Easy Vegan Ricotta and Other Hot Tips!
March 2024
I felt some shame about my February update because, immediately upon sending, I realized that it was just me complaining, then bragging, then complaining again, and not much else. Which is fine? Sometimes? I am aware that complaining and bragging are relatively dominant and acceptable modes online. But I feel in myself an enduring drive to atone for my perceived sins. I also drank several buckets of prosecco at a party last weekend and misbehaved in a profoundly humiliating manner for a woman of forty-five, so following this atonement drive without unpacking it feels especially right just now. Plus if I were to unpack it — to ruminate on the past me’s from which such thought patterns spring; to perhaps arrive at the comforting conclusion that my desire to do penance no longer serves me — I know just where this post would end up: complaining and bragging. Not today, babies! Today we atone!
In case that sounds dreary, by atone I simply mean that March’s update is all about hot tips for you my dear reader. 100% cold, hard service journalism. I only learned that term — service journalism — a few years back, so if you’re not familiar, think: Ten Best Ways to Get a Stain Out! How Should I Support My Friend Through Their Grief? Best Vegan Egg Replacements! That kind of thing.
March was very busy and bewildering, but I did write, read, and eat. Here are some hot tips about each that I’d like to share with you.
Writing
How to write without trying
I think I’ve done this thing for a long time, but I’ve only really noticed and codified it into my arsenal of writing tricks over the past few months. The trick is called “I’m not really doing it,” and here is how it works:
Let’s say you don’t feel like writing. Maybe you’re tired, or you’re nervous about the next scene or idea you need to bang out, or you’ve written so much lately you just don’t want to anymore, but you have to either because you have to make money or you have an everlasting, very grave agreement with yourself to do it because you’re weird (👋). Whatever is going on, you don’t want to write.
And let’s say what you do want to do is futz around in the kitchen testing out your latest vegan French toast idea. Maybe you want to while away some hours doing online window-shopping for just one more bag-shaped dress. Maybe you want to watch the Love Is Blind reunion.
What if I told you that you can? But no! you scream. I said I have to write! No, I know. What I’m saying is: do both. Open the document you’re working on, take your laptop or your notebook into the kitchen and put it on the counter. Get the French toast going, and while you wait for it to soak, and then to fry, jot down a sentence or two, barely even looking at the page. After all, you have to flip your toast in a sec, so no use getting all up in it. Just make a note here and there. Ope, time to flip, let’s go! Back at the laptop, hm, a sudden scrap of dialogue just sailed in, let’s jot it down, no big deal. You’re not writing. You’re not really doing it. You’re just doing the other thing but hovering the teeniest antenna of attention on the work you need to do.
When I watch things like Love Is Blind — a strange experience of somewhat pleasurable horror — I actually find it a welcome reprieve to occasionally tab away from Netflix and do some easy edits or outlining, the sweet strains of intoxicated strangers arguing about whether wearing makeup means you’re a slut providing the soundtrack.
Same with online shopping. How will I ever decide which art-lady dress to buy? I need a little break, so I’ll move these paragraphs around real quick like I’d been meaning to do, and see if they look better that way. Then I’ll spend another twenty minutes staring at the sizing chart. Why not?
Do you know what I mean? If you don’t, I get it. This tip may not be for everyone. When I work on my novel, I tend to make a ton of notes and write very bad sentences and do mini-outlines of the next few scenes, and then go back and fill in the blanks and refine everything, over and over. The “not really doing it” trick works well for note-making, preliminary sentences, and intuitive outlining. But I know some people write in a much more straight-forward, one solid sentence in front of the other kind of way for which they require a certain kind of sustained focus for an uninterrupted stretch of time. For some phases of my writing, I require this, too. Sometimes a bout of “Not really doing it,” will ignite excitement about my work, and I’ll close my other tabs and go in deep. Other times, the excitement doesn’t take hold, but at least in addition to a plate of French toast, another cart to agonize over, or an ounce of grey matter lost to the Chris Coelen empire, I also have a handful of notes or thoughts or edits to show for my time. It’s not nothing! And I didn’t really have to do it!
Reading
How to read Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy if you like both women and plots
Let me lead by saying I love Ursula K. LeGuin very much. When I met my partner David, he lent me one of his all-time faves, The Dispossessed, and it blew my mind clear open to anarchism and models of communal living and what sci-fi can do. My early LeGuin love is all very bundled up with my love for the partner (iykyk) and thinking big new thoughts in my twenties and becoming the weirdo I am today. So. She’s generally very important to me.
But come March, I’d been trying to get through fucking A Wizard of Earthsea since December and I could. Not. Do. It. It was so boring! So cold! What the fuck was Ged’s problem? And also, who was he? I felt like there was barely any characterization of this boy wizard except that he was talented and sulky and proud. I’m no show-don’t-tell fanatic, but maybe LeGuin could show me just a scene or two of boys living and learning at a wizard school?? And this was the other problem, of course. Only boys and men, all the damn time. And not even much dialogue between them, let alone laughs. Dull!
I was still trying because David had suggested I read it so that I could then read the second book in the series, The Tombs of Atuan. He had read it last year and declared it, “So metal.” Of course I wanted to get there, so I slogged on. Finally, sick of my grousing, David said, “Maybe just read The Tombs of Atuan first?” David gave me a solid play-by-play of the plot points of the first book, and off I went to read the second. And I did, indeed, go off. The Tombs of Atuan, now there’s a fucking book! LeGuin mentions in an interview that she wrote Tenar — the female protagonist of Atuan — as, well, atonement for her oversight in the first book. She was still figuring her feminism out at the time, and I would argue throughout the writing of the rest of the cycle. But I wasn’t just excited about that book because Tenar is a girl. I was excited because the narrator gets up close and personal with her and her thoughts in ways that don’t happen in Wizard. Plus it’s much more plot-heavy, which I do enjoy. I do love me a novel of ideas, but I think LeGuin’s special strength is when she executes both at once. Plus it was, indeed, so metal. Scary underground death cult type shit! And then you get to know Ged! Finally!
Then David told me to skip The Farthest Shore — “It’s pretty plotless again; I think it’s about depression.” He once again gave me the basic developments I needed to move on, and I started Tehanu. There is a scene near the top of that book which illustrates — through a beautifully dramatized, dialogue-heavy scene — the all-too-familiar feeling I’d expect all women have felt, of not being listened to or seen or valued by men in such a visceral way I cried while reading and for a long time after. Absolute fire. Plus you get to know Ged even more, and learn about his soft, vulnerable, sexy sides. That book simply slays.
Now I’ve gone back and am reading the Ged-heavy books, and because I know him, I can get into it. Now I’m like “Yes, Ged, slay those dragons! It’s all gonna pay off in the end!” whereas before I was like, “I simply do not care.”
So! The hot tip: if you want to read the Earthsea cycle (or you’ve tried and didn’t like it) and you like women and also plots, start with The Tombs of Atuan and go from there.
Eating
How to make a dead-easy vegan ricotta and then make Hetty McKinnon’s killer weeknight lasagna but vegan
I veganized
's recent recipe for a weeknight lasagna and it turned out really good (that’s a gift link, enjoy)!I’m always trying to do baked pasta on weeknights and regretting it because I try to make all the elements from scratch and then it’s 8:45 and we still haven’t eaten. So I really trusted McKinnon’s urging to “choose ease” this time, and bought the no-bake noodles and a jar of decent pasta sauce and even a bag of humble Daiya vegan mozzarella shreds (not my fave, I would’ve bought Miyoko’s mozzarella if my store had it, but it didn’t). This left me just enough time to make the ricotta myself and still get dinner on the table in a timely manner. I knew I could do it, because I’ve been making variations on this ricotta for a decade and could do it in my sleep.
This tofu-based ricotta is what I think of as very old-school vegan cooking, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. In fact, I think it’s great! Plus it’s high in protein so your lasagna will be filling, and it takes about five minutes to make. If you ever want to go wild and make a more delicate and delicious almond ricotta, I have a recipe for that as a component of this ricotta pie recipe I wrote for Vegetarian Times (RIP I think?) But for hearty, savoury applications like this, I think this tofu guy works a treat.
I make my tofu ricotta more flavourful than actual ricotta because I don’t have parm and mozzerella doing the heavy salt/umami lifting, and it all works out great. Here I go again with umeboshi paste and fermented tofu, and while I hate to be a one-trick pony, I hope it’s also helpful to have many uses for these ingredients once you have them in your fridge. I don’t like to tell people to seek out a ferment that might be harder to find in North America or Europe and not provide lots of uses for it! But if you don’t have those, you can still make this, I’ve noted some subs below.
One 350 gram block of firm or extra firm tofu
One clove garlic, crushed or chopped
Approx 1/4 cup of plain, unsweetened vegan yogurt (I used Silk almond)
1 tsp umeboshi paste (sub lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to taste)
Two squares of white fermented tofu (sub a tablespoon of miso, doenjang, and/or nutritional yeast)
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil (I just do a few glugs)
1-2 tablespoons of soy milk (enough to get the blender going)
Salt to taste
Crumble the tofu into a big measuring cup, dump in everything else, and blend until pretty smooth with an immersion blender. If you don’t have one, you can use a regular blender or food processor, but that makes this less of an easy weeknight recipe due to hauling out appliances and cleaning them. You could also mash everything as best as you can with a potato masher or strong fork. It won’t be as smooth and creamy, but it’ll still be tasty!
The only other change I made to Mckinnon’s recipe was to dollop the second half of my ricotta on before baking, because I think it tastes better cooked. But you do you! If you don’t want to use storebought vegan cheese at all, I think this recipe would still be pretty good with just the ricotta. Maybe just add a bit more olive oil and add more salt to everything? Maybe sprinkle with nutritional yeast? Live your life!
I love your newsletter so much. The how to write without trying and the Ursula K. LeGuin thoughts are especially awesome.