It Happened To Me: I Now Eat Every Vegetable

Congratulations! I now, very suddenly, like avocado. I have always loved every vegetable in the whole world, except avocado. I don’t know! The smeared green-turning-to-brown, the mushy cubes making a mess in a salad,  a half-cut avo going brown and crusty in my parents’ fridge, remnants of it dried around some dumb baby’s mouth – I just couldn’t. People would go on and on about what a delight it was – oh, they could just eat with a spoon! Oh, all they need is some salt and pepper! Maybe a lemon squeeze! Lordy. Anyway, I ate it inside some sushi, and then eventually I tried some truly delicious (fresh, cilantro heavy, lime anointed, etc.) guac with chips and salsa, and then I had it on some toast with poached eggs, and now, I have graduated to actually buying my own avocado, and putting it on my toast, or ordering it inside my lox bagel (I don’t like cream cheese.) I used to go to Peacefood and order that Avocado Tempeh Ruben sans avocado. But no more! It feels very sudden, but I suppose it was gradual. I feel truly like a woman in her 30s. Spread the news; Esther Werdiger now loves every vegetable in the world, for real.

The first avocado I ever purchased, with the sole intention of eating it myself, featured here in the breakfast I ate alone this past Sunday.

Annals of Breakfast: DIY Muesli

Muesli! Granola! I’m not sure if the difference is purely semantic or not. In Australia, they call it muesli, and here it’s called granola. Muesli is… European? Healthier? I don’t know. Also, it does not matter. I will henceforth use the terms interchangeably. I used to make a big batch of granola every few weeks, and I’d store it in a big container in the fridge or freezer, because anything that makes my milk colder is a +++ (Pro tip: I put frozen blueberries in my cereal. I like blueberries but it also makes the milk extra cold.)

I barely make museli anymore, mostly because my schedule is such that I rarely have time for breakfast. Breakfast is a large amount of sub-par coffee, purchased roughly a block away from Penn Station, and nursed at my stupid desk. Perhaps some almonds from my desk, or some other desk snack (what are YOUR desk snacks? Tell us in the comments below! I like Trader Joe’s dried mango.) And on Therapy Wednesdays, sometimes a scone. But I miss breakfast, and muesli was something I really felt I’d truly perfected. What a waste.

My recipe is super easy and really easy to customize. The basic principle is that it should be healthy, simple, tasty, and have clusters. Clusters! Chew and crunch is very important. You want oats, something to give it a bit of sweet (apple juice, honey, maple syrup, or agave), whatever dried fruit you like (I stick to raisins and apricots) and whatever nuts or seeds you like (I generally stick with almonds, but may also add some coconut and sesame seeds) and maybe some other stuff (I used a lot of cinnamon and sometimes cardamom). Here’s the main bit: YOU WET THE OATS. I put them in a big mixing bowl, and I pour a BUNCH of boiling water over them. You want enough that all the oats are wet (they are pretty absorbent), but not too much that you have excess water. Pour a little, and then reassess, I saw. After the water, I add the cinnamon (I find, personally, that you need to use quite a bit to taste it at all, which is odd, because, in the words of my mother, “cinnamon is a BULLY.” Why so angry about it, Mum???) And then, I add the honey, or whatever sweet thing you’re using. If you’re using apple juice, use less boiling water. You don’t need a lot – the dried fruit is pretty sweet, and I think this sort of recipe is for people who don’t love things to be crazy sweet? Unclear.

Next, you want to toast your muesli. If you’re using raw almonds, add them here. Pistachios are fun too (particularly nice if you’re using maple syrup and cardamom). Pre-toasted almonds can be chopped and thrown in after the cooking. If you’re using sesame seeds, add them here too. Fattier nuts like pecans should be used raw – they will burn way too quickly if you’re cooking them with the oats. This is how the clusters happen; you are very slowly toasting the wet oats, and as the water evaporates, the oats kinda stick together. That’s the whole thing. Keep the oven low, and check to see that it’s not burning at the edges. Move it all around with a wooden spoon so that it toasts evenly. But this whole part might take an hour, possibly more. You want to just keep it low and be patient.

When you’re done, let it all cool on the baking tray. To get an idea of how much fruit and nuts to add, I put the chopped nuts and fruits (Pro tip: use scissors to cut the dried apricots. Sounds dumb, I know.) on top of the cooling oats. It just helps you eyeball your fruit/nuts/oats ratio. Mix it all up with your hands, and then put it in a container. I like to throw some raw oats in too – it kind of looks cool (Light brown! Dark brown!) and adds fun texture. It also bulks it up and makes it go much further, with no extra work.  And keep it in the fridge or freezer. It’ll keep for longer AND MAKE YOUR MILK COLDER, like I mentioned a thousand times at the beginning.

Let’s Talk About… Veggie Sausage

I grew up in a pretty fat-phobic environment (although, who didn’t? It was the 90s, era of fat-free EVERYTHING) and people loved to trash talk sausages. I’d have a hotdog once or twice a year (Lag Ba’omer, usually; the Jewish holiday of bonfires!) but it was always accompanied by tsk-tsking, initially from adults and eventually FROM WITHIN (thanks, guys). Eventually, I got over it, and eventually, better Kosher sausages appeared on the market.

