Today I would like to take you on a trip to the Middle East. Somehow, lots of vegan dishes come from the Middle East: tabbouleh, fresh fruit salads, falafel... and mujadara. Mujadara, also spelled as mujaddara or m'judhara, is also known as the "poor mans meal", and dates back to medieval times in Arab history. First mentions of mujaddara can be found in a 1226 cookbook "Kitab al-Tabikh" but its history dates back to the biblical times of the great hunger of Esau:

32 “Look, I’m dying of hunger,” Esau said. “What good are those rights to me?”33 But Jacob said, “First promise to sell me your rights.” So Esau promised to do it. He sold Jacob all the rights that belonged to him as the oldest son.34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. Esau ate and drank. Then he got up and left.

 Genesis 25:32-34 New International Reader's Version (NIRV)
Salloum H. and Peters J. From the lands of figs and olives: over 300 delicious and unusual recipes from the Middle East and North Africa, p. 199.

I first heard about mujadara from my local little Middle Eastern store where I used to stock up on falafel and pickled peppers. One day, the nice lady suggested that I try mujadara which I eagerly did. I had it cold - as a salad - and I loved it immediately. I remember reading somewhere that it took many centuries for mujaddara to be introduced to the Western world because the native cultivators of its tradition did not see it as something that might be exciting to the Western man, and just a type of cheap eats. So, is it yet another type of rice and beans? Let's find out!

The original mujaddara has twice as much rice as lentils and used to be "dressed up" with meat for celebrations - but for obvious reasons we are not going to investigate that version. Although we will "dress it up" with more veggies, and use a 1:1 proportion of lentils to rice, to balance our macronutrients better. As we know, lentils are a great source of vegetarian protein, especially paired with rice. The poor man's stew originally consisted of cooked rice and lentils, and was topped with fried onions, served hot or cold as a salad. We are going to make it in a way simpler way: as a one-pot dish, which will save us a lot of time.



Ingredients:
For mujaddara:
1 cup rice
1 cup green lentils
1 large white onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of oil of your choice
(I used grapeseed)
3 cups of water

Also:
2-3 red peppers
vegan cheese (optional)

1. Do you know one of these jokes that every recipe starts with "grab a clean pot"? Well, here we go again. Grab a clean pot, but you're gonna need only one. Drizzle some oil on the bottom and let it heat up while you chop your onions finely. 
2. Fry your onions until beautifully golden brown. Mix them carefully every now and then not to burn them like I did! 
3. Carefully add 3 cups of water, then rice and lentils. Cook for about 8-10 minutes or until rice and lentils are soft. They may have a different cooking time depending on their kind, so make sure by checking the packaging that you get rice and lentils with similar cook time. Start preheating your oven to 350 F - it's gonna take a while.
4. Mix it every now and then to avoid sticking. When water evaporates completely and the stew has thick consistency, remove it from the stove. 
5. Cut the seeds out of your peppers and stuff them with mujadara. You can leave them open or keep the cap to cover them. 
6. Bake until the peppers become beautifully soft. 
7. Top with vegan cheese (optional).

It was a tough week and the Friday night was calling for comfort food... And then I saw a sign on my way home, which I will show you later in this post. But first things first: have you heard of gumbo? It's a traditional Creole dish which became popular thanks to the Creole inhabitants of New Orleans, Louisiana. Apparently, the word gumbo originated from Africa, and means okra, which is exactly why I decided to use okra in this recipe. 

I also decided we are going to be traveling around the world in these cooking series. I really want to explore more foreign cuisines. So far, we've been to Poland where we had vegan gluten-free spinach pierogi and buckwheat bread, so considering that I'm Polish, we didn't go far! Fasten your seatbelts dear and let's try this Creole goodness in a version from the beautiful state of Lousiana!

So let's do some engineering. 

What makes gumbo - gumbo?

A densifying agent. 

I used both roux (made with a tablespoon of grapeseed oil and a tablespoon of buckwheat flour) and okra, which is known for being a little slimy. The dish started from preparing the roux.

Vegetables. 

