Spring is here, spring is here; call it from the mountain tops, SPRING IS HERE. And an auspicious first day of spring it is: although I was met with intense fog when I awoke early this morning, the sun was trying to burn a hole through it on my drive to work and it was absolutely gorgeous. The temperature was in the 50s during my afternoon commute (convertible weather!), and considering we got 6″ of snow on Monday, I couldn’t be happier about that. I AM SO FLIPPING TIRED OF SHOVELING SNOW. I am tired of LOOKING at snow. I don’t know how you Canadians out there deal with this all winter every winter. Of course, the weather forecasters are saying there is a chance of yet more snow next week, but I refuse to think about that on this beautiful day.

Mark saw me taking pictures of my dinner last night and excitedly asked, “are you going to do a blog post? It’s been two years!” To which I responded, “more like two months, but yes, if this meal is blog-worthy I’ll do a post.” Mark stuck a fork in his bowl and loudly announced, “YES! YES! DO A POST! THIS IS DELICIOUS!” I have taken photos periodically of other meals over the long weeks since last I posted, but none of them seemed good enough to write up, and of course the longer I wait, the higher my standards are for a comeback. Fortunately Mark assures me this recipe qualifies (I have a feeling he’ll be requesting it in the future) and I think it has an air of spring about it so it seems appropriate for today.

I’ve had a craving for a tahini-based sauce lately and poking about the internet for ideas, I found inspiration in Isa’s Roasty Soba Bowl and this Honey Sriracha Glazed Tofu.

Tahini-Miso Soba Salad

3-4 bundles buckwheat soba, cooked according to package instructions and rinsed in cold water
1/2 lb extra firm tofu
1 head broccoli, cut into florets and lightly steamed for a minute or two
1 small or baby cucumber, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 avocado, chopped
3 scallions, sliced
sesame seeds

Sriracha Marinade
2 Tbsp sriracha
1 Tbsp agave nectar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp rice vinegar
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
splash of toasted sesame oil

Tahini-Miso Sauce
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup white miso
3 Tbsp rice vinegar
3 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1 Tbsp soy sauce
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
couple splashes toasted sesame oil
water as needed to thin

Whisk together the sriracha marinade ingredients. Slice the tofu into 1/2″ thick slices. Slather with half of the marinade. Let marinate for a while if you have time, although as I doubt much of the marinade will penetrate the tofu, this step is optional. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, then turn over and bake for another 15 minutes, coating with some more of the marinade. You can let it return to room temperature after baking if you have time.

Place the miso-tahini sauce ingredients into a blender or food processor and process until smooth, adding water as necessary to thin.

Prep the soba, broccoli, cucumber, and avocado as described above. Place 1/3 to 1/4 of the soba into each bowl or plate, then pour in enough of the tahini sauce to lightly coat the noodles, mixing with your hands or chopsticks. Top each bowl with some of the broccoli, cucumber, and avocado. Chop the baked tofu into cubes then sprinkle onto each bowl. Drizzle any remaining tahini sauce on top, then if you like, drizzle any remaining sriracha marinade (or just decoratively squirt on some additional sriracha), then top everything off with scattered sliced scallions and sesame seeds.

So there’s the food. What’s going other than food? Well, Mark bought me a new car! New-to-me anyway. I was/am very attached to my old car, a blue 1995 Miata I fully planned (plan?) to run into the ground. It has 152k miles and I was hoping for another 150k more. When it started pulling to the right and my mechanics weren’t able to fix it with an alignment, I was slightly concerned but trusted they would figure it out. Then the shop manager lent me his personal Miata while he tried to diagnose Cookie Monster (my car’s name, owing to its Cookie Monster color and pop-up googly eyes), and I developed a car crush on it. It’s one of the very few turbo Miatas ever made and it has all the available racing upgrades. I’m not a car enthusiast like my father or brother, but I inherited enough of the car-loving genes that I got addicted to the power and was reluctant to relinquish it in exchange for my still-right-leaning, suddenly-very-slow-seeming Cookie Monster. Then the manager offered to sell it to me and I realized I’d been tricked! He lent it to me knowing full well I’d want to buy it. It was a Friday night and I told him there was absolutely no way I was buying a new car when we already own a fleet of cars AND I need to buy a lot of expensive things for going to Africa. As soon as I returned home that Friday and told Mark it was for sale he immediately said, “I’ll buy it for you.” And that was all the convincing I needed. First thing Monday morning I called him to say we’d be by that night to take it. 🙂



It’s awesome! It gets terrible gas mileage and requires premium fuel! It’s also a huge amount of fun. It needs a name! I need a take a better picture of it than this one from the night we bought it, but unfortunately it’s been buried in snow for half the time we’ve had it. (Also pictured is Mark’s Jeep, which I muddied up nicely getting to the raccoons.)

Other than that, my life has been raptor-a-rama. Last weekend I had my first raptor escapee: a tiny screech owl flew out of his cage before I could grab him to move him for cage cleaning. Luckily we were inside. Unluckily, screechies are by far the smallest bird we rehab and they can hide ANYWHERE. I’d far rather a red tailed hawk or even a red shoulder had escaped; they’d have been much easier to find. I thought he was under some cages but didn’t have a flashlight and couldn’t see anything at all under there, so I swept underneath with a broom handle and out he hopped, a huge dust ball all over his face. Annoyed as I was with him, I couldn’t help but laugh at how surprised and silly he looked standing there. I quickly netted him and stashed him in an empty cage so I could clean his home. Kent, who runs the organization, told me later that was the same screechie that broke through the netting in another cage earlier in the week and escaped…Kent came into the bird room in the morning and found things overturned, which is how he knew a bird was out. Naughty owl!

For the sake of visualization (although my escapee was red screechie), here is a totally different screech owl I photographed last year:


I made another mistake the same day. While making my feeding rounds, I found a red tail lying on its back with its feet all curled up, looking very dead. “This bird is dead,” I announced to a senior volunteer, who happened to be there training a new volunteer. They peered into the cage and said, “yes, he sure looks dead,” and we all felt sad. I left him there for the time being to finish feeding the other birds, all of whom were EXTREMELY alive (it was a very rowdy raptor day). When Kent came in, I told him about the dead red tail so he opened the cage to retrieve the body AND IT JUMPED UP AND FLAPPED INDIGNANTLY AT HIM. Which was bad because Kent wasn’t wearing protective gloves and red tails are very large and strong and can easily maim you. Of course, I felt incredibly stupid, but that hawk really was sleeping in a most bizarre position. So, kids, apparently hawks play dead. Who knew? (Incidentally, Nick Cave fans, this paragraph reminds me of “…where that mad old buzzard, the reverend, shrieked and flapped about life after you’re dead…”. No?)

I’ve been going to the wildlife refuge every weekend for the eagle show. That’s right, we have at least one pair of nesting bald eagles and it’s been very easy to spot them and several other eagles, soaring about or just sitting around looking mighty and majestic.

Eagle in nest!!

(If you live in the area and want to visit for yourself, please note that because the eagle nest is RIGHT next to the trail, they’ve closed off a small but important length of the trail, making it impossible to do a loop through the center of the refuge (where the nest is). This map shows the closure, although you can actually get closer to the nest heading west on Charlie Road than the map implies. You will, however, have to double back along the bay to return to the parking lot. The nest is visible if you approach from the east, but you will need binoculars or a super-telephoto camera lens to see an eagle in the nest – and even with binoculars or a lens, the nest is deep and you may not see anyone in it.)

More on the eagles in a bit, but first, what else have I seen? Well, can anyone out there help me identify this bird?


