I love chocolate. There’s no way getting around it, but honestly, why would I try? It’s delicious, it makes me feel good, and there are so many varieties out there (even vegan ones!) that I never grow bored with it.

While spending the last month moving and working the day job and taking on freelance stuff and taking care of holiday obligations and trying to keep up with my other projects, I ran myself into the ground way more often than I was comfortable with. And it’s gonna sound like junkie talk, but a little bit of chocolate was all it took to get me up and at it again: peanut butter cups, a healthy dose of Holy Kakow syrup in my coffee, or whatever caught my eye while I was waiting in line at the grocery store.

Thank you, Taza, for catching my eye. It’s just this little puck o’ chocolate, around $5 or $6—which we know is cheap as hell when it takes but a tiny taste to satisfy you, allowing you to enjoy and even share this delight for a whole week. I grabbed the Salt and Pepper one, because it listed plain ol’ salt and black pepper and I thought that was ballsy, going with very pedestrian ingredients. It wasn’t fleur de sel and poblano, you know, just that stuff you grew up with, the stuff that lives on tables in pancake houses across the nation.

The taste was anything but pedestrian, but let’s not even start with the taste. The texture is unlike anything I’ve had before. It’s coarse, dry, with grains of sugar and salt and pepper. I read about Taza’s process on their website, and everything is done by hand, no giant steel machinery, so the product has an imperfect, handmade quality to it. If you grew up on Hershey’s and are looking for a smooth, homogonized, bland chocolate, this is not it. You will experience a crude yet gorgeous collection of flavors and textures that you may not want anything to do with. And I weep for you that you cannot see the beauty in this treat of treats.

I’ve since gotten the Cinnamon variety, and it’s the same texture and slap in the face of flavor. I’m tempted to buy the sampler they have online (not the $99 variety pack!), because they’ve got a Vanilla Bean, a Ginger, a Salted Almond, and a bunch of others, including more exotic peppers. And seeing as they’re all dairy-free, I’m in for the grand tour.

Don’t worry, other chocolate, I still have plenty of room in my heart (and tummy) for you.

Some of the stuff in the recesses of my cabinets will surely be trashed. If I can’t identify the type or purchase date (hell, year) of a plastic bag of some flour or starch or whatever, I’m not eating it. But there’s still a ton I can use. Take a look at what I’m dealing with:

The refrigerator is not dissimilar.

So in week one, I’ve made two of my favorites—you know, to lighten the load come moving day.

Stuffing! Whenever I get down to the ends of my bread, whether it’s homemade or purchased, I throw them in the freezer. Then, when the mood strikes, I can tear them up, dry them out, and make any day Thanksgiving. Not only did I clear out my freezer, but I also emptied a jar of bullion powder. Score.

Sushi! I cooked up all the short-grain rice I had and used up a jar of vegan caviar for what just might be my favorite food ever. The saltiness of the seaweed “caviar” was surprisingly perfect for sushi. I’ll definitely buy it again the next time I’m at Ikea, just for this.

As excited as I am to get out of our bite-size living quarters, I’m spacing as to whether or not there’s a place for this in the new kitchen. Not quite an Ikea hack, I found this in the bathroom section and thought it’d be perfect for spices. And so it is.

Fingers crossed—I just don’t know what I’d do without it now.

Wish me luck, and I’ll keep you posted as I throw together more bits-n-pieces meals in the coming weeks. It’ll probably get a little weird. Like what am I going to do with Soy Curl shake (the crumbly, powdery bits that collect in the jar I use when I buy bulk Soy Curls)?

Bagels!

Yeah, I made bagels. No big deal. Why is this a DIY, as opposed to any other food I made? Because bagels aren’t something you make. Well, at least they’re not something I make. I trust my local professional bageler. I mean, there’s a water bath involved! That’s pro stuff right there.

Or is it?

I just made some of the best bagels ever—and on my first try. After my amateur stunt, I can’t see what excuse grocery-store bakeries could possibly have for their crappy, white-bread-in-a-circle bagel wannabes!

I got this recipe online for my bread machine. It’s bread flour, salt, sugar, water, and yeast (of all things!), and the entire process, from measuring ingredients to beautiful, brown bagels, took around 2½ hours. And honestly, most of that time you’re not doing anything! The machines are doing the work for you.

Between the bread-machine phase and the oven phase, you’re charged with making your bagels bagel-shaped, boiling them in sugary water for a minute, then sprinkling them with whatever you want to sprinkle them with. I stuck with poppy for my first shot, but next time I’m doing an everything mix, dipping the damp bagels into it before placing them on the cookie sheet. It’s your chance to get way fancy! And the more stuff you top them with, the better you’ll be able to hide any imperfections.

