I’m not even going to pretend to have food today. I’m so busy sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe. I think I owe every person I know an email. I desperately need to catch up on my blog reading. I’m down 50% compared to last year in the number of books I’ve read. Work is crazy. When will it end? I’ve been making quick dinners almost every night, but on autopilot. I will have a food post for you soon. In the meantime, here are some things that are going on.

This is an actual incident that I found in our town’s crime blotter:

A town employee reported at 10:28 a.m. Aug. 28 there was a snowman hanging from a tree with fake blood on it on the 300 block of Glyndon Street NE. The snowman was stuffed with beer cans where his lights were supposed to be. The town employee was able to free the snowman and took him to a place where he would be cared for properly.

You didn’t realize we live in such a dangerous neighborhood, did you? THAT POOR SNOWMAN! If it gets any dicier here, we’re going to have to move.

Actually, what worries me about this incident is I didn’t realize it was a crime to put fake blood on snowmen. It makes me a little nervous to share with you an incident that took place in my past:

When searching for the evidence of my apparent crime, I also found this related picture, which I found pretty hilarious. Tigger has laser beam eyes! I miss Tigger.

In less illegal news, I got some better, though not great, shots of my hummingbirds!

And I went to Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge and saw some great egrets.

I later helped some baby bunnies.

And saw a two-headed raccoon.

Now I must eat and GO TO SLEEP, GLORIOUS SLEEP. Food soon, I promise.

When given the choice between a vegetable in its “normal” color or the same vegetable in a strange color, I’ll almost always go for the strange color. And I love it when the farmers market has something I’ve never seen before. Hence, I had a quart of red okra in the refrigerator all week that I needed to deal with last night.

I think I like it even better than green okra! It’s a beautiful color.

Okra is neat.

Obviously I had to make gumbo, but making a nice, dark roux for gumbo can be time-consuming, and I didn’t have any vegan sausage prepared, and moreover it was late and we were hungry. I decided that instead of trying to be remotely traditional, I was going to mix random things – I was so incredibly busy this week I didn’t even have time to cook and there was a lot of vegetables from last weekend’s market I had to get rid of – in a pot, season it with Creole seasoning, and call it gumbo. If you want a more traditional gumbo, run to the always amazing Kittee – I’ve made her gumbos before and she much more an authority than me. But if you are lazy and in the mood for something gumbo-ISH, this wasn’t half bad.

I was going to use tempeh as my protein, but there was so much going into this gumbo that I was worried Mark, who only likes tempeh in small doses, would complain about (squash, okra) that I decided to switch to tofu to make it more inviting for him. Surprisingly, he was completely fine with the okra and didn’t even seem to notice the squash, so maybe I could have gotten away with the tempeh, but I do think he liked it a lot more this way than he would have otherwise.

Tofu Gumbo

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
6 cups vegan broth (I used “beef” bouillon)
1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, sliced
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1 small squash, chopped
small handful French beans, chopped
1 1/2 cups chopped okra
1 lb extra-firm tofu, chopped
2 Tbsp vegan Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp liquid smoke
as much Creole seasoning as you can stand before it gets too salty (I used Tony Chachere’s)
Tabasco or other hot sauce, to taste

I should have taken a picture of my roux, but I wasn’t planning to make a post when I started cooking. I actually got a somewhat decent color faster than I thought, but in the interest of time, I decided to only go as dark as I had time to while prepping everything else. So I got a big cast iron Dutch oven out, put it over medium heat, poured in the oil, then with a wooden spoon, stirred in the flour. Then I kept stirring as frequently as I could while prepping everything else. It was definitely a lazy person’s roux, and a bit dangerous (it’s easy to burn if you don’t stir constantly), but it turned out surprisingly well.

While working on the roux, I chopped all the vegetables. In a smaller cast iron pot, I sauteed the onions, celery, and bell pepper until they were soft. When everything was chopped and the “holy trinity” was soft, I slowly and carefully added the broth to the roux (it will immediately bubble up) and stirred until there were no lumps. Then I added all the other ingredients except the Tabasco and let it simmer until everything was cooked through. Finally, I adjusted the saltiness (you can add regular salt if it needs some but you don’t want to over-Tony Chachere it) and added a little Tabasco, saving the rest for individual servings.

Just after adding all the ingredients:

I served it over rice (which has soaked up all the broth in this picture, it’s really a little soupier than it looks).

We have a lot of leftovers, but it keeps well and makes a nice lunch.

I’ve been trying to attract hummingbirds to our yard. We have a ton of birds, many of them very beautiful, such as cardinals, blue jays, and woodpeckers:

And this guy:

But I also wanted hummingbirds. So I’ve been putting nectar out all summer. I saw a single hummingbird at the feeder early on, but then a long period of nothing. Part of the problem was it was so hot this summer that I had to change the nectar about every other day or it would be gross, but it was hard to work up the motivation to keep making nectar, dragging a stool outside to get the feeder down, spilling sticky, bug-filled nectar on myself, and replacing the freshly cleaned and filled feeder when I was never rewarded with hummingbirds. But over the last couple of weeks, possibly because it’s been a little cooler (like in the upper 80s/lower 90s instead of 100+) so I’ve been more regular about replacing the nectar, I’ve started seeing hummingbirds frequently. Today there was a constant parade of them! Of course I wanted to photograph them, but this proved harder than I’d hoped. First there was the fumbling around with the camera and tripod every time, until I gave up and just left the tripod and camera set up, lined up for the shot and even pre-focused. Then the hummingbirds started doing “fly-bys”: they’d fly by the feeder – sometimes when I already had my face behind the camera, ready for the shot! – but then see there were too many other birds there (our bird feeding station is very heavily used) and keep on flying instead of stopping for a drink. I guess I should buy a separate pole for their feeder so they can have some privacy but I am on a major spending ban following a couple weeks (or lifetime?) of excessive spending.

