Hey, Julie and Julia! Want to Get Raw?

No raw corn chowder tonight! First of all, it's too heavy on a hot day, and second of all, I got home too late. Stopped at my sister's house and had a flame broiled Boca Burger with pickled ginger and a fresh salad she had made. It was awesome: dark romaine with cherry flavored cranberries and cucumbers.

The first time I heard of Boca Burgers was in the news, when a truck load was reportedly shipped to the White House for Chelsea Clinton, another famous vegetarian. (I'll make a list of those in my up-coming posts.) In my opinion, the original vegan Boca Burgers are the best. Even my carnivorous friends love them. They taste like hamburgers but don't have the gristle. (the burgers, not my carnivorous friends)

When I got home, my roommate Dori had made sesame broccoli. Of course it was delicious, for two reasons: 1) Dori made it and 2) Dori is a Taurus. :)

Call backs for Romeo and Juliet tomorrow after school and if the energy remains, there will be raw corn chowder on the home front. I'm looking forward to making it because it sounds wonderful and I get to shuck corn!

I grew up in a small artsy community on the Mississippi River. My grandparents had a farm a few miles away and I learned to shuck corn, snap string beans and pick strawberries when I was knee high to a katydid. Call me weird, but I LOVE to shuck corn. Maybe it's the silk. :)

Until tomorrow...

Peace and Good Food!

Bev

Zephyr, A Vegetarian Cafe in Long Beach

So how does a total neophyte review a restaurant? I’m not Elmer Dills and I’m not even a seasoned Yelp.com reviewer. I became interested in writing about food only because of seeing Julie and Julia. I wanted to formulate a blog in which I would write a vegetarian/vegan response to the film. Among my strongest blog topic options were preparing veggie equivalents of Julia Child’s dishes and visiting and reviewing vegetarian restaurants. At first it seemed like the former would be my choice, but now it appears to be a blend of the two…and this blog is ever in flux.

Today I visited Zephyr, a Vegetarian Cafe on 4th Street in Long Beach, CA.


My considerations are look, ambiance, menu, service, price and recommendation…in that order.

Look: Red flowers with long black stems are painted on the frosted windows, and there's a pale yellow flower (or sunburst) on the door. Cool art on canvas decorates the olive green/avocado walls. The tables are of varied sizes and styles; one is an octagon with a checker board in the center. Like my favorite coffeehouse, there are also couches with coffee tables. Magazine racks offer fliers, postcard ads and local freebie newspapers.

Ambiance: People of all ages are represented, but it's largely a young crowd. The dining area is spacious with a comfortable distance between the tables. Earthy colors on the walls, floor and furniture and the strategically placed potted plants give it a cozy feeling. Speaking of cozy, today it was about 100 in the shade, so there were fans blowing; there’s no air conditioning, which makes it warm but environmentally correct. :)


The music was actually quite fun, something of a cross between instrumental jazz and contemporary classical. Lots of brass and low timpani.

Menu: Almost exclusively vegan, the menu offers soup, salads, sandwiches, burgers and bowls. The back page offers two vegan entrees, five “living food” options, four side dishes and three desserts.

My choice was the Fakin’ Bacon BLT on toasted multi grain bread. They were out of Fakin’ Bacon but they offered to make me the same sandwich with a smokey-flavored tempeh, which was actually more natural. It came with a side of organic blue corn chips and a just-spicy-enough salsa, unsalted. The sandwich was just a tad dry for my taste, so I asked for an extra side of vegan mayo, and I was not charged. The presentation was great. Dark, leafy lettuce sticking out from under the bread and the side of salsa gave it some nice color.

