SIN & my BIG FAT Greek Easter

Do they still have the Seven Deadly Sins?  If so, I fear I'm going straight to Hell - do not pass go and do not collect $200.  How else can it go when my entire celebration of Jesus's act of reconciliation involved gluttony?  Well, okay, maybe not the whole celebration, but the part that occurred outside of the church.

After church, we dined with my in-laws (17 of us total) at Estia on Broad and Locust.  It was an extravagant affair to say the least.  Honestly, I would be lying (another sin, surely) if I didn't admit that my favorite part of lunch was seeing all of our family again - it doesn't happen frequently enough.  I'm pretty sure (unfortunately) that the last time I saw my parents-in-law was Christmas - and if that's not a sin, I don't know what is.  Mister and I had a little gift for our nephews, as well, and there is something priceless about watching children take turns pulling off the wrapping paper so they can share every part of the gift - they're good at being brothers.  So my true delight was in the people; my beautiful SIL, a cousin who brought his new lady friend, my little angel baby.  Of course, another priceless moment was when my father-in-law parked himself across from me, attentive waiter behind him, and asked if I would like some "voov," while making a drinking motion with his hand.  In my momentary ignorance, I thought he had learned a new Greek word for "drink," possibly "wine," but once the waiter nodded, noted, and walked away with my FIL, I realized he had just enlisted my assistance in drinking a bottle of Veuve Clicquot!  It helped wash down the huge amount of food that covered every square inch of the table (and some of the round ones) - fried zucchini, various spreads (baba ghanoush, muhammara, hummus, tzatziki) with bread, pita, and crudites, as well as amazing marinated peasant salads of red and orange tomatoes, red and green peppers, and cucumbers.  I barely had space for my entree and resolved, next time my entree will merely be a salad.  There were also three decadent, huge Greek desserts and Greek coffee.  I love Greek stuff - I'm so lucky to be married into this family!

After 15 hugs and kisses, we excused ourselves to run (in heels) to the train station.  We hopped on the train just as it was about to leave us, and 45 minutes later found ourselves in my dad's car.  Once we arrived at the house, I could finally relieve my purse of the jar full of rice, spices, and cashews that I'd carried to church and lunch.  Mom and a cousin were industriously chopping tomatoes for bruschetta while the littlest cousin hunted for plastic candy-filled eggs in my parents' verdant backyard.  While Mom and I started cooking, my dad showed everyone photos and video of me as an infant and toddler, then took the whole merry party down to the basement to play with his bordering-on-obsession trainset.  It takes up the entire basement.  He cut holes in the walls to let the trains go through "tunnels."  I told Dad he has to take this stuff down before he gets decrepit because I don't want to deal with it.  We all figured, though, that the littlest cousin, presently 2 years old, should at least be a teenager before this becomes an issue, so we'll just hire him and some friends for pizza.

Once the Black Bottom Pineapple Tofu on Coconut Cashew Rice (from Vegetarian Times: Fast and Easy) was done cooking, Mom and I set up the table and called everyone away from the fun to eat dinner.  My plate was delightfully colorful!

Taking up the majority of the plate was the tofu dish, accompanied (counter-clockwise) by a delightful strawberry-walnut salad my mom made, as well as an apple-sweet potato roast.  What a lovely springtime meal, don't you think?

So tonight is the first night of the new menu.  What menu?  Glad you asked:

1. Chili and Polenta Casserole also from Vegetarian Times: Fast and Easy, and hopefully, it comes together as quickly as they say it does, because this is going to be a busy week, methinks.

2. Pasta Marinara with Kale and Beans - although this will be accompanied by a new recipe for you (yay!), don't get too excited - it's going to be a cheater recipe (with a rockstar name).

3. Spring Vegetable Curry from The Accidental Vegan - why not?  It's spring and Mister Loves Asparagus.

4. Cajun Red Beans and Rice, also from The Accidental Vegan, because it's my fav-fav-favorite rice-n-beans recipe. 

5. Yakisoba, also from The Accidental Vegan, which was dinner tonight.

It's a little bit bland, but there is a subtle aftertaste of ginger and not quite enough garlic.  Of course, I wanted to use my new toy - a ginger grater, so I grated the garlic and I don't think I got as much out of each clove as I do when I press it.  It did a fantastic job on the ginger, though, so well done, Essene!  Best $5 I ever spent (especially after flirting with the $20 Microplane Special People Grater/Zester at Williams-Sonoma when I picked up the gifts for the nephews).  That $15 will go toward the Buy-Natalie-a-4qt-Saute-Pan fund.  Attempting to "toss" a pound of noodles with the veggies and sauce tonight in my 3-qt pan was quite an adventure and pushed me over the Suck-It-Up-and-Spend-the-$$$ edge.  After the rent gets paid :)

mister's miso noodle soup

Anyone here on facebook?  As 2010 approaches its end, I've noticed a lot of my friends doing what's called a "status cloud," in which the most frequently used words in a status are compiled and sorted.  For example, one of my friend's most frequently used word was "bus" and another friend's cloud revealed she spends the overwhelming majority of her status updates to inform the world about her elder son's exploits...her daughter trails by nearly 66%.

