Vegan with a Vengeance

tablespoons of olive oil and add to the potatoes when you add the margarine.
    Wasabi Mashed Potatoes: Dissolve 1 tablespoon of wasabi powder in the soy milk before you add it.
    Spinach Mashed Potatoes: Thaw a package of frozen spinach and pat it dry, or chop a bunch of spinach and sauté in water only until wilted; pat the spinach dry with a kitchen towel or paper towel. Add to potatoes at the end. (Spinach and garlic mashed potatoes are especially good.)
Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy
    MAKES ABOUT 3 CUPS
    Â 
    I feel like, if I had to reveal my soul via a gravy, then this would be it. Truth be told, I hate measuring and all that and am pretty good at eyeballing but you can’t write a whole cookbook that depends on guessing the quantities. Still, you can have one recipe that breaks out, and this is it. I call it “punk rock” because it depends on almost every spice in your spice rack; it would make any “real” chef gasp. And every punk worth their weight in CRASS records knows that chickpeas are the punkest legume there is. Oh, it tastes crazy good, too. You will make it at least once a week. I just know it.
    Â¼ cup all-purpose flour
    Approximately 2½ cups water
    1 tablespoon olive oil
    1 medium-size onion, quartered and thinly sliced
    2 teaspoons mustard seeds
    3 cloves garlic, minced
    2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained, or 1 (16-ounce) can, drained and rinsed
    2 pinches of ground cumin
    2 pinches of paprika
    Pinch of dried rosemary
    Pinch of dried thyme
    Pinch of dried oregano
    Pinch of ground coriander
    3 tablespoons soy sauce
    Juice of 1 lemon
    Â¼ cup nutritional yeast
    Mix the flour with 2 cups of water until the flour is mostly dissolved.
    Heat a large skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium heat. Add the olive oil and let heat for 20 seconds or so. Add the onions and mustard seeds; cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are browned and the mustard seeds are toasted. Add the garlic and sauté for 2 minutes more. Add the chickpeas; use a potato masher to mash them—you don’t want to mash them into a paste, just make sure each one is broken up although if there are a few whole ones left that is okay. Add the herbs and spices, soy sauce, and lemon juice. Scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen any browned bits of onion.
    Lower heat and pour the flour mixture into the pan. Stir constantly until a thick gravy forms. Stir in the nutritional yeast. If it looks too thick and pasty, add more water and mix well. It may look like it doesn’t want any more water added to it, but just keep mixing and it will loosen up.
    Keep warm until ready to serve.

    Anarcha-Feminist Potlucks
    In the late ‘90s I was feeling very isolated from any political community. I was working day and night to make ends meet. I even had three jobs: waitressing at two restaurants, and working at an organic produce warehouse. In my free time, I was either drinking or trying to write a novel that would never be finished.
    I knew that I had to reconnect with my community—any progressive political community, really. My friend Amanda and I decided to start an anarcha-feminist potluck. The idea was this: every two weeks, get a bunch of hairy-legged women in a room together to share food, recipes, and politics. We would each bring a dish, eat, talk, and then have an informal roundtable where each woman would discuss where her political activism and interests lay. If you weren’t politically active at the moment but wanted to be, you could say something like this: “My name is Eloise. I’m interested in prison reform work.” Then someone, let’s say Danielle, would say, “I’m active with Books Between Bars; let’s talk after the meeting.” And a prison reform activist would be born. We even had a little newsletter we passed out at meetings, called Eat Me , which listed events and happenings in the coming weeks. We also formed something called The Free(k) Economy, where each woman listed her skills, and whenever we needed help with something we could call on one another. It wasn’t a barter system, rather a way for us to support one another in whatever way we were able to. I gave many haircuts and painted many rooms. Other women skill-shared: taught each other how to knit, weld, and even make homemade dildos!
    Starting it was easy and this was before everyone and their Aunt Tilly had access to the Internet. We put up fliers in vegetarian