These are my kitties, not shelter kitties, but kitties are kitties, right?

A few Sweetpea, Herbivore and Food Fight staffers and I will be transforming the bakery into a candlelit bistro for the evening and serving a seasonal, organic, intimate, four course vegan dinner for 40. Please see all the info below the menu for ticket purchasing info, and I bet any other questions you have will be answered. If not, then email me at postpunkkitchen@gmail.com. Thanks everyone, I’m excited to cook for you and I hope to see you there.

Menu
Soup
White Bean And Roasted Garlic
A puree of navy beans and sweet smoky roasted garlic with leeks and fresh herbs

Salad
Golden Beet And Shallot
Warm roasted golden beets and baby greens in a creamy vinaigrette with caramelized shallots and a handful of toasted walnuts

Main
Autumn Plate
Cornbread and homemade sausage stuffed acorn squash, smoky grilled tempeh in a wild mushroom ragout served with garlicky purple kale

Dessert
Caramelized Apples
Warm apples in a caramelized maple sauce, served with crisp gingerbread shortbread and topped with homemade coconut based vanilla bean ice cream

Housemade hot chai will be served. Please bring your own beer and wine.

When:
Friday, October 24th. Please arrive between 8pm and 8:30 for a reception with House Of Dreams volunteers. Dinner will be served at 9pm.

Where:
Sweetpea Bakery
1205 SE Stark off SE 12th Ave
Google Map

Ticket Prices
Since seating limited, you must buy tickets in advance to attend the night’s festivities. Tickets are a sliding scale, from 40 to 100 dollars. Diners who pay 60 dollars or more will also be receiving a House Of Dreams 2009 calendar and a discount coupon for Herbivore. 100% of the proceeds go to the House Of Dreams shelter.

To Purchase Tickets
To purchase tickets, paypal 40 to 100 dollars to postpunkkitchen@gmail.com. Print out your thank you email, this will be your ticket when you arrive to the dinner.

Seating
If you are buying tickets for more than yourself, please put their names in the paypal comments and a table will be arranged for you. If you would like to sit with people in addition to the ones you are purchasing tickets for, please put their names in the comments as well, and let me know that you want to sit with them. If you are flying solo, you may end up sitting with strangers. But we promise that they will be fascinating strangers.

Allergies And Substitutions
If you require a gluten free dinner, your entree will come with tempeh instead of sausage and your baked ingredients will be made gluten free. If you have any other allergies please email me at postpunkkitchen@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can do. You must put your dietary concerns in the paypal comments in order to be accommodated.

Alcohol
Please bring your own beer and wine.

Any other questions? Just email me! postpunkkitchen@gmail.com. Thanks!

And now for the round-up! Lots of people are blogging about grains. I was a strictly quinoa girl through most of my twenties and then began to broaden my horizons and regret all those nights where I didn’t eat millet. Don’t let the same fate befall you. Carpe Diem! Seize the grain.

Carla at Year Of The Vegan proves that she can do more than just rice.

Lisa at Show Me Vegan prepares a scrumptious looking polenta dish with black beans, sweet potatoes and green zebras (the tomatoes, silly!)

This is a great tip from B36 kitchen, use leftover grains in your veggie burgers. She uses millet in this creation.

Lillet and Trey describe collards and quinoa as the Starsky & Hutch of Good For You Goodness. I couldn’t agree more! Quinoa and collards  love a good car chase.

Shellyfish sings the praises of bulghur and describes how she throws together a grainy salad.

Salt is a very personal thing - everyone has their perfect salt point, what the Germans call piekenseltzen. Actually, I just made that phrase up, but I am sure the French have a word for it. You need to incorporate salt into your dish while it’s cooking, be it a sauce or a soup or a marinade. But I am typically an undersalter because once on the plate, it’s easy enough to sprinkle on to your liking.

These fancy shmancy boutique salts go a long way to adding new dimensions to your food. I have a few favorites I’m gonna’ share with you so that you too can feel like a big yuppie.

Smoked Salt

Smoked salt is perfect for roasting vegetables. If you have the option of choosing a grind, keep it coarse so that the salt holds its shape while roasting. A few of my favorite veggies to sprinkle smoked salt on are cauliflower, eggplant and baby potatoes. I also love it sprinkled on juicy, sliced tomatoes. There are so many varieties of smoked salt but my two favorites are applewood and hickory. That just refers to the kind of wood used to smoke it.

