sometimes the sequel is better

While it is rarely true in motion pictures, I find that a dish is usually better the second or third time I make it.  I can only imagine that this is because the first time, I stay strictly close to the written recipe, and on future adventures, I break free of the tyranny of the recipe, allowing myself to tweak a little here and there.

Tonight, I reprised Pasta Shells with Black-Eyed Peas from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook.  We liked it just fine the first time around, which is why I made it again, but since I looked back over my original post, I remembered to give it a little more flavor this time around.  Mission accomplished: a generous sprinkling of my beloved sea salt blend took this from a decent dinner to a fantastic meal.

The shells were a little bigger than I thought they'd be, once they were all cooked up.  I knew they weren't as small as the ones I usually get, but these are really big - as in, almost clever-hors-d'ouevres-stuff-them big.  It was actually kind of fun trying to see how much "filling" I could force into each shell before stuffing it in my mouth.

I'm an adult.  I can play with my food if I want to.

extreeeeeeme close-up!

Anyway, in about 24 hours, I'll be trying to force myself to go to sleep so I can get up at some horrid time like 4am (which is when I should be going to sleep, not waking up).  Fortunately, the happy ending is that after I sleep through a four hour plane ride and groggily locate the bathroom and Starbucks at the Salt Lake City airport, I will find myself in San Francisco, ready for a much-needed, incredibly deserved [albeit short] vacation.

I've been researching cocktails on Esquire.com so I know some fun things to order (I am Over-Prepared Woman - that's my superhero name), and I've scoped out a natural, non-toxic nail salon where I hope to get a manicure to pass the time between my flight's arrival and my sister's.  This time tomorrow I'll be packing and panicking and hopefully, remembering to check-in online.  I'll be packing my fun little owl book as well as my camera (and the battery charger!), but I have absolutely no idea if I'll get a chance to post while I'm out there.

That being said, it's time to reveal what's behind Secret Door #1.

I've decided to create a new blog.  Don't worry - I'm not abandoning this one!  Angst Loves Spinach will continue to be my primary blogging home, but Pretty Woman in an Ugly World is going to be a kind of supplement, so to speak.

I realized that although this was meant to be a "look ma, I'm learning to cook vegan!" blog, there are a lot of times I've written up reviews of restaurants or other food-oriented establishments.  Customer service is very important to me and I feel like it is a dying art.  In an effort to put the spotlight on those businesses that continue to offer World Class Customer Service, as well as expose those who don't quite know how to spell it, I've created this new blog.

The spark behind it was two-fold.  If you want to wander over there, you'll find the "story" laid out amidst the tabs (which I know are still woefully lacking from this blog, and I hope to correct that soon!), but let me give you a brief synopsis:

As I mentioned in the last post, 13 of Mister's and my friends joined us for an evening of fun at North Bowl, based on our recommendation because we so enjoyed the first time we visited.  Our experience this time around was so far from the first experience as to be unrecognizable.  Our waitress was quite possibly the worst waitress I've ever had.  It was embarrassing, since it was my suggestion and most of our friends were from out of town.  I sent off a long, detailed, and "passionate" email to the management that very night, letting them know how unacceptable our experience was.

Management's response was swift and favorable - they reviewed their video tapes, identified the "culprit" and will address this occurrence with her.  Additionally, at the time of my choosing, Mister and I and two friends have been invited back to the bowling alley for a round of bowling and drinks on the house.

At my work, we try to keep an evaluation of World Class Customer Service by asking ourselves at the end of a customer interaction, "How does the client feel about me?  How the customer feel about our company?"  So, how do I feel about North Bowl?

I'm thrilled with them.

Seriously!  Within 12 hours of me writing that email, the management took the appropriate steps to ensure my future satisfaction with their establishment.  That kind of customer service is so out of fashion these days that it reminded me of something I had pondered long ago.

In the beginning of the movie, "Pretty Woman," Julia Roberts's character, Vivian (perfect '80s name) finds herself rudely turned away from a boutique on Rodeo Drive.  She is devastated because all she wanted to do was buy a dress so she would look appropriate for her dinner date.  I'm sure at least most of my readers are well enough acquainted with the scene that I don't have to rehash it, but here is what has stuck with me for years now: when she returns to the hotel and gets "in trouble" with Barnard, the hotel manager, she tells him her sob story (while losing her composure) and he, despite his notions about her and her occupation, has an irrepressible desire to make it right.  He picks up the phone, calls a fancy department store and calls in a favor, resulting in Vivian getting the perfect dress and everyone is happy.

