cat's gonna starve

Angst has a peculiar habit of waiting until I get home from work to become ravenously hungry and eat all his food then beg for more.  The theory is that Mister is so scary when I'm not here to protect him that Angst can't possibly risk coming out of hiding to eat.

Well, he's going to need to get over that or he'll be a hungry, hungry kitty by the time I get home this time.  Tomorrow morning (and by that I mean a little more than 4 hours from now) I'll be rising and shining in place of an absent sun to gather my things and head to the airport.  Mister and I are pretty sure that at some point, probably after the sun goes down, Angst is going to start bugging Mister to either let me out of the bedroom or, if he remembers me going out the front door, to let me back in.  The way he does this is by walking into Mister's room (having summoned all his courage to try to find me - what a devoted kitty), squeaking urgently until Mister stops what he's doing and follows the cat.  Angst then leads him to whichever door he's supposed to open to 'free' me.  He did this the other day when I didn't get home from work early enough to protect him from a thunderstorm.  Mister let him into the bedroom to see that I wasn't there and apparently, this was quite shocking to the poor little bugger.

I think he's in for a traumatic few days.  Hungry, too, since he wants me to believe Mister never feeds him.

I, on the other hand, anticipate an absolutely fabulous next few days.  I also anticipate that it will be just as devastating to leave as it always is, despite that I know I will miss Mister and Angst, and despite that Northern California is supposedly quite different from SoCal, where I have the more recent experience [of never ever wanting to leave].  I am brimming with excitement, looking forward to all the wonders that await me on the opposite coast.  I'm not completely sure how I expect to get to sleep because I'm pretty amped up right now and I still have to pack anyway.

Fortunately for me, Mister slept ultra late today so he's also not remotely sleepy and has agreed to stay up until 4 to make sure I get my booty out of bed and out the door.  I am terrified that my weeks and weeks of sleep deprivation will catch up tonight and I will wake up at noon tomorrow without an outside force acting upon me to prevent that.

To reward him (and feed him and keep the excessive pizza purchases at bay), I made a huge pot of pasta tonight.

Pasta Primavera with Fresh Veggies and Herbs from The Vegan Table makes a tremendous amount of food - how could you not with 12 oz pasta combined with a veggie ragout of 2 zucchinis, 2 peppers, 4 carrots, 5 tomatoes, and 10 asparagus spears (as well as all the seasoning)?  It always occurs to me after I've cut up the veggies that I could probably get away with halving this recipe, but this time around, I didn't want to.  I wanted there to be ample leftovers for Mister's meals.

Here are the rest of Mister's meals this weekend.  Except the Tempt Chocolate Fudge ice cream.  He'd better leave at least some of that for me....

Anyway, big pots of pasta make Mister happy, so for our last dinner together until Wednesday, I wanted something special.  With all those veggies to chop, it definitely was "special" and a bit time-consuming, but the results are delicious.

Beautiful, too, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, I'm off to shove clothes, books, and other essentials into a bag or two and try to get at least a three-hour nap before heading to the airport.  I will try to check in, but the laptop is way too big, bulky, and heavy to take with me, so I'm at the mercy of what I can find (although I'm pretty sure my sister will have hers).  Either way, I'll be keeping my little owl journal and my camera close at hand, so you can count on a nice picture parade and possibly multi-part story when I return.

Depending on whether I get treated like the rockstar I am, I may also have some posts for the other blog...

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.