good social life = bad blogger

Adventures take away from my blogging time.

I don't think that's a bad thing, necessarily...unless my adventures lead to me feeling like I'm about to spew in the ladies' room at work and then make me unconscious for nearly 15 hours straight.  Fortunately, only the first of my adventures had that disastrous result - the rest kept getting better, which isn't a bad way to spend a weekend, if you ask me.

It all started Wednesday night.  I had everything all ready to go and carefully sliced 10 cloves of garlic into relatively uniform slices before letting them swim in a generous amount of olive oil for about 10 minutes.  While they were busy infusing the olive oil with delightful garlic goodness, I was chopping up broccoli florets for Orecchiette con Broccoli from The Urban Vegan.  Once the garlic had a little time to make the apartment smell amazing, I plopped a teaspoon of white miso in the middle of the pan and pulled out my newly acquired flat whisk to mix it all in.

I was pretty excited to use this whisk, confident that it would make the difference in how difficult it's been in the past to blend the white miso into the garlicky olive oil.  It was fun to play with my new toy, but it really didn't deliver the way I thought it should.  However, I don't think it's the whisk's fault - from testing for her upcoming cookbook, I've discovered that there are times Dynise (inadvertently, obviously) leaves out one very important detail, like "use fresh pasta" or "add this crucial ingredient."  I'm thinking it's possible (and I will email for confirmation) that she intended for the miso to be dissolved in broth or water and for that to be the thing that is whisked into the garlic and oil, because miso all by itself most certainly does not want to be blended into oil... it just kind of gets smaller.

In an effort to force the miso to "melt" I added a splash of vegetable broth that might have been just a few days past its prime...which may possibly have contributed to my intense nausea the following day.  Regardless, it looks good and tasted great while I was eating it!

When I woke up the following morning, the first thing I noticed was that my belly was not happy.  I thought I was just overly hungry (you know how your stomach actually hurts if you get hungry enough?), so I had a nice big breakfast of waffles and a sliced apple.  Probably not my best move.  My digestive system rebelled a little, but I kept going because I had important, time-sensitive things to do at work.  In case you're wondering, when I got to work and nearly lost my breakfast in the bathroom, those things were able to wait a couple of hours...and then a whole day, since I ended up leaving early.  By 4 pm I was snug in my bed with chills; I was up for about an hour and a half around 8pm, but was back in bed soon and slept until my alarm went off the next morning at 7.  I could tell my body wasn't completely okay, but I had to go to work, so I carefully ate an apple with some tea, got ready and headed out the door.  I ate little things throughout the day and by the time I got home, I was feeling confident that I could handle dinner, but I didn't want to make it.

I convinced Mister to go to Pizzeria Stella, but there were no open tables, so we ended up at Pietro's.  Fortunately, they have recently added the exact thing I wanted at Stella - a marinara pizza with sliced garlic and fresh oregano.  I ate half of mine with a nice glass of Malbec, forgot to photograph it but completely intend to post about it...until I felt all sick again and had to lie down when we got home.

I was much better by last night, fortunately, since Mister and I had big plans to see old friends.  I met up with some of my oldest friends at Cedars, to celebrate a friend's birthday.  We had a delightful meal, full of laughter and inside jokes, followed by the insistence of my friends' beautiful daughter that we pay the check and go to Rita's for water ice.  She is entirely too adorable (and well-behaved!) to deny, so we had our dessert in the chill evening air.  Once the little one had her sugar high on, we let her run around South Street so she would actually sleep when they returned to the hotel.  She and her mommy left us, as did Mister, and my friends and I headed over to Southwark for a nightcap.

I did something I haven't done in years.  I closed the bar.  It was awesome.

However, it didn't leave me in any state to be blogging - believe me, you have no interest in what I have to say at 2:15 in the morning.

I slept about an hour and a half later than I intended, but I was having such a great weekend, why mess it up with an agenda?  As a result, I missed the Headhouse Farmers Market again, but there's always next week!  After some food shopping and some maintenance at Salon Sugar (goodbye, grays!), I finally made dinner again, for the first time since I apparently poisoned myself (of course, Mister hasn't suffered any ill effects, so it might not have been the dish - it might just be my job):

there aren't too many things more beautiful than this

although this comes close...

