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Things to do in New Paltz and environs, if you like the kind of things I like. August 8, 2011

Filed under: new paltz,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 10:04 pm

Sometimes people come to the shop from other places and they want to do other things besides eat chocolate.

And it’s made me realize that all I ever do is work and I need to remember fun things to do so I can point people to these fun things and maybe even do them myself some day. So, locals, help me out here! Leave a comment with the hundreds of amazing places I’m leaving out!

In time I’ll add links and photos to this page, but as usual I need to get this one whipped out in minutes before I collapse from exhaustion, so let’s do this rough for now. It’s a work in progress.

FUN THINGS TO DO IN NEW PALTZ (and environs) APART FROM GOING TO LAGUSTA’S LUSCIOUS

IN NEW PALTZ:

  • Walk two minutes down the rail trail and get a smoothie or vegan BLT or Caesar salad at New Paltz’s only vegan restaurant, Karma Road. The owners are the nicest people on the planet, and we share a precious employee, Pippa, who we politely try to not to tear in half because we both love her so much.
  • Keep walking on the trail trail 20 minutes more or so for glorious quiet walking and amazing leaf peeping in the fall. Eventually (if you’re going south) you’ll come to the tableau pictured in this post. So pretty.
  • Rent (for free) one of the Bikes that Heal (don’t donate money to them—it goes to animal research) from one of the stands around town (you just give your credit card to the business whose ad is on the stand as collateral) and pedal around on the rail trail. Start at my shop and go north and in 15 minutes you’ll be at a gorgeous bridge over the Wallkill river. So awesome.
  • Read The Chronogram to see what’s happening around town. You can get it everywhere.
  • Prowl around the two indie record shops in town: Rhino and Jack’s Rhythms. I adore both their owners, and cannot play favorites.
  • There are lovely books at Jack’s and also at the great bookstore in town, Inquiring Minds. And also the great used bookshop across the street (Church Street), Barner Books! They are conveniently across the street (Church St) from each other.
  • You probably like yoga. Allllll my yoga friends go to  Ashtanga Yoga of New Paltz and all love it, as one friend said, “hands freaking down.” I’m pretty sure the owner is vegan. Just sayin.
  • Poke around the Team Love/Ravenhouse Gallery, two blocks from the shop. Say hello to Nelly if she’s there. She’s the tall sweetheart who runs the place. They have interesting exhibits, rare records from bands on Saddle Creek Records and Team Love Records, and cute onesies for your hip baby.
  • Walk to the community gardens from the shop: turn left out of the shop and walk 1 minute to Huguenot Street. Turn left and walk for 1 minute, then turn right at the next street, where you see the sign for the community gardens (I *think* there’s a sign…?). Walk another minute and you’re there. Very lovely.
  • Look for vintage clothes at the Salvation Army just north of my shop on Route 32, the Antiques Barn (I love the Antiques Barn!) and the other antiques store in Water Street Market, as well as Judy Go Vintage on Route 32 in Rosendale. (Rosendale is a cute town 15 minutes from The Paltz.)
  • Oh, my old and outdated NP dining guide is here.
  • Get cheap and good tacos and burritos at Mexicali Blue in New Paltz right downtown on Main Street. Or pretty good Japanese at Hokkaido, a minute from the shop on North Front and Church Street.
  • Poke around the awesome art store Manny’s on Main Street in New Paltz (next to Mexicali!)
  • Go to the Reuse Center and sift through the marvelous junk.
  • There are a million trillion wonderful hikes to do. I am partial to swimming at Split Rock, though it’s usually very busy, and the hikes near there. If you go to Split Rock, follow Clove Road for a few miles until you see the amazing tree root sculptures on the left side of the road (can’t miss ‘em).
  • There is also good blueberry picking all around the Ridge (The Ridge [aka the Shawangunk Mountains] is the mountain range you’re looking at when you come into New Paltz)–drive west on 299 until the road ends, then turn right onto 44/55. After the hairpin turn keep going for, oh, 6 miles or so. Park at the tiny (3 car) turnaround/illegal [you'll be fine] lookout spot by the rock wall. Cross the street cautiously and scramble up the flat-ish white rocks. If it’s July, there will probably be tiny blueberries all around. You can also hike to gorgeous rock gardens around here…but I still never have and will have to get the info on how to get there from pals. Google it!
  • There is a vegan B&B a couple hours away, near MA, run by sweet people. I have their card at the shop and will update this tomorrow. There is also a very pretty one in New Paltz, called Hungry Ghost Guest House. And my rad friend Megan runs a perfect B&B in Woodstock, called Retreat at Tree Gap. There are no good hotels in the area. There are not even any DECENT hotels. There is Mohonk, a breathtaking mountain resort where Alan Alda and Oprah et al stay, and scary places by the Thruway. And B&Bs.
  • If it’s a Sunday, either go to the New Paltz farmer’s market, or drive to Rhinebeck and go to their vastly superior farmer’s market. The falafel is all vegan (even all the condiments) and it’s the best falafel you’ve ever had, even if you, like, grew up in Israel or something.
  • If it’s the second or fourth Monday of the month, come say hello to me at the New Paltz Town Hall, where I’ll be at the Planning Board!
  • There are lots of pick-your-own berries type farms. Come to the shop and let’s talk about which ones use the least amount of pesticides and aren’t run by Republicans. My favorite is Jenkens-Lueken.
  • Take a walk on Plains Road and finish it up at the Taliaferro farm market. I think it’s only open on the weekends. Lovely times.
  • Take a walk on the Oldest Continually Inhabited Street in America, Huguenot Street. It’s steps from the shop and I highly recommend the tour of the historic houses. Crazy fascinating–slave quarters! In upstate NY!
  • Read the New Paltz Times letters section. The highlight of everyone’s week, for reals.
  • Tear some siding off the building the shop’s in? Pretty please? We still have SO much to do.
  • Coffeehouses: Slash Root is an anarchist pay-what-you-can techie cafe full of smart people who will fix your computer, give you some wild-foraged tea, and teach you how to garden. Mudd Puddle is a bit of a breeder hideout, but I like it because it can be quiet and is friendly and cozy and in the summertime you can hang out outside and people watch and drink expertly-made drinks. They make the best espresso drinks in town (all the Italian expats go there), and roast their own beans. After walking around the Antiques Barn, you can get a veganized Mudd Freeze there and you’ll be very happy indeed. And check the events schedule for WSM, there are great movies all the time shown outside.
  • The Village Tea Room is pretty and fun for tea.
  • Swimming at Lake Minnewaska! Hiking to waterfalls! Directions and info coming!
  • The deal with movies: New Paltz cinema is run by a Republican, but has $5 movies on Tuesdays. Try not to go to a quiet movie that is next to a loud movie, or you will hear the loud movie more than your movie. Upstate Films Theater is in Rhinebeck, a bit of a hike, but is awesome and they have nooch for popcorn. Rosendale Theatre is the bestest place ever, a collective, old-timey art house with, inexplicably, dill weed for popcorn instead of butter and Fanta to drink, which tastes exactly like orange Skittles. Hyde Park Drive-In is great, or so I hear. I have yet to go.
NEAR NEW PALTZ:
  • Go to Dia Beacon. While you’re in Beacon, get a popsicle at Zora Dora’s.
  • If you must drive to an NYC area airport, here’s my secret way. It takes longer, but it’s better.
  • Go visit Gnome Chomsky, the world’s largest garden gnome.
  • Go to Hudson and look at amazing antiques you will never be able to afford and marvel at the Chelsea of upstate! The hot cultured gay boys are as abundant as the mid-century modern bureaus. Also my BFF Veronica works at a GREAT vintage store there, Sideshow Clothing. (It’s about an hour from New Paltz though.)
  • A bunch of my friends love Pure City, a veggie restaurant in Pine Bush. I went there 5 years ago and hated it, but I really need to go back so I stop hating it, because I trust my friends.
  • The Walkway over the Hudson is definitely worth a visit.
  • See a show or a Tributon at Market Market (aka A Little Slice of Brooklyn) in Rosendale. While in Rosendale, go to Roos Arts, the great tiny gallery. Do not go to Rosendale Cafe for food, veggie though it may be. Going there to hear music is acceptable.
  • Splurge on a nice vegan dinner at Garden Cafe in Woodstock. If the key lime pie is on the menu, I order you to get a slice (or a pie) for me and bring it to the shop.
  • Liberty View Farm also offers lodging now as well as apple picking, and is run by the cutest, sweetest couple in the world, Billiam and Rene. Billiam is one of the main movers behind the famous gay marriages in February 2004 in New Paltz. He also doesn’t allow Republicans at the farm! And HE HAS BEEN ON MARTHA STEWART LIVING. I mean COME ON.
  • The Last Bite is lovely and has lots of veggie options, and is in High Falls, which is fun to poke around in. The High Falls food co-op is right there too, which is a tiny little organic food co-op with good local veggies.
  • Speaking of Veronica, she just had this to say about Saugerties, a town I’ve never really kicked around: “Saugerties is a good tourist-y town, too. I don’t really love it, but it’s worth a trip as a tourist [Veronique is, like me, a classic snob.]. The lighthouse has a bed and breakfast, there are a lot of boutiques on Partition street (I like this store called Rock Star Rodeo), and Love Bites has pretty good food (although the place is teeny and I always come out smelling like grease). There’s also an Inquiring Minds Bookstore/Muddy Cup (the coffee is disgusting, though), and another book store. Oh, and Mother Earth [health food store], of course.” Thanks, V!
  • The Falcon has good live music, good fries, and a good tempeh reuben.
  • I hear that the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary will soon be opening a B&B…
  • And the Catskill Animal Sanctuary is worth a visit, and donation, too.
  • While driving to the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary or to dinner at Garden Cafe, go the scenic route (which I’ll write down here when I get it from my boyfrien’) and visit the lovely Ashokan Reservoir on the way.
More soon! With pictures! And links!
Tell me what I’ve left out!
 

