It’s hot here in the DC metro area.

It’s been hot for weeks. Personally, I’m loving it, so you’re not going to hear me complain. I’ll take 100 degree temperatures over a blizzard any day. I might feel differently if we didn’t have air conditioning, but frankly, Mark keeps it so cold at home, and our building management keeps it absolutely frigid at work (I actually sometimes use a space heater; how ridiculous is that?), and I’m cold when I leave the pool at the gym, and it’s always freezing in stores, so I actually consider it a relief to go outside. Our pool doesn’t work any more, so I don’t spend nearly as much time outside as I used to, unfortunately. Anyway, although I don’t feel all that affected by the crazy heat (watch our A/C break now that I’ve said this), I’ve been feeling a bit summery in the kitchen. That is, I eat a lot of pickles during the summer so I’ve been making a lot of pickles. Actually, I make and eat a lot of pickles all year round, but I’m trying to make this post topical. Also, I have been making pickles from stuff I get at the farmer’s market, so that’s seasonal. In fact, I have a pint of yellow jalapenos that I think need a vinegar bath. And a huge bunch of radishes. But today I present you two very easy, classic refrigerator pickles that I made a couple of weeks ago and am now ready to eat.

Refrigerator Dill Pickles

1 cucumber (really, 2 or 3 pickling cucumbers would probably be better, but this is what I had)
1 cup vinegar
1 cup water
few sprigs dill
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp pickling spices
pinch red pepper chili flakes
1 small clove garlic, lightly crushed
6 drops stevia or 1 Tbsp sugar

Chop the cucumber(s) into spears and lightly smash the garlic with the side of a knife. I also sliced the majority of the seeds off the cukes.

Put the rest of the ingredients except the dill into a large jar, cover, and shake to combine.

Put the cucumber spears, garlic, and dill into the jar. Top off with water if necessary to cover the cucumbers.

Refrigerate for at least a week (10 days is better).

Eat.

Spicy Pickled Green Beans

1 lb green beans, trimmed
1 jalapeno
few springs dill (optional)
1 1/2 cup water
1 1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp red chili flakes
1 small clove garlic, lightly crushed

Trim the green beans. Lightly crush the garlic with the side of a knife. For extra spicy green beans, make a cut in the jalapeno. Add all ingredients to a large jar, topping off with water if necessary to cover the beans.

Refrigerate for at least two weeks (three is better).

Eat. (Don’t forget to eat the jalapeno too!)

In kitten news, my mother sent the kittens and me a care package. I got a ton of tea and the kittens got exactly what they needed: more toys. They took to the Turbo Scratcher right away. Torticia literally throws herself into playing; she’s so rambunctious and adorable:

Gomez is a bit more laid back, although he does leap around and act just as nutty. I think his philosophy is to sit back and let Torticia tire out their prey and so he can go in for an easy kill later. I don’t have the heart to tell him Turbo Scratchers don’t tire out.

For those of you who didn’t see it on Twitter, here’s my hilarious joke – it’s the Large Cat Toy Collider. We’re hoping to find the Gomez boson.

I don’t know why this surprised me so much, because they sleep together a good 80% of the time, usually in one of their two cat trees, but I was taken aback for a second to find both kittens on the back of my chair. I guess it is because both Tigger and Brachtune liked to sleep there but there is no way in hell they’d ever both be there at the same time. This picture somehow hides the fact that Gomez is now a full 25% larger than Torticia. He’s an enormous giant.

When I was in high school, I worked in a local grocery store. It was the cool place to work; everyone in my high school worked there. When I applied, I assumed that like all of the other female teenage employees, I’d become a cashier. I was a little disappointed when they told me I’d be working in the bakery, because I thought I wouldn’t see all my friends, all the females of whom were cashiers. It didn’t take long for me to realize that working in the bakery was the very best assignment possible. The bakers, who all started at some obscene hour like 4 a.m., went home about half an hour after my weekday shifts began, which meant I was working with no supervision all night long. Shortly after I started, one of my best friends applied to work in the bakery with me and was also hired, which meant we spent every night goofing off, decorating donuts with cake icing and putting them out to sell, decorating cakes with our own ridiculous drawings, and chasing around and being chased by the produce guys, whose back room was connected to ours. I guess we somehow managed to do our work as well because I got along very well with the bakers, with whom I did have to work on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

This is me behind the bakery counter, selling my donut wares.