Tonight's dinner was Spicy Ragout of Vegetables and Tofu, also from Quick Vegetarian Pleasures.  I've had this cookbook long enough to use it frequently and then forget about it for a year, which means if there are things in there I haven't made, it was only because there was something about them that was initially unattractive.  I can only guess that the thing in this recipe was tofu, because I really didn't like it much when I first started cooking.

For shame...it's really good and is the perfect protein to complete this meal.  It was kind of a bizarre flavor combination - there's something about basil and peas that just doesn't work in my mind.

Fortunately, it was delightful on the tongue.  I laid the ragout on a bed of brown rice and upon scooping the rice into our bowls I had a revelation: I really don't get brown rice.  We don't mesh.  Maybe it's because I was raised on fluffy white Minute Rice or maybe it's because I have so much trouble cooking it or perhaps it's because it smells so God-awful, but I just cannot get into brown rice.  I decided tonight that if it has to be brown, it has to be basmati - at least it doesn't smell bad.

To make up for my absence I will tease you with some juicy upcoming posts (think round-up) and also share my new menu:

1. Penne with Spinach and Chickpeas in Garlic Sauce from Quick Vegetarian Pleasures.  Yes, this was on last week's menu, but two separate someones forgot to get spinach.  On multiple occasions.  Go me.  Go Mister.

2. Rice Noodle Bowl with Broccoli and Bell Pepper from a special edition of Vegetarian Times magazine I picked up while standing in line at Essene one day... bad habits die hard.

3. Potato and Cauliflower Burritos from the June 2011 Veg. Times magazine.  How could I see this recipe and not make it and then call myself a good wife?  We're talking about everything Mister loves in the world, wrapped up in a whole wheat shell.

4. Charro Beans with Chipotle Sausage, also from the June Veg. Times.  I have this pile of magazines, currently, because I'm subscribed to VegNews and Veg. Times and I have a ton of trouble getting rid of printed material that vaguely resembles a book.  So, I figured I may as well try to find a week's worth of dinners in them before convincing myself to cut out the important bits and recycle the rest.  One thing can be said for me and magazines - I get my money's worth.  They sit around for months, being read and re-read before I finally believe I've gotten all I can get from them, at which point I cut them up to keep anything remotely important, then recycle whatever's left.

5. Better-Than-Takeout Tofu Stir-fry from Vegan on the Cheap, but without cornstarch this time.

been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding

Okay, that isn't completely accurate. I've been to a few states in the USA, I visited Canada briefly 20 years ago, and I went to Cancun (Mexico) with my sister-in-law 9 years ago. So I haven't been around the world, and I don't think my in-laws, AKA parents-of-my-nephews-and-nieces, are stupid, but sometimes it seems like the stupider people are the louder they speak, doesn't it?

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but it has been bugging me for a few days and I need to share my inane discovery with someone. That Someone is You, lucky reader.

I was trying to get through the last of the Great Pile of Magazines that had gradually taken over a music stand I used to use as a cookbook holder. The majority of magazines living there were Health magazine. It was one of those "since you already subscribe to this magazine, we're going to give you an incredible deal to subscribe to this other magazine" kind of situations, and since there are two faces to my foodie nature, it filled the space left by the other publication. Those two faces, in case you were wondering, are the creative (and piggly) part of me that loves making (and eating) new dishes with a twist of something a little bizarre, and the nurturing side of me that shows love for myself and my husband (and anyone else I have the opportunity to cook for) by serving food that is not only tasty and attractive, but also full of nutrients and the things a body needs for fuel.

Anyway, I was reading through the News You Need feature in one of the editions, I came to this article: Orthorexia: The New Eating Disorder. The short article is both intriguing and utterly disgusting in its displayed ignorance of food lifestyles that are built around ethics and health. It is intriguing because only a few sentences in, I thought to myself, "they could be talking about me!" Primarily appearing in women over the age of 30 (ahem), orthorexia is an obsession with eating only healthy food and can be manifested in a vegan or raw food diet. I don't know if I would call myself obsessed and I certainly do not adhere to a vegan or raw food diet as strictly as I might prefer, but it is very important to me that I fuel my body with primarily good food. I prefer organic, but sometimes buy conventionally grown produce. I prefer seedy whole-grained breads, but I have been known to buy a loaf of finely-milled wheat bread. I yearn for salads, raw vegetable crudites, and fruit salads throughout the winter months, but I have no issue with making a meal completely from pantry items. I don't eat crap: no Twinkies, no Smuckers (read the label and be appalled), a rare Dorito or kettle-cooked potato chip, but no Little Debbie danishes or honeybuns for me and keep those Fritos where I can't smell them. I'm not perfect, but I try not to pollute my body. I'd rather get fat from protein and omega-rich peanut butter than a Snickers bar.