Service: Orders are placed at the register where there is a stack of menus. Lining the counter are also several types of bottled drinks, some natural and some…well…Bubble Up! Cashiers bring the food to the tables. There is a condiment stand for extra needs, and it houses organic ketchup, brown mustard, blue agave sweetener, soy sauce, sugar, salt, pepper etc. Very interesting. The speed with which my order came was perhaps a bit on the slow side but basically I was happy. The workers are all friendly and down-to-earth: no cookie cutter uniforms and no obvious dress code. Everyone looked natural and comfortable, which probably contributes to their happy attitude.

Price: What I got was $5.50. The bowls and larger entrees average $8.00 more or less. A slice of the vegan cherry pie (which I didn't get, or have room for) is a bit less than $4.00 a slice. I would say the prices are great...especially for a mom and pop vegetarian restaurant in today's economy.

Recommendation: Definitely check it out. It is well worth the trip, and even worth the heat on a hot afternoon.

Location: 340 East 4th St. Long Beach, CA
Hours: 11-4 PM Sun-Thurs, 11-9 PM Saturday

562-435-7113

Vegan Soup for the Soul of the Chicken (TM)

While thinking of the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy and a New England Clam Chowder (vegan style) recipe to post and try, I found this wonderful recipe for raw vegan corn chowder and it sounds easy! The recipe comes from Alissa Cohen, who wrote the book, Living on Live Food. Check it out!

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups of almond milk

5 ears of corn on the cob

1 small avocado

sea salt

Preparation

Cut the corn from the cobs and put one handful of corn aside.

Put all remaining ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.

Stir in the loose corn.

Add sea salt to taste.

This recipe is so simple and versatile it looks like you can add anything you wish to spice it up a little: pepper, cilantro or salsa on top, etc.

I may try it today. It sounds good!

Peace,

Bev/erly

Julie, Julia and Juliet and Mercury in Aquarius

Happy Saturday!

I'm happy to have a day where I don't have to be at school. I just finished two days worth of auditions for Romeo and Juliet and my director has yet to choose a Juliet. It's stiff competition because it's an awesome drama program where I work.

I began to wonder what kind of bloody meat weighted the tables in the days of Shakespeare, cooked animals complete with heads and open eyes. The struggles between groups reflected in Romeo and Juliet reminds me of a quote by Tolstoy (at least I think it was Tolstoy):

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."

Today we are honoring the life of Sen. Ted Kennedy; those on "both sides of the aisle" have come to the celebration. As I sit here contemplating the artichokes I'm about to try out on my sister, her girlfriend and my nephew, I reflect on the senator and his home on Cape Cod. Last night one of Teddy's football buddies recalled a time when he downed a vast quantity of New England clam chowder while in a storm at sea with the senator. My thoughts moved from there to a vegan tribute, and I found a great recipe online.

Before I totally undertake that, though, I'm going to see if I can find a raw recipe. Radical.

I have something in common with Sen. Ted Kennedy. Both of us have Mercury in Aquarius in our zodiac charts. What that means is: our thoughts are continually moving forward...which explains his progressive passions and my rambling.

I will post two recipes, hopefully, and tell you about how well my artichokes are received. I'm trying a raw variation of the lemon-olive oil sauce.

Until later...peace be with you and take time to enjoy your food.

Foodie Blogroll: I'm Approved!

Hi, Everybody!

My blog has been accepted to be listed on the foodie blogroll, which means I am an official food blog, and I'll get more visitors in the future. Right now I'm figuring out how to place the foodie blogroll widget onto my sidebar here, which is a condition of membership into this group.

SO, being tired as I am after a LONG day, and not being the least bit tech savvy, that's not going to happen until tomorrow or Saturday.

Meanwhile, any techies out there are welcome to clue me in as to how to do that. There is an FAQ section that explains it, but that wasn't clickable for some reason tonight.

With any luck, I'll get something cooked and reported on this weekend. Or maybe I'll make something raw since we're having a huge heatwave!

Peace and More Peace,

Bev

Yes, We Can

Julia and Julia, Meet Paula and Rachel

Hello!