Anyway, I FINALLY got some pictures, just before the sun went down, but it was already really too dark and the pictures are crap. But I’m excited nonetheless because Mark told me I couldn’t get hummingbirds, and he didn’t believe me when I told him a week ago that I HAD gotten them…until he saw one with his own eyes for the first time today. I don’t know why he doubted me because I can attract any animal I want. Raccoons appear out of nowhere wherever I am, and our (suburban!) yard is a haven for raccoons, skunks, foxes, turtles, snakes, deer, bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels, and opossums. Okay, enough suspense. Here are my crappy pictures of hummingbirds! I’m sure I’ll get better ones soon.

This is actually the sharpest picture I got, which is a shame because he’s half hidden.

Look at that beak!

Leaning in for a drink:

Posing:

Leaving!

Attention fellow Northern Virginians! The Fair Lakes Whole Foods in Fairfax has updated their bulk food section and it’s incredible!

I have a few vivid grocery store memories I don’t think I’ll ever forget: the first time I walked into Super H in Fairfax and immediately messaged Mark (on my gen 1 Sidekick to give you an idea how long ago this was), “I want to live in this store;” the first time I walked into Wegmans and saw their produce section (I had been doing a drive-by of the house we are now renting to check out the neighborhood and afterwards stopped down the street at Wegmans, and immediately messaged Mark, “WE ARE RENTING THAT HOUSE BECAUSE THIS STORE IS AWESOME”); the first time I went to a Trader Joe’s in Virginia after moving to DC from Maryland…which meant I was able to buy wine (grocery stores can’t sell wine in Maryland; I probably messaged Mark something full of wonder and awe and warned him he’d have to help me carry 5 cases of wine into house when I got home). I had no idea Whole Foods was remodeling their bulk foods section and I think that the moment I realized what they had done will be another of those enduring memories. (Is it weird to have a collection of favorite memories of grocery stores?)

Just a couple of weeks ago I casually mentioned on this blog that when I go on bulk food buying binges, specifically for my trail mix, I skip the much larger Fairfax store and shop at the Vienna Whole Foods, which despite being much smaller has – HAD – a much better bulk food selection. Well, no more, friends. On what was meant to be a quick breeze through the store tonight to grab some tofu for making jerky, I hustled through the produce section and then was stunned to see THIS:

That’s a huge wall of grains, flour, etc., then bulk spices (yay!!), then dried fruit (which I won’t be buying because I love my new dehydrator!) and mushrooms (which I won’t be buying because mushrooms are gross!), and to the right of the picture is various salts. Be still, my heart!

I was so excited I took those two pictures, then merrily turned around to continue on my quest for tofu, feeling very pleasantly surprised. But wait, the surprise was not over! Not by a long shot! Turning around, I ran right into …

That is one side of one of two beautiful wooden bins of dried beans, varieties of which I’ve never even heard of! And as you continue through the back of the store, there are more and more bins and tables full of all sorts of bulk items! THERE IS A WHOLE TABLE OF BULK GOURMET POPCORNS! I can’t believe I just ordered Mark a couple of popcorns on the internet – I should have just driven down the street! Their granola/trail mix selection, which used to be quite small, is now an entire plaza. There’s a dried pasta station, but it hasn’t been filled yet – it has labels though, and half of them appear to be whole wheat varieties. There’s an entire “sprouts” station, which all sorts of sprouted nuts, cereals, and flours. There’s a table with “liquids”, with lots of different honeys (which I wasn’t interested in), agave, Bragg’s, and tamari – I got some tamari because I needed some. I’ve never seen anything like it! It all looks very nice, too; it’s very well displayed, and the aisles are wide and open. It all gets a huge thumbs up from me. The guy in the check-out line ahead of me and I were gushing over it all; he said, “did you see all the salt?” and I responded, “SEE it? I PHOTOGRAPHED it, I was so excited!”

In addition to the tamari and some turmeric, here’s what I got (and this is me showing extreme restraint, by the way):

Applewood smoked salt. I have been buying Maldon smoked salt, and don’t get me wrong, I adore Maldon, but their smoked salt is not very smoky; I can hardly tell the difference between it and their regular flaked salt. This salt smells heavily of a campfire.

Black barley. Never seen it before!

Steuben yellow eye beans. Never heard of them, but aren’t they GORGEOUS?

Jacob’s cattle beans. Never heard of these either but they are so pretty I couldn’t not get them.

Tongues of fire beans. Okay, how am I possibly supposed to resist a name like that???