no more store: day five June 20, 2011

Filed under: cooking is vegan (of course),new paltz,recipe!,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 2:37 am

You know the deal: I’m seeing how long I can go without going to the grocery store.

Here’s the backstory, and here are today’s meals.

I have a little noontime Sunday brunch club with some friends, so off to brunch I went, a little late because I got up at 8:30 and decided to manically clean my house until 11:30, whereupon I spilled an entire bottle of floor soap onto the floor, which took forever to mop up. The floors are very clean now.

But brunch was worth it: I had an outrageously (not pictured) great meal at a newish restaurant, Rock and Rye Tavern. I wasn’t expecting much, because it’s a restaurant at a golf course (kill me now), and because the restaurant previously in that location was notoriously overpriced and vegan unfriendly, but when I finally got to brunch my friends were tucking into expertly made bloody marys (maries?) and things looked promising. There was only one vegan item on the brunch menu, and it was a tofu scramble wrap.

Now:

-I FUCKING HATE WRAPS. I’m going to assume I’ve run down why WRAPS MUST DIE in this space before, so I’ll spare you right now. But feel free to request the rant if you’re so inclined/can’t find it by searching.

-I am not a fan of tofu.

-It was $14.

But I got the thing, and the other vegan at the table did too, and

DUDES! It was good! Not just OK, but GOOD! How one could make a tofu scramble wrap GOOD is beyond me, but something having to do with caramelized onions and a properly cooked-through wrap (those disgusting half-raw processed tortillas are what make wraps so nauseating to me), along with a nice roasted tomato salsa on top and properly cooked home fries on the side made it wonderful.

Amazing!

After that I went to the farmer’s market, whereupon I was informed that I was wearing a shirt as a dress. Hrumph. I still think it’s a dress. It has smocking in the front. I think that makes it a dress.