My friend pointed it out to me the other day, saying, “that bird looks rusty,” which was a curious thing for him to say because just a couple of days earlier I’d been reading about the rusty blackbird “blitz” going on right now: Fish & Wildlife are asking for the public’s help in counting these threatened, rare birds, and Mark and I had been planning to look for them. So I snapped a picture in case it was a rusty blackbird, but in the photo it looks more iridescent than rusty to me, although apparently in the spring they are more black than rusty. Anyone out there know what this bird is? Rusty blackbirds are confirmed to have been seen in the refuge, so it’s not impossible that’s what this is. I’d like to report it if it is.

It amazes me every year how entirely different the refuge looks in the winter and the summer. It’s so lush and verdant in the summer, although you can see much, much more in the winter. I’ve been grateful for somewhat warm weekends despite all the snow we’ve gotten this winter.






We took my brother to see eagles the other weekend and at first it wasn’t looking good on the eagle front – it was the first time we encountered the trail closure (which they don’t bother to mention at any of the trailheads for some unknown reason). So I was glad when he spotted a beaver so at least he got to see SOMETHING interesting. (A few minutes after this we ran across an entirely intact beaver skeleton on the trail near the bay, which was…odd.)


I see great blue herons every time I go anywhere. I’ve actually seen them fly over my head while driving near my house.


Osprey and eagles are the big raptor attractions at the refuge, but it has its share of hawks and owls (though I haven’t YET seen an owl!).


It’s also somewhat known for the wild turkeys, which for the longest time were so elusive I couldn’t get a picture, but I’ve been lucky this year.


AND as of last weekend, the ospreys are back!! Ospreys are what this refuge is most well-known for (if you can call it well-known; it actually seems to be a huge secret, which is fine with me).


But if you’ve been reading for a while, you know it’s the bald eagles that both Mark and I love so much. We return week after week to admire them. I took this one on President’s Day, which was right before they closed the trail off for the nest, but the eagle couple must have picked the location out already because I walked right under the nest and consequently was much, much closer than I’d ever been to a wild bald eagle in my life: like 10 feet. It was exhilarating.

My brother finally did get to see his eagle: despite the trail closure we were able to get very close to this eagle sitting in a tree near the nest, close to the trail barricade.

My friend and I saw this eagle looking out over they bay near the end of the day last weekend:

Mark missed the first half of my President’s Day adventure (though he called me and asked me to come get him so he could join me later), so when we came across this eagle staring out at the bay from a tree maybe 50 feet from us a couple of weeks later, he was flabbergasted. I was delighted by his position on the edge of the tree and not behind a bunch of branches! These are my favorite pictures.






Whew! Now you are all caught up with me: new car, lots of eagles. Coming soon to an ieatfood post near you: BABY RACCOONS!!! No, we don’t have any yet, but we are currently prepping for our first intakes, which we expect in a few short weeks. I die every April when the first infants appear. I get so used to seeing the large juvies and adults that over-winter with us that I forget how very tiny and FLIPPING ADORABLE babies are. I’m excited, but life is about to get even more hectic once they start arriving. But spring also brings the farmers market, which I am DESPERATE for, so hopefully I’ll have more interesting meals to blog about. In addition to baby animals.

I had some limp broccoli in the refrigerator so I decided to make soup out of it last night. Nice for a cold night, perhaps, but not too amazing, right? I didn’t think so until Mark started going absolutely nuts over it. We were watching TV together while eating and I was flattered when he told me not once but twice that the soup was excellent. But then he didn’t stop! He just kept raving about it. “I’m not even paying attention to the show, I’m too into this soup!” he proclaimed, which was surprising considering we were watching a program he ordinarily finds hilarious. Even after we’d finished dinner, he was still going on about it: “I want to eat that soup until I throw up!” At that point I had to tell him the compliments were heading into gross territory and starting to sound less complimentary. But considering how much Mark hates throwing up the fact that he’d be willing to risk it in order to eat more of the soup was saying something, I suppose. Additionally, he’s also usually very squeamish about cleaning up pots from “creamy” things, but he cheerfully washed the soup pot and said even that chore was worth the soup. The last thing he said to me before I went to sleep was, “I’M GOING TO THE KITCHEN FOR MORE OF THAT SOUP.”

He insisted I do a post on it. I was reluctant to do so because I’ve already done a very similar post, but that post is ancient anyway, so here’s exactly what I did last night that produced the soup Mark would puke for.

Broccoli “Cheese” Soup

1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 cups or so chopped potatoes
2 small or medium or 1 large head of broccoli, cut into florets (and stalks peeled and chopped)
6 cups of vegetable broth (I used Better Than Bouillon’s “No Chicken” flavor)
1/3 cup vegan gouda or other cheese from Artisan Vegan Cheese*
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt or seasoning salt, to taste

* I am sorry that I keep including cheeses from this book in my recent recipes. I’ve been avoiding posting anything I made using recipes from this book since I don’t want to post the cheese recipes themselves, but as you can see I haven’t had a ton of other ideas for posts lately! Plus Mark REALLY wanted me to post this recipe! If you don’t have the book, you can use your favorite vegan “cheese”, or use the recipe I posted in this post. You can also just omit the “cheese” entirely for a Cream of Broccoli soup.

Heat some oil over medium heat in a Dutch oven or large soup pot. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic and cook until onions are soft. Add the potatoes and broccoli and cook another minute or so, then add the broth. Bring to a boil then add the “cheese” and nutritional yeast, stirring until the “cheese” is melted and incorporated. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until the potatoes are soft, about half an hour. Remove from the heat and puree using an immersion blender, or, when cooled, in batches in a regular blender. Return to the heat, stir in the lemon juice (adjust the amount to taste) and salt if necessary. (I actually used an all-purpose season salt mix I made up instead of regular salt, but I made it a while ago and have no idea what’s in it! Salt, garlic and onion powders, and other seasonings.)

Serve with crusty bread and a salad. Neither of us even bothered with the bread last night. As Mark says, the soup looks very unassuming and boring, but according to him, the flavor is just spot-on.

I said last time I had more raptor picture, so let’s get to it. While we were in Charleston over the holidays, we went on the swamp garden tour at Magnolia Plantation. I found it very expensive, but then I saw a red shouldered hawk lording over the swamp and my frivolous financial gripes were forgotten. Plus he posed for us for a long time. Such a long time I’m sure my very patient mother-in-law was wishing that bird would fly away so Mark (with his beloved binoculars) and I would mosey along already.

He’s saying here: “I’m a red shoulder!” (He was actually quite fussy, which is typical of red shoulders. They have an attitude.)

He flew away, but just to another nearby tree.

He just kept posing! I love him!

We eventually managed to drag ourselves away and continue the walk.

Hawks are definitely not the only wildlife at the swamp. This is an anhinga:

Egret:

And the real star of the swamp: an alligator! They enjoy sunbathing together with turtles.

I love their creepy smiles.

Quite frankly, I’ve decided I want to live next to a swamp. There’s always something fascinating going on in or around them.

Here is a side dish I made last night by scrounging through leftover bits I’d saved during the week. It was a nice accompaniment to the rice and beans I also made and Mark absolutely loved it. I made ours quite spicy but you can make it as mild or as spicy as you like by varying the amount of jalapenos.

Corn-Jalapeno Casserole

1/2 cup vegan “cheese” sauce (see note below)
2 Tbsp vegan sour cream
2 Tbsp pickled jalapeno “juice” (optional; I added it for some extra kick)
1-3 Tbsp chopped pickled jalapenos
12 oz frozen corn

Note: Since buying the phenomenal Vegan Artisan Cheese, all of my cheese sauces have been made by melting a hunk of pretty much any of the cheeses from that book, generally by whisking water off the boil into it, then whisking in nutritional yeast flakes, garlic and or onion granules, and sometimes fresh lemon juice, and they’ve all blown away any cheese sauces I’ve made in the past. I had half a cup or so of such a sauce left over from serving over steamed cauliflower the other night, although I can’t explain why because I can eat that stuff straight! If you don’t have Vegan Artisan Cheese, first of all, get it, but if you don’t have time to buy the book, make the rejuvelac, and ferment the cheese, use your favorite “cheesy” sauce. The recipe for an old standby is available here.

