Vegetarian | Gourmandistan

Tenacity & tok-sel lima beans

October 7, 2012 by Steve

“NuLu” is the trendy term for Louisville’s East Market district, currently reigning over Bardstown Road and Frankfort Avenue as the street deemed “Restaurant Row.” (Non-trendy Louisvillians have many more “restaurant row” streets to choose from. Some of them have battling all-you-can-eat buffets.) Before it was “Nu” East Market was more “Ew”—a place of derelict buildings (complete with actual derelicts!), Christian missions and one amazing chef. Bruce Ucán opened Mayan Café on East Market while many people still automatically locked doors and […]

Categories: Beans, Cooking, Food, Mexico, Recipes, Restaurants, Vegetables, Vegetarian

Plum, Dumb & Full of Crumb

August 21, 2012 by Steve

Sorry, people who put him in the “crazy” camp: Steve was not doing exactly the same thing and expecting different results. After all, these smaller, redder plums were purchased from a different vendor. And this time Steve did not leave them sitting in a bowl on the counter. He left them sitting on the counter in a paper bag, which somehow rendered them invisible. Fortunately, these plums ripened much less violently than their predecessors, with only a few having matured […]

Categories: Blueberries, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Plums, Recipes, Vegetarian

Impulse to action via Roasted Plum Frozen Yogurt

August 13, 2012 by Steve

We have been talking about fresh plums all summer long. When we finally spotted them at a recent market, we (OK Steve) couldn’t resist snapping up a bagful without bothering to ask the vendor anything regarding variety, locality or organicity. When we returned home all we knew was they were big, very purple and seemed very, very unripe. A few days later we also discovered they were very, very sensitive, as almost half of our purchase “ripened” into juice-weeping balls […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Plums, Recipes, Vegetarian, Yogurt

Cook-all-damn-day Corn Chowder

August 5, 2012 by Steve

Michelle wanted to make a dessert. Perhaps a peach crisp with the few shriveling fruits left in our crisper, maybe a Normandy-nearing tart with some of the funky-looking apples Steve picked up on Saturday’s market run. Our weekly trip was shorter than usual, and she felt the entire day was ahead of her. Then she decided to make this Roasted Corn Chowder with Garlic and Herb Butter from David Tanis’ Corn, part of the “Country Garden Cookbook” series. She’d made […]

Categories: Cooking, Corn, Food, Recipes, Soups & Stews, Vegetarian

A parching, painterly interruption leads to Peach Ice Cream Pie

July 29, 2012 by Steve

Horrifying heat is not good for ice cream. Neither, it seems, is it good for house painters. After weeks of weather-related delay, our house and kitchen were freshly painted and finally freed from painters. The outside, in its lovely new creamy white color, was baptized by a couple of non-drought-relieving nickel-sized hailstorms (thanks again, global weirding!). After restoring the cookbooks, WWII posters and various tchotchkes to our kitchen we were ready to once again bespatter its freshly painted walls with […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Peaches/Nectarines, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Literally grinding out a peanut butter brownie post.

July 14, 2012 by Steve

We began Gourmandistan as merely a way to amuse ourselves (and some may claim we still amuse merely ourselves). But we have grown quite attached to you, our readers. Our urge to post to this blog has grown beyond the simple need to stick recipes where we can easily access them to encompass the idea that someone out there in cyberspace might actually miss us if we’re gone. That is why, even though our home has been in complete disarray […]

Categories: Brownies, Chocolate, Cooking, Food, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Potato Salad and Patriotism (with a bit of Blackberry Cobbler)

July 4, 2012 by Steve

It’s the 4th of July, a day many Americans celebrate with beer, bizarre outfits and bloviating about “the greatest best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.” Gourmandistan takes a slightly different path to celebrate the Fourth, a bit quieter than the usual American practice of blowing stuff up real good. Unfortunately, to the sort of people who desperately want to believe they live in “Real America,” being different is a dangerous thing. These people […]

Categories: Blackberries, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Independence Day, Old cookbooks, Pies & Tarts, Potatoes, Recipes, Salad, Vegetarian

Baked peaches for a baking planet.

July 1, 2012 by Steve

A few of Steve’s “friends” (mostly the Facebook and “Fox & Friends” kind) might deny any existence of global climate change. Try as they might, though, they can’t deny it’s been horribly hot in Gourmandistani territory the past week or so. All-time heat records are being broken every day. The astonishing heat contributed to something called a “land hurricane” that swept through not too far from here, killing several and knocking out power to millions without any letup in temperature. […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Rice, Vegetarian

Lifting the curse of CSA chard

June 25, 2012 by Steve

If you’ve ever had a farm share, you’ve undoubtedly shared Gourmandistan’s occasional feelings of basket fatigue. That’s the point where you can’t think of one more thing to do with a bunch of Russian kale, basil or (please forgive us, Pavel) a bounty of accursed beets. Up until recently, one of the fatigue-inducing entries was Swiss chard. Though the chickens always loved the leftovers. Chard is a leafy green vegetable that comes with a variety of stem colors, but when […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggs, Food, Grains, Recipes, Swiss chard, Vegetarian