I had been getting low on beans and was thinking about placing a Rancho Gordo order soon, but this (and subsequent purchases I know I will be making to check out the tons of other beans they have) will hold me over for a while. These are some of my beans:

I’m so hopped up about this I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight (seriously, does that mean there’s something wrong with me??). Enjoy this picture of a raccoon rubbing his belly; I’m going to gaze at it and hope it calms me down. 🙂

PS If any of you have had any of the items I bought and have cooking suggestions, let me know! I need to pick one of those beans to make tomorrow night!

I’m pretty sure I’ve raved about Cooking at Home with Pedatha before. I can’t share today’s recipe because it was a faithful following of the rasam recipe in that book, but I do want to urge you to consider buying this book if you are at all interested in Indian food. Although it’s very pretty (there are pictures of all the dishes, and even a picture glossary), there are a few factors that would ordinarily prevent it from being one of my favorite cookbooks: it’s quite short, it calls for some ingredients that I have difficulty obtaining (and I live in an extremely ethnic food-friendly area), and the authors use unfamiliar names for even those ingredients I can get, requiring me to have to translate many of the recipes. Several of the recipes call for other recipes, increasing production time.

But don’t let those things scare you away! Where this book excels, other than its inherent charm (it’s a loving tribute to a grandmother compiled by two family members), is the podis and all the dishes that call for them. A podi is a “powder”, or spice combination, usually calling for various whole spices to be roasted then ground together, which is then used to flavor dals, rice, and soups. Every podi-related dish I have made from this book has been magical. When I commented above that some recipes call for other recipes, I was referring mostly to the use of these podis. It’s unfair, however, to ding the book for this because the podi recipes make about a cup and the recipes calling for it use about a tablespoon each, so once you make a podi, you won’t have to go through that process the next several times you make the recipe. And believe me, you’ll want to make these recipes again and again.

Friday night I made up a batch of the rasam podi and made Pedatha’s rasam. Rasam is one of my favorite soups. I did a post on it a long time ago, and I posted a picture of some homemade rasam a co-worker sent me home with when once I proclaimed my love of it. Pedatha’s rasam is, of course, AWESOME. Mark and I ate the entire batch in one sitting. And the great thing is, now that I have the podi prepared, I can whip some more up from some late summer tomatoes in mere minutes!

In other food-related news, I bought a dehydrator last week and am currently going crazy dehydrating everything possible. I’ve literally had the dehydrator going non-stop since it arrived. Skeptical Mark has pointed out that I tend to enthusiastically start projects and then quickly lose interest in them and he seems to think dehydrating will be another such fad. I don’t think so. Dehydrating is so easy that I don’t think it will take up much time I could later decide I’d rather be spending doing other things. Really the only time investment is chopping and I enjoy chopping. And buying dehydrated fruits and vegetables in incredibly expensive, so I’m very excited about the money I’ll save, for example on my trail mix. Plus, I can use the dehydrator for making tempeh and yogurt, both of which I’ve been meaning to get back into doing and now I have a great reason. I can also raise dough in it. I’ve never had a problem raising dough in the house, but if I want to time it a bit more precisely, the dehydrator’s temperature regulation will allow that. Also, although there are a couple of months left before I’ll need to come to terms with it, at some point the farmers market is going to close for the season and I’m going to freak out. So I’ve been trying to capture an essence of it by dehydrating what I can so I can use it over the winter.

Here’s what I’ve dried so far: tomatoes (there a another huge batch of tomatoes nearly ready to leave the dehydrator tonight), bananas, strawberries, (I have another quart and two huge bunches of bananas to get to this week), onion powder, carrots, and bell peppers. The latter two I may combine along with some potatoes, onions, and celery into a “soup mix”. When I’m desperate for a lunch to take into work, I’ll sometimes whip up a super-quick soup from a can of tomatoes, some bouillon, some dehydrated veggies, and orzo. I used some of my dried tomatoes on pizza last night and they were quite good.

I have also dried some garlic and am drying a whole bunch more right now, which I’ll grind into garlic powder. The dehydrator will also save me money at my notorious Penzeys binges! I’m also planning to make tofu jerky as a treat for Mark. I’ve made it before but it’s been a long time – anyone have a favorite tofu jerky recipe? What are your other favorite things to dehydrate? Any other creative uses for the dehydrator?

Not much else food-related has been going on. I’ve been super busy lately; annoyingly so. I can’t even remember what I’ve been cooking, I’ve been so busy. Lots of stuff involving farmers market fare, but I guess nothing earth-shattering enough that I’ve felt compelled to make a post, or maybe I just haven’t had time. I’m enjoying blackberry season; my current favorite snack is Daiya jack on crackers topped with blackberry:

As for animal news, I transported a baby chimney swift the other day and he was by far the cutest baby bird I’ve ever seen. This is a bad picture, but it’s all I have:

Today as I pulled into the raccoon sanctuary, there was a family of deer standing about five feet from my parking spot, so I wasn’t able to drive down the driveway. Instead I slowly got out of my car and started snapping pictures.

