I was sad to hear that Benoit Mandelbrot passed away last Thursday. A few years ago I asked myself where my obsession with physics came from and although it took a lot of thinking to remember, I finally recalled a day I was visiting the beautiful main branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, looking through the science section for a book on fractals. I did in fact find a beautiful book on the Mandelbrot set, but on my journey to it I also came across a book on string theory, and I was hooked. That’s sort of a roundabout way of expressing my love of fractals, but my point is, like string theory, fractals – and specifically the Mandelbrot set – are one of those things that sort of define me because I love them so much.

I was hoping to find romanesco – a fascinating fractal member of the cauliflower family – at the farmer’s market, as I did last year, all summer and autumn, to no avail. I’d given up, so it seemed like kismet when I found it at Wegmans tonight.

I knew immediately I’d dedicate our meal tonight to Mandelbrot. I don’t really have a recipe for you – I just steamed the romanesco and whisked together a quick sauce – but I took some photos for your geeky pleasure. I guess it’s dorky, but to me this had a lot of symbolism: I find an intense beauty and peace in mathematics and science, and when you combine it with something as simple and nourishing as a vegetable, well, I’m just supremely happy.

The sauce is just some soy sauce, tahini, Dragonfly’s Dry, Bulk Uncheese, water, and lemon juice, whisked and heated until a bit thickened.

In other news, tomorrow is my birthday, but Mark could not wait and made me open my present tonight. (He’s always been like this. He meant to propose to me on Valentine’s Day, but he picked the ring up three days before and ended up proposing that night because he couldn’t stand it.) Our house is rather dark – perhaps I should call it mood lighting – so this picture is lousy, but I got a much-desired iPod dock; this is it blasting my “All Nick (Cave) All the Time” playlist:

The kittens aren’t too sure how they feel about ole Nick (actually, having just read the wonderful Room, I don’t think I can refer to Nick in that manner, it being too close to “Old Nick”).

They’re both pulling some weird “I’m an owl!” thing, and I don’t know WHAT Torticia’s doing in that top picture.

I don’t know if it’s ever come up, but Mark is an amazing artist. This is the tag that was on my present:

I love the cartoons he does of himself, and I think this is the first time Gomez and Torticia have made it into one. (Since I’m sharing, this is my favorite.)

We just got back from Charleston. For any Stone Roses fans, I’ll describe the trip down in verse:
Driving south ’round midnight
Man, I must have been insane
Driving south ’round midnight
In a howling hurricane

It was not good. But once we got there, Charleston was warm, sunny, and full of delicious vegan pizza. And I got to see the following in a swamp!

Six minutes to my birthday, which means I’ll begin receiving a bunch of phone calls from friends singing

I’ve come to wish you an unhappy birthday
Because you’re evil and you lie
And if you should die
I may feel slightly sad but I won’t cry

…which, yes, is their way of saying they love me.

Yet another post without a recipe, but I grilled pizza for the first time today and took pictures, so I thought I’d post them in case it inspires anyone else. I know grilling pizza is hardly revolutionary, but I had a lot of fun and would like to share.

First I lit the fire and let the coals burn until they were mostly white. Although it’s in the mid-90s today, which makes slaving over a hot grill a bit ridiculous, one advantage grilling pizza has over baking it in the oven is it takes the oven and baking stone nearly an hour to come up to temperature, whereas the grill took next to no time. I also wasn’t heating up the house, although I am about to turn the oven on to bake a couple loaves of pain au levain, so I’m not doing so well at keeping the kitchen cool after all.

While I was waiting for the briquets to be ready, I got everything ready on the table. Here are our two pizza crusts on peels; I’ve sprayed the tops of them with olive oil. I used my whole wheat version of Peter Reinhart’s New York style dough. I made my normal pizza sauce: saute crushed garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, add crushed fire-roasted tomatoes, salt, pepper, and, sometimes, oregano; cook for 10 minutes and optionally puree. I also had Daiya mozzarella ready.

When the briquets were ready, I spread them out, then put the rack on the lower position. Then I picked one crust up and put it on the grill olive oil side down.

I sprayed the top with more olive oil then closed the grill for a minute or two. When I opened it, the crust was bubbling like crazy!

When the crust was firm enough that it was no longer sticking to the grill, I used an aluminum peel to remove it and flip it over onto the wooden peel. it got a bit darker than I’d intended, but I don’t think it matters – charred is good!

I added my toppings to the grilled side …

… and returned the pizza to the grill, sliding it off the peel.

I closed the grill and let it cook for a few more minutes, checking it every minute or so until the bottom was done and the “cheese” was melted.

