Sunday, January 25, 2009

Carrot Cake Heaven

Since we moved away from Columbia, the IC and I haven't had particularly good access to health-food stores, organic markets, etc., other than Whole Foods ($$$) and Trader Joe's. We used to have access to the wonderful David's Natural Market and Roots, and we miss them. A lot. It's not just that they had a broader variety of vegan-friendly fare, but that we got so many great ideas for recipes there.

Our fond reminiscences led the IC and I to have a "date-day" on Saturday, and go to Columbia for vegan food at Great Sage, then shopping at Roots. While we were shopping, I stopped by a display of locally baked desserts and made note of a particularly good-looking carrot cake.

My mom used to get this (non-vegan) carrot cake from the grocery store that was OUTRAGEOUSLY good. It had this 1/2-inch-thick layer of cream cheese frosting with walnuts on top, and I don't think I've ever tasted its equal. Frankly, I've tried vegan carrot cakes at restaurants and stores and none of them were especially notable. Come ON, people, we're vegans, we've GOT to take back carrot cake! It's a cake! Made of carrots!

I've never seriously attempted to make a vegan carrot cake, but it's an obvious choice. Moist, dense cakes tend to be forgiving of substitutions, and this was no exception. I started with the most decadent-sounding carrot cake recipe I could find and veganized according to my own design. I borrowed an idea from the raw foodists for the frosting, and it turned out very well.

Carrot Cake Heaven

First, decide which frosting you're going to use. If you're using the cashew frosting, you'll need to start soaking your ingredients before you begin baking. See frosting instructions, below.

Ingredients:

2-1/4 cups all purpose flour (or a gluten-free blend of flours)
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup cane sugar (may substitute agave, maple syrup, or use all brown sugar)
3 egg equivalent in Ener-G egg substitute
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup vegetable oil or applesauce
2 cups finely grated carrots

OPTIONS: as much or as many walnuts, raisins, pineapple tidbits, coconut, or whatever you like in your carrot cake

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, spice, baking powder, and salt.

In a large bowl, mix sugar and egg replacer until creamy. Add vanilla and oil (or applesauce). Mix wet and dry ingredients together and add carrots, raisins, nuts, etc.

You can use whatever kind of pan you like, and whatever means of greasing it you prefer (spray, oil, margarine...). I used a bundt pan, and my cake was done in about 50 minutes. Bake for 40 - 50 minutes (depending on pan), or until toothpick comes out clean.

While the cake is cooling, you can get to work on the frosting!

Amazing Cashew Cream Frosting

Soak for one hour in room-temperature water:

1 cup cashews
1/4 cup of raisins
1/4 cup dates

Drain and blend in a food processor until smooth. Add 1 tsp of lime or lemon juice and continue blending. You can use it as-is, as a slightly sweet glaze, or add powdered sugar (up to 2 cups) until it attains a more frosting-like consistency.

If you're not feeling adventurous, or if you don't have a food processor, you can always use this old standby:

Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting

1 package vegan cream cheese
1/3 cup vegan soy margarine (like Earth Balance), softened
1 tsp lime juice
2 cups vegan confectioners sugar

With an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and margarine. Add lime juice, then add sugar.

Once your cake is cool and your frosting is ready, you're all set for icing and enjoying your carrot cake! I used a blend of brown rice flour and regular flour, no oil at all (I substituted applesauce), added raisins and walnuts and I did the cashew frosting. The flavor is rich and almost buttery, the cake is very moist and sweet, and thanks to the lime juice the frosting has a little tang to it. It's lovely.

The IC tried it and found it delicious. He then told me, "I never thought I would like carrot cake!". It turns out he had NEVER HAD IT BEFORE. Is that completely crazypants or what?

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Exploring Consciousness Through The Study of Bees

An interesting article from Scientific American! :

Although bees can’t be expected to push levers, they can be trained to take either the left or the right exit inside a cylinder modified for the DMTS test. A color disk serves as a cue at the entrance of the maze, so that the bee sees it before entering. Once within the maze, the bee has to choose the arm displaying the color that matches (DMTS) or differs from (DNMTS) the color at the entrance. Bees perform both tasks well. They even generalize to a situation they have never previously encountered. That is, once they’ve been trained with colors, they “get it” and can now follow a trail of vertical stripes if a disk with vertical gratings is left at the entrance of the maze. These experiments tell us that bees have learned an abstract relation (sameness in DMTS, difference in DNMTS) irrespective of the physical nature of the stimuli. The generalization to novel stimuli can even occur from odors to colors.

Insect Intelligence
Although these experiments do not tell us that bees are conscious, they caution us that we have no principled reason at this point to reject this assertion. Bees are highly adaptive and sophisticated creatures with a bit fewer than one million neurons, which are interconnected in ways that are beyond our current understanding, jammed into less than one cubic millimeter of brain tissue. The neural density in the bee’s brain is about 10 times higher than that in a mammalian ce­rebral cortex, which most of us take to be the pinnacle of evolu­tion on this planet. In humans, widespread loss of cerebral cortex, as in the vegetative patient Terri Schiavo, leads to an irreversible loss of con­scious­ness. That is not to say that a cerebral cortex is necessary for consciousness in creatures with a different evolutionary heritage.