This is my friend, Dawn, looking at me through a cart of “trayed-up” frozen rolls. We had to do “tray-up”, which involved lining frozen rolls and breads on trays, putting them on a cart, and pushing them into the freezer, every night. I used to leave the bakers stories about the Tray-up God on the backs of the tray-up checklists. I’m very curious now to know what the heck I wrote, but one of the bakers told me at the time she saved them all. I’m sure they were ridiculous.

Anyway, if you’d have told me when I worked in the grocery store bakery that I’d one day consider being a baker, I’d have called you crazy. I couldn’t fathom the hours, for one thing (really, I still can’t), and it just didn’t seem very me, as much as I did like my after-school job. Culinary arts weren’t something I aspired to or had any interest in. Then when I went vegan and started teaching myself how to cook, I tried baking bread a few times and never had any success, so I gave up for several years, although I did get a bread machine. Eventually I got tired of the bread machine – it made funny shaped loaves and the paddle kept coming off and getting baked into the bread – and I tried my hand at baking by hand again. This time I for some reason had success, and after baking several breads from recipes off the internet, I got The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic by saying it changed my life, but in a way it did, because I always thought I just didn’t have a knack for bread, but after buying that book, I did have a knack for it. Or, more likely, Peter Reinhart is just really good at teaching bread baking, even through a book. And his breads taste amazing. If you have any interest in bread baking, I can’t recommend his books, particularly this one, enough. After my huge successes baking nearly every bread in that book and his others, I fell in love with it so much I have considered working in a bakery – baking this time, not washing dishes and arranging frozen rolls on trays.

We’re not doing much for the Fourth of July this year – just hanging out with the kittens and taking care of some stuff around the house – but I usually try to at least loosely follow tradition for holiday meals, so I decided I’d make homemade veggie burgers today and I decided to make Peter Reinhart’s kaiser rolls for them. These kaiser rolls taste amazing. They are definitely the best kaiser rolls I’ve ever had. I never fail to think of the frozen kaiser rolls I used to tray up in high school and always think how much better these are.

I’m normally hesitant to publish Peter’s recipes because I really do want you to buy his books, but I found the following online in several places (including Google Books). The only change I’ve made is I substituted En-R-G egg replacer for the egg he calls for, though I suspect you could just leave it out entirely. Also, I doubled the recipe in the book, which made six rolls, because if six rolls are good, a dozen is even better. They freeze well. The measurements below are Peter’s original for 6 4-ounce rolls, but you’ll see my doubled measurements in the pictures.

Finally, I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Weigh your ingredients. If you are at ALL interested in baking, buy a scale and use it. I’ve included the volume measurements because I’m a nice gal, but it is very hard to consistently measure ingredients – especially flour – by volume.

Peter Reinhart’s Kaiser Rolls
From The Bread Baker’s Apprentice

Pate Fermentee
5 oz (1 1/8 cups) all-purpose flour*
5 oz (1 1/8 cups) bread flour*
.19 oz (3/4 tsp) salt
.055 oz (1/2 tsp) instant yeast
6-7 oz (3/4 cup to 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp) water

* Peter says you can use all all-purpose or all bread flour if that’s all you have, but that this combination seems to yield the best results.

