Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing.

You ever toss and turn,
you're lying awake and thinking about the one you love?

You ever close your eyes,
making believe you're holding the one you're dreaming of?

It hurts so bad when you finally know just how
low, low, low, low, low, she'll go.

-Chris Isaak

Baby did a bad, bad thing.

I know I am not supposed to patronize your, ahem, establishment. I know that I'm not supposed to, um, eat you. But I can't help myself. A girl's got needs.

Aspiring vegan, yes, but when your siren song of triple cream, or baked mac-n-cheese, or melted cheese between two deliciously buttered grilled pieces of bread, or - oh my - goat cheese scone! calls to me, I can't control myself.

I've seen the videos of horrible treatment of dairy cattle and I've supported my vegan friends in their personal and professional endeavors, but I just, er, melt, when you're near.

I'm not saying I need you. I'm not even saying I love you. I'm simply saying I'm weak in your presence. I'm intrigued by your creaminess. I'm fascinated with the way you, uh, taste.

I can't promise this will go on forever. I don't think either you or I want that. But for now, just for the moment...

vegan supper club: inaugural dinner

Vegan Supper Club began many moons ago when the cows were crying and the lambs were screaming and we were hungry. Something like that. Well, rather, the real story is that vegan cupcake friends wanted like minded individuals to dine with them, but also to do some of the cooking so they didn't have so much work to do. I think that's how it went. You'll have to ask them.

So the theme was "fall" and the hosts were serving butternut squash ravioli. I of course chimed in with "BRUSSELS SPROUTS!!!" and the others claimed soup and salad. Being the vegan cupcake friends, the hosts also provided dessert.

The first course came with spicy pumpkin peanut soup cooked by some friends (who also have a blog!!!). It was delicious!!!!!! The soup was not thick like you might think, but rather a nice, light, pumpkiny, peanuty, spicy, delicious soupy treat. They call it Thai; I called it Yum.

It was paired with host's famous bread:


Breadmaking seems so "old world." But it's so worth it; this ain't no Wonder bread. (I mean that in the best possible way!). (My brother also makes his own bread and pizza crust too.)

Next course was this amazing fall salad. It included greens, of course, but also apples, figs, candied walnuts, pepitas, radishes or turnips or something little and white (from their garden!) and I don't even know what else. Each bite revealed some new secret, rendering this salad something from the category 'delicious'; it's not hard to find a 'fall greens' salad, especially when it's fall. But this one was unusually delightful.

And then came the most fantastic raviolis you've ever experienced: they were not too soft and not too rubbery, but rather the perfect noodle consistency. I'm fairly well-versed at ravioli-making in particular and noodle-making in general, but these raviolis were so well crafted that I contemplated selling them. I mean, we're only blocks from the Hill!!


But here's the thing: the topping. You can't put a cream sauce on a vegan ravioli, and a red sauce will mask the delicious squashiness... so what's a girl to do?

It wasn't so so long ago that I tried my own hand at butternut squash raviolis. They were not for a vegan crowd, however, so when the recipe called for a "brown butter glaze, I delivered (actually, it was the butter crowd of my parents and co. so it was perfect). But the raviolis, as delicious and successful as I could have hoped, in the end, tasted like butter to me.














Vegan Supperclub Friends' raviolis, being vegan, were not coated in a thick butter sauce. On the contrary, they were topped only with a small dollop of caramelized onions. Wha? Who'd a thought? It was perfection. The sweetness and creaminess and tanginess of a caramelized onion complemented the sweet-yet-savory squash-filled little pasta pockets. I still dig the idea of a sage-brown-butter glaze, mostly on account of the sage, and the word glaze, which sounds so delicate, but next time maybe I'll try it with more sage, some Earth Balance, and a little caramelized onion action.

Anyway, I digress. this entree was accompanied by my first attempt at BS and the meal was completed with S'mores Vegan Cupcakes. I'm telling you this today, because VSC2 is forthcoming!!! Yum! Indian Delight!!!!

Beer bread let down

So I went back to my favorite work lunch place, Schlafly Bottleworks, specifically to eat the yummy beer bread. I know, right? It doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. But this bread is fresh, it’s a wonderful texture, nice and heavy, and has a really good bread flavor. It’s brown, so you think you’re eating whole grains, which makes a body happy. (I don’t know if you are or not.) The accompanying butters are no joke, either: chive butter and some sort of white cheese. Wow! I first experienced this a couple of months ago with a pal visiting from New York (this was another meal I ate consisting completely of sides).

