Vegan Meals for March 12, 2004

Friday. Walk. Mass. Rollos.
B: bagel, cream cheese, and tomatoes with coffee (cream cheese makes that not-vegan, but vegetarian)
L:Kashi with soy milk and a banana
D:Coucous Pine Nut and Veggie Salad, Water with Pomegranate Syrup

Sunday February 29, 2004: We Celebrate the Resurrection

Christians do not fast on Sundays, even in Lent, because every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection

I went out after 8:30 Mass at Holy Cross with the 70+ group that I like. I ordered steak, hashbrowns with veggies, toast, coffee.
Dispatched the huge plate of food post haste. Sigh.

For some reason people started talking about their favorite ways to eat eggplant. Most of them are Italian, so eggplant is a favored
vegetable (unlike in the Irish neighborhoods where I grew up). One man, Al (?), said he grills slices of the eggplant from his garden, then
he puts a slice of provolone on top of one slice of eggplant, and tops it with another slice of eggplant, and serves them as hors d'oevres.
Sounds good. Another woman described grilling eggplant, then rolling it up with proscuito, and serving it with a nice tomato sauce.
Everyone is looking for ways to cook it without frying, since it soaks up so much oil. One of the several Roses said she boils it. That
doesn't sound bad either.

I'd talked with my foodie friend marshafromSF about eggplant when we were out to eat at Liverpool Lil's in the City last Sunday. I told her
that every recipe I had ever seen said to salt eggplant to get the bitterness out. When a smooth talking guy at Sun who prided himself on
his gourmet proclivities told me he made ratatouille at the San Francisco Culinary Institute, I asked him if they salted the eggplant ahead of
time, and when he said "No" my opinion of the culinary institute dropped precipitously. Marcia said she never salts eggplant either, but she
uses Chinese or Japanese, and they are small and probably don't get bitter. She cooks the sliced eggplant on a griddle with raised ribs that
have been ever so slightly coated with olive oil. The eggplant slices don't stick that way, and she gives them another brush of olive oil to
flavor them before serving. I told Al at breakfast how Marcia had said that the eggplant gets nice black grill marks from the griddle, and
then I realized, that's the same effect you get when you grill them. That's right! he said.

The gang from Holy Cross also debated the topic of salting ahead of time. Everyone has heard of it, but nobody said they did it. "I've never
had a problem with bitterness," seems to be the consensus.

The SF foodies don't have anything over the gourmandizing of these Italians. Probably could take a few lessons from them

Monday March 1: Vegan Meals for Day 6

B: Kashi, soy milk, and banana
L: Hummus and rice cakes, orange, pumpkin seeds, trail mix w/chocolate chips.
Snack: Banana.
D: I forget.

Meeting a Fellow Christian Blogger

Meeting a Fellow Christian Blogger

Around 2/27/03 Norma wrote:

I came across your blog on Christian fasting during Lent. I had no idea I was following a church suggestion. My husband and I always have a Friday night date--usually the same pub type restaurant, spending rarely more than $25, and home by 6:30 p.m. (big party folk). A couple of weeks ago I suggested we not go out during Lent, but instead have friends over for soup and salad. We would donate $125 to a medical mission on the west side of town. As it turns out, I'm serving broccoli soup and fresh fruit, and apple pie. Hadn't intended it to be meatless, but thought about it when I read your blog.

Norma
http://uglyacronym.blogspot.com
http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roseanne Sullivan"
To: "Norma"
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 6:13 PM
Subject: Christian fasting

Hi Norma,

I'm glad to see that someone is reading my blog ;-) But I'm delighted that you had the great idea to eat more simply on Fridays during Lent and give the money to a good cause. Must be the Holy Spirit working in your good heart.

If you're Catholic you might want to know that abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent is mandatory, with a fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Your making today's meal meatless might be the Holy Spirit at work again!

I read some of your collecting my thoughts blog. Liked your analysis about how unobjective reporting is. Bush attacks but Kerry simply says something. Bah!

Couldn't bring up the other blog for some reason. I'll try some other time.

It's good to "meet" you.

Take care,

Roseanne

Norma wrote:
>
> Good morning Roseanne,

We are Lutherans, and our "soup, salad and saints" dinner went well and we
became much better acquainted (we are all members of the same church, http://www.ualc.org. As it turned out one person is virtually a vegetarian so even the menu was right. Next week, potato soup! An one was a Sullivan.

My religious blog is http://uglyacronym.blogspot.com and I'm not sure why you couldn't get in. Occasionally blogger misfires, but since I use the free service, I can't complain.

I see you have additional URLs for your writings. Is that your profession?

Norma



----- Original Message -----
To: "Norma"
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 3:56 PM
Subject: Re: Christian fasting

Hi Norma,

Glad your "soup, salad, and saints" dinner went well. Wonder if I'm remotely related to the Sullivan at your dinner. My branch settled near Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Your dinner and the resulting closer connections reminds me of the verse about how "people will know you belong to Him by how you love one another." A lot of Christians don't take the community part of Christianity enough. We are a family of God's children, brothers and sisters in Christ, and we shouldn't remain just a bunch of strangers who inhabit a bunch of pews for a few hours every week. Good for you.

Besides, when we have other people over for dinner, we are entertaining Christ.

Isn't that great that your self-denial already brought many good fruits?