Rolls
8 oz (1 1/2 cups) pate fermentee (half of the above recipe)
10 oz (2 1/4 cups) bread flour
.2 oz (3/4 tsp + a pinch) salt
.17 oz (1 tsp) diastatic barley malt powder OR .33 oz (1 1/2 tsp) barley malt syrup
.11 oz (1 tsp) instant yeast
1 Tbsp En-R-G egg replacer + 4 Tbsp water, whisked
.75 ounce (1 1/2 Tbsp) vegetable oil
5 – 6 oz (10 Tbsp to 3/4 cup) water
poppy and/or sesame seeds, for topping

The night before baking, make the pate fermentee. I didn’t take pictures of this, but all you need to do is add all the dry ingredients to the bowl of your electric mixer (or a regular bowl if mixing by hand), then add 6 ounces of the water and mix on low speed or stir for about a minute until everything comes together in a coarse ball. Add the extra water if there is loose flour left over. Then mix on medium speed for 4 minutes, or knead by hand for 4 to 6 minutes, until the dough is, in Peter’s words, “soft and pliable, tacky but not sticky”. Lightly oil a bowl, roll the dough in the oil, then cover the bowl with a plate (in lieu of the plastic wrap Peter calls for). Leave the bowl out at room temperature for an hour or until the dough has risen to 1 1/2 times its original size, then refrigerate overnight or up to three days.

When you are ready to bake, remove the pate fermentee from the refrigerator.

Remove it from the bowl and use a bench cutter (or a serrated knife) to cut it into about 10 small pieces.

Cover with a tea towel and let come to room temperature for an hour. When the hour is up, add the flour, salt, malt powder, and yeast to your mixing bowl. Add the pate fermentee pieces, egg replacer, oil, and 5 ounces of water.

Mix on low speed for a minute (or stir by hand) until it comes together in a ball. Add the additional ounce of water if there is still loose flour.

Mix on medium speed for 6 minutes (10 minutes by hand), adding flour if needed, to “make a dough that is soft and supple, tacky but not sticky”. I like to finish it off by hand for a few seconds for a smooth dough.

It should pass the windowpane test.

Lightly oil a large bowl – I use this dough rising bucket from King Arthur Flour – roll the dough around in the oil, and cover with a large plate or lid.

Let sit at room temperature for two hours. If the dough doubles before two hours are up (mine had doubled at one hour) …

… remove it from the bowl, knead very lightly to degas (you don’t want to “punch down” dough as old recipes tell you to do; it’s too harsh), and return it to the bowl.

When the two hours are up or the dough has doubled again …

… remove the dough and divide it into six 4-ounce (or nine 2 2/3-ounce for small rolls) pieces. Because you may have had to add flour or water when kneading the dough, I like to weigh it before dividing, then divide the weight of the dough by the number of rolls I want. I’m always very excited when the dough weighs exactly what it should. Mine weighs exactly 48 ounces! (Remember, I doubled the recipe.)

Here I am weighing the individual rolls.

I was surprised, however, when the last roll weighed in at only 3.75 ounces, even after I’d weighed the first eleven twice each and they were all exactly 4 ounces. What this tells me is my scale is not as precise as I’d like it to be. I just took about .05 ounces off the five rolls that looked the biggest and added it to the runt.

Form the pieces into individual rolls. To do this, pinch the dough together on one side …

… creating and smoothing a seam, whilst creating surface tension on the opposite side.

Turn over and smooth into a round with your hands, seam side down.

When all the rolls have been created …

… cover with a tea towel and let rest for 10 minutes. Prepare a baking sheet by lining with parchment or a Silpat and misting lightly with oil.

Shape the rolls into kaiser rolls by using a kaiser roll cutter or by using this shaping method. (It was very hard for me to get pictures of this, so I suggest you read the book for a much better explanation.) Roll each roll into a rope about 8″ long.

Tie the rope into a simple knot.

Tuck the ends of the knot into the middle of the roll. (I didn’t get a good picture of this.) Tray the rolls, cut or prettier side down.

Cover with a couple of layers of tea towels and let rise for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit at this point. Turn the rolls over. If you want to seed your rolls, mist lightly with water and sprinkle with poppy and/or sesame seeds.

Cover again, and let rise for another 30 to 45 minutes, or until doubled from their original size.

