ode to tofurky: a thanksgiving haiku

i thought you'd be gross.
but then i gave you a try.
second helping please.

Roasted Root Vegetables

Here's another recipe that will warm up your house when it's cold.

Ingredients:

1 large rutabaga
12 medium parsnips
8 medium turnips
4 medium onions
Kosher Salt
Black Pepper
Dried Rosemary
Canola Oil

Procedures

1) Peel Rutabaga. Puncture it with a fork numerous times. Microwave it for about 4 minutes. Then chop it into bite-sized cubes. (If you want a workout, you can try chopping it without the pre-microwaving)
2) Peel parsnips and slice into bite-sized pieces.
3) Peel and quarter the onions.
4) Wash (but don't peel) the turnips and chop them into bite-sized pieces.
5) Generously coat a 10 X 15 baking pan with canola oil. Add rutabaga, parsnips, turnips, and onions. Add a little more oil and a bunch of salt. Stir.
6) Bake in oven at 350 for about an hour and a half. (Check on the vegetables, stirring and potentially adding oil, every half hour or so).
7) Generously season with rosemary, pepper, and additional salt. Bake for another hour / hour and a half until the rutabaga is soft and everything else is nicely carmelized.

Butternut Squash Dip

Within the next few days, I shall post recipes for everything I made for Thanksgiving. Here's a simple one:

Ingredients:

One Medium Butternut Squash
One 9 oz log of Cranberry Cinnamon Chevre (available cheaply at Trader Joes)
Biryani Pulav Masala Mix (available at any of the Indian Markets in Columbus)
Salt

Procedures:

1) Roast the butternut squash.
2) Scoop out the squash flesh into a food processor.
3) Crumble the chevre and add it to the food processor.
4) Add a pinch of the masala mix and a generous helping of salt.
5) Puree for a couple of minutes until smooth.
6) Chill in refrigerator for a couple of hours before serving with bread, pita, or crackers.

scattered, smothered, covered

So who is going to post about the joys of post-Larry's trips to Waffle House?
Hmm? Hmm? I'm waiting...

How I Miss Those Sidebar Links...

I'd like to forward the call to all contributing bloggers to help build up the static resouces of the site--namely, let's collect a few outbound links to useful foodie-related resources that visitors (and ourselves) might find useful as they ponder the culinary options afforded by cowtown and surrounding areas. Our fearless blog admin (whom I have just nominated for the task) can then stick a few in our "Links" section. I'll go first and recommend:
chowhound, the online destination for Zagat's-but-hipper type reviews.

Other suggestions?

(Trans)Snickerdoodles--a new twist on a classic treat

Because I love my Gender and Sexuality Theory students so much, I made them cookies to eat while we watched a film in class today. First I made the vegans Fudge and Peanutbutter no-bake cookies. These tasted pretty good but reminded me just a little too much of the uber-healthy cookies my mother used to place in my lunch as a child. However, I also made Snickerdoodles-- the perfect autumn treat! There is something about the cinnamon that warms you up on a blustery day. As I was looking at the recipe I thought, how can I really spice these up? Well, the last stage of snickerdoodle making you roll the cookie dough in cinnamon and sugar and I thought what if I add some cayenne pepper? It was a FANTASTIC idea! The cookies had a bite to them like little redhots, but of course the cookies were merely subtly sweet and pleasantsly spicy. Although I did not try it in this batch, I think adding a little unsweetened cocoa to the cinnamon, sugar, cayenne pepper mixture would make really yummy Mexican hot chocolate cookies.

Here is the recipe I made last night:
3.75 cups of flour
.5 tsp baking soda
.5 tsp salt
.5 tsp. cream of tartar
1 cup butter (although I used .5 butter and .5 vegan margarine)
1.5 cups sugar
2 eggs
.25 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 TBS sugar
1.5 tsp cinnamon
.5 tsp cayanne pepper (you can add more or less depending on how hot you want-- I was conservative because well, my students have Missouri palates)

Preheat the oven to 375. Use a non-stick cookie sheet or a silpat sheet or grease a regular cookie sheet. Stir together the flour, soda, cream of tartar, and salt. In a separate bowl beat butter for 30 seconds. Add the sugar and beat until fluffy. Add eggs, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and combine until a dough is formed. Out of the dough, create one inch balls and roll them in the sugar, cinnamon, and cayanne pepper. Place one inch apart of the cookie sheet and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand or a spatula. Bake for about 8 minutes. Allow to cool on a rack about five minutes. Enjoy!

Neo-Vegan Delights

We (rita + jason) smuggled a camera into a certain neo-vegan, haute-cuisine restaurant in Columbus, Ohio (whose name we dare not speak). Everything was truly wonderful, kicking the ass of neo-vegan food we have had on both coasts! There was an art opening. We both thought we were snappy dressers; we were wrong.

Everything was good, but here are our favorite selections in rank order from truly exceptional to pretty freakin' good:

1) Two tatins dessert--raw and traditional (the traditional tatin was a baked apple tart...the raw version had marinated apples with an early date walnut crust).
2) Crispy king oyster, beet tartare, wild walnut ricotta (appetizer)
3) Baby lettuces, spaghetti squash, radicchio + chinese cabbage, sea vegetable + peanut vinaigrette.
4) A tie: Arugula and cannelini "waldorf style" toasted fennel, millet, wild walnut ricotta crepe (appetizer) AND hedgehog + chanterelle risotto, totsoi + red miso broth (made to order entree)
5) Oatmeal danishes, passion fruit custard, rum-spiced cream.

And of course the manhattans and martinis were impeccable.

On to the illegal pictures; sometimes you have to break the law for food: