Ugggggghhhh. Saturday was flip-flop weather and today, Monday, THIS:

WHAT IS THIS???

Here’s why Mark is great, or one reason anyway: Fortinbras was here last week and he and Mark went to the mall so Mark could buy a new computer. I refused to go because I despise the mall. When they returned, I was informed that once they got to the Apple store, Mark abruptly announced, “buying a new computer is stupid; let’s go buy Renae something instead,” so they went to Williams-Sonoma and got me a bean pot for no apparent reason. I hadn’t done anything to deserve said bean pot, especially a mere week after Christmas, when I got a Vita-Mix, but I’m not complaining because I’ve been wanting a bean pot, so yay!

The bean pot I suddenly came to own was packed with a couple of recipes so today I decided to make the included Oven Baked Beans recipe, which is slightly non-vegan with its can of pork and beans (and Worcestershire sauce, but since it’s easy for me to buy vegan Worcestershire, I don’t even register it as a non-vegan ingredient). So this is my adaption of the Le Creuset Oven Baked Beans recipe.

Le Creuset Baked Beans

1 1/4 cups dried kidney beans
1 1/4 cups dried baby lima beans
1 1/4 cups dried pinto beans
1 1/4 cups dried Great Northern beans
1 14.5 oz can vegetarian baked beans
1 medium onion, diced
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 cup loosely packed brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses (I used blackstrap; the original recipe didn’t specify a type)
1/4 cup vegan Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup prepared mustard
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp liquid smoke
2 Tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp smoked pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp salt
hot sauce to taste – I used homemade sriracha
1 packet Goya artificial ham flavoring (optional, but it’s weirdly vegan, so if you want some of the hammy flavor you’re missing from the can of pork and beans, do it up)

Place the kidney, lima, pinto, and Great Northern beans in a large vessel. Cover with several inches of cold water and soak overnight (or all day). Alternatively, cover with several inches of boiling water and soak for one hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dice the onion.

Stir or whisk together the rest of the ingredients.

Drain the soaked beans.

Stir together all of the ingredients in a bean pot, Dutch oven, or large casserole.

Cover …

… and bake until done. The original recipe said to bake for two hours, and after two hours it was certainly edible, but I like my beans creamier so I added more water and baked for another hour.

Serve. This makes way more beans than you will probably need unless you are feeding 40 friends.

Moving on to completely off-topic items, the lovely Zoa asked to see some of the infrared pictures I took in Charleston and I can’t turn Zoa down.

Infrared filters work by blocking all visible light and allowing only infrared light to pass through to the camera. Because all visible light is blocked, the filters appear to be nearly opaque and you need to use shutter times of several seconds to many minutes, and thus you need a tripod. The images you make will appear very red with black detail. Usually you’ll convert this to black & white, where things that reflect a lot of infrared light, like foliage, will be more exposed, or lighter in tone, than they normally appear, which can give pictures an otherworldly appearance.

Here’s what a photo looks like before being converted to B&W:

This is the first infrared picture I ever took. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing and just held the shutter open for a random amount of time, so I don’t know how it ended up relatively well exposed. This is from Middleton Place. The South, with all that gorgeous Spanish moss, is a great place for these types of pictures.

Another from Middleton Place.

My tripod boy (Mark, acting as my assistant, is in charge of carrying the tripod) staged this photo. Can you find him? You can click for a full-size version if you need help.

From Magnolia Cemetery:

From Folly Beach:

We got a little silly by this time and started goofing off with the long exposures. This is me and Mark HAUNTING YOU.

Mark calls this one Portrait of an Artist as a Dead Man.

Okay, nothing too amazing, but I had a lot of fun taking them and am looking forward to playing around with the filter some more.

One of my favorite commenters, Josiane, managed to correctly identify and inquire about the lima bean risotto I made last week to accompany the “ricotta” butternut squash I mentioned in my last post. So I figured I’d make it again and post a recipe for her.

I thought I was lightly adapting the recipe for Risotto with Vegetables du Jour in Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure, but when I looked it up, I was pretty much making it exactly as specified, other than adding some wine to the broth. In a side note she even suggests lima beans, which I thought was my own idea, as one of the vegetables “du jour”. I wish I had actually adapted it so I wasn’t posting an exact recipe, but honestly, it’s a very basic recipe and there’s not much to change. Another thing: I used a pressure cooker, as you can probably tell from the name of the cookbook I got the recipe from. If you haven’t made risotto in a pressure cooker, you have no idea how EASY it is. I highly recommend investing in a pressure cooker – or putting one on your wish list. And as soon as you have the pressure cooker, get Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure because it’s excellent. Because I’m always looking up pressure-cook times for various beans and grains, it’s probably my most-referred-to cookbook.

You can also make this the hard way, by standing over the stove, stirring constantly and slowly adding the the broth as it is absorbed. It’s up to you!