The point of all this is that every now and then, I start to post something and have an odd sensation of deja vu.  I have not actually done a data-based query, but from patterns I notice, if I had to guess my top three most focused topics they would be:

1. kale and my kale-heavy recipe list
2. how exhausting my job is, especially this time of year (you may have noticed that I let two nights go by without posts for the first time in months)
and finally...
3. mister being sick

My poor mister has such a challenged immune system.  I'm fairly convinced that the way he eats when I'm not around to give him a hard time might be preventing him from at least somewhat improving that, but he just naturally gets sick easily.

Can you guess the topic of this post?

Mister is sick.  I don't know what's wrong with him, but I am amazed at how dramatic his illnesses can be.  He can't just have a cough - no, he has to cough until he's in pain and then make miserable noises while shaking uncontrollably because he's freezing, even though we turned up the heat.  He's been getting progressively more ill over the last couple of days, but when I came home tonight and found our living room dark and empty, my first thought was still that he had gone out somewhere.  It took me about 15 minutes to realize he had gone to the bedroom and was so utterly unconscious that I had to hold my breath to hear if he was still breathing.

He was, so I returned to the kitchen to figure out what I was going to eat with the bottle of 2009 deBoeuf Beaujolais-Villages I picked up on my way home from work tonight.  I had far less than no desire to make one of the two leftover recipes on my menu if I was the only one eating, so I evaluated my ingredients and nearly made something fun with angel hair pasta, leftover fire-roasted tomatoes, and Swiss chard (and of course, oodles of garlic), but then I realized that despite my enjoyment of the cooking process, I wanted nothing to do with the clean-up.  That ended up backfiring (<-- foreshadowing), but I decided to head over to Essene to check out the hot foods bar.  I was a little torn between the quirky, healthy food at Essene and the sheer comfort I would get from a slice or two of Blackbird pizza, so I figured if there wasn't anything truly exciting at Essene, I would just go to Blackbird.  This is one of the many, many things I love about living where I live - they are each a block and a half from my home.

Turns out, Essene had plenty to fill my to-go box: amazing mashed potatoes, roasted yams, broccoli raab with garlic, harvard beets, tuscan white beans (with tomatoes and basil), and tofu cutlets.  I wish I'd taken a picture, but I was still in a pretty special state of mind, recovering from today and this week in general.  I'll fill you in more tomorrow, but for now, let's return to the theme of MISTER IS SICK.

I was about two bites into my luscious mashed potatoes when I heard Mister hacking up a lung in the bedroom.  I went in, since I figured he was awake, to see if I could get him anything.  Apparently, he wasn't awake, but every time I spoke to him, he had a coughing/shaking/moaning fit, so I figured it was probably best to leave and finish the Beaujolais my dinner.  About 30 minutes after dinner, while I was sifting through Twitter timelines and FB updates, Mister emerged from the bedroom looking like a cross between a bum and a caveman (not flattering, I know).  When he sat down at the table, I asked if I could get him anything.  To my surprise, he requested soup.  That surprises me everytime.

I put down the wine and got to work while Mister took a short nap on the table.

Miso Noodle Soup
2 servings

2 cups vegetable broth
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp minced ginger
2 small carrots, sliced
1 cup chopped broccoli
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 tsp tamari
1/2 tsp thyme
1 oz angel hair/cappellini, broken into 2" pieces
1 tsp white miso, dissolved in 2 Tbsp warm water

Heat oil in a large saucepan on medium heat.  Add pressed garlic and lower heat; allow to saute for about 5 minutes but be careful not to burn or brown the garlic.  Add carrots and ginger, stir to mix and allow to saute for 1-2 minutes.  Pour in stock and tamari and bring to boiling, then add broccoli and peas.   Return to boiling, stir in the broken pasta, then reduce to a lively simmer for about 4-5 minutes.  Stir in thyme and miso and remove from heat.  Stir to combine and allow to sit for 5 minutes.

super foodie post

Please pardon what is probably about to be a somewhat random post - there will be at least one connecting thread: everything will have to do with fabulous vegan food!