Black Salt

Yeah, black salt is actually pink. Nothing gets passed you, does it? This is what started it all for me. I had heard that the sulfuric taste of black salt was akin to egg yolks and I had to try it. And it’s true - the taste is pretty much identical, making this salt perfect for tofu “egg” salads. I also use it in my omelet recipe. But I try not to go too crazy with it - the taste is very strong and you might be paying for it hours afterwards. I usually get this in a medium grind, because sometimes I want it to dissolve completely and sometimes I want it to stay a little crunchy. My friend Eppy swears by black salt and avocado, which I’m sure is good but I haven’t tried it. There are other kinds of black salt but the kind you want is Indian black salt, also called kala namak. You can often find it in Indian grocery stores for much cheaper than at a foo-foo shop.

Truffle Salt

This is my most prized possession and probably the salt that I use the most. Truffle salt is a blend of dried, ground truffle and sea salt, but the truffle taste is incredibly strong and earthy - exotic even. Pretend you’re a millionaire and sprinkle some on your pastas, your sandwiches, your pate, your risotto. I sometimes add them to my portobellos, as if they weren’t scrumptious and mushroom-y enough. In Portland you can often pick this up at farmer’s markets but if you’re purchasing it at a salt shop ask for it because it usually goes by some French name that I don’t remember. I like a fine grind for truffle salt so that it dissolves quickly and the flavor gets everywhere.

Well, those are my favorites. I know I was making a big display about what an upper class twit you are if you buy these things, but in reality they are a pretty economical way to add flavor. My one ounce bag of truffle salt cost 3 bucks and lasts months, even though I use it a lot. Happy saltin’, you Joe Forty Ouncers!

The stars of the hour, apple and ginger!

You know a dish is a keeper when you don’t want to wash your hands for hours afterwards because they smell so delicious.

When Katie announced this week’s Iron Chef Challenge ingredients I knew that I couldn’t go with the obvious, so I immediately crossed any and all baked goods off my imaginary list. But I’m still a little embarrassed that I came up with my dish because Peter Brady popped into my head, “Pork chops and appleshauche, porkchops and appleshauche…” Obviously, my Peter Brady was a vegan one.

I wanted a tender seitan. Not soft exactly - toothsome but not tough. I’ve been wanting to try chickpea flour in the Veganomicon seitan recipe instead of nutritional yeast and it really did the trick - exactly what I wanted. Simmered seitan was the way to go here because baking or steaming would give too stiff a texture. Once simmered and cooled, I sliced them lengthwise in kind of a diagonal to create a more organic shape because I wasn’t up for eating any right angles or geometry of any sort.

I used whole wheat panko to coat the cutlets, with lots of fresh rosemary and pan fried in olive oil to get a crispy on the outside, tender on the inside bite. You have got to love the aroma or fresh rosemary in the frying pan.

And finally - the star of the evening! Thick slices of rome apples with a little maple syrup and brown sugar and loads and loads of fresh minced ginger. I threw in a handful or dried cranberries and baked until tender and just a little caramelized. I also made a separate pan of crispy sauteed shallots for another dimension of savory with a hint of sweet. And then I smothered it all over the chops. And it was good.

It looks like a hot mess but I didn’t feel like taking a lot of time to set it up, I really wanted to eat it - I served with sweet and salty maple baby carrots, brown basmati and sauteed purple kale

Seitan Chops Smothered In Apples And Ginger

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I’ve got apples on the brain today, so this round up if all about everyone’s favorite fruit (apples, duh!)

Tami at Vegan Appetite interviews her mom about apples & sausages. A combination that apparently exists.

Neta at Vegan Fun uses a La Dolce Vegan pancake recipe to craft Apple Pie Pancakes.

Do you remember your first time? Watch Laura at Peace By Pastries as she consummates her first apple pie.

*Farmer’s Market to those of you that don’t know all the vegan street lingo of the day.

Lisa at Show Me Vegan discusses ’scramfu as “the gateway to veganism.”