But also, what’s even bad about sausages? Nitrates, mostly, to be honest. All those rumours you’d hear about sausages containing the most unmentionable animal parts never deterred me, a girl who truly enjoys the crunch of gristle or chewing on a roasted chicken neck. Plus, who cares? And yes, a juicy sausage is going to have a high fat content but like, a sausage is also not big, and you’re eating it – what, 3 times a year? And when the Kosher butcher stores in Melbourne started making better sausages, they were exactly that; better. I can’t talk about it any more because I’m getting hungry. And now I’m thinking about the hotdogs at baseball games.

Truth is, this whole preamble is irrelevant because what I’m about to talk about is… veggie sausage, not actual sausage. Like I mention in every blessed post, my kitchen is dairy. But beyond that, Kosher meat isn’t available everywhere. So if I’m ducking into a supermarket to pick up some groceries, it’s handy to just by some veggie meat, which is widely available. Here’s what I love about all sausage though; it’s like, substantial, and can be pretty wholesome, but will always have that kind of junky undertone. You know?

If I’m having a basic vegetable-based dinner, throwing in some sausage is a real treat. Livens up the whole thing! Adds flavour, chew, color, protein – I guess. Anyway, I just wanted to write a few fun ideas for veggie sausage. I like the Tofurky Italian one. It’s meaty and spicy, and comes in a pack of 4 that will last for a while (I don’t want to know why). I can use 2 in a soup, then one a week later with some lunch, and not have to worry about poisoning myself.

1. Soup! One of my favourite soups this winter was a thick, flavourful, tomato-based soup, full of sliced cabbage, onion, bay leaf and oregano and white beans. It tasted like a soup version of stuffed cabbage, almost (in a good way; I love stuffed cabbage). At the very end, I’d throw in sliced sausage, browned in a separate pan (usually in a bit of grapeseed oil). I also did a similar soup that had a clear vegetable broth base, kale, and also white beans. Sausage worked nicely in that too.

2. Fancy breakfast! On the rare days I am home during the day, making myself a fancy breakfast is very exciting. Some eggs, some greens, maybe some toast – adding some sausage to that is so delicious. Add to that the primal feelings of transgression – growing up in a Kosher house, no breakfast or brunch every contained any kind of meat. Eggs and sausages are a combination as goyish as college football. Having your own little Kosher version of that is truly a delight.

3. Salad! Any kind of salad – whether it’s grain-based, leafy – especially dark greens, or whatever, get such a kick from some browned rounds of sausage. In the same way you’d throw in some little polenta croutons to jazz up a salad, or throw together a special salad dressing to give it an extra something, sausage does the same thing.

Hooray for veggie sausage!

Here is a terrible photo of a fancy breakfast I ate this week for dinner. Don’t ever say I don’t spoil you.

Disappointing Dinner / Beautiful Breakfast: My Shakshuka Adventure

On Tuesday at work, I gchatted my friend Jude at work. “What’s a quick thing to make for dinner?” If it’s just me, I’m happy to make an omelet and salad and call it a night, but if I’m cooking for two, then I like to take it up a notch on the legitimacy scale. Jude suggested shakshuka. Hm! I used to live in Jerusalem, where shakshuka is a real brunch classic. I’d eat it from time to time (ideally with some good bread, tahini, and pesto on the side), but I’d never made it myself.

I thought about getting some crusty bread to go with it, but for lunch that day I’d had some really decadent restaurant leftovers; broad, fresh pasta with lamb, tomatoes and olives, from Park Slope’s Chagall Bistro, a nice but pretty overpriced kosher joint. Anyway, didn’t want pasta for lunch and  also bread for dinner, so I starting thinking up alternatives. I went with polenta. I’d make up a nice tomato sauce, throw the eggs in, fry up some rounds of ready-made polenta and call it a day – easy! Yes!

And after work, I went to yoga, and then I jumped a train home. I went to my local Met supermarket, but they were out of ready-made polenta. Bum, I thought, as my dream of a quick dinner flushed down the toilet in my brain (sounds like an Emily Dickinson poem; I have–a toilet–in my brain). I went to find the regular polenta – the one you have to stir for 30 minute straight, instead. I got an onion, a red pepper, a can of tomatoes and some parsley for the sauce. I grabbed some kale to green up the sauce a little bit. I went home, hung my coat up, put on some Mingus, and got to work. Truth is, I ended up cooking the onions and peppers for a long time – I wanted a sweet sauce. I ended up needing to be at the stove for a while anyway, so the polenta wasn’t that annoying. When the polenta was ready, I poured it into a dish to set. When the sauce was done, I made little wells and poured in the eggs. I covered the dish. There’s nothing I love more than an egg with a bright orange and slightly runny yolk. But there’s nothing I hate more than an egg cooked any more than that. I was tired and kind of emotional, and when I served dinner (a pretty wedge of polenta, with saucy shakshuka, garnished with loads of the parsley) only to realize that I’d overcooked the eggs, I literally had an instinct to cry and hurl my plate across the room. Anyway, I didn’t, because I’m an adult. I ate everything except the yolks and it was yum. I put away the leftover polenta and sauce. I even froze a few polenta wedges (I’d made a LOT), and thought I could use them for a future bunch or dinner (thinking: polenta pizza, or polenta with mushrooms and ACTUALLY RUNNY eggs).

And this morning for breakfast, I heated a wedge of polenta, cooked up some eggs and kale, and threw it on a plate with the leftover sauce and some parsley. And it was pretty good. Bye!