Suffice it to say we were wowed. I mean, we were wowed enough that when she returned months later, our phone conversation went something like this:

Friend: “Meg, beer bread.”

Me: “Yeah. Wednesday.”

So we go and before we order we’re like, “Listen, Tim; whatever about your specials. Can we get some beer bread?”

It was so good! Warm, crumbly, heavy yet light, and oh so flavorful. Can’t wait! Yay yay yayayayayay beeeeeeeeer bread!

But, uh, this was not the same. First, it was greasy. It seemed deep-fat-fried. I doubt it was (that’s just weird), but maybe they used a lot of oil? Then the butters. Oh the butters. If I’m going to violate my no-butter clause, then it had better be for a good reason. These butters were not good reasons. The chive butter looked the same, but the flavor was very blah. And the white one they said was a blue cheese cream cheese, which I KNOW can’t be the same, because I’m allergic to blue. We asked, they said for sure it was the same, no way, they hadn’t changed recipes in all the years the waiter’d been working there, but maybe a different sous-chef cooked it? Eh, whatevs.

So we let Tim tell us the specials. He says they have a salad special with locally grown mushrooms and some other stuff, and I cut him off and say, “OK I”ll take that.” I figure, I heart the vanilla vinaigrette salad, I’ve ordered it millions of times, it’s always good, so I trust Schalfly’s salads. And I figure, if they have the produce to create a salad on special, it’s got to be good!

But no again! Jeez! Bad day for the Bottleworks. The salad was greens, mushrooms (albeit locally grown shitakes), cheddar cheese (?!?!), lots of red onion, and what they said was a honey mustard dressing (but which tasted like Ireland’s version of “salad dressing” which is mayonnaise). It was so very so. Not even a so, actually, just an s, in my ranking system (so so/so/s). Boo.

Conversation: check

Iced tea: pretty good

Ambiance: like it.

But food today:_________________

I’ll leave that blank. So sad. I guess you shouldn’t knock a solid goat/green salad; at least you know what you’re getting.

Anyway, I'm not out for blood. Everyone gets a free pass for mediocrity. Just one, though...!

Turkish Delish

Dinner with the family. On a typical Sunday, this is a challenge: traditional Irish carnivores (i.e. meat and potatoes) + me (near vegan) = Mom cooks extra vegetables and I watch like a hawk to make sure no more than one pat of butter coats them (seriously, I've seen a stick of butter lumped onto a pot of green beans!). But add in brother (world traveler) from out of town and we have the unique task of eating American Ethnic. Whatever that is. Well actually, it doesn't exist.

What ensues is a conversation about "what to eat for dinner" that can last literally hours. First off, we're all "easy." None of us want to offend, and none of us want the others' eating to suffer (I mean we're all food-sensitive in the emotional sense). Second, inevitably, Mom and Dad want to go to their standard, the Missouri Athletic Club, which is a men's club with nice traditional upscale food (but whose chefs have a hard time remembering not to put the ham in the pasta primavera). And the rest of us want something ethnic (Nepalese? Vietnamese? Afghan?). So the conversations go something like this:

Brother: "how about Govinda's, that Hari Krishna restaurant?"
Sister (trying to mediate): "um, Dad can't eat curry; how about Vietnamese? Mom, it's almost like Chinese. You can order chicken!"
Mom: "Well, I'm easy, but we were thinking of the MAC. But I guess you can't eat there [because of my near-veganness]"
Sister: "Well, I'm sure they'll cook me something off the menu. I'm easy. Mmmm.... how about Greek? Dad, you can eat Greek, right?"
Dad: "I'm easy."
Sister-in-law: "Ooohhh... Thai!"
Brother: "Yeah! Thai!"
Mom: "Well, we're easy (whispering: but your father doesn't like that stuff)"
Dad: "I'm easy!"

and so on. Forever. People joke that our family starts planning what to eat for dinner over lunch. And it's really not an exaggeration.
But anyway, brother's in town, the kids decide we want Mediterranean, and I select one of my FAVORITE restaurants, Aya Sofia. Holy couscous this place is yummy. Mom isn't sure about the menu, and Dad can only eat the swordfish because of it being a religious holiday, but we are feeling middle eastern and they are feeling obliging. More or less. So we go.