I figured out that your uglyacroymn blog didn't display in an ancient version of Netscape that I was had to use because it was the only version supported by the IT group at Sun Microsystems, which is the company from which I was laid off recently. I just downloaded Netscape 7 yesterday and am trying to switch over. It downloads my mail slower than Netscape 4.79 so I'm reluctant to switch.

Thanks for asking about my writing.

I have been a technical writer for 20 years. All of my life I was preparing myself to be a creative writer. I studied journalism and I got an M.A. in creative writing. Then I became a technical writer because it paid well, and I had two small children to support after a divorce. But I still kept writing
other things.

Lately I've been writing a lot about Catholic issues because I am in the second year of a three year program at San Jose's Institute for Leadership in Ministry, and I have to write papers about such topics as "Death, Burial, and Resurrection with Christ During Baptism." I get really into them, and I write 16 pages when the assigned page length is only 3. Some of my articles have gotten published in small newspapers, and I'm trying to publish more.

After I got my notification of termination, I got about 6 months combined notification and severance pay so I've been looking at the termination as a gift
from God. I've been writing a lot and trying to get my home office set up so I can freelance and maybe get started with my creative writing again.

The writing website was encouraged by my son. My son said that I should put what I write online, and he set up the first simple page layout for me.

The web site already helped me get a freelance writing gig. The editor asked for writing samples, and I sent him to my website. He said he was pleased, and
responded positively to my query about an article, which I subsequently wrote for him.

Now I've got an assignment to write about a "Sacred Space" competition whose entries are on display at San Francisco's Presidio, so that's interesting, and they pay pretty well.

So the short answer is, yes writing is my profession, but right now unemployment is most of my income.

I'm glad to hear again from you. I'll check out your blogs some more as I have time.

Wishing you all of God's best blessings.

Roseanne


Subject: Re: Writing and blogging
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 19:40:02 -0500
From: "Norma"

Dear Roseanne,

Thanks for the update on your writing.


I love to write, which is why I have 3 blogs. However, I'm retired from a profession I loved (librarianship), so now I am the richest person in the world--I have time. All the verbs we use with money we use with time. I look forward to reading more, and when you are famous, I can say I knew you when! I am "published," but for the most part it is in my professional journals.

Norma

Saturday February 28: Vegan Meals for Day 4

B:  hashbrowns with sauteed tomatoes, mushrooms, green peppers, and onion. English muffin.
Most restaurants around here are willing to substitute omelette veggies for eggs when they find out I don't eat eggs. I invented this recipe at Baker's Square, and they make it for me and others now all the time and charge less than $3.
L:  fresh salsa, Fritos; leftover eggplant stir fry and rice.
D:   Kashi cereal, soy milk, banana, followed by an assortment of roasted root vegetables from the deli at Nob Hill grocery: potatoes, onions, carrots, squash.

Eggplant Stir Fry Version of the Day

I haven't settled on one favorite eggplant stir fry recipe, so I searched the Internet tonight for inspiration on how to cook the American eggplant I bought yesterday at Pak n Save. One recipe I googled had this note: Armineans measure the value of a woman by how many ways she can cook eggplant. Seems reasonable to me.

I still didn't know why they call it eggplant, so I went looking.

The following explanation of all the names for eggplant is from a site called: World Wide Words where "Michael Quinian writes about international English from a British viewpoint." The full discussion of the names for eggplant around the world is marvelously erudite. Here is the reason for the name used in English:

The name of eggplant was given it by Europeans in the middle of the eighteenth century because the variety they knew had fruits that were the shape and size of goose eggs. That variety also had fruits that are a whitish or yellowish colour rather than the wine purple that is more familiar to us nowadays. So the sort they knew really did look as though it had fruits like eggs.

Incidentally, Pak n Save is a discount grocery near where I live now in San Jose. Last night I went there because I was shopping nearby at Radio Shack. I found Pak n Save prices were twice as expensive as the other stores where I usually shop. 99 cents for a cucumber, $1.69 for lettuce, 99 cents for a bunch of green onions, 99 cents for parsley, for Pete's sake. In what sense is that a discount store? In all other senses except pricing it meets the basic criteria: big, ugly, impersonal, you load and bag your own groceries. You've got to wonder what brings people there. Maybe it's the mega size packages of stuff I never buy that I saw sitting around in large crates.

My medium-sized eggplant cost $1.99.

I go into the beautiful Nob Hill/Raley's in Milpitas, they take my groceries out of the cart, scan, bag them, carry my bags to my car, and even there I've never paid 99 cents for a cucumber or a bunch of green onions, or parsley.

Memoir alert: A quick review of my life with the humble eggplant (also see the Greek recipe for Eggplant, Tomato, Potato Stew recipe I wrote in another posting in this blog).

We never had eggplant when I was growing up. I found and cooked one eggplant recipe in the Italian cookbook I went out and bought when I had a crush on an Italian boy, and so I had my first taste of eggplant at 16 years of age, all for the love of Eddie Bertucci.

In the sub shops in Massachusetts, you can get eggplant subs. I didn't used to get that kind of sub much in my youth (but I do now when I'm back in Massachusetts since eggplant has become one of my favorite foods). What you get in the sub is essentially eggplant parmesan. Too cheesy for me.

My friend Gerry Sherman took me to a Greek restaurant in Cambridge Mass once where we had Moussaka, which includes eggplant and meat and a white sauce. I tried making it later, when I was cooking up a storm living with George in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district in the 60s, but it was too much trouble to be one of my normal set of recipes I use all the time.