Just finished watching Rachel Ray and before that it was Paula Dean. Did I spell her name right? I know her name but just didn't remember how she spells it. Interesting aside here, Paula Dean is reported to use this product on her hair that I used to sell when I was working in a beauty supply store. It's what keeps the pretty color even in her hair...and it comes in a purple bottle. :)

I'm not complaining, but today was a very long and full day at school. Had a meeting that went on until 4:30 and that may not sound late to a lot o' folks, but when you get up at 5, you probably want to go to bed fairly early and that doesn't leave much cooking time! :)

I came home and made a glorious salad of arugula, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, cashews, tomato, a dollop of hummus (the best ever) and made my own dressing. I'm going to try to bottle that stuff, I swear. I make a vegan dressing that is just delicious. I wonder if anyone else would think so. It's so simple it's crazy. Once I get the proportions down pat, I'll share...or get rich.

So check this out. Paula Dean made three desserts: a chocolate eclair cake, a raspberry trifle and peanut butter fudge that contains processed cheese! AHHHHHHHHH! Sad thing is, it's probably tasty...just deadly.

Rachel Ray made a flank steak with an Asian touch, wasabi mashed potatoes and green beans with bell peppers seasoned with sesame. Looked wonderful. I am going to go online and get those recipes and figure out what meat sub I can use for the steak...probably tempeh.

Meanwhile, what about Julie and Julia? I am convinced that they would both be horrified by Paula's desserts. Rachel's 30-minute meal, not so much. I'm going to do the asparagus and potatoes over the weekend. Hopefully it will be fabulous.

Until my next fun food rambling...

Peace and more peace...we need it.

Julie Definitely Had More Time!

She had more time than I do, that is, and of course Julia did too when she was in France with her working hubby. I just had my first full day of school and I have three lessons to plan and four sets of papers to grade. That is not going to be conducive to my getting any potatoes or asparagus done tonight, not even throwing them in the oven! :) In fact, after this workday, I reviewed my thoughts here, revamped my strategy and here is my new proposition:

I will attempt one cooking session per week and write about it, meanwhile I will blog about other veggie matters and ideas. I may discuss recipe ideas before I try them, considering what I may have to do in order to make vegan equivalents just as appealing and tasty.

Meanwhile, I had a great vegan experience yesterday afternoon. My friends Wayne and Larry took me to The Veggie Grille. It has two locations not far from me: one in El Segundo and the other in Irvine.

The food was delicious and everything on the menu is vegan...unbelievable. It's impossible to write enough about how good I thought it was, so I'm going to drop the website address for you here and hope you check it out. There are some reviews on http://www.yelp.com/. The site itself is http://www.veggiegrill.com/.

Veggie Grille has a casual atmosphere; it's a stand-in-line-to-order place, but the food is brought to your table. The presentation is lovely and the surroundings are clean and bright. You can see photos on the website.

I had the "carne asada" sandwich and the steamed kale. It was fresh, delicious and just spicy enough. My friend Wayne had the chopped salad (chop-chop) and Larry had the Chinese "chickin" salad. They are both carnivores, so when they really enjoyed the food I was jazzed. Larry commented that he felt full after his salad, but not as stuffed as he does when he eats a regular Chinese chicken salad.

There are gluten-free options on the menu which you have to request.

Veggie Grille offers three desserts and we wanted to try them, but we were too full. Guess that means we liked our food!

My only 'complaint', if you want to call it that, is that it was a bit hard to find. It's in a sprawling mall.

Check it out and have a good night!

Peace,
Bev

Plan for Today...for Julie and Julia

First, thanks to Bruce for his great ideas for a slogan to replace A1's "Sing for your Beef"! See them in yesterday's comment section!