A note on the pickled jalapenos: I linked to a refrigerator pickle version of pickled jalapenos that I’ve made in the past, but since I discovered and fell in love with canning this summer, I bought a ton of jalapenos at the farmers market, sliced them, and put them in 4-oz canning jars (which I find adorable), along with a couple sliced of carrots and a smashed garlic clove for each jar. Then I poured a hot brine of 50% white or cider vinegar/50% water and some salt into each jar, leaving 1/2″ headspace, and processed in a hot water bath for 5 minutes. I love this size jar for stuff like this and I have plenty of them to last me through the winter. I also love the spicy, vinegary brine – I mix it with tomato sauce and a few other ingredients to make a nearly instant taco sauce. Hmm, perhaps I should do a separate post on all this stuff?

Okay, to the actual recipe I’m supposed to be writing up:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. If you can fit your baking dish into your toaster oven, you can use that (I did).

In a bowl, whisk together the “cheese” sauce, sour cream, and jalapeno “juice” (if using). Stir in the jalapenos and corn. Transfer to a small baking dish (I used a glass loaf pan). The mixture should be just a little liquidy; if it’s not, add a little water or non-dairy milk.

Cover and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the cover and bake uncovered for 20 more minute or until brown and bubbly.

I served this with rice and beans. The beans are Steubens yellow eye beans, which Whole Foods sells in their bulk bins and which I adore. I think they are my favorite bean; they are very tasty and so pretty! I soaked the beans for a few hours then put in my slow cooker with some liquid smoke and minced onion and garlic in some broth and cooked on high for maybe an hour and a half. Then I drained the extra broth off. I had a few slices of leftover seitan, which I chopped pretty small and fried until crispy in a cast iron skillet. I added some vegan bacon salt and onion granules to it as well as several healthy squirts of liquid smoke. Then I added this “bacony” seitan to the beans, as well as some sliced fresh jalapenos, and warmed it all up. This was topped generously with Tabasco and served over rice with the corn jalapeno casserole accompanying it.

And now for raptor news. Mark and I went to Charleston for the holidays this year and while we were there paid a visit to the Center for Birds of Prey, which was really cool and a place I will definitely be volunteering should we ever move down there. Although the guided tour included only a small portion of the center (really just a few of the outdoor education bird cages), the flight demonstration that followed was worth the admission fee. I’m ordinarily opposed to forcing animals to put on “shows” for human enjoyment, but because these are all education birds that can’t be released, I don’t have a problem with training and shows like this, because all education birds in this country are required by federal law to be used in education programs. It’s either that or be euthanized. And I don’t have a problem with the birds that can fly showing that off, especially since this is an impressive show that really sticks with people and they’ll be more apt to remember things they learned and better appreciate raptors. Plus, if any bird they attempt to train doesn’t show signs within one month that they are willing to learn to do it, they stop trying and use that bird for non-flight programs. I also think it’s actually good for raptors to have to work for their meals, which is essentially what they are doing during a flight demonstration like this. Anyway, if you are at all interested in raptors and you are in the Charleston area, I highly recommend The Center for Birds of Prey. Admission isn’t cheap, but I’m happy to donate money to causes like this and felt that the ability to photograph raptors in flight was absolutely worth the admission. Here are some pictures:

The first birds we came to on the guided tour were a pair of eagles, both amputees:

My only raptor volunteering regret is that the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia isn’t a big enough facility to house eagles, except very young ones. We have to transfer any we get to the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

This is an eagle owl; I forget what kind. Eagle owls are all pretty huge though. We have a Eurasian eagle owl (as did the Center for Birds of Prey) at the Raptor Conservancy and it’s enormous.

The rest of the pictures are all from the flight demonstration.

How adorable is this Ural owl? You can see his jesses dangling from the perch. Education birds will usually have leather jesses around their legs. This is what handlers grab onto with their gloves when holding these birds (I know because I get to do this!). When you aren’t doing a flight demonstration (which is not something we do at the Raptor Conservancy), the jesses are attached to a lead whenever the bird is out of its cage.

He’s just been given the signal (he’s prompted with food) to leave that perch and fly to another, and thus he is about to take off:

Because owls are nocturnal, most people very rarely get to see them fly, which is a shame because owls in flight are really amazing. For one thing, they are totally silent.

I never really expected to see a vulture in a flight demonstration, but they had one! This one is for Jes.

Did you know that there is controversy over where to classify New World vultures (like this black vulture) in the animal kingdom? They used to be linked to falcons but genetic testing in the last 20 years or so put them closer to storks. We don’t admit vultures at the Raptor Conservancy. The Center for Birds of Prey, on the other hand, is way into vultures: the bulk of the “tour” was letting us watch them feed the local wild vultures with the scraps their patients refused to eat.

This is some sort of falcon; note he is wearing a radio device on his back. If he flies away during the flight demonstration, this device is how the Center will locate him and bring him home to safety. Remember these are education birds so they have been deemed unable to survive on their own, so catching them if they escape is important for their survival. (I suspect a lot of the birds they use for flight demonstrations are human imprints.)

Here the falcon is on the ground hiding his “prey” of ground beef behind his wings.

Kites seem to be lesser known raptors, at least in this area, but they are neat birds. We don’t have any at the raptor center right now and I don’t think we see too many. But they are fun to watch fly and this guy was clearly loving the opportunity to soar around for a bit on this very clear, beautiful day.

I have yet more raptor pics – we saw a few wild raptors at various parks while we were in Charleston, but I shall save those for another day.

Let’s just get this out of the way up front: the dish I made last week that I hoped to feature in a triumphant return to food blogging after several weeks of inactivity turned out to be okay, but not blog-worthy. I am sorry. However, I can’t resist making a quick post about our day today.

For a bit of a back story, in a stroke of genius I gave Mark binoculars for Christmas. Ostensibly they are for our trip to Tanzania (it’s an expensive trip so I’ve pledged to buy nothing but items we need for it until it happens, other than, of course, food), but I had another motive as well, which was to encourage him to start going to parks with me again. He got bored of going with me because I’m always stopping to take pictures of things he usually can’t even see. My plan worked; if anything too well. Now I’M the one impatiently waiting for HIM to catch up when we go to parks! Mark loves his binoculars so much he took this picture of himself to illustrate how he programs now:

Today after raccooning, I stopped by Mark’s office (Mark works from home, so stopping by his office meant walking down the hall of our house), where I found him looking suspiciously like he was working, on a Sunday. This exchange happened:

RENAE: Are you working?
MARK: Yes, but I’m not too happy about it.
RENAE: Do you have time to go out for a little while? Do you want to go binocularing?
MARK: [thinks for a moment, then…] Yes, yes I do. Let me find my shoes.

Then we had to decide where to go. We narrowed it down to Mason Neck State Park and/or National Wildlife Refuge (they are adjacent to each other), or Occoquan Bay NWR. I said that at Occoquan we’d probably see a larger variety of birds and if we were lucky perhaps turkeys or a fox, but that at Mason Neck we stood a fair chance of seeing an eagle. Although the odds were better of seeing a large number of more varied animals at Occoquan, seeing an eagle kind of trumps everything else. Nonetheless, Occoquan is closer so we ended up going there. I spied some turkeys soon after our arrival:

Walking along I was explaining to Mark that Occoquan Bay NWR is home to one or two nesting pairs of bald eagles but that I’d only ever seen a single eagle in all my many trips there. Mark said, “I want to see an eagle today.” I said, “well, it’s possible but I really don’t want you to get your hopes up because you’re probably not going to.” To which he responded, “oh, I’m getting my hopes up!”

