Kino MacGregor is Coming to DC!

Kino MacGregor, one of youngest female masters of the ashtanga system, is offering a weekend workshop at Woodley Park Yoga in just a couple weeks!

Vegan Adaptations: Apple-Currant Pie

A little more than a week ago, I bought a 3 pound bag of apples on a whim. All three pounds promptly then sat in my fridge for a little more than a week. Things were beginning to look dire for the poor things. They really needed to be eaten immediately -- which seemed quite unlikely given how few of them had been eaten last week. So I decided that this could very well be the incentive I needed to try my hand at making a vegan apple pie. This also meant I had an excuse to try out my new pie dish, a 9 inch, super deep-dish ceramic number from Emile Henry's cookware line.

I scoured my cookbooks for apple pie recipes and googled around for vegan pie crust recipes. I ultimately chose (with modifications) an apple pie filling from Susie Quick's Quick Simple Food and then used the ingredients for the vegan pie crust from Vegan Action's website. Instead of using the Vegan Action instructions for making the pie crust, however, I decided to more or less follow the directions for making the pie crust from Susie's book (because it provided an example of how to use a food processor to make the dough, which was helpful given that I don't have a pastry blender) and draw from some other online tips for making vegan pie crusts (including freezing the vegan "buttery spread" and chilling the vegan milk substitute).

In the end, the pie crust came out a little thin. Next time, I'd consider perhaps even doubling the dough recipes, just to make sure I had enough to cover the entire pie dish, which I barely did this time round. The filling, on the other hand, was delicious and extremely simple to make (though it'd probably have been easier, or at least less time-consuming, if I had an apple corer/peeler gadget). I can imagine baking this pie throughout the fall and winter, for any lazy chilly weekend evening. Don't worry about just piling on heaps of the apple filling; it'll reduce to a more reasonable size as they bake.

View of the gorgeous pie dish.

Another view.

View from the top.

First slice!

 Vegan Pie Crust:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Earth Balance original spread, frozen
3 to 5 tablespoons unsweetened soy milk (I used Organic Valley), chilled

Apple-Currant Filling:

1 cup dried currants
1/2 cup red wine (can be substituted with water if you're concerned the wine is not vegan)
1 bag of apples (3 pounds), peeled, quartered, cored, and thinly sliced
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup organic light brown sugar (I used Wholesome Sweeteners, which is wonderfully molasses-scented)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Steps: 

First step is to make the pie dough. Fit your food processor with the dough blade. Measure out the flour and salt into the processor and scoop in the Earth Balance spread. Pulse for 10 to 20 seconds. Open up the top of the processor and use a spatula to hand-mix briefly, especially the edges. Pour in 1 tablespoon of the soy milk, re-cover the processor and pulse for another few seconds. Continue adding soy milk, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the mixture just begins to stick together. Remove the crumbly dough mixture from the food processor and form into a ball. Wrap it with plastic wrap and flatten into a burger-like patty. Refrigerate for a while, 30 minutes or more. (If you're strapped for time, you can put it in the freezer instead.)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Next step is to prepare the filling. In a small microwavable bowl, combine dried currants with wine. Microwave for 1 minute, just enough to warm the wine. Set the wine-currant mixture aside. Separately, prepare the apples and, in a large bowl, coat the apple slices with lemon juice. Mix in the sugar, cornstarch, and spices. Drain the remaining wine that hasn't been soaked up by the currants and fold the currants into the apple-sugar-spice mixture. Set aside.

Then roll out the pie dough and fit into the pie dish. (To reduce messes, I usually roll out the dough between two large sheets of parchment paper, each sprayed with non-stick oil spray.)

Finally, fill the pie shell with the apple mixture and bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the apples get soft and the crust turns a golden brown. Let cool for at least 10 to 20 minutes and then enjoy!

Drawing 101

(From James McMullan's Online Portfolio)

As a lifelong doodler, I'm quite thrilled that the New York Times has just begun a new, 12-week series themed around the concept of teaching readers basic drawing fundamentals, called Line by Line. Each online essay, by New York author and artist James McMullan, will infuse drawing 101 lessons with bits of art history as well as examples drawn from his current work. The first installment, out last Thursday, introduces the column and provides prospective students/readers of the series with a list of basic drawing materials (paper and either a 2B or a 4B pencil). Happy reading (and drawing)!

Russia + Yuppiness = Yoga Obsession

Did you know that this week is yoga week in Russia?
Did you know that yoga was officially taboo in the Soviet Union?
Did you know that Dmitri Medvedev practices yoga "to deal with the stress of political obligations"?

Find out other amazing factoids about Russian yoga, here, in this super fun New York Times article.

Test Kitchen: Amazing (Vegan) Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

Stop whatever you're doing and immediately try out this much less popular (but in my opinion much, much better) Chloe Coscarelli recipe -- or at least bookmark it for later use! Odds are, you have all the ingredients already at home. The only kind-of special ingredients are chocolate chips, two bananas, and Ener-G Egg Replacer. Without reservations, Chloe's put together a recipe that is incredibly simple -- replicable even by my own amateurish hands -- and thoroughly delicious! It even won over one of my most die-hard non-vegan friends! I can imagine all sorts of possibly amazing variations and additions to this recipe, if someone wants to make it fancy (though, really, no need) -- dried tart cherries, candied orange rinds, crushed pistachios....

It's a little more crumbly than the version on Chloe's blog, but yummy nonetheless!

Lady Gaga and Bikram Yoga in DC!