Bees live in highly stratified yet flexible social organizations with group decision-making skills that rival academic, corporate or government committees in efficiency. In spring, when bees swarm, they choose a new hive that needs to satisfy many demands within a couple of days (consider that the next time you go house hunting). They communicate information about the location and quality of food sources using the waggle dance. Bees can fly several kilometers and return to their hive, a remarkable navigational performance. Their brains seem to have incorporated a map of their environment. And a scent blown into the hive can trigger a return to the site where the bee previously encountered this odor. This type of associative memory was famously described by French novelist Marcel Proust in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Given all of this ability, why does almost everybody instinctively reject the idea that bees or other insects might be conscious? The trouble is that bees are so different from us and our ilk that our insights fail us. But just because they are small and live in colonies does not mean that they can’t have subjective states, that they can’t smell the fragrance of the golden nectar or experience the warm rays of the sun or maybe even have a primitive sense of self. I am not a mystic. I am not arguing for pan-psychism, for the notion that anything is conscious. Nor am I assuming that bees can reason or can reflect on their fate as animated cartoon bees.

What this dilemma highlights is that there is no accepted theory of consciousness, no principled theory that would tell us which systems, organic or artificial, are conscious and why. In the absence of such a theory, we must at the very least remain agnostic about consciousness in these creatures. So the next time a bee hovers above your breakfast toast, attracted by the sweet jam, gently shoo her away. For she might be a fellow sentient being, experiencing her brief interlude in the light, shoehorned between this moment and eternity.

Note: This article was originally published with the title, "What Is It Like To Be a Bee?".

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Vegan Chocolate Fondue

I have this amazing little vintage fondue pot. It used to belong to my aunt, and I honestly don't think she ever used it, because it came to me with all its parts in their original packaging and looking absolutely perfect:


It's hard to incorporate fondue into our day-to-day lives. It's messy, it's not especially nutritious, and there are not a lot of vegan-friendly recipes. I've used mine as a way to keep soup warm at parties, and...well, that was it, actually, until this weekend! I finally decided to try my hand at vegan fondue.

I decided on chocolate fondue, since it's easy, and chocolate is pretty hard to ruin. The fondue part was easy: I put 2 bags of vegan chocolate chips into the pot with some soy creamer (about 1 cup) and stirred it until it was creamy. I tried it, and it tasted a little too bitter, so I added some agave nectar (approximately 7 tbsp) and a couple of vegan marshmallows. That really did the trick. If you decide to try it, you'll need to add each ingredient slowly and stir gently until it gets to the consistency and flavor you like.

So...what do you use for dipping? Strawberries were an obvious choice, and bananas, and apricots...if it's melon season, those would be good. Pineapple. Some sort of packaged vegan cookie, like these. Or these.


I also decided to make a vegan pound cake, and cut it into little cubes. That worked wonderfully. I used the Vanilla-Yogurt Pound Cake recipe from the Veganomicon, which was not only perfect for cubing and dipping in fondue, but was utterly fantastic by itself.

The fondue was a big hit with vegans and non-vegans alike!

Monday, January 12, 2009

News, and Jenn's Roasted Veggie Chili

I have been in a non-vegan purgatory for the last few months, waiting to find out if soy and gluten interfered with a (necessary-to-live) medication I take. During that time, my diet was very limited and I wasn't even sure I'd be able to continue to be vegan.

I am happy to announce that not only does my vegan diet officially totally NOT interfere with my meds, but I have a series of blood tests that demonstrate how much healthier my vegan diet was! So now I'm very excited to get back to experimenting with new and exciting vegan recipes.

Today's recipe was submitted during my November recipe contest.

Jenn's Roasted Veggie Chili

So the veggies come first. I use what ever looks good in the store or at the farmer's market. Some things that you can use are: Japanese eggplant, red or yellow peppers, squash, zucchini, rutabagas, carrots, onions, tomatoes, parsnips...you get the idea.

Cut them in chunks that are about the same size (maybe about 3/4 of an inch) - you want them to cook at about the same speed. I cut up maybe three or four cups of veggies; as much as you can fit in one layer on a big cookie sheet.

Toss the veggies with some (maybe about 1/4 cup) of olive oil; you want them all to have a little, but not be soaking in it. Throw some salt and pepper on as well. I also suggest putting tin foil on the cookie sheet, as the veggies tend to stick and carmelize a little, and it's a pain to get off. Sometimes I throw a little minced garlic in as well, but that is up to you.

These should go into a 425 degree oven for 40 minutes, and halfway through stir them around a little, as the ones on the edges tend to cook faster than the ones in the middle.

Now throw these veggies (without giving yourself a third degree burn - so let them cool for a few minutes) into a pot on the stove. I add 2 cans of beans that I rinsed (I like to use black and kidney, but its up to you) and two cans of tomatoes. Diced stewed tomatoes with garlic are good, and last time I used one can of those, and one can of Rotel brand with jalapenos, and it turned out well. Also add about 2 cups of veggie stock.

Then come the spices...these depend a lot on how spicy you like your chili. You don't need more salt, as the tomatoes and stock has it, as do most of the Tex-Mex spice mixes. I usually add chili powder or some kind of mexican seasoning mix, and last time I used a packet of Goya Sazon, and then I used some Tex-Mex stuff I got in Texas.

Bottom line is: season to taste. Check the labels, as some of these blends will have spicy peppers, and some won't.

Let it simmer with no lid for at least a half hour, but up to an hour. If all the liquid boils off, then add more stock or just some water (I did that last time and it turned out fine.)

Last step is: enjoy your yum yum!