I totally blew off my challenge for yesterday because something sneaked up on me and took up my whole day. So my challenge for today may be fixing two veggies instead of one. I'm thinking of adding potatoes to the asparagus experiment. (This doesn't mean I'll combine them!) :)

Potatoes are the food of heaven in my opinion. I've often said I could live on them, although I would tire of that amount of starch after a few months. These round or oval "tubers" are the most versatile vegetable on the planet in my humble, non-chef-like opinion, and I like them almost every way possible: baked, fried, mashed, boiled, broiled, roasted, whole, halved, sliced, fat, thin, soft, crisp, chopped, pureed into soup or folded into a delicious potato salad. I like them peeled or not, mostly not because the skins are heavenly and they contain vitamins. The only way I don't like potatoes is raw, but if I found the right recipe, that would change.

My favorite dishes, not in any particular order of preference are:

baked potatoes
twice-baked potatoes
potato skins
rosemary potatoes
thinly sliced and fried potatoes, just this side of crispy enough to be a chip
hash browns
scalloped potatoes
skinny French (not) fries
lattice potatoes,
French potato soup and
homemade potato salad

I'm learning my French cookery limits and boundaries, including the herbs (herbes!) that are used and not used in French recipes. If rosemary potatoes appear in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that will be my recipe of choice for today. Rosemary goes with potatoes like brown goes with rice...just a natural, harmonious relationship.

When I became a vegetarian, suddenly my eyes opened to the many, many kinds of veggies that are often overlooked or dismissed because of all the focus on meat in this meat-centered culture. It's really sad! Some carnivores (not my foodie roommates) miss out on so much, and they ask me what I eat! HA! With regard to potatoes, I have been introduced to many different varieties and colors. Most recently I have focused on Yukon golds, purple potatoes and the little fingerlings that come in all different colors in their pretty mesh bags.

(I just realized that the above paragraph should have been put in another place in this entry, but the application won't allow me to cut and paste. :( I hope you understand! Maybe next time I can write my blog in my word processor and paste the whole corrected thing into this window later. That'll show 'em!)

Have a great Sunday and I'll post about my asparagus and potatoes after the experiment is completed. Any bets on whether or not I'll get them both done with a new sauce for asparagus? Hmmmm...that's a challenge, even with my school work done and out of the way.

Peace and Good Food,

Bev

Would Julie or Julia Use A1? :)

I wonder.

Julia doesn't use anything pre-made. She has her own sauce recipes, at least in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie probably has some A1 in her kitchen somewhere, even though she wouldn't use it in these recipes.

So, since A1 is advertised here on my vegetarian/vegan blog site, let's have some fun. The slogan is "Sing for your Beef". Send me a veggie or cruelty-free slogan, something else to which we could add A1. Sing for your ______? (Keep it clean.) :)

Post your idea on the comment section.

Peace,
Bev

A Note on Julie

The longer I work on this blog and my sporadic attempts at the veganization of selected Julie Child recipes, the bigger and bigger my respect grows for Julie. It's unfathomable that someone would undertake the duplication of 500 plus detailed Julia recipes in 365 days, when I can only average two or three a week!

Granted, Julie was already a wonderful cook, which I'm not. Also, Julie's job was truly a day job. Instead of staying after school, grading, planning and directing drama productions, she spent her after-work hours going to the store to buy her ingredients and getting home to the recipe. She had an amazing amount of emotional stress on her post 9/11-related day job, she set a huge goal for herself and met it with flying colors.

If I can create one or two fabulous vegan recipes per week this school year, I'll be happy!

It really bites that even after completing that monumental task, Julia misunderstood Julie's project and Julie never got to meet her. What a bummer.

Vegan Lemon Butter for Julie and Julia

Yesterday was the day to attempt the vegan dipping sauce for artichokes! I followed Julia's non-vegan recipe from my last post, but I used olive oil with a pinch of garlic in place of the butter.

It turned out very well. One challenge was that I didn't have quite enough lemon to fill the 1/4 cup, so I topped it off with fresh lime juice. It was good, but not the authentic taste of the pure lemon "butter".

