Adelaide Lemonade

Finally Falafel

I just finished eating some yummy homemade falafel. Finally!  I spent a lot of time reading about falafel last weekend and finally decided to try Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipe after reading here that "real" falafel does not use cooked or canned beans.  I learned a bit about falafel while I was looking through recipes.  For instance, it's also called "ta’amia" and can be made with fava beans.  I'm getting a lot better, but planning isn't really one of my strengths, and as you'll see from the recipe, the beans have to soak for 24 hours.  I finally got my act together and started soaking the beans yesterday as soon as I got back from work.

It was definitely worth it.  The falafel was delicious.  I'd made it once before with a recipe that called for Garbanzo bean flour, but the falafel came out doughy and kind of gross.  This came out much more like the Papou's falafel that I was trying to emulate.

I don't think I'll be making it again though until I get a food processor.  I had to make do with the blender, but it really didn't chop up the beans well.  It never really does when I make hummus either, so I don't know why I thought this would be different.  I guess I didn't really.  I just wanted to make falafel and had no other choice.  I didn't mind eating the whole beans that ended up in the cooked falafel, but there just wasn't enough moisture to hold the falafel together.  It made it quite frustrating to cook.  It didn't help that I was making pita bread and trying to satisfy the demands of my 2-year-old at the same time.  To compound the frustration, I didn't start with a clean kitchen, so things fell and swears were uttered.  I'm over it now.

The recipe's definitely a keeper.  Let me know if you try it with a food processor and have better luck with getting the patties to stay in one piece.  If you're looking for a less traditional falafel, I've made this sweet potato falafel before.  It's very different from the original but very good.

I'm not sure what I'm going to make yet for recipe #3.  Heidi from 101 Cookbooks just posted a Ribolita recipe that I bet is good, and a friend just recommended the potato lima bean soup from the Moosewood lo-fat cookbook.  I've also been wanting to make something with artichokes purely just because I think they'd be fun to photograph.  I'll post what I end up deciding on soon.

Here are some photos of my falafel experiment:

The batter (which you can see is more of a salad than a batter):

The patties (they look like they're in one piece, but only until you try to put them in the pan):

Frying (I don't think falafel is actually good for you):

Basket o' Pita:

Vegan Challenge - Week One

Happy New Year, Everyone!  The house is quiet now with the kids still sleeping and my husband gone off to work.  We had a nice New Year's Eve hanging out with the kids and struggling to stay awake (us not the kids).  We toasted midnight with glasses of Prosecco for us and sparkling cider for the kids.  In my attempt to teach us all a bit of culture, we also ate 12 grapes at midnight.

Speaking of lucky food, my first Vegan recipe of the new year is going to be collard greens and black-eyed peas.  If you're from the South, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about, but my Yankee work buddies just thought I was talking about the band.  If you aren't familiar with this tradition, both the greens and the peas are supposed to represent money, and eating them on New Year's will bring you prosperity throughout the year.  Let's see if it works.

More specifically, I'm going to be trying this recipe for Hoppin' John minus the bacon fat.  I think I'll use a bit of olive oil instead.  Amazingly they did have collard greens at my supermarket, but since I learned from my internet surfing that cooking collard greens really stinks up your house, I opted for spinach.  I think I will just cook that in a bit of olive oil and garlic.

I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.  If you're cooking along, let me know what you think.  Or let me know if you made something else instead.

Vegan Challenge - 52 New Recipes in 2010

What do you think?  Are you up for it?  Will you join me?

So now that the the Christmas gorging is over,  (Did I say Christmas?  I meant December.  Wait, did I say December?  I think I meant the entire Fall), I really need to get back on the healthy eating bandwagon.

For the first 8 months of 2009, I followed a Vegan diet.  I really didn't lose much weight (which let's be honest really was my goal), but I did feel great.  It prevented me from eating my favorite bad-for-me foods like cookies, cookies, and more cookies.  By the way, if you're going to binge, the cookies from Old World Deli in Freeport, ME are the BEST.  My favorites were the chocolate espresso, but they've recently replaced the white chocolate chips with regular chocolate, so they're just not the same.  If you're in the area, their regular chocolate chip cookies are still awesome.  I love their ginger cookies, too.  Sheesh, how I digress.  Anyway, eating Vegan also eventually helped me stop craving those bad-for-me things, and I swear gave me more energy.

After an awesome sailing vacation which I took as a vacation from Vegan eating as well, I just kind of fell of the Vegan bandwagon.  I didn't fall as far as my husband who even ate meat.  (I only ate it on Thanksgiving and Christmas and on a breakfast egg sandwich three or four times.  My husband makes killer egg sandwiches.  Bacon doesn't really count anyway, does it?)  I'm really not very extreme.

So now my husband and I are fully committed to starting over again.  My husband would be content to live on red bell pepper sandwiches, but my problem is that I get bored really easily.  I do love to try new recipes though, so I'm going to try to challenge myself to try 52 new Vegan recipes, one per week, this year.  Once a week, I'll post a link to the recipe I tried along with a review and any modifications I made.  Maybe I'll even create some of my own recipes.

I'd love to have you join me.  I will try to post the recipe I'm going to try ahead of time if you'd like to cook along with me.  Sometimes I will just post a challenge like finding and trying a recipe with a certain main ingredient like kidney beans or quinoa or tempeh.  I would also welcome your recipe submissions and give some of them a try.  I'll create a list of links to participant's blogs on my blog and create a Flickr photo group.  Maybe I'll even have a few giveaways to people who make it all the way to weeks 13, 26, and 39 with me.  Leave a comment here or email me if you're interested.