OF A GOLDEN AGE

Have you ever seen those “Two Bite Treats” at the grocery store? Since they’re small but made of the same stuff as the less catchy Regular Sized Treats, I typically brought them home, ate multiples, and felt the same as I would have with a double chocolate cupcake or something.

This “lower fat, low sugar AMAZING vegan brownies recipe” from the Frugal Vegan caught my eye because it is so, so simple. I omitted the chocolate chips, swapped the regular flour for whole wheat, and baked the batter in a straight-sided round metal pan since that’s all I have.

Once it cooled, I used a 2″ish circle cookie cutter to make about 18 rounds. Then I mixed up a little bit of frosting:

1T Earth Balance
2T Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
1T creamy peanut butter
1t vanilla
1/4 to 1/3C powdered sugar
1t cocoa powder

If it’s too thick, thin it with a little bit of almond or soy milk or whatever. Distribute it evenly among the rounds. I used it judiciously and had some leftover afterward, then I added some sprinkles for some additional cheer. But really, the only cheer I need is that each of these frosted brownie rounds has only 1 Weight Watchers point. (If you eat 2, it’s 3 points total.)

If you were a forward thinker, you would do this: Save the scraps after cutting the rounds, mash them up with the leftover frosting or some ready-made stuff, and make cake balls. Then dip them in chocolate or whatever, you can get all fancy with the help of this great Pioneer Woman post on cake balls.

Today’s Recipe for Health is a vegan pureed mushroom soup. It looks delicious. Their description:

This dish is similar to a cream of mushroom soup, but without the dairy.

I’m so there. Stupid dairy, lactosing up my insides.

Two weekends ago I visited the far southern suburbs and happened upon a candy store called Greco Nut & Candy. This place has a huge selection of nuts (regular and chocolate covered, like there’s any contest) and candy, ranging from a generic form of Brach’s Pick-a-Mix to some of my long lost favorites (candy cigarettes!).

For $8.50:

4 candy necklaces
2 boxes Cherry Heads (made by local company Ferrara Pan, makers of Lemon Heads)
1/4 pound chocolate-covered peanuts
1 pound bulk hard candy (these ridiculous strawberry candies filled with honey)
2 rolls C. Howard violet candies
1 box C. Howard violet gum

THEN, on the way back from a doctor’s appointment Tuesday, I stopped in at a small deli and produce store I’ve driven past a million times. This time, for $6.13:

2 pounds carrots
2 large beets
1 bundle celery
16 ounces white mushrooms
2 pears
2 oranges

I used most of the fresh vegetables in a big slurry of quinoa which turned a beautiful color because of the beets. A cup of dry quinoa costs 50c at the most. That single batch made enough for four lunches this week.

Scrutinizing nut-butter labels at Trader Joe’s yesterday, I learned that sunflower butter has less saturated fat and more fiber than peanut butter. It is also less costly than the Trader Joe’s almond butter but still has that not-peanut-butter exotic appeal.

Tastewise, it has that smoky, slightly planty taste we associate with sunflower seeds, which I assume could be an acquired taste some may not enjoy. The texture is good, slightly runnier than supermarket peanut butter but still very smooth, like a high quality natural creamy peanut butter. It says to refrigerate after opening, and it has no hydrogenated oils.

One tablespoon has 100 calories, 8 grams of fat, and 2 grams of fiber. For breakfast I made an SB&J on an Arnold’s Multigrain Sandwich Thin and washed it down with a very refreshing glass of almond milk for a total of 275 calories.

On Saturday, my parents and I met out in Oak Brook at Antico Posto, a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant we hadn’t tried. They describe themselves as “carefully hidden” in Oak Brook Center, and that’s accurate — OBC is a large outdoor mall and Antico Posto is wedged in a little corner off the beaten path.

We typically order a lot of things and split them around the table. We got the asparagus ricotta gnocchi, eggplant parmesan, prosciutto-and-melon salad, and the spinach-and-strawberry salad. My parents ate the prosciutto and melon and said it was delicious. I tried everything else and it was all delicious too. The gnocchi in particular — made in-house, light, fresh, and fluffy — was our favorite, and it came served in a brown butter sauce with fresh asparagus, halved cherry tomatoes, and parmesan cheese.

When the waiter learned it was my birthday he said they’d have to bring us a dessert, and my dad insisted on “nothing embarrassing,” which we clarified to mean: No singing or attention. Antico Posto has a genius dessert arrangement, which is that you can choose from a variety of desserts in small, reasonable quantities for $1 each or full-sized versions for more. That in mind, we opted to get the trial size of all six and just took little bites of each one. The flourless chocolate cake had a nice little candle in it.

