whataya want from me?

If I could start from a decidedly non-culinary direction, I don't think I've made any secret of my love of two female vocalists.

Amy Lee of Evanescence

the incomparable P!nk

I realized something sometime in the last 48ish hours - I love them completely, equally, and for totally disparate reasons.  They each represent something I love or want to love about myself - a glorified, famous part of me.  I love Amy Lee for the ethereal beauty that she is - she looks a lot like me :) and we are both classically trained musicians.  She is rumored to be a domineering perfectionist... no comment.  P!nk, on the other hand, is the badass I want to be.  I love how raw she is and how passionately she makes each poignant point, yet with enough fire that she doesn't normally allow for the same otherworldly wallowing I find so comforting in Evanescence's music.

It all made a lot more sense in my head, so let me wrap all that up by saying that Amy Lee speaks to the part of me that is aloof, mysterious, and all too in touch with the heartbreak of this world while P!nk pulls me up by my bootstraps, kicks me in the butt and reminds me that we can take this on, as long as it's worth fighting for.

Believe it or not, this really is leading up to dinner (kind of).

Tonight I made Rice Island Casserole from Vegan on the Cheap.  

This is definitely not the first time I've made this, but sometimes, I spread my repeats so far apart that Mister forgets we've had something before.  Also, I think he somewhat depends on me taking so darn long to remake a recipe so that he doesn't have to tell me when he doesn't like dinner.

Don't get me wrong - he went back for seconds.  It might have been the second bowl that reminded him this wasn't his "favorite dinner," which is his cute little euphemistic way of saying, "I'd rather you didn't make this again."  It's also possible that he ruined his own second bowl by thinking hot sauce would be a good addition.  Either way, he got halfway through his second bowl before giving up.

I can probably take a lesson from a Sweet-n-Sour dish I made a few months ago which he helped me choose and then forgot when I served it, making a comment that he would never eat something sweet-n-sour "on purpose."  I might have even caught on by his almost violent reaction to my suggestion that I might make pineapple cupcakes for his birthday and some derogatory comment about pineapple.  I didn't, though, or I ignored it because sometimes, dinner is about what I want to eat.

In case you didn't know, P!nk actually wrote Adam Lambert's hit single "Whataya Want From Me?" and this is an incredible mash-up of the two of them singing it.  It just seemed an appropriate song considering our dinner adventures...

bring on October!

October is my favorite month for so many reasons.  I think it may also be Amy Lee's favorite month, because she released the second Evanescence album in October 2006 and now, after an agonizing 5-year hiatus, she is releasing a new Evanescence album with an almost completely new line-up on October 11, and yes, I have it pre-ordered through iTunes.

That's only part of the reason I can't wait for October to start.  Yes, I've been eagerly awaiting this album while covering my ears with my hands and singing "LA LA LA LA LA" any time someone gossiped about the band breaking up for the last 5 years or so, and the rumors were not helped by the fact that we actually know one of the former band members and were aware that he had moved on to another band.  However, I refused to believe a talent like Amy Lee's could be squandered, so I'm glad I was right.

There are a few other reasons I'm psyched for October - two can be found on amazon.com, one will remain a surprise a little longer.  I mentioned before that Isa has a new book, Vegan Pie in the Sky, and I couldn't be more on the edge of my seat waiting for Dynise's book, tested in part by yours truly, Celebrate Vegan.  It was due to come out the week after the new Evanescence album, but when I visited Amazon, they're saying it isn't being released until November now and that makes me a little sad.

The point of all that really is this: tonight we ate the last meal on the menu, which meant I had to construct the new menu tonight.  Did you catch that?  I had to construct the menu?  Isn't this something I have raved about in the past as one of my favorite parts of each week?  Haven't I reveled in flipping through pages of countless cookbooks to find the perfect combination of meals to get through this next week?  Had to?


I realized after dinner that I was not at all excited about menu-planning this week and wasn't terribly psyched for it last week either.  It shouldn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why - I'm bored of my current cookbook collection.  To my credit, I've been a very good (=frugal = freakishly cheap) girl this year and I haven't bought a new cookbook all year.  Considering we're nearing the tenth month of the year, I'd say I'm doing pretty good.  Yet, it couldn't last forever.  I had a little help with variety in the beginning of the year, when I had just gotten Appetite for Reduction and had a constantly renewing source of recipes I actually had to cook for recipe-testing for Dynise.  I've been slowly stagnating since then, and just recently I've realized that I've been through my cookbooks so many times, I can't even look at them with fresh eyes anymore.

Lucky for all of us, there's a surprise ending, but let's talk about dinner first:

I will probably always think it's funny to call this "Hooker Dinner," but that doesn't change my love for the sweet-salty blend of flavors and textures that makes up Pasta Puttanesca from Vegan Express.  I served it with garlic bread so we could scoop up the leftover tomatoes and olives from our bowls after the pasta was in our bellies.

