CrankyCakes

This picture swiped from Recipezaar, and credited to Chef1.

My turn again cooking for our cohousing community, and a friend had sent this recipe from the New England Soup Factory a couple months back, thinking it would be good for our group.  I’ve had it on deck ever since, excited to have a delicious-sounding, vegetarian/vegan, soy-free, gluten-free, nut-free recipe that sounded full of flavor and interesting.  So tonight we made:

• Spicy Chick Pea & Butternut Squash Soup
• Popovers
• Green Salad with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
• Custard & Chocolate Mini-Tarts in Phyllo Shells (and not in phyllo shells for the gluten-averse)

I liked the soup very much, but did wish the broth was thicker.  (Don’t know why – I have nothing against broth-y or tomato-y soups in general.)  Next time I make it, I’ll probably double the coconut milk (or upgrade to coconut cream instead), and also double the vegetables, and then puree half of it just before serving.

In any case, this is a great recipe to have in the repetoire for anyone who’s looking for something new to cook for folks with diverse food preferences.

So my next turn cooking for our cohousing community is coming up on Tuesday, January 6.  And because I’ve seldom encountered a theme I don’t like, I’ve been researching traditional foods for the Epiphany.  (This is the “12th Day of Christmas,” the day that the three wise men are said to have arrived in Bethlehem after Jesus was born.)  I have found many cakes, often a type of fruit cake, but dinner menus have been much more difficult to come by.

At last, I stumbled onto a Tuscan Epiphany dinner menu here.   Keeping in mind that we’ll be cooking for a big gang of people, that we’re only supposed to spend $3.50 on food per adult, and that we’ve got plenty of vegetarians, I’m truncating this multi-course meal to:

• Sweet Potato Gnocchi (a pasta course is naturally traditional for an Italian meal, but in American fashion it’ll just be part of the main course, plus the orange color represents gold and the sun)
• Vegetarian Sausages (sausages represent abundance)
• Broccoli Saute (broccoli’s bitterness has some apparent significance)
• Oranges & Figs
• For dessert, I was tempted by both a sweet foccacia called La Fugassa de la Befana, and Ciambella de Rei Magi – Three Wise Men Torte.    I like the sound of La Befana – a witchy character who leaves presents/charcoal in stockings on the Epiphany.  (She’s survived from older, pagan times – maybe an agriculture goddess, according to some sources.)  After searching through many, many funny translated Italian websites for a recipe, I at last found myself back at good old Recipezaar for this Befana Cake.

(And for more interesting things about the holiday and its pagan origins, visit  here and here.)

I’ll report back with pictures and results.  And hopefully also with sore muscles from a vigorous workout to atone for more feasting.

I have to start with this:  I love living in cohousing.  And one thing living here means is eating together when we can, and helping prepare one meal a month.  I’m one of the queen bee-ish types who tends to be the “lead cook” when my turn comes around, so that I get to do the menu planning, the shopping, and take charge of the cook team in preparing dinner for the 30 – 50 who typically attend.

There’s no doubt that it’s a lot of work, but there’s so much that happens as we do it.  The casual conversations over the chopping board where we get to know where people come from, find out what’s happening in each others’ lives.  Watching neighbors come and go on their various ways.  Learn who’s away and where and who’s coming to visit.  Learning more about where people come from, where they hope to go.

Still, meal planning for this interesting and diverse group isn’t easy.  We have a gluten-free neighbor, one who can’t eat any form of pepper, two who have walnut allergies, a dairy free guy and several vegetarians.  When you come to dinner here you see the big trays or pots alongside single, labeled servings for these folks.  But I think it’s true that none of us minds these extra steps.  Offering delicious, safe food to each other is an honest expression of our appreciation for each other.  You can’t help having this kind of affection for the people who babysit for you for free, who brush the snow off your car, clean the bathrooms in the common house, plant the common garden, bring your compost to the pile for you.  Make some baked tofu alongside the chicken?  Sure.

And I do love coming up with the menus.   I wanted one that was festive and fairly opulent, but vegetarian.   So what developed was:

I had a great, capable cooking team to put it all together, but we also had Melissa and Allison from the Burlington Free Press on hand to do an article on cohousing, asking questions and taking pictures, which may have made it a tad more unfocused, but definitely made it much more exciting.  Whisking eggs!  Crimping pastry!  Giant pot of greens!  All photo ops.  I felt like a celebrity when I took the pies from the oven and the photographer swooped in to capture them as they emerged.

But what made me really feel like a star, as it does every time, was the thumbs-up, back-pats, and whispered compliments as I walked around the dining room that night.   To have my neighbors and friends receive and return the caring we put into that meal feels like deep community.  Like family.  Like, well, love.

(Oh, and my kids?  They picked the puff pastry off their plates, pronounced it delicious, drank two sips of milk, then ran off crying when I suggested they try something else.)

So that’s dinner here.  We do it every other day, usually with as much TLC, but often with less fanfare … though we’ve been known to burst into applause at all the wanton yumminess.

(Check out the 12/20/08 BFP article!)