Eating in the Caribbean

Jeff and I have been back from the Caribbean for a week, and the time has flown by really fast. We came home to an infestation of bed bugs and piles of work to catch up on, so I haven't had much time to think about blogging until now.

We spent a few days in Puerto Rico, followed by a cruise to St. Thomas, Dominica, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and St. Maarten / St. Martin. This post will be the first in a series of posts on some of the delicious foods we ate on the islands, and either Jeff or I will write a follow-up post on how to eat on a Carnival Cruise.

Puerto Rico
We all stayed at a hotel in Isla Verde, which is very near the airport and a short taxi drive to the cruise docks. This strip is home to lots of hotels and several restaurants all within walking distance. It is also home to a cock fighting establishment, which I obviously never intend to step foot in. Lupis Mexican Grill, which is apparently a chain, resides here and serves a veggie burger that tastes of the dead cow that was previously fried on the grill. It's okay if you want to eat, but not if you want a meal. Platos is also near Lupis but actually serves Puerto Rican food. My entire family walked over for dinner on our first night in town, and Jeff and I scoured the veg options. We asked the waiter for help and he was able to suggest mofongo, made without any butter. (At first he seemed aghast that mofongo be made without butter, "but that's how it's made!") Mofongo is a dish of mashed plantains, and ours featured an array of grilled veggies inside. It is very delicious, starchy without tasting anything like mashed potatoes.

By far the best restaurant I've eaten at in Puerto Rico is Cafe Berlin. Located in the heart of Old San Juan overlooking a statue of Columbus himself, Cafe Berlin serves vegeterian, vegan and omni cuisine and is pretty much guaranteed to make any member of your family happy. The hardest part is deciding what to order. Jeff ordered the veggie steak, which I'd had before. Served with a savory gravy with some mushrooms and potatoes, the "steak" is soft but substantial. It would probably be divine if a little bit more firm, but even if the texture wasn't quite there, the taste was. I had the coconut-tomato tofu, which was a nice hefty chunk of tofu served in a delicious sauce made from (you guessed it) tomato and coconut. I thought the combination to be odd, but the two flavors made a great marriage. It was served with some mashed potatoes and sauteed vegetables, including carrots, which I ate. (I generally hate carrots, but only when they taste like raw carrots. These were cooked to mushy perfection, in my opinion.) To top it all off I had a mango smoothie, making Jeff regret not ordering one as well. My mom ordered a banana smoothie which was just as good. (Photo credits: my mom)

In driving around Puerto Rico to various locations (caves in Camuy, El Yunque rainforest and the Aricebo Observatory) we drove by lots of produce stands on the sides of the street. That and a lot of small BBQ shacks where people grill and sell (mostly, I think) dead animals. While the BBQ shacks were not my thing, we stopped at a produce cart and I had the most delicious banana ever. Anything I've eaten in the northern latitudes of the US just can not compare. The first remarkable thing about the banana was its heft and size. Biting into the banana yielded an incredible tender, juicy and sweet fruit. I had a "banana" in my cereal this morning and it was disappointing, even though I still love bananas. Chances are good that you've never had a plant ripened banana before if you live in cold climates. Just as a vine ripened tomato far surpasses the taste of anything you'll get shipped from thousands of miles away and ripened by gas in a truck, a fresh picked banana is truly a delight. (Photo credit: my mom)

But if I thought the bananas were delicious, I had only to sink my teeth into a mango to learn the taste of pure heaven. The tender flesh yielded easily to my bite, and I had to be careful not to let the juicy nectar spill all over my face. The mangos were easy enough to peel by hand so we could eat them in the car. (We couldn't wait to try them out!) Jeff and I had a hard time sharing, even though we had purchased several mangoes.

By far the strangest fruit I've eaten, and a new one for me was the canepa. This is a tiny little green ball about the size of one of those big shooter marbles. You peel back the slightly bumpy skin and pop the entire fruit into your mouth, being careful not to eat the large pit. There isn't much flesh in a canepa, and eating one is more like sucking on a lollipop than doing any real chewing and swallowing. Canepas reminded me of strange jellied concoctions you generally find in Asian grocery stores. Honestly, I felt that they were too much effort for little reward, but they seem to be a favored fruit in Puerto Rico. Definitely worth trying if you're up for something different.

