I hate Northern Virginia for many reasons, not the least of which is the traffic, the horrible traffic. Unless you live, like me, in the DC metro area, or in Los Angeles, you probably don’t understand traffic. Listen: my office is less than 10 miles from my home and it regularly takes me an hour to go from one to the other. The other morning I had an appointment 2.5 miles away and it took me 45 minutes to get there, and that is no exaggeration. It’s OBNOXIOUS. Tonight it took me nearly two hours to get home. Now, that did include a brief stint in a grocery store, but that accounted for 15 minutes, tops.

I had an idea for dinner tonight that required raw cashews, a commodity I can’t keep at the house. Mark eats them. He seeks them out and consumes them with a frightening ferocity. He will destroy the kitchen in search of them if he suspects I’m hiding them. So if I need ’em, I’ve got to buy ’em that day. I decided, then, to take an alternate route home from work that would pass by a Whole Foods, where I could quickly pop in, pour a pound or two of cashews out from the bulk bin, and pop back out. Bad mistake. Little did I know the town that is home to that particular Whole Foods was hosting a Halloween parade, shutting down their entire main street – the location of Whole Foods – drag. I was therefore detoured into a suburban neighborhood ill-equipped to deal with large volumes of traffic; me and a million other cars driven by people anxious to get home. Or to Whole Foods.

Another reason I hate Northern Virginia is the roads make no sense. None. I come from Baltimore, which is laid out as a lovely grid. You give me an address and a street and I can tell you how many blocks and in which direction it is from the center of the city, even if I’ve never been there. Baltimore makes sense. DC and its disturbing cousin Northern Virginia make no sense. I’ve been here for five years now and I can find my way to the important places (read: grocery stores and the 9:30 Club), but if I so much as stray one block from a regular route, I’m a goner. And our portable GPS was in Mark’s car following our Charleston trip, so I was bereft of any electronic assistance. After sitting at a light for 4 cycles without moving, I made a right turn into a neighborhood, convinced it had to end up somewhere that I’d recognize. After driving through suburban hell for 15 minutes, I did eventually emerge in a recognizable land: 10 miles further out than I started, past my office.

The upshot of this tale is I did go to Whole Foods: just not the one I’d intended. I stopped at the Whole Foods just a couple of miles down the street from my office…an hour after I’d left it! I got my cashews, but decided I was too tired and annoyed to make dinner at this point, so I looked to see what they had ready-made for me. Which leads me to why, for all of the seething hatred I often feel for Northern Virginia, I sometimes love it. Whole Foods had freshly-made vegan General Tso’s chicken available for my dining pleasure. I’m sure no one in my beloved San Francisco is too impressed by this, but there aren’t that many other places where a vegan can stop by a grocery store and pick up an instant dinner with such ease. Sure, I may not have needed the instant dinner if I lived elsewhere (feel my pain, Capt. Yossarian?), but boy, have I grown accustomed to it. It’s actually dangerous. I have, on more than one occasion, read a label on the hot bar at Whole Foods (for example) that clearly said “chicken” and assumed it was vegan. I am so spoiled that, rather than automatically assuming I can’t eat things, as I used to do, I assume I can. I have the freedom here to forget I’m a weirdo! (I must tell you that I feel much, much less like a weirdo in San Francisco. Although I can eat with ease here, I fit in a million times more right in San Francisco.) Every time I want to move away from Northern Virginia, I remember that my house is not only half a mile from glorious Wegmans, but cradled between THREE Whole Foods, two Trader Joe’s, Super H, and a myriad of ethnic grocery stores of every imaginable type. The grocery scene is sublime.

I had leftover rice from dinner last night, so, utilizing a microwave, I had a pretty good dinner ready in under two minutes.

Brachtune was impressed!

Well, I’m sorry for not having a recipe tonight. I had actually intended to, but sometimes life in Northern Virginia just gets in the way. I actually softened a bit, I must admit, when I realized the traffic issue tonight was caused by a Halloween parade. I love Halloween so much I was married on it, so it’s hard to hold a grudge against a town for celebrating my favorite holiday.

That and a couple of glasses of wine will usually cure any ills on my end. And hey, look at the awesome glasses my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday:

There are four wine glasses and four regular glasses and they are each made from recycled wine bottles! Neat, huh? I think they are really cool. And now it seems I have another wine bottle to recycle…

I’m afraid I don’t have a recipe tonight, but I thought I’d drop in, say hello, and post a couple of pictures. My birthday was yesterday, so I baked myself a cake. You may have noticed I don’t make many desserts, so my cake baking – and decorating – skills are mediocre at best.

