I’ve been making variations of the cashew cream to compliment meals lately.

Curry cashew cream

1 c raw cashews soaked for 3-4 hrs, rinsed
1/2 c water
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp curry powder
1 tbsp fresh lime or lemon juice
1/8 tsp sea salt (to taste)

Blend until creamy.

This spread tastes great with the Sloppeh Joes (pictured above). We’ve also used it as a jazzed up sour cream on taco night. Exclude the curry and add 1/4 tsp of onion powder and another tbsp of lemon juice for plain sour cream.

Blend til creamy.

I’ve tried a couple of vegan sloppy joe recipes, but this seems to be the biggest hit. It also turns out to be the least complicated one, took 10-15 minutes to make. So as a friend recently said: two flowers, one seed.

It’s pictures above on a sprouted grain bun topped with red leaf lettuce with leftover curry cashew cream sauce from the previous night’s dinner. This one comes from Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking with Whole Foods:

Sloppeh Joe’s

2 tsp EVOO (I used sunflower)
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 tsp sea salt
8 oz of tempeh, crumbled (I used the wild rice one)
2/3 c organic ketchup
2 tsp whole grain mustard (I used spicy dijon)
1 tbsp brown rice vinegar
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Heat the oil in a skillet. Cook the garlic, onions, and bell pepper with the salt until the veggies are soft. Add the crumbled tempeh. Leave on the heat long enough to brown, stirring occasionally. While it’s browning, mix the remaining ingredients and warm the buns. When the tempeh is golden, turn off the heat and stir in the sauce. Voila, it’s ready the serve.

Jeanine and I expanded the Brown Mamas Breastfeed project into a book and website titled Free to Breastfeed. We’re putting the finishing touches on the manuscript and will most likely pitch it to publishing companies to reach a larger audience. The book includes reflections, essays, diary entries and poetry from mothers about their triumphs, challenges and revelations in nursing their little ones. I can pretty much guarantee that it’ll move any pregnant or nursing mother. I’ll be sure to update the blog when there’s more info about the book. In the meantime, you can stay updated by joining the mailing list on the Free to Breastfeed site.

In building up to the book, we released this video while the whole “Stuff People Say” meme was big on the internet:

…and, we were featured in the post about Beyoncé breastfeeding over at theGrio.com. (Click here to read it.) Fancy, right?

Finally, I applied to participate in the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University’s Manning Marable Memorial Conference and was accepted! The conference is at the end of this month and I’ll be presenting on Sunday April 29th about why communities should and can support breastfeeding families. If you’re in the NYC area, you should come by and meet me! The full conference info is here.

Anyhow, the biggest challenge to my transition back into a vegan diet was giving up dairy cheese. I didn’t feel like I was losing out on anything else…but, man, cheese was a major challenge. I have two solid recipes for homemade “cheese” that taste great. They may not replicate the cheese taste, but they taste so good that you won’t mind. Also, they’re all soy free!

Vegan Cheese Pizza

Vegetable-based Cheese

I use this one in macaroni and cheese, on pizza and in lasagna. This recipe was shared by a member of SoulVegFolk.

Ingredients
1 cup red potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup orange carrots, cut into big chunks (they provide color)
1/3 cup onion,  chopped
2 tbsp shallots (I sometimes omit this ingredient if I don’t have any)
1 cup water
1/4 cup raw cashews
1 garlic clove
1/3 cup non-hydrogenated margarine (I use Soy Free Earth Balance)
1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1/4 tsp black (or white) pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp paprika (not really necessary)
2 tsp sea salt

Method:
Cover the first 5 ingredients into a pot and boil until the vegetables are just soft – not mushy! Drain the water (or save for stock later) and combine the veggies with the remaining ingredients in a blender or food processor. Blend until creamy.

Nooch Cheese

I got this recipe from Vegweb.com, which is a treasure trove of great vegan recipes if you have the time to sift through the reviews. I use this cheese over steamed vegetables, on pizza and on tacos.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup quinoa flour (unbleached works just as well, I use quinoa for the added nutrients)
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon dried yellow mustard powder
1 cup water
1 1/2 tablespoons vegan margarine (again, I use Soy Free Earth Balance)

Method:
Combine the dry ingredients into a saucepan and whisk into water until the mixture is clump-free. Heat the pan on medium and add the margarine. Warm until it thickens. It takes 2-4 minutes.

Rawfredo Sauce

We stopped buying milk about 5 or 6 years ago and make our own. With the Soyabella, it literally takes like 1 minute, flat to make our own. BUT, we were wasting the pulp for years because we didn’t know what to do with it. Now, this recipe is one of the reasons I save it in the fridge. I found this one on Cafe Janae. Use this recipe however you would an alfredo sauce. SJ also loves it on steamed broccoli.