On our last evening in Puerto Rico we took an excursion to the Bioluminescent Bay in Vieques. Easily one of the most impressive places I have ever been in my life, the bay is inhabited by countless dinoflagellates that luminesce when agitated. Put in simpler terms, if you swim in the bay at night, the water around you will glow a shade of blue. It is an amazing sight to behold, and my sister, dad, Jeff and I were all sad to have to eventually leave the water to go back to our hotel on the main island. We booked the trip to Bio Bay through a company whose name I can't recall, but they offered a dinner as part of the trip. Jeff and I knew better than to get to the boat hungry, so we grabbed some take-out Chinese food on our way. The menu was presented to us before we got on the boat to Vieques, where we were to pick our option so it would be ready when we got there. We were pleased to see vegetarian options with mofongo listed as well as rice and beans. Having found out at Platos that mofongo is made with butter, we opted for the rice and beans. Settled into a beautiful boat ride with loads of rum drinks, we enjoyed some time with my family until we got to Vieques. A short bus ride brought us to the restaurant where we awaited our food and chatted with other people headed on the excursion. The rice came out first, and Jeff and I happily started eating. Next the beans, which I heaped over my rice, and I started chowing down. As did Jeff, but when he overturned his bowl of beans, out popped a pork bone. As we made this discovery, the waitress brought us some steamed veggies topped with a pat of butter. We put our forks down and were just glad to have found out the truth behind our meal, and that we had already eaten something earlier.

All in all, our experience in Puerto Rico was lots of fun. Two years ago when I went to Puerto Rico with my parents, sister and brother in law, we only stayed for an overnight which was not enough time to really experience the island.

Stay tuned for a summary of the delicious food, and more pictures, from other Caribbean islands.

Vacation!

Not that I post terribly often, but Jeff and I will be on vacation for the next two weeks. We're going on a cruise with my parents, sister and brother in law to the Caribbean. I've cruised many times before, as an omnivore, vegetarian and vegan. One of the biggest perks of cruising is the food, but as a vegan I have found that to no longer be the case. It will be nice to have Jeff with me this time, as we can commiserate in the lack of options together. Also, having knowledge of what to expect has helped me prepare some snack foods to bring along just in case. I hope to try out some veg restaurants while I'm gone, and hope to post reviews here after I return.

Things have been really busy at work as I'm wildly gathering data to publish in a paper, but I've managed to find some time to can preserves and make tempeh for the first time. I hope to post about that in the near future because it was a definite success. Jeff has also invented an okara meatball recipe that is so delicious that we have tested it probably about a dozen times and yet never manage to photograph it before eating them all! The recipe is totally solid now and once I can snap some decent looking photos I'll post it here. So stay tuned for some good stuff in the near future!

Take Your Vitamins

I generally don't like the idea of taking supplements, because I feel like I should be getting enough vitamins and nutrients from the food I eat. However, I realize that I have no way of really insuring this, and I realize that I live in New England where vitamin D deficiency is rampant. So I decided to scope out the offerings at my local Whole Foods for a vitamin I can try.

There were tons of options - just plain multivitamins, vitamins with weird wheatgrass and mushroom extracts, raw vitamins, and plenty of "vegan" multis. Why vegan in scare quotes? Because most of them didn't turn out to be vegan once I checked the label.

For example, Raw One For Women. See the little picture to the left? It says VEGAN on the label, so I figured it would be free of animal products. I flipped over to the label and found that it contains vitamin D3.

If you don't know, vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is derived from animals, usually sheep's wool. This is the type of vitamin D that we humans produce when our skin is exposed to UV rays. It's also why we tend to be vitamin D deficient up north here when there's little sunlight all winter long.

Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) is the vegan option of vitamin D, derived from plant or fungal sources.

So keep your eyes open when you're shopping for truly vegan vitamins! Your best bet is to shop online at a trusted source like Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe or Pangea Vegan Store. But if you have to shop at the grocery store, read the labels and don't buy anything that says D3 or cholecalciferol.