And for the love of kittens, please enjoy your bagel in its pure form rather than toasting! Toasting is fine for old or inferior bagels. Your gorgeous, fresh, homemade gem has a chewy, tender texture you do not want to miss.

I checked the ingredients. It’s seaweed extract, salt, blah, blah, xantham gum, and vegetable carbon (coloring). I can do this.

I did some caviar research, ’cause I don’t know from fish eggs, and apparently it is best served on some lightly buttered, lightly toasted bread. Any talk of creamy accompaniments only clue your guests in to the inferior quality of your roe. So toast and seaweed and salt—I can do this.

And then I opened the jar.

OK, that’s creepy. I made sure I had Tom on board for this one—he’s actually eaten fishy caviar in sushi, back in his omni days. If I ended up spitting it out, he could follow through for sure.

Here’s the assembly. Increasingly creepy the closer it gets to taste time. But shock and amazement and all things crazy, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great, either, but I got through it and tasted some more on its own to get a full grasp on what I was tasting. The texture is like wet poppy seeds, and it’s just super salty with some tang to it. Tom described it as “salty pickle rye.”

Will I buy it again? We actually talked about using it in sushi. Our normal sushi is the garden-variety vegetable sushi (although Tom has made his ridiculous deli roll). With the fakey shrimp or crab meat we could make some novelty fakey fishy sushi.

But to those real caviar-eaters out there, I still don’t get you. They’re friggin’ fish eggs.

I have also lived in apartments for the past decade. As they’ve been the kind with strict rules regarding grilling on the balcony (when I’ve been lucky enough to score a balcony), I’ve gone without any means of grilling for quite some time.

Guess who’s done moving—me! I’m settling down, I think, enough to slowly build my collection of cast iron. What better start than a grill pan? Wanna know a secret? It’s technically a panini pan, but I ditched the top piece somewhere in the depths of my kitchen cabinets and guess what’s left: a grill pan.

This was ’round six months ago, and I use it several times a month, and it’s just not there yet. I did the proper seasoning, and i use it like you’re supposed to, but it’s taking forever to get all gorgeous and black and nonstick. I try to use as little oil as possible, to avoid having the smoke alarm go off, and I know it’s getting better, but every time, I lose a chunk or two out of my tempeh. See?

I know, chin up and all that. And it’s not that bad—dinner still looks good and tastes good.

This is my tempeh, simmered in a simple marinade for a few minutes then grilled with some Annie’s Original BBQ Sauce. I served it up with Trader Joe’s Creative Grains, which is a lazy man’s mixture of Israeli couscous, orzos, mini garbanzos, and other delights. Way easy. Way delicious. Way good for you. And way cheap.

First I’m sharing this awesome cookie with you. So pink and sparkly! It’s a rosewater sugar cookie from Back to Eden Bakery. I was running errands today and started to get a headache—chocolate was in order and B2E was a worthwhile detour. Not pictured is the chocolate chip cookie I ate way too fast to photograph, kinda like Bruce Lee’s Chinese boxing.

Click on it--it's got a surprise for you!

I’m also sharing this song with you. Leslie Hall (of Gem Sweater fame) released a special little ditty for VeganMoFo Hump Day. Watch and listen to everything Leslie has produced. She is a force of nature and as sparkly as a rosewater sugar cookie. (I want to thank my friend Colleen for introducing me to her radness when we were grammar geeks for hire down in LA.)

Grinding your own spices is the easiest thing ever in the world of anything, and it’ll net you some fresher, spicier spices—and save you a few bucks to boot.

I’m not saying you have to spend hours over a mortar and pestle. Sure, I’ve got one, but I also have this amazing new space-age ultra high-tech modern marvel: the $15 coffee grinder. Because we also grind our own coffee beans daily (with a mixture of cacao nibs and cassia chips), our second grinder is set aside just for spices. I don’t want to taste rosemary and cumin in my coffee.

So what should you be grinding? Cumin, coriander, mustard, cloves, and dried herbs (drying your own yet?), absolutely. Buy your spices in bulk from a place you trust. Penzeys (yes, I talk about them a lot, but their prices—and spices—are killer), your favorite natural foods store, whatever, just make sure you like the stuff. The point here is to have spices that taste good, better than those McCormick bottles.

