the secret ingredient is love.

Or so I told my buddy when she showed up for her birthday breakfast cake to celebrate the beginning of her third decade. When pressed, I had to admit that there were a few other ingredients holding the love together for better bake-ability. You see, I think that it's important to have cake for breakfast on one's birthday. To start the year off right, and make the day special, and to take advantage of being a grown up and actually remembering to go ahead and have cake for breakfast every now and then. It's good for the soul. Buddy requested ginger cake, and peaches are lovely right now, so here's what the birthday girl found when she arrived at my flat.

Gingerbread cake, cardamom icing, fresh peaches, ginger ice cream.

For the cake

Mix liquid ingredients

1.5 cups applesauce
1/2 cup almond meal left over from making almond milk (or use 1/2 cup ground almonds + 3 tbs water)
1 good size slice of fresh ginger
1 tsp almond extract
3/4 cup molasses
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup ginger wine

blend all of this in a blender.

Now, mix up the dry ingredients

1.5 cups self-raising whole wheat flour
1 cup soy flour
pinch salt
1 tbs ground ginger
1/2 tbs cardamom
1/2 tbs nutmeg
1/4 tbs cloves
1/4 tbs cinnamon
1 cup chopped candied ginger

Pour wet into dry and mix to combine. Pour into a greased and floured (or just silicone) cake pan and bake at 180C until done. Depending on your baking vessel and your oven, "done" is probably between 40 mins and an hour. Poke the cake with a knife occasionally, and when the knife comes out clean, it's done. If you want to ice the cake, bake it the night before.

Also the night before, make the icing:

1 package vegan cream cheese (I use Sheese)
1 tetra pack firm silken tofu
pinch salt
4 tbs icing sugar
1 tbs cardamom

Combine using a hand blender. Leave in fridge overnight. It will firm up a bit.

The next morning, ice cake and top with fresh peaches. Yum.

I served it up with ginger ice cream from here. I modified the ice cream by adding xantham gum and a splash of ginger wine(before blending, to keep the ice cream from getting too solid in my fridge), and then stirred in an ungodly amount of crushed candied ginger in syrup (after blending). I used homemade soy kefir instead of yogurt, and subbed stevia for the sugar.

dancing to: happy birthday toooooo youuuuuuuuu!

compassion. also, carob.

Compassion is a word that gets thrown around lightly, but it's one I take quite seriously. I sat down the other day and posed one of those ridiculous hypothethicals to myself (If someone were forced to describe me in a single word, what would I want that word to be - in other words, what is the outwardly acting part of me that I most value), and my first instinct was to answer "compassionate".

I thought about this a lot, because the answer surprised me and frankly, I thought it was boring and maybe a little too woo-woo to admit to publicly. I wanted a more exciting answer. I expected me to say "intelligent" or "creative". Secretly, I longed to have picked "transgressive". But when I was honest with myself, I stuck to "compassionate". So what does this mean in terms of habits? Habits are what we do every day. They are our default actions, and I would argue that our habits (rather than our occasional acts of grandeur or madness) tell what kind of people we are.

First of all, a compassionate person habitually acts with compassion. Yup. In my books, intentions matter less than actions. Intentions matter, of course, but the point of an intention is to inform action (or inaction). To act with compassion, I have to know what compassion is, and how the intention of compassion manifests in action. So.... compassion is a sympathetic consciousness of another's suffering (part one) combined with a strong desire to alleviate it (part 2). The definition is paraphrased from my trusty OED, and the parts are my addition.

Part 1: A sympathetic consciousness of another's suffering. This means that to act with compassion, I first have to put myself in the other guy's shoes. Or the other guy's feet, if the other guy happens to be unshod. To experience the first part of compassion, we have to shut up and observe others and try to figure out their point of view rather than our point of view. That annoying person next to me on the plane who can't shut up is lonely, or maybe scared of flying, or maybe they're just trying to be nice to me. There they are. I'm annoyed. I don't have to stop being annoyed, I just have to acknowledge that and also look at it from their perspective. Or... there's a chicken somewhere who has their own agenda. Most likely, being someone's dinner is not part of that agenda, even if that someone is hungry and likes the taste of chicken. From the chicken's point of view, my dinner is not their concern, and most certainly not something that they're willing to die for.