(Sidenote: I also screamed “I LOVE YOU, KIRA KINNEY, EVEN THOUGH YOU UNFRIENDED ME ON FACEBOOK BECAUSE YOU THINK I WHINE TOO MUCH” to a friend (?) when we passed each other on the street, but that’s a different story. Real quick though, here’s the thing: I love Kira Kinney. It’s OK about the unfriending. As she was driving away, she yelled “I JUST LIKE YOU TOO MUCH TO LISTEN TO SO MUCH RANTING” and I sighed and didn’t have time to tell her that the one week we were FB friends I was having a lot of building-related stress. C’est la vie. When I turned to keep walking I saw that a gaggle of teenagers were staring at me like I was a crazy person for screaming my head off about how I loved someone who had unfriended me on Facebook in the middle of the street or something. WHATEVER YO.)

(Please excuse the self-timer photo and weirdly snobby pose.)

I went to the farmer’s market searching for onions.

Not having onions is bumming me out. I knew there wouldn’t be real onions yet, but I would have been happy with spring onions, or scallions, or chives, or any allium whatsoever, really, but no luck.

No fruit either—NONE. I came a little late, but still. The New Paltz farmer’s market is notoriously awful, particularly for a town overflowing with CSAs and organic farms. All the smart farmers I know take their stuff to fancier, bigger markets (preferably the NYC greenmarkets, which are basically a license for farmers to print money [as long as they are willing to work 80+ hours a week for the privilege], so we’ve got a real cobbler’s-children-with-no-shoes thing happening in my farmy little town. Sux. But I can walk to the market from work, so what can you do.

I walked back to work and painted some roof trim at the building by hanging upside down from the roof, which worked up an appetite. (I changed into painty clothes, yes. And yes, this photo was taken later on, when it was getting dark.)

OK, so I wasn't hanging upside down. But I was painting upside down!

I needed to use up a napa cabbage from my CSA, so I made some cole slaw. Except that I didn’t have half the ingredients for the cole slaw. Here’s the recipe I usually use (note that the dressing makes A TON):

cole slaw with almond mayonnaise

1 c almonds (I used a mix of very old hazelnuts and cashews—almonds are lots better)

1/3 c lemon juice, or more to taste (of course I didn’t have a goddamn lemon, and I missed it)

1 ½ c water

1 c grape seed oil

2 ts sea salt

3 Tb mustard (I made my own! See below)

1/3 c red wine vinegar

splash Tabasco

3 small cabbages, thinly sliced (I just had one napa cabbage)

6 small red peppers, slivered (nope)

6 carrots, grated (nope)

4 small red onions, thinly sliced (I had some onion scapes I thinly sliced.)

  1. Blend almonds, lemon juice, and water in blender until emulsified. Drizzle in grape seed oil with blender running in a thin stream. Add salt, mustard, vinegar, and Tabasco and blend until combined. Taste and adjust seasonings. Add more water if necessary for a creamy consistency.
  2. Combine all vegetables and add mayonnaise. Stir well and add salt and more Tabasco if necessary. Refrigerate for an hour to meld flavors. Eat within 2 days.

Just for you, dear internet, I also chopped up some nasturtiums for the top, so it wouldn’t look so colorless. Even with all the substitutions (which definitely compromised the flavor a bit, sigh.), it was a nice meal.

I didn’t have any mustard, so I made my own by mixing together coarsely ground mustard seeds (I threw in yellow and brown, why not), my homemade garlic vinegar, mustard powder, white wine, and salt.

Homemade mustard is better when allowed to sit in the fridge overnight (it needs cold to activate or something), but it was OK right away.

Without this challenge, I definitely would have bought mustard, which is just stupid when I have all the ingredients for a superior homemade mustard, so I ate my meal feeling very smug and thrifty indeed.

I had to open a bottle of wine for the mustard, so I had a glass with lunch, why not.

I kept on eating more cole-ish slaw (that cabbage was big) throughout the afternoon, as I painted and painted. Then it got dark and I went inside and scrubbed up and…..

….

…

MADE TEMPEH!

I’m so excited. I haven’t used my tempeh incubator in 2011 at all because of the move and not doing the meal delivery, so this is a big deal.

I weighed out 20 or so 8 oz. packets of tempeh-to-be that I’m going to freeze and sell in the shop. Who says a chocolate shop can’t sell tempeh? I’m going to sell it cheapo, too: $4 for 1/2 lb!

I made my usual recipe for 100% chickpea tempeh, but maybe in the future I’ll get more adventurous. So look for me eating some tempeh by Tuesday or so.

After that I chocolatized, and for dinner I made some weird not-good thing with some shiitakes I’d bought from my aforementioned pal/contractor Aaron, who grows beautiful shiitakes on logs in his backyard, plus chickpeas left over from tempeh-making, and pasta. And some harissa sauce from the freezer, and some green garlic from the farmer’s market. It was OK.  It needed some veggies and color, as you can see.

It would have been insanely good with an insanely good tomato sauce, all rich and long-simmered and filled with all my secret ingredients and techniques (fry the tomato paste when the onions are just caramelized; nutritional yeast, red wine, lots of e.v.o, shoyu, balsamic, pesto at the end, my mouth is watering), and I had everything for an insanely good tomato sauce but onions. Tomato sauce without onions is stupid canned salsa. No thanks.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll simmer the leftovers with some tomatoes and spice it up a bit and see how that goes.

OK, it’s 2 and I’ve been up and on my feet since 8, so maybe it’s time for bed. Tomorrow I have high hopes of finishing the painting (I’m turning everything [plus more not pictured] in this photo that’s white to brown.).

Writing about my everyday life on the blog like this is very boring to me, but also addicting. Is it boring to you?

How long is this dang challenge going to go on? Why am I doing this?

I want an onion.

Sleep well, sweethearts!

 

Monday Miscellany March 14, 2011

Filed under: culture and its discontents,Monday Miscellany,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 4:03 pm

Hello!

I’ve been holding on to a whole passel of internetty things. I’m going to deposit them here for safekeeping. The whole passel. Are you ready for the passel? Here comes the passel.

Also, I’m accompanying them with a passel (OK, maybe a half passel) of photos taken on a snowy day last month.

 

Washing your face with oil? I’m old now, and I think it might be time to stop washing my face with soap. A Facebook friend of mine wrote this, and I’m saving it here to contemplate later. How do you wash your face, pals?

 

 

Bookshelf porn. I’m not a fan of using words like “porn” or “pimp” to refer to non-patriarchal things (blah blah and yeah there is good porn out there) but WHATEVER LOOK AT THESE BOOKSHELVES.

