carpe diem...et rosae

I can be a bad influence.  I don't mean in that You-Should-Do-Drugs-'Cause-It'll-Make-You-Cool kind of way.  Rather, I encourage people to choose the better of two evils when locked in an internal conflict of conscience.  For example, the following conversation occurred at work today:

Colleague:  I really want to go to Sampan for lunch, but I shouldn't.
Me: Why not?
Colleague:  I brought a sandwich, so I was just going to get soup.
Me:  Okay...
Colleague:  Aw man.... I just remembered how good their soup dumplings are...[self-flaggelation follows]
Me:  You should go.
Colleague:  No, I should eat my sandwich, otherwise it will go to waste.  I'll just go tomorrow.
Me:  You don't know tomorrow will come - no one is promised tomorrow.  If you want to go, you should go today. [little horns start to poke up from under my hair]
Colleague:  You're a bad influence.
Me: Yes.
Colleague:  But I'm having dinner with my cousin after work, so the sandwich will go to waste.
Me:  The sandwich you were eating earlier?
Colleague:  Yes.  But I still have half left.
Me:  Okay, but it's 4:30 right now and you're working until 9, so you won't have dinner until 9:15 at the very earliest.  You'll be back here at 5, you'll eat your other half-sandwich around 7 because you'll need a snack to get you through until dinner.
Colleague:  You're a bad influence.
Me: Yes.

With that, Colleague headed out the door for his lunch of Kimchi Fried Rice and Soup Dumplings at Sampan.  He came back 30 minutes later with a satisfied smile and the last bite of an ice cream cone that had been his dessert poking through his lips.

I try to live by that whole "carpe diem" thing.  Some people think it's morbid when I point out that we don't know that we'll have tomorrow, but it's true and I'm just trying to be realistic - you don't know.  People close their eyes on their last day every day - if today is mine, I want to know I had a good one and didn't say, "eh, tomorrow," as though I had a limitless supply.

Actually, one thing, before we move on to happy things - here is a clip from Brandon Lee's last interview before he died quite unexpectedly on the set of "The Crow."  You can skip to minute 5 for the part that is relevant to the first part of this post.

Now, Angst also likes to live in the Now, and doesn't want a single opportunity to eat something he shouldn't to pass him by.  Enter the newest object of his hungry lust:

Two or three times a year (anniversary, birthday, and/or Valentines day), Mister ignores that Angst likes to destroy my roses and gets them for me anyway.  At that point, Angst commences to stalking them, so we have to take them in the bedroom at the end of each night.

Yesterday was Mister's and my fourth wedding anniversary, which we celebrated by me working until 9pm, freezing my butt off as I walked home, and then hugging some and deciding to go out tonight instead (when I was home from work much earlier).  Nevertheless, he did a bunch of sweet things for me - he got me my beautiful roses, changed the kitty litter and lit a smelly candle, and turned on the heat so I'd be warm when I got home from work.  He's a keeper!

After a full day of trying to find somewhere to fill the void of Horizons and wishing Vedge was open, we ended up at La Fourno, having an enjoyable Italian meal.  I will say, they have some of the most creative and substantial salads I've seen - we had some trouble finding the lettuce under all the grilled veggies!  There was nothing terribly outstanding but I do have one little word of advice for my friends at La Fourno: wine should never be served in a heated glass.  They really need to work on differentiating "cellar temperature" from "pizza oven behind this wall" temperature.

may your days be merry and bright

Happy Friday!  We made it!

It blows my mind that this time next week we'll have gone through the first round of holiday eating festivities.  I'm looking forward to the holiday, seeing family, not working, and not going to work.
Yes, I wrote that twice on purpose.  What a week and I'm not sorry to bid it farewell!  I had this awesome Good-news-Bad-news story with Mister during dinner tonight:

The good news is the week finally ended and I get to breathe for a couple of days.
The better news is that next week I only have to work two days!
The bad news is that means I have to fit a whole lot of work into those two days.
The good news is that lots of work makes the days pass faster.
The bad news is that lots of work makes the days disappear too soon.
The good news is, once I get through them, I'll be off for five beautiful days straight.