Part 2: A strong desire to alleviate the suffering of another. To act with compassion, after putting myself in the other guy's feets, I have to think of possible courses of action, and choose the one that makes them suffer least or (even better) brings them joy. So, maybe I can spend a few minutes talking to the annoying person next to me on the plane, at least until we're through the turbulent takeoff and they're no longer clinging white-knuckled to the armrest, and then tell them politely that I'm *really* looking forward to my book rather than glaring at them and putting on my noise-cancelling headphones as the plane lurches left and right. For the chicken, one option is to kill them quickly, but actually a better one is not to kill them at all. Food-wise, being vegan is how I understand compassionate action. And compassion is more important than pleasure. Of course, it's also possible (and important) to be compassionate towards oneself, but there's a big different between compassionate towards yourself and being indulgent or entitled.

Cultivating compassionate habits means that the day-to-day of what I do should be based on the two things above. Too often I see the pattern of merely declaring oneself compassionate rather than a focus on compassionate action. Frankly, if we have a strong desire to alleviate the suffering of another but fail to do so given an easy opportunity, then the desire probably isn't all that strong. It's true that some situations are harder to figure out, but many are simple, and working on the hard stuff is no excuse for not doing the easy stuff. It may be unclear to me which approach is best with a student who is struggling (tough love or gentle nudging or asking if they've considered a different area of study altogether), but that wouldn't excuse me mocking someone with a learning disability.

So what does that mean in terms of concrete action? I try not to look away from suffering when it is right in front of me. I refuse to pretend that homeless people aren't there. I refuse to pretend that the meat in the supermarket wasn't a sentient, feeling being. But I'm not perfect. Right now, I secretly wish that whoever stole my bike wheels returned home to find that their car was gone. Sigh.

Now, in the spirit of this actually being a food blog: carob. Another place that compassion is hard is towards people who keep on pretending that carob is just like chocolate. They ruin carob, which is perfectly delish in it's own right. So, while I go and try to cultivate compassion towards those well-intentioned destroyers of desserts, I leave you with this super-yummy dessert that in no way resembles chocolate.


Carob brain-freeze enabler

4 frozen bananas, peeled and in pieces (keep them already peeled and chopped up in your freezer at all times in case of emergencies)
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
4 heaping tbs carob
1 tbs maple syrup
tiny itsy bitsy pinch of salt

up to 1/4 cup soy or almond milk OR 1/3 cup soy yogurt

Put everything in either a high powered blender (like a Vitamix) or a food processor. Add enough soy milk or yogurt to let it blend, but only enough to let it blend, or your brain freeze enabler will go from spoonable to slurpable, which might not be a bad thing.... Blend until smooth and about the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. Serve drizzled with a little more balsamic and a little more maple syrup. Serves 2-3 people, depending how reasonable you want to be about serving sizes.

dancedancedance (and taste your chocolate)

Another non-cooking post because these days I'm doing more travelling and working than cooking so my food-related instructions would go something like this: wash fruit. Wash veg. Eat. Since I'm not much of a photographer, I'm not going to take artistic pictures of bowls of cherries and piles of peaches. Get your own. Enjoy how pretty they are. Wash. Eat. Dance dance dance.

This blog is called kitchen dancing because that's how I feel when I cook. It's playful and fun and creative (and I get to eat the evidence). I also feel like that when I eat. I love eating. More to the point, I love tasting and feeling and smelling. Like so many others, I spend my days in my head (I'm an academic) and so it's always a nice change to move into the kitchen and spend time in my body. I'm home in the UK for a few weeks now before my next round of trips and it's the best time to be here: stone fruit, berries, glorious bike-riding weather, warm tea in cool evenings but the sun is still up early enough to make running or going to yoga achingly beautiful and calm.

This time of year is all about delight. In late summer everything seems to be yelling "Use your senses, crazy humans! Slow down and taste! Slow down and look! Slow down and smell all these things before they shut down for the winter!" Since the world is telling me to notice it more, it seems fitting that I'm co-hosting a tea and chocolate tasting event this week and I'm sure people will ask me how to taste chocolate. I can tell them how I taste it -how I tease the different smells and flavors out of chocolate so that it amuses and delights me, but ultimately, the right way to taste it is the way that gives you the most enjoyment. Chocosnobs may disagree with me, but I say that if you get genuine pleasure out of scarfing the whole bar in 2 minutes, then go for it. I generally don't scarf my chocolate. I like to enjoy the tastes slowly, kind of like tasting wine (but I don't spit the chocolate out). I like to look at the chocolate, smell it, and notice how the taste changes over time, how the second bite is different from the first, how it reminds me of particular places or memories or smells or tastes. I like to notice the way it feels: how it melts. I like to let the taste fade after I've finished. Some bars have three or four tastes and some have dozens. Some are wild and some are refined. Some are loud and some are subtle. Some I love and some I dislike and some I'm just indifferent to. I train - I keep notes on how chocolates from different places taste, and on how different chocolate makers put their own signature style on top of that. I make my own chocolates and have fun noticing how tiny changes in technique makes a huge difference in finished chocolate. I get frustrated and get my friends to eat the evidence when things don't work. I crank up the music and dance.