Lima Bean Risotto
very lightly adapted from Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure

1 large shallot, minced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
large pinch saffron (Trader Joe’s sells this for a reasonable price, although that’s not very helpful for Josiane, who is in Canada!)
salt to taste (the recipe calls for 1 tsp; I find the perfect amount depends on the broth you choose)
3 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup cooked lima beans (I had some leftover from another dish in the freezer)
2 Tbsp freshly-squeezed lemon juice
something green: thinly sliced scallions, chopped parsley or other herb, etc.

Mince the shallot.

Prep and measure the rest of the ingredients.

My broth is homemade and fairly concentrated, so I watered it down a bit so not to overwhelm the risotto. Here it is combined with the wine.

Heat some olive oil over medium-high heat in a pressure cooker (or medium-large pot if you are doing things the hard way). Add the shallots and cook until soft, then add the rice, salt, and saffron and stir to coat with the oil.

Add the broth and wine, put the lid on, take the heat up to high, and bring up to pressure. Then reduce the heat to low or medium-low (the lowest at which you can keep it at pressure) and cook for 5 minutes. Release pressure using a “quick-release” method.
(If you aren’t using a pressure cooker, get a book to read and a chair to sit on, and add the broth 1/2 cup at a time, waiting until it is absorbed to add the next dose. This will take about 30-40 minutes, if I remember correctly, but it’s been a very long time.)

There are three possibilities when you remove the lid of the pressure cooker: 1) the risotto will be a little dry, 2) the risotto will be a little runny, or 3) the risotto will be done perfectly. In the case of #1, add a little broth, as well as the lima beans and green stuff and return to medium heat just until the lima beans are heated through, stirring. In the case of #2, return to medium to medium-high heat to boil off the extra liquid, stirring and adding the lima beans and green stuff 2 or 3 minutes before it’s ready. If #3, just add the lima beans and green stuff and heat a couple of minutes until the lima beans are warm. Mine was a little liquidy.

I’ve added the limas in this picture.

After removing from the heat, add the lemon juice, adjusting the amount to taste. Adjust the salt if necessary.

And serve. This was accompanied by vegan “fish” in a garlic-tarragon sauce.

Josiane, I hope that helps – I’m sure you’ll add your own touches; let me know how it goes! As for the rest of you, any other requests?!

And now, Torticia.

Tomorrow is my company’s holiday potluck and I volunteered, as usual, to bring a salad. So last night I went to Wegmans and wandered around until inspiration struck. I decided to go with a rice noodle salad, so I bought a few things and then tonight whipped up a sauce to pull them all together. I knew I had posted a rice noodle salad here a few months ago, but I didn’t realize until now that what I made was almost identical. Nonetheless, I took a bunch of pictures of it, so I’m posting it anyway!

Rice Noodle Salad…again

1 package rice noodles
about 3″ of a wide daikon, shredded, julienned, or cut on spiralizer
2 carrots, shredded, julienned, or cut on spiralizer
a few leaves of savoy or Napa cabbage, shredded
1 red bell pepper, thinly julienned
1 cup bean sprouts
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp sesame paste
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp grated ginger
1 Tbsp tamarind paste
1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 Tbsp lime juice
sriracha to taste

Prepare the noodles. Begin by soaking them in cold-to-room-temperature water for 10 minutes (this prevents them from sticking to each other later), then heat the water to a near boil and cook just until al dente. Drain, rinse with cold water, and toss with a bit of sesame oil to prevent sticking. Set aside.

Prepare each of the vegetables by julienning, shredding, or cutting on a spiralizer. Here is my daikon:

And here is my cabbage:

Put each of the vegetables in a bowl as you prep them.

Chop the cilantro, then place in the bowl with the vegetables. Set aside.

Put the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl. Adjust the ratio of each to suit your taste; I just estimated above what I used. I adore this little Fire King bowl for making small amounts of sauce.

Whisk. This sauce would also be good as a dipping sauce for summer rolls. In fact, it ended up kind of watered down in the salad, but was good enough to show off, so I might have to make it again soon for dipping.

Put the noodles into a large bowl or pot, then thoroughly mix in the sauce.

Add the vegetables and toss until everything is combined.

I’m thinking this will be a good potluck dish because it doesn’t need to be warmed before serving and in fact can just sit on my desk for a couple of hours in the morning instead of taking up space in the refrigerator.

The bundle of cilantro I bought was HUGE! Help me out: what are your favorite cilantro-centric recipes?

In other news, I had some Tofutti ricotta left over from my taste test last week, so I thought I’d sprinkle some on a butternut squash before baking. Mistake. The Tofutti ricotta did okay in the pasta bake I made for my review, but it did not fare as well baked “in the open” instead of mixed in a casserole and covered. I put a bunch of the ricotta in the hole left by the seeds, and a thin layer on the rest of the squash. The ricotta in the hole melted to a very thin, watery, tasteless liquid, and the remainder of it turned…kinda brown and crusty. Looks like cat food, non?

That whole brown part was hollow and crispy and slid right off the squash. The ricotta added absolutely no taste to the squash; it was like water. (The brown part was like crispy water, I guess.) I should have just poured it off and sprinkled some of my normal brown sugar on the squash; it would have been much better. I definitely won’t be buying that stuff again. I gave the rest of it to Gomez, who likes it far better than I do, though I can’t imagine why.