In the Haight hippy rag, I found an article for ratatouille, a Provençal vegetable ragout with eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions and tomatoes, that seemed extremely exotic to me. Still have the yellowed clipping in my recipe box. I cooked it often over the years, until ratatouille stopped appealing to me. I can still hear the way Julia Child said ratatouille on her cooking show, but I can't think of a way to duplicate it in writing. Try saying Ra Ta Two Ee with an excited, fulsome, high pitched soprano voice, with a nasal accent, and don't forget to r-r-r-oll the R.

If you cook all the ingredients in ratatouille with a higher proportion of tomatoes, you have a great spaghetti sauce, which I've made often.

Around here in San Jose, with all the authentic Chinese restaurants, you can get stir fried eggplant any time you want. The best I ever had was made by Elizabeth Stanley. Her husband Jim was an editor where I worked in Saint Paul, and the family moved out to Livermore about six months after I came here, after the St. Paul company closed. They had me over to their house, and Elizabeth, who is from Taiwan, made a delicious version using Chinese eggplant, garlic and ginger that I've tried unsuccessfully to duplicate many times since then. Sun's Newark Cafe del Sol cafeteria served eggplant in its Chinese food service line, but they always cut the chunks too big and don't cook it long enough.

Note: American eggplants are large. Chinese and Japanese eggplants are not quite so deep purple, and smaller than a cucumber.

This is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
+ meatless
+ vegan
+ vegan without olive oil (use another kind of oil)

Eggplant Stir Fry Version of the Day

2 tablespoons of mixed toasted sesame oil and corn (or other bland) oil

2 teaspoons chinese chili garlic sauce (Could use hot peppers and minced garlic) or to taste

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 eggplant (could use 4 small Chinese or Japanese eggplants) cut into pieces the same size as you would cut potatoes for boiling

1 cup red, green, yellow, or a mix of peppers (frozen or fresh ) cut about the same size as the eggplant pieces

1 cup water

1 generous splash of sake or dry white wine

Heat the oil in a wok, add the chili garlic sauce and salt and stir.

Add the egpplant and peppers and stir fry until almost tender. Pour water and splash the wine over the mixture, stir again, cover, and let simmer for 5 or so minutes more.

Serve with rice.

Friday February 27: Vegan Meals for Day 3

B:  Toast with peanut butter, an orange from Carlos Fernandez tree, coffee

L:   12 Veggie Soup, Whole Wheat Tortilla heated rolled around heated Vegetarian Refried Beans and Salsa Fresca (Mexicana Mild Fresh Salsa)

D:   Eggplant Stir Fry and Rice, another orange

Thursday February 26: Vegan Meals for Day 2

B:  Polenta and Tomato Sauce with Beans, Corn and Mushrooms

L:   12 Veggie Soup

D:   More Polenta and Tomato Sauce

Twelve Veggie Soup

I used to meet with a RENEW faith-sharing group at Maggie and George Eckenroth's house in N.E. Minneapolis. One evening we followed a suggestion in the RENEW materials and held a Lenten soup supper.

Since hardly any Catholics realize that Lenten fasts and abstinence are still encouraged, most Catholics are at a loss to know what to do during Lent.

Eating one simple meal of soup during Lent and donating the savings to the poor is sometimes practiced with the ideal of changing the focus from "giving up things" to helping others.

We make do with less so that others might have more.

On this theme, I've seen Lenten soup dinners advertised at the Basilica of St. Mary's in Minneapolis. But why stop with one meal?

Here is the recipe for the soup I brought to the Eckenroth's in March 1989. I still have it on an index card written in now-smeared purple ink. I don't remember where I got the recipe. I do remember that George liked the soup so much that Maggie asked me for the recipe. Hope you like it too.

This is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
   + meatless
   + vegan
   + vegan without olive oil (use another kind of oil)

Twelve Veggie Soup
Prepare the following vegetables by cutting them into small pieces
about the same size.

2 medium zucchini
1 small onion
1 medium head cauliflower
1 medium bunch brocolli
4 medium carrots
1 1/2 cup corn
1 small head cabbage
4 large tomatoes (or use a large can)
1 small bunch celery
6 large mushrooms

Put the above veggies in a large pot with the following
ingredients:

1 1/2 cup peas
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons butter or oil (vegans use oil)
1 cup barley
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon sage
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon sage
Water or broth to cover.

Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to simmer the soup
for about an hour, until the vegetables are crisp tender.

Freeze this to eat during the weeks of Lent if you don't use it all
at once. I put three quarts of the soup in glass canning jars into the freezer.

The Disappearance of the Ash Wednesday Blog, and Its Return with Much Added and Much Taken Away

Starting before 5 this morning, I wrote for a half hour about the Ash Wednesday Mass and imposition of ashes, the tiredness and sadness that comes with fasting, what I ate, why I was sad, and how prayer heals. Then I hit the space key and it all disappeared. Sigh!

What follows is a whole new set of ideas.

This quote the Morning Prayer for Ash Wednesday summarizes part of what a fast can help us to do:

May we abstain from what we do not really need and help our brothers who are in distress.