For more information on vitamin D, I recommend the wikipedia page.

All American Dinner -- Vegan Meatloaf with Miso Gravy and Kale

I know when I'm finally starting to get over an illness, because my appetite goes through the roof. I was sick for a week with a trachea infection, but come Thursday, I could not stop thinking about gravy.

This is THE BEST homemade gravy I have ever tasted, and it was perfect with this surprisingly good vegan meatloaf recipe. It is made smooth by creating a roux, which is flour cooked in butter or its substitute. The meatloaf recipe is from Vegetarians in Paradise, one of the ugliest websites I've ever seen. It calls for Gimme Lean meat substitute. I had a half package of ground beef style and a half package of sausage style, so I just mixed them together and it was pretty good. This loaf is very small, so if you want a larger one (that will fit into a traditional loaf pan) I'd suggest tripling the recipe, which can get expensive. You could try out a TVP substitute, but I'd suggest really seasoning it. As for the kale, I won't provide a recipe, just instructions: saute on medium heat washed, de-stemmed, and chopped kale in a lightly oiled pan with salt and pepper to taste until the leaves change from bright green to a dull green.

Creamy Vegan Miso Gravy
makes about 2 1/2 cups

Ingredients:
2 T Earth Balance
1/4 cup flour
3 cups low sodium vegetable broth OR 3 cups water with 2 T of homemade vegetable bouillon
1 T nutritional yeast
1 tsp cornstarch, as needed 
black pepper to taste
2 T red miso
2 T water
soy sauce to taste

1. Melt the Earth Balance in a sauce pan. Add the flour and whisk until bubbly and you can't smell the flour. Add the vegetable broth, nutritional yeast, pepper, and cornstarch and bring to a boil, stirring continuously until it reaches the thickness you prefer. Allow to cool slightly.
2. Dissolve the miso in the water and add to the gravy. Stir to combine thoroughly. Add soy sauce to taste.

Vegan Meatloaf
(serves 2)

Ingredients:
2 pieces of bread, lightly toasted
1/3 to 1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk
1 T soy sauce or tamari
1 14 oz package of Gimme Lean ground beef style
2/3 cup chopped onion or 4 T onion powder
1 T garlic powder
1 T black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 375. Break the toasted bread up into small pieces in a bowl and add the soymilk, soaking the bread. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix well with your hands.
2. Shape the mixture into a loaf and place in a lightly oiled loaf pan. (Optional: pour some gravy over the loaf.) Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 5-10 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then slice and serve with gravy.

Garden Photos

Jeff and I are back in NY for a fun July 4th weekend. We stopped off at our garden first to give it one last watering before Monday when we come back. Here are some shots of our hard work:


Unripe Blackberries


Cucumbers


Cucumber Flowers

These last pictures are of the garden in my parents back yard. Everything is huge! We're going to be eating so much kale and snap peas. The tomatoes are just starting to fruit. This is the most exciting part of having a garden.


Tomato Flower


Unripe Tomatoes


Kale


Blueberries

Plant-pocalypse

One of the projects I've been working on this summer is starting a garden. Two, actually. How is that possible for someone who lives in a city, and doesn't even have a fire escape for "land"? Well, my parents have a nice, big, mostly empty back yard, and Jeff and I were lucky enough to score a plot at the Fenway Victory Gardens.

Jeff and I built raised beds in my old back yard in early May. It was our first time doing it and we were on a fixed schedule. On Saturday we took a trip to the hardware store, coming home with almost half a ton of top soil, weighing down my mom's 10-year-old mini van. We also bought 6 pieces of 8' pressure treated lumber and lots of screws (it was almost impossible to find the right screws because apparently there are special screws for pressure treated lumber).

Armed with two cordless drills and a hand saw (although my dad did give Jeff a run down on how to use his chain saw and circular saw, just in case) we proceeded to build the raised beds, fill them with top soil, and plant dozens of veggies in less than 3 hours, meanwhile making some delicious beans for a dinner we had to be at that evening. (Hence the rush.)

