partners in crime

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I could burn water if I tried to cook.  My mother tried to explain to me that cooking is as easy as following a recipe, but I couldn't be bothered to read and prepare food simultaneously.  When I moved into my first apartment, I was somewhat skilled at Minute Rice, frozen chicken nuggets, and stovetop mac & cheese (involving packets of impossibly orange "cheese product").  I was also pretty skilled at ordering take-out and delivery.

Oh yeah, ramen noodles - I was a champ with those.

Anyway, when I met Mister, we usually went out for food, occasionally got a pizza after work, and once in a while, he'd cook something up.  Once I got this romantic notion that I would make him dinner.  I set the table with my parents' special china, crystal glasses, and lit some candles, then served the most impressive meal I could make at that time: chicken nuggets, Minute Rice, and Campbell's chunky soup in the Potato Cheese variety.

I look at that "menu" now and understand why Mister didn't let me cook again for at least two more years.  I usually credit two things with me learning how to become the gourmet chef I pretend to be today: losing my job and therefore having all day to prepare dinner, and several great cookbooks gifted to me by my husband's mother, specifically Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.  Let's put a little timeline together, though:

Summer 2001 - Mister and I share our first kiss, become generally inseparable.
Winter 2002 - Mister becomes a vegetarian, forsaking meat and confusing the heck out of me
Summer 2002 - I join Mister in ceasing animal consumption
October 2002 - move out of my parents' house and into my ghetto apartment.  No takeout worth risking my life for, so I learn to cook...kind of.  General rotation at this point: pasta with red sauce, veggie lo mein, veggie burgers with fries, mixed veggies on rice.  Just mix and repeat.
blahblahblah
June 2006 - get laid off, have tons of time to cook, suddenly grow my gourmet wings.

Do you see that huge gap?  Do you really think we lived on a diet of mixed veggies with rice, pasta and sauce, pizza and veggie burgers for four years?  No, we didn't.  Somewhere in there, Mister taught me some tricks and helped me figure out this crazy cooking thing.

See, I don't work all day and then come home and cook us dinner because Mister can't or is unwilling to.  I come home and cook dinner because I enjoy cooking and it helps me unwind.  Mister has offered many times to make dinner, but he knows I enjoy it.  He does offer his assistance from time to time - especially where mexican/southwestern cuisine is concerned.  I never would have known that you can't eat chili without tortilla chips and that using a fork is a sin but a spoon?  Well, that's straight-up sacrilegious.

Tonight, as I was dicing a pepper for Tofu Rancheros, Mister came sniffing his way into the kitchen to see what was going on (the tasty aroma of the pan-seared tofu drew him in...no, really, it did).  He asked what I was making, I told him.  He asked how exactly that was going to work, so I told him the recipe.  He stood, looking a little perplexed, then said,

"Shouldn't there be refried beans?"
Um....
"I thought that's what made them 'Rancheros,' right?"
Um.... I thought it was the tortilla.
"I don't know..."
Okay, well, do you want there to be refried beans?
thinkthinkthink "Yes."
short staring contest commences, and then,
"So I'll go get them.  Do we need anything else?"

So that's the story of how Mister made my old recipe for Tofu Rancheros a little bit better.

Although, I have to say, letting the congealed mass of mashed beans sluuuurrrp! into my food is never something that makes me drool with anticipation.  When I was younger, we had a poodle and when she got older we had to feed her a special diet which involved phenomenally stinky canned dog food.

I don't want to say that this reminds me of that... but why would I have told you that story if it didn't?

It always works out, though, once the heat has some time to work it into a malleable goop.