If that conversation sounds familiar, it’s because we had the EXACT same exchange back in April: Mark said he wanted to see an eagle at Mason Neck and I said, “don’t get your hopes up,” and Mark replied, “my hopes are up,” and damn if we didn’t see an eagle two minutes later.

Guess what happened two minutes – I’m not exaggerating! – after Mark said he was getting his hopes up about seeing an eagle today? He scanned around with his binoculars and announced, “Yep, I see an eagle.” Now, like a lot of people, Mark has “see an eagle-itis”. I don’t know why it is, but there is some either human or American tendency to think that everything you see in the sky is an eagle. The raptor rehabber I work with has numerous stories of calls he’s gotten about eagles that have turned out to be anything from red shouldered hawks (which are much, much smaller than eagles and look nothing like them) to PIGEONS. He receives dozens of calls about injured eagles annually and I think in his many years of rehab only one has actually been an eagle. People think they see eagles ALL THE TIME when they do not. Mark, too, has many times claimed to be looking at an eagle when what he was really seeing was something else, so naturally I didn’t believe him…I mean, I’d JUST told him he probably wasn’t going to. Except I DID then see something white-headed in the direction he was pointing his binoculars. I aimed my telephoto lens at it AND DAMN IF IT WASN’T A BALD EAGLE.

HOW DOES HE DO IT???

Now, none of the pictures in this post are my best; in fact, they’re pretty crappy, but I’m sharing them anyway because, well, I’m obsessed with raptors. The eagle was pretty far away from me and like an idiot I’d left my tripod at home so I had to handhold my big lens, which can make it difficult to get sharp pictures. But here is the eagle flying from one tree to another nearby tree:

And where he landed:

After gawking at him for quite some time, we eventually continued on our way through the refuge, heading over towards the bay. As soon as we got to the water, I looked out to a small island and saw a dark shape at the top of a tree. A dark shape with a white head. Looking through my lens again I announced, “uhhhhhhhhh….eagle!”

So then we spent many more minutes admiring and photographing THAT eagle. Eventually we decided to move on, when Mark looked back for some reason or another. NOW GUESS WHAT:

I’m assuming this is a mated pair, although since they are in the middle of a narrow bay between two wildlife refuges, I don’t know in which one they reside.

Maybe this makes me strange, but in my opinion, seeing three eagles is the definition of “great day”! I think I’m going to coin an alternative to the phrase “red-letter day”: “three-eagle day”! Not only that, I got to share my three-eagle day with Mark. And not only that, but the setting sun threw beautiful colors over the bay at the same time (the island in this picture is the one the two eagles were on):

It was quite dark by the time we managed to make it out of the refuge. This is the last of the setting sun over Marumsco Creek:

In quick non-food, non-wildlife news, I took Heidi to her new home yesterday morning and although she was nervous and scared, she was totally happy to have her new companion person pet her – she even ate treats out of her hand! – and I feel really good that I made the right decision. I do miss her and feel bad that she probably feels like I abandoned her, but I saw signs yesterday that it’ll actually take her less time to adapt to her new home than I worried it might. I truly think she will be much happier there. Gomez and Torticia have been in extra high spirits since yesterday so I suppose they are happier too.

I shall be spending the upcoming days hoping a food post comes to me…if only because I have a backlog of raptor pictures to foist upon you!

I exist!

I have far more non-food-related news going on in my life right now than new recipes, so I return with a non-recipe post…but only because I am actually planning a recipe post later this week. Several people have asked about the cat situation, particularly since last time I alluded to the fact we had four cats. Which, for a couple of months, we did. So for you cat lovers, here’s a cat-only update. For those of you uninterested in cats, come back soon for some food.

So, back when I was furloughed in October, I was in the sunroom when Gomez and Torticia suddenly sounded an alert: someone was at the back door! Mezzie and Tish race to the door whenever any other living thing shows up outside the sliding glass door: bird, squirrel, raccoon, skunk, fox…you name it. But that day the cause of their excitement was another cat. And not just any cat, this gorgeous fluffy black cat, and she was pressing herself against the door as if she desperately wanted in, although the weather was quite nice out at the time. Gently kicking Mez and Tish out of the way, I opened the door, only to have the kitty run off a few yards. However, to my surprise, when I called to her she came running up to me and let me pet her. In fact, she let me pick her up. I fell for her immediately. I INSTANTLY loved this cat. She rubbed noses with me! I went back inside to get her some food and to call Mark to come look at her. She scarfed down a large can of food like she hadn’t eaten for days and by the time she was done Mark was in love with her too.

It took me several weeks to bring Heidi in when she was living in our yard, but I took this cat up to the animal hospital to be scanned for a microchip within a couple of hours. For one thing, she was a black cat and it was nearing Halloween. For another thing, I loved her and I was secretly hoping no one claimed her. She was negative for a chip and I SWEAR I made a good faith attempt to find her owners, checking in with the animal shelter and Craigslist, etc., but when no one claimed her in a week or so, Mark and I called her a Halloween miracle from the Great Pumpkin and we christened her Wednesday to fit in with Gomez and Torticia (conveniently, I also found her on a Wednesday).

I took Wednesday to our vet and told him we’d adopted a fourth cat. I was convinced he was going to think I was some crazy cat thief because Torticia is a tortie and Gomez is all-black, and the first cat I found in my yard was another tortie, and now the second cat I’d found in the yard was all-black. I mean, what at the chances that the TWO cats that show up in my yard within a few months of each other would be another tortie and another all-black cat?? Both the new cats were like tiny versions of Mezzie and Tortellini! I thought he’d think I was starting a bizarre collection. He insisted he just thought I was a good person to care about strays so much, gave her some shots, and collected some blood to run the standard new-cat tests.

Two days later I sprang to answer his call because Wednesday was going crazy being locked up in a room by herself and I was desperate to get the all-clear to let her mingle with other cats and have full run of the house. Only it wasn’t to be: the test results were positive for feline leukemia. I cried my eyes out when I got off the phone with him, because feline leukemia is pretty much an early death sentence. Unlike feline HIV patients who can often live many years with no symptoms of their disease, most leukemia patients die within 3-5 years. And since it’s contagious to other cats, Wednesday would have to go to a home where she could be the only cat. It’s REALLY hard to find someone who is willing to adopt such a cat. Honestly I don’t know that I would choose to do so. You can’t have any other cats (unless they too are FLV+), you have to live knowing they will very likely have a short life, and you’re probably looking at at lot of vet bills near the end of their life. I thought immediately of my friend Melissa, though, who lost her cat KK the prior year (KK was an orange tabby, like my cat Tigger that those of you who have been reading for years may remember, and like Tigger, KK was from Ocean City, MD: Melissa and I adopted them about the same time when we were in college together) and through my tears sent her an emotional email. I figured she’d probably be mad at me for asking her such a ridiculous question (“Hey, I know you are busy raising three young kids and working but how would you like to adopt a cat that’s going to get sick and die in a few years????”), so when she didn’t respond right away, I totally understood and began the arduous task of reaching out to EVERY cat charity I could find and asking for help. Very few did anything to help me, although I did finally find one place near Charlottesville that has a FLV room and would accept Wednesday if I agreed to sponsor her – essentially donate money monthly towards her vet bills and upkeep – which I kept on reserve as a last resort as I preferred to find her an actual home.