My mom sent me photos of the garden that she took earlier this week (see above and directly below, click on them for a better view) and I can't believe how huge everything has gotten! Kale, peppers, tomatoes, beets, sage, peas, beans, chives, and I can't even remember what else we planted, are all flourishing. Several plants are flowering and fruiting, and I think the cherry tomatoes have started producing little green babies.


Meanwhile, Jeff and I have gotten to our Victory plot approximately twice. Once to put on a new lock, and the second time to get a start on the "weeds." I call them weeds, but the person who tended the plot before us probably thought otherwise about the lilies and rosebushes and 4-foot-high willow tree. After an hour of back breaking labor, we had managed to clear out a 4 or 5 foot strip (extending back about 25 feet) of old plants and sink two huge posts into the ground for a fence. (The water table is very high here, and it was funny to hear a splash as we sunk the posts.) Jeff and I, exhausted, dehydrated and burnt to a crisp (but only on our backs), decided to save the rest for another day.

That day hasn't come... yet. We plan to finish up what we've started with the help of a bunch of friends this weekend. It'll be nice to free up some space on my window sills, which are currently jam packed with veggies waiting to be planted in some real dirt. We have almost three dozen different tomatoes (three varieties), over a dozen peppers (some sweet, some hot), lots of cucumbers (which I think are starting to flower already), squash and chives. The plants get a ton of sunlight, because we have south-facing windows and get full sun in the morning. But they're not able to stretch out their roots as much as they'd like. I'm sure they'd be much bigger by now if only we'd gotten back to our plot sooner! (But it's been hard to find the time, what with being full time grad students, attending a wedding in Colorado, and dealing with "fun" back injuries.)

We're excited to finally get our own little garden going, and hopefully in the future we'll be posting back about the progress of our veggies, and all of the delicious things we'll be making from the results. (Tomato sauce, hot sauce, jalapeño wine, pickles, etc.) Also, I just purchased a new camera lens, so hopefully I won't be able to make any more excuses about not taking photos of recipes for this blog. Jeff has invented a delicious okara meatball, and once we can photograph them before devouring them, we'll post the recipe here. We've got a lot of other recipes on the back burner as well. Stay tuned!

Brewing Beer

I started brewing beer a few weeks ago and it was finally ready to drink today. Alyssa and I have been fermenting food and drink for a while now (see prior posts on wine, sauerkraut, sourdough, etc.) and beer was the next untouched frontier. I have friends who brew beer and I've been itching to try it out. All I needed was a pictographic step-by-step how-to guide to show me that it wasn't that hard. Luckily, Alyssa came across this article on brewing small batch beer from chow.com.

Alyssa and I needed to pick up some supplies for our latest batch of wine, so we took a long trek across town to the Homebrew Emporium for beer ingredients, too. If you're in the Boston, Troy, or Worcester areas this is the place for all your homebrew needs. The employees at the Davis Square location might come across as a little snarky, but you have to remember that: 1. We're in Boston and 2. They're beer GEEKS. They really know their stuff and are really trying to be helpful. They want to make sure that your first few batches come out drinkable so that you keep coming back. Each employee also has a different method of brewing, and if you have time it can be fun to listen to their bickering discussions.

If you are going to brew beer, keep the time in mind. Don't be like me and start at 10PM, thinking it will only take an hour. It takes an hour just for the grains to soak! At that late hour you might even forget (like me) to add one of the grains!

The brewing process takes about 3 hours, depending on how fast you can cool down the wort. After that is a 2 week wait while it bubbles away in the carboys. Unlike wine, most of the work is finished when the brew is fermenting. The next steps are priming and bottling.

The recipe says that it makes about 1 gallon of beer to fit a 1 gallon carboy. I don't care for drinking a gallon all at once, so I bottled in 11 12oz. bottles. You might have done the math and realized that 11 * 12 = 132 and 1 gallon is 128 oz. One of the beers is a light beer.

With proper planning, the hardest part of brewing is waiting for the beer to be done. I set the bottles in a paper bag in the hallway for 2 weeks where the flavors had time to mix and mellow. I decided to try one tonight.