Eating a vegan diet, we abstain from foodstuffs made from animals or fish or foul or anything made from them (such as Jello, which is made from beef hooves, and chicken broth, which is made from chicken, of course). So eating a vegan diet could be seen as a type of fast in which we abstain from what we do not really need. We do not need meat or any other flesh to live healthy lives or to get our required amounts of protein.

Many more resources go into the production of meat than go into the production of an equivalent amount of non-meat protein. If we don't eat flesh, does that alievate other people's hunger? I think it does, but I have to do some more research on the global effects of such a change in diet. (Eat less locally so others can eat more globally, does that really work?)

What I need to do is answer the question of whether simply eating lower on the food chain actually benefits anyone except myself--in my waistline and my pocketbook.

Even if we cannot establish any direct connection between our underconsumption and someone else's ability to get food, we are able to create that direct connection by giving alms. Freeing up our resources by underconsumption lets us live on less money, and it therefore allows us to be more generous and gracious with our surplus, as God is generous and gracious.

The Pope said these thing about Lenten practices at his Ash Wednesday audience:

The Church has always indicated some useful means to advance on this path [to holiness]. First of all, humble and docile adherence to the will of God accompanied by incessant prayer; the penitential forms that are typical of the Christian tradition, such as abstinence, fasting, mortification and self-denial even of goods that are legitimate in themselves; concrete gestures of acceptance in relating to one's neighbor, which today's page of the Gospel evokes with the word "alms." All this is proposed again with greater intensity during the Lenten period, which represents, in this connection, an "intense time" of spiritual training and of generous service to brothers.

Pope John Paul II introduced the above practices as means to get holy. Will everyone who wants to get holy raise her or his hand? Holiness doesn't mean self-righteousness. For those of us who hunger and thirst for righteousness Lenten practices can help get us in shape spiritually. To paraphrase what the Pope said, here is what we have to do:

Live in God's will (not in sin)
Pray always (which helps us with the first requirement)
Abstain from what we don't need
Fast
Humble ourselves (mortification)
Say no to self-will and selfish pursuits even to things that are good that might distract us from God
Be generous and give alms (which the Pope called "gestures of acceptance in relating to one's neighbor")

Lent is one of the special times to practice these things that bring us to holiness, because holiness is expected of every Christian. Lent is our boot camp for our life during the rest of the liturgical year.

Ash Wednesday 2/25/04: Vegan Meals for Day 1

B: Multi-seed multi-grain bread, buttered. Coffee.
The bread is longer than the slots in my old toaster, so I have to toast one end and then turn the piece around to toast the other end. I forgot that I wasn't going to use butter during my vegan fast. The little poppy seeds are the best part of that bread, and they tasted great with the butter. But goodbye to that combination for a while.

Bread: I think the bread I used is called a Seeded Pillow and it's made by Golden Sheaf Bakery. I can't tell for sure because the only label is a free floating piece of paper and it must have fallen out of the bag. I buy pre-sliced bread and put bread and tortillas in the freezer and peel off pieces as I need them. I toast them to defrost them, so the heat brings out the flavor at the same time. If I leave bread in the refrigerator or on the counter it gets mouldy before I use it.

Finding vegan bread:  Most American bread is made with milk (not to mention sugar). You have to read the labels. The only bread that is made milk-free consistently by just about every company is light rye (also called Jewish Rye). I love Golden Sheaf bread because it has the only four ingredients that belong in a plain bread: flour, water, salt, and yeast. Their Italian bread is wonderful. I can only find this brand in one store: Nob Hill/Raley's in Milpitas on Jacklin Road.

L: One and a quarter cups of the 12 Veggie Soup (see recipe) I made last week and froze in quart canning jars. One banana.

D: Polenta and Tomato Sauce with Bean, Corn and Mushrooms
I used the only kind of prepared pasta sauce I can stand. It's by Mario Batali. The version is used is Sugo Finocchiato Tomato Sauce with Sweet Garlic and Toasted Fennel. Trader Joe's is the only place I've been able to find Mario's brand. It contains imported plum tomatoes, onions, garlic, wine, extra virgin olive oil, carrots, fennel, thyme and salt. Note the happy absence of tomato paste. To the sugo finocchiato I added the following ingredients because they appealed to me and I had them in the house:

1 can white cannelli beans, rinsed and drained (for protein complimentarity)
1 can corn drained
5 soaked dried Shitake mushrooms, drained and cut into 1/2 pieces
About a cup of chopped cilantro
A tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil.
A cup of leftover canned tomatoes

The improvised meal above is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
+ meatless
+ vegan

Don't be afraid to experiment. How do you think the great chefs come up with good things? They learn the properties of food and what tastes good together, and they make new combinations based on their knowledge, experience, and hunches.

Chick Pea-Zucchini Curry

This is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
   + meatless
   + vegan
   + vegan without olive oil (use another kind of oil)

8 ounces pasta or cut-up potatoes in their skins or brown rice
2 tablespoons oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 medium-sized zucchini, sliced
1 large tomato, cubed
1 15-ounce can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed or 1 1/2 cups cooked
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 cup water
2 teaspoons curry power, or to taste (I use India-style curry powder, which I buy at Indian grocery stores)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 quarter-sized piece of fresh ginger.

If you are going to use brown rice, start the water boiling about an hour before you want to serve this. If not, start the pasta or potatoes. While pasta or potatoes or rice are cooking, heat the oil in a saucepan and add garlic, onion, mushrooms, and zucchini. Grate the ginger into the dish. Saute until zucchini is tender but not mushy. Stir in remaining ingredients, and cook over medium heat, covered, for about 8 minutes.

