Last night’s dinner was rather generically Asian-themed. I had a random bag of broccoli slaw I needed to use up and the best-sounding recipe I found when googling was something very similar to what I present below, so from there I decided to take the whole meal in an Asian direction. I prepped everything in advance, and when mixing up the slaw dressing, tofu marinade, and green salad dressing, since they were all so similar, I didn’t even bother washing the mixing bowl between each of them, keeping prep quick and easy. Here are all three things I made:

Asian Broccoli Slaw

1 12 oz package broccoli slaw (or grate your own broccoli; cabbage would be good too)
3 Tbsp sesame oil (not toasted)
3 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
2 Tbsp peanut butter
1 Tbsp grated ginger
2 tsp minced or pressed garlic
2 tsp brown sugar

In a small bowl, whisk together everything but the slaw. In a larger bowl, toss the dressing with the slaw and refrigerate for at least an hour for flavors to blend.

Asian Marinated Tofu

1 lb extra firm tofu
1 cup vegan broth
1/4 low sodium soy sauce
2 Tbsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp minced or pressed garlic
1 Tbsp grated ginger
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Whisk together everything but the tofu and set aside. Slice the tofu into 1/2″ slabs and arrange in a 8″x8″ or 9″x9″ baking pan. Pour the marinade over the tofu and let marinate for at least half an hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. When ready to bake the tofu, pour off some of the marinade so that the tofu is about half-submerged. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until golden.

I served this over some mung bean noodles, which I soaked in boiling water for 15 minutes (don’t keep it on the heat, just boil and set aside), then tossed with leftover tofu marinade. I also lightly stir-fried some julienned orange bell pepper in some sesame + toasted sesame oil, then tossed with toasted sesame seeds and served both the peppers and the tofu over the noodles.

Asian-flavored Salad Dressing

4 Tbsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 Tbsp grated ginger
1 tsp minced or pressed garlic
1 tsp peanut butter
1 tsp brown sugar

Whisk or shake together all ingredients. Serve over a green salad.

Not that you can really see the dressing, but here’s the salad:

And here are all three components together:

In wildlife news, I have to take at least six hours of continuing education hours to renew my rehabbers permit every year. Last year I was so busy and there were so few classes held nearby at times I could go that I was cramming in readings at the last minute. This year I’ve scored all six hours within nine days of the permit year beginning. This I did by attending an all-day bat workshop yesterday. I was very excited about this because I’ve always had a particular love for bats and I intend to accept bats one day when I’m rehabbing out of my own home. It was a great, very informative class, although also kind of depressing because some of the species in our area (the Mid-Atlantic) are federally endangered, and many more are state-listed as threatened or endangered. Even the most optimistic bat enthusiasts are very worried that the species suffering from White Nose Syndrome will be extinct in just a few years. This is very bad. Although so far the fungus affects only those bats that hibernate, migratory bats are being killed by wind turbines, so there’s unprecedented death rates for all kinds of bats. Bats eat their weight in insects every night. You don’t want to live in a world without bats. I can even relate the wildlife portion of this post to food for once, because one of the consequences of extinct bats is going to be crop failures, greatly increased food prices, and/or higher instances of pesticide use.

I was able to take some pictures of the live bats. (Because I’m rabies vaccinated, I was also able to handle the live (and dead) bats, which even more exciting!) Unfortunately I think I’m going to have to retire the crappy “all-purpose” lens I tend to leave on my camera as a default because the pictures S.U.C.K. and I’m super disappointed by them. True, the lighting in the room was dim and terrible (though probably a lot more bat-friendly than camera-friendly), but I still think I could have gotten decent pictures with a better lens, including some I left at home. Live and learn, I guess. So I apologize for the horrible, horrible, horrible pictures, which don’t do any justice to these awesome little creatures, but bats are too cool for me not to share and I feel compelled to raise awareness of White Nose Syndrome. As of right now, it’s confined to the eastern and more northern parts of Northern America, but it WILL soon migrate to the south and west, and it’s devastating.

This is a Tricolor Bat, squawking because she’s dropped her mealworm. To reward them for good behavior while they were out being handled by those of us with rabies shots and admired by everyone else, these education bats were fed treats of mealworms. You can see this bat’s mealworm in front of her. (Education animals are non-releasable animals that rehabbers and wildlife organizations have received special permission to keep (as opposed to euthanizing) as teaching tools.)

This is a Big Brown Bat. Big Browns are a migratory species not affected by White Nose, unlike the similar-looking but smaller cave-dwelling Little Brown Bat. One kind of good thing is new Big Brown colonies have been found in areas where Little Brown colonies have been wiped out by White Nose, so nature is replacing one species for another. Note that despite the name – and he is in fact bigger than a Little Brown Bat – like all North American bats, he’s really quite small. I was actually surprised by how tiny all of our bats are. They’re not at all like the beautiful, wonderful flying foxes I saw in Australia.