That seems a good place to leave it.  Speaking of getting through things, we've gotten through the menu this final night with a beautiful blend of cultures and cuisines.

Tonight's dinner was Cajun Baked Tofu with Cajun Beans and Rice, both recipes from The Accidental Vegan.  I've made the rice-n-beans before - in fact, it is absolutely my favorite beans-n-rice recipe.  The Cajun tofu was new and a delightful addition.  Since the tofu seemed the obvious Protein in the meal, I opted to leave out the veg sausage called for in the recipe.  I also discovered, while cooking and after Whole Foods was too far away, that I had only one of two tablespoons of the prescribed worcestershire sauce.  I subbed in a Tbsp of tamari, since it has a darker savory taste and could fill in if I closed my eyes and wished really hard (which I did, and it seemed to work!).

I also subbed an 8 oz can of tomato sauce for the 1/2 cup tomato juice that was the key part of the tofu marinade, which resulted in a fun lacquered kind of situation.  I flipped the tofu halfway through cooking and spread the remaining "marinade" over top of the tofu slices.  I whisked some harissa into the mix in place of hot sauce and was quite pleased with the heat it lent to the marinade - the tofu and rice-n-beans played well together, and the whole Cajun melange made fast friends with the Georges duBoeuf Beaujolais I picked up on my walk home from the train tonight.  I had actually intended to pick up the Beaujolais Nouveau people keep saying they see, but all I could find was a 2009 vintage - but hey! It was on sale and had a little hang-tag telling me it was the best year ever for Beaujolais due to....blahblahblah....a bunch of stuff my brain is too full and too tired to fit in.

Let's just say I had a sip during dinner and had the exact same reaction that I had to my favorite summer wine.  Mister was quite amused.

Mister loves me.

I'm not gonna lie - by the time I made it in the door tonight, I wasn't sure I would be able to extricate myself from a chair if I sat down, so I just stood in my kitchen, still wearing my coat, hat, and gloves.  After giving me my kisses, Mister walked away and came back with something lovely he thought would make me happy.

Yessir, it sure did.

 Speaking of things that make me happy (yup, looks like it's that Random time of year), has anyone else noticed that Starbucks has the most brilliant marketing ever?  One year, someone said, "Hey, why don't we make happy red cups for the winter holiday beverages?"  To everyone's ineffable surprise and delight, the world responded by thinking that was just the cutest thing ever, so now, the minute that bitter chill begins to infiltrate the breeze, Starbucks launches the Red Cup Campaign.  It's brilliant and it totally works.  I'll admit, I bought into the hype - I wanted a red cup.

Admit it.  You do, too.

P.S. You can get a Toffee Mocha Americano (not just a latte).  You want one because they are incredibly tasty.  Follow your heart.  I'll be waiting with my red cup, too.

at last, my love has come along..

My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
At last, the skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clovers
The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known
Oh, yeah when you smile, you smile
Oh, and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
For you are mine
At last

Today marked the anniversary of my second blissful year of marriage to my best friend and love of my life. Ironically, when I woke up this morning, it was gray and pouring rain, just like it was two years ago. I was running ahead of schedule (how many brides can say that?), had collected everything I needed the night before so that I wouldn't have to rush in the morning. All I had to do was shove Angst into his box (kitty carrier) and stumble through the rain to my car with him and all the other stuff I was taking. Oh, and don't forget the umbrella! I finally get out to my car and the remote entry wasn't working. Prepared to hit the killswitch on my car alarm the minute I pop open the door manually, I turn the key in the lock. No alarm. When I turn the key in the ignition...nothing. So about an hour later, after much swearing and pouting, Angst and I and all my stuff have been reloaded into Mister's truck and we're on our way to the beauty salon. At noon on the dot, the rain stopped, the clouds cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day, the wet spots on the road the only indication it had rained at all. Everything went beautifully until about two hours before the ceremony, when my husband's taxi breaks down and they have to get another one and they're still 45 minutes away from the church. Miraculously (obviously), he got there on time and commenced to making me the happiest woman on earth. And he still does, every day.

