this is what concerns me:

So I finally did it: I made perfectly reasonable looking and tasting vegan chocolate chip cookies without a hitch. It only took a year and a half, no big deal.

These are lightly adapted (healthified) from Dreena Burton’s Vive le Vegan recipe. If you, too, are having trouble with getting your vegan cookies to resemble cookies more than clusterfucks, I suggest using oil for the fat instead of margarine. That way you also don’t have to cream the margarine and sugar, which can be brutal on your wrists (which you should really be using for blogging).

• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup maple syrup (preferably grade B)
• 1 1/2-2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the dry stuff and wet stuff separately, then together. Add the good bits. Don’t overmix! Spoon ‘em out and flatten a bit. Bake for 12 minutes. Don’t burn them because then you’ll really feel like an asshole. Makes a dozen, should last you about three hours.

If you know me, you probably know I now have consistent access to cable television programming for the first time in about six years and that this means I’ve been introduced to the Food Network in all of its bloody glory. As Amy Sedaris says, “when you’re alone and high in the night,” you can switch back and forth between the Food Network and the medical shows with the box on mute and everything looks just about the same. (But I’m also kind of convinced that watching has improved my seriously sub-par vegetable chopping time significantly.)

This also, of course, means I’ve been introduced to RayRay, that ever-grinning reminder of our continued march as a culture toward the lowest common denominator. (Not to mention those recipes take at least an hour.)

Now, I find Anthony Bourdain as repugnant as any of y’all, but I just had to block quote this for posterity…

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell, I could do that. I ain’t gonna but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing! Just sit there. Have another Triscuit. Sleep.. sleep..

That is all.

Sorry, folks, I’ve just been distracted by other pursuits. But I’ll be back very shortly with tales of transcontinental air transit, kitchen-related injuries by way of indulgent desserts, New York art shows, sketchbook follies and general hard-knock stories about being a Crown Heights, Brooklyn freelancing shut-in. See, so much to come! For now, though, I’ll leave you with these gooey tiramisu cupcakes from VCTOW.

1. Follow the directions from the Vegan Family Cookbook, cutting the sugar by half.
2. Preheat oven to 500, despite directions stating 425.
3. Get in the shower.
4. Realize six minutes later that you preheated the oven to 500, despite directions stating 425.
5. Jump out of shower, soapy and wet, and rush to kitchen, nearly slipping and falling in hallway.
6. Reset oven to 425.
7. Run back to shower.
8. Return to kitchen in time to remove muffins, only to find them not done.
9. Bake muffins for twice recommended time.
10. End product: photogenic but overly-chewy muffins.
11. Enjoy?

I’ll be taking a break from cooking while traveling in Europe with the fam this week. Try not to burn anything without me.

Always cook with a buddy - or seven, if your kitchen and buddies will allow it. This means for better times all around: someone to run to the store when the yeast is found dead (tragic), someone to watch TV while the dough is rising, someone to cook the spinach and make sure you don’t put too much olive oil on the rolled crust, someone to grate cheese and slice tomatoes and wave magazines frantically at the beeping smoke alarm, someone to test the center of the dough for crustiness and provide moral support when it seems to be taking three times as long to cook as it should, someone to take the pan out of the oven so you don’t burn your hand or set another pot holder on fire and then someone to tell you that it really does taste quite good and could you imagine doing all this without any of us? Impossible. You’d have been killed. And the alarm would still be going off.

If you are like me, however, post-pizza time you are stuck with a freezer full of a really tasty spinach, tomato and mushroom pie cut into awkward pieces to fit into a mustard-yellow tupperware the size of a hubcap. I guess heaven is no other people.

Ouch.

Dough: 2 tsp yeast + .25 c warm water + 1 tsp sugar, foam 10 minutes. Sift 3 c flour + 1 tsp salt + spices of choice. Combine and + 1.25 c warm water. Knead with floured hands. Let rise 60 minutes. Knead again, roll out onto floured pan.

Top: with too much olive oil + four sliced roma tomatoes + 10 ounces spinach sauteed in olive oil with 4 cloves garlic + 1 c sliced mushrooms + half package grated cheese. Cook at 450 as long as you can stand or until it burns beyond edibility.

Enjoy alone.

Just kidding! Burritos are actually an American-born product, a streamlined to-go snack created in the 1840s in the Southwest: meat wrapped in a flour tortilla. My meatless version is a tastier take on this classic Southwest sandwich.