Most of the time when I post my menu, I do so at the conclusion of the post.  However, it seems like the best place to start this one, considering my Ode to Cookbook Browsing and my Look What I Can Do posts this week.  So, I did finally sit down with a glass of Beaujolais and Vegan on the Cheap last night and figured out what we're eating this week:

1. Caldo Verde with Vegan Gourmet grilled cheeses.  This looks like a hella hearty soup - potatoes and kale work together so nicely, texturally, taste-wise, and nutritionally.  I love the combination of the smooth, squishy potatoes with the chewy, stern kale.

2. Savory Sausage and Peppers which was dinner tonight, so you'll read more in just a moment, but I'll give you this one little hint:  it was so freakin' good.

3. Tropic of Tempeh Tofu - It really makes me sad that Mister crumples into a heap of hurt whenever he eats tempeh, because I really like it and never get to eat it.  Nevertheless, this recipe looked way too good to bypass just because Mister can't eat the main ingredient...so I changed the main ingredient.

4. Better Bean Burgers with oven fries and these super-slick "burger thins."  I can't wait to make this and photograph it because these things are awesome - they're like the Macbook Air of bread products.

5. Tuscan White Bean Pizza because Mister loves pizza and I love Mister.  And I love pizza.  And all things Tuscan.  Plus, it takes a pretty picture.

So, tonight's dinner was Savory Sausage and Peppers and it was delightful.  How can you go wrong with a skillet supper involving diced Tofurky, bell peppers, and sliced potatoes (among other things)?  Also, there is something magical that happens when you add thyme to potatoes.  It seems like most people associate rosemary with potatoes, but I think they missed the boat - Thyme is where it's at.

It looks just as good as it tasted.  Between the intensity of the Italian Tofurky and the herb and salt-rich sauce, I was able to limit myself to just one-and-a-half servings, preserving a decent bit of leftovers for later this week.  This dish smelled phenomenal while it was simmering, even drawing Mister away from his computer and into the kitchen (all 7 steps) to see what smelled so tasty.  I wasn't at all surprised that it tasted as good as it did, but its inherent attractiveness shocked the heck out of me.  I mean, look at it - it's gorgeous!

Breakfast was also stupendous - a girl has to get fueled up for a fun day of grocery shopping and baking for work potlucks, right?  As promised, it comes with another recipe.

Banana Pecan Oatmeal
serves 1 (but easily multiplied)

1 banana
1 cup of nondairy milk (I used Almond Milk)
1/2 cup oats
1/4 cup pecan pieces
1 Tbsp agave nectar (although I find the banana, when very ripe, is sweet enough)
cinnamon sugar for sprinkling

Bring nondairy milk to a light boil.  Shake in oats, stirring, then reduce heat to low.  Simmer 3-5 minutes, stirring often.  Meanwhile, break the banana into pieces and place it in a microwave-safe bowl.  Nuke on high for 45-60 seconds, then mash to near-liquid consistency with your spoon.  Pour oatmeal into the same bowl, along with half the pecan pieces and stir to combine with banana.  Taste and add agave nectar if necessary.  Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (if using) and remaining pecans.

Tomorrow will bring three blessings (we have to counteract that whole Bad Things Come In Threes thing somehow, right?):

1. For me: When I leave work tomorrow night, I will be halfway through my work week :)
2. For everyone at work: we're having a Thanksgiving potluck and surely, tasty food will abound.

Applesauce Softies from VCIYCJ, more in a minute

3. For YOU:  finally, after all your patience, The Great Chocolate Round-Up.  Yes, I promise.

So, Essene was having a sale last week and I took the opportunity to stock up on BOGO Santa Cruz Organic Applesauce.  There are a ton of amazing holiday recipes which recruit applesauce as a fat replacer, binding agent, or just plain fabulous flavor to incorporate into autumn eats.  One of the reasons I don't have a pantry is...well...because there's no room for one.  Honestly, I would give up my dishwasher to have space for a pantry.  The other reason I don't have a pantry is because even though I have the purest of intentions, when there is a sale that causes me to get things I wouldn't ordinarily buy or have no specific use for right now, I bring them home, thinking I'll store them somewhere until I need them, but then they stare at me until I do something with them.  Such was the case with my applesauce, so when I remembered this afternoon that I have a potluck at work tomorrow, I decided to try my hand at the Applesauce Softies that have been softly whispering to me since I got the book (within days of its release to bookstores).