BIG TIP: It's important not to let the lemon juice boil down to less than a tablespoon before adding the oil. I accidentally did that yesterday and it was SO POTENT that it nearly shriveled the entire lower portion of my face. Good flavor though! :) It's really important to keep an eye on the lemon juice as it's boiling down; I'm sure that is what made it so much stronger than before.

My Taurus cook/foodie/roomie, Dori suggested that this vegan sauce would be great for asparagus, so that is what I'm going to try later today. If I get ambitious, I'll try another of Julia's sauces also.

Asparagus is one of my very favorite veggies, so I'm really looking forward to it. Julia has a lot of suggestions for picking out the right bundle. There's nothing a whole lot sadder than biting into a beautiful piece of asparagus and getting a mouthful of tree bark instead.

Humor note: Notice how "adsense" chose to put A1 Steak Sauce under this blog! HA! "Sing for your beef"? :) What else could we sing for instead? Send me your ideas! :)

What Would Julie and Julia Do?

What would the two J's do if they had just taught all day and didn't have what they wanted to make for dinner? Probably not what I'm doing. :) Sitting here in a coffeehouse eating a bagel and drinking ice water. :)

So the artichoke experiment went really well as far as the cooking and the taste go. I chose against my own preferences, not to make the vegan dipping sauce, but I made the traditional one, the lemon butter, and my roommates loved it. They lapped it up like hungry puppies. It basically consists of exactly what Julia's recipe calls for: butter, salt, white pepper and lemon juice.

Ingredients:

1/4 of a cup of lemon juice
1/8 tsp salt
dash of white pepper

1 stick of butter cut into 8 pieces.

-Boil the lemon juice, with salt and pepper down to only on tablespoon.

-Remove from heat.
-Add two pieces of butter and whisk until its all melted.
-Add the rest of the butter and whisk until it is all melted.

Use this as a dipping sauce for the artichokes.

In the next two days I'm going to make a vegan equivalent and tell you about it. I know it will be awesome!

Look for me to switch gears to raw in the near future!

Peace,
Bev

Artichokes for Julie and Julia

After a crazy day yesterday, I headed home at about 6. I stopped to pick up some artichokes and that was a feat for me. I was tired and didn't want to cook anything or even stop at the store! I'm not a cook, really, mind you. In fact I have thought of getting Peg Bracken's The I Hate to Cook Book and veg-ing up those recipes for this blog in a counter-reaction to the many steps involved in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I even went so far as to look up Peg's recipes and book experts online. I wasn't that impressed with the ingredients and the style, so to speak, though, so back to Julia.


On Sunday night I learned how to cut and prepare the artichokes for cooking. I reviewed it when I got home last night and I actually had fun snapping, cutting and trimming. I'm learning more about preparation for cooking than I ever thought was possible. All those little details! They're so important! Here are some things I learned about artichokes:

Cut off the stems.

Pull off the very bottom leaves along the base so that the artichoke can stand on its base in the water. (Yeah, right...artichokes don't like to sit in the water any more than Styrofoam does!) :)

Lay each artichoke on its side and chop off about the top 3/4 of an inch...giving it a flat top!

Wash them well (letting water run between the leaves).

Rub the cut portions of the artichoke with real lemon juice.

Put them into a basin full of cold water with 1 Tbsp. of vinegar per quart of water.



I did all that. Then I put them into boiling water with 1/2 lemon to preserve color, and let them boil for about 45 minutes.

Artichokes are done when you can pull off a leaf easily and the meat of the leaf is tender.

The little suckers didn't want to stay under the water, so I put a veggie steamer on top of them to hold them down!

They turned out beautifully. I was very happy and proud. I'm a totally novice 'fancy' cook, if you catch my drift. I can sling all kinds of things together and get really creative in the kitchen, when the mood strikes, and it has over the years...but I only like to do it when I have time. So making something from a Julia Child cookbook is a major thing for me.