When pasta/potatoes/rice is done, drain well and add to the curry. Or serve the curry on
top.

This recipe is adapted from The 15 Minute Vegetarian Gourmet by Paulette Mitchell. New York: Macmillan, 1987. P. 87. See amazon.com for a list of her other cookbooks.

Paulette Mitchell's Vegetarian Recipes are Works of Genius

I think Paulette Mitchell is a genius. I've been using an old edition of her book The 15 Minute Vegetarian Gourmet for years. Every time I cook one of the three or four recipes of hers that I love, I think of writing her a fan letter, but I never have. Her vegan recipes are particularly noteworthy. Most other vegan recipes are usually pretty awful, the exceptions being recipes from places like India where vegetarian dishes are an important part of the cuisine.

Part of Paulette's genius is to use spices and flavorings to make delectable food without using salt. She doesn't even mention that she skips salt.

Now I have to confess that I'm a diehard who isn't satisfied without salt, since I feel that salt marries all the flavors of a dish together in a way that you cannot duplicate without using salt. Except, gasp, if you used monosodium glutamate. So I add salt to her recipes. I would advise you to try them without salt. If you like them without salt, which you probably will, then you'll save yourself the health risks associated with overconsumption of salt.

I just found recently that I'm not the only one who is grateful to Mitchell. She published and won prizes for many more of her cook books. Here is a quote from a year-old link at NBC 11.com:

Paulette Mitchell, a culinary instructor, television personality, and the author of 10 cookbooks, is known internationally for her quick-to-prepare recipes with a gourmet flair. Her 15-Minute Gourmet cookbook series, including Chicken, Vegetarian, and Noodles, was awarded "Best Cookbook Series in the World" at the 2000 World Cookbook Fair in Périgueux, France in November, 2000. Her Complete Soy Cookbook was named "Best Health Cookbook" at the same event in 1998. Paulette's recipes will appear each day in this column, and she will share culinary tips and kitchen wisdom acquired over the years and through her international travels.

The problem with the above quoted text is that it is the only content I can find about Mitchell. Cannot find the daily column. Another link on the page to Paulette Mitchell is a link that brings you back to the same page. I just wrote the following email to the mailto address that came up when I clicked on Paulette Mitchell's name:
Subject:
whatever happened to Paulette Mitchell's column?
Date:
Mon, 16 Feb 2004 14:37:51 -0800
To:
food@ibsys.com

I googled for Paulette Mitchell and found this link:

http://www.nbc11.com/food/1783372/detail.html

It is from January 2003 and promises that Paulette
will have a daily column. But I cannot find any column.
The link on the right to Paulette links back to this
same page.

Any info would be appreciated.

I have been using her 15 minute vegetarian gourment
for years. I think she is a genius. I wanted to
write something about her in my blog about vegan
underconsumption today,
which is why I'm researching her.

Help!

Roseanne

NOTE from 2/26/04: I got a reply. Paulette's writing
is at the site, http://www.nbc11.com/food/ under Recipe
of the Day. Today's is a recipe for Shrimp and Penne Pasta
that she likes to serve to guests.

Pea Soup Andersen's Original Recipe

I have this recipe on a piece of card stock from the Pea Soup Andersen's restaurant down near Modesto, off highway 1 about an hour north of L.A. The recipe doesn't have a copyright mark on it, so I guess it's okay to post it.

This is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
   + meatless
   + vegan
   + vegan without any oil
   + vegan without olive oil

I stopped at Andersen's twice, once when driving to L.A. with Liberty to visit Theresa. Another time I was with my sister Martha, and Sister Maria Juanita Von Bommel. We were on our way to the L.A. Religious Education Congress.

You can order a single bowl for about $7.00 or a bowl with unlimited refills for a few dollars more. I also bought some of their canned soup to send to my aunt and uncle. I love going to places like that, which are sort of roadside shrines of the mobile American.

Every pea soup recipe I've seen in my life had a ham hock or ham bone in it, and so I wouldn't believe until I'd tasted this soup that you can have a perfectly delicious pea soup without any meat in it. This doesn't even have any fat in it! If you feel you would be missing something, you could sautee the onions and celery with 1 teaspoon of oil before adding the other ingredients.

Recipe for 8 bowls of Andersen's Famous Split Pea Soup:

2 quarts of soft water (I'm guessing that it'll work with hard water too)
2 cups of Andersen's Specially Selected Green Split Peas (use any peas!)
1 branch of celery, coarsely chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground thyme
1 pinch of cayenne
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper

Boil hard for 20 minutes, then simmer until peas are tender. Strain through fine sieve and reheat to boiling point.

Mrs. Andersen was from France, and her recipe made a hit with Californians.
"You're in for a treat . . . the one that made Andersen's nationally famous. 276 Avenue of the Flags, Buellton, CA 93427, 1-805-688-5581."

Cabbage with Noodles

This is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
   + meatless
   + vegan (if you serve it with eggless noodles)
   + vegan without olive oil (if you don't use olive oil or egg noodles)

I served this once to my Hungarian friend Martha, and she was nice enough to tell me that it tasted just like the cabbage with noodles her mother used to make. I have to believe that her mother's must have been far superior, because Mrs. Nemesi used homemade square noodles, and I just make this dish with bow tie pasta from the grocery store. Martha also remarked that the shape of the bow tie pasta resembled her mother's square noodles. To enable you to try your hand at the really authentic version I'm including a recipe from a Hungarian cookbook for the noodles. I seem to recall that Martha said her mother served this dish with paprika and a little sour cream.