Ingredients:
2 cups almond (or other nut) pulp
1 tsp salt
1 clove garlic
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
a dash of cayenne pepper

Method:
Combine all of the ingredients into your blender or food processor and blend until creamy. Add water or milk slowly if necessary to achieve the desired creaminess.

Do you struggle with a love of dairy cheese?

I’m gonna give you some guidelines for produce storage based on which items produce the high amounts of ethylene gas (which ripens foods) and those items that are particularly susceptible to it. You may already be familiar with some of these tips, but I guarantee there will be some surprises for you.

1) If it’s not yet ripe, don’t refrigerate it.
Those avocados, peaches, or tomatoes that are still a bit firm should not go into the fridge just yet. Refrigeration will slow down their ripening. More on ways to ripen foods without them going mushy in the center below.

2) Leave stems in tact.
The cavity created from removing the stem is an entry point for microorganisms. Keep it sealed until you’re ready for use to prevent bacteria that will cause your food to rot or decay sooner.

3) Keep the gas-releasers away from the sensitive ones.

Refrigerate these gassy foods

Apples
Apricots
Cantaloupe
Figs
Honeydew Melon

Do NOT refrigerate these gassy foods

Avocados
(unripe) Bananas
Nectarines
Peaches
Pears
Plums
Tomatoes

Keep gassy foods away from these sensitive ones

(ripe) Bananas
Bok Choy
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Carrots
Cauliflower
Chard
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Kale
Lettuce
Parsley
Peas
Peppers
Spinach
Squash
Sweet potatoes
Watermelon
(all leafy green veggies)

4) Tools and techniques that also work
Air-flow Containers

These containers work well because they allows moisture to drain away from the produce and you can adjust the airflow on them to suit the particular items you’re storing. They work like the crisper in your fridge, just smaller and more intuitive.

Debbie Myers Green Bags

Supposedly, these bags keep produce fresh by absorbing the ethylene gas. I know people who swear by them. I suspect that using the storage tips above and keeping those gods susceptible to ethylene gas away from the gas releasers is enough. Consumer reports tested these bags and found that they weren’t any more effective than not using them.

Bowl of Water

I thought my husband was just a lil cookoo when he started putting produce in water, but it works! Putting the roots or bottom stems of vegetables in a bowl of water also keeps them fresh and vibrant. Just make sure to rinse and change the water every few days. We’ve had success at keeping dark, leafy greens, carrots, scallions and broccoli fresh for over a week this way. Ideally they should be eaten within the week, but this buys you time.

I haven’t yet posted about cloth diapering, but our 19 month old son has been cloth diapered from birth and we love it. I initially made the decision to cloth diaper out of concern for polluting the world with more plastic. Consider that it will take an estimated 300 years for plastic to break down. The first piece of plastic created in the late 1800s still exist. Recycling is a nice gesture, but by all accounts is more of a gesture than an actual solution. In any case, end-product plastics like soiled diapers and sanitary napkins cannot be recycled anyway. So, they just sit in trash dumps…forever.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-plastic. I think plastic is a marvelous invention that is greatly abused in overly disposable culture.

As I learned more about the chemical constituents of disposable diapers, my resolve to avoid them deepened. Plainly put, I want to delay my child’s exposure to the toxic substances within my control for as long as possible. Popular disposable diapers are known to contain dioxin, a well-known carcinogen banned in most other countries, just ask the World Health Organization. This chemical is a by-product of the bleaching process used to make popular disposable diapers, sanitary napkins and tampons white. Thankfully, dioxin-free alternatives of all of them are now widely available in health food stores and on the Internet.

I’m talking a lot about diapers when this was supposed to be too much information about periods! Well, my female friends, we all know that sanitary napkins, diapers, and Depends are pretty much the same thing. I could personally not justify going back to the same old disposable pads for myself, while keeping SJ’s bum wrapped in soft cloth. Which feels better on your lady parts: cloth or plastic? The answer to this led me to try out cloth menstrual pads.

Of course there’s still the question of tampons, but I’ve never had any love for those. I never liked the feeling of them and possibility of Toxic Shock Syndrome turned me off as a teen. Trying cloth pads, led me to the world of menstrual cups and sea pearls.

To use any of these may take shedding anti-woman views on our bodies and periods ingrained since infancy. The first being that menstrual blood is dirty, nasty, unsanitary, etc. Without romanticizing it at all, menstrual blood is kind of the bomb. For one, it’s been inside your body, so it’s probably more sterile than anything you touch as you go about your day. It’s also highly nutritious because it would have been used to nourish a growing person had you become impregnated. The second thing is that you’ll probably have to touch yourself. It’s ironic when you think about it, but we’re conditioned to believe that unless we’re bathing, our vaginas are for other people to touch: doctors, sexual partners, etc.

