but you don't need ciabatta to make breadcrumbs. Regular sandwich bread will work in a pinch. Once the bread is hard and stale, I put the cubes in my little Braun hand chopper and zip them up into crumbs. These crumbs then go in a mason jar in the pantry. Jar must be absolutely dry inside. Crumbs will last for months.
Beans: This isn't necessarily a make from scratch for me. Quick cooking legumes like lentils are a staple in my pantry and a lovely dal or other lentil dish can be whipped up in less than an hour unlike most other beans. So I "cheat" and have many cans of beans of different types in my pantry. Staples are Pinto, Black, Garbanzo and some kind of White beans. With a can of Garbanzos, a grrl can whip up falafels in very short order. With a can of Pintos, a grrl can create a Mexican meal, with a can of White beans a grrl can add texture and protein to a baked pasta or whip up a yummy garlic, lemon dip or sandwich filling. I buy canned organic beans on sale and rarely pay more than $1 for a 15 oz can.
Vegetable Broth: Making my own vegetable broth has become an essential. I control what veggies go in the broth and that totally affects the taste of any seitan projects I endeavor as well as how a soup or sauce or stew will taste. Vegetable broth is easy: Big pot, lots of alliums (onions and garlic; onions cut in half, garlic crushed, no need to peel, 3 or more carrots broken into pieces, a rib or two of celery, a handful of dried parsley, a bay leaf, some salt, some olive oil, about six cups of water, and some dried wild mushrooms if you are so inclined. Simmer for an hour or two on the back burner. Strain, squeeze out vegetables before discarding and voila! Easy, inexpensive and very very useful in the pre-prepare context.
Seitan: I make my own, but again, if this isn't how you can spend your time, there are many choices out there to buy prepackaged. For me, making seitan is an artform and I am now making it from a recipe that actually takes 3 hours from start to finish; with one hour being the dough resting and 1 1/2 hours being the seitan simmering, but a good half hour to prepare the dough if you are starting from scratch with the vegetable broth already made (see above). If you are making your own vegetable broth, which to me is essential as how you flavor your broth totally affects the taste of your seitan, then you've got a half day project. But don't let that daunt you. Setting up a vegetable broth to simmer takes about 5 minutes and then the stove does all the work. Having seitan already made, sitting in its lovely broth in my fridge gives me a quick, low fat protein to throw into whatever I choose, make "pulled seitan", barbeque sandwiches, breaded and fried slices with lemon, chopped and sauted in cumin and chili peppers for burrito "meat"....the possibilities are vast. And the broth the seitan has cooked in is a great base for sauces.
Seitan Sausages: Much easier to make than traditional seitan are seitan sausages. I admit, I use more oil in them than when I started because the oil just makes the texture "right", but still I'm not going into cardiac arrest land with 2 Tbsp of olive oil instead of 1 spread out over 6 servings. Seitan sausages benefit from strongly flavored broth. For the Italian style, I use a very garlicy broth with tomatoes cooked in it. For Asian style, a gingery, oniony broth works well. For breakfast sausages, a more all-around veggie broth works great. I make the Italian style most often as I do seem to cook more Italian/Mediterranean style dishes than anything else and I just like them the best. Seitan sausage dough is made similarly to traditional seitan (with the addition of different things: tomato sauce for the Italian, minced shiitakes and ginger powder for the Asian, maple syrup for the breakfast style), but instead of simmering in stock, you roll them into sausage lengths (2 servings per sausage) and roll tightly in heavy duty foil and bake for an hour in a 325 oven, turning once. On a Tuesday night, when drum class students don't all leave sometimes until close to 7:00, it is so easy to throw together a vegan pizza with a pizza shell, homemade tomato sauce, roasted veggies and some Italian seitan sausages, cut into coins.
Roasted Vegetables: I can easily eat a whole eggplant as a snack if the slices were peeled and roasted with a little olive oil spray and salt. I regularly roast eggplant and zucchini together and have on hand to throw on a pizza, toss into a baked pasta or add to a burrito. I roast in a 350 convection oven, but a 375 regular oven works just fine. I take cookie sheets, spray them with Spectrum organic olive oil spray, then lay out the veggies, spray with oil spray and sprinkle with salt: eggplant peeled and sliced 1/2", zucchini slices a little smaller than 1/2", cremini mushrooms halved or quartered if they are very big, baby carrots, whole, broccoli and cauliflower cut into med/small sized florets, to name a few things. You can roast onions, asparagus, garlic, some people I know roast kale....I've not tried that. What I've observed is that zucchini and eggplant take 15 minutes on one side, then I flip them and roast for another 10 minutes on the other side. Cauliflower and broccoli take about 10 minutes total, maybe 15 depending on how large your florets are. They need to be stirred/turned once too. Mushrooms and asparagus take 10 minutes and they're done. Baby carrots take about 10 minutes and need to be turned once. Onions take about 20, turned once. Roasted veggies can be stored in the refrigerator for several days.
Tomato Sauce and Canned Tomatoes: OK, I garden. I grow lots of tomatoes. I spend the entire month of September canning and the bulk of that canning is tomato sauce and roasted, canned tomatoes. You don't need a garden to do canning; just a good source of tomatoes in the peak of their season, which here in Northern CA is late summer, usually September. The easiest sauce and way to can tomatoes that I know of is to roast the tomatoes. I thank my veggieboard friend Lauren forever for this easy recipe: Cut tomatoes into wedges and fill several baking pans. You can put sliced eggplant, zucchini, onions, garlic and basil, or any combination of these things UNDER the tomatoes while they roast. Sprinkle with salt. Roast in a 250 degree oven for about 2 1/2 hours. You don't have to do anything except turn the top tomatoes under if you wish, but you don't have to. A little char on the top adds magic to the final product. After 2 1/2 hours, the tomatoes should be carmelizing on top and the liquid that cooking created has reduced some. If you're canning them as tomatoes, you're done: Put into prepared pint jars and can in a hot water bath for 20 mintues. For sauce, you're simply going to pour the tomatoes into a large sauce pan, cook down until liquid reduces by 1/3 and zip up with your immersion blender, or do it the old fashioned way by pouring into a food processor or blender and zipping up until smooth. Then can by pouring hot sauce into prepared pint jars and immersing in a hot water bath for 20 minutes. (The canning instructions are vague, I know. PLEASE get a simple canning book so you do it right and don't spoil your hard work. Sunset publishes a great How-To canning book. It's the only one I've ever owned or needed.)
And if you just don't have the time for this sort of work, then keeping some cans of whole tomatoes and jars of fat free tomato sauce on hand is very useful.
So let's call this the end of Part I of Cooking Preparedness. There is a lot more, but more basic pantry supplies that I can just list out, I'll do another time. It's becoming a lovely day out there and I need to get my shoes on and go hike.
On May 13, 2008, I, Maddy Avena discovered yoga podcasts. Yes it's true. "Podcast" was a hum I heard on the peripheral edges of my awareness, but I didn't relate to it in my life. Lately, in my home practice I've been prefering taking my now three Shiva Rea CD sets and mixing different flows from them. I like it because I get to situate myself in the choicest spot in the very small area I have to work within and I know the flows, the poses and their names, how to flow into and out of them, as I come up on my 4th anniversary of having a yoga practice. 