What’s that you say? You miss the raccoons? Well, that’s understandable!

Scrumpy was found alone near a school a few weeks ago. As you may expect, young raccoons like toys similar to those you would give your cat or dog. They are so dexterous and curious, however, that they also enjoy toys made for human children, with buttons they can push and parts they can yank on. They get into as much trouble than a toddler, that’s for sure!

Renata is much larger than Scrumpy and in fact her siblings were released months ago, but she wasn’t ready to go. She’s adopted Scrumpy and will over-winter with us to take care of him, which works out well because raccoons like company and also learn from each other as they grow. Renata kept pushing her face into the camera when I was trying to take Scrumpy’s picture. Does your cat or dog walk towards you whenever you try to take a picture? Raccoons are like that too, except I think usually their motive is more to steal your camera than to say hi.

Today I was definitively diagnosed as suffering from (daily, yay) migraines. I’m not telling you to solicit pity or anything, just to explain tonight’s dinner (although it also sort of explains why I’ve been quiet lately). I met with my doctor this afternoon to go over the results of my MRI, which was composed of images like this:

…which because I LOVE neuroscience, I found fascinating, but which are also creepy because those are MY eyeballs on stalks. However, we also now know that is my very normal brain, which is a good thing.

Is showing you pictures of my brain too intimate? I think it may be, although people are always showing off their sonograms and frankly I find this much more interesting to look at. Sorry, though. Try not to think of Large Marge every time you see me.

Moving on, having ruled out anything terrifying (other than the eyeballs on stalks) like brain tumors, migraines it is. This is bad because migraines are annoying, but it is GOOD to have an explanation for this annoyance, and GOOD to have medicine, which I can start tomorrow. I was resistant earlier to the idea of taking medicine, but after this past week, I’m ready for it.

So I stopped by Wegmans on my way home this afternoon to pick up what I hope is my miracle cure. While waiting for the prescription to be filled, I wandered the aisles, and guess what I found?? Tofutti Better Than Ricotta Cheese! I had no idea this was a new product! As the label says, wow!

I immediately snatched it up in a flurry of excitement. For occasional use, I’m a big fan of Tofutti’s Better Than Cream Cheese and Better Than Sour Cream, so I had high hopes for the ricotta. However, I was slightly hesitant about it because honestly, although I’ve never made a spectacular homemade “cream cheese”, and Tofutti’s sour cream is more realistic than anything I’ve made as well, I’ve never had any problems making tofu “ricotta”, so I wasn’t sure I needed this product. Nonetheless, I bought it…for you! So I could do a taste test and write a review for YOU. Because I care! I’ve been trying to make extra-healthy dinners lately, but I decided that tonight I would splurge and make something easy (because I have a headache), but decadent and fun (to celebrate because I hope to not have a headache tomorrow! Or the next day!). And educational for my readers!

So the “ricotta” went home with me, for the rather outrageous price of I believe $4.39, in addition to some just-as-processed Gardein Beefless Tips, tinned tomatoes, and pasta – WHITE pasta. That’s right, I’m celebrating.

Unfortunately, I was slightly put off when I opened the ricotta.

It just didn’t look…great.

I crumbled it with my hands. It felt distressingly like cold, damp okara. If any of you have followed my depressing okara trials, you’ll know that I am no fan of okara, and let me tell you something: cold, damp okara is the WORST kind of okara. Worse, the ricotta TASTED a bit like cold, damp okara. The photo may make it look as innocuous as a bowl of crumbled tofu, but it’s actually very grainy and disturbing, whereas crumbled tofu is pleasant and fresh. Those of you who don’t make your own tofu or soy milk may be wondering what the heck okara (the ground-up remains of soybeans that is a by-product of the soymilk-making process) looks, feels, and tastes like. Suffice it to say, it’s a grainy, bland mess. Raw Tofutti ricotta tastes a little bit like what I suspect chalk would taste like if you ground it up and added water with a touch of lemon juice. Slightly tangy wet chalk, in other words.

I became alarmed at this point. My celebratory dinner suddenly seemed in danger of being GROSS. So I decided I would make TWO versions of my dinner, one with the now-frightening Tofutti ricotta and one with my own tofu “ricotta”. I didn’t want to “waste” my good “cotton” (i.e., non-silken) tofu on an experiment, so I took a box of firm silken tofu and whizzed it in a blender with a little salt, 2 or 3 tablespoons of Dragonfly’s Bulk, Dry Uncheese Mix, and about 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.

While I was blending up my own “ricotta”, behind my back, Senor Gomez was not nearly as skeptical of the Tofutti stuff as I was!

Hahahahaahahaha!!! Oh man, this hilariated* me. He REALLY liked that stuff.

Anyway, so I pre-heated the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, then ground up the Beefless Tips and sauteed them with a small onion and some garlic in a skillet, deglazing with white wine.