It was a little cloudier than I'm used to, but it tasted clean, light, and slightly hoppy. Luckily, it's too hoppy for Alyssa to drink right now. Maybe the batch will continue to mellow, or she might develop a taste for hops. Until then, it's all mine.

The next step is to get a larger brewing pot (8 qts is just large enough to make a 1 gallon batch) and a new primary to ramp up the volume. I see a nut brown ale on the horizon.

Recipe Review: Totally Awesome Tofu

Shortly after becoming vegan, I somehow stumbled upon Beth Terry's blog Fake Plastic Fish which details her attempts to live a plastic-free lifestyle. I've always been a big fan of the environmental movement and decided to put my money where my mouth is and try to do something to reduce my own consumption. So I wrote a list and posted it on my freezer of food items that came packaged in plastic, whether or not I could make them on my own, and what I could do to replace or live without items that I didn't know how to make.

I immediately started buying things in glass jars and started buying things in bulk more often. These days I won't buy oil or vinegar unless it's in bulk, because even the glass jars come capped with plastic. But I digress. Some of the things on my list weren't so easy, and I still haven't taken all of the plastic out of my life. A huge gallon sized jug of mustard (yes, they do exist) doesn't use as many resources as many 8-oz bottles, but it's still plastic. And every few weeks I'd buy more packages of tofu and tempeh. I'd say that Jeff and I, roughly, consume three blocks of tofu and maybe an equal number of tempeh packages per week. And I'd sigh, and toss the tempeh package in the trash and set aside the tofu carton to plant seedlings in.

And then I found this cute little book while I was back at home during Troy Night Out: Cooking with Tofu by Mary Ann DuSablon. It's part of a series of pamphlets published by Storey Press dedicated to teaching everyone, including city folk such as myself, necessary skills for living smaller and simpler. I initially picked it up because of the recipe for eggless mayo, but then realized it also had a tofu recipe in it.

I had tried two or three tofu recipes up to this point. Jeff and I would invest a lot of time into making the soymilk, curdling with coagulant (packaged in plastic, came with our tofu kit) and pressing, only to get a tiny, 1-oz slice of tofu. All of that effort for something we ate in 30 seconds! Tofu making isn't quick or even necessarily that easy the first time you try it, so you definitely want a return on your investment. Enter the new recipe book. The first thing I knew I was doing right was adding a substantial amount of soybeans. It doesn't make sense to get a pound of tofu out of less than a cup of soybeans, right? And the coagulants the recipe suggests are simple things like lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, that you probably already have. No weird phrases like nigari are thrown around.

The recipe is incredibly intuitive, and Jeff and I were very excited to produce a nice big, solid block of tofu. (I'd say at least a pound.) We used three times the vinegar called for, which makes an extra firm block. We cut this into thirds and have three meals out of it. This is enough for about one week for us, and each weekend when we have time we will make more. The nice thing about tofu is that, if you have enough beans, and a big enough pot, you can double the recipe and make twice as much with just as much effort.

By the way, if you already have a soymilk maker, then 99% of the hard work of making tofu is already done. Just take your fresh soymilk, pour in the coagulant, let the tofu form for 10-15 minutes, and then press it in a cheesecloth lined strainer or similarly lined tofu press.

Another wonderful thing about this recipe is that the blended beans are boiled before being strained. This means that the pulp that remains in the cheesecloth as the soymilk filters out, which is known as okara, is cooked. Jeff and I have made okara burgers with uncooked okara before, and I never knew that they would be so much more delicious with cooked okara! It's a night and day change, and I can't rave about the amazing taste and texture of cooked okara enough. We also found this fantastic recipe for okara bread and I just want to eat it all the time! The first batch of tofu we made with this recipe, we didn't save all the okara, thinking we wouldn't use it all. I regretted that decision the moment I took a bite out of the first loaf of okara bread.

I wish I could reproduce the recipe here, but the book makes it pretty clear that it's copyrighted. I have not found any other recipes online that are as good. So all I can do is recommend that you just spend the few bucks buying this pamphlet, because it will save so much money from buying tofu, and save a lot of plastic from the landfill!

