Fire hazard for a cause

Lots of lit candles and alcohol make a great combo.

So I had an Earth Hour party.

I think we were extra-good citizens b/c we kept the lights off longer than the designated hour. But then we did leave the music on. I was kinda hoping someone would break out a guitar and play acoustic. Doesn’t everyone in this town know three chords? Alas we were all too busy celebrating the planet.

The food I tried to keep mostly organic, vegan, local.

The pasta recipe came from Sophie, the chef at Monkton Wyld in England who cooks from the garden as often as possible. The sweet potato fries and citrus collard greens w/ raisin redux came from Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen.

In his book, Bryant suggests the greens as a side dish or as filling for quesadillas, but I thought tacos in soft whole wheat tortillas would be easier to eat at a party. I love how the raisins add nuggets of sweet in the garlicky greens. 

This video is dark, but I think you’ll get the picture.

Citrus Collards with Raisins Redux

Makes 4 servings

Coarse sea salt

2 large bunches collard greens, ribs removed, cut into a chiffonade, rinsed and drained

1 tablespoon evoo

2 cloves garlic, minced

2/3 cup raisins

1/3 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1. In a large pot over high heat, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil and add 1 tablespoon salt. Add the collards and cook uncovered for 8 to 10 minutes, until softened. Meanwhile, prepare a large bowl of ice water to cool the collards. 

2. Remove the collards from the heat, drain, and plunge them into the bowl of cold water to stop cooking and set the color of the greens. Drain by gently pressing the greens against the colander. 

3. In a medium-sized saute pan, combine the olive oil and the garlic and raise the heat to medium. Saute for 1 minute. Add the collards, raisins, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Saute for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. 

4. Add orange juice and cook for an additional 15 seconds. Do not overcook (collards should be bright green). Season with additional salt to taste if needed and serve immediately.

Recipe from Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry (Da Capo Life Long, 2009).  

One piece of the pie

I’ve been feeling kinda blah lately. But yesterday I decided to cook myself out of the blues.

I recently picked up a copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry (love him and his philosophy on food), so I made his Maple Yam-Ginger Pie.


Soul food, bless it, can come with a measure of guilt. But Bryant’s vegan versions make it better without losing the heart. It makes sense for a pie with African and Caribbean influence to have a crust made from coconut oil. I didn’t miss the butter in the pastry, and the filling is creamy-sweet with a touch of heat, too, from fresh ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg.

This pie wasn’t easy though…for me anyway. I couldn’t get the consistency of the coconut oil right in the flour, so I ended up ditching my first attempt and starting over. Then it took like 15 blue moons for the agar flakes -- a plant-based thickener that I had never worked with – to dissolve in the coconut milk. But what the process taught me (and the lesson I kept hearing on my farm trip) was to just slow down.

I think maybe I’ve been in a hurry for nearly 35 years…to finish school and start the next one, to finish jobs, to get in or out of relationships. But life doesn’t start when the pie is finished. It happens while making the crust. Twice.

Speaking of sweet things and pies, I also loved this line I read over the weekend about restaurateur Julie Daniels Janklow of Sweetiepie in NYC.

“…her long limbs seem to furl in and out from a tiny core of sadness. She embodies an ineffable quality of a Robert Altman-at-his-‘70s-peak heroine, or a tragic film noir character. If you were a perfumer, you’d want to bottle it. Instead, you can go to Sweetiepie.”
– Miranda Purves for Elle magazine

Pie-making playlist:
Sugar in My Bowl -- Nina Simone
Making Pies -- Patty Griffin
Do You Feel Me -- Anthony Hamilton
What a Difference a Day Makes -- Dinah Washington
Truth -- Amos Lee
Cold Turkey -- Anthony David (Bryant’s choice with the pie recipe from his book)