The reason this stuck with me is because it is my opinion that a person should not have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars per night at a high-end hotel to be treated with respect and dignity.  The a$$-kissing is nice and I suppose that's something for money to buy, but it just feels like more and more often, we accept substandard service simply because there is no outstanding service available (or affordable).  I had an entrepreneurial moment while watching the moving about 5 years ago that I would like to get into hospitality just so that I could start my own hospitality business modeled after the service demonstrated at the Beverly Wilshire, but somewhere "normal" people could go.  Everyone deserves a little sucking up once in a while, don't you think?  (that is, by the way, absolutely a goal I have for this vacation - we're staying in two boutique hotels and I expect to be treated like a female version of Edward Lewis.)

So, in an effort to shift our service paradigm, especially in a time when money is far more scarce, so far more valuable, I want to highlight businesses that either offer incredible service consistently or companies, like North Bowl, who are willing to do whatever it takes to regain your business after someone messes up.  Occasionally, I may also write a scathing review of a business that exhibits unapologetically horrendous service, obviously hoping to influence my readers to take their hard-earned dollars elsewhere.

So, if you get bored in my absence, please, feel free to poke around on Pretty Woman in an Ugly World and let me know what you think!

green beer goggles

I don't actually like beer.  I think that is both a blessing and a curse.  On the one hand, beer is normally pretty cheap and easy to come by (although it takes way more beer than can fit in my belly to have any effect on me).  On the other hand, it doesn't taste very good, and by avoiding it I am also avoiding pointless calorie use and involving myself directly in scenes like this:

Apparently, shortly before I arrived home from work, there was a huge Irish band across the street, complete with a bagpipe choir and a marching band drumline.  Mister said the drums were making the apartment shake, which did not make our wee kitty happy.  They started up again while I was cooking dinner.  Mister started moaning but honestly, they weren't that bad - I kind of got a kick out them, as long as they kept it brief.  They did.

I never had the traditional corned beef and cabbage before I stopped eating animals, mainly because my family is not Irish and we didn't eat cabbage.  I don't even know what you do to beef to corn it, but it sounds kind of gross.  Nevertheless, I did feel the need to do something Irish and cabbagey for dinner tonight, so I made my own version of vegan corned beef and cabbage (with a little help from my friends).

That's some pretty purple cabbage just steam-simmering away with some garlic and caraway seeds right there.  While it was cooking, I reflected on a memory I might have made up, but I think I remember my mother telling me about the time my sister, as an adult, wanted to make some traditional German meal that involved cabbage and how it stunk up the whole house.  As I inhaled the sweet scent of my cabbage, I wondered just what a person has to do to cabbage to make it smell as bad as other people think it does.  I think the answer is: boil it.  I think as long as you refrain from boiling it for hours, it is just fine.

In place of the corned beef, I sliced a package of Tofurky kielbasa on the bias and then did a quick saute in a bit of olive oil.  Once it was lightly browned, I turned off the heat and finished cooking the cabbage.  Finally, I artfully arranged the "beef" over a bed of Red Cabbage with Caraway Seeds from The Urban Vegan.  

It was a delightful combination of sweet and savory, a little crunchy and a little chewy.  We happily finished it all up while discussing how some famous people manage to have long, fruitful, and relevant careers (think Madonna, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Steven Tyler) while other celebs enjoyed a phenomenal career until the had some kind of major meltdown and never quite make it back to normal (for example, Mel Gibson, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Mariah Carey).

I love Mister's and my dinner conversations.

black-eyed Irish

When we came to check out what is now our new home, there was really only one thing that gave us a moment of hesitation.  As I'm sure you picked up, we were not enthusiastic about the restaurant/bar/nightclub that opened beneath our old home and annoyed us every single night until we moved.  So, we had a few qualms when we looked out the bedroom window of our new home and saw a bar.

Not just any bar... No, we find ourselves in the slightly unenviable position of living across the street from an Irish bar.  In March.