It’s a little unintentionally Rocky Horror Picture Show. Mark gets to share the cake with me because his birthday is Friday! Plus there was a lot of room left over on the cake after I got to Renae…. It’s a red velvet cake with Tofutti cream cheese icing, and it’s not that great because I overbaked it. And red food coloring proving strangely hard to come by in Northern Virginia, it may more aptly be termed a mauve velvet cake. Oh well. I also made pumpkin muffins and those were very good.

Mark got me the BEST PRESENT EVER! It’s not food related, but it’s so great I have to share!

The Oxford English Dictionary! Now I’ll know every word in the language! And Fortinbras got me a special bookshelf to house it. It’s really, really nice.

To celebrate my birthday, some friends and I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Renae and Renaissance are different forms of the same French word, meaning reborn and rebirth respectively, so I like to claim ownership of the RenFest. The Renaissance Festival is not exactly burgeoning with vegan – or even remotely healthy – food, though. My friends seemed determined to eat the most ludicrous foods they could get their hands on, including deep-fried macaroni and cheese on a stick (I kid you not). For dessert they had a deep-fried Twinkee and a couple of deep-fried Oreos. It was truly astonishing. I took a lot of pictures, but trust me, you don’t want to see them.

I did eat some curly fries, however. It was my birthday. I can have curly fries on my birthday.

Mark and me.

My friend Melissa has been talking about this vegetarian restaurant up in Clarksville, Maryland for months, and as it wasn’t too terribly far from the RenFest she suggested we go there for dinner. Great Sage was really great! Nearly everything on the menu was vegan and it was all very delicious. The staff graciously tolerated our antics and even gave me a free drink. And I just noticed their lunch menu has a tempeh reuben, so methinks we’ll have to make it up there for lunch sometime!

The weather finally turned cool this weekend. Brachtune likes it when it gets cold because Tigger will tolerate her presence in exchange for body heat. It’s pretty rare they get this close!

That’s it for tonight…I’ll try to muster up a real post tomorrow!

No recipes tonight – we went to a friend’s house to watch Heroes and were treated to a delicious vegan dinner – but I did snap some pictures of my bento lunch yesterday. That’s not even exciting since it was just leftovers from the night before, but I thought I’d show off the bento box I got in Japantown.

Here’s the inside. The bottom layer is leftover sushi rice; yes, it’s best fresh, but it’s okay gently re-heated the next day. Up top is some ume plum paste and furikake (dry seasoning) to mix into the rice and cabbage pickle.

There’s a tight-fitting lid for the top layer …

… and a band to keep the two layers together. What I liked about this box is it is not “cute” like many of them are.

Upon hearing that I was interested in furoshiki, a friend brought me back several from a trip she took to Japan a couple of years ago:

I used one of them to wrap and carry the bento box.

This isn’t a very good bento lunch because it doesn’t contain a protein, but I was very pressed for time and just grabbed what was in the refrigerator!

I’d like to write up a much more informative and interesting post on bentos, but in the meantime, Maki of Just Hungry and Just Bento (both of which often feature vegan recipes) has a very good article on selecting a bento box. One of the things I find fascinating about them is that the number of milliliters the box holds is supposed to be an indicator (on a one-to-one scale) of the number of calories it contains when full (using traditional proportions of starch, vegetable, and protein).

Today Mark and some friends and I attended the National Book Festival, where they served free vegan beverages!

Water! I also enjoyed a Clif bar while I was there, but I had to supply that. Really this is just about the lamest, most obvious ploy to make yet another non-food post. I just wanted to gloat about meeting Sir Salman Rushdie!!!

I stood in line to have a book signed by him after he did a Q & A, which was very crowded and therefore extremely difficult to get photos of, particularly as a somewhat height-challenged individual. This is the best I could do:

He was smart and funny!

Immediately after the Q & A, we rushed over to the book signing line, although he wasn’t scheduled to begin signing for another hour. While I stood in line, sweating profusely in the extremely humid DC heat, I gave Mark my camera and let him go wander around taking pictures. While he was out doing so, he ran into Rushdie being carted over to the signing tent!! He got to shake his hand and take this picture! How fair is that?!

Just before Sir Rushdie’s Q & A, Neil Gaiman did a reading from his new book, The Graveyard Book. I consider Neil Gaiman to the The Nicest Person In The World. It’s also always a pleasure to hear him read.

I’m surprised any of the pics of him turned out, since I could barely see him either.