 

 

A random Google search led me to this here blog, which for some reason I sat and read at work for an hour or so, and by the time I finally left work the road was flooded (the snow you see here is finally melting, causing mass chaos) and I had to drive 45 minutes out of the way to get home. But it was OK, because the whole time I was singing along to Whispertown and thinking about this post: five reasons to stop trying to be happy. I think I’ve been living this way my whole life, but pretending that I’ve been trying to get happy, when really I’ve been trying to get an interesting and fulfilling life, which I have. Her point is that happiness often means stagnation, and if you want a real life it has to keep moving/changing/growing/being complicated. Just read the post, she explains it better.

 

 

DUDES! Have you been watching Downton Abbey? I always loves me a costume drama, the more Englishy/Austiney/angsty the better, but this Masterpiece Classics PBS series has all that plus some serious exploration of class, sex, and gender issues. Really, really great.

 

 

Hey! A blog post about my awesome grandfather!

 

 

This guide to veg hotspots of the Hudson Valley, in the reliably awesome Chronogram, includes my discerning, snobby restaurant picks!

 

 

This episode of the Moth, in which “legendary rapper Darryl “DMC” McDaniels admits his Sarah McLachlan obsession” BLEW MY MIND. Just listen. Freaking amazeballs.

 

 

OK so maybe that wasn’t quite a passel. WHATEVS.

 

Lag out!

 

hump day link dump, chumps! the pump don’t work because the vandals took the handles! sake! August 5, 2010

Filed under: culture and its discontents,Mad Men is so rad I just might die,Monday Miscellany,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 1:52 am

Here’s some stuff. And an outfit! A blurry one! You can’t tell, but my hair is all Heidi-style! Themes, yo. Themes. I am into themes. Today’s was twee.

Oh, I have another painfully twee outfit–that weirdo dress, remember? I’ve got a lot, but the difference between my fuck-you mouth and my painfully cute outfits sometimes shocks people too much, so I have to regulate the tweeification so as not to kill people with the contradictory nature of the universe.

OK, let’s talk about real things now. For reals! Sometimes the world just sucks and all you have is outfits, you know? Not this week though. This week I’m just being superficial. It’s been a pretty good week.

(Why yes, I am having an end-of-night-and-it’s-90-degrees-in-here icy yuzu sake beverage, how can you tell?)

First of all I’ve got to beg you to vote for my little company in this VegNews poll-y thingy. Thank you! Look, there’s an icon & everything!

Peeps, are you watching Louie? My god. Mr. Lagusta is watching it over my shoulder as I click-clack. So good! I’ve been watching each episode on a loop at work. Awesomeness.

The people who make the jeans I like have a blog post about sharks that is cool. SHARKS!

Not Sark—sharks!

Remember in high school when we (maybe just me?) thought Sark’s weirdo handwritten rainbowy books were so deep and thoughtful? Oh, Sark. Good for you! Not my scene anymore, but good on ya. Eat mangoes naked! Almost a triple rainbow! Mixing pop-culture references!

Moving on. Shall we start talking about Mad Men? I just got caught up and am still all tingly in all my special parts. When I get a chance, I’m going to pore over this and this and this and more links that maybe you will point me to so I can get my think on. For now Peggy’s new hairstyle and that pink dress Joan was wearing when she was in Roger’s whiteout office has me on such a cloud that I’m not capable of anything more. Oh, and how great was THIS?

Here’s a good post on how to do what you know you need to do: get your attention span back.

I’m pretty convinced someone in my life has Asperger’s Syndrome, and thus I was interested in this link all about how to help a friend with autism navigate the wild world of Facebook. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Pretty pretty pretty.

Two great things happened this week: even though marriage is for idiots, now gay idiots can get married in CA, and yay for that. You knew that happened, though, so why am I even mentioning it? To be all avant-garde and holier-than-thou, of course!

The second is that the NY State senate passed a moratorium on fracking—yay! All those annoying phone calls paid off! It still needs to be passed by the assembly though. And even then it’s just the first of many, many steps.

Something to add to my someday-to-be-written veg dining guide to the H-to-the-V: dudes, why had no one ever told me about the taco place with homemade tortillas and oodles of veggie options run by a Chinese family who moved up from the city right next to Vassar before? You’ve got to tell me these things!

OK, is that it? My watered down yuzu sake is about done. Anything happening in your world?

Hey, can you tell me how to get people’s blog posts in my email even when their blog doesn’t have that little box saying “yo yo yo, like, give me your email and I will drop my blog posts right to your inbox, mofo!”? Google just mumbles something about RSS feeds that I don’t understand when I ask.

But if you’re torn between voting in the VegNews poll and telling me how to make that happen, mos def pick the former.

Go forth!

Seriously: worst cat mom ever.

 

three perspectives on vegans dining at nonvegan restaurants August 29, 2009

Filed under: cooking is vegan (of course),Elsewhere,NYC,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 8:57 pm

Here’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot:

Vegans: do you make it a point to go only to vegan and veggie restaurants? I’d like to know. Here are my thoughts on it, as well as my (probably incorrect) interpretations of those of the two vegans I’m closest to: my moms & my sweetheart.

My thoughts:

IMGP0151

The number of photos I have of me looking bizarre while eating is truly amazing. Also, I’d really like someone to explain why I’m wearing two sweaters in L.A. Also what’s happening with my bosoms.