So, for your viewing and tasting pleasure, here is a recipe to celebrate World Vegan Day:

Tofu Rancheros
6 servings (or 8 skimpy ones)

Ingredients:
6 small to medium tortillas (I used Whole Foods 365 brand Red Chili tortillas)
14 oz firm or extra firm tofu
cooking spray
3 Tbsp tamari/soy sauce
2 Tbsp oil
1 large red bell pepper, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
14 oz can of petite diced tomatoes, drained with liquid reserved
1 cup finely chopped kale (or green thing of your preference)
a generous tsp of chili powder
a generous tsp of dried cilantro
a scant tsp of kosher salt
1/2 tsp cumin


Coat a square skillet with cooking spray.
Slice tofu through the middle lengthwise, then into 8ths crosswise.  Heat the skillet while the tofu drains on a towel, then lay the tofu on the hot skillet and sprinkle with tamari.  Flip tofu immediately to allow tamari to penetrate both sides of the tofu, and cook on medium-high for about 10 minutes, flipping two or three times (about every 3 minutes), until browned and a little crisp on both sides.  Remove from heat and roughly chop with your spatula.

I'm actually not very good at "roughly."  I prefer perfect triangles, cutting each square piece of tofu from corner to corner and then the other way, too.  But it doesn't have to look this OCD precise.

While the tofu is cooking, heat the oil in a saute pan and saute the peppers and garlic in oil 3-5 minutes over a medium-low flame.  Add drained tomatoes, chili powder, cilantro, salt, and cumin and stir well to combine.  Cook for 5 more minutes, adding reserved tomato juice if the mixture seems to dry out, then add kale and stir to wilt.

Add refried bean and cut up the congealed, can-shaped mass until it can mix in with the other ingredients.  Stir everything together until it is smooth and looks more like food or vomit than a can-shaped, pink cylinder of dog food.

Add tofu and mix well - feel free to break up the tofu a little more with the spoon as you mix.

Cook for a minute or two more, then remove from heat.  Divide mixture among warmed tortillas, then tuck the bottom and roll like a burrito and enjoy!

It must have come out alright - Mister had four.  That might be a record number of servings involving tofu for him.  He was so busy enjoying his "fun dinner" that he didn't notice how much he'd eaten until I pointed it out, which then veered off into a conversation about Del Taco and him ordering the family value meals when he goes there because everything is so cheap and small.

I hurt all over

When I started working at the place I just left, about four and a half years ago, the hardest thing for me to get used to was sitting.  I just sat, tethered to a phone, all day.  Yes, I had a couple of breaks, and believe me, I used that time to move around as much as possible, but for the most part I just sat.  The reason this was so difficult for me was because I had been unemployed for nine months, during which time I got into wandering around the city when I wasn't begging people to hire me.  Before I was laid off, I had a pretty physical job - moving at least every hour to go from this room to that or this house to that school.

Conversely, I got a little too good at sitting over the last four years, and my 3 hours daily of commuting did not help.  I got comfortable and besides, sitting so much allowed me to pull off dangerously high heels (which I have consequently forgone in my new position...at least for now).  Now?  Well, my whole body hurts.  I have not had to stand up for 8 hours in a row for....well, probably 15 years, actually.  15 years ago, I worked retail between Black Friday and mid-January, but my body was 15 years younger and able to handle the stress - in heels!  Right now, I would love a good massage and a bottle of aspirin.

My new job had a Grand Opening celebration this weekend with all hands on deck from Friday until tonight.  Everyone was working the floor, including the President, Marketing Director, and a bunch of other people who usually spend a decent bit of time sitting at their desks.  I'm sure at least some of them are hurting, too.

Anyway, I don't have a whole lot to say about food.  I'm hoping to have some good stories next week so I can convince myself to write more.  I'm kind of in this place where I'm re-evaluating Angst Loves Spinach and trying to see what's important and where we're going here.  I started the blog in the hopes of developing myself as a creative chef and as an outlet for my love of writing.  I do love to write and I have had a ball the last two years doing so, but I've definitely gotten away from the original intention - to create recipes, not just babble about the recipes other people made up and I cooked.

I'd like to flatter myself into believing that at least a few people are reading these words in something akin to horror and thinking, "gee, I hope she's not ending the blog..."  If that is going through anyone's mind, let me give a word of comfort - that is not really my intention.  Here is what I am hoping for: I am currently adjusting to my new job and my new schedule.  Once I am adjusted, once my body finds a new strength so I'm not bone-tired when I get home from work, I will find that I have a ton more time.  My goal is to use at least some of that time to become more creative - set goals for myself, force myself to create something at least once a week.