I put 28 oz of whole tinned tomatoes into the blender, with a bunch of chopped garlic, frozen basil, and some dried oregano, red chili flakes, and salt, and processed. It’s like a circus in my kitchen at times, by the way.

I also cooked some pasta al dente and drained. I set up two small bakers and put a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of each, then topped with some of the pasta.

Then I added the “beef”.

Next up, the “ricotta”, Toffuti on the left, homemade on the right.

Closeup of the Tofutti, looking suspiciously okara-like.

I added more sauce, pasta, another layer of “ricotta”, and the rest of the sauce.

Another close-up of the Tofutti version:

I covered and baked for 45 minutes. After removing, let sit for 5 to 10 minutes before serving. Here is the dish with MY ricotta:

…and here is the Tofutti ricotta. It MELTED! THANK GOD. Soooo much more appetizing. And actually not gross!

I served myself some of each for a taste comparison. Tofutti on the left, Renae on the right.

The verdict? To my surprise, the Tofutti was okay. Baking it did WONDERS. However, it was just okay. It was not worth anywhere NEAR its $5 retail price (which is absurd). My tofu ricotta cost about $1.75 – and would have been mere pennies had I made the tofu myself – and tasted BETTER than Tofutti. It’s also better for you. To be honest, I had a pretty hard time distinguishing which lump of pasta bake was the Tofutti Ricotta and which was the Renae Ricotta on my plate during the taste test (a.k.a. dinner, which by the way I balanced with a lovely, abundant salad); they tasted and looked similar. Mark said the Tofutti was okay, but when he went back for seconds, he only got more of the Renae Ricotta, which he said was better.

In conclusion, Tofutti ricotta is a useless and extremely over-priced product. I can’t even say it’s a good convenience product because it takes only SECONDS to make a nice, fresh tofu ricotta. You don’t even need the blender: just crumble up some regular tofu with your hands and work in some salt and lemon juice, and nutritional yeast if you want. You also can’t really eat Tofutti ricotta raw, unless you are a glutton for punishment or are a cat.

Hahahahahaha.

The reason I find those pictures of Gomez so hilarious is because when I was growing up, I had the Most Awesome Cat in the World, Dracula. Dracula had THE biggest personality you’ll ever find on a cat. I even have a tattoo of him, he was so awesome. Like Gomez, Dracula was all-black. What I find really weird is I actually sometimes CALL Gomez Dracula, which seems so bizarre to me because Dracula died years and years ago and other than their species and color, they have little in common. You’d think I’d accidentally call him Tigger, but I have never done that even once. Anyway, among many, many goofy things Dracula did, if you put a paper lunch bag on the floor, he’d stick his head in it and then walk until he hit a wall. Then he’d back up, change directions, and again walk until he hit a wall. (This makes Dracula sound very stupid, but he wasn’t – he was just…unique.) Evidence:

* a perfectly cromulent word.

Thanksgiving is my father’s favorite holiday. My mother does not like to cook (and my father does not cook), so I think Thanksgiving may be her least favorite holiday. But no one wants to disappoint my dad, and no restaurants are going to have anything for me and Mark, so my mother continues to make Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, everyone’s problems would be solved if I were allowed to host Thanksgiving dinner since I love to cook and I love hosting dinner parties, but that’s a rather Renae-centric perspective because I’m pretty sure my father would counter there’d be the problem of a lack of a dead turkey. ANYWAY, I’m trying to help ease the burden on my mother and aunt by bringing whatever I can. This year one of the things I offered to bring was succotash.

Now, in prior years I would never have made such an offer, because lima beans, gross! But then a couple of years ago I found fresh lima beans at the farmers market and learned I do like lima beans. In fact, not too long ago, I made succotash – the single part of Thanksgiving I despised as a child – and loved it. So I said I could make succotash this year, IF I could use dried baby limas instead of the nasty frozen ones. But I’ve never made it from dried beans before, so today as a trial I soaked and cooked some of those dried baby limas, mixed a few with some corn and Earth Balance, and tried to decide if I thought there was a chance my family would eat it. It tasted fine, but I haven’t yet admitted to Mom that dried limas are white, not green like the frozen ones, so not only is it an extremely boring looking dish, it may be too different-looking to pass muster with my father. I’m thinking about adding some chopped scallions for Thanksgiving, though, to give it color.

That’s a very long way of telling you that today I had a mess of cooked baby limas and nothing to do with them. Actually, they’d have been fine just waiting for Thursday so I guess I didn’t have to do anything with them. But I like cooking a whole bunch of things at once for holidays, so I’d just as soon cook another batch of limas on Wednesday. (Is that weird?) Today’s limas went in…well, if you’ve been reading long enough, you know. Soup. If I don’t know what to do with something, it’s soup. Soup, soup, lovely soup. Oh 8-year old Renae, how I love to confound you with my lima bean creations.