  • If I ever eat another shittyass veggie burger, or even a mediocre veggie burger, or even a pretty good veggie burger, I am going to die.
  • If I see another menu with a mediocre tempeh reuben/seitan fajita dish/portobello sandwich/cole slaw with veganaise mayo (sigh)/terrifying soy buffalo wings/whitey burritos/underflavored whitey tacos/stir-fries (oh. god.)/and the hummus/and the bland chili/horrifyingly bland peanut noodles/sad sad sad uncrispy salads with truck lettuce and sad sad sad gloppy dressings, etc. etc, I. Will. Die.
  • [insert long cheffy snobbish rant here about how I make my own tempeh and can't possibly be expected to eat that bitter shit in regular tempeh reubens and would never own a restaurant because then you have to make what people want to order instead of vice versa, which is how my weirdo business works because I'm such a diva.]
  • Why do we go to these places, when we could go to, say, an actual Mexican place run by actual Mexicans who actually know how to cook and can make us actual Mexican food that is 1,000 times better? I do not have even one more inch of stomach space for a burrito as big as my head stuffed with iceberg lettuce and crunchy beans made by…well, I was just about to write the most horrifying sentence about trustafarian hippie vegans, but why be so mean? Trustafarian hippie vegans could make this non-trustafarian hippie-hating long-time vegan a good meal, I will admit that it is possible. I will merely say that they so rarely do and will not slander those who are, sigh, basically my people.

IMGP4593

  • By “these places,” I am specifically talking about places like: Chicago Diner in Chicago (where last night I had a truly dreadful dish called “Oaxacan Ravioli” whereby I must give the cooks points for trying, but whose execution was mindblowingly horrid (here’s a tip: ravioli should not be so “al dente” [i.e., undercooked] as to CRUNCH when you bite into it, unless it is the famous St. Louis-style “toasted ravioli,” which this most assuredly was not); Kate’s Joint and Quantum Leap and Caravan of Dreams and bunches more in NYC; one zillion crap vegan Thai places in LA with plasticky soy protein dishes; this one place I went to in Boston last year I can’t remember the name of (it was upstairs, and Asian, and horrrrrid); and I’m sure you can think of more.
  • The other thing is that when you go to nonvegan places & order their vegan dishes, you show them that there is a market for vegan things, and that’s good, right?
  • OK, I’ll admit it: Chicago Diner has the best vegan strawberry milkshakes ever.

IMG_1134

Really. Amazing.

My sweetheart’s thoughts:

IMG_2915

The number of photos I have of my sweetheart eating something sugary is truly amazing.

  • YUM! Seitan!
  • Ooh, terrifying soy buffalo wings!!
  • I’ve been on tour for weeks and am subsisting on hummus and kombucha from our rider and the last thing I want to do on the half hour I have before I have to rush back to the venue is worry that the chilaquiles from the awesome-looking taco truck on the corner have secret cheese in them. Plus, I can trade tickets to the show tonight to the cool vegans at this place in exchange for backstage doughnuts! Doughnuts!!!!!

IMG_3515

“Dudes! I got the doughnuts!”

IMG_3505

IMG_3502

  • I wonder if Lagusta could FedEx some peanut butter cups to the next hotel? I’m getting a little low.
  • Oh my god Chicago Diner has the best vegan cookies & cream milkshakes ever. I hope they use real Oreos. Wow, I’m so happy that Oreos are vegan these days. No more Hydrox for me! Oh boy. I’m going to get some Oreos on my way back to the venue.
  • Oreos!!!!!

My mom’s thoughts:

IMG_0524

OK, I need to work on my collection of mom-eating photos.

  • Chicago Diner is SO AWESOME. I love it SO MUCH. They always donate to whatever animal rights campaigns we’re working on, and they support all the groups I’m in as much as they can. Everyone is so nice and cute, and when Lagusta’s sweetheart is in town we go and he loves the milkshakes so much.
  • Hmm, what’s this in my soup? A door hinge? Oh my. The rest of the soup is pretty tasty though!*
  • Look at that cute dog!
  • One reason I love going to vegan restaurants is to support other vegans, and vegan businesses. Why worry about what’s in the food at nonvegan places when you can have peace of mind at all-vegan places?

IMG_3644

This ice cream has Oreos in it!!!!!

What are your thoughts?

—

—

*TRUE STORY.

 

pisces love cancers / everyone should be loving agar July 4, 2009

Filed under: chocolate,cooking is vegan (of course),recipe!,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 12:08 pm

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For someone who says she doesn’t believe in astrology, I seem to have a ridiculously large amount of Cancer friends. I’m pretty in love with all of them, and was super psyched that I rounded so many up to have dinner and managed to fit all their names on one cake! I was planning on decorating it with tiny peanut butter cups, but in the end it was just going to be too busy, so chocolate shavings won.

At any rate, I’m pretty happy with this cake. It’s a basic chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and filling that I frosted with my favorite easy easy easy chocolate frosting: ganache (yeah, it’s got a double frosting: ganache, then the pb just on the top.). Ganache frosting really is the shit. Have you ever made it? You pour it on the cake and it hardens to a shiny, smooth gloss. It’s incredibly rich and, unless you always have a lot of untempered chocolate to use up like I do (you don’t need tempered chocolate for ganache, and I’ve always got chocolate hanging around that’s been in the tempering machine for 2 hours or something and is tired of being tempered. [Yes, chocolate gets tired and needs a rest sometimes too!]), it’s pretty expensive. Basically you’re covering your entire cake in a chocolate bar.

I usually use about half a pound of chocolate on a standard cake. To make it, just bring 3/4 of a cup coconut milk and 1 tablespoon coconut oil to a strong boil. While it’s coming to a boil, finely chop 8 oz. of chocolate and put it in a medium bowl. When the liquids boil, pour them over the chocolate, stir for a few seconds, then cover it and let it sit for a few minutes. You can also add 1 tablespoon or more of any alcohol that will go well with your cake, or 1/2 teaspoon or so of any extract that will go with the cake. I usually add a little brandy. After the chocolate has sat for a few minutes, stir it until it’s completely smooth. If some chocolate pieces won’t melt, cover it for another few minutes then try again, and remember to chop the chocolate more finely next time.

Spread whatever filling you’re using for your cake on the middle layer (you can use ganache for that too, or raspberry jam, or anything else you can think of), top it with the top layer, and make sure it’s nice and cool before frosting. Set it on a rack on top of a parchment-lined sheet pan—all three of these (rack, parchment, sheet pan) will make your life so much easier when frosting this cake, I really wouldn’t recommend doing the ganache frosting unless you have a rack or can rig up something like a rack to put the cake on. You need some space between the cake and the pan to let the excess frosting drip.