I haven't heard anything (yet) about this year's VeganMoFo (and I truly hope it will occur again this year, but I certainly do not have the time or energy to be one of the initiators/organizers).  The last two years, this event has had a considerable influence on my posting and I'm hoping it will re-ignite the fire in my kitchen again this year.  I'm fairly certain that I will be up to speed and as comfortable as I'll ever be with my new job by the time it starts, so I want to make a schedule of goals to meet that month, culinarily speaking, so that I can spread my wings and stretch again.  I always feel such a sense of accomplishment when I come up with my own recipes, but lately I've been way to tired to do anything but follow someone else's [fabulous] recipe like a little KitchenZombie.

Nevertheless, I will, as I do every week, share the coming week's menu with you (as well as my joy that my new job is only a few short blocks from Trader Joe's, so I'll be stopping there after work tomorrow to pick up supplies):

1. Spanakopita from The Accidental Vegan with roasted fingerling potatoes.  I have never made this recipe.  I will admit, I'm a little nervous about making this recipe, the way I am always nervous when I try to make something Mister knows from his childhood of good eats made with love by a Greek father or a half-Sicilian mother.  My mother-in-law is getting awfully good at making Spanakopita from YiaYia's recipe, under her tutelage, so to go it alone like this is both invigorating and terrifying.  You can bet there will be a post the night I make this!

2. Seitan Pepper Steak, also from The Accidental Vegan.

3. Cajun Red Beans and Rice, also from The Accidental Vegan, because I used all of my self-control last week when I made the menu to not include this, since I had another beans-n-rice recipe on there, but this week, This is the beans-n-rice recipe.

4. Coconut Curry Rice from Vegan on the Cheap.

5. Baked Ziti, also from Vegan on the Cheap with sauteed cauliflower and broccoli.  This is also a new recipe (I believe - sometimes I space makings so far apart I forgot I made something before!), but when I was looking over the menu, I realized we had a lot of cuisines represented (Greek, Japanese, Cajun/Latina, Indian), but no Italian.  If I hadn't come upon this when I did, and if it hadn't looked as easy as it does, we'd have been reprising Isa's Pasta e Fagioli for the 100th time this year.

let's give 'em something to talk about (link party)

A friend of mine posted an article on facebook today about how useless a college education is, sparking a short but lively interaction between friends in the comment section.  The main point of the article is that institutions of higher education are outdated, obsolete.  They are expensive wastes-of-time and in the end, the bearer of a degree benefits little from that time and money spent.  I have my own mixed feelings toward this article.

On the one hand, I did go to college.  I even went to grad school and was 2/3 through my Masters degree before taking a leave of absence that turned into dropping out altogether.  I am still paying off my Bachelors degree but I haven't worked in "my field" since 2003.  I may still be paying off the degree I didn't get when I entered graduate education (can't differentiate that debt from leftover wedding debt with some travel/moving debt mixed in for good measure).  So, to sum it up, I am many thousands of dollars in debt for a degree and a half that I'm not using.

On the other hand, I think there is a great deal more learning that goes on in higher education than what is summarized on that nifty piece of paper you get when you wear a black robe under a hot May sun for a few hours.  Do I regret that I haven't worked in "my field" in over 8 years?  Somewhat.  Do I regret what I eventually got my degree in?  Sometimes, and more frequently lately.  Do I feel I would have gotten as far as I've gotten professionally without a degree?  No.  No, I do not.

Every time I've engaged in a job search over the last 10 years, any job I had any interest in pursuing was quite clear on the necessity of a college degree.  Some have been content with a 2-year degree, others have stated that a 4-year degree is "preferred."  Besides just having a degree to have a degree, I think I learned a lot more during my time in the classroom.