They eventually got tired of that and ran off, so I was able to park. Today was a big day for the last six raccoons in the nursery, who graduated to the big outdoor enclosures! I coined a new saying to replace one I hate, “curiosity killed the cat”: “curiosity captured the raccoon”. Unfortunately, out of context it sounds like a saying I would dislike just as much as the original because in general capturing raccoons is a bad thing. But raccoons who want to leave their baby cages in the nursery and move to their big-boy (and girl) enclosures outside need to be temporarily captured in a carrier in order to be transported. Many of you with cats may be familiar with the difficulty of putting an unwilling cat into a carrier. It CAN be the same, possibly even worse due to their super-dexterous fingers and toes, with raccoons, however, we were lucky with these six. We put some pork rinds (a raccoon favorite) in some carriers and simply waited for their curiosity to prevail and soon enough all six had climbed into a carrier and were briskly locked in and carried out to their new home. Raccoons are so curious we probably didn’t even need the pork rind incentive, but it sure didn’t hurt. I was so into this task I forgot to take pictures, but here is a picture from last week that I love, which incidentally is of a raccoon eating a pork rind…and smiling about it!

Mark and I have just returned from a week in the mountains with his family, where it seemed my camera was permanently attached to my hand, except at mealtimes. Since I didn’t take any pictures of our food, I can’t rightly do a “real” food post about it, but I would like to mention a few of the things we ate because I think Mark’s family is really good at jointly feeding a large group of people with diverse diets. When I met them 11 years ago, I was delighted to find a few pescatarians and vegetarians in Mark’s family. For that reason, their communal meals were never very meat-centric to begin with, but when I joined the family (and Mark later converted to veganism), all their family meals became almost entirely vegan, and everyone was perfectly happy with that. Which, by the way, made me feel extremely welcome in their family, from the first day.

Mark’s family does an annual family vacation, during which each willing adult or household chooses a night to make dinner. Usually when I return home from a vacation, I’m sick of restaurant food and feel like I need to get back into healthy eating habits. After vacations like this, however, I feel great: we ate very well and very healthy all week. Although most of the group are omnivorous, only one meal of the week contained optional chicken for anyone who wanted it. The rest of the meals were all vegan, but they were the sorts of meals that don’t cause you to miss meat.

Mark’s aunt pre-made a large batch of vegan chili and froze it in a few containers, which then doubled as ice in the large cooler they brought, keeping several items that didn’t fit in the fridge at the lodge (which we had filled with an awful lot of beer) cold for a few days. She also pre-breaded pieces of okra and eggplant and froze them, then baked them for a quick side dish our first night there. Mark’s uncle maintains a large and diverse vegetable garden in Charleston, so it’s always a pleasure eating whatever he and Mark’s aunt make, as it’s always chock-full of delicious homegrown vegetables. His uncle pre-made and froze a huge batch of veggie-heavy pasta sauce, which he served over penne one night, with a huge tossed salad made from his own produce. Another uncle made linguine with garlic and local kale and turnip greens (and optional herbed chicken). Mark’s mom made tabbouleh, a potato and green bean salad, and offered fillings for making wraps. His cousins made veggie fajitas with seasoned black beans and lots of sauteed veggies.

I made summer rolls and “drunken noodles”. I brought rice paper wrappers, mung bean threads, and rice noodles with me, then we stopped in a local grocery store to pick up vegetables, fresh herbs, and sauce ingredients. For the summer rolls, I soaked the mung bean threads and snipped them up into smaller pieces with kitchen shears, then rolled them into rolls using rice paper wrappers, along with some “broccoli slaw mix” I found in the store, sliced avocado, julienned carrots and cucumbers, and fresh mint and basil. For a dipping sauce, I mixed together peanut butter, soy sauce, garlic, sriracha, a couple splashes of vinegar, a little brown sugar, and the juice of a lime – some of these ingredients I found in the pantry and were different than I’d have used at home (e.g. white vinegar instead of rice vinegar), but everyone raved about it.

I had had the idea to make some fairly mild drunken noodles as the main for my meal (I figured those of us who like stuff extra-hot could add our own heat on our plates), but I forgot to pack dark soy sauce, and the grocery store in town didn’t stock anything like it, nor did they have vegetarian oyster sauce or anything else vegan I thought would make a decent sub. The closest thing in their small selection I could find was a sichuan bean paste. So that’s what I used, although I think in doing so I gave up whatever flimsy right I had in the first place to call my dish “drunken noodles”. I mixed the bean paste with some low-sodium soy sauce, however, as well as some vinegar, lime juice, and brown sugar. I chopped up a bunch of vegetables and some garlic, but I forgot to use the broccoli and tofu I had purchased. I had two different shapes of rice noodles, so I made two batches of noodles, one mild for children and non-heat-loving adults, and a hotter one. My throat is sensitive to chilis – I often choke when I’m preparing them though I love to eat them – so I made Mark mince some jalapenos for me, most of which I served on the side, but some of which I put in the “hot” wok. I stir-fried the veggies, added the noodles, then the sauce, and lastly stirred in as much basil as I could get my hands on. I also served sriracha and lemon and lime wedges on the side.