Did you know that vitamin C was first identified and extracted from paprika? Add some paprika and get your vitamin C today.

3 cups finely chopped savoy cabbage or regular cabbage
1 chopped onion
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil (or butter)
1 teaspoon sugar
Noodles (I use 8 oz. of bowtie noodles)
1 teaspoon pepper

Mix the cabbage with the salt and let stand 30 minutes. Press the cabbage to squeeze out moisture. Heat the fat with the sugar, and then add the cabbage and onions and brown them. Add pepper. Cover after five minutes and cook until soft. In the meantime, cook the noodles in boiling salted water. Drain and rinse with hot water. Combine with the cabbage mixture, and heat.

I haven't tried the noodle recipe. After many attempts, I have found I cannot roll thin pastries and noodles. If I make noodles, I make soft Hungarian noodles called Galuska or Spatzle, which you scrape from a cutting board or drop from a Spatzle press into boiling water.

Noodles
Meteltek

1 1/3 cups sifted flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons water

Mix the flour and salt. Break the egg in the center of the flour, add the water, and mix. Knead thoroughly until the dough is smooth and velvety. Put flour on your hands and shape dough into a loaf. Cover and let stand 15 minutes, to make rolling easier.

On a floured board, roll out the dough tissue-thin. Divide in half if it becomes too large for the board. Slightly dry the sheets. Stack the pastry and cut it into 1 inch squares.

The Art of Hungarian Cooking. Paula Pogany Bennett and Velma R. Clark. New York Doubleday. 1954.

Aduki Rice

This recipe has the same ingredients that were in the first surprisingly delicious aduki beans and rice dish that I tasted, and the result tastes just about the same. (See my other blog entry about Aduki beans.)

3/4 cup aduki beans, washed, picked over, and soaked for
at least 4 hours or overnight
6 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup sesame seeds, toasted in a frying pan until they begin
to pop.
2 cups brown rice, washed and picked over
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup parslety, finely chopped

Drain the soaked beans. Add the water and bring it to a boil.
Add the rice, sesame seeds and sea salt, and bring the mixture
to a boil again. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.

Add parsley, and serve.

Six servings.

Aduki/adzuki/andaka Beans

Aduki/adzuki/andaka beans are small red beans with a distinctive flavor, which are popular in Japan and China. In Japan they are the second most often planted bean crop.

You can buy aduki beans at natural foods stores and Asian markets. This aduki_tips link has more recipes and has suggestions on how to grow your own (since the beans are a little expensive to buy at stores).

Warning: Memoir alert.

I first found out about aduki beans in the 60s when I tasted them in a macrobiotic dish. They are rich, like garbanzo beans, chewy, and satisfying to the mouth and the stomach.

The woman who gave me my first taste of aduki beans dish lived in an old townhouse on Rutland Street, in the South End of Boston in 1965 or so. I found her in the communal kitchen when I was looking for John Ashworth, an artist who rented rooms for $30 or $40 a month to his friends. I was then and still am very curious about "relationships" and how people manage to negotiate being intimate without marriage, and so I asked her a lot of questions when I found out that the woman was cooking for her "old man." [Another explanatory note: in the early days of the sexual revolution, only some of the rules had changed. Men were able to take women on any terms without any responsibilities, but women were still doing the cooking and nurturing.] Yup, I found out, she was staying in his room with him in a totally tenous situation, and paying her own way. But she was still cooking for him. Figures. I couldn't figure out how she could stand that relationship, I really couldn't. It seemed so unequal. If he loved her, why didn't he marry her? If he didn't love her, wasn't that hurtful?

The woman was contentedly enough preparing the food on a round wooden table. She was making aduki beans and brown rice with sesame seeds, and grinding gomasio, a seasoning made up of sesame seeds with salt. She let me sample what she was cooking, and I recall that the food tasted both very satisying and "clean." The clean feeling was not from the absence of chemicals because the food was organically grown. But I think now the clean feeling came from the absence of meat products. It was a minor revelation to me that food could taste deeply satisfying without being heavy in fat.

Macrobiotic Food
Most people, if they have heard of macrobiotics, think the macrobiotic diet consists of only brown rice. But that limitation is only for when a person wants to purify her or his body, as one might want to do, for example, after coming off a lifetime diet of meat and other processed food that has been grown with chemicals. [I'm just reporting, not promoting the brown rice fast. I wouldn't recommend it or any other weird unbalanced diet.] In its most liberal form, the diet excludes many of the foods we eat, but happily aduki beans are allowed.

I didn't start this with any agenda to promote macrobiotic food. But as I write this, I have to say I'm coming to the realization that I really enjoy eating macrobiotic food. One of my many theories is that when I crave something, my body really needs whatever it is that I'm craving.

