Phone Photo Friday:: how I started my Friday morning

1.  Befuddled

The cats made a ruckus all night long, so I should have known something was up.  This is what I saw when I turned on the hallway light at 530 this morning:

Two dinosaurs and a pig had been dragged out of the living room and left stranded in the middle of the hallway.  What you can’t see is a third plush dinosaur several feet away in the kitchen, legs akimbo and looking a little worse for wear.  What on earth were our four cats up to?  On second thought, I don’t want to know.

2.  Pleasantly Surprised

This is what I saw a few seconds later when I opened up the fridge:

I guess Mario liked the Vichyssoise I left for him and Nina to eat last night while I was at book club.

Bon Appétit!

Earlier this week I was on another reconnaissance mission to rescue find more used copies of The Corrections (it’s become an addiction – I sense an intervention in the near future) when I stumbled across a 1970 FIRST EDITION of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2.  Not a revised first edition, but the real deal, in pristine condition.

For six dollars.

I’m going to sleep with this book under my pillow tonight, with hopes that osmosis will transfer a little bit of Julia’s joie de vivre over to me.  (Hey, it can’t hurt.)  Her recipe for how to make French bread with the ever abominable all-purpose flour is my first order of business this weekend.

Finding a pristine, used (a.k.a. affordable) first edition of volume 1 will probably consume me, but it’s such a worthy quest, don’t you think?

Cry me a river

Ira Glass is going to be at UNC tomorrow night, and Mario doesn’t want to go!

Sniff.  Sob.  Loooong sigh.

I’ve already seen Ira twice in recent years, so my first thought was that Mar just didn’t think it should be that big of a deal to see him again.  Especially since we saw him in Chicago just a couple of years ago.  But then I remembered that my Most Awesome First Date of All Time was when someone, who was not Mario, took me to see Ira. And I think I’ve mentioned it, albeit in passing, more than a few times.   (For the record, this first date quickly turned into the Fastest Platonic Date of All Time, and Mar has met, and digs, the platonic friend of which I speak.)  But still.

Note to self: Don’t talk about old date nights with your husband, no matter how schadenfreude-esque, disastrous or inconsequential they were.  No, seriously, just don’t.  Zip it.  This is the one time your inappropriate sense of humor and poor story-telling abilities should not be allowed to coexist.

It’s no wonder I have knobby knees

Way the way back in my university days, I was a little bit addicted to exercise – step aerobics, to be exact.  I have no coordination and very little tolerance for top 40 music, and yet three times a week my friend Michelle and I were taking two back to back classes with our little platforms jacked up three risers high.  This was also around the same time as my Muscle & Fitness phase, so I’m just blaming it all on poor judgment.  But I digress.

Today on my lunch break I couldn’t run out-of-doors, because the entire state of North Carolina is one big fat sheet of ice.  All of the treadmills and ellipticals were taken, my preferred cross-training machines.  In a mad dash to accomplish something before I had to get back to the office, somehow I ended up in a step class.

How on earth did my knees survive all of those classes I used to take?  Running my first two marathons two weeks apart didn’t make my knees hurt as much as today’s 45 minutes of step torture, and I wasn’t even giving it 100%.  No, I was in the back corner, with only one level of risers, modifying half the moves because all the loop-de-loops and over-the-tops make my vertigo kick in.

The worst part about that bloody class, though, is that I can’t count it towards my 500 in 2010.

Dark Days Challenge 09/10: Weeks ten and eleven – better late than never!

I completely forgot to post my meal for week 10, so I’m posting it today along with week 11 (which is also late, and may or not make the recap on the mother ship).

Week ten’s meal was simple comfort food – tomato soup and grilled hummus and sprout sandwhiches.  The canned tomatoes were from a friend’s garden, garlic from LSF, fresh baked bread made with local flour, chickpeas from the farmers’ market, and sprouts from the co-op.  The soup was a recipe I tested for a cookbook that’s still in the works, but as soon as it hits the shelves (or I’m given an early thumbs up) I’ll be posting it to my other site.  As for the sandwhich, it’s exactly what it sounds like – hummus schmeared on two slices of fresh bread, sprouts smooshed inbetween, and grilled until golden and crispy.

Week eleven’s meal was a lot of work, but probably one of the most memorable I’ll have for some time.  Nina and I made fresh eggless pasta, and it was good.  The two most essential ingredients in any kind of fresh pasta, when it’s made with the assistance of a snowed in three-year old with cabin fever, are PATIENCE and TIME.  I’ll talk more about the actual ingredients and procedure for a decent eggless fresh pasta (as well as why you don’t need egg at all for dried pasta) on my other site later this week, so if you’re interested look for the post later this month.  I’ll also link it here.