Peter recommends spraying the walls of the oven with water just after putting the rolls in, but I used a different technique of his and instead poured 1 cup of hot water into a cast iron pan I keep on the bottom shelf of my oven. If you go the water-in-pan method of creating steam, make sure the pan was preheated with the oven. Put the rolls into the oven and steam using one of those methods, then bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, rotate to the pan and reduce the heat to 400 degrees, then bake another 15 to 30 minutes for large rolls (less for small rolls), or until golden brown.

Transfer to a cooling rack and cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Here are the veggie burgers I made; I baked them in the toaster oven.

A closeup of one of the rolls …

… and the crumb.

And here’s my burger …

… and my whole meal.

As you can see in the last picture, I also made Bianca’s deviled eggs, and they are amazing! They really do taste like the real thing and were at least as easy to make.

I probably can’t get away without posting any kitten pictures, but since this has been such a long, photo-heavy post, I’m going to restrain myself to just one.

Okay, two, because Gomez started to yawn and it was funny.

I hope all of my fellow Americans had a happy and safe Fourth of July.

A trip to Penzeys on Sunday resulted in an abundance of mustard seeds, so it seemed appropriate to make mustard. This was based on a recipe by Emeril, even though I’ve made it before and wasn’t wowed. I thought maybe the sherry would make a difference, but frankly I don’t really taste the sherry over the mustard and I probably wasted what was actually pretty nice sherry. So I think I’ll continue to play around with this recipe – it’s good and it’s mustardy but it’s not amazing – but in the interest of recording what I did this time for myself (and as an excuse to post more kitten pictures), I’ll post it (and also accept suggestions from any veteran mustard makers).

Sherry Mustard

3 Tbsp yellow mustard seeds
3 Tbsp brown mustard seeds
1 shallot, minced
2 Tbsp cream sherry
4 Tbsp (1/4 cup) sherry vinegar
6 Tbsp water
1/2 tsp salt
pinch tarragon
1 tsp brown sugar

Place all ingredients in a jar, close, and shake.

Refrigerate for at least 24 hours.

Put in a blender, coffee/spice grinder, or food processor.

Blend until as smooth or grainy as you like. Add additional water (or other liquid) by the tablespoon if necessary.

I taste-tested it on some Sheese and crackers.

And stored (some of) it in the adorable mustard pot my mom gave me.

I have a couple of mustard pots (courtesy of Mom), but this is the only one that has a built-in spoon in the top. Cute!

Speaking of cute (I think you know where this is going)…

I had the flash on my camera, pointed to bounce off the kitchen ceiling to take pictures of the mustard, when I noticed the kittens being cute in the living room, which was positively flooded with early evening sunlight. So I turned the flash off and tried to get pictures of them, but instead of looking at me, or toys, or chessmen, or each other, they kept staring intently at the ceiling and walls, emitting tiny Tribble noises of excitement. Turns out the sun was reflecting off the flash and sending dots of light dancing all over the walls of the room, driving them mad. Torticia is so intent…

She and Gomez apparently went crazy with the chess set today; chessmen are all over the place.

It’s not too obvious in this smaller version, but in the full-size version of this photo, you can actually see the chessmen reflected in Gomez’s eye.

When going through this set of photos, I almost deleted this one with all the other blurry ones, but then I decided it amuses me, and anyway this is actually what Torticia looks like most of the time as she’s constantly in motion (unless she’s asleep, and when she’s asleep, she’s dead asleep).

These kittens are way too fascinated with this glass coffee table (which actually belongs to Fortinbras). One of them is always trying to play chess from the wrong side of the glass. And here Gomez is trying to get Torticia’s tail…from the wrong side of the glass.

Another farmers market purchase was yellow wax beans. I used some in a soup that also incorporated the rest of my lima beans last night (yes, it was 100 degrees here yesterday and no, I don’t believe in “soup season”), but I decided to showcase the rest in a wax bean-intensive dish, which I based off this recipe on The Crispy Cook.