Traditional Creole flavor composition includes parsley, bay leaf, green onions, dried cayenne pepper and dried black pepper. Tomatoes are commonly used in both versions of gumbo. However, we are aiming at a more New-Orleans-inspired version. Louisiana's native Cajun chefs use the Cajun cuisine's "holy trinity" in Creole dishes. The "holy trinity" consists of diced onion, green bell pepper and celery. I used a green bell pepper instead and I didn't have selery so I diced an onion, a red pepper, some cherry tomatoes and a small potato. We should try to make the original Creole gumbo one day tho!

Meat and/or seafood. 

Creole gumbo consists of just one of these, while the New Orleans kind allows to mix them. We are going to make ours with vegan sausages and dry soy patties which my mom sent me from Poland. I soaked the patties in soy sauce and water. Note: a vegetable-only gumbo z'herbes exists too. But first, we wanna taste the 'real deal'.

Rice. 

The dish is traditionally served over rice but in my twisted recipe we're going to eat it over buckwheat and millet.

Alright, let's go!

Ingredients for 5 portions:

"Meats":
2 spicy vegan sausages
4-5 dry soy patties
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
half a cup of water

Roux:
2 tablespoons of buckwheat flour*
you can use any savory flour you like
2 tablespoons of grapeseed oil*
you can use any oil you like

Veggies:
1 red bell pepper
1 baking potato
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 onion
150g fresh okra
10 cherry tomatoes
5 cups of water

Spices:
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon nutritional yeast (optional)
1 tablespoon marjoram

Preparation:

1. Start by chopping your base veggies: potato, onion, pepper and tomatoes into small cubes. 
2. In the meantime, make the roux by mixing the oil and flour of your choice together at the bottom of a large pot. Let it thicken and become brown in color. 
3. Then, add your chopped veggies to the roux and fry until the base releases the aroma. You may want to add two more tablespoons of oil. 
4. In the meantime, lay out your dry soy patties on a plate or in a bowl and pour water with soy sauce over them, then press. You will need to turn them upside down at some point so they soak the soy sauce evenly. 
5. When your onions are translucent and very aromatic, it's time to add spices, okra and 4 cups of water. 
6. Cook for about 7-8 minutes until the okra is soft and releases its slimy texture. For a little less slime, you can add a dash of apple cider vinegar, but that's optional. 
7. At the end, cut your soy patties into chicken-like stripes and slice your sausages, then add them to your gumbo. Voila!

Here is the nutritional value of this gumbo:

One portion (out of 5):

Protein	Fat	Carbs	Calories
13,6	10,8	17,6	228,8

One portion (out of 5) plus 50g millet and 50g buckwheat:

Protein	Fat	Carbs	Calories
19,6	12,3	52,6	408,8

Vegan gumbo is also very transformative. It took me exactly 5 mins to put some gumbo in the wrap and heat it up while I chopped some greens and popped a half of avo out of the shell. Delicious! And also good if you want to cut down on carbs but eat something tasty. I used a wrap that's higher in protein because it uses chickpea flour. Yum! 



Have you ever had gumbo? Let me know!

Oh, and one more thing. This is what made me think of the dish on Friday night. Thanks for the inspiration, Toronto!

Beautiful inertia. Is it just me, or do you also sometimes feel like you are being carried by open water. Some of us develop the strength to drift in our own direction and some of us just follow the stream.





guesses of the unreal

i don’t like when what’s mine is in fashion.
especially painful is my love
for bialoszewski,
although we have latvia, sartre, radom,
the language of cats and a mast in the forest
in common.

i am surprised, that poetic monoamory
and emotional hipsterhood
have not yet been called lack of erudition.
and – there we go: a kid with bialoszewski's “memoir…” says hi –
an epiphony of alienness in espadrilles clicks,
a magnetic card, banancino with whipped cream, colored charts
twitched and it is already clear what he’s spending on.

i'm surprised again: someone chose classes
just like me. I think, somewhere, someone has his
dental x-ray, and some priest remembers his sins.
did you see the google map boy in the window?
he has a blurry face
to me but someone likes to watch
him sleep. truth is the subject of interpretation.

we have nothing of our own.