Lima Bean Soup

8 oz dried baby lima beans
1/2 large yellow onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped (I included some leaves, too)
3 medium carrots, chopped
4-6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
4 oz white wine
14.5 oz tin chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp dried thyme
4 cups vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Note: I cooked my lima beans separately from the soup because I was trying them in a different dish as well. You could also simply cook the limas in the soup, adding 30-60 minutes to the soup cooking time as needed.

Soak the lima beans overnight in cold water, or pour boiling water over them and “quick soak” for an hour or two. Drain, then cook in fresh water to cover until done. I think it took about 45 minutes for mine; maybe not even that.

Chop all the vegetables, then heat some oil in a Dutch oven and add the onions, celery, and carrot. Cook until soft, then add the garlic and cook another minute or two. Deglaze the pot with the wine. Add the chopped tomatoes and thyme and cook for another minute or two, then add the vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, then add the limas.

Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 20-30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. This is particularly good with a nice crusty bread and salad.

In cat news, Gomez gave us a scare last night when he didn’t appear for cat dinner. Mark searched the house while I went outside in the cold desperately calling his name. Eventually I went back inside in full panic mode and started randomly opening closet doors I knew Mark had already searched. I was talking to Mark and absentmindedly opened a dresser drawer…and out sprung Gomez like a jack-in-the-box! Which was both astonishing and a tremendous relief, although I’d like to know why he didn’t ANSWER US when we called him. Apparently he just sat in there in oblivion for 45 minutes. Well, other than the psychic “meow” he sent me. I had thought I heard a faint meow just before getting up to get their dinner, and I said to Mark, “Gomez is trapped somewhere!”, in fact, that’s why I got up to get their dinner. But Mark hadn’t heard it and didn’t think anything of it until Mez didn’t appear for his food. If Gomez HAD meowed from the dresser, I couldn’t possibly have heard him in the room I was in, so I guess my brain was just sending me a signal he was in trouble. It was weird. Here are some pictures of Gomez NOT trying to give me a heart attack.

For dinner tonight I got the idea to combine sweet potatoes and baby kale. It seemed very autumnal. I gave the internet a half-hearted search for ideas, but didn’t come up with much. Sweet potatoes and kale are not an unheard-of pairing, but a lot of the recipes I came across were soups or stews and I was worried about overwhelming my delicate baby kale. During the search, I did find an intriguing non-kale recipe, however: Smoked Chile Scalloped Sweet Potatoes.

The only problem? I think heavy cream is gross. It’s not even the vegan thing, although obviously it’s off limits because of that. Maybe it’s because I was raised on skim milk and I don’t recall ever even having cream of any sort, but I just think heavy cream – especially in a savory recipe – is disgusting. (I also tried whole milk once – before I was vegan, of course, – and almost threw up.) I don’t even want to substitute for it; I just think the idea of putting it or anything that is remotely like it in my food is abhorrent. And heavy cream is a pretty big component of that recipe. Fortunately, my vegan sub doesn’t just make the recipe safe for those who prefer not to eat animal products, it also makes it much healthier and a lot less…gross.

I cut this back to serve two as a side dish. If you’re serving more, feel free to double it.

Chipotle Scalloped Sweet Potatoes
Adapted from The Food Network

1 medium to large sweet potato, sliced thinly
1 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk (I used hemp, and not only that, I only had 3/4 a cup left so I thinned it out with 1/4 cup water, which was even better for making this dish as little like heavy cream as possible)
1 – 2 tsp chipotle powder, depending on your heat preference
1 tsp vegan vegetarian or “chicken” bouillon
2 Tbsp Dragonfly’s Bulk, Dry Uncheese Mix (you really want to have some of this stuff lying around at all times)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Peel and slice the sweet potato about 1/8″ thick. A mandolin is a huge help here as uniform slices will look best and also cook evenly.

See? Nice and uniform:

Whisk together the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl.

In a small baking dish, layer a row of slightly overlapping sweet potato slices.

Add additional layers until all slices are used up.

Pour the “milk” mixture over the sweet potato slices.

Cover and bake for 45 minutes or until sweet potatoes are soft.

Since I wasn’t putting them together in a single dish, I just simply sauteed the baby kale in a little olive oil with garlic and seasoned with salt and pepper. This was my first time trying baby kale. It’s gorgeous.

Baby kale is every bit as awesome as I expected it to be.

I didn’t cook the sweet potatoes and baby kale together, but you can be sure I ATE them together. I’m one of those people that happily mushes everything on their plate together – I don’t understand people who have “food touching” issues – but the sweet potatoes and kale were particularly awesome together. Also served with barley pilaf from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Mark said the sweet potatoes were great; “surprisingly great”. The surprising part wasn’t that I made something great (I don’t think), it was that the sweet potatoes were spicy. And smoky. Chipotle-y! This was a really good meal.

Halloween was a couple of weeks ago, but my friend Dave just sent me this lovely photograph, which he snapped Saturday night. It’s Renae, The Happiest Zombie Ever.

Creepy? Okay, to make up for it, here’s a nice, non-creepy squirrel on our patio:

And here is a skunk who wants to come in. AND I WANT TO LET HIM IN BECAUSE HE’S AWESOME. But I’m not going to. No, I’m not. I swear. It’s wrong to invite skunks into your home. No matter how awesome they are.

