A trip to Penzeys on Sunday resulted in an abundance of mustard seeds, so it seemed appropriate to make mustard. This was based on a recipe by Emeril, even though I’ve made it before and wasn’t wowed. I thought maybe the sherry would make a difference, but frankly I don’t really taste the sherry over the mustard and I probably wasted what was actually pretty nice sherry. So I think I’ll continue to play around with this recipe – it’s good and it’s mustardy but it’s not amazing – but in the interest of recording what I did this time for myself (and as an excuse to post more kitten pictures), I’ll post it (and also accept suggestions from any veteran mustard makers).

Sherry Mustard

3 Tbsp yellow mustard seeds
3 Tbsp brown mustard seeds
1 shallot, minced
2 Tbsp cream sherry
4 Tbsp (1/4 cup) sherry vinegar
6 Tbsp water
1/2 tsp salt
pinch tarragon
1 tsp brown sugar

Place all ingredients in a jar, close, and shake.

Refrigerate for at least 24 hours.

Put in a blender, coffee/spice grinder, or food processor.

Blend until as smooth or grainy as you like. Add additional water (or other liquid) by the tablespoon if necessary.

I taste-tested it on some Sheese and crackers.

And stored (some of) it in the adorable mustard pot my mom gave me.

I have a couple of mustard pots (courtesy of Mom), but this is the only one that has a built-in spoon in the top. Cute!

Speaking of cute (I think you know where this is going)…

I had the flash on my camera, pointed to bounce off the kitchen ceiling to take pictures of the mustard, when I noticed the kittens being cute in the living room, which was positively flooded with early evening sunlight. So I turned the flash off and tried to get pictures of them, but instead of looking at me, or toys, or chessmen, or each other, they kept staring intently at the ceiling and walls, emitting tiny Tribble noises of excitement. Turns out the sun was reflecting off the flash and sending dots of light dancing all over the walls of the room, driving them mad. Torticia is so intent…

She and Gomez apparently went crazy with the chess set today; chessmen are all over the place.

It’s not too obvious in this smaller version, but in the full-size version of this photo, you can actually see the chessmen reflected in Gomez’s eye.

When going through this set of photos, I almost deleted this one with all the other blurry ones, but then I decided it amuses me, and anyway this is actually what Torticia looks like most of the time as she’s constantly in motion (unless she’s asleep, and when she’s asleep, she’s dead asleep).

These kittens are way too fascinated with this glass coffee table (which actually belongs to Fortinbras). One of them is always trying to play chess from the wrong side of the glass. And here Gomez is trying to get Torticia’s tail…from the wrong side of the glass.

Another farmers market purchase was yellow wax beans. I used some in a soup that also incorporated the rest of my lima beans last night (yes, it was 100 degrees here yesterday and no, I don’t believe in “soup season”), but I decided to showcase the rest in a wax bean-intensive dish, which I based off this recipe on The Crispy Cook.

Yellow Wax Beans with Tomatoes and Shallots

2 cups yellow wax beans, trimmed
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
1 or 2 healthy splashes champagne or white wine vinegar
flaked sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Boil the beans in water to cover for 5 minutes or until just past crisp-tender. Drain and run under cold water. In the same pot, heat a little oil, add the shallot and cook until soft, then add the tomatoes and cook for another minute or two. Add the beans and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Serve warm, at room temperature, or chilled.

We got home a bit late tonight and, having been at a not-overly-vegan-friendly conference all day, I was starving, so this was quickly put together and served with Gardein Crispy Tenders, a cucumber salad I made yesterday, and a few pickled radishes.

Gomez and Torticia are proving to be mighty popular with readers, so I wouldn’t dream of making a post without pictures, but when we got home they were WOUND UP, and it is very hard to take pictures of kittens that are running around like lunatics, especially with a flash that has batteries that need to be recharged (and is therefore taking a while to cycle between flashes), and especially when one is starving and trying to cook dinner at the same time. So these pictures may not be very good, but they do capture the essence of An Evening With Gomez and Torticia.