Yellow Wax Beans with Tomatoes and Shallots

2 cups yellow wax beans, trimmed
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
1 or 2 healthy splashes champagne or white wine vinegar
flaked sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Boil the beans in water to cover for 5 minutes or until just past crisp-tender. Drain and run under cold water. In the same pot, heat a little oil, add the shallot and cook until soft, then add the tomatoes and cook for another minute or two. Add the beans and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Serve warm, at room temperature, or chilled.

We got home a bit late tonight and, having been at a not-overly-vegan-friendly conference all day, I was starving, so this was quickly put together and served with Gardein Crispy Tenders, a cucumber salad I made yesterday, and a few pickled radishes.

Gomez and Torticia are proving to be mighty popular with readers, so I wouldn’t dream of making a post without pictures, but when we got home they were WOUND UP, and it is very hard to take pictures of kittens that are running around like lunatics, especially with a flash that has batteries that need to be recharged (and is therefore taking a while to cycle between flashes), and especially when one is starving and trying to cook dinner at the same time. So these pictures may not be very good, but they do capture the essence of An Evening With Gomez and Torticia.

The day before I brought the kittens home, I spent close to $200 buying them supplies, which included a number of toys. They also inherited toys from Tigger and Brachtune. Then last weekend, my mom and aunt came to visit and singlehandedly more than tripled their toy supply. What I’m trying to say here is these cats are NOT hurting for cat toys. Naturally, their favorite thing in the world is pipe cleaners. This picture amuses me because it looks like the pipe cleaner is a squiggle I rather inartistically added in GIMP (which, I’m afraid, is how I do everything in GIMP), but really Torticia is tossing it into the air. (The pipe cleaner used to be wound up in a nice spiral.)

I love, love, love it when cats carry their toys around in their mouths.

Torticia managed to lose the red pipe cleaner so I gave her a new yellow one, which she again carried around in her mouth because she knows how to make me swoon with her cuteness.

Speaking of losing toys, at the exact same time the red pipe cleaner went missing, Gomez lost HIS toy under the heater. At least he seemed to; he tried to retrieve it for so long I interceded on his behalf and there was absolutely no toy there. No idea what he did with it.

Poor Gomez.

I found him a new toy but he wasn’t sure if it was a fair trade for his pawn.

You can’t tell here but his final decision was whatever Torticia was playing with.

Finally, Torticia surrendered her toy to Gomez and invaded my dinner.

Well, an unexpected but welcome benefit of having kittens is I can go to the Saturday farmer’s market. If that seems like an incongruous statement, let me explain. In the past, I’ve had a tendency to sleep through the farmer’s market on Saturdays. Which has been a bit frustrating this summer because it’s also been hard for me to get to the Wednesday market I went to last year because I’ve been going into work earlier in order to swim every day after work. The kittens, however, don’t share my love of sleeping in on weekends and feel 5 a.m. is an appropriate time to arise. I guess when you’re a kitten every day is exciting as Christmas morning is to a 6-year old. So although I obviously didn’t get up at 5 a.m., I was up early enough yesterday to go to the farmer’s market. And immediately kicked myself for not going prior weeks, because it was awesome.

One thing I bought was a pint of fresh lima beans. Which may also seem incongruous considering I hate lima beans. Or rather, I used to. I hated them as a child, although I was far from a picky eater and ate pretty much everything else. Then last year I made myself Garlicky Chipotle Lima Beans and loved them. So that proved I liked dried limas. But what about fresh? It seemed time to find out.

There is a lot of conflicting information about lima beans on the internet. According to some people, they aren’t lima beans at all but butter beans. And some people say to cook them for 10 to 15 minutes, whereas other insist on a couple of hours – yes, even for fresh. It seems fresh limas aren’t very common to begin with as nearly every recipe calls for dried or frozen. So I decided to cook them simply, as I prefer my side dishes anyway, and let their lima flavor shine through to either wow or disgust me. Fortunately for me, they did the former.