Mister has been kindly picking up the Superfresh leg of my usual shopping adventures ever since I've been hitting up Trader Joe's on the way home from work.  As you can imagine, some interesting things have been finding their way into our home.  He's been shopping with me enough times to know that the goal is almost always to find the lowest price on a product, unless to do so would compromise its quality.  I can only imagine that some kind of pang of pride for his adolescent home, New Jersey, pulled the jar of New Jersey tomato sauce into the basket by his heart strings.

It wasn't very good.  I shouldn't say that.  It was clearly very fresh and made from real ingredients.  I would liken it to making a batch of homemade tomato sauce, from the dicing of the tomatoes...to the part where you make a kind of weak, watery gazpacho with them, rather than a thick, chunky sauce.  I had to let the sauce simmer a little more lively and longer than the recipe said to allow it to reduce acceptably, and I also felt inclined to add some savory flavors to complement the olives.

It worked out well enough - both our bowls went into the sink pretty clean.

Now for the happy part of menu planning.  When I went over to my bookshelf, half-heartedly looking to see if there was a book from which I haven't cooked in a while and which interested my palate, I noticed something I've been keeping in the corner of my eye for months:

When Mister and I moved in February, we got rid of a ton of stuff - we moved just as much to have a good reason to purge as to get away from that apartment.  We ended up taking a bunch of books to a used book dealer who was happy to write up a credit slip for us to use to buy "new" books from them.  We started out with nearly $100 worth of credit (which means we gave them a lot of books and that they are generous with their appraisals).  One afternoon I went browsing in there and found the gem pictured above.

I already had two Moosewood cookbooks and one of the things I like to make the most from them are the slow-cooking stews and soups, so I scooped this up.  Unfortunately, it was not soup weather, so I just put it aside on the shelf to wait for cooler times.  Well, Saturday greets October with a chilly, chilly day and even the rest of this week isn't supposed to see temperatures out of the low to mid 70s, so I think I'm safe to start investigating that new treasure.  And so, my first adventures will be....

1. Autumn Minestrone from Moosewood Restaurant Soups & Stews Deck.  I plan to serve it with a long, crusty loaf of Italian bread and a bowl of olives.  (Would anyone have found it completely offensive had I written "a long, hard loaf" of bread?  Sorry, too much Anne Rice - she gets a little carried away sometimes.)

2. Mediterranean Stew, also from the card deck.  This chunky pottage will be accompanied by Roasted Cauliflower and Olives from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy, because I figure Mister will respond better to the first week with not just one but two soup dinners on the menu if cauliflower is involved.

3. Warm Chickpea Ragout with Swiss Chard, Carrots and Harissa, also from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy because hey, I had the book open!

4. Hoisin-Braised Tempeh Tofu and Chinese Vegetables, also from VTF&E, but the twist here is that I've never actually made this one before.  The reason is because I usually employ this book when I'm either anticipating being brain-dead or already am brain-dead.  As such, I've managed to complete avoid the logic that would make a person say, "well, yes, my husband is deathly allergic to tempeh, but I can substitute tofu."  I'm kind of excited about this one so I'll let you know how it turns out.

5. Vegetable and "Sausage" Skillet from an old issue of Eating Well magazine.

6. Seitan and Broccoli with Pantry BBQ Sauce from theppk.com.  I had an incredible experience with the recipe here, so I thought it was worth another go.

in the bleak midwinter

Actually, we are slightly more than two-thirds through "winter", but this has been a serious winter so far and anyone who has paid attention for the last decade or so that I've been paying attention knows it doesn't actually get [consistently] warm in Philadelphia until May.

It's snowing again. Honestly, it never gets old - I am as happy looking out my window today as I was during the first snowfall in December. I just think it's beautiful, especially in the city where you can watch the flakes dance and swirl in the halo of the street lamps before they lay a velvet carpet on untrod sidewalks.

Today was a great day to just sit inside and be cozy and lazy, so it is very fortunate that it just happened to be my day off from work. I was supposed to do productive things like get my taxes done and go grocery shopping, but why ruin a beautiful day? I'll admit, I pretty well wussed out because of the wind advisory from the National Weather Service making me afraid to drive to my taxes appointment, and when I saw metal signs wiggling around on their posts, it didn't exactly entice me to step outside my door and join the others who were fighting the wind for their scarves. Besides, I work hard enough to justify a day of watching Amy Lee be perfect while mourning that more than three years have passed without a new release from Evanescence.


So I made myself a nice snowy day lunch - leftover French Lentil Soup with a substantial and tasty salad (spring mix, sprouts, broccoli, carrots, kalamata olives).


That was actually last night's dinner - lentil soup and a mega salad with broccoli, spring mix baby greens, mixed sprouts, kalamata olives, and dried cranberries in lieu of clementine segments. I figured that the 3 I ate as a snack at work probably covered my citrus requirement for the day.