practice makes...

...more practice. Let me explain. I don't often blog about anything other than food or veganism here, but sometimes other things are relevant. In this case, yoga is relevant to cooking. Before you roll your eyes (or hell, after you roll your eyes) keep reading. It might help.

There are things we do that we don't stop doing until we die. You can get better at it, it can be fun or not fun, but the point is that you do it. For me, cooking is one of those things. We don't *have* to cook - there are certainly enough ready-made foods around. And I don't have to cook at a practice - one can certainly approach it just as a means to getting food into one's tummy. But if I had to pick a way to describe my cooking, I would say that I have a cooking practice.

A little background: I am an improvisational cook. Though I have cookbooks, and read cookbooks, I rarely follow recipes (even when baking - GASP). In the kitchen, very few things flummox me. I cook easily, and while not every single meal is a masterpiece, I'm just as happy when I have to improvise because I'm cleaning out the fridge, have run out of an ingredient that I could have sworn I had lots of, or because of new dietary preferences or restrictions, as I am when everything goes according to my evil culinary plans. I love cooking. To me, it's like dancing when nobody's looking. It's like jazz. It's like... running really fast when you're bursting with energy. It's like fingerpainting with a 4 year old. You get the point. All of these things are experiences, not endpoints. And all of them are things that come more easily the more you do them. So the grownup way of saying all that is that for me, cooking is a practice. Like all practices, the point is that it's part of my life. It's something I do every day (or almost). It doesn't interrupt me being me, it's just part of me.

Wanna hear my woo-woo hippie secret? I've started going to yoga at 6.30. Every single morning. I started doing it in self defense - I can't always make it to evening classes if things pick up at work, and I like to be able to socialize in the evenings, or work, or cook. So when yoga is relegated to evenings, it often gets skipped, and is a source of major scheduling woes. And after not-too-many weeks of doing the same series of asana every morning, I rapidly realized one very important thing: the asana are not the practice. Getting up at 5 is the practice. Getting on my bike is the practice. Showing up is the practice. Breathing is the practice. The asana focus me, but the practice is much more than that. Oh, and the exercise is a side-effect. The muscles in my arms are a side effect. Being able to do the splits fairly effortlessly is a side effect. Being (nearly) able to walk about on my hands is a side effect. These side effects are all awesome, but I can't motivate myself to get out of bed before sunrise with the possibility that I may one day have a nicer ass. I just have to get out of bed because I'm getting out of bed. I can't climb on my bike in the rain for killer abs. I can climb on my bike, every morning, to climb on my bike. And I sure as hell can't make it through the entire primary series before breakfast for any goal. I can, however, breathe in and out and focus on whatever asana I'm in (or attempting) right then and there, and eventually the series gets done. You see, there isn't a goal. If I ever manage to do every single asana in the primary series, I won't "finish" anything. I'll just fall on my ass less. And keep getting up at 5. And some days my yoga practice really sucks: sometimes I'm tired, or unbendy or unbalanced or unfocused and one time, I just kind of burst into tears. But the thing about a practice is that it includes the sucky days too. Yoga on days when I fall over or can't keep my mind from wandering off in all directions is just as much yoga as days when every asana falls into place and I experience each and every breath conciously. The only way to fail at practicing is not to show up.