Our last night was “leftover night”, which is where we all simply raid the fridge for dinner in an attempt to clean it out. I made a super-quick stir-fry from my forgotten tofu and broccoli, and I served it over the rest of the mung bean threads. For the sauce, I used up the rest of that sichuan bean paste and my small bottle of soy sauce, and added in other stuff I found in the pantry. I was surprised that others in addition to Mark were interested in it, but it was gobbled up.

I do have one food picture from the trip for you, although I took it today at home. I regularly make a trail mix that I keep at my desk at work for snacks, and I took a whopping 4 liters of it with me to North Carolina, where it was devoured in a few short days. It’s mostly nuts, but I’m not crazy about most commercial nut mixes because they are super salty. So what I do is go to the Whole Foods with the best bulk foods selection (in my area of Northern Virginia, this is the Vienna store) and just buy a bunch of everything I like, then mix it all together. Typically I include:

• raw cashews
• raw almonds
• sesame sticks (these are a must; Mark picks them out and eats them all, so I have to buy a huge amount of them)
• walnuts
• pecans
• hazel nuts
• Brazil nuts
• dark chocolate-covered almonds
• dark chocolate-covered raisins
• roasted soynuts
• roasted corn
• raisins
• dried strawberries
• dried banana chips
• etc.

So, a few pictures from the trip. We stayed in this lodge between Highlands and Cashiers, NC:

Overall the weather was great because, being so high in the mountains, it was a relief from the unrelenting heat at home, although it rained briefly most days (and most of one day). Wildflowers on a misty hike:

The Highlands Botanical Garden was pleasant; I particularly liked the lily pads …

… where I chatted about lenses with a friendly old gent and spent longer than I should have taking pictures of a dragonfly.

I also enjoyed the bumblebees ..

… who enjoyed the wildflowers.

There are a lot of waterfalls in the area. This one is under the Iron Bridge.

From the ground on the opposite side:

I especially enjoyed Sunset Rock, a large rocky cliff that affords a stunning westward view of the tiny town of Highlands. The sunset was nice.

As we speed-walked up the trail to the rock (being a bit late for the sunset), we passed another couple walking back down, who somewhat disgustedly warned us, “it’s cloudy.” Well, it turns out I was delighted that it was cloudy because it afforded me the opportunity to capture lightning for the first time.

And now we are home, where it is, surprise surprise, hot. Mark’s Jeep will display the external temperature and I watched it rise from 84 to 96 degrees practically as I crossed the Fairfax County line at 6:30 p.m. Although it looks like it’s about to start lightning here now, an hour or so ago, ole Torticia was feeling extra lazy in the heat.

During dinner last night I commented, “this is a stereotypically healthy meal.” It was also a stereotypically vegan meal: brown rice, tofu, kale, and corn on the cob. While it sounds kind of boring, and it’s true that it wasn’t the most amazing meal ever, it was very flavorful and I felt good about eating it, so here you go:

Orange-Marinated Tofu
Lightly adapted from http://www.food.com/recipe/spicy-orange-tofu-136875
By “adapted” I mean I looked at this recipe briefly, went into the kitchen, and proceeded to pour mysterious amounts of what I thought I remembered were the ingredients together without measuring. So my measurements are guesses. I did eliminate most of the oil, however.

1 pound extra-firm tofu, sliced into 1/2″ slabs
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
squirt of agave nectar
6-8 dried red chilis, lightly crushed between fingers

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine all the ingredients except the tofu together in a large shallow dish, then submerge the slabs of tofu. Let marinate for at least half an hour. When ready to bake, pour off most of the marinade, then bake for about half an hour.

My tofu was an herbed variety from Twin Oaks, which explains the specks.

For the kale, which was market-fresh, I just sauteed a bunch of (super delicious farmers market) garlic in some avocado oil, added the kale and stirred to coat it, then poured in a few tablespoons of vegan broth, then reduced the heat, covered, and cooked until limp.

My weekend has been raccoon-intensive, as I worked at the sanctuary both days due to volunteer shortages, and we have 43 – about to be 45, as two more were set to arrive after I left – raccoons. I literally had to clean several of the cages with a raccoon – sometimes two – on my head, which makes it very difficult. Some of them were so rambunctious, it’s worn me out! Here are four trouble-makers:

They are so anxious to “help”. Here an assistant fills his “pond” with fresh water for me:

Raccoons love, love, love water.

Actually, raccoons love just about anything they can get their little hands on. We provide a wide variety of toys and objects for them to play with. Wind chimes are fun for them to grab (and destroy), and pleasant to listen to.

I made the mistake of putting a paper towel down and completely forgetting about it. When I returned to the cage later to fill the pond, I found these two fighting over something it took me a moment to recognize: the shredded, soggy remains of my paper towel. Sometimes cleaning their cages is like taking one step forward, two steps backwards. No wonder I’m exhausted.

Raccoons are certainly not the only wildlife I see at the sanctuary. Currently the big show are the deer, including these twin fawns:

This morning in the drizzle, I encountered this doe …

… and this young buck.

And now, I must go get ready for the play Mark and I are going to see in celebration of the 11th anniversary of our first date!