Beets are one example. I love beets. I always heap them on my plate in a salad bar. When I encountered beets freshly made and marinated on a platter on a picnic table under the shade of a plane tree in the Languedoc region of France, at a brunch prepared by Marie Jose, the local woman who cooked for us at a yoga retreat, I thought my day had been blessed. I never make beets from scratch, so they are one of the few foods I buy in a can. When I open the can, I almost HAVE TO drink the liquid. Beets are high in iron and other minerals and vitamins, and I theorize that my body feels the lack and motivates me to love beets and crave the beet liquid too. I bring in YAD (yet another digression) this time because macrobiotic food might have elements my body lacks too.

When I came to the South End at 18 years of age, I had been living on an American diet rich in fat and carbohydrates and poor in fiber and nutrient-rich foods like brown rice and fresh vegetables. That day I had my first macrobiotic food I had been living on my own for about a year, making $40 a week, and scrimping on food. My big splurge was to get some vegetables by going once every few weeks to a little Chinese restaurant below street level on Tremont Street and order beef stir fried with tomatoes and green peppers and onions. But I didn't cook vegetables on my own. I think I might have been half-starved.

What's my point here? I have to ask myself. One thing to note is that people on macrobiotic or other restricted diets are very willing to fast for their physical health. And paradoxically the foods they eat while fasting are actually sometimes more satisfying on a deep level. Wouldn't a diet like this be good on a fast for spiritual health? And wouldn't it be a kind of cosmic giggle if the fasting would actually turn out to be more satisfying than the feasting? Are these what I'm trying to say here? Maybe. I'll have to think some more about this.

This odd link to a hotel in Singapore summarized the main principles of the diet and advertises that they serve macrobitic food:
Mandarin Hotel Singapore macrobiotic diet )

Cuban Beans and Rice

You can use aduki beans or black beans in this.
If you like seaweed, you can crumble up some
nori, wakame, or kombu and add it to the dish
with the other seasonings (enhance your mineral
intake while reducing the gasifying effects of the
beans). Start by soaking the beans, at least
four hours or overnight.

1 medium onion chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced (or pressed
through a garlic press)
1 cup brown rice
Optional: Nori, wakame, or kombu, crumbled
2.5 cups water
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon salt (or less)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup soaked and drained aduki or black beans.

Make this in a pressure cooker or in the oven.

Heat the oil, add onion and garlic, and
saute until the onion starts to turn translucent.
Add the rice and continue to cook for a few more
minutes, until the rice is just beginning to look
golden brown.

Pour in the water, add the seaweed if you are
using it, then add the cumin, cayenne pepper,
black pepper, and the beans. Cook
in the pressure cooker at low pressure for 30
minutes, or bake in the oven for 1 hour. If
using a pressure cooker, let the
pressure drop by itself. Add the salt after cooking.

You might enjoy this as a kind of sandwich on a
tortilla.

Greek Spinach Pilafi (Spinach with Rice)

(vegan with oil)

A Minnesota woman of Swedish descent who married a Greek man showed me how to make this authentic Greek dish. When I first met Beth she was the secretary at St. Frances Cabrini Church in Southeast Minneapolis, then she moved to the Boston area. Her husband still lived in Greece, but she had come back to the U.S. without him. Her reasons were complicated (I seem to recall that her mother-in-law was a consideration) but one major draw was that her [their?] children had previously all moved to U.S. too. The husband would come visit her from time to time, and during his conjugal visits would try to pursuade her to come back . . .. The last time I saw Beth was during a hurried visit in Harvard Square while I was back East seeing my family and visiting friends about 10 years ago. I've lost track of her since then, but wherever you are (maybe Greece?) "Thanks, Beth."

1 (10 oz.) pkg. frozen or approximately 2 cups cooked fresh spinach
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
salt, pepper, and mint (dried or fresh or skip it) to taste
1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil
Fresh lemon juice (or frozen or bottled, if you like that)

Cook spinach and drain. Add cooked rice to pan with spinach, and
stir with a fork to mix. Add salt, pepper, and optional mint.

Heat oil to sizzling. Pour hot oil over spinach/rice mixture, and
carefully stir to mix. Let rest about 5 minutes. Add lemon juice
to taste.

This is a great lunch or light supper. Serve it with a salad sprinkled
with toasted seeds or cooked beans (garbanzos for example)
for a balanced protein meal. Or eat beans or nuts or seeds some
other time during the day.

Eggplant-Potato-Tomato-Onion Stew

1 large eggplant cut into chunks
1 1/2 lb. potatoes cut into the same sized chunks
as the egglant
3 large onions, sliced
About 1/2 cup olive oil
6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 crushed bay leaf
1 lb. (about 4) tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup water
Salt and pepper to taste and a dash of sugar.

Sprinkle the eggplant chunks with salt and let stand
half an hour. (Salting is to remove bitterness from the
eggplant.)

Pat the eggplant dry with a towel. Heat about 1/3 cup
oil in a wide-bottomed pan. Saute the eggplant,
potatoes, and onions, stirring frequently, about 20
minutes, until the onions and potatoes are golden. Add
more oil.

Add the garlic, parsley, bay leaf, tomatoes, water, and
seasonings. Cover and cook until vegetables are tender
and well-coated with sauce. Let stand about 10 minutes for
flavors to blend.

Serves 6.

Changes in the laws on fasting and abstinence and the accompanying changes in people's faith

The Roman Catholic Church relaxed the laws of fast and abstinence. In February, 1966 Pope Paul VI issued an apostolic constitution changing the rules.

