RACHAEL RAY

first, i will need to admit that i have been becoming weary in my little vegan culinary world. i have several cookbooks that i lurv, but i have had them for awhile, and have fallen into a bit of a lentil rut. there are a few good vegan cookbooks, but a lot of them suck, and are based on the assumption that if you are a vegan, you also must not like anything with flavor, and also must be a rabbit. sometimes i get a little gloomy when i go to the cookbook section in the bookstore (as i tend to do, for long amounts of time) because my section is tiny, and then there are shelves and shelves of the most beautiful and enticing and wonderful cookbooks overflowing with dairy, and dairy, and some dairy with eggs, and some dairy with meat, and some more dairy. and dairy, did i say dairy? they have the dairy. oh, and the meat too.

now for my next confession. i have a little friend (well, i use "friend" loosely here, because really what i mean is MORTAL ENEMY) who i like to call my cheese monkey. cheese monkey eats cheese, and only cheese, and a lot of cheese. cheese monkey scoffs at soy cheese, and any other product that tries to masquerade as cheese. sometimes, cheese monkey will lie dormant for months and months without causing any kind of ruckus. those are the good times. the happy times. the normal pooping times. but then cheese monkey starts demanding things. when i say things, i mean cheese. every and any type of cheese. if cheese monkey's demands are not met, cheese monkey throws tantrums of such epic proportion i dare not try to limit them to the tiny parameters of my inadequate vocabulary. eventually, the cheese monkey gets what the cheese monkey wants.

BUT, my friends, the plot thickens. i have been successful enough in repressing the cheese monkey and keeping it chained in its cold lonely cell that my body has forgotten what to do with cheese. over the course of my two and a half years of fairly strict veganism, i have become what i believe people like to call "lactose intolerant." so, when i am defeated by the cheese monkey i must do penance for my sins in the form of bloating, extreme discomfort, and other unmentionables.

recently i was at the house of a dear friend, and i noted a magazine nearby: "every day with rachael ray." i've never really been much into rachael ray, primarily because i can't eat the majority of the food from her cookbooks, on her show, etc. but i have fallen crazily and hopelessly in love with this magazine. i can find a fair amount of recipes that can at least be adapted for my gastrointestinal comfort, and the rest i just have to feed to other people who come eat at my house. AND most of the recipes have a wine suggestion, which prevents me from wandering stupidly around the wine store completely puzzled about what wine would best complement stuffed portobellos with bread salad. last week i made a free form red fruit tart (from the magazine, naturally) that was CRAZY amazing. in the past, i have cried more than one time (go ahead and laugh) trying to make a flaky crust. my frustration with flaky crusts actually led me to a meltdown on christmas eve in which i swore i wasn't going to go to christmas with my family because i had FAILED AT MAKING A PERFECT PIE CRUST. well, not the case with the tart. the crust was effortlessly, marvelously, meltingly flaky. plus, it wasn't salted with my own tears. i will admit, sometimes rachael ray and cheese monkey appear to be in cahoots with each other (like, for instance, a couple of weeks ago when i apparently TOTALLY LOST MY MIND and decided it would be a good plan to eat a pressed manchego cheese sandwich with roasted red peppers. CHEESE SANDWICH? i will spare the gory details of the fallout.) so anyways. say what you will about rachael, because i have said it too. and then try the recipes from that damn magazine and start working on the SHRINE to her that you will surely want to construct in your kitchen.