I will tell you about the dipping sauce I made for them tomorrow! That's a long story and I'm ready to call it a day!



Peace,

Beverly

Julie and Julia 8/18 Corrected

I grabbed Mastering the Art of French Cooking Sunday night and began combing through the vegetable pages, most of which Julia suggests serving with meat, or garnishing with meat products of some sort. In between all that, though, are some good recipes for vegetables and a ton of information on how to prepare them. Before that, however, a reversion to my last blog about sauteed mushrooms.

One important tip regarding sauteing any vegetable: the veggies to be sauteed must be completely DRY, otherwise the water creates an effect that keeps the flavor from being sealed in and the veggies are not nearly as tasty. Also the reason for the super hot oil (and the importance of the sizzle sound as the veggies hit the oil) is that without it, the veggies are steamed rather than sauteed.

I'm learning so much, and the funny thing is, folks, I'm not even a "cook" by my own definition...certainly not like Julie.

Back to today:

I was going to tell you all about the preparation of artichokes today, but having witnessed a nasty accident on the road yesterday, I didn't feel like dealing with it, so I've postponed it until later today. I DID learn how to trim the tips of the leaves, how to get rid of the stem and how to remove the choke from the center of the artichoke, and that is a major accomplishment. The day before that, I would have just thrown the artichoke into the boiling water not thinking about any of the preparation. :)

More about the artichoke later. I'm looking forward to it and I hope you like artichokes.

Peace.

For Julie and Julia: Vegan Sausages and Mushrooms

Between 2 and 4 AM this morning, I woke up, tossing and turning, too awake to sleep and too tired to get up. (Has that ever happened to you?) During that restless time it dawned on me that I hadn't blogged yesterday! In the midst of actually cooking something, getting ready for a dinner party and submitting this blog for a space on the foodie blog roll, I totally forgot to write. I feel like I've broken a chain letter, or turned off the movie during the critical exposition phase, which is funny, because this blog is so new that it has no readers, at least no responders. I continue to believe that if I prepare this 'party', someone will attend. :)

This morning I heard a radio talk show host offer up a great recipe for happiness: "List five things you're grateful for, once a week." It was good to be reminded of that, because it's something I've tried to do on a daily basis ever since I watched The Secret for the first time three years ago. I thought this exercise would weave itself beautifully into this blog about food this morning, so here are five things I'm grateful for: 1) a brain to think up what to say here, 2) a computer on which to write those thoughts, 3) this blog space that provides the forum in which to express myself, 4) the film that inspired me to write this and 5) the money, food and cookbooks that will help me carry out this experiment and these reflections.

Now as for yesterday:

My roommate, Dori, gave a dinner party for four friends and she graciously invited our other roommate Dianne and me to join them. Being a typical Taurus, Dori loves to cook more than Julia Child or any chef on The Food Network; she would much rather eat at home, and she would much rather cook for me and my friends than to see us go out to a restaurant. I'm not used to such a person, but it's certainly a treat. For appetizers, Dori served chips and her homemade ceviche, guacamole and salsa. She made a wonderful corn and black bean salad, black bean soup and for the carnivores, a huge plate full of grilled steak and shrimp to fold into tortillas with her homemade salsa and guacamole.

As for me? I made my first vegan main dish, which two of the guests tried...and really liked! :) YEAH!

Variation on Julia Child's recipe for Sauteed Mushrooms with Vegan Mexican Chipotle Sausage:

1/2 pound of chopped mushrooms
3 Tbsp. olive oil
a pinch of minced fresh garlic (This is added when using olive oil to replace butter.)

2 Tbsp. chopped green onion

1 1/2 Tbsp. chopped parsley
1 Tbsp. chopped cilantro

(Parsley and cilantro are excellent detoxing agents for the body; they absorb and remove toxic metals!)

Saute the mushrooms for about three minutes, then add the green onions and saute for two more minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in the parsley and cilantro.

