bryant terry's afro-vegan

Bryant Terry's Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed is a wonderful cookbook full of flavor and spice, story and song.  (Yes, there are songs...as in the musical selections suggested for a personal cooking soundtrack at the beginning of each chapter.)  As a vegetarian who tries to be vegan every now and again, this vibrant collection of recipes makes that transition fairly painless for me -- and, to add even more of an endorsement, the recipes are easily served up to people who claim to be staunch meat and dairy eaters, even the ones who make fun of vegans and their stereotypical plates full of mealy soy substitutes or sprouts and beans.  They don't really know they're eating vegan food, and so much the better for that.

Lil-Tofu Po-Boys with Creamy Red Pepper Sauce, Verdant Vegetable Couscous with Spicy Mustard Greens, Cumin-Pickled Onions, Pumpkin-Peanut Fritters, Date-Almond Cornbread Muffins, Fig Preserves with Thyme -- that's just a sampling of Afro-Vegan's fare.  Along with Cocoa-Spiced Cake with Crystallized Ginger and Coconut-Chocolate Ganache or Date, Nut, and Cranberry Balls for dessert.  The recipe inspirations are creatively detailed and interspersed with African, African-American and Afro-Caribbean historical and culinary context.  Like the Congo Square, concocted from coconut milk and coconut water, dark rum, nutmeg and cinnamon -- this unique cocktail came to mind via Terry's musings on the many Haitians who fled revolution and immigrated to New Orleans during the late 18th century, and how they brought their tastes and traditions with them.  And one of my favorite recipes is the simple basil sea salt mixture, which quickly becomes part of your own cooking repertoire and which has a musical recommendation of Jelly Roll Morton's "Salty Dog." 

All told, Afro-Vegan is really a must-own cookbook if you want to try a spicier, sweeter, creamier or more satisfying vegan lifestyle, bolstered by Bryant Terry's sage philosophy, i.e., “start with the visceral, move to the cerebral, and end at the political.”  While sipping some Ginger-Lemongrass Tonic along the way.  

the suffrage cookbook

Here's an interesting little historical gem from Project Gutenberg -- The Suffrage Cookbook, published in 1915 by The Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania and edited by Mrs. L.O. Kleber.  Aside from recipes, the book contains endorsements for equal voting rights from various U.S. governors, intellectuals, writers, judges, progressive-minded society women and actress Alla Nazimova.  And then there's author Jack London's best wishes, along with his recipe for roast duck.

The Suffrage Cookbook has a similar range of offerings as other cookbooks of the day, including tea sandwiches, main dishes, soups, cakes, preserves, pies, breads, and helpful kitchen hints. You can see the influence of ethnic recipes like Polenta and Goulash...and a probably not so great Americanized version of Chop Suey involving butter and Worcestershire sauce.  And there's a kind of wry humor every now and then, like in the recipe for Pie for a Suffragist's Doubting Husband, which uses the Milk of Human Kindness and advises the cook to "[m]ix the crust with tact and velvet gloves, using no sarcasm."  Meat recipes are plentiful, which was also common in cookbooks of the time, but there are some vegetarian recipes for nut roasts and the like, though this seemed mainly to offer economic and protein-packed alternatives to meat as opposed to any concern about animal suffering.  I guess it was one battle at a time back then and animal rights would come later.

With Election Day coming up, it is important to think about how just a century ago, women were still fighting for the right to vote, whether with protest and force and/or velvet gloves and tact.  So many thanks to those who put this cookbook together and who demanded their turn at the ballot box, and additional thanks for this simple but delicious Cheese Savories recipe:

Butter slices of bread and sprinkle over them a mixture of grated cheese and paprika. Set them in a pan and place the pan in the oven, leaving it there until the bread is colored, and the cheese set. Serve very hot.

Eating and drinking are so essential to our living and to our usefulness, and so directly involved with our future state, that these must be classed with our sacred duties. Hence the necessity for so educating the children that they will know how to live, and how to develop into hale, hearty and wholesome men and women, thus insuring the best possible social and political conditions for the people of this country.

The Suffrage Cookbook, 1915