I’m a very inconsistent blogger. I was totally on a roll there, blogging all the time, and then a lull. It’s been hot again. This weekend I got sick of it being too hot to go to parks, so I did something extremely out of character and got up at 5:30 on Sunday morning in order to get to Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge when they opened, to beat the worst of the heat and to hopefully see more wildlife. I consider 5:30 a.m. more a bedtime than a rising time, but I shocked Mark and myself by actually doing it! It was hot anyway and honestly I don’t think I saw any more wildlife than I do there in the middle of the day, but in lieu of a food post, here are some pictures.

#1 thing I saw? Jackrabbits! SO MANY JACKRABBITS! They were all over the place!

Sometimes I take pictures that I think look like greeting cards. I’m thinking about making greeting cards from them! I could sell them on etsy, right?! Of course, this would entail purchasing a printer of some sort. I haven’t owned a printer since about 2002. But don’t you think this photo would be enhanced by some text that says “Happy Easter to a wonderful son-in-law!” or something in a nice script about the rabbit?

This is a terrible photo from a photography standpoint. The exposure is atrocious. In my defense, I was bracketing – taking lots of pictures with different exposures in the hopes of one of them being right – but I ended up liking this overexposed one more than the better exposed ones because LOOK HOW CRAZY THESE OSPREYS LOOK! They’re staring at me with their humongous eyes! LOOK AT THAT BABY! I didn’t even know he was in the nest until I got home and could look at the pictures on my computer – the nest is very high up and pretty far from the camera. So they so were far away I couldn’t even see the baby, but I know that baby could see me!

There was a lot of bumblebee action.

Closeup of the trumpet vine the bee is pollinating in the prior picture. What do you think: notecard?

I could have a series of wildflowers as notecards?

I decided that Queen Anne’s lace might be even more neat before it blooms.

But it’s pretty while blooming too.

So agrees this pearl crescent (or silvery checkerspot, I’m not sure) butterfly.

So this other guy and I arrived at the refuge at about the same time Sunday morning and without speaking, went in opposite directions. By coincidence, we got back to the parking lot at the same time three hours later, and this time we greeted each other. It turned out we both had the exact same camera and the same telephoto lens. He asked me if I got anything good; I didn’t really think so. Get this: he was all excited because he saw a raccoon! I thought that was fantastic! I was so excited to run into someone so excited to see a raccoon. He said he was slightly nervous because the raccoon got so close, and of course I had to blabber about being a raccoon rehabber and there’s no need to be nervous around raccoons because they are just extremely curious, not aggressive. Hopefully I didn’t sound like a jerk. Anyway, he showed me his pictures and he got some great shots of the raccoon. I was jealous! He also rattled off a long list of other animals he saw that I didn’t (although I DID see a beaver, who swam out of the shot at high speed). Next time I’m going in the direction this guy went, which is apparently where all the action is. I decided not to bore the guy with the 100 pictures of raccoons I had on my camera from the day before, but you guys don’t get off so easy. Since I missed the wild raccoon at the refuge on Sunday, here are some wild raccoons I saw on Saturday:

Haha, yeah, that’s a wild raccoon alright! It really IS a wild raccoon, but it’s Emmy, the surrogate mother I mentioned a few months ago, who is raising some of our orphans for us. As you can see, she’s right in my face. Most wild raccoons won’t actually get this close to a human, but Emmy knows and trusts us. (Emmy was rehabbed at the sanctuary a few years ago when she herself was orphaned.)

One or both of these raccoons peeping out of a nest box might be the youngsters Emmy is raising for us. I’m not entirely sure because there were about 20 wild raccoons on the deck I was on at the time and I can’t keep them all straight!

Last night’s meal was a celebration of summer! It was also a celebration of preparedness. I worked late, got irritated with what I was doing at work, got a headache (which I first blamed on my work but later realized I forgot to take my headache medicine in the morning; damn, I keep hoping I’ll be able to go off that stuff), and was annoyed. I also wanted something simple for dinner like a salad, and I had a ton of fresh vegetables at home (I don’t know how I live without the farmers market during the off-season), but I knew there was no lettuce in the house and didn’t feel like stopping at the store just for that, mostly because of the working late and headache. But then I remembered that the night before I had cooked Future Renae up a mess of black beans! Suddenly my attitude brightened! I drove home and in little time was serving this:

Summertime Black Beans and Quinoa

1 cup quinoa (I used multi-colored)
2 cups vegan broth or water
1 ear of corn, shucked and kernels removed
2 spring onions, chopped (thinly slice some of the green parts and reserve separately)
2 or 3 garlic scapes chopped (or a couple of cloves of garlic)
1 small summer squash, chopped (I used patty pan)
1 jalapeno, minced
1 or 2 tomatoes, depending on size, chopped
a little bit of vegan broth
3 cups cooked black beans
salt, to taste
1 avocado, peeled and chopped
lemon or lime wedges

Rinse the quinoa. Put some oil in a medium pot, then saute the quinoa for a few minutes until lightly toasted. Add the 2 cups of broth (or water) in a medium pot and bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.

Cook the corn kernels in a small amount of water for a few minutes until soft, then drain. If you have super-fresh corn, you might be able to skip this step. I had really good corn and probably didn’t need to pre-cook it.

