Showing posts with label marketspice tea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketspice tea. Show all posts
Monday, November 15, 2010
Cold Weather Breakfast
The fall weather is in full swing, and the best morning breakfast on these days must be steel-cut oats. Chop up some apples, sprinkle with sugar and add a pinch of nutmeg. Pair with some Market Spice tea and all the chills in your toes and fingers will disappear. I use Bob's Red Mill, and it only takes about 20 minutes to cook, and is creamy and delicious. I don't even know why people bother with regular oatmeal when they can have steel-cut oats.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Market Spice Tea Cupcakes
Does anyone else remember when vegan cupcakes took over the world? I do– it was 2006, I was living in Norfolk, VA, in an apartment that with a dining room that resembled a barn, a big ass kitchen and a porch perfect for southern evening beer drinking. I had quite a few vegan friends, and it seems like there we were, all minding our own business, living our lives, and then: BAM!!! Within the course of a few weeks we had all become masters of the vegan cupcake. There were cupcake clubs at the office. There were personalized cupcakes for everyone’s birthdays. There were 20 different kinds of vegan cupcakes at office potlucks. Sweet Abandon opened. Annie made a super cute batch with gummy sharks riding "butter cream" waves. I made Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes with sugar skulls. The small wonders were everywhere.
So congrats, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, if your intentions were to have Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the Word (literally), well, in our little corner of the world, you succeeded. Of course, once Veganomicon came out, the cupcake craze died down a little, but I think for all of us in 2006 that used VCTOTW as a springboard for cupcakery, the sweet treats will always have a place in our hearts.
I haven’t made cupcakes in quite a long time, but walking through Market Spice Tea at the market a few days ago, I picked up a new stash of their original (orange cinnamon) tea. It’s the perfect fall tea, with orange and cinnamon and clove, you just can’t go wrong. I also had the idea it might be really good in cupcake form. So I busted out my batter splattered copy of VCTOTW and got to work modifying.
So congrats, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, if your intentions were to have Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the Word (literally), well, in our little corner of the world, you succeeded. Of course, once Veganomicon came out, the cupcake craze died down a little, but I think for all of us in 2006 that used VCTOTW as a springboard for cupcakery, the sweet treats will always have a place in our hearts.
I haven’t made cupcakes in quite a long time, but walking through Market Spice Tea at the market a few days ago, I picked up a new stash of their original (orange cinnamon) tea. It’s the perfect fall tea, with orange and cinnamon and clove, you just can’t go wrong. I also had the idea it might be really good in cupcake form. So I busted out my batter splattered copy of VCTOTW and got to work modifying.
Market Spice Tea Cupcakes
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Book Review: A Busy Cook’s Guide to Spices
Book Review: A Busy Cook’s Guide to Spices
Like it goes with the rest of my life, I’m one of the last to hop on the bandwagon for Vegan Month of Food. But I guess what matters is that I made the blogroll deadline and am now fully committed to kicking out vegan food blogs left and right this month. So, dear friends, if I don’t answer your emails or phone calls, it’s because I’m up to my eyeballs in produce, spices, and baking. This also serves as an invitation for Seattle friends to just stop by and have a meal, or just pick up to-go containers of food.
But before the baking and cooking commences, I wanted to share with you a gem of a book I picked up the other day at Market Spice Tea in the Pike Place Market. This is not a vegan cookbook. Hell, it’s not even really a cookbook. It’s a total resource of amazing ideas and flavour for us “home cooks” who never, and will never, go to cooking school.
Wondering what other herbs complement basil? Just flip to page 22. Or how about the folklore of chervil? Take a gander at page 37. Never even heard of chervil? Well, that’s ok; you’d just learn that its flavour is a “mild licorice with a peppery aftertaste.” And apparently it goes well with leeks. Ever wonder what spices are in “mulling spices”? That’s answered as well.
But that’s not even the half of it. This book is like a little bible of flavour. The first section of the book contains “Flavourings and how they are used,” which includes the spice name, a description of taste, when it should be added, complimenting spices, and history and origin. As well as a guide to herbs, it also includes the same for wine and beer, beans, and nuts.
The second section contains “Foods and flavorings that go with them.” Now, there is flesh listed in here, but it doesn’t take a great leap to translate the guide to vegan options. Wondering what you could put in your scrambled tofu to spruce it up a bit? Check out the eggs section. Have a bag of Gardien steak strips? Turn to the “beef” page and see what spices would go well to make a faux beef stew. See where I’m going with this? Anyways, there’s a ton of other ingredients in this section, the majority of them vegetables, running from apples to zucchini, and there's even some recipes.
Other fun resources include a guide to the four tastes, measurement equivalents, a pasta variety chart, a mini guide to mushrooms, and a spice substitution list. Out of turmeric and to lazy to run to the store? Try using ginger instead. No, it’s not a cookbook, but it’s an amazing base from which to build your own recipes. Plus, the pages smell like the original cinnamon-orange tea.* Whether you’re a foodie or a food whore, you’d do well to have A Busy Cook’s Guide to Spices, by Linda Murdock, in your collection.
Like it goes with the rest of my life, I’m one of the last to hop on the bandwagon for Vegan Month of Food. But I guess what matters is that I made the blogroll deadline and am now fully committed to kicking out vegan food blogs left and right this month. So, dear friends, if I don’t answer your emails or phone calls, it’s because I’m up to my eyeballs in produce, spices, and baking. This also serves as an invitation for Seattle friends to just stop by and have a meal, or just pick up to-go containers of food.
But before the baking and cooking commences, I wanted to share with you a gem of a book I picked up the other day at Market Spice Tea in the Pike Place Market. This is not a vegan cookbook. Hell, it’s not even really a cookbook. It’s a total resource of amazing ideas and flavour for us “home cooks” who never, and will never, go to cooking school.