Simple Fresh Lima Beans

1 1/2 cups fresh shelled lima beans
water to cover
1 Tbsp vegan powdered bouillon
salt and pepper to taste (I used smoked Maldon)
drizzle of olive oil

Put the shelled lima beans in a small, heavy-bottomed pot and cover with water.

Bring to a boil and add the bouillon, salt, and pepper.

Boil for 15 to 30 minutes. I tasted them at 15 minutes and they were about done, but the rest of the meal wasn’t, so I let them simmer for another 15 minutes, after which they tasted pretty much the same and didn’t feel much more cooked (somewhat surprisingly).

Drizzle with olive oil and serve.

I also bought a pint of radishes at the market, being on a bit of a radish kick. I wanted to pickle some of them, but also wanted to try something new with some as well. I got the idea to braise them from this Rachel Ray recipe. I read that cooked radishes taste like mild Brussels sprouts (yum!), but I thought they tasted like artichoke hearts. What they did NOT taste like was radishes. Unfortunately, my insistence they tasted nothing like radishes did not convince Mark to eat any. I forced him to eat a tiny bite and he made one of those awful faces he makes when he feels tortured by food. Oh well, more for me. I heated up some frozen corn for his second vegetable.

Braised Radishes

1 cup radishes, trimmed and halved
1 cup vegan stock (vegetable or “chicken”)
2 tsp white wine or champagne vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt (I used smoked Maldon)
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Trim the radishes and cut in half.

Put all of the ingredients in a small saucepan.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes or until fork-tender.

Serve.

Here are both dishes, served with some fried seitan with a mustard sauce:

Meanwhile…

I’m trying to think of a clever or at least remotely interesting intro for this recipe but I’m drawing a blank. It’s pickled radish. It was a quick refrigerator pickle. It is good. Sorry, that’s all I have!

Quick Pickled Radishes

I used “normal” (for this continent) red radishes but you could also chop up a daikon and use that. Adapted from Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure.

1 bunch red radishes, halved or quartered depending on size (or part of a daikon, chopped into bite-sized pieces)
rice vinegar to cover radishes (about a cup)
6 drops stevia (or about 1 1/2 tsp sugar)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black peppercorns
1 bay leaf

Remove the leaves from the radishes then halve or quarter them depending on their size. Place in a small jar.

Add the rest of the ingredients to the jar.

Put the lid on the jar and shake until salt is dissolved.

Refrigerate for 48 hours. Actually, they should be ready after 24 hours according to the recipe I based this off of, but I didn’t try mine for two days, so that’s what I’m vouching for.

Oh, was the focus of that photo supposed to be the radishes? I’m sorry.

Is this any better?

Out of the brine …

… and into my mouth! I loved these. I love radishes to begin with but even non-lovers of radishes may like these, if they like pickles. The spicy radish flavor is made milder, but the pickling gives them a nice sour taste. They remain crunchy. This is a nice, fresh tasting pickle that went well with a version of spicy tofu teriyaki.

Mark saw them sitting out last night and claimed they looked like pickled pig’s feet. He refused to try them. Sissy.

While Torticia was helping me with my radish photo shoot, the day I feared would come sooner or later arrived.

Gomez discovered Mark’s chess set …

… and decided it was an interactive cat toy.

Goodbye, pawn.

Screw pickled pig’s feet, this is far more fascinating!

Um, have I mentioned that I love these kittens?

Today marks the first time in a couple of months I’ve spent the entire day in the kitchen. I baked bread, made three different kinds of soda, pickled some radishes, made ice cream, and made a big dinner. Although I wanted to make a nice Sunday meal, I had no idea what to make. I finally decided I wanted to use up some dried beans, so I did an “extended quick soak” on some pink beans and just sort of went from there. I had also bought a “rainbow slaw” (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and carrots) mix I wanted to incorporate into the meal. Here’s what I did:

Mayo-less Fun Slaw

Mark hates mayonnaise, made with eggs or otherwise, so I wanted to make a mayo-free slaw he would enjoy. This was quick and easy.