When the ganache is super smooth, pour it over the cake. Use an offset spatula to smooth it all out gorgeously. Work rather quickly, because it’ll start setting up pretty quick (especially if the cake is very cold), then you won’t be able to smooth it out. You can always reclaim all that frosting on the parchment and spread it over any holes on the cake, too.

Here’s a picture of a plain chocolate cake frosted with this frosting.

I pretty much made up the peanut butter frosting on the spot (I knew Jacob & Veronica liked p.b. + choc, but I had to quickly call Randy to make sure his sweetheart Lacey liked the combo. ["Randy, is Lacey near you? Don't say it's me!" "Sort of." "OK, just say yes or no: does Lacey like peanut butter and chocolate?" "YES!" "OK, see you tomorrow!"], and I know it’s going to enter my regular rotation. I’ve been slowly training myself to use agar-agar powder to thicken all kinds of sauces, frostings, fillings, etc.

I already make a killer fluffy chocolate fudge frosting (it’s based on one in Myra’s first book—that recipe is worth the price of the book alone, I swear) with coconut milk and agar that incorporates lots and lots of chocolate. It’s a perfect decorating frosting, you can pipe it into all kinds of shapes, and it makes great fluffy fudgy swirls of frosting on a cake. It’s the complete opposite of the cool cucumber that is ganache frosting, which is sophisticated and fierce. It’s good to have both under your belt.

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I also make a super basic white frosting used only for writing on cakes and decorating that is nothing more than coconut milk, water, agar-agar powder, maple syrup or sugar. It sets up very firm then I process it in the food processor and it’s perfect to put in a pastry bag. You can tint it with those nice all-natural food colorings the health food stores have, or you can go all DIY and add some turmeric (yellow), or beet juice (red).

Oh wait, but what is agar-agar? I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about it on the blog and as I am writing all this from a hotel room in downtown Manhattan on the Fourth of July,* I’m not exactly inspired to get all into it right now, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Vegans should be using a lot more agar than they do (I use the terms “agar-agar” and “agar” interchangeably). Agar is often called “vegetarian gelatin” and that’s exactly what it is. You don’t use it exactly like the ground up hooves and whatever else is in death gelatin though.

Hmm, can I find something already written about how to use agar, so I don’t have to do it myself? Well, here’s something.

Where they get it wrong:

  • “Agar, also know as agar agar,”   Um.
  • “Create a mousse or pudding by adding tofu or yogurt—or both.” Eeeew. Tofu thickened with agar, ick.
  • “Gelatin can be replaced with agar powder or flakes in a one-to-one ratio.” Nope. Agar powder is about ten zillion times stronger than agar flakes. My guidelines are to 1) NEVER EVER use agar flakes, or those horrid agar bars. They are a huge pain to work with. Buy agar powder. You can get it in health food stores where it will cost you dearly, or in Asian (usually Thai) markets where the exact same stuff will be 99 cents for a packet that will last you a while. I’m all fancy these days and I buy Ferran Adria’s brand of agar, but that’s because I like to pour money down the drain. If you can only find agar flakes, grind them as finely as you can get them in a coffee grinder. The truth is, it’s not difficult to get the flakes to work perfectly too, but agar powder is so much easier that I hate to think of novices even fucking with the flakes. The bars are twice as annoying as the flakes, so, skip those all together. 2) If you’re using powder in a recipe that calls for flakes, use about 1/2 as much powder as flakes.
  • “Agar will not gel liquids containing vinegar or foods that contain high levels of oxalic acid, such as chocolate.” Uh, that’s completely wrong. I’ve made lemon gels and tons of chocolate-agar concoctions. The trick is to use a lot more agar in recipes that contain a lot of acid, and if you’re using chocolate make sure you have some sort of carrier like water or coconut milk, because you couldn’t just melt chocolate and add some agar powder and you know what, actually? Who knows? It seems like it wouldn’t work because of the oxalic acid, but I’ve never tried it. I’m not sure why anyone would, but I’m not going to be a hater like stupid ehow and say it’s impossible.

OK, clearly someone different wrote this article on using agar in dessrts, and it’s a lot better. Good tips, lady!

So, that peanut butter frosting.

I didn’t write down what I did, but here’s what I can reconstruct after three days, two glasses of wine, 1 glass of sake, and four beers standing between me and the frosting:

2 (14 oz) cans coconut milk

3/4 Tb. agar powder (I bet you could do 1/2 Tb. I always add too much agar because if you add too little your recipe is crap, and if you add too much you just need to process it more later and it’s fine.)

pinch of sea salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup peanut butter (I doubled the amount in the original recipe, per Erin’s comment below)

splash vanilla

So you just bring the milk, agar, salt and sugar to a boil, whisking once in a while. Bring it to a boil slowly so the sugar dissolves. When it’s all dissolved, crank up the heat and let it come to a real, rock-solid, rollicking boil. Agar needs heat to do its thing, but too much heat will kill it, so don’t boil it forever. Turn off the heat and whisk in the vanilla and p.b. If the p.b. doesn’t want to get totally smooth, don’t sweat it, it’ll be fine.

Taste it and see if you want to add more p.b. or sugar or anything. If you want to add more sugar, use powdered sugar so it doesn’t get grainy. Put the entire thing in the fridge for an hour or so until—magic!—it sets up super firm and hard. You can now have fun by slicing it up and handing out slices, or you can make a frosting by whipping it in the food processor until it’s creamy and smooth. Keep tasting and adding stuff (vanilla, sugar, peanut butter) until it’s perfect.

Spread it on the cake!

*

(Oh, hey, local peeps: I brought this cake to Garden Café in Woodstock**, and they were so incredibly sweet about a party of 11 people and a cake—they even put candles on it and brought it out singing, though I didn’t ask them to do either! And as always the food was super super tasty, and I loved that they were only going to let me bring the cake if it was vegan—fuckin’ A! Go Garden Café!)

OK, oh dear, its getting late, I’ve got to go outside!

*

*Can you believe there are hotel rooms so teeny that they don’t even have a bathtub? This Wall St-area hotel is ridiculous. One of the main reasons I decided to follow my sweetheart around for the past few days was to stay in an NYC hotel room & take a bath, because my bathtub at home is so shitty. Tragic.