But then it turned out Melissa wasn’t purposely avoiding me because she didn’t want to have to say no to me – she just hadn’t checked her email in a few days. AND she thought she may be feeling called to agree to it! After a lot of research on Melissa’s part and a family vote, Melissa’s family agreed to adopt Wednesday. I was so, so, so, so happy! Because not only was Wednesday going to a great home with someone I trust implicitly, I’d be able to see her whenever I wanted! Plus, I was tired of going to Melissa’s house and not getting to see KK or any other cats. Wednesday has been at Melissa’s for over a month and is adjusting well to her three kids. This story has a happy ending!!

Wednesday is super difficult to take pictures of because she’s so dark and fast: if you level a camera at her, she’s immediately in your face, wanting attention. These are the crappy pictures I took for Melissa while she was still deciding; they do nothing to express the beauty of Wednesday, who is very tiny but very silky, very black, very, very pretty, and super personable.

This picture is absurd, but I wanted to capture her gorgeous tail.

I love this cat. And I love Melissa and her family for adopting her!

Now, another story, which is a little less dramatic, but like the first starts out sad then gets happy: Heidi.

Little Heidi. I told you how I came to adopt her this summer in this post, but unfortunately, during the whole Wednesday debacle it was becoming obvious it just wasn’t going to work out with her. I love Heidi: she’s very sweet and loyal and eager to show me how grateful she is I took her in. Seriously, I can read it in her eyes. The problem is Torticia has HATED Heidi since the day I let Heidi out of quarantine following HER blood test results (which were, thankfully, all negative). Mezzie, on the other hand, was super friendly with Heidi and tried to befriend her. Heidi, however, went on the defensive following Torticia’s rancor and struck out indiscriminately at both cats. After a few months, I don’t know if Mezzie got tired of his friendly overtures being rebuffed or if Torticia finally convinced him to join the dark side, but eventually Mezzie started hassling Heidi as well. With the two of them ganged up on the poor girl, I realized I couldn’t make the relationship work, so I turned to the SPCA, from whom I adopted Mez and Tish. SPCA NOVA is awesome to work with and they responded immediately with help. They posted Heidi on their website and promised to get Heidi into a safe foster home as soon as one was available.

Imagine my surprise when a week later no foster homes had opened up, but two different people wanted to adopt her! I liked both applicants tremendously but of course only one could adopt her. This Saturday morning Heidi will be moving to her new home with a very nice woman who was looking for a quiet, gentle kitty to love after her ex-husband took the cat he entered the relationship with. I feel really good about this. I know Heidi will be much happier in her new home and I think Heidi will be an excellent companion for her.

My sweet girl, I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the home you deserve, but I hope you know I’m giving you up so you can have a better life!

AND NOW LOOK AT THESE BULLIES!

Seriously, though, when they aren’t giving me headaches by hassling Heidi, Gomez and Torticia remain the most absolutely wonderful cats ever. And frankly, I’m looking forward to being back down to two cats. Four was too many, especially since there were three distinct “groups” to whom I had to pay separate attention. When I work with the raccoons and the raptors, I have to divide my time up between many animals, and I like that because I am exposed to so many different needs and personalities and I learn a lot. But at home, I really just want two awesome best feline friends with whom I have the strongest relationship possible. And a lot of the time I’m not home. So when I get home, I just want to see their two smiling little faces greeting me and not feel stressed out that I need to spend quality time with half the cat population of Virginia.

Yeah, they LOOK lazy, but they are MEANIE PANTS.

LET’S ALL HOPE NO MORE STRAY CATS TAKE UP RESIDENCE IN MY YARD.

Finally, in non-cat-related news, big excitement on the horizon!! Mark and I are going on safari in Tanzania for our 10th wedding anniversary in October! And Smucky and his girlfriend are going with us! It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done and I am beside myself! I am mentioning it here because, well, it’s pretty much the only thing I think of these days, but also because I’m soliciting advice. Our tour organizer knows we are vegan and has assured me it won’t be a problem, and I’ve actually seen the words “vegan-friendly” on the websites of some of the camps and lodges we’ll be staying in (can you imagine that?! The times we live in!), so I’m not super worried about starving, but I am a little worried about being hungry from time to time. We’ll be on some long drives and I get really, really bad headaches – and turn into a total monster – if I don’t eat when I’m hungry. Usually when I travel long distances, I load up on energy bars for the journey, and usually my destination is a city or at least someplace I can find a bag of chips or something if I’m really desperate. But what do I do when I’m in the Serengeti and there’s no vegan snacks around for miles? Because we will be taking tiny planes from camp to camp in Africa, there is a 12 kg luggage weight limit, most of which I’ll be devoting to camera equipment, and furthermore, we have to use soft-sided luggage like duffle bags. Basically I’m planning to take a very small carry-on bag for my clothes and toiletries – just enough clothes for 3 days or so (laundry service is provided in the camps). I won’t have space for a 2-week supply of energy bars, and besides which, it’ll be hot: a lot of them get melty and gross in the heat. Are there any of you out there who, even if you haven’t been on safari, are maybe avid backpackers and have suggestions for highly portable, filling snacks, or other not-starving-while-traveling tips? So far all I can think of is nuts, but I’m not even sure how much room I’ll have for those…and how I’ll keep Mark from eating all of them on the first day. (That boy loves nuts!)

And now I’m off to make dinner…a dinner that I hope to be able to post as a recipe here.

RENAE IS UPDATING HER BLOG. That’s right, folks! I’m here with an actual recipe and everything! I thought my life would be getting less hectic around this time, but I can’t even remember a day I was able to sleep in past 8 a.m.. Although half of our raccoons have been released (we actually have more than usual remaining for this late in the year), instead of using the extra time gained during my weekend for leisure, I’ve been training to work with raptors. In addition, it feels like I have 400 cats in the house right now (it’s really four). And I attended a weekend-long wildlife conference a couple of weeks ago. And I’ve been testing for Kittee’s upcoming Ethiopian cookbook. I’ve therefore actually been cooking a lot this month, but not many recipes I can share. My food photography skills, never very impressive, have taken a nosedive of late so I don’t even have any decent pictures of my delicious output, although I can assure you YOU WILL WANT THIS COOKBOOK. I was worried I wouldn’t have the time to commit to testing, but I’ve been making Kittee’s Ethiopian recipes for years and I just couldn’t resist the temptation to be a small part of this project because I knew it was going to be amazing. And it is!

I took a break from Ethiopian last night (although I had leftovers for lunch earlier!), and I did something I haven’t done in an embarrassingly long time: I baked bread!! I used this no-time bread recipe from The Kitchn. As a bread snob, I can’t say it’s the best bread I’ve ever baked, and I’m so bread-baker-snobby I hate bread recipes that are by volume instead of weight, but it’s better than no bread and better than commercial bread for sure. Then I needed to come up with something to serve with it. I’ve been stuffing my face with a ton of injera lately so when not eating Ethiopian, I’ve been making lighter meals, so soup seemed about right. I had some fresh black-eyed peas from the farmers market in the freezer and a large horde of jalapenos ready for the test recipes, so I whipped up this smoky, spicy black-eyed pea soup.

Spicy Black-eyed Pea Soup

1 medium onion, diced
1 small jalapeno, sliced
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
4-6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp Old Bay
1/2 tsp smoked salt (or to taste, depending on how salty your broth is)
14-16 oz can diced tomatoes
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen black-eyed peas
8 cups veggie broth
2 bay leaves
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Put some oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat, then add the onion, jalapeno, celery, carrot, bell pepper, and garlic, and saute for several minutes until vegetables are soft. Add the paprika, Old Bay, and salt and cook another minute or two, then add the tomatoes, using them to deglaze the pot if necessary, and cook another minute or so. Add the black-eyed peas, veggie broth, bay leaves, and vinegar, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer over medium heat until the peas are soft, about an hour to an hour and a half. Remove the bay leaves before serving.