In any case, there isn't a whole lot of romance you can affect on a Tuesday evening after you've both just worked a full day and it's 8:30 pm. So Mister greeted me at the door with kisses and smiles and while I was putting down my bag and taking off my jacket, he disappeared into the bedroom and came out with gorgeous long-stemmed red roses. They smell so good (and so edible, to Angst) and roses are my favorites (I know, it's cliche, whatever) and red is my favorite color. I'm such a lucky little wife. After more smiles and kisses, I got to work on dinner. We both have off from work this Friday, so we're going to have a date and celebrate for real then. Tonight, we had Chickpea Stew with Fried Polenta and this time I didn't overpulvarize the stew/sauce:
Also, we had some fun accompaniments, resulting a gorgeous (and delicious) still life:
When I was at Whole Foods on Sunday, since I was just picking up olives for the sake of eating them and not because I needed a specific kind of olive for a specific recipe, I decided to get a few of all the different kinds we've never had before. It started with these amazingly emerald green olives, then some very plump purple olives, and I know we've had them before, but these other green olives are just so good, and I'll grab some mezze mix Greek olives while I'm here... So we sampled them with dinner. It's a shame I can't remember any names...the emerald green ones were very oily and mild in flavor, which was in total contrast to the plump purple ones that were SO flavorful and bitter that I forgot for a moment that Balsamic vinegar is not made from olives.

Regarding the newest challenge of ethical decision making: I appreciate the feedback I got on my last post, specifically pointing me towards www.savethesheep.com, another PETA project. I really like it when people not only share with me their own opinions on matters like this but also provide resources that (I assume) helped them to make up their minds. I took quite a while to plod through that website and other links provided, and as always, found PETA's photojournalism to be shocking and in generally poor taste. I understand the point is to show the absolute brutal truth in the cruelty experienced in probably the vast majority of industry-related animal farming, but there is a very good reason people look at PETA fanatics the way they do: it seems like a cult. The tactics are very much the same - evoke a very strong reaction to something in order to win people to your point of view. And it works - after all, exposure to PETA propaganda and videos were what caused my first go-around with veganism in 2003.

The information on savethesheep.com and various other sites it linked to was somewhat helpful, at least in clearing up a few things regarding the treatment of wool-producing sheep and wool-harvesting procedures. I learned a few new and horrific vocabulary words, like mulesing (I'm not going into it on a full stomach - you can look it up if you're interested). However, there is a vital piece of the puzzle missing for me still. PETA has taken the time and extraordinary effort to put together a list of "cruelty-free" brands and vendors of various vegan things (leather alternatives, things of that nature) and at several points they praise the wonderful synthetic materials used in goods made at "value" stores like TJ Maxx, Marshalls, etc, as well as Victoria's Secret and other "high-end" retailers. The piece that's missing is people.

I have mentioned before that my primary reason for becoming a vegetarian was actually related to how the meat industry exploits and harms people, though I do find the mistreatment of the animals in question abhorrent as well. But what really helped me make my mind up was knowing how many more people we could share our food with if we just stopped feeding it all to the cows we breed and raise just to kill and use to overfeed our grossly overweight nation. Believe it or not (though, if you're reading this, you probably believe), there actually is enough food in the world to feed all the people of the world, but instead, we're feeding it to livestock that won't live much longer anyway. So when PETA pushes for the purchase of synthetic materials sold in the stores on their special "cruelty-free" list, it makes me wonder if PETA has forgotten that Humans, like Bees, are also animals and also should not be mistreated or exploited for other people's gain. If you took that list apart, you would probably find more of those shops purchase goods made in sweatshops than you'd be comfortable with. I don't care if I sound like a fundamentalist, God-made-man-to-rule-over-the-earth-and-everything-in-it ignoramus - I still think it's important to prevent cruelty to people who are treated about as well as these factory-farmed animals, and if that means wearing wool from a sheep rather than a cotton shirt stitched in the 11th hour of labor by a 12-year-old, well then I guess I'm just not a PETA spokesperson.

Nevertheless, I welcome more of your thoughts on how to be
1. warm
2. ethical/compassionate
3. stylish - I am NOT wearing polar-fleece or any of that other fuzzy crap and puffy coats should not exist outside of the juniors department of {insert store name here}.

So please, if you have insight for me, leave me a comment!