Meanwhile, heat some oil in a large skillet, preferably cast iron, and add the garlic scapes (or garlic) and green onions. After a minute or two, add the summer squash and jalapeno. Saute for about 5 minutes then add the tomatoes. Saute another few minutes, then add the black beans and corn. Cook until beans are warmed through. Add a little broth to keep things from getting too dry – I threw in 3 ice cubes of homemade veggie stock and let them melt. Season with salt to taste; I sprinkled it with a bit of a finishing salt.

Serve with the avocado, garnishing with lemon or lime wedges to be squeezed generously over the beans. Also top with the reserved green onions (which I totally forgot to do for the picture).

I thought I’d spice things up by flipping my placemat over and photographing the “cheerful” (or, according to Mark, “hideous”) side. This is me attempting to put effort into my food photography. So sad.

It wreaked havoc with my white balance, even though I manually calculated it with a gray card. Maybe the same old black is better after all? I haven’t changed the light in my dining room, not that my food photos ever looked great, but the last few I’ve taken have looked horribly unappetizing. Trust me, this looked much nicer in person.

This also made a very nice, refreshing lunch today.

And now, a chipmunk.

My mother thinks he has a cocaine problem. Nope, just sunflower seeds!

You know who you guys haven’t seen in a while? Torticia …

… and Gomez!

This is a game we play with Mezzie. He is obsessed with pipe cleaners, so Mark sticks them around the house in increasingly difficult places for Mez to get to. Hanging them from the ceiling fan pull is entertaining in that Mez will make these amazing straight leaps to get them down, but also kinda stupid because every time he does, he changes the speed on the fan. So it’s been a million degrees and Gomez keeps turning the ceiling fan off. But we keep doing it. 🙂

(PS, guess what? It’s only 88 degrees here today! NOT 110! It’s…wonderful.)

Weather-wise, this week has been brutal here in the Mid-Atlantic. We kicked things off with last Friday night’s derecho, which I had the pleasure of driving through, and which knocked out power to millions of residences and businesses. This during the middle of a record-setting heatwave. The storm happened around 11 p.m. and the temperature was in the 90s during the storm. There were a lot of miserable, very, very hot people for many days this week. We were fortunate to not lose power at our house, but the raccoon sanctuary was not as fortunate. Without power, they also have no water. So last weekend I was one of the miserable people, cleaning indoor and outdoor raccoon cages in 100+ degree heat with no water but what I was able to stop and buy on the way there.

I can’t think of a better test for my homemade deodorant! It passed with flying colors. I’ve been using it for a long time, so I wasn’t surprised, or even actually testing it as it’s already proven itself time and time again, but even with restored power, working at the raccoon sanctuary today when the heat index was 115 degrees got me thinking how grateful I am to have discovered it. So today’s post is on how to make your own deodorant, and why you should.

I stopped using antiperspirant years ago when I realized how terrible it is to stop your body from perspiring, a function it performs for a very good reason (to keep you from overheating). But I never found a deodorant that I liked. Despite my hippie-ish ways in many things, I often find that so-called packaged “natural” products don’t always perform very well. (I generally find that many commercial products don’t work particularly well either, of course.) But then I found Funk Butter, a natural deodorant made by a small company in Baltimore, my hometown. Not all of Oyin Handmade’s products are vegan – their specialty is using honey as an ingredient – but they are clear about which products are (see their FAQ page). Funk Butter was a revelation. It works really, really well. I used it for years. I have to occasionally ship some to Fortinbras, who loves it too. In fact, if you simply have no interest in making your own deodorant, I urge you to try Funk Butter instead.

The only reason I stopped using Funk Butter daily was, well, kind of perverse. I liked it too much. I was worried that as a very small business, one day in the future they may go out of business. I don’t think this will happen soon because I think they’re doing pretty well for themselves, but I was looking 10, 20 years down the road and worrying I’d be pretty upset if they suddenly weren’t around any longer. I realize this is a ridiculous thing to worry about, but it’s tied to the fact that I hate relying on others. Feeling self-sufficient is very important to me. I have to be able to make everything I use regularly by myself. For example, the only reason I can bring myself to buy the super-wonderful Twin Oaks Tofu (if you live in an area where you can get it, I highly recommend it) is I know I can make tofu of a similar quality myself.

I had to make sure I could replicate Funk Butter on my own, so I searched the internet and found lots of information on homemade deodorant. This was a while ago so I’m not sure every website I visited, but I know this was one of them. The “recipe” is nearly the same in all of them, though most people suggest experimentation to find the right mixture for you. Basically, you just mix equal parts coconut oil, baking soda, and cornstarch. I’ll turn it into a recipe though, because why not?

Homemade Deodorant

1 part coconut oil
1 part baking soda
1 part cornstarch

Mix together. Apply to underarms. The end.

Okay, more detail. The blog post I linked to suggests mixing the ingredients together while the coconut oil is in a solid state. I do it a little differently. I buy this brand of coconut oil from my local Indian grocery, just because it’s really cheap. This huge jug cost me $13 and even though I also use it as a body lotion, lasts me probably close to a year. (It’s a bit beat-up looking because I also use it as a doorstop; so useful!)