 A friend of mine visited me in Toronto and we decided to pay the Toronto Ripley's Aquarium a visit. And then I made this.

1. Work efficiently, not just a lot.

2. Ask for help.

Photo by Victor Freitas from Pexels

3. Take care of yourself first. 

4. Choose your boosters wisely. 

5. Try light therapy.

This was my fridge in February when was the last time I did this to pay my dues!

Each of us has different reasons for doing the things we do. We've been hurt, told what to do, we've heard we're not good enough. At other times, we were encouraged because our talents were noticed. We've been exhausted: physically, mentally and emotionally. We've had relationships that let us bloom - or get up from our knees and fight for ourselves. We've heard that negative motivation should not be your motivation. But let's be honest: anger, disagreement with the status quo and longing for freedom has historically always been the main factor for a breakthrough.

If you want to take full ownership of your life and be the only decisive person in the process, if you have dreams that require you to work your ass off to fulfill, I would like to invite you to the game. The one and only, true personality bootcamp. The game is just between you and yourself, and if you win it, you're gonna come out of it as a better person. It's not only free, but you'll also have extra money at the end. Sounds good? Let's do this.

What do I want to achieve?

• I will learn to prioritize, set goals and work hard towards them.
• I will get fitter, healthier and reset my digestive system. 
• I will learn new cooking skills.
• I will learn persistence and getting what I want.
• I will save money for something I really want to do or have.

Ok, gotcha. What do I have to do?
The rules are really simple: you don't have to do anything, just breathe. Just kidding. See below for some dos and don'ts:

1. DO set a weekly budget and follow it very strictly. You are only allowed to spend money on nutritious, vegan foods. Junk and processed vegan food are not allowed, but you can make your own burgers, tacos, cookies and whatever you wish - as long as you make them from scratch. Only buy as much as you will consume.
2. DO eat according to your current body needs for calories and nutrients. Fasting or undereating is not the purpose of this challenge. It's cheating!
3. DO plan in advance and cook all of your meals. If you don't cook, you don't eat - so pull out your tupperware. Meal prepping is encouraged. It's not the first time that I'm doing it so if you need inspiration, I will be posting weekly recipes you can use in your own cooking but I'd like to encourage you to do your own research based on your own body needs. 
4. DO explore your freezer and pantry. Eat what you already have and spend as little as you can while cleaning out your reserves.
5. DON'T use sugar - anything containing added sugar is banned. Fresh and frozen fruit is acceptable (within reason). 
6. DO exercise twice a week for an hour - this is mandatory: you can do yoga, pilates, run, go to the gym, box - you name it. 
7. DO spend at least two hours each week on your hobby. If you don't have a hobby, either pick up something that's been on your mind for a while, go out for a romantic walk with your loved one, see a good movie on Netflix (why not make it a classic or documentary), read a book or explore a museum on a free-of-charge day. 
8. DO buy cleaning products if you run out, but make it as simple as possible. Stretch your creativity and explore new cheaper or discounted products. Beauty products do not fall into this category and yes, you can survive a month if you run out of mascara. It's a bootcamp!
9. DON'T even think of getting coffee or going out for lunch. This is only acceptable for business meetings that you must attend.
10. DO have your goal in mind every single day! 

My veggies for this week

I recently got a message from an old friend, reminiscing our school trip to Milan, when we spent a week of staying up studying at muggy, hot Italian nights, and drinking bottled spritz in the study room. However, about 10pm we suddenly got hungry and realized there were no cafeterias nearby, so we'd have to walk all the way to Viale Abruzzi to get a sandwich. Which we did. 

The night was hot and humid, we didn't pass a lot of people, just some delirious, lurid female figures in skimpy outfits. I remember my friend's meltdown as if it was yesterday when a car stopped by us on an empty roundabout between two closed car repair shops and a nightclub, with the driver shouting: Stronze! I lied when she asked me whether I knew what it meant, not sure whether he took us for the ladies we passed by or just wanted to insult us, but she got scared nonetheless and started freaking out. We couldn't order a cab, my roaming wasn't working and her phone died. I was calm though, the guy kept driving, possibly drunk, and we ended up getting the sandwiches and safely getting back to the dorm. It's been some five or six years since that story now and we would totally go there again, have a sandwich and unreasonable amounts of spritz by an open window, inhaling the musty smell of centuries. You can't have that elsewhere.

There are little flashbacks like this that I get every single day. They vary in theme and intensity. Sometimes it's just the flavors: wild strawberries from my garden which used to give me stomachache from overeating them. Gooseberries in the summer, which I'd eat with my grandpa. He would toss some sugar on top and would teach me not to eat the skin. I'd laugh it off and do it, and skip the sugar. Wild blueberries sold by the jar by elder ladies in the market or by the road, where a forest would end. The slightly sour aftertaste of dark rye bread, eaten by itself. Pickled beetroots.

Photo by Wendy Wei from Pexels / free to use

Until about a week or two ago I had no clue about neither the dancer community nor what voguing was. It was then that a colleague of mine briefly shared a few of her observations with me, then I looked up the style on youtube and, for the most part, forgot about it. Yesterday after work, I was wandering around the city, reading Michelle Obama's Becoming in various cafes, enjoying the sun setting later and later, and I thought: why not go to the movies? My choice was Climax, an improvisational movie, directed and shot by Gaspar Noe, and little did I know what I had actually selected.

In the beginning, I was a little confused, as the choreography was very dynamic, obscurely sexual but not at all sensual as I would have expected. Then I started questioning what in fact was disturbing in it and observing my own reactions. Now that I think about it, my confusion was based on the fact that I did not understand voguing as a dance style. "Voguing came from shade, because it was a dance that two people did because they didn't like each other. Instead of fighting you would dance it out on the dancefloor" said dancer and choreographer Willi Ninja in Paris is Burning (KQED Art School, 2015). Some sources focus on the ballroom culture in LGBTQ communities of Harlem in the 70s and the haute couture inspiration (Birardi Mazzone G. & Peressini G., 2014), while some explain the "hyper-stylized body" aspect of voguing and their origins in the African American and Latino cross-dresser communities, which became more known as a dance style thanks to Madonna's 90s song "Vogue" (Halberstam, Livingston, 1995). Having learned the history, and watched multiple performances, and tried duck walking myself for five seconds, my eyes opened a little bit wider with immense respect for the dancers Noe gathered as his cast for Climax. 

First and foremost, the movie was an exceptional dance show. It's considered a psychological horror and that's been clear to me from the beginning before I read any descriptions online: it will pull all the dirt out of you and make you lose control along with various characters. It will let you explore your boundaries by letting you see how far you can go in your mind. The film starts with an end scene and closing credits - apparently a Gaspar Noe trademark. Then we get to meet the characters during a casting, talking about their dance journey. The rehearsal takes place in what seems to be an abandoned building. The group performs the dance and then continues to party, drinking large amounts of sangria. Little did they know that the drink was spiked with LSD.

Not only do we follow the characters in their path to realizing that they've been given narcotics, but we learn about their personal struggles, weaknesses, we feel their fear. There was a moment when I screamed and cried along with one of the characters, when I wanted to leave the movie theater, but when I opened my eyes, the frame changed, and I stayed. I had put my shoes on and was kept on pins and needles unsure whether the character would return - or not.

In my opinion, it is a portrayal of the tiny section of different human emotions often described as the "thin line between". An appalling scary movie at first glimpse that develops into a learning experience about the boundaries of human nature, if you're willing to scratch your way a little deeper under the skin of the film. However, be forewarned about explicit sexual scenes, nudity and specifically obscene, objectifying language, direct violence, drug, and alcohol abuse. For these reasons, I do not feel authorized to recommend this movie to anyone.

References:
Birardi Mazzone G. & Peressini G. (2014). Voguing: examples of performance through art, gender and identity. Mantichora.
Halberstam, J., & Livingston, I. (1995). Posthuman bodies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
School, K. A. (2015, December 15). How to Vogue with Jocquese Whitfield. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lyUvaaxWRY

When I think of pierogi, I think of Sunday afternoons with my grandma, in northern Poland, when my age was a one-digit number. She would make the dough and let me roll and shape it and then carve little circles out of it using a glass, while she'd be making the potato and cottage cheese filling. Then I'd be folding them in half and connecting the halves pressing them with my fingers, based on her instructions. Now she's over eighty years old and doesn't make pierogi any more, it is, therefore, my turn in the circle of life.

But I did it my way.

GLUTEN-FREE VEGAN PIEROGI WITH SPINACH
Ingredients 
to make about 30-35 pierogi 
in about 1,5 hrs

Dough: 
80g potato starch
70g gluten-free oats blended to flour consistency
70g buckwheat flour
50g flaxseeds blended to a powder
1 tablespoon of olive or grapeseed oil
half a cup of hot water (but not boiling)

Filling:
4 large spinach cubes
1 large white or yellow onion
30g firm tofu (you can skip this)
a drop of oil of your choice
a clove of garlic or a hearty spoonful of dried garlic powder

Instructions:
Start by preparing the filling. Thaw the spinach and throw it on a frying pan with a drop of oil and diced onion. Fry it on low heat, mixing often, until the excess water evaporates from the spinach and onion turns golden. When it's ready, add crumbled tofu in and mix well, still frying for a few minutes. Then take it off the stove and leave aside.

Now to make the dough, throw all ingredients into a food processor and mix well. Assess the consistency - it should be fairly easy to form, and not too sticky. If it's too sticky, add a little bit of flour (a teaspoon or two), but if it seems too solid, add a tiny splash of water.


Put some oat flour on your table and roll the dough out. I would suggest making it slightly thicker (~1/8") because it is gluten-free and vegan, which makes it less flexible as regular dough, and more prone to tearing.


You can only make a portion of pierogi and freeze the remaining dough, or make them in phases while keeping the remaining dough wrapped in cotton cloth.

Cut circles out of the rolled out dough using a glass or a jar, and then add filling. I would suggest using about a half of the filling amount that you see in the picture above: I had to remove some of it because the pierogi would be too thick and the halves wouldn't stick. When you're done, wet your hands with clean water, fold the pierogi in half and press the dough together with two fingers in 4-5 spots around the rim. That's the way my grandma did it.


I divided them into 6 portions of 5-7 pierogi and froze each portion. There were several which were torn and I decided to boil these to try the flavor. To be safe, I laid them out in a frying pan and covered in water just so that they would stay in place safely and not fall apart. I boiled them just for about a minute: until I saw that the dough softened. Their flavor was great: the filling was really delicious and the dough was slightly harder than regular, but its flavor was good.

Navjot Altaf "Untitled", 2002 from the Royal Ontario Museum

It was International Women's Day yesterday, which brought many thoughts and conversations upon me, based on which I would like to share with you these wishes, not just for women or myself, but for anyone:

I wish for us to practice what we preach. Let's not judge, and we won't be judged, or at least it won't matter. Let's be less critical of ourselves and each other. Let's stop looking for fault in others to feel better about ourselves. Let's work on feeling good by taking responsibility for our actions. Let's be supportive of others and allow ourselves to get emotional support.

I wish for us to be in meaningful relationships, with partners who are proud of being with us, and who help us grow and not bring us down, who love our minds and bodies. Let's be that partner that we want for ourselves: insightful, focused, open-minded, active, uplifting.

I wish for us to stop romanticizing, or belittling depression, trauma, anxiety, and other mental disorders. To know that it's not a sign of weakness to get help and live a happy fulfilling life, and giving ourselves to others.

No matter what your gender is. Rock on!

Back in the day when I was a little kid, access to the Internet was not as widespread as nowadays. In fact, I remember begging my parents so that they would let me use their, ancient now, ZX Spectrum machine to type some sentences in the Tag text editor. Entertainment via technology was a rarity, and so I spent each evening reading books. 

As a child, I had a special preference for books with images, so when I ran out of fiction, I moved on to various encyclopedias, which we had heaps of. The adult ones from the sixties came in six intimidating books and had both images in black and white, and several thicker pages in color. These pages were my favorite and featured animals, plants and indigenous people of various regions. They also had all the terms I could possibly think of. Then in the late nineties my grandparents got us new, colored encyclopedias. These had much fewer images, but all of them were in color. Then there were illustrated English dictionaries for kids which I knew by heart by the age of seven but I kept looking at them because they portrayed a simple drawing of a naked guy to list his major body parts. Then there were multiple geographical atlases which I loved, and finally, illustrated ancient history books, which were my other favorite.

The latter was where I first read about the origins of bread, how it was initially just flour with water, baked on the open fire, and how flour was just dried grains, crushed with stone tools against a larger stone. And then I found out that the bread and pastries we know now were born unplanned, as wild yeast accidentally contaminated the dough and it rose, allowing our predecessors to further experiment and mix other ingredients into it. That made me think of bread less as something very basic and more as something very innate. I always thought of baking your own bread as the most heart-warming, soul-uplifting and cozy homemaking experience.
What I really like about eating a simple diet is not just that it's helping me eliminate the foods that don't help me in any way or even bother me, or that it's making me feel like I take care of myself and eat healthfully, or that it's frugal and helps me save some money on shopping. I love the idea of eating like my ancient predecessors with a contemporary twist. I would like to introduce you to the simplest one-ingredient (or two, if you count water) vegan, gluten-free bread, which came into being just as its earliest predecessors did: out of grains and water. As a person from Central Europe, where buckwheat is part of our culinary heritage, I felt like this recipe is a touch of the past - and yet another throwback to childhood. I first read about it on the Green Creator's blog, and then simplified it and made my own creation:

Ingredients:
4 cups of white buckwheat grains
cold water to cover the grains

Optional:
salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, powdered garlic etc.
shredded nuts, seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, hemp, sesame, chia etc.)
millet grains

Preparation:
Put the buckwheat in your baking pan and cover with water so that it has about an inch of room under the water to soak and swell. Leave it in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours and mix every evening and morning. After the soaking is done and there is still more than 1/2 inch water, you can pour some out.

The consistency of the dough after blending the soaked grains

Add your spices, nuts, and seeds - before or after blending the dough, to achieve the desired consistency. Blend it in a food processor to achieve a more creamy texture. It does not need to be smooth - chunks of nuts and grains are fully acceptable.

My bread during baking, turned over for a more crunchy crust as per the Green Creator's recipe recommendation - it works!

Bake in the oven for approximately two hours, but make sure to check up on it after an hour and then every 20 minutes.

A note from me:
After it's baked, make sure not to try to cut it before it cools down (leave it out overnight, covered with a paper towel), and cut it into fairly thick slices, as it may be prone to crumble.

Once upon a time, I was roasting some veggies to bring them to work, then I made vegan patties and a great tahini-based dressing, and I realized - this is so simple, so easy, so homely and feels so cozy. I should start a food log. But hey, wouldn't that be so cliche - a woman who cooks? 

A woman who cooks her lunches to carry to work though - would that be a little more 21st-century-like? And all that made me laugh because I have always been a believer in the you-do-you philosophy where every person had the right to do their own thing - have a career if they please, stay at home raising kids if they please, be an outsider or an edgy artist, or any other path they'd choose: fine with me! So the idea of putting myself in the stereotypical gender role of mine made me laugh. And I kept cooking with a smile on my face because I knew that cooking is not oppressive to me, quite the contrary. It was my choice to be in charge of knowing exactly what I eat, and a sign of my responsibility for my body. If that's not a mark of a contemporary woman - what is?

I never had (or made) the time to explore my feminine self with all its heavy historical, sociological, psychological and biological baggage. Femininity and womanhood can be viewed and expressed through a whole range of media like movies, books, journals, art, fashion, cuisine, beauty, fitness, geography, and foreign cultures, inspiring people, inventions, poetry, performance, and so much more.

This blog is a gift from me to me - for my 30th birthday coming up in roughly sixteen months. I want to delve into positive womanhood, into the warm and accepting depths of the independent contemporary woman that I am, be grounded in it and truly understand, what it means. Respectful of the differences between us all, observe the whole spectrum and embrace it with love.

Warmly,
K.