The first step of the recipe involves reducing the applesauce by simmering it until it becomes more dense and concentrated.  The recipe says this should take about 25 minutes, but it took me about 45 minutes to reduce the sauce from 1 1/3 cups to 2/3 cup.  I had hoped that the simmering applesauce would fill my home with the tasty scent of autumn and apples, but it really didn't smell much as it evaporated the juices into the air of my apartment.  The cookies, on the other hand, smelled amazing!  Mister and I did a small sampling, to make sure I wouldn't accidentally poison my work-mates.  The taste is subtle but they are pillow-soft and rather light for cookies.  The best thing to compare them to would be muffin tops - the kind you want to eat, not the kind that make you avert your eyes out of courtesy and self-preservation.

One last tangent, then I'll let you go dream of chocolate in anticipation of tomorrow's round-up: I stopped into Essene today for my last test chocolate, a pizza crust, and hand lotion (can you develop a more disparate shopping list?) and came away with a bonus prize.

That is an organic Winesap apple.  Until today, I was unaware of their existence.  I still haven't eaten mine - I will probably save it to savor for breakfast on Wednesday morning, but I fear that I will become addicted to these the way I have recently become addicted to Honeycrisps.  I fear this because they are not inexpensive, but heavens!  Look at how red that apple is!  The deep crimson apple, along with my newly ebony hair and perpetually ivory skin made me feel something like Snow White...so I took a cheesy picture: enjoy!

IKEA and Black-eyed Peas

This week has just been crazy.  I just realized I haven't posted anything since Tuesday and that I can't really remember Wednesday or yesterday.  I am so relieved it's Friday night that I could barely cook!  I have actually just barely reclaimed my ability to form sentences in English, so hopefully they're coherent.

Sometimes, dinner does come in a box.  Mister had a busy day yesterday, too, and ate lunch so late that he wasn't hungry for dinner.  I popped over to Essene because I absolutely had lost my ability to be creative by this time in the week.  Besides, the arrival of the new IKEA catalog is always a happy time of year for me.  I could think of no better way to spend last night than drinking a glass (or two...maybe three) of Chateau Ste Michelle Select Harvest Riesling while munching on tasty food prepared by someone else and perusing the 2011 IKEA catalog.  So that's what I did.

Spring mix greens, grilled eggplant, peppers, and summer squash, baked tofu, marinated/grilled seitan, harvard beets, and braised broccoli rabe.  Aside from one tofu that was a little too spicy (I probably should have stayed away from the one coated with a habanero-based sauce), it really hit the spot and allowed for super simple clean-up.  It also afforded me plenty of time to drool all over the IKEA catalog and employ my remaining brain cells in scheming about our future home and how it will be organized adorned.

Tonight, I made Satisfying Sleek from the latest issue of VegNews (Sept/Oct 2010), the first issue of my official subscription. 

I swear I have a hundred pictures that look like this - a dark, leafy green wilted with beans and a grain.  However, this Sleek was unlike anything I've made/eaten before for two reasons:

First, despite my inability to locate ground fenugreek, I mixed my own blend of Baharat.  I was a little nervous that the majority ingredient was black pepper but went ahead with it anyway.  It was an intriguing combination of pepper, cumin, coriander, ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom.  It certainly made the dish spicy-hot, but not unbearably so.

Second, this marks my first experience with black-eyed peas.  I'm not sure why they're called peas, other than that they are very small beans; smaller than I expected them to be.  They have a mild taste that went well with the kale as well as the bulghur, although they smelled a bit funny.

As much as I would love to regale you with tales of black-eyed peas and/or my unhealthy affection for IKEA, I'm going to leave you with a link to a giveaway instead.

Kind Boutique is giving away a beautiful vegan "leather" satchel worth over $80!  Visit their site and check out their other clothing, shoes, and accessories - some of it is on sale.

don't forget to spit out the chicken seeds

Every once in a while, I am completely impressed by a question or statement made in my presence.  Today, I had that privilege.  I was training a new group of sales reps and explaining the difference in the Vegetarian menu we offer.  One of the trainees raised his hand and this is what came out of his mouth:

"I am getting the impression that poultry is considered meat on this program.  Is that correct?"

I have to be honest - it takes a lot to stun me.  That more or less did it.  I think my initial silence was my attempt to prevent myself from gawking at him and saying, "wow - really?" but after I caught my breath and recovered, I smiled and explained that "anything which used to move of its own volition would be considered meat."  Fortunately, the class found this very amusing and moved to the [apparently] obvious conclusion that I was, in fact, a vegetarian.