OK, I am DONE with non-food posts, I swear! In fact, I’ll have TWO food posts for you tomorrow. The pictures are uploaded and everything; but it’s too late for me to write them up tonight. And I just remembered I need to go crack and soak some soybeans so I can make tofu tomorrow.

Today is my last day here in beautiful, wonderful San Francisco. I take a red-eye back home to Mark, Tigger, and Brachtune. My friend and I are hitting up the Haight today but although I think I am going to lug my camera with me, I won’t have a chance to post again until I’m home.

Last night we ate at an Indonesian restaurant. I had a “tempe” and tofu dish that looked like this:

Not a very good picture, I’m afraid, but I had to use the flash and I didn’t want to disturb our neighbors, who were pretty close to us, by taking more than one picture. As it is, they asked me twice if I am a food critic. They also suggested that posing as a food critic would be a way to get good service in restaurants. Anyway, after the meal I asked the waiter if they made the tempeh on the premises and he answered affirmatively. I could tell that it was homemade, though, without even asking. It just has a more lovely texture than store-bought. Theirs was even better than my homemade tempeh, but the somewhat unfortunate thing is that after eating their tempeh, and after making my own, and finding it so much better than store-bought, I’m not sure if I can buy it any more. The unfortunate part is I’m not that great at making it and sometimes fail. I am getting better though and I ordered more starter before I left, so hopefully soon I’ll be a tempeh master.

Yesterday I took a Victorian house walking tour because I love Victorian houses. That obviously has nothing to do with food, but I’ll share a couple of photos anyway since my posts have been so wordy lately.

This is a block in Lower Pacific Heights:

These are a couple of Queen Annes:

This is an Italianate house I thought was pretty:

Too bad the houses I saw on the tour ranged in price from 3 million to 30 million. Apartments in Victorians are 1 million. Oof.

Well, time to pack up and check out. I will surely be leaving my heart in San Francisco.

I ordered in from Golden Era again tonight, because hunger came on suddenly and I was waiting for my friend to call me upon her arrival from the airport. Above is a not-very-good-but-the-best-I-could do shot of the Spicy Beef Stew, which is really pretty good, although as there is no A/C in my room, a bit too warming! The “beef” has an amazing texture and the broth is a Vietnamese-flavored, spicy, warm yumminess. It also has potatoes, carrots, tofu, and basil. I was a little conferenced-out by the end of the day and wanted something comforting: this certainly filled the bill.

My friend called the very second I focused my camera for the shot above, and I’m off to her apartment in a few minutes. She lives near City Lights, and I’m about to finish The Secret Scripture, so I think I’ll be dragging her over there. City Lights is a must-stop destination every time I’m here; I think it’s my favorite bookstore in the world after The Strand (although Normals holds a special place in my heart as well). I stopped by the hotel cafe to get a beer to enjoy with my meal and noticed the bartender was reading The Trial, so I a bit uncharacteristically (being immensely shy) struck up a conversation about it with him and we consequently engaged in a little Kafka-love fest. Have I mentioned I love this city?!

OK, this is NOT turning into a book blog, I swear. Soon we’ll be back to all food, food, food! Ok: food, Tigger, food, Mark, food. I can’t believe I’ve been making all of these non-recipe posts. And in fact you wouldn’t believe how much I miss cooking. Don’t get me wrong, the food here is amazing and there are almost too many choices, but I really prefer it when I rent a flat when traveling so I can have a kitchen. Not only is it cheaper, but I have a perverse love of grocery shopping in other cities. I did go to Whole Foods today to pick up a lunch since I wasn’t going to have time to go out between conference sessions, but Whole Foods doesn’t really count. It’s not THAT different than my Whole Foods.

Good news everyone! I was reading The Secret Scripture between conference sessions today and happened to look at the author photo on the inside jacket cover and thought to myself, “hm, that doesn’t look anything at all like the vain man I saw on the website last night”. Turns out I had spelled “Barry” incorrectly as “Berry”! The real Sebastian Barry doesn’t seem to have one of those newfangled web sites I’ve been hearing so much about (here’s a page about him, however), and I can go back to enjoying this book very much, thank you.

Just got back from seeing Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, which I quite liked.

Sorry for the non-food post (and distinct lack of photos…forgot to get on that USB cord today; not that I’ve actually yet photographed anything other than some tofu yesterday); just didn’t want to look stupid for any longer.

I have had a great day despite being on my own in San Francisco! I’m here for a conference that begins tomorrow and although I am eagerly looking forward to meeting up with my dear San Francisco-resident friend, she had to be out of town today.