My parents and I have a favorite Italian restaurant in St Charles called Pi Pizza Perfection (how can I not love it? There’s a math joke right in the name), but as my dad pointed out, they don’t do great salads and Antico Posto does. Produce can really make or break your whole meal, and in my experience with the Lettuce Entertain You group, they do a great job with fresh ingredients.

I would definitely go back to Antico Posto, and the prices were reasonable enough that I actually could.

Natalie Portman is a prominent celebrity vegetarian, appearing via testimonial in the vogue Babycakes cookbook and sometimes stirring up trouble with her statements about meat. I appreciate that she sticks with it and lives her convictions, and as evidenced by the appearances of Portman and vegan Zooey Deschanel this season, the chefs hit a dead panic when faced with any alternative diet. Heck, some of them resist instances when they aren’t allowed to use the specific meat they want . . . The ones who are way, way into pork are even a little disturbing.*

And yeah, the chefs majorly disappointed in the challenge, putting out unappealing food that — especially after a month when hundreds of good-looking vegan food blogs trotted out their best material — really missed any connection with a vegetarian mentality. More than that, it furthered some of the impressions vegetarians and vegans often get from mainstream foodlife, which is that, you know, most chefs resent us or think we’re nuts.

I laughed when Kelly threw a one-off remark about this disappointing episode on her delicious-looking post about butternut squash lasagna, which is a Giada De Laurentiis recipe. And then . . . Vegan Dad completely one-upped Top Chef with a beautiful dish: polenta with white beans, braised kale, and roasted pears.

* Sorry, Michael Symon, I still love you!

Today I returned to my own desk temporarily, but because I’ve covered in another department for more than two weeks, I now have mixed brain dominance.

Charles Schulz invented this fictional affliction ( . . . affiction??) to describe Charlie Brown’s overall life malaise and failures. And really, I don’t know a better way to sum up the pure mental confusion of abruptly switching gears after two weeks.

But, in an effort to save some money and eat healthier, I try to bring my lunch more often, and eating homemade food helps to ground my day. I can still step out at lunchtime for some fresh air or to pick up a supplementary foodstuff, but I don’t have to, and if I do buy a snack it still costs less than buying lunch.

Last night I made a simple “cream” sauce with olive oil, almond milk, garlic, and some ground chipotle pepper. I mixed in a little store-bought pasta sauce and let it all reduce until it got fairly thick, then tossed it with whole-wheat rotini and layered it in a Gladware with some frozen broccoli and lima beans.

The sunchoke (or Jerusalem artichoke*) was foreign to me until a friend talked about them enough that we finally bought some. And they are strange, wonderful, too costly to be a practical foodstuff for someone in my position. Yet . . .

John Lennon thought he was the walrus, but he has some competition.

* Fascinating Wikipedia alert. From the Contents:

3 History
    3.1 Pyramid Scheme
4 Cultivation and uses
    4.1 Liquor

I’ve been lax lately, busy and tired. Still substituting in another department without a real home base.

This morning, after a week of slacking off, I woke up early and dragged myself to the Y to hop on the treadmill. After a good workout, I am always starving, and usually end up eating a protein bar from Whole Foods — today I picked up a honeycrisp apple and a handful of Dancing Star energy chunks. What a terrible name, who wants to be reminded of chunks following a workout??

Regardless, they’re great and I’ve loved them forever. Dense and chocolatey tasting without dairy or any other animal stuff, and sweetened only with dates so their glycemic index is through the floor. Just right for workout recovery food.

What a long week! I’m substituting in a different department because a large project is taking some of my coworkers away from their duties temporarily, and while it isn’t my favorite thing, it has been a nice change of pace and a different crowd.

All week, I have been nearly running into one of my colleagues around the only real corner in our office — literally once every day all week, sometimes more. Another time, I ran headlong into another colleague, and luckily we were both unharmed. Today I got Thai food for lunch and my fortune cookie told me: Contentment is just around the corner for you. Look forward! I laughed long and hard. The irony of this single fortune is much more compelling than the near-misses of the more generic ones.

But wait! Actually, the fortune cookie had a point, because this week my friends and I went to the Dragon Lady Lounge in Avondale (Elston and Belmont) for their Thursday night vegan buffet, where the most beautiful things waited around owner Sue’s kitchen corner. I was out the door for $11.25 ($13 with tip) and the food was wonderful, colorful, obviously homemade:

Oh, oh, my. Everything on this plate was delicious, from half-moon fried dumplings to something that tasted like cauliflower parmesan. Sue did not deal in meat substitutes as such, the closest being a tofu dish.

Partway through the meal, people in whimsical costumes began gathering in the bar, and at first we thought they were just, you know, eclectic regular people. It turns out they’re part of a band called Environmental Encroachment, which includes many marching-band-type instruments and a general attitude of disrupting your normal routine. A trombone? I’m so there.