Buying bulk sesame seeds? Throw them in a food processor and make your own super fresh tahini for cheap yet delicious hummus.

And you are storing your bulk poppy seeds in the freezer, aren’t you? Ugh, this is worse than I thought! Poppy seeds have high oil content, so they go rancid quickly. Take out a little jar at a time and just leave the big jar in the freezer. If someone asks you why you have a big jar of poppy seeds in your freezer, tell them the Austrian-Hungarian-Gypsy-or-something girl told you to.

Now go eat better food!

Today’s entry is kombucha, tea that’s been fermented with a bacteria-yeast pancake, with raspberry juice and chia seeds, which plump up like frog eggs.

I know, right?!

I got the raspberry one, because you expect little seeds in raspberry whatever, so it might soften the blow. Still, when I opened the bottle, it did smell like a bottle of juice that fell out of the cupholder in your car and rolled under the seat, where it sat for a summer. Would you even dare your friend to drink that? I know, kombucha is made in a controlled environment, and I’ve had wine before—that’s fermented. Still, this smelled a little extra gross.

When I poured it into a cup, it glopped out (new situations call for new words) and I was faced with the reality that the next step involved putting that into my mouth. Tom!

I had Tom try it first. He made a face like a baby when it tastes lemon for the first time, a little confused and betrayed. He recovered and said the taste actually wasn’t that bad, but the texture was unexpected. (A little later gave it another go and said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m sick enough to need this as a medicine.”)

And then it was my turn. I tried to drink it like a normal beverage, nose open, just taking it all in without reservation. And yes, I found it disgusting and overwhelming. I tried again, this time turning off my nose and sipping in just around a teaspoon. This time I saw the novelty in the chia and could sort of munch the little seedyguys then throw it back down my throat.

Could I drink a full 8-ounce serving of this stuff? No way. I can see how kombucha itself could be an acquired taste, but I don’t much go in for acquired tastes. Its health benefits are super anecdotal, so I don’t see the need to force myself to like it. I would like to figure out a way to eat chia, maybe in a pudding. But I’m done with this—it just seems so contrived, putting a couple of trendy “superfoods” together to make the supergroup of superfoods, like Damn Yankees in a bottle.

For the record, it’s been about 20 minutes since drinking it and I just had a memory of the taste make me almost shiver.

So mysterious. With all the reflecting and odd shapes floating within, if I didn’t tell you before you got here what it was you could be creeped out. But fear not! It’s just vanilla beans and vodka, and when have they ever steered you wrong? (That time didn’t count—you guys had just broken up and it was like the third night of that heat wave…)

This is all you need to make yourself some quality vanilla extract. How much have you paid and how many times have you almost grabbed the imitation stuff, ’cause who’s gonna notice in chocolate chip cookies? Once you make your own, you’ll never even think about buying one of those tiny bottles. You’ll laugh to yourself when you see someone buying it at the store, not that you judge people at the check-out line or anything.

So how do you do it?
Purchase 6 vanilla beans and slit them lengthwise, exposing the innards.
Stick them in a jar with 2 cups of vodka.
Hide the jar for a few months—in a cool, dry place, of course.
And…oh wait, that’s it. You just made vanilla extract.

If you pour yourself off a little bit, add some more vodka and hide again! Like a good tea bag, the vanilla beans will keep on givin’ you the good stuff for quite some time.

What is it? Not just coconut oil. Not margarine or shortening, really. It’s really stiff but melts very easily, and it really does have a coconutty flavor and a fuller mouthfeel than the other EB spreads. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not extra greasy like the sticks, which I only use in baking. I don’t know what the deal is with those, but I can’t even melt that stuff down for popcorn topping.

I tried buttering toast with it and it was odd, but I usually follow my EB spread with a healthy sprinkling (read: dousing) of nutritional yeast. This is not one of those sweet-n-savory gems.

I stuck it back in the fridge and it sat for a bit. Nothing pisses me off more than making gross food, so I was hesitant to give this another shot…until a clean-out-the-kitchen day, when I decided to sauté some vegetables and add it to orzo, like so:

Perfect. Coconut and carrot are best friends, it turns out. They each have that sweetness and together become the bridge for all the other flavors (zucchini, parsley, onion, and garlic). Hoo and ray! This is the perfect little side dish for you or some fancy friends you want to impress.

By the way, I have since used this in a biscuit recipe, replacing the soymilk with vanilla creamer, and it was great, almost like a scone. It was also perfect to replace half the oil in a cinnamon coffee cake.

So it turns out every Earth Balance has its place(s).