ALL of that being said, I’ve tried out three different alternatives to disposable menstrual products. Here’s my take:

Cloth pads

Among the natural parenting folks, these may also be known as mama pads because so many of us come to them after trying cloth diapers. The market on these is quite vast. There are lots of handcrafted options available through Etsy and direct websites, in addition the established companies like Party in My Pants, Lunapads, and Glad Rags. The fabric choices range from flannel and organic cotton to wool and bamboo. I have tried the PIMP liner and a few cotton and wool pads from Etsy sellers. They are all super cute and make me feel like my lady parts are well-dressed. However, I have yet to find a leakproof one that I like. Call me picky, but flannel and wool aren’t exactly the temperature regulators I want between my legs.

Menstrual cup

A menstrual cup is worn internally to catch the menstrual flow. The most surprising thing I learned from using one is that despite how it may look (and feel) most of us don’t shed very much blood each day. The most popular cups are DivaCup, Instead Softcup, Mooncup and Mooncup UK. The differences between them are slight, but enough to make one a loyalist. I’ve only tried the DivaCup and it’s always leaked. I’ve read women who also have a retroverted cervix say they had the same experience. I’m going to try trimming the stem and give it another go round because it could be really useful during travels.

Sea sponge tampon

I was complete skeptic of the sea sponge. Sounded unsanitary and gross. But, when I needed to replace the DivaCup and couldn’t find a reasonably priced one by Jade and Pearl, I decided to try the sponge because it was available. LOVE IT! It didn’t leak and I completely couldn’t feel it. I cleaned it with baking soda before using and it rinses very easily between uses. My only issue with it is that I had to trim it a considerable amount before it fit. The one on the left in the photo is what I ended up with after trimming to fit me. I couldn’t see using outside of home though, since it has to be rinsed every few hours on the same schedule you would use a disposable tampon (depending of flow heaviness).

So, I’m still working on getting a full regimen together. In the meanwhile, I’ll give the DivaCup another shot when the sponge is inconvenient. The cloth pads I’ve tried so far make good back-up.

Have you tried any alternatives to disposable menstrual products?

The first time I had chickpea fries was at the seasonal vegan bistro Counter in NYC. I couldn’t stop at one order and would even fill up on them before I could order entrees. Despite other worthwhile items on the menu, I would go to Counter solely for the chickpea fries. So, on my last visit when they told me they no longer served them, I was a little crushed. How dare they? It took me a few months before I even thought of making them myself.

Turns out they’re super easy to make, though they do require refrigeration time before frying. I’ve tried them with and without garlic, onions, and bell peppers in them. It’s a good thing I got it down because it turns out that Counter has shut down for good (RIP).

Garlic Chickpea Fries
Ingredients
2 cups water
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 large garlic clove – minced or crushed
1 1/2 cups chickpea flour

Frying oil – I use peanut.

You’ll also need two sheets of parchment/wax paper.

1. Line the bottom of a casserole dish with wax paper.
2. Bring the water, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper to a boil and turn the fire down to a simmer.
3. Slowly whisk in the chickpea flour.
4. Once the mixture is thick and sticky, transfer it to the wax paper immediately. Don’t overmix.
5. Using the other sheet of wax paper, cover the mixture and spread it across pan as evenly as you can.
6. Allow the mixture to chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. 20 minutes in a freezer will also do the trick.
7. When you’re ready to fry, heat your frying oil.
8. Cut up the chickpea batter into slices.
9. Fry!

If you’re not going to eat them immediately, you can keep them warm in the oven heated to 250 degrees.

Credit: Black Mommy Circle

One of my favorite bloggers journaling her growth as person, mother, writer, and wife Jessica from Mommyhood Next Right gave birth to her second child recently.  Because she’s way more organized than I am, she contacted me last month and asked if I would write a guest post for her blog while she’s adjusting to her new life as Mother x 2.  I was completely humbled and excited that she even asked and wants to share my voice with her readers.  Please join them and check out my post today where I share a major change in my life that is completely rocking my world – in a good way.  Read the post.

But, what does it all amount to? I’m not sure, but I’d like to share an exercise that we’ve done a few different ways over the years that helps us reaffirm what and why we are. This iteration is adapted from the organizational development book Good to Great by Jim Collins.

1) How do your actions talk? Each person generates a list of words, phrases, concepts, etc. they believe represents how the family operates. These should be evident in the way your family already moves in the world and treats each other, not how you aspire to be.

Core Values List

When we wrote them up on poster paper, we had to use different colors because I would’ve been overwhelmed otherwise. Anyhow, in places where there was overlap between our two lists, we consolidated the words or concepts.

2) Narrow it down! After all of that wordsmithing, now you’ve gotta pare it down.