But really?  I shouldn't make fun of my new hires, and I'm really not, but it amazes me that in this age of hyper-awareness of every alternative lifestyle out there, something as relatively normal as vegetarianism would be such a mystery.  Is chicken considered meat?  No, only dead cows.  Really?  Is chicken a vegetable, then?  Perhaps a legume?  No, I think it's just a really loud fruit.

So, for dinner tonight, I covered The Urban Vegan with plastic wrap so I wouldn't get any asparagus blood on it when I plucked out the feathers and removed the innards.  I actually made the Cauliflower-Chickpea Tagine tonight, but since it was simmering for about 45 minutes, I decided to roast my asparagus, too, in place of a salad tonight.  Ironic, perhaps, since Philadelphia broke a heat record today - 87 degrees!  If that's not salad weather...no, it's crank-the-oven-to-450 weather.  Anyway, after I finished chasing the cauliflower around the kitchen, I severed its extremities from the thick core and added it to the sliced carrots I had already de-veined.

Our lovely and cruelty-free dinner - the table just looked so pretty (and symmetrical).  Then, as a reward for not dying in this early-April heat, I pulled out a special dessert:

I happened into Essene on a day they were giving out samples of this stuff, as well as coupons, so I figured, why not give it a try.  I've heard some good things about it and it was on sale!  I was pretty sure I would like it, but I knew the real test would be Mister.

We both agreed that Tempt's "ice cream" is much creamier than any soy cream we've tried.  Also, the slight aftertaste (which only Mister minds) that accompanies soy is conspicuously absent.  The flavor is subtle - it's not overly sweet.  I wouldn't mind if the mint chips were a little bigger, but the overall texture was delightful.  Living Harvest has 5 flavors of Tempt: Vanilla, Mint Chip, Coffee Biscotti, Chocolate Fudge, and Coconut Lime.  I'm not a huge fan of Vanilla, but I am absolutely intrigued by the others.  I wonder how likely it is that I can score some more coupons...

a fresh coat of paint

I spent three and a half hours at Salon Sugar today (this seems to be a trend). It always passes quickly, though, because Candi is fun to talk to and she plays great music. It will never cease to amaze me how rejuvenating it is to look in the mirror when all is said and done. This time we really did it up - my own husband did not recognize me from a slight distance!

not the best picture, perhaps, but you can really see my hair!

So, although I scarfed down a Banana Nut Odwalla bar on my short walk across the street to the Salon, after 3.5 hours, I was not only euphoric about my new look (and trying to get used to the hair in my face - AKA bangs), I was also pretty hungry. It probably didn't help that Candi and I spent at least an hour of the time I was there talking about various tasty food in the immediate vicinity. I was almost practical and thought about going home to heat up some leftover soup and roast my garnet yam, but then I remembered that it was my one true day off and I decided to enjoy some of the "local cuisine." So, coming out of Salon Sugar, I swooped around the northeast corner and walked the block to Essene Market. In addition to being an obscure and generally overpriced produce/oddities market, there is a small cafe in the back with a self-service hot food bar. I had been craving weird food, so I selected one of the larger containers and filled it up with a millet cake, stirfried bok choy, roasted potatoes and cauliflower, fried parsnips, and some savory, chewy baked tofu. The parsnips were a little off and the bok choy got stuck in my teeth, but I was very happy with my paper bowl of lunch.

After my satisfying lunch, I grabbed a small squirt bottle of agave nectar for my teas at work and a miniature Green & Black 70% chocolate bar, then headed over the Whole Foods to do my grocery shopping for the following menu (once again, all from The 30 Minute Vegan):

1. Tofu Saag which we had tonight - more in a minute
2. Homey Vegetable Stew with Dumplings which we'll have tomorrow, since it's supposed to drop 15 degrees and be all rainy and miserable.
3. Mediterranean Hummus Wraps
4. Seitan Curry Bowl which I skipped over last time in favor of the Monk Bowl.
5. Easy as Pie Stirfry

This book really hasn't let me down yet! The meals really do come together quickly, even though at first glance they look like a lot of effort. Honestly, the only thing I can find "wrong" with the recipes in this book are that they come together so quickly and are so action-packed that I don't have a minute to make salads. I didn't feel like salads were really necessary tonight, though, since our main course involved a pound of spinach...call me crazy, but I think we satisfied our greens quotient.

I'm really enjoying their method of roasting the tofu - it works better than I would have imagined for only 15 minutes of roasting in a medium-heat oven. The spice mix was a little intense for the amount of spinach - in the future, I will probably cut it down a little because we were walking the fine line between intense umami and need-bread-to-choke-it-down. I definitely needed the rice.