Wine: I start with a really lovely Montepulciano. They were late arriving so I sat at the bar and enjoyed it solo. I felt so New York! It had obviously been refrigerated all night, which I know is acceptable nowadays, but I have to say, I like my reds at the standard room temp. It took almost an hour to warm up, but it was good anyway. It was fruity but not sweet at all, and it was nice and bold, with a little zing, but not overly acidic.

Then when the family arrived, Dad ordered a bottle of Malbec; I liked it too. It oddly had no end flavor, but rather stopped short, just after a big initial burst of raspberry and what I usually call rubber eraser. I'm no wine expert; I just call it like I taste it.

They brought warmed pita and a kalamata olive tapenade, which typically I would avoid because of my love-hate relationship with olives (I want to love them, but I secretly hate them) (and I secretly hate people who love them), but this stuff's good. It's really salty and somehow that kalamata twang is subdued by garlic? oil? Something. Oh, I hope there aren't anchovies in there! Yikes! Crap. Anyway, I ate it and I loved it.

Then we ordered the appetizer platter with humus, biber ezme (roasted red pepper puree), and babaganouj. I was going to order humus for dinner with a salad, but the table wanted to share, and "I'm easy," so I ordered something else. Now this is good: the humus is really garlicky and chickpeay, but it's also nice and textured. I've had humuses all across the country (Here are the rankings: 1. the former Blackberry Cafe in St. Louis that wouldn't tell me the secret to their recipe and then shut down. I like to think I hexed them. 2. The Hummus Place in NYC, which is actually just hummus. Oh holy hummus, oh holy hummus. 3. Probably this humus. Truly, it's that good.) and this one is tasty. Then the red pepper puree: I likey; my Dad described it as a mild salsa, and I wouldn't disagree. It's sweet, tangy, fruity; it's spready, it goes well on pita. Then the winner, actually, however, was the babaganouj. I'm not a huge eggplant fan (jeez, all these confessions of vegetable insecurities coming out in one post!), but I try. Part of why I don't heart eggplant is that it's hard to cook with. It's SO eggplanty, and the texture is often so tough. And another reason is that so often eggplant parm is the sole "veggie" item on menus. That's irritating.
Anyway, this one rocked. It is nice and cold, first of all, but also creamy, but not creamy in a half-and-half way, rather it was blended nicely, and it was eggplanty, but also garlicky, and salty, and almost nutty? Is that what it was? I was two wines in at that point, so that's my best recollection.

Next: salad. This was a very standard chopped salad (a wonderful reprieve from the goat and green salad week I just had) but the flavors were freaking amazing. It was simple: diced tomatoes (good fresh, meaty ones), diced green peppers, and diced cucumbers. But here are the hidden gems of this salad: lots of green onion, sliced into an equivalent size as the diced veggies. And lots of parsley. And a lemon and olive oil vinaigrette. This was so good, it tasted in color--yellow from the lemon and green from the parsley (although it looked rather red). It was the reason why you eat veggies. It was like Turkish Delight, but a salad, rather than a nougat.

Finally, the entree: I ordered the falafel since we'd already had hummus, but I wasn't really hungry at that point, so the less-than-exciting balls that appeared didn't disappoint, they merely intrigued. Here's why they intrigued: first, the texture was totally smooth. I guess I know you can grind up chick peas into a smooth consistency, but why? Especially since the hummus is so nice and lumpy. And second, the balls were perfectly round and totally solid. I've had baked falafel, fried falafel, patty falafel, ball falafel, chunk falafel packed in oil (or in yogurt sauce), but never smooth, round, shooter-marble falafel. And it was very so so. Actually, I'd give it just a so. Again, 3 wines in, full of humus and salad, but still, this was, eh, meh. Next time I'll stick with the sides, as I had planned from the get go.

My mom ordered the Turkish equivalent of fried mozzarella sticks, which
were phyllo-dough-wrapped feta cheese sticks. They were hot and fried
and melty, and even accompanied by a red tomato-based sauce, but the surprise was the dill weed in them. That made them tasty. Odd, but tasty.

In sum, yum. Salads, spreads, and red wine = wow. Balls and sticks = eh. But I still love this place. I'll go back. Especially since the belly dancers won't bug you if you don't make eye contact. Now that's just respectful.