My flight was at some unfathomably early hour, so I arrived four hours too early to check into my hotel. No problem, I cheerfully dropped off my bags and hoofed it on down to JAPANTOWN! Man, I love Japantown! I bought a tsukemono recipe book (for way less than Amazon is offering it), a pickle press (that doesn’t look like that one because I finally found a more 2-person sized one at Soko Hardware; the reason I never bought one before was all the others I have found have been so huge), a bento box, a beautifully painted ceramic citrus reamer, a doo-hickey for brushing my cast iron pan with a thin film of oil (in lieu of the pastry brush I currently use, which never gets really clean and therefore makes a mess), and a beautiful scarf (the one non-food item I purchased all day). Have I mentioned my love of Japantown? Then I had a vegan soon tofu at a Korean tofu house that was really yummy. Soon tofu recipe coming to an ieatfood post near you soon! I generally don’t mind eating alone if I have a book with me, so I quite enjoyed my solo lunch. I wish I had brought my camera just to show you my delicious meal, but alas, lugging it around with all its accoutrements is kind of a pain and I knew I was going to be buying a lot of stuff, AND it was drizzling when I left the hotel, so the camera stayed behind.

After checking in at the hotel, waiting 45 minutes for a huge herd of French people to use the elevator ahead of me (they were there first) 4 at a time (the maximum capacity of said elevator) (I took the opportunity, while waiting, to practice my very rusty French (most of what I remember from my many French classes seems to involves bibliothèques and Barbu, so I imagine these people were wondering what’s wrong with the crazy American who wants to play cards in the library)), and then walking down to the civic center to check in at my conference, and THEN hitting up the thrift store near my hotel, I started to think about dinner. It was at this point in time that I realized my hotel is less than a block from Millennium! This would have been much more exciting if Mark were here, though. Although I don’t mind dining by myself in most circumstances, I think Millennium is a little too fancy for solo eating. It’s more the prices than shame at being alone. But then I learned that Golden Era was just a block away as well! DO I LOVE THIS CITY OR WHAT?!?

I phoned in an order of Spicy Gourmet “Chicken” for take-out, trotted on over there, picked it up, stopped next door for a big ol’ bottle of beer, and headed back to my room (congratulating myself on thinking to pack a bottle opener; I’m a genius). (The jolly man at the liquor store, seeing my take-out container and noting my beer purchase asked me if I were heading back to my apartment for a relaxing evening. I just smiled and said, “I sure am!” I love that I’m always taken for a local in this city. I tell you, the love I have for this city is completely reciprocal!)

I photographed the “chicken” for you! I really did! And then I realized that although I managed to bring a bottle opener, I completely forgot to bring a USB cord, so I can’t upload my photos! (Shows my priorities, I suppose.) I think I’ll pick one up tomorrow, though, so I’ll edit this entry and include a picture of it. It was pretty tasty, although slightly more authentic-tasting than I’m used to. Mark and I would LOVE to live near a place like this though. (Well, we sort of do, actually.)

Update:
Here’s the photo!

At first I was disappointed that my friend won’t be in the city tonight because it’s Saturday and it seems like I should be out doing something. But honestly, between getting 3 hours of sleep before my flight and just an hour or so on the plane, then walking further and up more hills than Mark probably did on his weekly hike through the woods back at home, all day long, I have to say that kicking back in my hotel room with some yummy vegan food, a nice, refreshing beer, and watching some Frontier House on DVD (because I’ve been on a big kick of re-reading all the Little House on the Prairie books lately and thought it would be a good tie-in) is actually a great way to spend my evening. AND I’ll be all perky for the conference tomorrow!

And now I have to confess something non-food oriented (those of you that tune in for food and/or cats only can sign off now). I’m still reading Infinite Jest (I mentioned in an earlier post how shocked I was that David Foster Wallace happened to commit suicide while I was in the middle of it), but it’s far too large for me to try to transport across the country and then carry around in my purse while walking many miles all day, so I had to choose a different book to travel with. I chose The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Berry because it’s the favorite to win the Man Booker Prize this year and I often (but not always) like Booker winners. So I was going to casually mention to you here that I was reading it (because you can see it in some of the pictures I took of my dinner), but when I did a quick google search to get a link for it, I accidentally found myself at the author’s website (WARNING! DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK IF YOU WANT TO TAKE ANY OF HIS BOOKS SERIOUSLY.) Apparently he believes himself to be male model or something. I don’t know; the multiple automatically-refreshing glamor shots really turned me off. Which reminds me quite strongly of the time Fortinbras forced The Corrections on me, but sternly instructed me, “do NOT under any circumstances look at the photo of Jonathon Franzen on the back cover, in fact, I PLEAD of you to cover it up with electrical tape so I never have to see it again”. (Oh, do both Fort and I labor under the strange and perverted impression that to be good an author must look like this?) I’m just going to concentrate on the fact that one week from today, I will be face-to-face (for a few seconds as I awkwardly shove this book at him to sign) with this man.