It was hard to take a picture of the bottom because it really takes more than two hands to hold a pizza up and photograph the bottom of it, at least when it’s too hot to touch, but here’s my attempt at doing so:

Verdict? This was great! There’s room for improvement: next time I’m going to try to roll the dough out thinner, and I might move the rack to the upper position so the pizza has a chance to bake a little longer before starting to burn. But considering it was my first time grilling pizza and only my 4th or 5th time ever using a grill, the results were very impressive, and very tasty. I’m definitely going to use this method for our weekly pizzas whenever the weather allows.

In other news, I’ve had a very productive weekend. I mentioned in my last post that I recently bought a whole bunch of vintage mason jars to store dry goods in and I even posted a picture of my newly organized baker’s rack. Well, yesterday I found a great rack for storing my jars in my favorite antique store – it’s the perfect size for the jars and fits perfectly next to my baker’s rack – and what’s more it was only $24! How awesome is that?!

And here’s that whole side of the kitchen:

Where I had some of the jars on the baker’s rack, I moved them to the new rack. Then I emptied half of my over-stuffed cupboard onto the newly-freed shelf on the baker’s rack, which means for the first time in years I can actually see what I have. I discovered I have three bottles of apple cider vinegar because I could never see the bottles I already had. THAT gave me plenty of space in that cupboard to spread out my canned goods so I can see THEM and so they are not falling on my head when I open the cupboard door. I always feel so good about life when I organize the kitchen! And now that my dried beans are out on display in the dining room, I’ll see them and think to make them more often, in fact, I’m soaking some right now for dinner tonight!

And finally:

I hope everyone has had as nice a weekend as I have! Apparently Torticia has.

Hello, friends. No, I haven’t abandoned the blog – I just haven’t cooked anything new or original in a few weeks, and I’ve been fairly busy. I don’t have a recipe for you tonight, but to tide you over, here’s a personal post. Seemingly ages ago, Zoa at The Airy Way passed on a Happy 101 award to me, which means I have been requested to list 10 things that make me happy. Because I’m very shy – you may not believe it because I do share personal stuff periodically, but perhaps even more shy online than in person – and because I find it hard to believe anyone cares what makes me happy, and actually I bet most of you can already list 10 things that make me happy anyway, I would ordinarily have been happy to “forget” to address this. But for some reason, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. So I’ll do it – I’ll tell you 10 of the things that make me happiest. Mostly I’m doing this to pimp Zoa’s blog, though, because I think she is incredibly creative and she’s always doing amazing things, like making realistic poached “eggs”, and doing mind-blowing things with my nemesis okara. Really, you need to check it out if you don’t already – she has one of the most impressive blogs I’ve seen. I wish she lived in Virginia instead of Canada so she could cook for me!

So, on with my list of things that make me happy. I think you know what #1 is going to be. Really, if you’ve read more than two of my blog posts, you know it’s all cats, food, and books, right?

1. Gomez and Torticia.
   
   And memories of Tigger and Brachtune.
   
   I am awed by how much I love these cats and no matter how bad my day has been, they make it better. More broadly, though, I would say that all animals make me happy. I am far more relaxed going into a home that has pets than I am one without. If I am walking or driving down a street and spot a cat, I’ll point and shriek, “kitty!” like a 3-year old – and if I’m walking, I’ll follow it. Though I’m partial to cats, large and small, bats, and otters, I simply love all animals and being around them or just looking at pictures of them makes me happy. Conversely, though I have a reputation for being unemotional, animals in cages make me cry.
2. That moment when you are reading a book and you realize you really, really like it. Also, every other moment of reading a book. Also, being near books. Okay, books in general. I love reading. I’ve read 78 books so far this year. According to the database I created to log them, that’s 2.29 books a week. Few things in life make me happier then curling up in my reading chair with a book, gazing at my bookshelves, being in a bookstore, or frankly, even ordering books online.
   
3. The smell of: onions sautéing, basil, bread baking, chocolate, lemons, coffee, garlic on my hands (not so much my breath). In general, cooking. Well, obviously. I have a whole blog about it. But it makes me happy. On the rare occasions I don’t make dinner when I get home from work, I’m actually very disoriented. It feels quite wrong to not spend at least an hour in the kitchen every night.
4. Sitting down to a good meal, with wine. Nothing says relaxation to me like dinner and wine. Good dinner, made with fresh foods. It often takes me an hour to eat dinner because I savor it. I love to eat. I love to eat a little too much.
5. Old things. My kitchen is full of vintage Pyrex and antique cast iron. I am distrustful of new things. I want to live in an old Victorian house, filled with antiques and oddities. Not particularly nice antiques, though; I don’t like expensive things. Just well-made, sturdy, unique things with a history. My latest thing is vintage mason jars: I’ve bought a bunch of them to store my dry goods in.
   
   I’ve tried saving jars from food I buy, but I make so many things from scratch I really just don’t accumulate that many jars, especially of the sizes I want, so I’ve been storing grains and things in plastic containers. I have wanted to switch to glass for a long time but thought it would be kind of costly to buy old jars in the quantity I need. Turns out they manufactured so many canning jars in the first half of the 20th century (and earlier) that they are actually pretty inexpensive. It would have been even cheaper for me to just buy a couple of cases of new canning jars, but you know, I didn’t even think of that until I’d already placed bids on old ones. And I don’t care; I just prefer the older ones. Not to collect – I’m not really a collector of anything – in fact, I prefer whatever is common or imperfect just because I’m less ill at ease about breaking it. I just like knowing my jars were used by someone before me. I like it best when I have old things that come from my own family, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t know who had the thing before me. My jars are almost 100 years old. I find that comforting for some reason I can’t explain.
   
   By the way, another cool thing about storing stuff in these jars is they are so pretty I’ve put many of them out on display in the dining room, which freed up a lot of space in my rather small kitchen! And here’s my newly organized baker’s rack in the kitchen:
   
6. That “a-ha!” moment when you are learning something new and it suddenly clicks. I love learning. I love school. I even love taking tests. It’s my life’s mission to collect as many Bachelor’s degrees as I can. I can’t decide if Physics or Neuroscience should be next!
7. The sound of Nick Cave’s voice. The music of Einsturzende Neubauten. The Smiths. Morphine. And hundreds of other bands – music in general, really – but if I need to MAKE myself happy, or sooth myself, I’m certain to pick one of those four.
   
   _{This is me buying a Smiths poster that is bigger than I am, in front of my first car.}
8. This may make me a terrible person, but my car. My non-hybrid, not-particularly-fuel-efficient, non-vegan (it has leather seats, which by the way I HATE, not just because I’m vegan but because they are hot in the summer and cold in the winter – who thought that was a good idea?), lovely little tiny car of joy. It’s a 1995 Mazda Miata that I bought used (the only reason it has leather seats) ten years ago. Driving around with the top down on a warm summer day is one of my favorite things. So is driving around with the top down on a crisp autumn day. Especially so is driving around with the top down on a sunny, fragrant spring day. Winter…not so great for the Miata.
   
9. Taking off in a plane, and any travel by train. No matter how much I travel – and how degrading and awful TSA makes the experience – I still find it exciting to get on a plane. I just love going somewhere new – or familiar – even if it’s just for work. I especially love travelling by train, though, particularly in Europe. Not that I’ve done a huge amount of train travel in Europe, but I’ve done enough to know I love it. If I lived in Europe, I’d be on a train every weekend going somewhere new.
10. Watching TV with Mark (and kittens). No matter how stressful my day has been, I heave a huge sigh of relief when I collapse on the sofa next to Mark to watch the X-Files or whatever we’re into at the moment. I also like coming home together late at night after we’ve been out somewhere and just being glad to be home, together.
    

So, that was way more than you cared to know about me. I had a hard time narrowing it down to ten things. I’ve left so many things out. These, though, are all things I do every day (except travelling), which I guess means I’m one very happy person – who knew? I’m supposed to pass my award on to other bloggers, but I’m afraid I had enough trouble working up the nerve to drone on and on about myself. So I’ll do the cop-out thing and say I award it to all of you: if you are reading this and you have a blog, I really do want to know what makes you happy, so post me a link.

It occurred to me tonight that it’s been a week since I’ve made a post and may well be another week before I’m able to make another. I have a lot going on right now, including hosting a large party this weekend, and I’m probably not going to be cooking anything new, let alone taking pictures of it. In the meantime, please enjoy the kittens and I’ll be back in a week or so.

Do you see the orange M on Torticia’s forehead? I’ve been reading about cat genetics and apparently orange in cats is always tabby; what appears to be solid orange in some cats is really striped. That goes for the orange in tortoiseshells. Additionally, tabbies almost always have an M on their foreheads (both Tigger and Brachtune, as well as every other tabby I’ve ever known, did). So although most of Torticia’s colouring seems to be entirely random, in many places, her orange appears as tabby stripes. It’s particularly obvious in the orange bands around her front legs (totally adorable), but I missed her orange M for a couple of weeks. Once I spotted it, though, I can’t NOT see it. Mark claims the M stands for Mark; I claim it stands for my last name.

Gomez’s black-on-black stripes (not really visible in this photo; I love that you can only see them sometimes) are called ghost stripes. I had a black cat, Dracula, growing up (I have a tattoo in his honor), and I’ve been friends with several other black cats over the years, but Gomez is the first black kitty I’ve met with noticeable stripes, though apparently it’s fairly common because the gene that suppresses the tabby stripes in solid cats doesn’t always manage to fully suppress it. You can make out a faint M on his head as well, but it’s much harder to see than Torticia’s scarlet letter.

WARNING: This post contains nothing about food, but does contain extremely cute kittens. If you hate kittens and/or cuteness, you are advised to stop reading now and come back for a food-related post in a couple of days.

I was pretty devastated when Brachtune died. It was even harder than when Tigger died because suddenly there were no cats in the house. And I just can’t stand a pet-less house. It felt so lonely and depressing here. Mark wanted to look for cats right away, but I figured it was best and easiest to just wait until we got back from our mini-vacation in Charleston last week. I caved, though, and did look at the SPCA NoVA website. A couple of siblings caught my eye; I had a feeling about them. I looked at their pictures all day, then at the end of the day showed them to Mark, who said he’d seen those two as well and thought they looked perfect for us but wasn’t sure if I were really ready, so he hadn’t pointed them out to me. So I emailed the SPCA about them and soon we had an appointment to meet them at their foster parents’ house the day after we returned from our vacation. And yesterday morning we brought them home.

Meet Gomez …

… and Torticia.

(For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Addams Family, Torticia’s name is a bit of a pun. In The Addams Family, Gomez’s wife is Morticia. But our sweet kitty doesn’t look anything like a Morticia. She is, however, a tortoiseshell, commonly referred to as a “tortie”, so Mark came up with Torticia, which seemed more fitting.)

They are three months old, adjusting very rapidly to their new home, and just the most playful, affectionate, sweet, wonderful, darling, gorgeous, entertaining, lovely, and downright AWESOME kittens in the world. We are head over heels in love with them. Gomez is a bit more reticent than his sister, but once Torticia gets going, Gomez is compelled to join in. Torticia, on the other hand, is a wild woman: she’s brave, curious, and extremely playful, but also loving and affectionate. This was taken just a few hours after she got here:

Torticia seems like she might become my kitchen helper, like Tigger used to be. She likes sitting on the counter watching me.

Gomez comes when I call him, looking for pets. The second I start to pet him, he starts purring loudly. (Actually, they both do that.)

Tigger and Brachtune never really got along, unfortunately. At best they tolerated each other. It was an extremely rare treat to find them curled up near each other – MAYBE touching if Tigger was sound asleep and oblivious – that happened only when it was very cold outside. Otherwise, Tigger wouldn’t let Brachtune remain on the same piece of furniture as him. So it’s a real treat to have sibling kittens who actually love each other.

Please ignore the state of our cat tree (which Tigger destroyed), but these pictures were too cute not to share. I want to get them a new cat tree ASAP, but they simply love this raggedy old one (and now Mark says I can’t get rid of it even if we get a new one).

Gomez has long been on our list of cat names because not only have I loved the Addams Family since I was little, but just thinking of Gomez (from the original TV series) makes me laugh. Here’s a Gomez pumpkin I carved a few years ago (can you see Tigger and Brachtune in this picture?):

And here are Mark and me dressed as Pugsley and Wednesday Addams for Halloween.

Yeah, these were the right cats for us. We’re going to have a long, happy life together. And you guys are going to be subjected to a LOT of pictures!

In the wee hours before dawn, many, many, many years ago, friends and I were sitting in the courtyard of their apartment building, quietly talking. Across the way, a single light was on in a building that backed to my friends’. The walls of the lighted room were painted red and there was an American flag and a Nine Inch Nails poster hanging on the wall. On the window sill there sat a cat. It was too far and too dark for me to make out anything but a cat-shaped silhouette, but I felt comforted someone else was up as late as us and that they had a cat, and I wondered aloud what the “flag people” were like.

About a year after that night, my roommate, Lisa, and I moved into the apartment complex across the street from my other friends. Tigger, still a kitten, moved with us. As we were moving things in, some guys came around and invited us to a party later that night across the way. So we went to the party, happy to already be making friend with our neighbors. As I was standing around the dining room, marveling that all four walls were lined with beer cans, floor to ceiling, Lisa came racing up to me from a hallway and told me I had to go into one of the bedrooms, where the “most beautiful cat” was hiding from the party. So I followed Lisa to the bedroom and you guessed it: red walls, a flag, and a NIN poster. And the most beautiful cat in the world sitting in the middle of the bed, seeming a little put out by the party but accepting pets from me and Lisa.

Some months later, the owner of the cat announced he was getting rid of her. I couldn’t figure out why, but begged him not to take her to the pound and instead took her myself, planning to find her a home. I quickly realized part of the reason he didn’t want her was probably because she was in heat, which was really pretty annoying. I also quickly found her to be very aggressive: she tried to kill our senior citizen cat, Eishel, and sparred with Tigger. This also made it hard to find someone to take her in, so I called some no-kill shelters, but I have this condition where it’s near impossible for me to tell a lie, and when I admitted she was aggressive, the no-kill shelters refused to take her. Eventually, although we didn’t want three cats, especially three that couldn’t get along, it became clear we were stuck with this beautiful but somewhat annoying cat, and I made an appointment to get her spayed.

I’ve often joked that the animal hospital got it mixed up and gave her a lobotomy when she went in for her spay, because Brachtune (by the way, the origin of her name is in this post) returned home a completely different cat. She was sweet and loving and not aggressive at all. Eishel was sort of ousted by Tigger and Brachtune and went to live with my parents, and I went on to spend 15 more years with Tigger and 16 with Brachtune, convinced I had the two most perfect cats in the world.

Regular readers know Brachtune’s been sick for a while. Like many cats, her kidneys started to fail, and she was hyperthyroid and anemic on top of it. She hadn’t been herself for a week or so and had stopped eating, so I took her in to the vet on Wednesday. After simply examining her, the doctor gave her only a couple of days to live, and after doing some bloodwork, urged me to delay no more than a day or two putting an end to her suffering, warning me her body was going to start to drastically fail very soon. So I took off work today and am spending all day with her, and am indeed watching her body shut down. She and Mark and I have to go to animal hospital at 7. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Part of the reason I loved Tigger so much was probably because I identified with him. Of the two cats I’ve had in my adult life, I think I am most like Tigger; our personalities were similar: independent, feisty, suspicious of strangers but fiercely loyal to loved ones, loud and gregarious at times but introspective at others. Convinced we’re always right. Proud, perhaps to a fault. Uncaring and largely unaware what other people think of us. A bit dual natured. Adventurous. Risk taking. Brachtune, on the other hand, is who I strive to be. It sounds corny, but I learned a lot from Brachtune, and it was mostly this: calm down and enjoy yourself. Love everyone. Tigger had a hard time making friends outside me and Mark, but everyone that met Brachtune loved her. She is just sweetness personified. Friendly, laid back, loving, affectionate, warm, caring…if everyone were like Brachtune, or even half as sweet as her, we’d have no wars. Tigger judged you. Brachtune only judges you on your propensity for petting her.

I just keep thinking a single thought: She’s too nice to die. I need her, true, but the world needs her. The world is a better place with her in it and will be missing something without her. She may have been small – by the end, tiny – but her value as a living being is so much bigger than her physical size. Sometimes it’s hard to see the good in the world around you, but Brachtune radiates goodness. I think it’s so hard for me to deal with because she was so happy, all the time, to be alive. I hate seeing life extinguished from someone who just enjoyed it so much.

Mark and I would constantly joke with Brachtune as she wedged herself between the two of us while we were watching TV or something: “Brachtune, cheer up. Why are you so depressed all the time? Why must you hold all your emotions in?” As she sat there purring like a machine and pawing at us if we stopped petting her for a single moment. Brachtune always seemed ecstactic. I think she may have had an MDMA problem. Except Brachtune didn’t need chemical bliss. It is just her nature to eminate – and soak up – love.

I have a favorite reading chair – regular readers have seen it in numerous photographs because Brachtune liked to share it with me – and I can be found in it almost every evening. When entering the sunroom where my chair is located, from the doorway at the opposite end of the room, Brachtune would saunter into the room, make eye contact with me, and start walking towards me, then start trotting, finally racing toward me at full gallop, holding my gaze the entire time, until she reached my chair and leapt onto my lap. I’ve tried and I can not think of a single more endearing thing in the world than the thought of Brachtune picking up speed as she got closer and closer to me. Every time.

A few years ago, Brachtune got underfoot and I stepped on her, breaking her leg. I felt terrible. The day I brought her home following her surgery, she was hopped up on painkillers and had to learn to walk with a pin in her leg, which had to hurt. I had to take her kitty carrier apart and lift her out of it because she couldn’t walk out of it. I did so and sat on the floor a few feet from her, feeling upset and hideously guilty. Brachtune looked me in the eye and dragged herself over to me, unable to use her hind legs, until she got to my lap, which she collapsed in, purring. I’ll never forget that. It’s rare you feel that loved.

But as much as she loves me, no matter how comfortable she was on my lap, or how fast asleep she was, or how long or short a time she’d been cuddled up with me, the second Mark walked into the room and sat on the floor, she’d bound up off my lap and race to him. Brachtune liked everyone, but she loved us, so much my heart bursts thinking of it.

Brachtune. Brachtunavitch. B-tune. The Toonse. Toonsie. Sweetheart. Sugarplum. Sweetpea. Dollface. Sweetness and Light. Lovebug. Purrbot. I love you and I miss you.

Due to a combination of factors including our trip to Charleston and, oh, a few blizzards, I have not been to Super H or any other Asian grocery store in many weeks, other than the solitary Chinese grocery store my mother-in-law found in North Charleston. I don’t know if Super H got wind of the fact I was considering moving to Charleston or if I had just missed it sorely, but for some reason it seemed to be even more amazingly awesome than usual this evening.

Oh, my love.

(This picture taken a million years ago when there weren’t 20′ snow piles all over the parking lot. Oh, happy, happy days.)

I remember vividly the first time I set foot in Super H. It must have been 5 or 6 years ago and I’d driven down to Fairfax from Arlington, where we lived at the time, just to check out the big brother to the closer-by Han Ah Reum. I walked into the produce department and immediately gaped in amazement. I remember digging my Blackberry out of my purse and immediately IMing Mark: “I WANT TO LIVE IN THIS GROCERY STORE.” Super H is HUGE and their produce selection is simply unbelievable. And CHEAP! Then there’s the entire aisle devoted to rice, and an entire aisle devoted to noodles, an entire aisle devoted to soy sauces and vinegars….it’s just amazing. You do have to watch out for certain areas – there are a lot of tentacles and other scary things that need to be avoided, but that’s really only a problem in the frozen food aisle, otherwise that stuff is confined to the seafood department in the back that I just pretend doesn’t exist.

Not only is Super H jam-packed with awesomeness, but they’re always playing good music. Like The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Erasure. I don’t know how a Korean grocery store chain got a hold of my high school record collection, but I’m not complaining.

Anyway, I went completely nuts tonight. I should have taken a picture of everything I bought, but it didn’t all fit on the kitchen island at one time. I filled four big reusable grocery bags to the point they were nearly busting, and the bill was only $100. If I’d bought that much at Whole Foods, it’d have been $500. Not that Whole Foods has half the stuff I bought. I think the blizzards have mentally scarred me and I decided I’d better pack my pantry with enough stuff to see us through an entire year or something.

No recipes tonight – it’s very late so I’m just having a huge assortment of fresh banchan supplied by Super H, and some sushi rice – but I wanted to share a few items I picked up that are new to me, with the hopes maybe some of you will supply me with ideas on using it.

Tia To:

I thought this looked suspiciously like shiso, which can be hard to find, so I snatched it up. Turns out I was right: it’s Vietnamese shiso, and apparently it has a stronger taste. There’s a pretty large amount of it for $1!

Frozen bean curd:

I got this because it looked a little bit like fish cake, so I was thinking I could use it in something that calls for fish cake. I’ve never had fish cake before, so I’ll have no idea if it tastes like it or not. I’ll probably add seaweed to whatever dish I come up with to make it fishier. Anybody tried a product like this? Since the tia to is supposed to be good with seafood dishes, I’m thinking about combining these items?

Fermented soybean:

I think I’ve identified this as doenjang, so I’m pretty sure it’ll end up in an awesome Korean soup, but I’d love to hear ideas on this.

Meatless Spaghetti Sauce With Pickled Cucumber

This one is so simply bizarre, I couldn’t pass it up. I’m not sure if I will actually eat it, although it is vegan. It’s fried wheat gluten with pickles. Apparently you put it on spaghetti?! I’ll definitely do a post on this, even if it’s not edible.

Soy Pudding

Not entirely sure why I bought this because it’s just soft tofu, which I can easily make myself, with a syrup you mix in to make a dessert. The syrup is just high fructose corn syrup with ginger flavoring, so I imagine I’ll be throwing that away and making my own syrup using fresh ginger and no HFCS. Anyone tried this stuff? Thoughts on replacing the syrup?

Rice Noodles

I just picked these up because one of the very, very few things I can’t find at Super H are really wide rice noodles, like I’d use for drunken noodles. The Thai grocery has them, but it’s far away. Actually, that Chinese grocery in North Charleston had them! Score 1 for N. Charleston (but 1,000,000 for Super H).

Aloe

I love aloe but I’ve just never bought it fresh. It was only $1 for this leaf so I figured, what the heck. Now I’m not sure what to do with it.

Kimchi!

This is NOT a new product for me, of course, but it’s pictured here because this huge container cost $14.99, and the cashier was raving about it and saying how it’s the best kind and that it was “so expensive” but worth it. Which I got a huge laugh out of, because in Charleston, Mark picked a tiny (Vegenaise-sized) jar of kimchi up at Earth Fare without looking at the price and I was shocked to look at the receipt later and find it had cost $14.99. Flabbergasted. It was just cabbage, carrots, ginger, and salt! Outrageous! When he ate it I asked him if it was the most amazing kimchi he’d ever had and he said no, in fact, it was extremely boring. It wasn’t even spicy. So now we’re always joking about the world’s most expensive kimchi. I can’t believe Super H thinks THEIR kimchi is expensive! (By the way, this kind of kimchi didn’t contain any fish sauce, anchovies, or oysters, but you’ve got to look out for that stuff when buying kimchi. Or make your own.)

Speaking of the cashier, who was Korean, she noted all the Korean food I was buying and seemed quite impressed by my selections. I’m now an honorary Korean!

I’m off to eat my banchan…have a great weekend, and if you have any thoughts on these items, let’s hear them!

Update: Here’s a picture of tonight’s meal:

We are trapped: buried under more than a foot of snow! Aargh!

Nothing to do in that case except bake, I guess. Here’s what I’ve made this weekend:

Sparkling cranberries.

Spoon cookies.

Salted caramels (made with MimicCreme and Earth Balance buttery sticks). This was the first time I’ve ever really made candy and they turned out amazing despite the fact I didn’t really trust my thermometer, as it’s not a candy thermometer. But I stopped when it said 248 degrees (I also tested by dropping a bit into ice water and checking the consistency) and it was perfect! I topped them with extra salt (I actually used Maldon, which is my favorite salt; I can’t afford fleur de sel) and my only regret is I wasn’t more heavy-handed with the salt because some pieces didn’t get any and the pieces that did are sooo good.

Crusty cheese bread (using Follow Your Heart cheese) from Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day.

Pretzel from Artisan Breads.

San Francisco Sourdough from Artisan Breads…proofing in a brotform.

Sourdough after baking; I’d say I got some oven spring:

We really are trapped; this is our street. It may not look too bad to owners of four-wheel drive cars or SUVs, but we both have rear wheel drive cars. Mine’s completely useless in the snow and I don’t even try; Mark’s is bigger, heavier, and a little better, but he couldn’t make it up the second hill in this picture and had to turn back home. He was trying to get to Wegmans to buy some orange juice because he’s drunk a gallon of it since Thursday.

Mark’s decidedly less healthy alternative to orange juice, chilling.

If we lived on the side street next to our house instead of the main road, we’d be stuck here for weeks!

It was really hard for me to walk around the yard other than where Mark shoveled because the snow was deeper than the height of my boots:

It took a lot of effort, but I made it over to the pool. Man, I miss summer. This picture is just plain depressing.

Our patio table looks like a cake:

I was very fortunate in that Mark decided that shoveling all the snow himself would suffice for his workout since he couldn’t make it to the gym. I thought he looked particularly cute here surveying all his hard work:

The sunshine today really belies the intensity of yesterday’s storm.

We took Brachtune out briefly to let her see the snow.

She didn’t like it.

But as soon as we took her back in, she thought maybe she’d like to go out again.

Weirdo.

I was reprimanded for not having enough cat pictures lately … sorry.

I’ve just been so busy! But then I realized I had a bunch of pictures on my iPhone I’d been saving to share with you, all of cats. In fact, there were so many I’m going to make them their own post. Rest assured that I plan to have a food post for you later tonight or tomorrow, though, so if you aren’t among the cat lovers out there, you can sign off now and come back tomorrow for the food!

I took this series of pictures of Brachtune on my phone shortly after Mark’s birthday, when I was enjoying a slice of his birthday cake for dessert one evening. Brachtune was dining with me:

Suddenly, she approaches:

When she thought I wasn’t looking, she had a little snoot of the cake to see if it smelled like tuna:

And finally attacks!

I eat a lot of meals looking at this view, by the way:

In other cat news, this is the cat I’m going to have one day very soon:

His name is Nakata. I love him.

And okay, I’m not sure how soon I’m really going to have him because I must come up with an elaborate, foolproof plan for stealing him from my friends Dale and Nona, to whom he doesn’t even actually belong. They are long-term cat sitting him and another cat for a military friend of theirs. And his name isn’t actually Nakata. But get this: I fell in love with him on sight the first time I met him and immediately re-named him Nakata (from Bogey), which has been on my list of possible cat names ever since I read Kafka on the Shore. I thought the name sounded neat for a cat, especially since it’s the name of a character who can communicate with cats. Cool, huh? And I instantly decided that The Cat Formerly Known As Bogey looked like a Nakata. What I didn’t know at the time I issued this new name is that Nakata is actually from Japan! Nona’s friend rescued him when she was stationed there. Nakata is Japanese, like his name! NAKATA SHALL ALSO BE MINE. I feel I have a special bond with Nakata. He comes over to me and lies his tiny little head (actually, it’s quite large; he’s a substantially sized kitty) on my lap every time I am there! My heart, it melts.

This is the cat that really belongs to Dale and Nona, Pot Pie. She’s also super cute and I love her, but I’m not planning to steal her.

Finally, this picture is a year and a half old, but I mentioned in one of my recent San Francisco posts that I go looking for and chase around random and stray cats when I’m traveling because I really miss having a cat around to pet, and it reminded me of this cat I found at the beach last summer, lounging on a Harley. I really want to know if the bike belongs to the cat’s human:

There was also the time in New Orleans when Pig found a Siamese in a bookstore (you have no idea how much I love bookstores that have cats, by the way). Ended badly for Pig:

(You’d think I’d get kicked out of bookstores more often than I do…)

Finally, when I searched my galleries for those older pictures, I came across this picture, which made me mist up a bit:

I miss my handsome orange boy.

Right, well, time to hit Wegmans, make dinner, and make a post that’s actually about eating food, not terrorizing or stealing cats.

This is a bit late in coming, but to continue my record of my adventures in San Francisco, V took me to Medjool for sangria on the rooftop for the view. The sangria sucked, I’m sorry to say. In fact, I made V drink the entire carafe. V didn’t complain:

I really needed a tripod, but this was the view through a 50mm lens; it reminded me a lot of Baltimore.

We moved onto Casanova Lounge where I partook of some beers. And took pictures of the ceiling because it was entertaining.

Me! V was extremely amused that there was a butt next to my head. The decor at Casnova is…interesting.

Friday morning I decided to trek over to Rainbow Grocery. Because I think going to grocery stores when on vacation is a fun thing to do. Rainbow Grocery was amazing. I thought I was spoiled with my proximity to Wegmans, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Super H, but, wow. Rainbow Grocery has EVERYTHING. There are so many signs saying “vegan”; it was incredible. Vegan cookies, vegan cakes, GOOD vegan cheese (Daiya and Teese, though no Cheezly, which is my favorite), and on and on and on. I’m not sure I can live without Rainbow Grocery now that I’ve been there.

Funny story about lunch after Rainbow Grocery. Earlier in the week, V had wanted to take me to a restaurant near her apartment that she’d always wanted to go to but had never made it to, but she’d been researching it beforehand and read on Yelp that they fried their vegan stuff in the same oil as the fish. She didn’t remember the name of the place, but I was perplexed about why they had vats of of oil they were frying fish in, because I was under the impression it was a burger joint she was talking about. (I think she thought it was.) Well, I’d always wanted to go to Weird Fish, so after Rainbow Grocery, I dragged her over there, and she said, “hey, this is the place I wanted to take you but they cook their vegan stuff in the fish oil!” So she asked the waitress if that was true and the waitress said, no, they have dedicated oil and cooking implements for the vegan stuff. Woo! V sort of surprised me by ordering a vegan meal; I think it’s the chico taco. She said it was really good.

I got the fried seitan and chips.

I’ve never had fish and chips before and I’m not sure it was really supposed to, but I know this tasted NOTHING like fish. What it tasted exactly like to me was my Thanksgiving seitan “turkey”. It must have sage or something in it. It was good, though not at all fishy, and it was a HUGE amount. I could barely finish one piece.

This is what it looked like inside:

Later that day I helped V pack up her belongings for her move to LA and I took these pictures of her Mission kitchen.

Now what you may be waiting for are my pictures and review of Millennium, the all-vegan gourmet restaurant in the heart of San Francisco (if you consider the Tenderloin the heart of San Francisco, which I do). Unfortunately I didn’t want to take my dSLR and my iPhone pictures SUCK. Badly. And there’s not much I can do to make them any better. So you’re going to have to suffer through this because I’m going to post them anyway because the meal was sooooo good. The pictures do NOT do it justice AT ALL.

Here’s V looking smart:

And me looking stupid:

For starters we got the house-pickled vegetables and the roasted beets glazed in balsamic and rosemary. DELICIOUS though the photo is atrocious.

They also provided free bread with a yummy “cheesy” tofu spread.

V ordered some Italian-sounding eggplant dish that this photo makes look like a disorganized pile of stuff but which was in reality nicely presented and which V – ordinarily a very light eater – ate every bite of, save the bit she reserved for me.

We got a side of garlic chard with caramelized onions to share.

I had the Korean BBQ tempeh with homemade gochujang.

It was excellent, though about the limit of smokiness that I like. I don’t think I’ve ever had properly cooked lotus root before because it’s the first time I ever really liked it.

We also killed a bottle of wine during dinner. For dessert, I wanted the peanut butter chocolate cake, but as one of V’s few defects is she doesn’t like peanut butter OR chocolate (I know, I know, WHAT?) I had to force her to get the sorbet sampler instead. I know one of these is fig but I don’t remember what the other two are. We also had Prosecco with dessert because we’re lushes.

An absolutely TERRIBLE picture of my cake, which came with a small scoop of sorbet and was amazingly delicious, although extremely rich, so much so I couldn’t finish it.

All in all an AMAZING meal, and even more amazing because I had fully intended to treat V since I more or less forced her to go with me, but she absolutely insisted on paying for everything as my birthday gift. Wow!

….aaand finally, speaking of birthdays, MARK TURNED 30 YESTERDAY!! I had a surprise party for him because I’m sneaky!! I had to have it in a bar because I couldn’t have pulled it off at the house, so I for once didn’t have to spend two entire days cooking before a party.

I baked him a cake at home …

… but couldn’t sneak it to the bar, so his mom came up with the idea of sneaking jelly candies into the bar and sticking birthday candles into them so he could blow out candles, be sung to, and thoroughly embarrassed.

One of Mark’s gifts, from his friends Brad and April …

… which was later used on my cake at home:

And with that I take my leave: we have guests who drove down all the way from Bethelehem, PA to be at his party and I need to get back to entertaining them!