you lose some, you win some

So, I don't think I did too much to hide my disappointment with the Sicilian Market Pasta.  It had so very much potential to be an amazing pasta dish, but just not enough flavor in the end.  I was able to resurrect it and enhance it with some dollar tomatoes, but when I followed the actual recipe, it was nothing Mister and I would eat again.

But the chili was so good we ate until we were fat (which probably contradicts the purpose of the recipe) and Mister actually requested that I heat up the leftovers last night instead of cooking a new dinner.  So, when I got my peppers out to make dinner tonight, I had forgotten that I was afraid her infrequent use of pasta in recipes made Susan slightly less skilled in using it as an ingredient.

When I put my peppers (and tomato) on the counter to wait for their scrubbings, I was struck by the vibrant color contrast.  I love when recipes use multi-colored peppers, because unlike M&Ms, you actually can taste the difference between red and green and yellow.

One of the things I initially found intriguing enough about this recipe to include it in our weekly menu were the instructions to roast the peppers and sausages while the pasta cooked.  Once everything was laid out on the baking sheet, I was struck by two thoughts.

1. Look how pretty those peppers are!
2. Maybe I should just saute these buggers in some olive oil.

In then end, I just hoped the extra spray of olive oil would keep everything from drying out in the oven (my main concern was the Tofurky, honestly) and tried to give Susan another chance.  That positive thinking got me as far as combining the pasta with the roasted peppers and sausages before I started muttering under my breath about how she managed to win blog awards when she clearly doesn't know anything about cooking pasta, and what kind of nut doesn't love olive oil, and how I was going to ignore her blog from this point forward.

In other words, I lost my faith.

Turns out, I was a little premature.  It tasted just as good as it looks.  Granted, I did some serious tweaking to the tomato sauce, incorporated not only a generous bit of olive oil but also my "secret" ingredient - V8 Spicy Hot.  I was right about the sausages drying out a bit, and the roasting enhanced their flavor a little too much for me - they're already pretty intense; they don't need any help.  The peppers, however, were divine.

In fact, the only complaint I have about Pasta with Peppers and Sausage is that my mouth is too small.

worth waiting for

Normally, I'm scrambling to write my post and publish it by Midnight...you may or may not have noticed that, but if you wander through my blog, you'll find most of the posts went up pretty darn close to Midnight.

Truth be told, I could have started writing around 10:30 and had plenty of time to clean up our awesome, make-up-for-last-night dinner.  However, it's now pushing 1am and I still have a kitchen full of messy dishes...why?

Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

Mister loves chili, especially since it means he doesn't need to use a pesky utensil to eat.  No, we don't use forks here, we scoop our chili up with multigrain tostitos.  So, to "make up" for last night's less than successful dinner, I made SusanV's Red, Gold, Black and Green Chili.

Not only did this tasty and slightly zesty chili make up for the Seitan and Prunes debacle, it also restored my faith for the third and final recipe on the menu from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen.  I should note that I am not faithful to Susan's Fat Free Manifesto - I think olive oil is a good healthy fat when used in moderation and lends a delightful flavor you cannot imitate by sauteing with water.

A few other variations: in place of Tabasco sauce, I added a healthy dollop of harissa, mainly because anything hot-saucy that isn't harissa kind of terrifies me.  At least I know what to expect from harissa.  Also, Mister has mentioned his distaste for "squishy wheat" before, so I decided to forego the barley in the recipe, especially in light of last night's fail.  In place of it, I added a can of Eden Organic caribbean rice-n-beans.  It actually worked out perfectly.

So, why do I still have dirty dishes and I'm sitting here at my computer?

Well, shortly after I put our dishes on the counter to be washed, the Baking Bug bit me.  Yup.  So, in an effort to be a good little tester, I wandered over to my computer to see if there were any baked goods in need of testing.  To my ineffable delight, it seems the Baking Bug bit Dynise, too, because a chocolate cake recipe was sitting there, newly added, waiting for its first test.  I was more than happy to oblige.

Just before going into the oven.  I couldn't escape how closely the batter resembled fudge.  I really just wanted to eat the batter, so I stuffed this pan into the oven and just focused on licking the mixing bowl and spatula clean.  Score another win for vegan baking: No need to worry about salmonella when there are no raw eggs in your batter.

It actually started smelling amazing before I'd even finished mixing all of the components together, due to a patently killer technique used in prep.  Have I mentioned YOU ALL NEED TO GET THIS BOOK?  You do.