Julia's Sauteing Tips:

As Julie learns in the film, in order to saute correctly, you have to make sure the mushrooms are flat, not crowded in the pan. Otherwise they don't brown evenly.
The oil has to be really hot, almost smoking, before you add the mushrooms; they must sizzle when they hit the oil. If they don't sizzle, remove them from the pan immediately until the oil is hot enough. I tested a couple of mushrooms at a time.

Vegan Mexican Chipotle Sausage

2 vegan Mexican chipotle sausages, removed from their casing and chopped
1 Tbsp. oil
1/2 cup red cooking wine

There is not even one recipe for sauteed sausages in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. So, here's what I would do, and did:

Follow the instructions for sauteing except for the time. TIP! Plant-based foods require little to no cooking; they are already cooked, so all you have to do with them is heat them. If you overcook them, you will see what Mr. Goodyear experienced when he tried heating rubber for the first time: it will turn into something hard enough to make tires.

After thoroughly heated, add cooking wine to the sausages and stir until the wine is absorbed.

Stir in the sauteed mushrooms and serve.

There's probably a better way to do this than to saute the mushrooms and sausages separately, but they turned out fairly well and, as I said, the meat-eaters that tried them really liked them. My only complaint is that I may have cooked the sausages a bit too long; they were a wee bit dry, and I don't think they came out of the casing that way.

SO, there it is, my first attempt at an actual Julia Child vegan hybrid.

Have a wonderful day, and should you want to try this recipe, you can get the vegan sausages at many different natural food stores and sometimes even at major grocery stores.

Julie and Julia Day 5

I decided against the Brussels sprouts until I can get an actual cheese alternative that I can honestly promote. Whole Foods doesn't sell it. And I don't want to offer up a recipe for which the cheese must be mail-ordered from Scotland.

So, while at Whole Foods last night, I bought some amazing looking vegan sausages and some crimini mushrooms, which I will throw down with onions, peppers, olive oil and garlic. I will let you know how it turns out.

Speaking of olive oil, I have heard that in order to be a worthy substitute for the butter flavor, a dash of garlic must be added. My questions are: how much of a dash of garlic? What kind of garlic? Fresh? Bottled? Natural garlic spray?

I'm still awaiting a reply from the vegan blogger who made the claim.

Well, it's been five days and I still haven't cooked anything, but I have great plans...not bad for someone who one week ago didn't even want to think about cooking, much less experimenting and blogging about it!

Wait until you get my recipe for brownies with mint frosting!

Have a great weekend and stay tuned!

Peace...to all sentient beings.

Julie and Julia Day 3

I'm sitting here thinking of going to the vegetarian restaurant, Zephyr, on 4th Street in Long Beach. Maybe that will be an inspiration. Right now I feel a case of blogger's block.

This morning my comic mind has mulled over images of recipes from the 'white trash' cookbook, and tips from the 70's book, "How to Eat Like a Child". Was that where I heard "Always eat your peas with a knife, but roll it in molasses first to keep them from rolling off."?

From there my thoughts moved on to vegan cheeses. Cheese is the hardest thing to make vegan and tasty as well as healthy. I think I may have stumbled onto one: Sheese. The difficulty is that Sheese is made in Scotland, and not readily available here in the U.S. I'll check out Whole Foods later and see.

Why the thoughts of vegan cheese? I want to attempt Amy Adams' favorite Julia Child recipe: baked Brussels sprouts with cheese. Sounds good to me even if many people cringe at the thought of Brussels sprouts. (I personally cringe more at the thought of eating something that once walked or flew.) It seems to me a person could substitute the sprouts for broccoli or any other wonderful veggie...although the cooking times would vary.

Here's a question to ponder: how long was it before that butter Julie left for Julia started melting and running down the shelf and the walls of that exhibit?

I've decided I like Meryl Streep better than Julia Child. Don't think Meryl would be as judgmental about vegetarians and vegans.