The day before I brought the kittens home, I spent close to $200 buying them supplies, which included a number of toys. They also inherited toys from Tigger and Brachtune. Then last weekend, my mom and aunt came to visit and singlehandedly more than tripled their toy supply. What I’m trying to say here is these cats are NOT hurting for cat toys. Naturally, their favorite thing in the world is pipe cleaners. This picture amuses me because it looks like the pipe cleaner is a squiggle I rather inartistically added in GIMP (which, I’m afraid, is how I do everything in GIMP), but really Torticia is tossing it into the air. (The pipe cleaner used to be wound up in a nice spiral.)

I love, love, love it when cats carry their toys around in their mouths.

Torticia managed to lose the red pipe cleaner so I gave her a new yellow one, which she again carried around in her mouth because she knows how to make me swoon with her cuteness.

Speaking of losing toys, at the exact same time the red pipe cleaner went missing, Gomez lost HIS toy under the heater. At least he seemed to; he tried to retrieve it for so long I interceded on his behalf and there was absolutely no toy there. No idea what he did with it.

Poor Gomez.

I found him a new toy but he wasn’t sure if it was a fair trade for his pawn.

You can’t tell here but his final decision was whatever Torticia was playing with.

Finally, Torticia surrendered her toy to Gomez and invaded my dinner.

Well, an unexpected but welcome benefit of having kittens is I can go to the Saturday farmer’s market. If that seems like an incongruous statement, let me explain. In the past, I’ve had a tendency to sleep through the farmer’s market on Saturdays. Which has been a bit frustrating this summer because it’s also been hard for me to get to the Wednesday market I went to last year because I’ve been going into work earlier in order to swim every day after work. The kittens, however, don’t share my love of sleeping in on weekends and feel 5 a.m. is an appropriate time to arise. I guess when you’re a kitten every day is exciting as Christmas morning is to a 6-year old. So although I obviously didn’t get up at 5 a.m., I was up early enough yesterday to go to the farmer’s market. And immediately kicked myself for not going prior weeks, because it was awesome.

One thing I bought was a pint of fresh lima beans. Which may also seem incongruous considering I hate lima beans. Or rather, I used to. I hated them as a child, although I was far from a picky eater and ate pretty much everything else. Then last year I made myself Garlicky Chipotle Lima Beans and loved them. So that proved I liked dried limas. But what about fresh? It seemed time to find out.

There is a lot of conflicting information about lima beans on the internet. According to some people, they aren’t lima beans at all but butter beans. And some people say to cook them for 10 to 15 minutes, whereas other insist on a couple of hours – yes, even for fresh. It seems fresh limas aren’t very common to begin with as nearly every recipe calls for dried or frozen. So I decided to cook them simply, as I prefer my side dishes anyway, and let their lima flavor shine through to either wow or disgust me. Fortunately for me, they did the former.

Simple Fresh Lima Beans

1 1/2 cups fresh shelled lima beans
water to cover
1 Tbsp vegan powdered bouillon
salt and pepper to taste (I used smoked Maldon)
drizzle of olive oil

Put the shelled lima beans in a small, heavy-bottomed pot and cover with water.

Bring to a boil and add the bouillon, salt, and pepper.

Boil for 15 to 30 minutes. I tasted them at 15 minutes and they were about done, but the rest of the meal wasn’t, so I let them simmer for another 15 minutes, after which they tasted pretty much the same and didn’t feel much more cooked (somewhat surprisingly).

Drizzle with olive oil and serve.

I also bought a pint of radishes at the market, being on a bit of a radish kick. I wanted to pickle some of them, but also wanted to try something new with some as well. I got the idea to braise them from this Rachel Ray recipe. I read that cooked radishes taste like mild Brussels sprouts (yum!), but I thought they tasted like artichoke hearts. What they did NOT taste like was radishes. Unfortunately, my insistence they tasted nothing like radishes did not convince Mark to eat any. I forced him to eat a tiny bite and he made one of those awful faces he makes when he feels tortured by food. Oh well, more for me. I heated up some frozen corn for his second vegetable.

Braised Radishes

1 cup radishes, trimmed and halved
1 cup vegan stock (vegetable or “chicken”)
2 tsp white wine or champagne vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt (I used smoked Maldon)
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Trim the radishes and cut in half.

Put all of the ingredients in a small saucepan.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes or until fork-tender.

Serve.

Here are both dishes, served with some fried seitan with a mustard sauce:

Meanwhile…