Update: Ugh. Just so you know, I happened to pause Frontier House to write this post just seconds before they murdered a chicken. I realize times were very different back then and I’m actually glad the participants are being forced to see where their sanitized chicken nuggets really come from (except factory farms are even worse than what they are experiencing), but the historian who has been teaching them how they will have to live was holding one of the chickens in her arms, saying, “in just a few moments we are going to kill these chickens…”, and it just broke my heart because the poor chicken was sitting so calmly, so friendly, so trustingly, in her arms, just as my cats sit in my arms, and then they just lopped its head off.

Well, apparently I’m not cut out for life on the frontier, that’s for sure.

As I promised in the Imperial Deviled Crab post, yesterday I attempted to make a crabby tofu. And I failed miserably. I was left with, however, an Old Bay and seaweed-infused mass of thick okara, so to keep the thing from becoming a total loss, I obviously made SusanV’s Okara Crab Cakes.

I actually had some tartar sauce already prepared, as yesterday I’d made us quick “fish” sandwiches, using some frozen vegan “fish” patties, but reading Susan’s suggestion of a “spicy cocktail sauce”, I decided I wanted some of that too! I looked up cocktail sauce recipes and quickly learned that horseradish is pretty much essential, but I didn’t have any and it didn’t seem worth a trip to Wegmans (despite my undying love for Wegmans). In case you ever find yourself in the same situation, here’s what I did:

Don’t Have Any Horseradish But Need Cocktail Sauce Cocktail Sauce

1 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp powdered wasabi
2 Tbsp vegan Worcestershire sauce
juice of 1/2 large lemon
hot sauce to taste

Mix all ingredients. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.

Since I had made the tartar sauce the day before and wasn’t planning to post it, I don’t have any pictures for you, but in case you are interested, here’s what I probably did (I don’t remember exactly and I just make this stuff up as I go along…)

Tartar Sauce

1 cup Vegenaise
1/4 cup sweet relish, squeezed dry
1/4 onion, minced
1 tsp dry mustard
juice of 1/2 large lemon
1/4 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients. Refrigerate at least 20 minutes.

Now, I don’t know how many of you are into photography at all. I’m quite an amateur, but I consider it one of my hobbies. I like to think that most of my photography is better than the awful pictures I manage to take of food for this blog (food photography is a skill I’m trying to improve), but I still have a lot to learn. One thing I DO know is that my aperture was set way, way too low when I was taking pictures of my crab cakes tonight. Wow. This actually looks better in the smaller version (usually the reverse is quite true), but it is still an awful picture and I’m sorry. I’d have skipped posting anything tonight, but it’s been several days and I feel as I’ve abandoned you. I wanted to have an awesome tofu crab tutorial for you today but that didn’t work out!

I’ll leave you with a picture of some rolls I baked yesterday (in addition to a hearth loaf and a panned loaf that is currently in the refrigerator for baking tomorrow). The recipe was the Whole Wheat Bread with a Multi-Grain Soaker and Pâte Fermentée from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread.

This book has been on my wish list forever and I was ready for a new bread book, but since I’m a book-buying ban until I go to Sydney in February, I borrowed it from the library. I don’t want to hurt Peter Reinhart’s feelings, but I might have a new boyfriend now! I’m either going to have to keep this book checked out until my birthday in October, or I’m going to have to break the book-buying ban, because I need this book. (Fortunately, I’ve been very careful to say I’m only “cutting back” on my book purchases until Sydney…)

Oh yeah, and I found out that Fortinbras promised his mother that I would do a bagel tutorial, so look for that soon. If it weren’t so late and I weren’t so into reading Little House on the Prairie for some unknown reason, I’d start some bagels tonight, but I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait another week. Bagels are fun though! Get yourselves some high-gluten flour in preparation!

Remember the Anti-Tigger Shield in this post? Well, here’s why it’s necessary:

That’s Tigger sitting in a bread basket. On a loaf of bread. It was stale bread, so it didn’t bother me, but it’s even more weird that he wants to sit on rock-hard bread.

What, is he roosting?!

A very hungry Mark just came into the library where I am posting this, gnawing on a piece of the very stale bread. “You realize Tigger just laid that, don’t you?”