Serve with crusty bread and lots of Tabasco!

I wish that since it’s been so long since I last posted that I had scads of pictures to share of all the exciting things I’ve been doing, but alas, although I’ve been doing some exciting things, photos are scarce. I never did share some of the pictures I took in Harpers Ferry, WV when I was furloughed, though, so I’ll take the opportunity to do so, as it’s a very lovely place and I had a really nice day. A lot of the acreage there is a national park, which was of course closed (it seems like EVERYTHING I wanted to do while furloughed was a national park or wildlife refuge…soooo annoying), but I don’t think I’ve actually gone to the park before as there is a lot to do otherwise. Actually, I’m not sure I wasn’t on park grounds at times, but there was no one to stop me, so IN YOUR FACE, CONGRESS.

We usually park near the train station. I love trains (and train travel), and if you are in the town for any length of time, you’ll probably see one. A freight train chugged on through about two minutes after I parked. Amtrak stops at this station as well. Here’s an infrared shot of the station:

Across some disused tracks you can see the quaint, historical town:

Nearby is an old boat landing; there’s a sign here telling the story of a daring Civil War-era escape.

One of the focal points of the town is the old church, which is up many, many 18th-century (read: small, uneven, and treacherous!) stone stairs.

If that church isn’t old enough for you, here are the remains of an even older one:

Keep going behind the church and you come to Jefferson Rock, named for yes, THE Thomas Jefferson, who took in the view from the rock while traveling through the area and stated “this scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic.”

The view is pretty awesome.

Continuing along you come to a graveyard.

All in all, a very lovely way to spend a day. The government reopened the very next day and I found myself quite suddenly back at work.

I’ve alluded periodically to the fact that in addition to raccoons, I’ve been starting to work with raptors. I won’t be able to share as many photos from that because we aren’t really allowed to take pictures of our rehab birds, but I’ll try to snag some pics of the education birds when I can. Working with raptors is WAY different than raccoons: they don’t take to being cuddled and they eat much grosser food. But I really enjoy it. I’ve always been in awe of these birds of prey (when I say raptors, I mean birds, not dinosaurs!) and having the opportunity to get so close to them and even handle them is amazing. I showed some friends and family some pictures of me holding some of the birds and most everyone commented, “you look really HAPPY!” Of course I was happy, I WAS HOLDING AN OWL! THIS owl:

Another of our ed birds, this is a long-eared owl, which is smaller than the barred owl above, but much larger than a screech owl.

One of the first things you learn about birds of prey is that red-shouldered hawks have a reputation for their attitude, which is just that: they have an attitude. Every single person that takes a red shoulder out of its cage imitates it by saying, “I’m a red shoulder!” in an assertive voice…usually while the red shoulder is asserting its red-shoulderness. This education bird was notable for not acting like a red shoulder – instead he sat quietly and enjoyed the crisp autumn air.

Here I am holding a broadwing hawk, which I know less about because we have fewer than we do red shoulders and red tails; in fact, I think this is the only broadwing we have at the moment. It took him a little while to settle down.

I got a question about the new cat, Heidi, a couple of weeks ago – I’ll have a cat update next time…there’s much to tell, good and bad. A teaser: Heidi is no longer the “new” cat!

Sigh, October. It’s my favorite month and it contains all sort of fun events and celebrations, but it’s always so busy! Because my birthday fell on a Saturday this year, I decided we needed to go away for the weekend to celebrate both our birthdays (Mark’s is just a few days after mine). Mark wanted to go to the Blue Ridge mountains, but because the fall colors are so spectacular there, everything in that area books like a year in advance. I’ve been wanting to go to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge for a while, so we booked a B&B on Chincoteague Island. There was a while there during the furlough when I thought the weekend was going to be ruined (as all national parks and refuges were closed), but fortunately the government reopened the day before we were scheduled to leave.

Chincoteague Island and NWR are located just south of the Maryland/Virginia border; in fact, although we live in Virginia, most of our drive was in Maryland. Although like many people from the Baltimore area I spent lots of adolescent summers in Maryland’s Ocean City and Delaware’s Rehobeth Beach, I’d never made it to nearby Assateague Island or Chincoteague right below it, each home to a herd of wild ponies. When I started getting into wildlife photography, however, it became a required destination.

We stayed at Miss Molly’s Inn, famed location where Misty of Chincoteague was written. Miss Molly’s is charming, the host, Sam, was funny and very friendly (I barely saw his wife), and they were happy to accommodate our vegan diets. The entire island is small enough that you can pretty much walk the whole thing, but the inn is conveniently located on the main road with most of the shops and restaurants. We stayed in the room off the upper deck. The room itself was kind of tiny, but check out our awesome deck!

A small chilled bottle of complimentary Prosecco and a birthday card awaited us, which I thought was sweet. We drank red wine and Prosecco …

…watching the sunset from the deck. Lovely!

There was a harvest moon that first evening, and once it got dark enough, I noticed an arc of light circling it, with two rainbow patches to the left and right of it. I’ve seen that happen with the sun before and knew it was called sun dogs, and though I don’t recall seeing such a thing around the moon, I decided what we were seeing were moon dogs. Turns out I was right: moon dogs exist. It’s kind of hard to discern from the picture – it’s somewhat difficult to photograph without burning out the moon – but it was really neat in reality.

Chincoteague is not much of a hot vegan destination, although you won’t starve there. It’s mostly seafood, though all the seafood places serve pasta. I sort of hate getting pasta marinara out, though, because it’s something I can make deliciously at home in my sleep. There is a single Vietnamese (the only Asian place, I believe) restaurant on the island, Saigon Village, but fortunately it was two blocks from Miss Molly’s and had plenty of vegan-friendly options. We ate outside on the porch which was nicer than the brightly lit interior, although it was getting a bit nippy, and we soon regretted not just getting take-out and eating on our deck with some wine. Nonetheless, it was a good meal.

Mark ordered a spicy noodle dish with tofu. The waitress asked him how hot he wanted it on a scale of 10 out of 10 and tried warning him against it when he said “10”. However, she gave in when he said he grows and eats raw ghost peppers. Mark was subsequently suitably impressed with the spiciness of the noodles. In fact, it took him longer to eat his food than it did me mine, and that’s UNHEARD of because I’m a notoriously slow eater and he’s really fast. However, the noodles weren’t so hot that they had no flavor and I was quite happy to eat more than a few forkfuls.

I ordered barbecued tofu, which was pretty yummy. Loved the grill marks.

And that’s all the food pictures I remembered to take! (And Mark had to remind me to take those!) The other night we ordered pizza delivery. The pizza from Famous Pizza wasn’t the most amazing pizza I’ve ever had in my life, but they were very friendly, didn’t sound at all surprised I didn’t want cheese, and it arrived a few minutes before they said it would, even on a Saturday night.

I was disappointed Poseidon’s Pantry was closed the entire weekend we were there, but Sea Star Cafe had several sandwiches and vegan wraps to choose from and we had a nice lunch shielded from a light rain under an umbrella at one of their tables. (There are no eat-in tables.)

Saturday morning we headed out to the wildlife refuge and were rewarded with ponies! They were pretty far away – hard to see without my 400mm lens – and it was misting most of the morning, so my pictures aren’t super sharp, but wild horses are exciting nonetheless.

Wanna know what I look like when I’m photographing wildlife?

We saw the Assateague lighthouse …

… and climbed to the top.

I almost didn’t recognize this great blue heron when I first saw him, until he turned his head slightly. Until then he was almost 2-dimensional – herons look a bit weird straight-on!

We saw a LOT of great blue herons.