The following quote from the bishops of the United States summarize the current requirements:
"Catholics in the United States are obliged to abstain from the eating of meat on Ash Wednesday and on all Fridays during the season of Lent. They are also obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday (ref. Canons 1249-1253, Code of Canon Law)."

It might be hard for a non-Catholic to understand how disturbed many Catholics were about that change and how some people's faith was shaken. The most extreme reaction, and unfortunately a fairly common one for many people, was to come to believe that now all of the dogmas of the Church are up for grabs. People were especially troubled about the fact that eating meat on Friday had been a mortal sin and now it wasn't. Maybe the same thing applied to other things that the Church has taught are serious sins? Maybe sex outside of marriage, for instance? Or the obligation to attend Mass on Sundays? (By the way, just to set the record straight, the answer to the rhetorical questions in this paragraph are, "No," and "No.") A lot could be said about this topic of the difference between unchangeable moral laws and disciplinary laws, and I'll try to come back to it later.

But for today I want to open the topic of another sort of confusion that many of us have about the change in regulations. Even though the requirement for fasting and abstinence under pain of sin have been lifted, as one Orthodox writer on this topic wrote, the Church cannot take away Christ's clear mandate that His followers fast.

On every Friday, the Church still remembers the death of the Lord. And Catholics are still supposed to do some penitential practice on Fridays. Not having enough imagination to think of something new and lacking the constancy to stick to something I make up myself, I continue to not eat meat on Fridays.

While He was alive in the flesh on this earth, Christ said that his followers did not fast because no one fasts while they have the bridegroom with them. The Orthodox remember this saying by calling Friday fasts the fasts in honor of the absent bridegroom.

The following is a quote from the US Catholic Bishops that followed the sentences quotes above. These sentences interestingly show the Bishops strongly encourage Catholics to voluntarily continue the old traditional fast during the weekdays of Lent and meatless Fridays:

"Self-imposed observance of fasting on all weekdays of Lent is strongly recommended. Abstinence from flesh meat on all Fridays of the year [excluding solemnities like Christmas which may fall on Friday] is especially recommended to individuals and to the Catholic community as a whole" (ref. Canons 1249-1253, Code of Canon Law).

How Catholics Fasted When I Was Young

When I was growing up Roman Catholic, in the early 50s to the mids 60s, Lent was a time of year when everyone gave something up. Us kids mainly gave up candy. And grown-ups, even though I couldn't understand how they could stand the hunger, ate only one full meal a day and didn't eat meat. Eating less food is called fasting, and not eating meat is called abstinence.

All year round, Catholics stood out by not eating meat on Friday. We ate a lot of tuna fish, prefried frozen fish sticks, and macaroni and cheese on Fridays over the years. People didn't seem to understand the spirit of the abstinence regulations, and not a one of us would have seen anything wrong with stuffing ourselves with lobster, clams, or shrimp on a Friday. We were being obedient, we felt, as long as we obeyed the letter of the law and avoided meat.

When I left the Catholic Church in college, I first announced my apostasy to the world (and to myself) by eating meat. It was 1963. At the time, I was going to a mostly-Jewish university called Brandeis. They served unlimited portions of rare roast beef, my favorite food, and they always served it on Friday.

The university had a kosher section in the freshman cafeteria. When I decided I didn't believe in the Catholic Church any more a few months into the school year, I took my tray with a plate full of roast beef over to the kosher side, and sat with my Orthodox Jewish boyfriend, who was eating with a yarmulke (skull cap) on his head. I must have been nervous about what I was doing, because when I gestured I spilled my glass of milk over his serving of kosher roast beef. You have to understand a little bit of the kosher laws to know why that was such an outrageous thing to do. My Jewish classmates had told me that in Leviticus, Jews were forbidden to seethe a kid in its mother's milk, and that prohibiition had led to the prohibition of eating meat and milk together. Orthodox Jewish households had two sets of dishes, one for serving meat, and one for serving dishes made with milk. Rabbis oversaw the cafeteria and certified that the kosher laws were being kept. The proper response to the travesty I had just commited was for the rabbi to be notified, and the meat-only plates and utensils that had been touched by the milk should have been destroyed.

By my boyfriend also was turning his back on the faith of his childhood, and he simply picked up a paper napkin, blotted the milk off his meat, and finished his meal.

Why all this fuss about food? you may be asking. I'll try to provide some answers here.

Introduction

This blog is a place to collect my thoughts about penitential practices of fasting and abstinence in the Catholic Church. (For anyone who doesn't know what I mean about any of these things, don't worry, all terms will be defined.)

In about a month, Lent will start again. For the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations, Lent is the main time of year when fasting and abstinence are practiced. The mystery of why people fast and abstain will be discussed here, so if you don't have a clue why people do these things, stay tuned.

When Lent starts on February 25, I will start a Lenten fast and record here the things I eat. I plan to follow a modified version of the Great Fast of the Orthodox Church, which proscribes meat, meat products, fish, and fowl, leaving its practioners with what is essentially a vegan diet. It is a good diet for me since I am very allergic to eggs and moderately allergic to milk.

Besides, I followed a vegan fast during Lent a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the food. My son and I felt lighter in several ways after eating that way for a while. I also painlessly lost 10 pounds.

This blog will also be a place to save my recipes. I have collected and made up some satisfying dishes that fit the vegan diet and that just about anyone would like, so I'll include my recipes here. I will also include tips on how to eat this way when you don't have much time to prepare food.