I learned how to think.
I learned how to ask questions.
I learned how to communicate to various levels of understanding.
I learned how to expand my vocabulary; I learned how to "dumb it down" for accessibility.
I learned how to juggle work, school, and social life.
I learned about a big world I didn't know existed - I was extraordinarily fortunate to go to two schools who placed a heavy emphasis on multi-culturalism and learning from "the other."
I learned how to play nice with people who weren't like me.
I learned how to reach deep inside myself and find something I held in common with "the other."
I learned how to see the world, or just my little city, through the eyes of someone completely unlike me.

I learned how to cooperate.  I learned how to love.  I learned.

So, regardless of my current profession being as far from "my field" as possible, I have always been and continue to be ineffably grateful for the 9 years I spent in institutions of higher learning.  I learned a lot from the books, but I learned a lot from the people and the experience as well.

My college and grad school were very focused on social justice, equality, and leaving the world a better place than it was when you entered.  The world around us is making it very difficult to carry out the last one, but I have no doubt that my classmates are continuing to strive toward that goal as much as I am.  By being part of that culture, surrounded by that ethos for nearly a decade of my life, my mind is irreversibly changed.  I was privileged, sheltered, and myopic as an adolescent.  Being a part of that new world helped to shape me into a pensive, globally-conscious, action-oriented adult.

My decision to give up meat had very little to do with the suffering of animals, but rather, it was focused on the degradation of our world - environmentally, nutritionally, and socially - which can be traced to the meat industry.  My husband became a vegetarian first and I thought he was crazy - life without meat, cheese, milk, etc, was absolutely foreign to me and I was not comfortable with it at all.  I asked him why he chose that route and his long, thoughtful answer appealed completely to the part of me that mourns for the exploitation rampant in poorer areas of the world, poorer areas of our own country, state, 25-mile radius.  It was the slow realization that I was contributing to the poverty and hunger of other human beings by indulging in luxuries like filet mignon on a pretty regular basis that led me to declare "Never again," as two-thirds of a perfectly good piece of meat slid off of my plate and into the waiting garbage can.

The USDA (in all their hallowed, pure-intentioned, unconflicted-interest glory) released the new My Plate, to replace the food pyramid as the new guide for how Americans should eat.  This has led to a number of editorials, blogs, and tweeted musings about the influences that shaped the Plate and whether it accomplished any good whatsoever.

Mama Pea stirred up quite a discussion with her post - I encourage you to read not only the post but also the comments.  Her readers are an insightful and generally well-educated bunch.  Someone who was interested in doing so could learn a whole lot of good information from these comments.  I know I did.

Nutrition and healthy eating are nearly constantly on my mind.  I work for one of the top three weight loss programs in the nation as one of the people who train incoming new hires as well as "uptraining" the present corps of employees on new policies, guidelines, or other relevant information.  This can be, on limited occasion, extremely rewarding.  Most of the time, it is heart-rendingly frustrating.  Because I have put so much time into understanding my own relationship with food and the way that it fuels my body and propels my life, I take for granted that other people also think of these things.  I am guilty of crawling back into my own little world and neglecting the evidence of the much larger world out there.  It is astonishing how little people know about food, nutrition, and how to not kill themselves.

A few times, I have thought it would be humorous to devote an entire post or two to some of the bizarre things my new hires or present employees say to me in trainings.  While these things are kind of funny in retrospect, as a "I can't wait to tell Mister about this one" kind of thing, they are horrifying when they actually occur because they remind me how much I take for granted in my own life.  Here are some highlights:

There was the employee who was truly surprised that chicken would not be included on our vegetarian program. [click here for the full story]

There was the hot dog vendor who was personally offended by my tofu pups.

There was the woman who explained that vegetarians have to eat a lot of food that's been enriched with protein to help them "fight the cravings."  I was too busy being horror-stricken to ask her what vegetarians were craving that they needed protein in large quantities to ward off.

That same employee, only minutes later also explained that vegetarians don't get enough nutrients, which is why "they all have that weird skin color."  Mister and I had a field day with this one.  That weird skin color?  We weren't sure whether she meant that healthy glow that comes from eating foods that are good for you or the absence of red-flushed cheeks/face that indicate hypertension.