6 oz. “rainbow slaw” (a pre-packaged mix of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and carrots)
3 Tbsp chopped scallions
2 Tbsp champagne or white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 tsp salt

Place the vinegar, oil, mustard and salt into a small mixing bowl.

Whisk well.

Toss with the slaw and scallions.

Refrigerate for at least an hour.

Smoky Pink Beans

2 1/4 cup dried pink beans
2 small onions, peeled
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and roughly chopped
vegan broth (I used “chicken”-flavored) to cover beans by 2 inches
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 tsp salt (I used smoked Maldon)

Soak the beans overnight in cold water, or quick soak by boiling for two minutes, then removing from heat and soaking for an hour. Drain.

Place all ingredients but the salt in a pressure cooker if you have one. Pressure cook for 12 minutes then quick release if using a pressure cooker, otherwise, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until beans are soft. Stir in the salt after the beans are soft.

When my beans were done, I still had a lot of broth, so I brought it to a steady boil and boiled what I could off. I eventually got tired of waiting and wanted the beans to be soupier so I stirred in about 1/4 tsp xantham gum. You don’t need to do that, however. Break up the onions with the back of a spoon before serving.

Fried Potatoes

2 lbs potatoes, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp flaked salt (I used the smoked Maldon again)
1/2 tsp Mexican oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes for about five minutes, then drain. Heat some oil in a cast iron skillet, then add the onions, peppers, salt, oregano, and cayenne and black peppers; saute until onions are soft. Add the potatoes and fry until golden brown. I deglazed the pan with a triple-strength mixture of Vegeta and water for extra flavor.

And here is everything together, served with brown rice.

Mark liked this a lot; he had two huge servings of the beans, which he thoroughly doused in Tabasco. There are plenty of leftovers, which I imagine will only improve with age.

And now it is time for a heartwarming tale. One morning a few weeks ago my manager and I had to go downtown for three back-to-back meetings. As we drove into the city, I warned him that I was going to be very cranky by the time the meetings were over because they were interfering with my normal lunch time and I’m not pleasant to be around if I don’t eat at regular intervals. My manager is a very good guy and when the meetings were over and we were heading back to the office, he wanted to know if I was okay or if I’d like to stop for lunch. I noticed him looking at a hot dog stand as he asked this, though, and I said, “that’s a hot dog stand, what the hell would I get there? You think they’re going to have vegan hot dogs at a hot dog stand?!”, as if he were totally off his rocker. Well, to my immense surprise, on Friday I came across this post on DC Vegan. It seems some hot dog stands in DC DO in fact have vegan hot dogs and not only that, the one we passed is one of them (it was the third on that list). Frankly, I’m flabbergasted. But that also made my month. This year has been a lot of things so far, good and bad, but I’ll tell you what: it is a GREAT year to be vegan. I FEEL SO NORMAL! I’ve been vegan for 12 years and when I started I never dreamt I’d be able to order a hot dog from a hot dog stand. That’s just…amazing.

You know what else is amazing?

This guy!

And this girl!

Doesn’t Gomez look a little evil in this picture?

But he’s not evil! He’s a sweet, wonderful, lovable, adorable, amazing little boy!

It’s really amazing that we are actually watching their personalities form. Sure, they already had very distinct personalities when we got them a week ago, but they are changing in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. Gomez is FAR less shy than he was when he got here (I’m not even sure the word shy even remotely describes him any longer), and they are both even more affectionate than they were a week ago. They constantly switch between which one is dominant. They are learning from one another. Every day – every hour, even – I learn something new about them. It’s so weird, yet exciting, to have cats I don’t know better than I know myself (after living with Tigger and Brachtune each for 16 years, I could anticipate their every move). Torticia is sitting on my lap as I type this, purring like a machine and licking my wrist: my plan to make lap cats out of them is going well!

Mark and I are both wildly in love with these kittens. I don’t know how a person could not be, honestly.

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

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

Meet Gomez …

… and Torticia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suddenly, she approaches:

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

And finally attacks!

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

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

His name is Nakata. I love him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I miss my handsome orange boy.

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