(photo credits)

I've read before that Lady Gaga has a tendency to drop in on Bikram classes while on tour, but it's way more exciting when a celebrity drops in at a yoga studio close to home. And not just any yoga studio, but the same Bikram studio where I took my first hot yoga classes, Bikram Yoga Capitol Hill! Unfortunately for me, I had basically a zero-percent chance of seeing her in yoga action. She apparently took the noon-time class, which I have never taken (probably full of mostly other Bikram teachers and non-9-to-5ers). On the plus side, though, I have sat on that same bench (see above) in the entrance to the Capitol Hill Bikram yoga studio, so that's something, right?

And just to set the record straight, just because everyone seems to be dwelling on what she wore to Bikram class, five-inch heels and a blazer are much more unusual yoga wear cover-ups than the bra-and-underwear-style outfit that folks seem to be describing her as wearing for the Bikram session itself. Bikram devotees are notoriously scantily clad in class -- which is completely reasonable and acceptable when you're spending 90 minutes exercising in a 105 degree heated room. (Just look at what Bikram himself is wearing at the top of his website!) I can always tell who the Bikram newbies are when I see them rolling out their yoga mats wearing full-length yoga pants and anything more than a sports bra on top.

Test Kitchen: Vegan Cupcakes

An invite to a weekend dinner party and all the recent press about vegan chef Chloe Coscarelli's cupcake challenge win on the Food Network inspired me to (try to) make two of Chloe's winning cupcake recipes for the dinner party. The recipes for the raspberry tiramisu cupcake and the chocolate strawberry shortcake cupcake are available on her blog here and here.

My attempts were definitely only partial successes, at best. They tasted good (not great), but what really set them apart, compared to the beautiful idealized versions on Chloe's blog, was that they were entirely lacking in the looks department. I'm guessing that something when wrong with the frosting because my versions came out resembling something closer to Cinnabon icing than buttercream frosting -- all drippy and tooth-numbingly sweet, without any of the fluffy volume I had hoped for. Admittedly, probably compounding the drippy-frosting-problem was the 45-minute drive in a sun-baked car that the cupcakes had to endure to get to the dinner party -- by the time we ate them, they were mostly just gooey, sweet blobs.

I'm not sure I would use either of these cupcake recipes again, at least not in their entirety. The base recipes for the plain vanilla and chocolate/espresso cupcakes are fine, but neither wowed me enough to prevent me from wanting to try out other recipes. And it goes without saying that I am still in search for a better frosting recipe. But on the plus side, I will undoubtedly find a way to incorporate the amazing raspberry sauce (from the raspberry tiramisu cupcake recipe) in other dishes (layered into soy yogurt parfaits, drizzled over vanilla soy ice cream, or as a topping for vegan waffles and pancakes!). It was hands-down the best aspect of either of the two cupcakes (though sadly, the raspberry sauce got completely lost among the other competing flavors in the tiramisu cupcake).

The chocolate cupcakes straight out of the oven.

A slightly closer look.

Chocolate strawberry shortcake cupcakes, mid-assembly.

Decidedly more homely than the gorgeous masterpieces that won on Cupcake Wars.

Test Kitchen: Vegan Wheat Bread

So, I may or may not have gotten a mild case of food poisoning from a little hole-in-the-wall Tunisian restaurant last night, but what I do know is that the only kind of food I've been willing to stomach since the fateful Tunisian dinner is bread. This is actually a good thing because last weekend I tried my hand at baking my first ever loaf of bread -- a whole wheat vegan concoction I found on the Internet -- and am now awash with more bread than I know what to do with. (In retrospect, I probably should have read the comments below the recipe before trying it out because I would have been forewarned that the recipe would result in the world's largest loaf of bread in the history of bread making.)

It looks reasonable-sized here, but, really, it's not.

Yeast gone wild?

The volume of bread the recipe produced notwithstanding, the bread itself is quite tasty in a bland, healthy-vegan sort of way. This is perfect for my current stomach condition, but might warrant at least a little recipe tinkering in the future. For starters, cutting the recipe in half and/or reducing the amount of yeast. Then, subbing out the no-sugar-added soy milk I used (my own fault) for regular soy milk. And adding some sugar or agave nectar, in lieu of or in addition to the bitter molasses.

Veganism Takes the (Cup)Cake

Ok, so I'm not quite ready just yet to fully embrace veganism in its entirety, but this New York Times blog post -- about a vegan chef, Chloe Coscarelli, winning a cupcake baking contest on the Food Network's TV show Cupcake Wars -- offers some additional motivation. The blog post notes that veganism has become an increasingly popular dietary preference in recent years, with various celebrities helping to endorse healthy eating habits and animal-friendly lifestyles. But what makes this recent vegan coup extra special is that it proves that vegan food has the potential to actually taste good -- better, in fact, than non-vegan food. And not just vegan food, but vegan baking, often considered the not-so-tasty Achilles heel of a vegan diet. Even when pitted against three non-vegan bakers who had the advantage of being able to use non-vegan baking ingredient staples, including eggs, cream, and butter, Coscarelli's creations managed to impress the Food Network cupcake judges the most. (Two of her winning cupcake recipes are available on Coscarelli's blog, here and here.) One of the judges, Candace Nelson, explains in the NYTimes blog post:

“Of all the shows we’ve done, the thing I hear the most is, ‘Were those vegan cupcakes really that good?’ ” Ms. Nelson said. “People are in sort of disbelief that this vegan chef beat out the rest of the competition. My answer is yes, they were delicious. It was everything we were looking for in a cupcake.”

Today I did buy my first box of Ener-G's Egg Replacer and my first tub of Earth Balance's buttery spread - two key ingredients for vegan baking. Am looking forward to trying these products out and experimenting with some vegan baked goods very, very soon!