If you look closely in this picture, you can just barely make out a bunch of birds OTHER than the heron, hiding!

I believe this is an immature double crested cormorant. They are funny.

They reminded me of something out of Disney when posed like this for some reason.

Another…

Great egrets are a big thing in Chincoteague, after the ponies.

Assateague National Seashore is part of Chincoteague NWR. Mark was sad that due to weather conditions he was unable to get an on-sand permit for his Jeep.

But not so sad he couldn’t delight in the treasures he found.

Sunday we visited NASA’s Wallops facility.

We also stopped by Blackwater NWR, which was just a few miles out of our way. Lots more herons! How mean does this one look?

All in all, it was a very lovely weekend! And now…Halloween party time.

So I’m sure even those of you not in the U.S. have heard that our government has been shut down for a week and a half, with no signs of re-opening. If you are not an American citizen, you are probably wondering what kind of country thinks that’s an acceptable idea. If you are an American citizen, you’ve probably been affected in some way, large or small. I’ve been affected quite directly in that I’m a government contractor and have been furloughed, meaning I’ve been forced to take a leave without pay from my job. And unlike federal employees, I won’t be paid back. It’s starting to trickle down and affect my life in other ways, too: Dogue Hollow, currently desperate for money, might not get the Combined Federal Campaign check we usually get in October. My father – a retired special agent – is worried he may not get his next pension check. I was really looking forward to attending my first board meeting of the Friends of the Potomac River Refuges, but it was cancelled because the refuges are closed. My birthday has probably been ruined because I’d planned to spend it at Chincoteague NWR. ALL THE FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND CONTRACTORS ARE DRIVING AROUND NORTHERN VIRGINIA ALL THE TIME! (Seriously, everyone thought that at least traffic would be better than usual, but it’s just as bad, if not worse!)

So there’s a lot of frustration here. Philosophically, I am very angry. Disgusted with our Congress. My government has given me plenty of reasons not to trust them, but I think taking my job and salary from me takes the cake. How can I have any faith or trust in them? They clearly do not have the well-being of myself or any other citizen in mind. It’s funny; they’ve taken away the two places I spend the most time: my job and the wildlife refuge (no sense linking to it because the website currently redirects to the Dept. of the Interior (even their WEBSITE is shut down!). Remember how in my last post I mentioned the sign in the refuge that says “Welcome to YOUR National Wildlife Refuge”. Well, apparently it’s NOT mine: it’s the “government’s”.

Okay, I’m starting to get worked up. Next thing you know I’ll be blasting Rage Against the Machine and pumping my fist in the air. I AM outraged, but I don’t want you to think I’ve been sitting around feeling sorry for myself, because I’ve barely had time to do any sitting! I’ve been putting in some extra time with both the raccoons and the raptors, and I’ve been spending time with my brother (also furloughed) and a good friend, and I’ve been taking care of a stray cat, and I’ve been canning up a storm, and I’ve been discovering new music, and basically being furloughed is EXHAUSTING! And I haven’t even had time to do half of the things I want to do. I feel more harried at times than I did when I was working! I have no idea how that’s even possible.

I have been canning a lot, but other than that I haven’t spent a lot of time cooking new things I could be blogging, somewhat surprisingly. Often by the time I finish up canning something, I’m ready to make something quick for dinner. But yesterday my friend and I had lunch at a restaurant that makes their own in-house potato chips (Old Bay flavored to boot!), and there’s been a deluge over the last couple of days, so after running around in the rain all day yesterday, and helping raccoons this morning, I decided to spend a little extra time on dinner tonight and make some homemade potato chips (crisps for you non-Americans) to go with some veggie burgers. I’m not really sure it even warrants a post, but I figured it was a good excuse to check in with you guys! I’ve made these before, but here are some pointers I picked up tonight:

• A lot of recipes on the internet specify russet potatoes, but I used less starchy red potatoes.
• You should really use a mandoline to slice the chips, but paper thin is really too thin. 1/16″ or so is a little better.
• Peanut oil is traditional, but olive oil works fine.
• These go from not done to overdone FAST. Check the chips pretty much constantly and remove those that are done immediately, then return the pan back to the oven to finish up the others.
• As the chips finish, I like to remove them in a single layer to my wooden chopping block. They cool very quickly there without building up any condensation. Within a couple of minutes, I can move them to a bowl where they stay crisp.
• You can try blotting off the oil with a paper towel, but the chips are fragile, so it’s easier to try to keep the oil to a minimum in the first place.
• I was going for salt & vinegar flavor, but found that I couldn’t really taste the vinegar if I drizzled it on before cooking. Instead I salted them before baking, but just spritzed with a little malt vinegar right before serving.

Baked Potato Chips

large potatoes – I used 2 large red potatoes and ended up with enough chips for 2-4 people
oil
salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Use a mandoline to thinly and evenly slice the potatoes about 1/16″ thick. If you have time, soak the sliced potatoes in cold water for a while to remove some of the starch, then drain them well. Brush a thin film of oil on a large baking pan and arrange the chips in a single layer, then brush a little oil over them. Sprinkle lightly with salt.

Bake just until golden brown. They will in all likelihood not finish at the same time; remove them with a thin spatula as they finish. Let cool in a single layer.

I’m not yet able to share any pictures from the raptor rehabbing I’m getting involved with, but I can talk about a raptor visitor we had in our yard. I showed you a Cooper’s hawk that was patrolling our bird feeder back in March. Well, we had another one here last week, this time a juvenile. If you look back at the older post, compare the difference in coloring between the adult and the juvie.

I have mixed feelings about him. On one hand, HE’S TRYING TO EAT MY BIRDS, which I just think is rude. On the other hand, that’s what hawks do: they eat smaller birds. It’s his prerogative. And also he’s beautiful!

Look at him hunting down my songbirds! Damn him!

Look at him looking at ME! ISN’T HE AWESOME? Seriously, how can I be mad at that face? I love raptors; can’t help it!

My favorite stand at the farmers market always has cippollini onions with a sign next to them saying, “these are great roasted!” and every single week I’m suckered into buying them by that sign because I LOVE roasted onions. I made this with potatoes last night, but I wish I’d tossed a couple of chopped carrots in there as well because roasted carrots are also totally awesome and my plate would have been that much more colorful.

Roasted Vegetables with Cippollini Onions and White Balsamic

1 lb cippollini onions, peeled
1 lb other root vegetables, like potatoes and carrots, chopped
a couple springs fresh rosemary
olive oil
white baslamic vinegar
flaked salt, to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the onions and chopped vegetables in a pot and just cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook for about 3 minutes, then drain and rinse under cold water until cool enough to touch. Place on a pan or in a cooking dish large enough to arrange in a single layer and drizzle with olive oil (about a tablespoon or so) and about a tablespoon of the white balsamic, using your hands to coat every piece. Sprinkle with the rosemary and salt. Cover the pan or dish with aluminum foil and roast for half an hour. Remove the foil and return to the oven for another 20 minutes or until the vegetables are all soft. Drizzle with additional basalmic if so desired.

The brown blob on my plate is barbecued seitan, using a riff on Vegan Dad’s lunch meat. YES, I AM OBSESSED WITH AVOCADOS.

I don’t know about where you live, but the weather in Northern Virginia has been GLORIOUS. I finally got around to getting an annual pass for Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge (there is normally a $2 honor system entrance fee) since I’m there all the time. I was very easily talked into joining the Friends of the Potomac River Refuges, which meant I paid $15 for a membership and got $5 off my annual pass, meaning I spent $10 more than planned in order to earn the privilege of doing things like picking up trash! I josh. Although really that’s one of the things I get to do as a “friend” of the refuges (Occoquan Bay is one of three refuges in a complex of three within a few miles of each other, although currently one of them is only accessible by kayak). I must be very easy to read because the volunteer making the sale remarked that as a “friend” I’d have occasional access to areas not open to the public (which, honestly, is about 80% of the refuge, and I’d give myself about a 4 out of 10 on ability to obey those rules). And really I do want to get more involved with the refuges so had I known about the organization, I’d have joined a long time ago. I want to do things like count species for them.