Vetting the Values

Using a sticky note, identify 3-5 that are shared among your lists. Then answer the following questions with a ‘Y’ for “Yes” or “N” for “No”:

• If you were to move and start a new life for your self and family would you build it around this principle regardless of of your circumstances? (rich poor, homeless, wealthy,etc.)
• Would you want to yourself and your family to be known and remembered for this for the next 100 years, no matter what happens in the outside world or society?
• Would you hold this core value, even if at some point in time it became a social disadvantage-even if in some instances people ridiculed you for living this core value?
• Do you believe that those who do not share this core value – those who disregard or violate it consistently simply do not belong in your inner circle? Or, break the sanctity of familyhood?
• Would you personally continue to hold this core value even if you were not rewarded for holding it?
• Would you sacrifice your comforts, lifestyle or livelihood before abandoning this core value?
• If you awoke tomorrow with more than enough money to retire comfortably for the rest of your life, would you continue to apply this core value to your productive activities?

Kind of intense, right? It’s not so bad when you just answer truthfully without assigning value to the answer. Remember, the point is greater transparency, not shame or posturing.

3) Make something beautiful…and simple. Now that you’ve narrowed it down to the principles that are unanimously “YES,” check again to make sure there’s nothing on the list that’s an aspiration. These should represent the family based on who you already are. We then used the values to come up with a succinct statement that encompassed them all. We started with two different statements each and kinda riffed off each others until we arrived someplace that made sense (in purple):

Purpose Statements

Prince SJ weighed in

To finalize it, we asked ourselves the following questions:

• Do you find this statement personally inspiring?
• Can you envision this purpose being as valid 100 years from now as it is today?
• Does the purpose help you think expansively about the long-term possibilities and range of activities the family can consider over the next 100 years, beyond its current activities, commitments, and investments?
• Does the purpose help you to decide what activities to not pursue, to eliminate from consideration?
• Is this purpose authentic—something true to what the family is all about—not merely words on paper that “sound nice”?
• Would this purpose be greeted with enthusiasm rather than cynicism by a broad base of people in the family? (There are only two of us to weigh in, so this was a no-brainer).
• When telling other family members of friends what your family is about, would you feel proud in describing your work in terms of this purpose?

So, was it worth it? This activity gets a round of applause from me. I was hesitant at first because it seemed like a lot of work. But, it turned out to be really inspiring and a great bonding experience for us. Also, now that my feet are headed steadily toward midwifery, having articulated the family purpose is a great motivator. It’s even been a common reference point for mediating the tensions that arise from handling the dynamic needs of running a household and raising a child. It’s also been helpful for thinking about the intersections between our various obligations and interests.

Considering Adinkra Symbols

We still have a little ways to go. We also chose Adinkra symbols that most closely reflected our purpose statement. The short story of why we chose Adinkra symbols is that my husband and I met on a trip to Ghana, so they hold a special significance for our relationship. Above are some of the symbols we considered. I’d also like to find a beautiful way to integrate the symbol we adopted and the final purpose statement into a piece of artwork for our home.

]]> http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/whats-your-familys-purpose/feed/ 0 http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/15-minute-vegan-french-toast/ http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/15-minute-vegan-french-toast/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:00:03 +0000 Anayah http://www.soulvegmama.com/?p=763

We’re brunch addicts.  I have to be careful with brunch, because it really amounts to a big ol’ carb fest.  One of the ways I make sure that brunch is as nutritious as it is decadent is with sprouted grain breads.  Sprouted breads are less carbohydrate than regular whole grain or white breads. Furthermore, they have a high protein content.  I prefer Alvarado St. Bakery‘s organic sprouted grain breads because they taste delicious and they’re also a cooperatively, worker-owned bakery.The LA Times published a short piece on some basics to sprouted grain breads here.  There are also published studies on the health benefits of sprouted grains, including increased digestibility.

How could you not feel free to indulging after all that feel-good research? Here’s my fail-proof recipe for slamming, vegan french toast in 15 minutes or less:

1 cup nut milk (I usually use homemade hazelnut or macadamia nut)

1/4 chickpea flour (grind or buy)

2 tbsp rice flour (or cornstarch)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cardamom (optional)

oil for cooking

Makes 10-12 slices.

Get your frying pan hot.  Mix up all the ingredients.  Add a thin layer of oil to the frying pan (SN: Do people not use the word “skillet” anymore?).  Dip each slice on both sides for 1 or 2 seconds.  It’ll only take about 2 minutes or so for the toast to brown before you need to turn it over and cook the other side.

Top with fruit like berries and/or bananas and drizzle with maple syrup.  We’ve recently tried raw coconut nectar lately for a really unique flavor and a boost of the B-vitamins it’s supposed to contain.