Here is my fudgy-wudgy but surprisingly fluffy and light piece of Funeral Cake.  Despite the slightly morbid name, it's just the best chocolate cake I've ever made.  Perfectly moist, the right amount of squishy, not too sweet (which surprised me, considering how much sugar is in there), and with those great little crumbs that you can squish with the back of your fork so you get every last morsel.  I could eat this cake until I got a bellyache.  I definitely see why this rich, dark chocolate cake would be comforting to mourners.

Well...those dishes aren't going to do themselves, and I can't leave them for Mister every night... can I?

in the mouths of babes

My brother(-in-law) is getting married in 7 weeks.

That's actually a little mind-blowing because no one ever thought he would get married, but he is, in fact, getting married.  Not only is he getting married, but he will instantly become a step-father to 4 children, in addition to already being the father of his beautiful daughter, my little angel baby.

When my SIL-to-be posted something on Facebook about how awesome their cake is going to be, I had this Lightbulb Moment when I thought, "oh dear, I hope they'll remember we don't eat animals..." regarding reception food.  Honestly, I don't have much of a problem with salad and side dishes, but Mister gets supercranky when he doesn't get to eat "real food" (more in a minute) so since social occasions can be a stretch anyway, I really don't want him to be hungry, too.

Upon further reflection, I remembered that one of the children is a vegetarian and took comfort, since surely, that means they will remember to consider a real vegetarian entree.  Then I started to reflect on the strength of a 14-year-old to make such a decision and wondered how she came to that point in her life and started thinking of my 8-year-old nephew, who has also decided not to eat animals.  This is truly perplexing to the rest of the family, especially my parents-in-law, who cannot understand why he doesn't want to eat chicken fingers.  Fortunately, his mother is supportive of his decision, and of course, his aunt and uncle love that he is a broccoli addict, but I couldn't stop thinking there...no, my mind is a restless creature.

When so many children are making such a substantial decision, to eschew the eating of animals, I can't help but wonder what they are seeing or what they understand that eludes the general population.  I hear about children, mainly between the ages of 5 and 10, choosing a meat-free diet more and more frequently and I want to know why.  What information are these children exposed to that is helping them make this decision?  In their innocence, are they able to better understand the nature of "meat" better than adults?

It has been said, and I have observed, that children have a natural sense of evil - by that I mean some children have an uncanny sense of a person who might harm them or a situation that is dangerous.  I have seen children [who were not abused] shy away from the embrace of someone who was later found to be a pedophile.  I have seen unerring compassion from children towards animals and other children, even adults.  You hear amazing stories of children starting charities to give other children pets, or farm animals for sustenance, or raising money for cancer research.  You are acquainted with the stereotype of stray animals following children who then plead with their parents to bring the new fuzzball into their home.  When they aren't whining, children can be extraordinary creatures.

This is how my mind works.  I think way too much.

The only segue to dinner I can think of is this: SusanV, the author of tonight's dinner recipe, has a daughter she refers to on her blog only by her first initial, E.  According to Susan, E loves pasta.  Funny - my husband also loves pasta!  Smells like a segue to me....

Having been quite productive today, between food shopping, teaching, and cleaning up the kitchen, I actually had very little energy left to make dinner.  A shame, really, as I had intended to make a strange (in a good way) and time-consuming recipe that Isa just posted yesterday on thePPK.com.  Nevertheless, I knew Sicilian Market Pasta from the Fat Free Kitchen blog would be much better accompanied by my Montepulciano than the bizarro wheatberry dish, so I started a pot of water to boil.

I deviated slightly from the recipe mainly because it seems like she's just making things more difficult for herself by sauteing each individual component separately and also because I prefer my cherry tomatoes to be at least lightly sauteed.  As the name of the blog might suggest, Susan is at least a little bit focused on cutting fat and calories in her recipes.  She includes the Weight Watchers exchange for all of her recipes.

I have nothing [big] against Weight Watchers, but what follows will probably reveal that WW is not the weight loss company I work for... Mister and I were unanimous in our reaction to this dish: too many years of dieting appear to have robbed Susan of her tastebuds.  This recipe had so very much potential....with some tweaking, this could be a recipe to reckon with, although I think Martha has already perfected it.  There was way too much pasta for the "sauce."  It's possible she meant to use 1 lb of fresh pasta, but 1 lbs of dry pasta was WAY too much.  There was also more basil than anything else, which is fine, except that it doesn't melt into a sauce.

Also, chickpeas and spaghetti just don't mix.  It is profoundly difficult to eat them together.  It was an attractive, but very bland dish.  Since we didn't eat much, there is a whole dinner's worth of leftovers, so I may try to craft a real sauce and serve the leftovers with that one day when time is tight and/or I don't feel like cooking, but really, Susan...this was the Guaranteed Not To Suck dish...now I'm more than just a little concerned about the other two recipes I have on my menu.