Another new hire nearly laughed himself into a coma trying to figure out why we would even need a vegetarian weight loss program since "those people" don't eat anything.  On the one hand, I'm glad he was able to recognize that eating animals contributes to the obesity rampant in our nation.  On the other hand, I explained to him that there are a great many things that are vegetarian-safe but will make you fat: potato chips, cake, french fries (not from McDonalds), most candy; I finished by pointing out that Alec Baldwin is a vegetarian.  I didn't need to say the rest.

I don't share these stories to make fun of the "stars," rather, to show what I believe is a relatively common ignorance about healthy eating.  It's so much more convenient to eat whatever McDonald's tells you is healthy or pick the lowest calorie treat in Starbucks' pastry case than it is to think of balance.  Pizza and drive-thru burgers are so much easier than working all day and then cooking a meal from scratch.  I totally get that and there are times I feel the same way.

So, although I feel the USDA is hopelessly corrupt and has been bought out by Big Meat/Dairy, I do think the Plate is a babystep in the right direction - at least it shows that half the plate should be taken up by fresh whole foods like fruit and vegetables.  Even though protein represented by meat and dairy are considered an essential part of your daily meals, at least the protein portion is smaller than the rest.  People don't know enough, generally, about nutrition or the corruption of those who feed us (so to speak) to make an educated decision, so if this will give them a little tap in the right direction (portion control, anyone?), I'm all for it.  Paradigms are not shifted overnight and the veg movement is definitely gaining ground.  We'll get there.

In the meantime, may I suggest two in-depth articles for your reading pleasure?

On the Huffington Post, Nil Zacharias explores The Inconvenience of Being Vegan.  He provides a lot of really good information in a completely accessible and readable format.  He incorporates humor but knows when to turn more serious to make his point.  He also includes a ton of links so interested readers can get more information.

At ZenHabits, the writer explores the myth that soy is bad for you in some way.  I was fortunate to find this post immediately after one of my new hires expressed concerns his son had raised to him about soy, resulting in the young man's refusal to eat anything with soy.  When I say "anything," I mean this young man is reading labels as closely as a vegan looking for casein.  This is a well-written and comprehensive answer to him buying into the anti-soy propaganda circulated, not surprisingly, by Big Meat and Big Dairy....

I meant to tell you how much I enjoyed the Rice Island Casserole from Vegan on the Cheap tonight, but I think too much.

lessons learned at the cutting board

Call me a lifelong student or simply a student of life; I love learning things and applying the things I learn.  When I was actually in college and grad school, you couldn't shut me up once I got going about something I had learned or read and once I had babbled all about it to one person, the information was with me - learned.  There is something about sharing what I learn with others that helps me to more fully understand it myself.

It was really difficult to make myself go back to work yesterday - I had a three-day weekend because of taking my birthday off and at least half the country seemed to have yesterday off because of Martin Luther King Day.  I tried to give myself a pep talk by asking myself, rhetorically, I thought, what on earth I would do if I didn't go to work.  Unfortunately, I was prepared, and started listing things I would do if I stayed home.  Ultimately, I convinced me to go to work because I knew we were in for some nasty weather and I wanted to leave myself the option of calling out today if it really was bad.

That's exactly what I did.  I'm pretty sure it was fate or possibly predestination (in other words: I had predetermined to take the day off if the weather was even remotely hazardous to travel).  After thawing out from my walk home in 20something degree weather since the buses felt the best way to honor MLK was to make sure Rosa had to walk, I started making dinner.  As I was shredding my cabbage and boiling the farfalle, Mister drew my attention to the little sparkly bits of snow dancing around in the streetlamps' light.  By the time I put dinner on the table, there was actually a coating on the roads which surprised the heck out of me - I didn't think we were actually supposed to get an accumulation!  Through dinner and clean-up, the snow continued to fall - just tiny little guys, but enough of them that the 20-degree streets didn't stand a chance - and then they got bigger.  By the time we were heading to bed, the snow had turned from fluffy flakes of happy to ominous drops of freezing rain, ricocheting off the windows before coating the snow-covered streets with a layer of ice.