Just kidding! Burritos aren’t sandwiches after all! Or are they…? Via Dictionary.com:

sand·wich, n.
1. Two or more slices of bread with a filling such as meat or cheese placed between them.
2. A partly split long or round roll containing a filling.
3. One slice of bread covered with a filling.
tor·til·la, n.
A thin disk of unleavened bread made from masa or wheat flour and baked on a hot surface.

Thus burrito = sandwich according to internet dictiomonarians + me. Now that this matter is settled with a simple equation, let me continue with the eats.

1. Fry up some firm tofu + turmeric in oil. Don’t get the turmeric on your shirt because it will stain yellow and you will look like an idiot who got turmeric on their shirt, and no one wants that.
2. Fry up some cut up potatoes + onion + bell pepper in oil. Don’t burn your hand on the pan and then disregard the burn because you’re trying to act tough even though it hurts like hell and it’s red and blistering because that’s some second degree shit, there, man, and that’s not cool at all.
3. Fry up some fakin bacons in oil. Be careful. I stress this with italics.
4. Toast a whole wheat tortilla on the stove burner. When this invariably sets off your smoke alarm, wave at it frantically with a crappy Spin magazine. Discard this in paper recycling when finished. Thanks, Spin!
5. Chop tomato and slice bits from enormous Reed avocado.
6. On plate, bottom to top: tortilla, tofu, potatoes, bacons, tomato, avocado, sweet pea sprouts, tofu sour cream, tiny sombrero.

Done!

So as you can tell from those cookies, I’m not so great at the cooking thing. And things haven’t so much improved, despite much practice (another round of biscuit cookies, and a mushy apple “crisp.” I assure you all these things taste fabulous, (and you should not judge a dessert by its crust) but they still look like they were made by kindergarteners. Which is why I have returned to my first love of sandwiches.

This is the sandwich I made today. It was really hard to eat. They usually are. I suggest wrapping the bottom half in foil or paper napkin/towel so as to not spill the contents on your lap, since you’re clearly not doing laundry very often lately.

1. Toast bagel. (I used whole wheat - pumpernickel, poppy or sesame would also be tasty with this).

2. Fry up three to four pieces of facons with some olive oil until browned and crispy.

3. On one half of bagel: spread about 1/4 of a Reed avocado, top with one piece lettuce, two slices tomato, and a handful of snow pea sprouts.

4. Other half: a thick squirt of Miso Mayo (vegenaise/spicy mustard would also be acceptable) and the bacon strips.

5. Smash together.

6. Have a way difficult time eating.

7. Feel uncomfortably full.
This sandwich will taste even better if eaten while listening to George Allen’s concession speech. Mmm, I love the smell of pseudo-democracy in the afternoon.

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley (like omg) my family ate at restaurants or got take out nearly every night of the week. I chalk this up to my parents’ extremely busy schedules, plus their New York nostalgia. And now that I live in NYC, it’s very easy to do the same (especially with a Vegetarian Palate that delivers so promptly). However, these factors have not only put a large dent in my little wallet, but have also made me a relatively incompetent cook. Lately I’ve been making strides to remedy this. These cookies are the sad victims of my learning process.

This cookie recipe was taken (and subsequently mutilated) from the Vegan Family Cookbook.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups flour
• 1.5 teaspoons egg replacer powder
• .5 teaspoon of baking soda
• .5 teaspoon salt
• .666.. cup brown sugar (or white if that’s all you got)
• .5 cup margarine
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Way too many chocolate chunks
• Way too many chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. Mix the flour + egg replacer + baking soda + salt in one bowl.
2. Mix the sugar + margarine + water + vanilla in another bowl.
3. Mix the bowl contents together.
4. Do not be alarmed that the dough is not really sticking together – just add tablespoons of water until it becomes one big creamy clump.
5. Now add way too many chocolate chunks.
6. And way too many chopped walnuts.
7. Spoon large clumps onto a nonstick cookie sheet. The VFC recipe makes 24, but this makes only a lucky 13, because the clumps are so damn big!
8. Bake for about 15 minutes or until they become nicely tanned. Do not be alarmed that the clusterfucks do not spread like normal cookies. This is to be expected.

And: Do not be alarmed that the clusterfucks look kind of gross — they taste awesome!