Thursday should be amazing.  You can't see completely, but it's a Jameson sign and it says "Get your Irish on with an Irish Ginger."  While I will admit I'm a little curious about an Irish Ginger, Jameson and I have tattered past, and although I'm Irish, I really don't dig the St. Patty's day bar scene.  Aside from the first St Patty's day after I turned 21 and my dad and I went to this nice local bar/restaurant and drank green things and no one spilled anything on us.

Anyway, I figure Irish folk and black eyes more or less go together like PB&J, so that should be a relatively good segue to our dinner: Pasta Shells with Black-eyed Peas and Artichokes from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook.

This "Italian" dish had some of the most bizarrely matched ingredients.  I don't know if they even have caraway seeds in Italy - I'll have to look if Mister and I really do make it to Tuscany next year for our anniversary like we planned three and a half years ago.  In any case, I kind of feel like the only thing that made this dish "Italian" was the presence of pasta and the artichoke hearts.  We added a little southern charm with black-eyed peas and I'm not sure what the deal was with the smoked tofu, but you never have to ask me twice to include that stuff in a recipe!

It was an interesting result.  I thought it was a little bland at first and I thought Mister was probably going to play that old game of pushing things around his plate and trying to just eat the shells and artichoke hearts.  I ended up being quite wrong!  Mister had two and a half helpings and I had a little more as well, although I do think it benefited from the Mediterranean sea salt I sprinkled over top.  I don't know what I would do without that stuff, honestly.  Mister commented that it was creamy, yet a little acidic.  No good at keeping culinary secrets, I explained the creaminess came from the beans I had mashed into a paste and then combined with the vegetable broth to make a sauce, and I can imagine the acidity came from the apple cider vinegar.  Yes, of all the variations of vinegar in the world and on my shelf, this recipe wanted apple cider vinegar.  Another bizarre twist, if you ask me.

So, happy weekend!  I'm thrilled to be done with the week at work, even though I'm teaching tomorrow.  I've constructed this week's menu and I'm hoping that if I stop stalling and start cleaning up dinner, I can get to bed early enough that I can get up and go food shopping before lessons tomorrow.  Honestly, very little is more irritating than trying to do your grocery shopping near a major social hub on a Saturday night.  Besides, I'd rather spend my evening getting a jump on unpacking - I really want this weekend to see the end of unpacking so we can start spending our weekends actually enjoying our new home...watch a movie, just screw around on the computer without feeling like I should be doing something more productive, or *gasp* reading! 

You envy my exciting social life.

Wanna see the new menu?  It got an "OooH!" of approval from the Mister, so I must have done something right.  A lot of the recipes are from The Urban Vegan, so maybe he is as big a fan of Dynise as I am.  Truth be told, I haven't had the chance to test any new recipes since the moving process began and I found myself missing her style, so I figured I'd make some of the old recipes to get back into the groove.  I do have some baking projects in the wings, though, now that I've figured out how to turn on the oven.

1. Sweet and Sour Stirfry from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook.  Yes, this was on the menu last week - I managed to forget two vital ingredients.

2. Greek-Style Rice Pilaf, also from VTCC and last week's menu.  Going to Cedars threw us off a day...

3. Sloppy Joes from The Urban Vegan.  I have a bunch of sloppy joes recipes, but I've never made this one, which uses Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), unlike my other recipes which either use a meat analog or lentils.  I'm interested to see how the TVP works out and it's kind of a fun, weird thing to buy and cook.

4. Cauliflower-Chickpea Tagine, also from The Urban Vegan.  I can't remember if I've made this before, but if I haven't, it's high time.

5. Red Cabbage with Caraway Seeds and Tofurky Kielbasa, also from The Urban Vegan.  Can you guess which night we're eating this?  I think the flavors will be pleasantly complemented by an Irish Ginger...whatever that is.

6. Spaghetti con Salsa Fresca, also from The Urban Vegan.  I chose this recipe because it will make Mister happy and because I made a little error in my shopping last week and came home with two pounds of plum tomatoes....instead of the two plum tomatoes I needed for the curry last night.

7. BBQ-Flavored White Beans with Sausage and Spinach from Vegan Express.  Ordinarily, I make this recipe as part of a cycle that begins with Isa's Pomegranate BBQ tofu.  This recipe allows me to use up the leftover homemade BBQ sauce that is way too good to waste.  This will mark the first time I make it with store bought BBQ sauce, but I figured that since I had to get some for the Sloppy Joes recipe, I may as well use it to make this recipe.  It's been quite a while since I made it last.