Now here's how it relates to cooking: the final dish is a side effect. Being able to cook a dinner party for 8 without a recipe book or even knowing what the ingredients will be the day before (and not finding that stressful) is a side effect. Making a cake that you imagine but don't have a recipe for, and having it work out the first time is a side effect. Making my own chocolate bars is a side effect. Cooking is a practice. Each step is it's own thing. If you worry too much about the end product, then it becomes a chore. Not that the end product isn't awesome. It is. I love preparing food for those I love. But I'm not torturing myself to make them something. The practice is this: shopping, chopping, mixing, tasting. The practice is putting combinations of spices together over and over until you know how they will affect each other before starting, it is chopping often enough that chopping takes on an effortless rhythm that isn't unlike breathing. It's paying attention to smells and textures when they happen so that eventually you can smell when the rice is done without opening the pot or pull sesame seeds off the heat when they're toasty but before they burn. It's making bread over and over and eventually (trust me) you just know when the dough is right. It's really listening to what your loved ones tell you they like and don't like and inventing recipes just for them. Cooking is cooking and it doesn't end, so you might as well let it be an end in itself. The food, my friend, is a side effect. Oh, and the only way to truly fail at cooking is to fail to show up. Making plain boiled rice is not lesser cooking than is a 4 layer birthday cake, or Christmas dinner. Sometimes I burn the rice. And that's practice too.

am vegan, will travel: be prepared.

I travel a lot. And often, I get the comment "it must be hard to travel and stay vegan". Uh... no. You just have to be a little bit prepared. Depending where you are going (I am currently in the middle of nowhere, pretty much exactly...I think they call it Oklahoma), bringing a stash of food with you can save your ass (and your tummy). I've already posted on my standard vegan scooby snackz - but it bears reiterating that a little bit of preparation goes a long way. If you have some dried chickpeas, some dried berries, and some nuts, you can jazz up even the boringest and most iceberg lettucy of salads to be a filling meal. Add a few packs of powdered miso soup to your bag, and a bunch of powdered greens drinks, then buy some non-perishable produce when you arrive: carrots and apples are my standards. Even in the heat, they've been keeping fine in my room. I also picked up some rice cakes since I'm pretty sure that the bread at the conference isn't vegan. If you're gluten intolerant or super-picky, just pack the rice cakes in your suitcase. I also always pack a thermos, a sporknife, and some teabags (because it pisses me off to pay for a breakfast buffet where I can't eat anything). Finally, I *always* pack some fancy chocolate to share with others - this is vegan activism. I don't want people to see a deprived vegan, and when you're sitting there pulling dried chickpeas out of your bag to add to your iceberg lettuce while everyone else is eating a 3-course meal, you do stand out a little. A fancy treat can really turn the tables and make people see that you're not a martyr, and can also defuse a lot of uncomfortableness that others might be feeling (think about it - wouldn't you feel bad eating a giant piece of cake in front of someone who wasn't eating it because of allergies, but feel much more relaxed if they suddenly pulled their own dessert out? A lot of food eating is social - remember that sometimes a chocolate bar is more than just a chocolate bar.). Sure, bringing extra stuff with you means that you have to check a bag instead of going with only carry-on, but meh. It's not hard, and it's only the tiniest itsiest bitsiest bit inconvenient. Sometimes it's a little inconvenient to act in line with your morals. To all those who whinge that a few minutes of planning are needed: GROW UP already (unless you're an actual child, in which case, grow up at the usual speed, okay?).

Finally, you *can* get vegan food just about anywhere. It may not be fancy, but it will probably fill you up. Be polite. Smile. State exactly what you want, and be firm. Say please, say thank you, and leave a decent tip. Do not whine, throw a temper tantrum, or be an entitled bitch. And if that fails, pull the dried chickpeas and carrots out of your bag, accept the situation with good humor and grace, and enjoy the company (and the chocolate bar). So far, I've only failed once, which puts the chances of getting vegan food at about 67/68, if I've properly tallied my trips so far this year. Them's pretty good odds. So stop whining.

I wanna be a chocolate god: vegan != healthy

This recipe singlehandedly (singlebrownie-ly?) disproves the often-made (erroneous) assumption that vegan == healthy. I modified the recipe from here, making it more spicy and less sweet. And... more chocolatey. I put some of them in the freezer "for later" and discovered that they are reeeeeeeally delicious and highly addictive frozen. Especially made into a brownie sundae on banana soft-serve. I imagine they'd also be good on coconut milk ice cream, but that much coconut at once is probably lethal.