Watching Nina’s face as she watched three pyramids of flour transformed into dough, and the dough fed out as sheets of pasta, and eventually emerging as ribbons of fettuccine was so much fun.  Having her get impatient and try to pull it through the rollers because she was turning the crank in the wrong direction was not - but for the most part it was a magical experience.  My parents never did this sort of thing with me – I think you really have to love cooking to attempt making homemade pasta, with our without a toddler.  I think Nina’s favorite part was mounding each set of noodles into a bird’s nest while we cut the rest of the fettuccine.  Mine was that after hours of making all that pasta, it only took about 60 seconds to cook, and another 30 to dress it and get it on the table.  Two of the three flours I used were local and organic, so I’m counting this pasta as a SOLE food.

While I waited for the water to boil, I whipped up a quick spinach and mint pesto.  The spinach was from the farmers’ market, the mint was rescued from my garden shortly before our big snow storm.  Served with a baguette straight from the oven and homemade vegan meatballs made with SOLE ingredients (another recipe I can’t post until it’s published), this was a pretty fabulous meal, and I’m glad I took the time to finally make fresh pasta with Nina.

And I’m really glad my husband was around to see how much trouble and hard work it was, because at the top of my wish list are Kitchen Aid pasta attachments.

mumbo jumbo

I’m still slogging away at a sweater that was supposed to be Mario’s Christmas gift in 2008.  I had to frog it twice, Nina ran a lot of interference, and I injured my wrist.  I still had plenty of time to finish it for him this past holiday, but it just didn’t happen.  I think this is my official Biggest Procrastination Project of All Time.

Nina can spell her name, count into the thirties, recite half a dozen of her favorite books almost verbatim – but she still isn’t toilet trained.  That little blue and white plastic commode has become the bane of my existence.

I’ve been testing recipes for Celine’s new cookbook for months and it is killing me not to post them on my recipe site!  You may think I’m being dramatic, but the day that cookbook hits the shelves I’m posting about twenty recipes, and then you’ll understand.  Slowly but surely, it’s killing me.  So is the weight I’ve gained eating all that food.

I want a pony.

I let Nina wear her swimsuit for her bath because she was so stinking cute when she asked me that I just couldn’t say no.

Saving animals and the environment and having a clean conscience are nice and all, but the real reason I make vegan cookies is so that I can watch Nina stuff herself with raw cookie dough and not have to stop her.  As Martha would say:  No salmonella – it’s a good thing.

There is a certain novel that I’ve seen in a lot of used book stores and thrift shops lately.  I liken it to when I was pregnant – suddenly, everywhere I looked the streets were teeming with other pregnant women.  This also happens to be my favorite book, so occasionally I’ll pick up a couple of extra copies in case I want to share it with someone else.  Problem is, I’ve heard other people say they don’t like this book.  Inconceivable! I tell myself.  Critics loved it, all of my friends back in Chicago (okay, the one friend who actually read it) loved it, literati the world over appreciate this book.  It’s won awards and all that jazz.  So then my inner book snob reared its ugly head and convinced me that I should buy up all of the extra copies I can find, because no one else deserves to put their under-appreciative, illiterate hands on it.  The only thing stopping me from buying up every used copy of this novel is that I have no where to put them.  One or two copies are easy enough to mix in with the rest of my 1000+ books, but pretty soon my husband is going to start noticing that there is a copy in our general fiction section, our contemporary literature section, my favorite writers section (yes I’m a nerd we categorize our books), in my book bag, and at my bedside.  I wonder if this is what it feels like to become a hoarder?  Will I wake up and have 30 cats?

Why I let my otherwise vegan daughter eat eggs

In the post previous to this one, I may have come off as flippant about my family’s consumption of eggs.  If anyone was offended, that was not my intention.  I’ve been veg since I was 15 (with a couple of short relapses), and take veganism very seriously, especially now that I have a child whose choices and perspective I am influencing every moment of my life.

In a nutshell, our girls came to us completely out of the blue – they were destined for the broiler, the poultry breeder from whence they came had heard through the grapevine that we were considering bringing some hens into our lives, and he got word to us through a mutual friend that he had some 12-week old pullets whose days were numbered.  We brought as many of them home as we could reasonably take care of on such short notice (we were on vacation in the UP when we got word, did not have a coop, food, or any other supplies – just an awesome neighbor who offered to care for them in our stead until we returned home and got things set up!).

Since we don’t have a rooster, once our pullets were ovulating, there was no chance of the eggs being fertilized.  My husband, who was a whole foods omnivore when I met him, had slowly transitioned to being about 98% vegan, by choice – which all started when he read one of the flyers that I used to distribute (yep, been there done that – I was still out rallying on Fur Free Fridays in the dead cold of Chicago winter when I was 8 months pregnant, so he knew I was serious about this stuff).  Anyway, he hadn’t had an egg in a very, very long time, and there was never any question that if we ever had hens, he would get to have some eggs.  Morally/ethically/etc etc, I have no problem with that.  Personally, the idea of eating a bird’s menstrual cycle grosses me out.  But anyway, we knew the time would come when Nina would notice that her dad was eating eggs, and that if she tried them, she might like them.  Ultimately, I decided that as long as I know where the eggs are coming from, what the girls are eating, how they are treated, and what their future holds, I’m at peace with that.

