Eventful Bacon

It’s been a heck of a hiatus, and my kitchen is still recovering. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from making the mess bigger!

After an absolutely dreadful cold that sapped me of any will to do anything (including eat! yikes!), I’m finally almost back to 100% and ready to go again. It’s been an interesting coupla weeks, lemme tell ya.

My mom flew in in the midst of everything to celebrate the Little Dude’s third birthday (three? already??), and I baked him up a little cake from a Duncan Hines mix (that right there should tell you all you need to know about how I was feeling!). Some of these flavors fall in to that “accidentally vegan” category, so I went with the Dark Chocolate Fudge mix. Normally, the box wants 3 eggs, 1 C water, and 1/3 C oil added. That wasn’t going to cut it for the VV household, obvs. I sifted in 1 1/2 tsp of baking soda with the dry mix and used 1 C soy milk with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar in place of water. I found a 3.2 oz Buddy Fruit (apple + banana) in the pantry that I mixed into the batter as well. It worked for the 4″ round cake and several cupcakes.

I’m not calling that an official recipe — just letting you all know that it can be done!

I was inspired by Phoney Baloney to mimic their coconut bacon after I found a tub of coconut chips at my favorite Asian market. I dragged my mom along to it and she seemed a little overwhelmed. She survived though, enough to help me demolish some of this crispy tastiness. So, here’s the scoop — in a really flexible format. Ha.

Special Sauce

I have no exact formula for this. Bear with me. I love Sriracha you guys. Like. Really love it. And I can’t bear to toss out that tiny little bit that’s impossible to get out of the bottle. It makes me sadface really badly. So, I turn it into my special bacon sawce.

• sriracha dregs, in bottle
• 1/4 C Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (coconut aminos, shoyu, soy sauce, etc.)
• 1/4 tsp liquid smoke
• optional: 1 tsp vegan Worcestershire or maple syrup

Add all to bottle and shake.

Coconut Facon

• two or three handfuls coconut chips
• 2-3 tsp “special sauce”

Preheat oven to 325F. If you have a convection oven, preheat it to 300F. In a small bowl, combine chips and sauce and stir to coat. Spread chips in a single layer on a parchment-lined rimless cookie cheet. Bake 20-30 minutes, until crispy. If using a convection oven, the time will be shorter and you’ll only need to “stir” the chips once, about halfway through. A conventional oven will require some babysitting. You’ll need to flip the chips about ever 5 minutes or so to keep them from burning. Store in an airtight container or bag in the fridge for about a week. To crisp up the chips, bake at 250F for a few minutes, or dry-fry on the stovetop.

My Fall CSA Failure

I love CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). They’re honestly completely totally absolutely awesome. As long as you have two or more really good eaters and lots of creativity and/or freezer space. Let me explain.

The CSA available through the farm market closest to us is a little unusual. This could be because the market itself is a little unusual. Unlike other markets I have been to, ours is in part of a large building and has produce set up in much the same way as a supermarket does. There is a small area with bulk bins of various dry beans and grains, a refrigerated case with cheese, eggs, and tofu. A seafood vendor, salsa vendor, a small cookie shop. Another case of milk, ice cream, and various meaty items. Peanuts. Holistic pet food. Other than the few vendor stalls, the cookie shop, and the little cafe, the only other choice you have for interaction is with the cashiers.

I miss going to each “booth” to talk to the farmers, but I also get why they’d just drop off their harvest to be sold here — it lets them go to other markets or spend that valuable time with families or working.

Anyways. I feel like I rambled and got off track there. So, this market is a non-profit organization, open Thursday through Sunday, selling “local” products. I’m not going to get into defining what “local” means in this case, because I have no idea. I may or may not have had an extremely polite “exchange” on Facebook with their seafood vendor (pre-veg days) about using the slogan “Always Fresh, Always Local” while selling salmon from Alaska. Sorry, guys — this is the East Coast.

There are several types of CSAs out there — subscriptions varying in price based on season, number of people you’re feeding, if you’re wanting organic produce, delivered to your doorstep, etc. Some CSAs package your share so it’s all ready for you to pick up. Ours works a little differently.

We pay our subscription fee based on the season (it’s $190-$250, depending) and go to the market once a week for twelve weeks to pick up the items in our CSA share. It’s a bring-your-own-bag affair, and we choose our own items from the bins. There’s generally a placard there saying “Take 6 apples”, or “Choose 2 eggplant” etc. Smaller items like berries or mushrooms are packaged by weight and you simply pick a container. So it’s really fun in that way. You can choose smaller or larger melons/squash/whatever to suit your needs. If you’re an idiot like me, you pick some of the biggest ones and never manage to keep up.

Some weeks were pretty manageable.

Others… not so much.

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At the time, I was still eating omnivorously, though trying to stay on top of the CSA share by myself essentially force-converted me to vegetarianism. Not necessarily a bad thing at all. Except I had never really learned to cook with such a variety of produce. It was certainly an education. I was giving away at least half of my share every week and still had roasted squash stuffed in every cranny of my freezer. My produce bins were overflowing with apples.

I had to come up with a solution. One was to start canning. The other was this delicious soup. Even with those stopgap measures, I still managed to fail miserably at keeping up. Learn from my mistakes, but definitely try the soup (I apologize for the lack of photo — this soup isn’t very photogenic, but I’ll try again sometime).

Squash-Apple Soup

1T non-hydrogenated margarine

1T EV olive oil

2C chopped yellow onion (1 medium)

1T curry powder

1 1/2 lb roasted butternut squash (1 medium)

2 sweet apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (Gala)

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

2 C veggie or mock-chicken stock

1/2 C good apple cider or juice (Simply Apple)

Melt margarine in large pot. Add olive oil, onions, and curry. Cook uncovered on low heat 15-20 minutes until onions are tender. Stir occasionally, scraping bottom of pot.

Add squash, apples, salt, pepper, and stock. Bring to boil. Cover. Cook on low 20 minutes, until apples begin to break down. Purée by allowing soup to cool and transferring to a blender or by using an immersion blender.

With soup back in pot, add apple juice to desired consistency. It should be slightly sweet and quite thick. Adjust salt and pepper. Serve hot.

To roast squash: cut in half, scoop out seeds. Place cut-side-down in 9″x13″ dish in 1/2″ of water. Bake at 350F for 40min. Flesh should scoop away easily from the skin.