Chai brownies

1 cup coconut oil
200g dark chocolate (I used about 80% cocoa content, leftovers from homemade bars)
1 tsp vanilla
chai spices: 1 tsp cardamom, 1/2 tsp each of cinnamon, ginger, ground aniseed and black pepper, 1/4 tsp of cloves. Optional 1/4 tsp of chili powder.
1 cup very strong black tea
1 and 1/4 cups sugar (1/2c white and 3/4 cup brown works best)
2 cups cake or pastry flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour)
1 scant cup dutch process cocoa
2 tsp baking powder (omit if you use self-raising flour)
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp flax seeds (ground)


1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease an 8 x 8 pan, or use an ungreased silicone pan.
2. In a double boiler or makeshift equivalent, melt the coconut oil, chocolate squares and vanilla together. Add sugar and remove from heat.
3. Make tea (3 teabags). After it has steeped and the teabags have been removed, stir the flax into the tea. Let this sit for at least 5 mins. It will thicken into goo.
4. In another bowl, sift together the flours, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
5. When your flax mixture has thickened, add it to the chocolate/coconut oil / Now combine the chocolate/coconut oil/flax/tea mixture with the flour mixture and stir to incorporate. The batter will be less liquid than you are probably used to. Fear not.
6. Spread the batter into the greased baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes. Test after 30 mins, but in most ovens that I've used, it takes closer to 40. I did have one very overzealous oven that used to do them in 30, though. Best to check.
7. When finished, remove the brownies from the oven, and *do not try to remove them from the pan*. They need to be completely cool before cutting them. Best is to make them the night before you need them.

I've also made these with Dove's gluten-free flour blend and tapioca flour (3:1 ratio), and they are delish, but need 1 more tbs of flax and an extra 1/4 cup or so of tea.

For the icing, I used 1 package vegan cream cheese (Sheese brand), 1/2 cup icing sugar, and 50 grams melted chai-flavored chocolate (I had some "failed" chai chocolates left over from making them for a friend) and a pinch of salt all mixed with a handblender.

Dancing for the brownies: Suzanne Vega: Nine objects of desire.

queen of tart: rhubarb thyme rolly buns

It was only a matter of thyme. Ahem. This week there was some lovely deep-red rhubarb in my fridge and a big bunch of fresh tyme in my veg box. When they saw each other, they fell in love, and it just seemed wrong to separate them. So I made these.

dry ingredients:
flours-equal parts millet, chickpea, arrowroot and brown rice (for a grand total of 2.5 cups)
1.5 tsp xantham gum
1 tbs flax meal
pinch salt
1 package quick yeast
zest from 1 lemon
2 heaping tbs fresh thyme leaves, rubbed

wet ingredients:
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup soy milk
juice from lemon
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbs maple syrup

Mix all the dry ingredients together. Mix all the wet ingredients together - they will curdle- and pour over dry ingredients. Mix mix mix until it's all mixed into a sticky dough. Add more water or soy milk if it's too dry. Add more millet flour if it's too sticky.

Filling:
okara from 1 batch soy milk (1 heaping cup)
1 tbs coconut flour (optional, but nice)
2 tbs sweet white miso
2 tbs maple syrup
pinch salt
zest from 1 lemon
arrowroot powder (start with 1 tbs)

Mix all the filling ingredients together. They should be gloopy, like cream cheese. Add enough arrowroot to ensure that this is so (the exact amount you need will depend on how watery your okara was to start with). The filling should be quite sweet, as you are going to throw rhubarb into it.

Chop up 2 cups rhubarb and one very ripe pear. Mix them. If you do not love tartness, mix 1/4 cup (or more) of sugar in with the fruit. I love tartness. I am the queen of tart. I eat rhubarb straight. I also sometimes peel and eat limes. So... I made this without sugar and found that the pear and the maple syrup took the edge off, but left the filling pleasantly puckery. If you are more of a sweetie-pie than a queen of tart, then go with the sugar.

Now, roll out the buns into a rectangle on a very well-floured surface (I used more millet flour), schmear with filling, and then cover that with a layer of rhubarb and pear. Roll up. Cut into 4 buns, place in a silicone pie dish, and let rise overnight. If you don't use silicone or other seriously non-stick cookware, then coconut oil + flour a normal metal pie dish and proceed with that. Don't skip the oil + flour, or you will never ever unstick your rolly buns from the pie dish, which will be sad.

The next morning, preheat oven to as high as it goes with a bowl of water in it. Drop temp to 200C, and, without waiting for the oven to actually cool to 200C, put the rolly buns inside. Bake 40 mins (assuming you've made 4 large buns).

Devour for breakfast with green tea and fruit and be pleased with spring.

Dancing along to: The Spice Girls: Wannabe. I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want: RHUBARB.