**Um, a message to the person who wrote the “disappointed” review on that page: you are possibly certifiably insane and should really seek professional help.

 

Monday Miscellany – the long and boring edition September 30, 2008

Filed under: cooking is vegan (of course),Monday Miscellany,NYC,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 1:54 am

“Poke my cheek with a pencil! Harder!!”

Election year blues continues, but in the meantime, here are 3.5 random distractions from the ridiculousness:

1) I have found my own personal perfect beverage: Fizzy Lizzy Grapefruit. I’ve been drinking it for a few years, always feeling guilty because it is packaged (just a glass bottle and a cardboard carton, not the worst), not organic, and shipped (but it seems that maybe it’s made in NY? I can’t really figure it out). But I always go back, and since I did the math and realized that my wholesale cost is less than $1 each, I indulge in about one a day – this feels super indulgent for a frugal gal like me who thinks of bottled drinks as luxuries.

At every Fancy Food Show I make it a point to taste all the fizzy juice drinks (Izzy, GUS, etc.), and nothing compares to my beloved Fiz Liz. (At Bloodroot, where it’s a bestseller, the employees secretly call it Fizzy Lezzy). I also really like this ballsy page comparing the different fizzy sodas with Mz. Liz – I’m thinking about doing the same for my business, to really show people why my little company is so much better than, well, anything else, anywhere, ever. (Oh, I can’t link directly to the page – click on “Compare Us.”)

While doing some research on Fizzy Lizzy recently, I saw this in a NY Times piece: “Fizzy Lizzy is the kitchen staff’s house drink at Blue Hill at Stone Barns.”

1.5) (Ha! Could BHSB possibly get any more publicity? What they are doing is admittedly awesome, and friends of mine have had perfectly lovely dinners there, but the whole place irks the fuck out of me in that special way that super Slow Foodie things can be so irksome. Give any chef, not just the anointed Dan Barber, a zillion dollars and a magnificent parcel of land, and she will build an amazing restaurant on it, I promise you. And while they absolutely deserve praise for only cooking what they grow, I hate to break it to every major and minor media outlet in the area, if not the country, but, um, oodles of restaurants – and vegan meal delivery services! – do pretty much the same thing, just without all the bells and whistles (= star chefs, Rockefellers, and P.R. agents). Yes, most don’t do it to the obsessive extent that they do but…oh, nevermind. Just thinking about them is tiring. (Also, I shouldn’t really talk smack about the Rockefellers – they bought many hundreds of dollars’ worth of my truffles last year. Thank you, Rockefellers, and please remember Lagusta’s Luscious for your holiday party needs this year!)

Also, I emailed them (Blue Hill at Stone Barns, not the Rockefellers) to make a reservation recently, but knowing how insane they are about seasonability and fearing a dinner of micro zucchini steamed with nothing on it but salt because they don’t use olive oil or something (or this ridiculous-looking creation, OY VEY! This is what everyone I know snacks on between lunch and dinner – good honest CSA-fresh veggies. Something about the pomposity of calling it “vegetables on a fence” makes me want to poke my eyes out with those nails, do you feel me?), I straight up asked: is it worth it for two upstate vegans, one a chef herself, both of whom know all about the bounties of Hudson Valley produce, to come for dinner? Do they, perhaps, do innovative things with house-fermented tempeh or anything else that might be interesting to my particular demographic? I asked all this very politely, because I do respect them and did feel I should see the damn place for myself since it was inspiring such orgasmic outbursts of p.c. purple prose from the foodie press. But I wasn’t up for paying triple digits for a dinner of the same veggies I get from farmers every week prepared by people with no understanding of the vagaries of vegan cuisine. They very promptly and kindly responded: they don’t grow soybeans, so I will be treated to a 100% vegetable meal. I’m sure it would have been a very nice meal, but I declined.*)

Well, anyway, Fizzy Lizzy is also the official house drink at Lagusta’s Luscious. Veronica – drink freely!

2) My Sula cat would be the happiest dude in the world if I would hold a super sharp pencil or knitting needle out so he could rub his cheeks super hard against it over and over again, turning his head each time to get a symmetrical face full o’ pencil points. He is adamant about only getting poked one time before prissily turning the other cheek, so to speak. Sometimes I try to sneak two passes with the pencil on one side, but he just stares at me like I’m deranged. Trying to explain to him that it is so clearly the other way around doesn’t help, and this is why I so adore Sula. He lives in a world completely of his own making, governed by his own unbreakable rules. Sneezing so freaks him out that he will flee for hours if you sneeze too near him, but if you whistle in the right key he will run toward you and you can engage him in an endless jazzy call-and-response meow/whistle song that will have him dancing and purring with delight. Have you ever heard of a cat that comes when you whistle at him?

I have lived with this cat for almost ten years, but there are entire parts of Sula’s brain I will never understand. He is also, it must be admitted, utterly unphotogenic. I’m actually tempted to post photos of his showboaty sister Noodle instead, because she loves a camera like nothing else.

I’ve been thinking about little Sula a lot because he will be ten on Thursday. He shares a birthday with Gandhi and Gillian Welch, how nice is that? In truth, we arbitrarily decided to make his birthday World Vegetarian Day, though he is not himself a vegetarian. He lives up to the Gandhi part of the day well, though, being the resident rebel of our house. And it must be noted that he has a most mellifluous meow, though it is not quite as nice as Gillian’s voice.

(And now he clearly has sensed me thinking about him: he just jumped up on the desk with that particular meow that sounds just like an elongated “hello!” and means “come to bed!”)

3) My god, I am becoming a cat blogger. Moving on, hastily: I’m not going to take the credit for Sweet & Sara’s rising star in the vegan culinary landscape, but the facts of the case are these:

Several years ago, a sweet girl named Sara was making marshmallows and things for Candle Café and other NYC restaurants. I met her when I catered a Carol Adams reading at Mooshoes, the vegan shoe store in NYC. (I also met the great Jen Mazer that day, who went on to design my gorgeous website.) She said that she was thinking of trying to get some distribution for her marshmallows and other sweets, and I got very excited and told her she pretty much owed it to the vegan world to do so. There were no vegan-owned companies making marshmallows, just the Kosher ones you used to be able to get around Passover until they started using fish gelatin, a brand of utterly horrific vegan marshmallows I will not name, and Tiny Trapeze, who make tasty vegan and not vegan marshmallows.