I'll get back to you tomorrow on that recipe.

Julie and Julia Day 2

I'm still mulling over my vegetarian response to this wonderful foodie film...in between surges of ire regarding disrupters of town hall discussions about the deplorable shape of this country's health care system. I'm a teacher and I have much better control over my hormone-raging, ADD teenagers than the Senators seem to be able to gain over these terrorized, terrified and terribly misinformed citizens.

I wonder if I can channel that frustration I feel into something creative. Maybe a salad or a batch of chocolate mint brownies. I wonder which of those two would be the healthier choice. :) Then again, maybe I could pour out my soul in a new song. Haven't written one in a long time.

But back to Julie and Julia. I think the last option from yesterday's blog is the best so far: try to convert certain Julia recipes into a vegetarian equivalent..no easy task, but a worthy one. I'll look at Julia's book, owned and used by my two carnivorous foodie roommates. I'll choose a recipe and begin tomorrow.

Until then...peace and good health to all sentient beings.

Julie and Julia

Julie and Julia. It was a great movie. The acting was wonderful, and who wouldn't expect that from such professionals as Amy Adams and the incomparable Meryl Streep?

How could I, a vegetarian and winged/four-legged rights advocate, enjoy all these animal-flesh-and-product-ridden frames of film?

The color was gorgeous: vivid shots of Julie's dark New York flat and tiny kitchen juxtaposed against those of Julia Child's and the Cordon Bleu in 1949 Paris, glimpses of simmering stews and spinning sauces. The complete absorption into the passion for cooking portrayed by the film divas was infectious.

Those factors got me past the de-boning of the duck, the hacking and the boiling of live lobsters...much like the happy scenes get me past the bloody, violent ones in action or war films.

Julie adores cooking...and Julia Child. She challenges herself to a one-year experiment: to prepare every one of Julia Child's recipes...500 plus...and blog about them..

Ok, so this already sounds like an attempt at a movie review. It isn't. These are simply my vegetarian thoughts and my vegetarian reaction to this colorful food film...because not one of Julia Child's recipes featured in the film was vegan. Everything had at least one animal product in it, usually butter. There was reference to a cucumber dish, but unless I missed something (and I didn't get up to use the facilities) there was no shot of such a prep, not even a frame of a cucumber.

Julia Child was said to have "wondered if vegetarians ever really enjoyed a meal". Oh, Julia..! Of course we have enjoyed our meals! You obviously never tasted what I would call a 'real' vegetarian meal, any more than you actually read Julie's blog. :)

Did you ever, ever taste olive oil? Sesame oil? Tahini? Orange bean curd? Teriaki tempeh? Roasted corn without butter? Not every vegetarian or vegan dish is bland. Some vegetarian and vegan cooks actually do a good job, and now there are vegetarian, raw and vegan gourmet restaurants springing up all over the place. So someone SOMEWHERE, must be enjoying non-animal-derived food.

While not judging anyone here, Julia or Julie, I really want to accept the challenge to address this issue. Here are some possiblities:

• Do what Julie did, only the vegetarian version. Yeah right.


• Review vegan, raw and vegetarian restaurants from time to time, and blog about them. Maybe...starting with Zephyr in Long Beach.


• Experiment with vegetarian alternatives to some of Julia's most popular recipes, and blog about that experience. Cooking is all about chemistry, so this would be a challenge. Changing the chemical components of the animal dishes to non-animal dishes. This would be especially tricky with recipes involving cow cream and butter. I know this just from changing the milk from whole to non-fat in a quiche recipe once. :)

I'll think about more ideas and blog about them tomorrow. Meanwhile...what is my issue here? Why do I feel I might want to take this on? Because I truly believe it's possible to enjoy life and to relish food in a cruelty-free way...and if I can prove that point...people will have a scrumptious option while fewer animals fall victim to 'life is a bitch and then you die'.

Until tomorrow...peace.