Regardless, the implication in this article or at least what I took away, is that people who restrict their diets as severely as a vegan or raw foodist would have an eating disorder. I think it's ludicrous that there would even be an eating disorder that starts with someone being committed to eating healthy food. It demonstrates to me just how off-kilter the paradigm of this country, in which 66% of the adult population is overweight, is. Ironically, people who follow a macrobiotic diet (which does include meat consumption, ordinarily) are not listed, yet I have a hard time thinking of a more restrictive diet.

You should know by now that when I say "I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this," it means I have been obsessing over the subject for days and need to babble until everything falls out of my brain. Which usually means I will spend more time on it than I intend. I just think it's straight-up retarded to label someone as having an eating disorder because they are vegan or a raw foodist. Rant done.

Today began The Great Dig-Out. I must give Philadelphia some props for their serious stance on snow removal - they had construction plows and dump trucks today! I don't know where they took the snow, but it's not on the/some streets anymore. It is still very much on the sidewalks - I think it's cute how some merchants figure that as long as there is a path through the snow, it doesn't necessarily have to be all the way down to the pavement. Apparently, there is nothing hazardous about carving a path of about 3 inches of compacted snow and ice that you will need a metal hoe and/or chisel to break through, because it's not melting until June. I slipped and slid my way to and from Whole Foods and Superfresh today because there was nothing else to turn into a meal here, unless you take me up on my offer to make a gourmet meal from kitty kibble.

First, I'll give you the menu, then a short and sweet dinner story:

1. Two-Tofu Shepherd's Pie

2. French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme from Veganomicon, because I can never get enough of this soup. Judging from the two and a half pounds of French lentils I got at WF today, apparently I also cannot get enough French lentils... oh, the shame of self-serve bulk containers.

3. Curried Udon Noodle Stir-Fry also from Veganomicon. I can't remember if I made this before or if the recipe just looked familiar because I know I should have made it before if I haven't.

4. Garlic and Greens Soup from The Vegan Table. After a week that was split 50/50 with soup and "solid" dinners, I tried to stay away from soup, but when I saw this recipe I just couldn't resist it. I mean, seriously - it calls for an entire head of garlic!

5. Red Lentil Artichoke Stew also from The Vegan Table. I have definitely not made this before and it looks both fun and different. Plus, we haven't had anything with red lentils for a while.

6. Orzo Pilaf with Roasted Red Peppers and Peas also from The Vegan Table. I intended to make this from the minute I pulled the book off the shelf. It's tasty and fast and you need that sometimes...like tonight.


So, I practiced my balance and grace by wandering around the frozen and barely salted tundra this afternoon/evening while Mister got some cardio in by digging out my car. Needless to say, we were both kind of starving, so rather than saving the fastest dinner on the menu for some night after work and cooking one of the longer and more labor-intensive meals on my day off, I made the Orzo Pilaf tonight. Don't you love my strategic menu-planning?

It is very photogenic and I think it is very tasty. It very much resembles risotto because orzo is rice-shaped pasta and I sauteed it with garlic before adding the full quart of broth. It lengthened the cooking time a bit, but the fully plumped orzo and creamy texture of the reduced stock was well worth it.

Mister wasn't as excited as I was. He agreed with me that it was very pretty and looks like Christmas, but I guess it was actually a little too close to real risotto for his liking. I love how he is starving before dinner and then pushes his food around and kind of picks at the peas until I ask him if he doesn't like dinner, to which he smiles and responds, "It's not my favorite." My answer to that is, "Pizza is your favorite." We pout at each other, then laugh and move on.


My hope, though, is that someday he will learn to tell me the first time I make something that he doesn't care for it.