A while later, I heard through the vegan grapevine that she jumped into the deep waters of large-scale production and distribution (well, I’m sure she is actually pretty small-scale in the scheme of things, but compared with my happy little micro-business, where making 1000 truffles is a major undertaking, she got big fast) and now I see her stuff everywhere. Little by little, people are realizing that they don’t have to eat marshmallows made from the collagen of tortured animals, and for that I thank Sara Sohn.

____________

*Actually, why don’t I just copy and paste the email exchange?

On Aug 30, 2007, at 6:11 PM, lagusta’s luscious wrote:

Hello!

I was hoping to come to dinner at BHSB, and was wondering if you could do a nice meal for two that is vegan. My partner and I have been to many fancy restaurants – per se, Charlie Trotter’s, etc. that specialize in vegetarian tasting menus, and while the meals are always lovely they are also always 100% vegetables. I’m a vegan chef in New Paltz, NY, where I am blessed with many great local farms to choose from, and I have to say that an amuse bouche of heirloom tomatoes and vinaigrette isn’t exactly what I’m looking to pay $100 for, as lovely as heirloom tomatoes are…it’s just that that’s what I eat all day long. I hope this doesn’t sound too bossy, but I’m just wondering if we request a vegan meal if it will be 100% vegetables, or if there will be interesting things with soy foods, nuts, etc?

Best,
Lagusta

Hello,
I understand your dilemma! We are also a working farm and very proud of the vegetables that we grow.   Unfortunately we don’t work with soy products and nuts, so our vegan menu does feature all vegetable items.  I apologize for not being able to be more accommodating.  Have you tried Pure Food and Wine in the city?

Sincerely,

Philippe Gouze
General Manager
Blue Hill at Stone Barns
630 Bedford Road
Pocantico Hills, NY 10591

 

New Paltz Dining Guide Redux – Itadakimasu! May 27, 2008

Filed under: cooking is vegan (of course),new paltz,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 9:22 pm


Because I have been setting up my new commercial kitchen and didn’t turn on the walk-in fridge until three days ago, I have been eating out. As you might recall, I adore my little upstate town but it’s not an eating mecca for vegans who love to eat outside the college-town veggie trifecta of (perfectly decent) falafel wraps, burritos and bar food.

I have to eat a little crow though, because the so horribly menu-ed quasi-anonymous restaurant I spoke of at the beginning of the Dining Guide has – gasp, sigh – perfectly decent food. In fact, there is a mushroom appetizer (it’s called Magic Mushrooms, but sane people call it “the mushroom appetizer”) with shiitake mushrooms in a red wine and balsamic reduction with garlic bread that you can request to be made with olive oil that is damn, damn good. And many of the pastas can be made vegan, and make a reasonably lovely lunch.

OK, crow eating over.

In other New Paltz restaurant news, I am proud to plug my friend Youko’s new and hotly anticipated restaurant, Gomen Kudasai.

Youko made these cards for me to take on a trip to Japan. “Watashi wa bejitelian desu” (I am a vegetarian) helped me out of many a jam, as did many repetitions of “sumimasen” (excuse me/I’m sorry/thank you – the Japanese holy trinity)

Gomen Kudasai is a traditional Japanese noodle shop serving real Japanese home cooking. Finally – a Japanese restaurant with no sushi! Much as I love sushi, New Paltzians need to learn that there is more to Japanese food than fake wasabi. I’ve eaten at Gomen Kudasai twice this week and loved the thick udon noodles, fresh tofu appetizers, and wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets – think green tea, black sesame seeds, and red bean kuzu mangu [sweet dumplings with an exterior made of kuzu - a white powder thickener used like cornstarch that is made from kudzu - and a sweet bean paste interior]. There is a great fresh kimchi made with yuzu juice – yuzu is an aromatic Japanese citrus fruit that is barely available in the US, and tasting Youko’s yuzu-scented kimchi was transcendent. There are traditional Japanese teas, seasonal veggies and local produce.

Congratulations to Youko and hooray for the improved New Paltz food scene!

 

New Paltz vegan friendly dining guide! February 23, 2008

Filed under: cooking is vegan (of course),new paltz,Restaurant rants and raves,Upstate NY — lagusta @ 2:44 am

This overly quotation marked, utterly insane-looking little place just opened up in my town. I just had to point it out. I’m just mean like that, I can’t help it. It looks terrifying, but I respect it because at least it’s not yet another toiletty cookie cutter fakey Chinese place or rubbery pizza joint. But still. Usually I make a point to try every new restaurant in town, but even for purposes of ridicule I don’t think I can stomach this one.

I count 36 typos on the site, including all uses of the non-word “da,” misspellings, improper punctuation, lack of dashes/lack of punctuation, and inappropriate quotation marks.

Let me be clear: I love my little mountain town. I more than love it, I’m in love with it.

Here’s your typical New Paltz bulletin board:

img_0173_2.jpg

High Vibrational House Cleaning, GO GREEN! and a moon rolling around on an anthropomorphic block of wood talking about ideas and dreams. Pretty representative. This is a town that, until recently, had no less than four places to buy crystals. Now one of the crystals shops has become a baby clothing store.

I’m not sure if this is an improvement or not.

But the food scene is just horrifying. And because I am the cold-hearted bitch that I am, here I go: my icy-cold New Paltz Restaurant Roundup.

If I get a bunch of comments from good-hearted people telling me it’s just too mean, I’ll take it down, I promise. It’s a tiny town, and I know I’m making enemies, but I just can’t help it.

To soften the blows are lovely pictures of the supremely, joyously arty windows of the most awesome art store on the planet, Manny’s – enjoy!

Oh – one thing before we begin – did you all catch my super rad letter to the New Paltz Times this week? No? Well, allow me to point it out – scroll down a bit, and ignore the idiotic headline, which I of course did not write.

(more…)

 

 
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