Next up: tempeh. Jeff and I just ordered a tempeh culture but it hasn't arrived yet. Hopefully it will be just as delicious and rewarding as the tofu.



Tofu

Fully Fermented Dinner: Tempeh Reuben with Fiddlehead Ferns

I've had a small crock pot sitting on my counter for a couple of weeks filled with cut up cabbage and brine. I was tired of wasting cabbage, which I had been getting loads of from our produce shipments, so I checked out Wild Fermentation's sauerkraut recipe and decided to go for it. I'm always slightly skeptical every time I try a new food project like this. I know that fermentation isn't magic, but when the end product is going to be consumed, I like to know in advance that what I make isn't going to make me sick.

I shouldn't have worried. The sauerkraut came out excellent, and was probably the easiest thing I've ever made. A word of advice if you plan to try this: definitely keep the cabbage submerged in the brine the ENTIRE time, not just at the beginning. I used the lid for a plastic take out container (my crock pot is just too small for a saucer) with a quart jar filled with water on top. That was completely sufficient to keep the cabbage under water, and I put a napkin on top of the crock pot afterward. I almost forgot it was there for the most part, as it just sat unobtrusively on my counter top. Over the past few days, however, the aroma has been getting better and better, and I knew it was time to finally dig in and eat some.

Jeff and I decided to make tempeh Reubens, after having eaten some at Red Lentil after running in a local road race a month ago. It was my first Reuben, and I loved it. Jeff prepared some sourdough from his starter, which fermented and rose all weekend. He baked two loaves this morning, one of which we used for the sandwiches. Then we went to the grocery store to pick up the stuff we don't make (yet): tempeh (fermented soy beans), ketchup and some Vegenaise for the Russian dressing. While at the store, I eyed some fiddlehead ferns and couldn't help but pick up a few to try out.

The meal was delicious and we topped it off with some of our Sauvignon Blanc, for an almost entirely fermented and homemade meal. The fiddleheads were delicious, and I regretted only buying a few ounces. Next time I'll definitely get more. They're simple to make, and apparently quite abundant in New England, so it's nice to eat a truly local food.



Tempeh Reuben
Yield: 2 servings
4 slices of bread
1 8-oz package of tempeh, sliced in half width-wise
A few heaping spoonfuls of sauerkraut
Russian dressing (see recipe below)

Assemble ingredients to your liking, enjoy!

Vegan Russian Dressing
1/4 cup Vegenaise (or vegan mayo of choice)
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tsp sweet pickle relish

Mix ingredients, store any unused dressing in the fridge.

Sautéed Fiddlehead Ferns
1/2 pound fiddlehead ferns
1 tbsp olive oil
1 quarter of a lemon

Wash the fiddleheads thoroughly until all of the dirt is gone. Sauté the ferns in the olive oil. You will know when they're done as they turn a dark green and become tender. Serve with fresh juice from a quarter wedge of lemon.

Weird Stuff: Miracle Fruit

It's April Fool's Day, and I've managed to survive without getting my cubicle covered in tinfoil or finding out that Jeff has been married for 10 years, but I did get to eat some weird stuff today. The pub at BU was selling miracle fruit for 5 dollars a tab (yes, they do come in tablets, to compound the weirdness). While at first I thought it might be an elaborate hoax, I quickly realized that it was legit when Jeff was able to practically drink Tabasco sauce.

The pub offered a spread of sour offerings: lemons, limes, banana peppers, pickles, grapefruit and the above mentioned Tabasco sauce. After letting the tablet dissolve on my tongue I dove into the lemon, which was almost like eating a pie, except I knew deep down inside somewhere it was sour and should have made me pucker up. My favorite offering was the banana peppers. Soaked to the bone in vinegar, they were nevertheless sensationally sweet.

While the miracle fruit is a processed product, something I wouldn't consider buying, it was definitely an interesting experience of how strange nature can be. A fruit that makes sour things turn sweet is certainly a great trick for April first. :)



Miracle Fruit