Attack of the Killer Salads

Funny story: remember my last post, where I raved about the "killer" salad I got from the salad bar at work? Turns out I was actually telling a piece of the future. Obviously, it didn't really kill me, since I'm posting this, but it sure is trying.

A little back-story: I have long had a hateful relationship with the food service at work. That's a horrible thing to say, since I am fortunate to have a cafeteria in my workplace. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, though, this place is the reason cafeteria stories exist. In the time we have been in the building (about two and a half years), we have gone through two food service companies in this cafeteria. They shall remain nameless not to protect them, but rather to prevent the unintentional loss of my employment by someone coming upon my blog and finding my comments termination-worthy. I will say, however, that our present providers, though the "value brand" of the two, are actually much better than the "name brand" guys we had at first.

The food isn't great, but it's not bad, either - what little of it I've eaten. I generally avoid eating the food they prepare because I have witnessed what I perceive to be less than sanitary behavior. Little things, like taking money with your food prep gloves still on your hands or wearing your apron to the bathroom, but they don't give me a lot of confidence about the behind-the-scenes situation. However, they were behind the preparation of the food that management delivered to us daily for three weeks, and I didn't suffer any ill effects, so I became bold when I found the Salad Bar That Didn't Suck in the earlier part of this week.

What follows can only be described as a Complete Lack of Common Sense. Having become convinced that the less-than-sanitary practices of the kitchen staff were not going to kill me, I forgot about the purest nature of a salad bar. It's like a buffet - the only contact the staff has with it is refilling empty containers. Most of the human contamination comes from my colleagues - all of whom seem to have contracted some kind of deadly illness over the first month of winter. So, now I'm all snuffly and achy. No more killer salads for me - that was so stupid.

While growing progressively more sniffly and starting to admit that I might actually be sick (the last time I was sick was 14 months ago), and in between sips of Yellowtail Shiraz-Grenache (which has a gorgeous color, by the way, and probably tastes really good, but I was already starting to lose my tastebuds' acuity), I was able to construct the new menu. I have a folder full of recipes I clipped from a building collection of cooking magazines and when I do things like that, I have a tendency to forget them...kind of like I did when the magazines I had saved for the recipes were sitting in a neglected pile in the bedroom. So, this week's menu is constructed from those recipes - I'll do my best to trace the source.

1. Tofurky and Kale Minestra - actually, the recipe is for Bacon and Kale Minestra, but I was approaching the magazines with a creative mind and when I saw how delicious the picture of this soup looked, I thought that I had to find a way to make it work. I decided to substitute Hickory Smoked Tofurky because I knew better than to try tempeh bacon.

2. Braised Broccoli Rabe with Orecchiette - the cooking instructions intrigued me - aside from orzo, I've never cooked pasta in broth before, so I think this is going to be fascinating.

3. Seitan and Cabbage Stirfry with Peanut Sauce - I have made this before and I was absolutely thrilled with how it came out. The original recipe calls for beef, but I am going to use seitan. Unfortunately, I could not find the right cabbage at Whole Foods or Superfresh, so this probably won't happen until later in the week, when I'm feeling well enough to try again.

4. Pan-Crisped Tofu with Greens and Peanut Dressing - I don't know how this is going to work out, which is kind of why I chose it...I might have been feeling woozy from the combination of getting sick and drinking wine, but I was feeling adventurous.

5. Garlicky Spaghetti with Beans and Greens - I have made this before as well, but it just looks so irresistibly good in the picture. Also, I'm on a greens kick. Did you notice?

6. Aloo Channa Soup from The Garden of Vegan. I never ended up making this from last week's menu.

I need a nap. More later.

of menus and magazines

When I was planning my wedding, I think I truly bought every bridal magazine that was widely available - Brides, The Knot, Martha Stewart Weddings, and a few others. Up until that point, I was actually not a big fan of magazines. I would go through phases in my early twenties where I thought I liked magazines, so I would subscribe to a bunch, then I would inevitably run out of time to read them. I was really good until my 29th birthday, when I got engaged. I didn't actually subscribe to any of these magazines, and knowing my affinity for letting things pile up, I made a deal with myself that I had to get rid of a magazine every time I bought a new one, so I spent a lot of time poring over the magazines, then cutting out what I thought was important and recycling the rest to make room for a new glossy treasure.

