…I found myself without one for a few weeks.
Hello from NYC! I’ve been here for a week and I have two more weeks to go. Visiting for some book events and to watch two sweet cats for a friend who is on a European adventure, I’m in a darling apartment in Harlem and I’m loving it. I’m working and writing in a location just a few blocks from the subway so I’m hopping and bopping downtown, to Brooklyn, to New Jersey, and beyond.
The biggest adjustment has been cooking. You guys know I’m a gadget gal. I love me an air fryer, and I’ve had a long and happy relationship with pressure cooking. Neither appliance was in my temporary kitchen when I arrived. The first couple of days – when it was over 90°F and fairly uncomfortable, I made a few tofu dishes in a pan on the stove but mostly ate salads. I was aching for a pressure cooker. One of my book tour sponsors – GoWISE USA – has been sending me air fryers to give away at cooking demos and last week they sent one for the NYC Vegetarian Food Festival…and a pressure cooker! It has all of the functions of the Instant Pot and I love, love, love it!
And I’ve been cooking!
I followed the soy curl mac and cheese recipe in my book Vegan Pressure Cooking loosely (you can find the recipe online here) by simply using onion, soy curls, whole wheat elbow macaroni, and not-chicken broth in the pressure cooker – 4 minutes low pressure, quick release – and then I stirred in nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and raw chopped red cabbage + raw arugula and spinach. Pressure cooking foodie heaven!
Yesterday I went out to New Jersey to cook with a Kitchen Coaching client. She and I cooked up several things in her Instant Pot (she had never used it before!), including a kale, potato and garlic combo in the IP before turning them into these air fried potato nuggets.
When I got back to my cozy retreat in Harlem, not one single bit hungry thanks to a fabulous late lunch at the Ethiopian restaurant Mesob in Montclair, NJ, I was still inspired to cook. Mostly because my next few days are going to be super busy and I wanted food ready to reheat and eat.
I started with mushroom rice (shiitake mushrooms sauteed in sesame oil and combined with brown rice and vegetable broth – 22 minutes high pressure). When the rice was done I transferred it to a bowl and began heating up a little water in the pressure cooker (like the Instant Pot, the GoWISE multicooker has a saute function with a low, medium and high adjustment) with five spice, cumin, and garlic. I was moved to go with a mirepoix lentil dish so I added onion, carrot, and celery to the fragrant saute-broth and then added brown lentils and water and cooked for 9 minutes on high pressure. Well, by the time it was done, I decided maybe I did need a little bite to eat. I added a few raw leafy greens to a small bowl and added a splash of rice vinegar to the verdant veggies before topping with hot rice and lentils and raw scallions for garnish.
My happy place: beans and grains in minutes!
Today I’m off to work with my friend, mentor and colleague Victoria Moran . We’ll be live on her radio show on Unity FM today at 3 p.m. EST!
Westchester, NY readers: I’ll be at Hilltop Hanover Farm in Yorktown Heights Friday night teaching a pressure cooker + air fryer cooking demo class. Register here. Other upcoming events:
- June 3 – Ottawa (Canada) – Ottawa Veg Fest
- June 4 – St. Catharines (Canada) – Niagara VegFest
- June 11 – Tustin, CA – Vegan Cookbook Club
- June 12 – Long Beach, CA – The Vegan Air Fryer cooking demonstration class
- June 17 – Colorado Springs BOOK LAUNCH PARTY! – Details coming soon
- July 1 – Albuquerque, NM – Red & Green VegFest Albuquerque
- July 11 – Colorado Springs, CO – 2-hour Hands-on Vegan Air Frying Cooking Class
- July 13 – Phoenix, AZ – Vegan Air Frying 101 demonstration: Register here
- July 15 – Sedona, AZ -TWO-hour cooking demo class: Register here
- July 22 and 23 – Golden, CO – VegFest Colorado
(Appearances in August and beyond here.) The Vegan Air Fryer comes out in TWO WEEKS! Be sure to take advantage of the fun bonus we’re offering folks who pre-order (Anyone want to win a single package that includes an air fryer, a pressure cooker, soy curls, a 36-inch stuffed Spuddy Buddy, signed copies of all three of my books?): Details here.
I should mention that though traveling, I continue to produce and host my weekly radio program. On this week’s episode, Leah Duncan talks about Vegan Villages popping up in Louisiana and how you can start a Vegan Village in your own community! Listen here:
I’ll be back in a few days to share some of the delicious vegan eats I’ve been enjoying throughout the city! And speaking of vegan eats in the Big Apple, you have one more day to enter to win a copy of the cookbook NYC Vegan! Enter here.
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I use my IP so often, my husband said yesterday, “you’re going to break that because you use it so much.” LOL