Wondering what other herbs complement basil? Just flip to page 22. Or how about the folklore of chervil? Take a gander at page 37. Never even heard of chervil? Well, that’s ok; you’d just learn that its flavour is a “mild licorice with a peppery aftertaste.” And apparently it goes well with leeks. Ever wonder what spices are in “mulling spices”? That’s answered as well.
But that’s not even the half of it. This book is like a little bible of flavour. The first section of the book contains “Flavourings and how they are used,” which includes the spice name, a description of taste, when it should be added, complimenting spices, and history and origin. As well as a guide to herbs, it also includes the same for wine and beer, beans, and nuts.
The second section contains “Foods and flavorings that go with them.” Now, there is flesh listed in here, but it doesn’t take a great leap to translate the guide to vegan options. Wondering what you could put in your scrambled tofu to spruce it up a bit? Check out the eggs section. Have a bag of Gardien steak strips? Turn to the “beef” page and see what spices would go well to make a faux beef stew. See where I’m going with this? Anyways, there’s a ton of other ingredients in this section, the majority of them vegetables, running from apples to zucchini, and there's even some recipes.
Other fun resources include a guide to the four tastes, measurement equivalents, a pasta variety chart, a mini guide to mushrooms, and a spice substitution list. Out of turmeric and to lazy to run to the store? Try using ginger instead. No, it’s not a cookbook, but it’s an amazing base from which to build your own recipes. Plus, the pages smell like the original cinnamon-orange tea.* Whether you’re a foodie or a food whore, you’d do well to have A Busy Cook’s Guide to Spices, by Linda Murdock, in your collection.
* Only true if you buy it from a tea shop where the smell of orange-cinnamon has permeated every object.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Nice (Spice) Rack
I just spent eight weeks obsessively looking at spice jars and racks. I’m not exaggerating. First I looked at those damned test tube racks, scouring cookware stores and science material stores on the interwebs until my fingers turned red from banging on my keyboard in frustration. I thought I had figured out what I wanted, when I went to a friend’s house for tea and ended up helping her pour spices into her test tube spice racks using funnels we rolled out of sheets of paper. As it turns out, test tubes don’t actually hold more than a few tablespoons, and form over function definitely does not apply. At that point, it was "Fuck you, test tubes!"
So I looked at wholesale jar outfits, more cooking stores, houseware stores, container stores, spice jar realtors and more. If there’s a spice jar on the market, by this point, I’ve seen it. I also looked at spice racks (wall mounted, I have very little counter space) knowing the only thing I didn’t want was something from Ikea. I looked on etsy, ebay, thrift stores, department stores… the list goes on. And finally, I found the perfect rack, and the perfect jars. Ironically, I decided upon the one thing I was against when I set out- the Grundtal Ikea spice rack. In itself, it isn’t anything special, but matched with miniature old timey canning style jars I originally spotted at MarketSpice Tea (and later found on sale at Crate & Barrel), it’s perfect. The rack is just the right size for the jars, and holds 21 jars total. Plus, my spice jars now match my pantry jars. I get weirdly particular about things in my kitchen–nothing else in the apartment has been unpacked, and the walls are still a shitty shade of brown-gray, but as long as I’ve got my spice rack and a cast iron skillet, I’m doin’ alright.
Top Row: Ground Ginger, Ground Coriander, Ground Cardamom, Bay Leaves, Black Lava Salt, Sel Gris, Alder Smoked Sea Salt. Middle Row: Garlic Powder, Rubbed Sage, Herbes de Provence, Turmeric, Ground Cumin, Clove, Ground Nutmeg. Bottom Row: Ground Mustard, Chili Powder, Smoked Paprika, Sumac, Cumin Seed, Fennel Seed, Black Sesame Seed. Below Shelf I’ve hung measuring spoons, my ginger grater, and my tea infuser spoon. Stay tuned for a post in the near future one why all these spices (and minerals) are my staples.
So I looked at wholesale jar outfits, more cooking stores, houseware stores, container stores, spice jar realtors and more. If there’s a spice jar on the market, by this point, I’ve seen it. I also looked at spice racks (wall mounted, I have very little counter space) knowing the only thing I didn’t want was something from Ikea. I looked on etsy, ebay, thrift stores, department stores… the list goes on. And finally, I found the perfect rack, and the perfect jars. Ironically, I decided upon the one thing I was against when I set out- the Grundtal Ikea spice rack. In itself, it isn’t anything special, but matched with miniature old timey canning style jars I originally spotted at MarketSpice Tea (and later found on sale at Crate & Barrel), it’s perfect. The rack is just the right size for the jars, and holds 21 jars total. Plus, my spice jars now match my pantry jars. I get weirdly particular about things in my kitchen–nothing else in the apartment has been unpacked, and the walls are still a shitty shade of brown-gray, but as long as I’ve got my spice rack and a cast iron skillet, I’m doin’ alright.
Top Row: Ground Ginger, Ground Coriander, Ground Cardamom, Bay Leaves, Black Lava Salt, Sel Gris, Alder Smoked Sea Salt. Middle Row: Garlic Powder, Rubbed Sage, Herbes de Provence, Turmeric, Ground Cumin, Clove, Ground Nutmeg. Bottom Row: Ground Mustard, Chili Powder, Smoked Paprika, Sumac, Cumin Seed, Fennel Seed, Black Sesame Seed. Below Shelf I’ve hung measuring spoons, my ginger grater, and my tea infuser spoon. Stay tuned for a post in the near future one why all these spices (and minerals) are my staples.
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