I am so impressed with how pretty salads can be if you take five minutes to construct one that doesn't require dressing. I think it's the dressing that messes up the pretty. By the way, for the more observant among you, I did not try to eat my salad with a spoon - that was for the soup. There is actually a fork beside it, it just didn't make it into the picture. And yes, I know the spoon goes on the right and the fork goes on the left, but I wasn't throwing a dinner party, I was just having dinner alone while checking out some amazing artwork in a magazine shared with me by a colleague. He and a friend thought this painting looked like me:


Anyway, with the help of Smirnoff's Grand Cosmopolitan, I constructed this week's menu after my little dinner last night. At the time, I had every intention of shopping for the necessary ingredients today, but when you see the snow blowing from left to right, rather than merely floating peacefully downward, you might not be overly enthusiastic about going to a grocery store where you get to fight the frenzied omg-it's-snowing-I'll-never-eat-again mobs. I know I wasn't.

1. Kedgeree from The Accidental Vegan because I still haven't made it. That's tonight's dinner.

2. Spanish Veggie Stew with Spanish Rice also from The Accidental Vegan because it looked interesting. I actually almost turned past it, but something made me flip the page back.

3. Seitan Cacciatore also from TAV. I made this before, full of trepidation because it borders on warping a traditional recipe, but it came out so well I was craving it again.

4. Cajun Red Beans and Rice also from TAV. I don't know why I'm so attracted to Cajun Beans and Rice recipes, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for. (hee hee - you're going to have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day...)

5. Pomegranate Saute on Cinnamon Bulghur from my little holographic gold book of chicken scratch.

6. Spicy Stir-Fry with Clementine, Asparagus, and Tofu from Vegetarian Times: Fast & Easy. I was hellbent on including a tofu-based recipe in my menu because I accidentally bought a tub of tofu a couple of weeks ago that needs to be used up ASAP. I also happen to have half a bag of clementines left, so all I actually need to buy for this recipe is the asparagus!

amy lee looks just like me

What a funny week this is becoming! It has thus far been chock-full of memories, but also of hopeful looking-aheads. I don't know if I'm waxing philosophical because everyone else seems to be so focused on the approach of the second decade of the 21st century or what, but I will admit I'm buying into the hype at least a little.

For nostalgia, though, I mentioned earlier a memory of my mother making chicken cacciatore when I was growing up. I'm thrilled to say that my recent undertaking of making Seitan Cacciatore from The Accidental Vegan was an absolute success. I feel much more comfortable making weird, avant-garde dishes than I do when I try to replicate a traditional meal within the confines of vegan/vegetarian cooking. I guess there's always the reminder, poking my brain, that my husband's mother and father are both phenomenal cooks and he is used to eating very tasty things. I guess I'm a little worried that my seitan/tofu/tofurky version won't measure up to his childhood memories of the same foods.

Nothing to fear! I was very pleased with the way it came out, and Mister couldn't have been too disappointed - he went back for thirds! It also tasted nothing like my memory, but I equate seitan more with beef than with chicken.
True to form, tonight was One-Serving Wednesday. I think it needs a new name. I've given up on making small portions and have turned my focus to just eating everything Mister hates. My sweet potato fetish is becoming a weekly event - tonight I scrubbed and cubed another garnet yam and then tossed it with broccoli, olive oil, garlic, and a touch of salt. I wasn't really paying attention to how long it baked because I was preparing my tempeh. I haven't had tempeh since sometime this summer when Mister and I went to Horizons and I was really craving it. I was going to follow one of Isa's recipes for scrambled tempeh, but in the end here's what I did (perhaps it will find its way into recipe form at some point in the future):

Heated 2 Tbsp peanut oil and 1/2 Tbsp toasted sesame oil in a large skillet. Added about a tsp of good curry powder (I favor Frontier brand), a tsp of dried cilantro and about 1/4 tsp dried thyme and sauteed it all for about a minute. I splashed in about a Tbsp of tamari, then added 8 oz tempeh cubes and stirred to coat. I covered the skillet and wandered around my kitchen for a few minutes, checking on the tempeh and the roasting vegetables. About three-four minutes into the tempeh cooking time, I added 1/4 c water, then cooked more or less until that evaporated/was absorbed into the tempeh. Then I took the roasted broccoli and yam out of the oven and added the tempeh, stirring to combine. Quite easy, actually.
The funniest thing happened today. We are currently working with some "outside consultants" to ensure we are completely prepared for what we hope will be an onslaught of business in the new year. I presented my part of the training today and later on, the leader of the pack said to my supervisor, "That Natalie...she looks a lot like the lead singer of Evanescence, doesn't she?"

I LOVE Amy Lee. There are not too many things you can say to compliment me more, aside from the time a new trainee was being seated with one of our veterans for some mentoring. Upon reaching his cubicle, she exclaimed, "Oh my gosh, you have a picture of Natalie on your cubicle? That's so awesome!" The picture was actually Megan Fox. I was flying high for the rest of the day.

Keep an open mind - I take my own crappy pictures ;)

Anyway, I remember waaaaayyy back in 2003 when Fallen came out. I took the CD to a bar my friend tended to show it to him. From about 10-15 feet distance he looked at the CD and then at me in surprise:
"You recorded a CD??"
To be completely honest, I had not noticed until that moment that in that moment we did indeed bear a striking resemblance to one another.

So, that was my happy moment today.