Nina knows that a lot of animals lay eggs, and that they usually hatch baby animals.  She obviously doesn’t understand ovulation or fertilization (she’s only three), but we explained to her that a rooster needs to be present in order for chicks to hatch, and on some level she gets it.  Our biggest concern about letting her eat eggs was that she would have an a-ha moment and freak out about eating baby chickens, but I think we’re safely past that.

We do plan on eventually hatching some chicks of our own, when Nina is a little older and can actively care for them herself for the duration of their life cycle (which can be several years).  But that leads to all sorts of other questions:    Do we want roosters?  If not, do we know someone who will care for our roosters and what their fate would be?  If we purchase fertilized eggs from someone, isn’t that the same as buying a cat or dog from a breeder (which is evil evil EVIL!!)?

So, that’s my story.  I welcome feedback, and if anyone would like to discuss this issue further offline just shoot me a message.

Dark Days Challenge 09/10: Simple breakfast in week nine

My husband is the stay at home parent in our family, which means that for at least five days a week, he and Nina are left to their own devices where breakfast is concerned.  I was home sick earlier this week and got to witness their current morning ritual first hand – they go out to collect eggs, Nina demands an “egg boat!” as soon as they’re in the door, and ten minutes later, they’re both devouring their meal.

I guess now would be the time to point out that yes, as my blog name implies, I am indeed a vegan.  My husband is a vegetarian, and we’ve raised Nina on a strict vegan diet until a few months ago, when our hens (pullets, technically) started laying eggs.  I don’t feel like hijacking this DDC post to explain myself to the other vegans out there who are probably itching to flame me; instead, I’ll leave you with this picture of our poor, miserable hens in captivity:

Anywho, back to brekkie.  A couple of days later Nina asked me to make her an egg boat, which I think turned out pretty good for my first try ever.

But even better was that while I was at the stove, Nina decided to bogart my toast, slather it with sun butter and preserves, and keep it all to herself.  She ate every last bite, even the dreaded crust.

So, the brekkie tally.  SOLE foods:  homemade bread with local flour, an egg from one of our girls, local fruit preserves from the farmers’ market.  Not so SOLE:  salt, pepper, sun butter, and the glass of oj that Nina had to wash it all down with.  All in all, I think it fairly represents most of our at home meals, especially the unplanned ones.  Bon Appetit!

Dark Days Challenge 09/10: regaining my kitchen mojo in Week 8

Red lentil & butternut squash burgers…roasted brussels sprouts that had just been picked…caramelized sweet corn with mint…and of course, fresh bread.  These things brought me back from the brink.  I finally made a SOLE meal this past Sunday, and boy was it good.

Here’s what happened when Nina offered to help prepare the brussels sprouts:

I guess their not one of her favorite foods yet

Clearly she wasn’t impressed with what I had planned for dinner, but I forged ahead nontheless.

I didn’t realize until halfway through meal prep that I didn’t have enough room in the oven for my little green brassicas, as I was already roasting the squash and baking a loaf of bread.  Then it dawned on me that we have a toaster oven.  The toaster oven that I tried so hard to convince my husband we didn’t need, would never use, blah blah blah.  Because only college students use them, right?  Right?

I managed to get these prepared before Nina could shred them to pieces, like their poor companions scattered all over the kitchen floor

Out of any other options, I decided to pop them in and see what happened.  I’m so glad I was wrong.

In less than half the time needed in my convection oven, they were roasted to perfection.  (I’m still kicking myself for not taking a picture, because damn were they good)

Once the burgers were baking and the bread was cooling, it was time to make the corn.  The last bag of frozen sweet corn from this summer, mint from our back door garden, and just enough California olive oil to roast the heck out of these kernels.

caramelized and tossed with minced fresh mint

a whole wheat boule to round out the meal

All the main ingredients were SOLE – butternut  squash, red lentils, tomato chutney, sweet corn, mint, bread flour, brussels sprouts.  I’m so glad I had the energy to cook something!  As long as I remember to collect photographic evidence, I think I’m back on track for the rest of the Challenge.

Dark Days Challenge 09/10: Weeks five through seven; FAIL!

I didn’t fail at using SOLE ingredients, because that’s about all we have on hand.  However, since I’ve been feeling uder the weather since the second week of November and it hasn’t gotten any better, cooking a meal for my family has quickly devolved into 1) picking up take-out SOLE meals at the co-op, 2) throwing a bunch of stuff into a pot and calling it either a sauce or a soup, depending on texture and taste, or 3) letting my husband do all of the work (and then not having the courtesy to pay attention).  If I’d had the foresight to record any instances of numbers 1 or 3, they might have counted for the Challenge.  But I didn’t, so that’s a big fat fail! in my book.

The only good thing to come out of this is that I think I finally get how it feels for someone who doesn’t enjoy cooking, when they are faced with the prospect of preparing a meal for someone else.  And it sucks.