Maybe he could just come in for 5 minutes?

Mark’s been sick this week and wasn’t up for dinner tonight. Long-time readers may know that when Mark doesn’t eat dinner, dinner is Indian! I’d been planning a nice autumn meal of seitan, kale, and delicata squash before he announced he wasn’t hungry, so I decided to save it for tomorrow instead of eating it alone. But then I eyed up the kale and considered how much I’d been looking forward to eating it…so I didn’t put it away.

Like a lot of my Indian meals, because they are generally impromptu affairs born of Mark’s refusal of dinner, this recipe was made up on the fly using ingredients I had on hand and needed to use up. I’d done a really smart thing Sunday afternoon after returning home from LA: I cooked up a pound of dried chickpeas, reserving some for salads, and freezing the rest. I also cooked up a large batch of rice and portioned it into single serving sizes, which were also frozen, ready for me to grab for a quick meal down the road. Tonight that quick meal was realized.

Chole Saag

1/2 large or 1 small onion, small dice
about 1″ of ginger, grated
3-4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
1 bunch kale, chopped into fairly small pieces
8 oz spinach, also chopped into fairly small pieces
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup vegetable broth or water, plus additional (I start with 1/2 cup broth and add plain water)
salt to taste (I used Indian black salt, but regular old salt is fine)
asafoetida to taste (optional; I love the stuff)
lemon wedges, for serving

In a large pan, pot, or wok, heat some oil over medium high heat, then add the onions, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes, turmeric, garam masala, and asafoetida if desired. Cook until soft, then add the kale. Stir and cook down slightly, then add the spinach. Stir and cook down again, then reduce heat to medium and add about 1/2 cup broth or water and the chickpeas. Cook for about 20 minutes, adding 1/4 cup of water or broth periodically if it looks dry. Salt to taste. Serve over basmati rice with lemon wedges.

Since I didn’t take prep photos (I didn’t know it would be blog-worthy!), this post seems uncharacteristically short. To make up for it, here are some pictures I took shortly before our vacation, when I spotted a cardinal outside the window taking a bath in an overturned planter. Not the greatest pictures since I was taking them through both a screen and dirty glass, but the subject is pretty.

I wasn’t the only one charmed!

Those of you who live in the US may have heard (or dealt with) about the slightly freakish snow the East Coast got last Saturday (it doesn’t usually snow in October in the mid-Atlantic region). Ordinarily this is something I would have been loudly whining about – probably right here in this blog – but as it turns out, Mark and I left for LA Friday night and missed the whole ordeal. Yes, it was snowing at home and I was in California enjoying sunshine and 90-degree temperatures. Boy, was that a great feeling.

For our late evening flight, I prepared onigiri (rice balls), which is perfect travel food. I wish I had taken pictures while preparing it, but I was busy getting ready for the trip. Next time I’ll take pictures and do a real post, but really it’s so easy, you don’t need much of a tutorial. And as with most things Japanese, there is little point in me doing a tutorial when Maki of Just Hungry has one that can’t be beat.

To summarize, though, I used a mold similar to this one (Maki’s tutorial explains how to do it without a mold). Just prepare some sushi rice, but don’t cool it and don’t season it as you would sushi – just cook it. Then stir in some salt to taste. Next, fill the mold a little more than half way with rice, then (optionally), make an indentation in the middle of the rice and add about a teaspoon of filling. The filling can really be just about anything as long as it’s not too wet. I used pickled radishes this time. Umeboshi is traditional and I often use it, but I was afraid Mark wouldn’t like it and didn’t want to worry about marking what was in each onigiri. Then fill the rest of the mold with rice, put the top on the mold, and push together. Then unmold – my mold has tabs on it that facilitate pushing the onigiri out.

Finally, and this is also optional, wrap the onigiri in nori, which you can cut out into fun shapes. For traveling, I then wrapped each onigiri in plastic wrap. Unless you use a mayonnaise-y filling, these will be safe at room temperature for quite some time, which is one of the many reasons they are so great for traveling. Other reasons include: you eat them with your fingers, they are filling, they are healthy, and they are super-portable.

For maximum fun, be decorative with the nori.

And now time to bombard you with pictures, though I will try to keep them mostly food- and animal-related. Last year I went totally nutso over the food in LA. As the Angelenos would say, it’s amazing. Here is an example of how amazing: Monday night Fort and Mark and I were at an event, after which we were meeting friends in Silver Lake. I was hungry and my friend warned me there was no food at the bar we were going to and so urged me to find something on the way. I figured that would be a hopeless cause, as we were in a hurry. Then, a block from the bar we drove by a restaurant called Vegan House. There wasn’t anything else around, just a random, open vegan restaurant with, of course, awesome food. There is no need to plan your meals in LA if you are vegan: vegan food is EVERYWHERE. (Except the airport. I hate LAX.)