Katie at Don’t Eat Off The Sidewalk reveals her unhinged love for basil-ly tofu scrams. She mentions me in the post but I swear that is not why I am linking to her.

The Potato Vine lets us know how she ‘fus.

At Livin La Vida Vegan, Janet shares her recipe for that trusty breakfast staple - the tofu scramble wrap.

Megan at Vegan Punks In The Kitchen takes us on her epic tofu journey. A tale of defeat, hardships and ultimately victory with scrambly stops along the way.

And finally, just a little MoFo housekeeping. If your posts aren’t registering as new on the MoFo feed, I don’t think there is anything I can do about it. If someone else knows better please fill me in. What I suggest for everyone is to create your own account at bloglines and import all of the links from veganmofo. This way you can control how you MoFo. And don’t forget that you can also search the latest entries using google’s blogsearch.

*I know I’m not using that word correctly but I really wanted to use it.

People keep threatening me about Portland winters. I won’t be able to deal with the gray or the cold or the rain. I’ll be driven mad by a runny nose and wet socks. I don’t know how to react to these threats, it reminds me of the little guy with the big mouth that always starts the fights. Do you have a bigger friend to back you up, like a hurricane or a tornado or a cyclone? Because I think I’m going to be fine. I think I’m going to have 6 months of soup weather and that is more than okay with me. If I get sick of it I’ll take a trip to California.*

Food tastes better on rainy days. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, in fact sometimes the simplest things are the best. Roasted butternut squash is like a big fluffy blanket on a wet autumn day. There’s certainly nothing wrong with just splitting the squash, seeding it and popping it in the oven. But when I’ve got the time I really loved to peel and cube it, this way the outside is crisp and toasty and the inside is creamy and sweet. You can sit back and pop these into your mouth as is, or serve with some tempeh and greens and maybe a hazelnut pesto. I also love to serve it for brunch in place of homefries, it tastes great alongside scrambled tofu.

I’m not actually going to write out a recipe with quantities and measurements, because really you can use the amount of butternut squash that you have. You’ll just need some squash, olive oil and salt. Preheat oven to 375 F. Peel the squash and divide the round part from the long part. Cut the round part in half and scoop out the seeds. Slice everything into 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch pieces.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread squash out in a single layer and drizzle with olive oil (about 2 tablespoons for a 2 1/2 pound squash.) The single layer is important because if the baking sheet is overcrowded the squash won’t brown, it’ll steam and just get mushy. Sprinkle with salt (about 1/2 teaspoons) and use your hands to coat everything.

Pop in the oven for about 45 minutes, flipping every 15 minutes or so. They’re done when lightly browned on the outside and tender inside. They taste great right out of the oven, but honestly, they’re still good if you leave them out on the counter to snack on all day.

*Please don’t hold me to this when I am whining about the rain in 3 months.

So let’s get down to it.

I’ve been eying the Saveur breakfast magazine for awhile now, excited to get around to reading it. But kittee does more than eye - she bakes! Cream Cheeze Cinnamon Rolls!

Jordan creates an authentic tasting Vietnamese soup, or dies trying.

Deb muses on the nature of bunny food. Don’t deny you love it, instead embrace it!

If you’ve been wondering about Get It Ripe but can’t make any cookbook buying decisions without the help of the entire internet, then Ashley points you in the right direction with a few mouthwatering photos.

So we’re off to a great start! I am so happy not to have to turn to the Food Network to get my fix. Remember to comment on other people’s posts to let them know that they are awesome. Unless they aren’t awesome, then leave mean anonymous comments.

From The Food Fight 5 Year Anniversary Pie Eating Contest

I am still updating the list for the bloglines feed so if you haven’t been added yet ye shall be sometime today or tomorrow. In the meantime, you can do a google blogsearch and if you title your post, say, “VeganMoFo day 1: Isa Is So Pretty” then your post will show up. I don’t think it will work if you just tag it “VeganMoFo.”

I have been updating things all morning and last night so I don’t think I will get around to my first MoFo until tonight, but do as I say and not as I do and make sure to MoFo today! Or else. Some Australians have even already blogged twice and others even have a VeganMoFo mascot.

I have a hard time functioning in election years. This photo from Diedre Jean helped.