My engagement was not quite a year, so my magazine-buying spree didn't last all that long, but it had become a habit. By the time I got home from my honeymoon and recycled the last of my bridal magazines, I'll admit - I was at a loss. I had gotten so used to buying magazines, I felt like I needed something to fill that void. I tried a book and realized that probably one reason magazines are so popular is because you don't have to devote a lot of time to them - you can read a quick article here or there and come back later and start fresh with a completely unrelated article, whereas with a book, there is generally a continuing storyline.

I'm not completely sure how it happened, but somehow, I managed to get a bunch of trial issues of magazines I was at least remotely interested in, and out of those trials, I think I ended up subscribing to 3 magazines: Cooking Light, Eating Well, and Health. After a year, I let Eating Well drop because the magazine and the website were more or less identical - it is that same reason that I didn't subscribe to any Martha Stewart publications, despite my love for her. I have had Health for a year and apparently stopped reading it after about four months, because I have a lot of issues still wrapped in plastic. I renewed my Cooking Light subscription last year and also got a subscription for my mom for Christmas. Somewhere in the past few months, though, I have fallen out of love with Cooking Light - too much meat. Most recipes I get from there are either desserts or side dishes and I don't make either frequently.

The point of all this explanation is to let you know that I spent the past few days going through a stack of back issues of these magazines and tearing out what I need and recycling the rest. I will not be renewing any subscriptions this year, although I believe I will always toy with the idea of subscribing to Vegetarian Times. I wanted to do something completely different for my menu this week, since it's so disjointed anyway between One-Serving Wednesday and Thanksgiving. I went through my magazines and did my best to convert recipes from what they are to something vegan, as well as get some ideas together for Thanksgiving (I can't serve the turkeys alone!). Here are the results of my toils:

1. Greek Orzo Stuffed Peppers from Eating Well magazine, March/April 2009.
2. Beef & Cabbage Stirfry with Peanut Sauce from Eating Well, January/February 2009.
3. Lentil-Edamame Stew from Cooking Light, December 2008.
4. Seitan Stir-Fry with Black Bean Garlic Sauce from Cooking Light, December 2009.
5. Cumin-Roasted Eggplant with Sweet Peppers & Chickpeas from Vegetarian Times, January 2009 - This will be my "One-Serving" Wednesday dinner because Mister hates eggplant. He doesn't want to, he just does.
Thanksgiving:
Tofu Turkeys with
Chunky Chai Applesauce from Cooking Light, November 2008 and
Spiced Potatoes and Green Beans from Cooking Light, September 2009.

I am so excited about those stupid turkeys. The whole menu looks fun (for the week, not just T-Day), so hopefully I'll have some great stories for you this week to make up for my three-day absence just now.

I will be back later with stories of tonight's dinner as well as the cookies I'm making for my work potluck tomorrow - I am really excited about these cookies, too, especially because of how easily they were "veganized."

I will leave you with a couple of pictures of our last two dinners and a few stories:

On Friday night we had Moroccan Meatballs on Couscous. I have made this a dozen times and it's always fun. The best story I have about this is when I bought the vegan meatballs at Whole Foods and the cashier was way more enthusiastic about them than I was. In fact, while she was picking them up and exclaiming that they were the "best thing ever," I was wishing there was a better vegan meatball out there. They taste great, don't get me wrong, but they fall apart way more easily than I would like - I cook hard. It's also fun to cook with pomegranate juice, except that even POM Wonderful doesn't sell pure pomegranate juice anymore - it's always a blend: pom-mango, blueberry pomegranate, etc. I ended up with Odwalla Pomagrand.
Last night we had Pasta Jambalaya with my happy Tofurky Italian sausages. Last time I made this I cut them into rounds and that just seemed like a little too much sausage in one bite, so this time I halved each link lengthwise before slicing it into half-moons. I was really impressed with how flavorful this pasta dish is - you almost need the pasta to calm the flavors. The paprika really shines in this dish, though it overpowers the thyme a little. I really don't like the crunchiness of the celery and I forgot to cook it until it was mushy.

Anyway, I'm off to make dinner and bake cookies - I'll probably share about dinner while I'm waiting on the cookies, so check back in a few hours!