Another example: I was browsing thrift and book stores near Fort’s new apartment in Echo Park and walked by an ice cream shop. I had really liked the book store I was in and thought how neat it would be if this ice cream shop a few doors down had anything vegan. Turns out it was ALL vegan. That’s LA: I think it might actually be harder to NOT be vegan there.

So anyway, here’s a little recap of my trip. I managed to forget to take pictures of many of my meals – despite the fact I lugged my new camera everywhere – but I did get a few. Saturday Fort took us for a walk through nearby Elysian Park. I love this picture I took of a lizard because he’s looking right up at me and I swear, SMILING! (I have another photo where he’s NOT looking at me or smiling, which makes me all the more sure that’s what he’s doing in this one.)

We hit up wine country on Sunday, where Mark made a new friend …

… as did I.

The views were almost as great as the animals.

Oh yeah, the wine was pretty awesome, too.

Even if I had to share.

Monday night was not only the best holiday of the year, it was Mark’s and my 7-year anniversary. Do you know who we were??

Tuesday we again met up with our friends, who suggested we check out Mohawk Bend. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of our food because it was very dark but I did snap a shot of the menu because I thought it was really cool that everything is “vegan unless marked” otherwise, instead of the other way around! Not only that but they have separate kitchens for the vegan and non-vegan stuff. Everything was delicious here and the drink selection was terrific.

I chased a few cats around throughout the week. There are a particularly high number of them in Venice, where we went Wednesday.

Because I am a great wife, I suggested we go to Disneyland on Thursday, as Mark LOVES Disney. Disneyland fun, see?

Disneyland also vegan-friendly! Vegan gumbo in New Orleans! In a sourdough boule! If you’ve ever tried to find vegan food in a non-Disney theme park, you know how incredible this sort of thing is. It was good and very, very filling. Just what you need to fuel an action-packed day.

The rides are super-fun at Disney …

… but Mark found it very typical that I took more pictures of the ducks than anything else.

Disneyland and Disney World are kinda the same and kinda different. The castles…very different. Like Disneyland in general, it’s much smaller, for one thing.

After a long, hard day of Disneying, we were starving, so I checked my phone for vegan-friendly restaurants in Anaheim. Tana Ethiopian got good reviews and I love, love, love Ethiopian, so away we went! Veggie soup:

Awesomeness:

Friday the unthinkable happened: it RAINED! Actually, I didn’t have a problem with this, other than the fact that LA drivers are even worse in the rain than they normally are, and normally they are even worse than Northern Virginia drivers, who I previously thought were the worst. Mark and I took it easy and stayed local while Fort was in school, though. Which was fine because it gave me a chance to check out Sage Bistro, which was great.

A bright respite from the rain. The counter up front actually contains the vegan ice cream I mentioned earlier.

Mark’s Cobb salad:

My tuna melt with German potato salad:

The snails come out when it rains in LA.

Our final day was yesterday, Saturday. Fort insisted we go to his favorite beach, Malibu. I’ll let the pictures do the talking: gorgeous!

And that was our trip…and also an explanation of where I’ve been during my lull in posting. I’ve really missed Fort and V and am already looking forward to returning to LA, but in the meantime I’m glad to be home with Gomez and Torticia…if slightly less glad to be going back to work tomorrow!

It seems I’m not the only one who had never heard of vitamin greens until I found them at the farmer’s market this weekend. So I thought I would report back with some information on the greens by themselves and not in a stir-fry. Last night I simply sauteed the remainder of the greens in some olive oil with garlic and salt. The verdict? They’re great! After eating one serving, Mark said to me, “I’m going to go upstairs and get some more of those green things.” Readers, I have NEVER heard those words before. More greens for Mark?! Amazing! Like I said in my previous post, they cook up like chard. Texture-wise they are like spinach. The taste is very pleasant. I don’t know if it’s the name, but I feel extraordinarily healthy eating them. I’m excited to buy them again.

Not sure why I think this really needs a recipe, but here you go. You can just cook the stalks right up with the leafy parts.

Sauteed Vitamin Greens

1/2 bunch vitamin greens, chopped
2 tsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
salt to taste

Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the oil, then the garlic and salt and cook for a couple of seconds, then add the vitamin greens. Cook until they are wilted, about 5 minutes.

I scored fresh cranberry beans, also pictured, at the same stand at the market. I used this recipe. The grain is a brown rice/quinoa mix. For lunch today I had the leftover grains, some leftover refried beans, a tiny bit of the vitamin greens I had leftover, and some homemade salsa, and that was a really nice lunch.

I’m still getting to know my new camera.

But so far my favorite feature is it allows me to shoot B&W.

I feel a bit weird saying that considering all the other amazing features it has, but when I used a film camera (digital cameras being non-existent, of course) in high school and college, I used B&W film more than half the time and I’ve really missed it. Sure, I could very easily have applied a filter to any picture I shot with my old camera to make it look monochrome, but first of all, I don’t like spending much time processing my photos, and second of all, it’s just different. I LOVE that I can see a B&W picture on the LED screen after taking it, and I even love I can’t ever change it to color.