The only problem with this is unless it’s quite warm in the house, you have to warm the bottle in order to pour the oil. (This is not a problem right now.) To do this, I set the bottle in a high-sided pot, then pour boiling water into the pot. This usually gets the coconut oil liquidy enough to pour within a few minutes. This also means that my coconut oil is liquid when I mix it with the baking soda and cornstarch, and frankly, I think this makes it a lot easier to stir anyway. After combining all three ingredients, I pour them into storage containers, then I refrigerate them for a while until they’ve solidified. In the hottest days of summer this cooling stage is just reversed right away as it then melts again, but application is the same whether it’s solid or not.

This is what it looks like now, in my bathroom that doesn’t get much cold air from our A/C, when it’s 105 degrees outside:

It would look almost the same in a photograph if it were more solid. Either way, to apply, just scoop out a small amount and apply to your underarms. I’ve used a little jar that used to contain pimentos above. I also use empty Funk Butter containers like this one (I noticed on their website they’ve changed their packaging since I’ve bought Funk Butter):

It works great. In fact, I used to keep a commercial deodorant on hand for “emergencies”, times when I thought I would really need some sort of extra deodorizing power. Well, the emergency backup deodorant got chucked pretty quickly for being way less effective than the homemade. Some backup that was.

According to some sources, some people may require a transitional period before an all-natural deodorant like this will work as well as claimed. I’m no expert on the matter, but I would imagine this has more to do with your body purging chemicals and gunk from your commercial deodorant than it does the homemade deodorant not “working” right away. The only issue I have with this homemade deodorant is I wouldn’t recommend it for traveling because its solidity is so volatile. For that reason, I use Funk Butter when I travel, because it does not melt. This is what Funk Butter looks like:

Baking soda is fairly abrasive, so some people may experience some discomfort from this recipe. I find that the coconut oil balances the abrasiveness of the baking soda perfectly and I’ve never experienced any redness, rashes, or discomfort whatsoever. But I don’t want to be held responsible if you do.

A little more about how freaking awesome coconut oil is. Again, except when traveling, I use coconut oil all over in place of lotion. When I step out of the shower in the morning, I put on a light coat of coconut oil, including on my face instead of moisturizer. I keep it in a jar, just like the deodorant. I used to mix in some essential oils for scent, but I stopped doing that because Gomez likes to lap the oil out of the jar while I’m applying it. Which is fine with me because how many body lotions or moisturizers would you let your cat eat? I feel much better putting stuff on my body that I’d be fully prepared to put IN my body.

So yeah, here’s my beauty routine:

No wonder I’m so glamorous.

In what may be far more interesting news than how my underarms smell, we just got in two teeny, tiny late-ish baby raccoons. They are the tiniest raccoons I’ve ever seen! In fact, one of them still had its umbilical cord attached! They were found at a construction site. When they were discovered, the mother raccoon retrieved their sibling but did not claim this little brother and sister. They were just a a day or two old when they arrived on Thursday, so today they are about three or four days old. They are smaller than the palm of a hand. OH MY GOSH are they cute!!

Look how tiny compared to the baby bottle!!

We call this “hallelujah hands” – many raccoons hold their paws out in front of them like this while feeding from a bottle. I suspect it’s a reflex because they expect to latch onto their mother’s belly, but I love it because I find those dexterous little hands fascinating.

Their eyes will probably remain closed for another couple of weeks.

All the others are getting so big now – about a third of them have graduated to the huge outdoor cages, a move we generally make when they are about 5 pounds – and they are soooo playful and rambunctious and trouble-making, that by comparison these teeny tiny little things are extra-precious. My heart, it melts. (Of course, it’s 105 degrees here, everything in, on, or near me has melted.)

I feel compelled to share a link to an article I enjoyed reading today: Showing Vultures A Little Love. I think vultures are neat, but I don’t think many people do. I’m always surprised when people react negatively when I tell them I rehab raccoons (they are so adorable I can’t figure out how anyone could dislike them), but vultures are even more reviled because they are “ugly” and – this is the part I really don’t get – eat dead animals. I LIKE vultures for eating dead animals. As far as I’m concerned, they are doing me a service; the fewer dead animals lying around to rot on the ground the better. Eat up, vultures!

Taken earlier this year in Occoquan, VA

I got to meet our local vulture rehabber a while ago, which was awesome. Weirdly, it was the day of the earthquake. I was on the schedule to transport wildlife that day, but then the day got really, really strange, what with the earthquake and everything, but I couldn’t see any reason not to deliver the birds I had been asked to transport before the earthquake, so I picked them up from the animal hospital and drove out to Manassas and had a long talk with the rehabber, Mattie, who takes just about any animal, particularly “unloved” species, but specializes in vultures. She was really cool and since then I’ve loved vultures even more. There are a couple of articles you can read about her if you are interested.

Taken a few years ago in Harper’s Ferry, WV

Turkey vulture, taken earlier this year

Since I’m babbling about vultures anyway, here are some other wildlife pictures I’ve taken recently. They are all from Occoquan National Wildlife Reserve.

Anyone know what this one is? I can’t find it in my bird book, probably because I’m a noob.

With that, I’m going to eat dinner… a very happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans!