No, that was not an unintentional spelling error, it was a very poor pun. I am ridiculously exhausted and for no good reason, other than being in a more or less constant state of sleep deprivation. So, on Friday nights while the rest of the world is gallivanting around my neighborhood, I am struggling to keep my eyes open and form coherent sentences. As such, I find that where I used to stay out until the bars closed, I'm old and tired and ready for bed before midnight as my body, aware that we've reached the end of the standard work week, tries to make up for the hours and hours of "lost" sleep I didn't get this week.
It's super cold in Philadelphia, which is a stunning way to welcome Springtime - I think it is actually below freezing right now and the heat keeps kicking on. I decided, as I was leaving work and walking through rather blustery conditions, that there was nothing special enough about today/tonight/the recent past or foreseeable future to warrant a walk through the cold, windy night for the privilege of paying $25 for tofu.
Instead, I made a pit stop at Superfresh for black beans and fries and cooked up some bean burgers. The excitement never ends. One of the things I truly enjoy about my husband, however, is the bizarre and thoughtful conversations we have after dinner. Tonight we talked about clonal trees and Methuselah, a tree thought to be 4,800 years old; the oldest living non-clonal tree. Last night we discussed the Hadron Particle Collider and how the Earth nearly imploded in 2008. Which, of course, led to the most romantic thing said all night:
If the whole world has to implode, I hope I implode with you.
I know. We're kind of like Romeo and Juliet. I'm just waiting for our movie to come out.
Anyway, I have absolutely nothing interesting to say about our burgers, so I'll skip right to the menu. I wanted to do something a little different this week. I've actually wanted to do this for a while. I did not use a single existing cookbook to construct my new menu - each of these recipes comes from a blog I've been following for a while, in one capacity or another. You can link to all the blogs on the left side of the page and as I prepare each recipe, I will link back to the blog from which it came.
1. Seitan and Broccoli with Pantry BBQ Sauce from the Post Punk Kitchen, Isa's blog.
2. Pasta with Peppers and Sausage
3. Red, Gold, Black and Green Chili
4. Sicilian Market Pasta, all three from SusanV at the Fat Free Kitchen blog.
5. Meatless Meatloaf from Mama Pea at Peas and Thank You. Mama Pea will have her first cookbook published this summer and I couldn't be happier for her. You should pre-order the book - I'm planning to pick my copy up the moment it's out.
6. Wheatberry "Paella" with Chickpeas and Leeks, also from thePPK.com. I'm pretty sure Isa can't write a recipe that doesn't include chickpeas...just an observation. A fun story - apparently, she was posting about the same time I was poking around my bookmarks looking for fun food, because I went back to the PPK about a half hour after deciding on #1 and found this freshly posted recipe. I feel kinda special about that.
7. Seitan with Prunes, a test recipe for the forthcoming UV2. I think all the other testers are a little afraid of this recipe. I'm not saying that I'm going into this without a little trepidation, but I will be the first person to test this recipe, despite it being posted about two months ago. I'll admit, I'm a little worried about how Mister will feel about savory-braised prunes sharing a skillet with his seitan, but I'm willing to risk a fail dinner for the sake of testing this "scary" recipe. You can count on a great and detailed post that night! Unfortunately, I won't be able to share the recipe, but I'm sure I'll plug once again for you to buy the book when it comes out.
With that thought, I'm going to give up on consciousness.
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