FoodFash

Adventure Begins in the Kitchen

Distraction

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One of the most difficult aspects of cleansing, for me at least, is boredom.  So much of a day is spent talking about food, shopping for food, preparing food, writing about food, that when you take meals out of the equation, well… you’ve got a whole lotta time to spare.

So rather than spending seven days writing about veggies and boring you and me alike, I went on a picture taking stroll.

I intended on making my way to the downtown farmer’s market.  I went on their website, checked their Twitter status, read and re-read “Fridays 10am-2pm, October-May”, determined that 1pm on a December Friday fit that matrix, only to find that there was no farmer’s market going on when I arrived.

I suppose it’s better that I wasn’t tempted with yummy street food.  Disappointment was minimal.

Happy New Year’s Eve!!!

Community Pie

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Cafe Hey appears on FoodFash frequently.  It’s almost exactly halfway between my house and my office.  They have the most vegan options in town. They don’t cringe when I butcher their VLT cause I don’t do T.  I love it there.

And since I compulsively refresh Facebook newsfeed throughout the day and Cafe Hey updates their status almost as often as I refresh, we have a pretty solid virtual friendship as well.  Typically, their updates include info on daily soups, grain salads, and quiche, but yesterday…  I noticed they were hosting a vegan pumpkin pie cooking class for Tampa Freeskool.  Hurrah!  I signed up.

As soon as everyone arrived, we got friendly in the kitchen.  We learned that a pumpkin is a gourd, a calabaza is a sweet Caribbean squash, and that you could use either of these in a pumpkin pie and they would taste equally, if not more, delightful than your run-of-the-mill Libby’s.

Soon after, we stood in a circle, utilitarian bowls in hand, and waited as the ingredients were portioned.  At that point, I think Anne, the owner, was concerned that we weren’t getting enough hands-on time with the ingredients.  What she didn’t know?  Measuring is my least favorite part of baking and she was doing this cook a tremendous favor!

Getting my hands dirty made me realize how I badly I want to get back into bread baking.  And watching this stand mixer do it’s thang reminded me how much I’ve neglected my own.  Me and bread are gonna happen this weekend.

We mixed and mixed and splattered and mixed until the pumpkin-ness was ready to be poured into our ginger and molasses crust.

And then we parted ways, carefully so as not to spill our pies, rushing home to bake our creations.

An hour later…  The pie turned out A+ and I have to believe that’s largely due to how much fresh ginger was both in the crust and filling.  The crust puffed up nicely, like a soft cookie, and complimented the creaminess and the spice of the filling nicely.

Thanks a million Cafe Hey and Tampa Freeskool for reeling in such good company to make delicious community pies!