ANYWAY, the weather’s been about a 12 out of 10 all week and it’s the last few days I’ll be able to get into the refuge past 5 p.m., so Wednesday night I was down there again tromping around.

This is the entrance road. The main parking lot is in the middle of the refuge so I’m headed there. The sign says, “Welcome to Your National Wildlife Refuge System,” which always makes me think MINE MINE MINE!

Apparently the refuge’s beaches used to be a tourist attraction until the ’40s, after which the army bought it and used it as a research station until the ’90s, at which time US Fish and Wildlife bought it and allowed nature to reclaim most of it. Remnants of the army installation remain pretty much only in the form of the roads which now form the hiking paths. This is Easy Road, with the sun setting behind me as I hike east:

And this was taken just a little further down Easy Road, but turned around and facing away from the sun:

I’m not really sure where the boundaries of the different water bodies are, but this is probably right about where Belmont and Occoquan Bays merge. OBNWR is located at the intersection of the Occoquan and Potomac Rivers.

I’ll be honest, one of the main reasons I want to be at OBNWR around sunset is because I REALLY want a good picture of a fox and sunset or sunrise will be my best bet. And I see one maybe one out of every three times I go around sunset. But I NEVER get the picture. THEY ARE SO QUICK! (And always jumping over lazy dogs!) It started getting dark fast after I took those sunset pics over the bay(s), so I had to trot back rather quickly to my car, which as I said was parked in the middle of the refuge. So I was trot trot trotting, turned a corner, and found myself face to face with a beautiful red fox, startling both of us. He was actually too close to me! Too close for my 400mm lens to focus on him! Damn it! Here he is running away from me!

To be even more honest: although I want a fox picture bad, I also don’t want one, because I like having a goal. I wanted a turkey picture bad and now I see turkeys all the time and I’m all, “ho hum, another turkey”. (I’m also all, “Ho Ho Ho, Who’d Be a Turkey at Christmas?“, one of the three best Christmas songs ever!)

In personal news, yesterday it dawned on me that I might be a hippie, or rather, that other people probably consider me a hippie. I’m not really one for labels. When I wore a lot of black and danced to anything by Depeche Commode, I never once called myself a goth. But I went to a new person for a haircut last night and had the following exchange:

Hair stylist: How often do you wash your hair?
Me: Rarely.
Hair stylist: What do you wash it with?
Me: Some handmade shampoo bar I got from etsy.
Hair stylist: What styling products do you use?
Me: The gel I scrape from inside the leaves of my aloe plant.

I mean, to me, all that sounds perfectly normal. Everything I do seems very normal. But even *I* walked away from that conversation thinking I might be a goddamn hippie. In discussing what sort of cut I wanted, he asked what styling methods I use and I had to confess that the only hair dryer I own is my convertible car. He did his best not to look mortified, but he did suggest about five times that I try switching to a volumizing shampoo. His parting words to me were: “VOLUMIZING MOUSSE!”.

Well, that was probably TMI, so I’m going to go now and don some love beads, switch on the black light, burn some incense, douse myself in patchouli (crap, I have a bar of patchouli soap in my shower; if I wanted to avoid this hippie label I’m not faring very well here), crank up In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (hmm, not only do I own In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, probably half of my music is from the ’60s – it’s getting harder to run from this label), drop some acid, and ruminate on how the man is bringing me down.

I don’t know if this picture makes me a hippie but it is one of the more normal outfits I wore in college. It probably just makes me weird.

In the immortal words of Mark E. Smith:

You don’t have to be strange to be strange. You don’t have to be weird to be weird.

Edited to add: I just learned that Mark E. Smith is on twitter and his tweets are just about what I expected, which is to say, hilarious.

Here’s a tasty dish I whipped up last night partially to use up several different leftovers: a single link of soyrizo, a couple of poblano peppers that had seen better days, and a little less than a cup of cooked black-eyed peas. I also had a box of super-cute baby sweet potatoes from the farmers market that I wanted to base my meal around. I just combined all of that stuff et viola!

Soyrizo-stuffed Sweet Potatoes

4 large baby sweet potatoes or 2 medium regular sweet potatoes
1 link vegan chorizo (“soyrizo”)
2 poblano peppers
1/2 – 1 cup cooked black-eyed peas
shredded vegan cheese (I used jack flavor) (optional)

I used the largest 4 in a box of baby sweet potatoes, but you can also use regular sized ones. Poke them a few times with a fork, rub lightly with olive oil, and bake them (the toaster oven is perfect for this) at 400 degrees Fahrenheit until a fork pierces them easily. How long this will take will depend on the size of the potatoes; my baby potatoes were probably done in 30-40 minutes. Remove them from the oven, make a slit lengthwise down the top of them by poking with a fork, then put one palm on either end of each potato and press your hands together until the split opens up to a perfect pocket for stuffing.

While the sweet potatoes are cooking, prepare the filling. Roast the poblano peppers. If you have a gas stove, you can do this right over the flame. I have an electric stove (bleh), but this pepper roaster works great on an electric stove. You could also put them under the broiler for several minutes, though if you do that, I’d stem and seed them first instead of after roasting so you don’t have to turn them. In any case, roast them until the skins are black and charred, then pop them into a paper bag, close it up, and set aside to cool. After 10 or 15 minutes, the charred skins will slide right off the peppers. Remove the seed and stems and chop the peppers.

Heat some oil in a small skillet, then add the soyrizo, chopped roasted peppers, and cooked black-eyed peas and saute for a few minutes.

When this mixture seems thoroughly cooked, spoon it into each of the sweet potatoes. If you’d like, top with shredded vegan cheese.

Pop back into the oven until the potatoes are warm and the cheese, if using, is melted.

I served this with kale chips seasoned with cumin, chili powder, and smoked paprika, and a garden salad tossed with a homemade lime vinaigrette. (I believe the vinaigrette was olive oil, lime juice, garlic, salt, cumin, and cilantro.) The leftover potatoes and kale chips made a nice lunch today.

I haven’t posted any raccoon pictures lately! This was was taken from within a cage that I was cleaning. One of our wild mother raccoons was bringing her babies by for a visit.

We released 19 raccoons a few weeks ago. We’re lucky in that we can do what is called a soft release, which means we can release the animals right on the property, leaving their cages open and providing food for a few days until the more cautious are ready to totally make on their own and go find their own territory. A few take off as soon as we open their little escape door and we never see them again, but many hang around for varying lengths of time. This is a raccoon that we released this summer who was lurking around the deck hoping for a food handout.

Speaking of raccoons, if you have three minutes, this is an awesome video by the Humane Society that explains how we receive many of our orphaned babies – in fact it features Dogue Hollow! So if you want a tiny glimpse into where I spend a chunk of every weekend, watch through to the end.

In other nature news, about the only thing I don’t like about Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge (other than the fact that their website looks screwed up right now) is they aren’t open from sunrise to sunset like many parks. Instead they are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the spring and summer and 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the fall and winter. This is frustrating because the majority of wildlife comes out at dusk and goes back in at dawn. As the closing time changes to 5 p.m. next month and the days are getting shorter, this is a good time to go down there after work to take pictures because it’s one of the few times of the year you can really be there near sunset. So that’s what I did last week. Unfortunately I didn’t encounter much wildlife other than these turkeys …

… but the sunset was pretty.

(Yes, I was naughty and stayed past 7!)