Here’s the camera I learned on, or one of them. My father and my grandfather had identical cameras in the ’70s, and I inherited my grandfather’s when he died and my father’s when he replaced his with a newer one. So I often did this thing where I hid the other camera in my pictures. It’s not particularly well hidden in this shot.

Neither one of them had a working light meter so I had to guess at every exposure. There was also no auto-focus. I’m hard core! That camera is awesome!

I found a completely ridiculous picture of myself, “hidden” camera and all, that I shall share with you because it’ll be my birthday when most of you read this and everyone should be made fun of on their birthday, right? Also, it’s relevant to this blog because I’M COOKING! Which believe me, wasn’t a common occurrence when I was in high school. It was probably Spaghetti-O’s. Need help deciding where to start making fun of it? Well, there’s the hair, obviously. That’s almost too obvious. And what am I LOOKING at? You may think I’m sharing a laugh with a friend, but the fact of the matter is this is a self-portrait. There was probably no one in the room with me but my tripod. And how unnatural do I look stirring that pot? Obviously my love of cooking has not yet taken root, although I did show inklings of it when I became a vegetarian, which I would have been when this picture was taken. I really didn’t get more sophisticated than Spaghetti-O’s too often, though. You can also make fun of the wallpaper, but I wasn’t responsible for that; that was all my parents. Anyway, I’m sorry it’s so small, but it’s my birthday gift to you:

I love finding new vegetables. Yesterday’s trip to the farmer’s market yielded something called vitamin greens. The sign said they were a “mild member of the mustard family”. I wasn’t sure what to do with them but figured I couldn’t go wrong with an easy stir-fry. And I obviously didn’t go wrong because Mark claims to hate all cooked greens, but he had two servings and ate up all the greens in each of them. I still have half a bunch, so if anyone has any suggestions for other things to do with vitamin greens, let me know! And obviously you can substitute just about any other green in this recipe.

Stir-Fry with Tofu and Vitamin Greens

3 Tbsp dried fermented black beans
1/4 cup shaoxing wine (Chinese rice wine) (can sub sherry)
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 carrot, sliced
chili garlic sauce, to taste
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
1 lb tofu, chopped
1/2 bunch vitamin greens (or other greens)
3/4 cup vegetable broth
2 Tbsp vegetarian oyster sauce
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp cornstarch + 2 Tbsp cold water
1-2 scallions, sliced thinly on the diagonal

Whisk together the vegetable broth, oyster sauce, and soy sauce in small bowl; set aside. Whisk together the cornstarch and cold water in a small bowl or cup; set aside. Put the fermented black beans in a small cup or bowl and add the shaoxing wine to soften them; set aside.

Chop the tofu.

Prepare all the vegetables by peeling (if necessary) and chopping.

These are the vitamin greens in all their glory:

Heat a wok over medium high heat, then add some oil. When it’s hot, add the onions and garlic and stir-fry for a minute or two.

Add the carrots and chili garlic sauce and stir-fry for another minute or two.

Add the bell pepper and again stir-fry a minute or two.

Next up the tofu:

Finally, the greens:

Stir-fry until the greens have cooked down.

Add the fermented black beans and cook for a minute or so, then add the broth mixture. Bring to a boil, then stir in the cornstarch mixture and cook until thickened. Top with the sliced scallions.

Serve with brown rice.

What do vitamin greens taste like? Well, I didn’t get a pure taste of it considering I hid it in a spicy stir-fry (maybe I should just cook the remainder up by themselves), but it wasn’t at all sharp or mustardy as I thought it might be as a member of the mustard family. It was definitely “mild” as stated on the sign. Really good, though. I’d say it was a bit spinach-like in flavor. They cook similar to chard. It might be a good green for trying on greens-haters, as it’s not overpowering. Mark’s getting a lot better about eating greens, but I was still worried he’d pick all the vitamin greens out of his stir-fry, however, he actually seemed to enjoy them. So vitamin greens are a huge winner in my book and I’ll be keeping an eye out for them. They tasted great and I liked the texture they had in the stir-fry. They are also apparently good in salads, which I may try tomorrow as well.

I dropped my camera this morning, heading out to the wildlife sanctuary. It only fell about a foot and it landed on carpeting, but a trip to the camera store later when I realized it was broken resulted in me finding out the lens was completely gone and the body would cost almost as much to repair as its current market value. Even though it was an entry-level dSLR, I loved it and hadn’t felt the need to upgrade, so I was kind of upset about this. It was a good camera. So, feeling sad, I went home and asked Mark if he’d bought me a birthday present yet (my birthday is this week), and when he said no sort of asked/informed him he was buying me a new camera for my birthday. So I very unexpectedly got a new camera today. What this means for you is probably an onslaught of posts, or at least a lot of pictures of my cats. Here, for example, is Torticia playing with a wax bean, which she removed from the refrigerator when I was in there getting stir-fry ingredients.

In retrospect, I should have just taken a video, which apparently I can do with my new camera. Woo!