Because I don't want to leave you on a bad note, I will share the most amazing link.  I don't even know how I found this - it was one of those amazing finds that comes as the result of multiple "click-throughs" from one website to another.  Some woman discovered some Weight Watchers recipes cards from the 1970s and was so repulsed (and with good reason!) she devoted a blog to sharing them with others.  I laughed so hard I couldn't breath - although I don't want to rob you of your breath, I do hope you laugh as hard as I did, because everyone needs a little ridiculousness in their lives.

Click here.  You won't be sorry.

sleep is for the week

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.

can we do that again?

Wow!  I don't know what happened yesterday but it seems like a lot of you enjoyed my Apple Almond Oatmeal recipe...or maybe it was my stimulating discourse on queso-less quesadillas?  Probably the Via...  In any case, I appreciate all the folks who came to my blog and who directed others here as well!  Within the first 24 hours Refriedillas and Via-to-go was up, it skyrocketed to the top of my most popular posts, unseating the picture parade post that had held that spot since July.  I hope I don't disappoint tonight!

Backing up a moment to yesterday - it was an absotively, posilutely gorgeous Sunday, which I spent wandering all over my fair city, without so much as a light jacket.  I really had one major goal in mind - I wanted, nay, needed to go up to Sephora.  I have been without pure white eyeshadow for too long and it's really starting to limit my color palettes.  I'm also approaching the bitter end of my two favored lipsticks, so I was in search of lip color.  Before I had a chance to do that, though, I got notice from Candi KaBoom that Salon Sugar had a cancellation, so I darted across the street for a desperately necessary haircut.  Have you noticed I wait for the last possible minute to do most things?  For the record, I have never run out of gas....in my Prizm.

That's actually a really dorky picture of me, but it does show off my hair.  It also shows off how crooked my face is, but check out that lipstick!  I did head up to Sephora after getting my hairs did and I got my white eyeshadow, as well as the lipstain you see modeled so demurely above, and a bonus prize - I found vegan, roll-on perfume!

Urban Decay Yeyo matte eyeshadow and Greedy lip envy lipstain, with my shiny new vial of Pacifica Mediterranean Fig.  I don't ordinarily like smelling like food (aside from garlic), but it's really more of a green floral scent and very subtle.

Later in the evening, Mister and I braved the severely beautiful weather and went on a date to Pizzeria Stella.  We split an appetizer of broccoli rabe and rosemary flatbread, then Mister got a quattroformaggio (=4 cheeses) pizza while I got the marinara - spiced sauce, sprinkled with fresh oregano (what a treat!) and juicy slices of garlic.  I washed it down with the house red, which is a light, easy-to-drink Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and Mister had a Kutztown Red Cream Soda.

Today, though, was back-to-reality time for me, and even though I think I nodded off on the train, I did make it up to work and then got through most of the day by reminding myself that this was a three day week and when I was finished today, I'd be 33% through it and that much closer to my California vacation!  Yes, in case you were wondering, I do have "California Girls" stuck in my head, relentlessly "hearing" the chorus over and over again.

I rewarded myself by making Bok Choy and Baked Tofu Stir-Fry in Ginger-Citrus Sauce from Fat Free Vegan blog.

Aside from lacking mushrooms, I'm happy to report that mine doesn't look too different from Susan V's and that's always a victory in my book.  Her picture is much prettier, but she is a much better photographer than I am and almost definitely has a much better camera for that very reason.  Regardless of the way it looks, this little dinner was just as tasty as I had hoped it would be.

In her recipe, Susan mentions that the sauce will only have a hint of citrus flavor which can be enhanced, should the chef desire, by adding in some grated zest toward the end of cooking.  I have to admit, I didn't believe that it would be that subtle, since the freshly squeezed OJ is more than half of the liquid in the sauce, but she was right - it was very subtle and as a result, the sauce was perfect.  I would have liked it to be a little thicker, but it clung to the leaves of the bok choy magnificently.  I was really just excited that Whole Foods decided to have baby bok choys this week, because I've actually  been wanting to make this for the two weeks since I found it, but sometimes WF is a bit of a stinker about consistently stocking non-local foods.  The nerve! ;)

Tomorrow, I have one last "fresh" recipe to make before we enter "Eat everything in the house" mode.  Honestly, we'll only be away for a long weekend and I just finished soup that had been hanging out in the fridge for longer than that, but there's something about actually leaving the apartment for an extended period of time that makes me panic that any food left in the entire apartment will rot and sprout new wiggly life.  Hopefully, nothing will eat Angst's auntie/pet-sitter!