I got up in the morning and it looked like the rain had cleared up most of the streets, so I had some tea and breakfast, but as I listened to the moaning of the wind outside, I became more than just a little curious about the state of things, so I visited weather.com and decided now was as good a time as any to follow SEPTA's tweets and was I ever right.  For the next twenty minutes, as I hemmed and hawed about whether to risk a relapse of my fragile health to go to work today, I was bombarded with updates on this bus being rerouted and that one being cancelled, while this train was late and that one is only going half its normal route, and let's not forget about the trolleys being stopped because of "smoking manhole covers."  I decided the apocalypse was manifesting itself through public transit and said to myself, once again, "what will you do if you stay home?"  This time, though, I made a list of all the ways I would be more productive at home than at work, and when I hit the bottom of the paper, I called out.  It took a minute, including writing time, by the way.

What on earth does all this have to do with learning, you ask?
Well, nothing really, aside from allowing me a little extra time to cook dinner and forcing me to be introspective about something I thought I'd left mostly in my past for the sake of helping a student with her homework.  So, on to dinner!

Since I was well-rested (yes, I left out the part about going back to bed after leaving the list to be completed upon re-waking), I had plenty of energy to devote to making Chickpea Piccata, served on a fluffy cloud of Caulipots, both from Appetite for Reduction.  Here are some things I learned:

1. If Isa wants to help people lose weight, she needs to stop making her recipes so darn tasty.  I have not had trouble keeping my promise to my mom yet.

2. Thanks to Isa and Dynise, I have become much more daring with garlic and with shallots.  There was a time, about a month ago, actually, when I couldn't fathom preparing garlic in anyway that did not involved pressing it so that it would more or less dissolve innocuously into my food.  Now?  Check out these huge slices of garlic:

3. Shallots make me cry.  I've seen some funny pictures of onion goggles, but I've never really had any problems with onions, green onions, shallots, or garlic making me tear up...until tonight.  It was the weirdest thing; I was slicing the shallots and all of a sudden, I noticed my eyes were stinging and about to tear up and I stood upright and allowed myself a moment of confusion - it's not like tonight was the first time I'd sliced shallots.  I think the difference tonight is that I was wearing my glasses, not my contacts - can anyone else confirm this or am I just a freak?

4. Angst loves when I stay home, but he doesn't like to share.  He demonstrated his defiance tonight by hopping up onto Mister's dinner chair while I was filling our bowls and making himself very comfy.

Look at that scowl!  He was very clearly saying, MY chair.  When Mister came to sit for dinner, Angst just gave him that same angry look, as if to say, "find another chair. This one's taken."

He scrammed when Mister made like he was going to sit on him, though.

The Chickpea Piccata was absolutely fabulous.  From the minute I opened this book for the first time, that was high up on my list of things I wanted to make, and it did not disappoint.  I want to share Isa's intro because it perfectly sets you up for the amazing flavors about to meet and mingle in your mouth:

A plate of piccata is like an instant fancy dinner with all the stops.  One second you're just sitting there, all normal-like, but the moment that first forkful of lemony wine bliss touches your tongue, you're transported to candlelight and tablecloths, even if you're sitting in front of the TV.

I served the piccata over Caulipots, as Isa suggests.  Mister and I love the way this girl thinks; one of the things we missed the most after "going veg" was mashed potatoes, which doesn't make any sense, since potatoes are not an animal.  We realized, though, that there are very few things in our diet with which you can serve mashed potatoes.  Isa has changed all of that, though, with her genius scheme to used mashed potatoes as the starchy base, rather than the standard rice/grain or pasta - we love her for it.

The caulipots were unbeatable - they were just a little lighter than regular mashed potatoes, but packed a powerful punch, flavor-wise and nutritionally.  I used only two Tbsp of broth in the mashing, yet the whole batch was perfectly seasoned from that + olive oil + little bit of salt.  This may very well become my standard "mashed potatoes" recipe.  If I haven't said it yet, please do yourself and everyone you cook for a big favor: break open your piggy bank and head to your local bookstore to get yourself a copy of Appetite for Reduction.