Side view of a Big Brown:

Silver-haired Bat. I think he looks like a teeny-tiny, legless bull.

I have been on a huge yogurt kick for a while now. I make 2 1/2 quarts at a time, using my dehydrator to incubate it, which provides me breakfasts for more than a week plus extra for other applications. It’s been a while since I did that original yogurt post; perhaps I should do an updated one with my current tips and tricks. Anyway, since I’m pretty much always swimming in yogurt these days, I’m always thinking of things to do with it other than scarfing it down with Grape Nuts, berries, and coconut nectar every morning.

Wide-mouth canning jars are perfect for making yogurt.

I recently bought some commercial yogurt to refresh my cultures and was appalled by how nasty it was: runny, sweet, and so yukky that I gave all but the two tablespoons I needed to the raccoons (who were not nearly as picky as me about it). I should have scooped some out into a bowl for this picture so you can see how thick it is, but trust me, it’s thick.

Anyway, in addition to a ton of delicious yogurt, I had a head of cauliflower and an outside temperature of EIGHT DEGREES last night. Man, I HATE winter. I feel brittle. My feet actually hurt all day, indoors, because they are so cold they feel like they are going to break into pieces. I’ve been talking to the wonderful Smucky and cursing the cold while he at the very same time complains of the heat in Sydney. It’s a stupid 8 degrees here and it’s 114 there! I’d rather have his problem, BUT at least I love soup, so here’s what I made for dinner last night.

Tangy Cauliflower Soup

1 small onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped (if I don’t have this, I’ll often just sprinkle some celery seed in)
1 medium potato, chopped
1 head cauliflower, chopped (doesn’t need to be pretty)
veggie broth to just cover veggies – about 4-5 cups
2 bay leaves
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 cup plain nondairy yogurt
juice of 1/2 lemon

Heat some oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat, then add the onions, carrot, and celery and cook until the onions are beginning to brown. Add the cauliflower and potato, then cover them with the veggie broth and add the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer until the cauliflower is completely soft, about half an hour. Remove from the heat, remove bay leaves, and stir in the yogurt, then puree until silky using an immersion blender, or by cooling and then blending in batches in a regular blender. Season with salt and pepper, then add the lemon juice, more or less to suit your tastes.

Serve with crusty bread, crackers, or croutons. That’s a whole wheat miche, which is a sourdough bread and was nearly as tangy as the soup!

I don’t have much wildlife news to report. I don’t see too much of the raccoons this time of year because they’re older and therefore nocturnal, although we do have two young enough to greet me most mornings. No recent pictures of our juvies, but I did notice a wild (probably earlier-released) adult peeping at me from a nest box the other morning:

My bird feeding station is proving very popular this winter. My favorite bird right now is the red-bellied woodpecker. These pictures are a couple months old but he’s still around. (I say “he” but we really have several.)

I haven’t seen the mangy fox for a while, which is a bad sign. I’ve stopped putting chicken out for him, but I still have interlopers showing up looking for handouts. The interesting thing is they mostly seem to get along. This video shows an opossum, raccoon, and fox in my yard at the same time.

And here is some footage of my favorite skunk, Super H, who is named after my favorite Korean grocery store and the “H” on his back.

I see that the last time I posted was on December 5th, and it is now January 5th. Wow. That was an unintentional break that I didn’t even really realize I was taking. It wasn’t from lack of time (though I have none) or lack of cooking, but I guess I’ve just been getting back to basics lately and haven’t made anything I felt compelled to share because I’ve already done a post on it or it’s boring. Or things have been too experimental and I haven’t replicated them for quality assurance. Anyway, I’m back today, so yay!

I’ve been treadmilling lately. I’ve noticed a trend amongst my friends and peers – and even husband – in running. Friends who always claimed to hate running are now training for marathons. I think everyone I know is training for a marathon. Not me, man, I’m sticking to the hatred of running I’ve nurtured since grade school. When I was in 10th grade, our JV field hockey team was in danger of being disbanded due to lack of interest. A friend of mine was on the team and devastated by this and somehow cajoled me into auditioning. (I think perhaps “audition” is not the right verb for applying to participate in a sport, but I’m not up on such sporty lingo.) Despite their desperation for players, the coach wasn’t allowed to waive the base requirements for making the team, one of which was the ability to run a mile in 8 minutes. So basically I had to run a mile in 8 minutes or the team wouldn’t exist and my friend would cry and it’d be all my fault. I think my prior best time for mile “running” was in the 13-minute range. But I bucked up and ran that mile, clocking in at 7:58. The team was saved! Yes, I actually played an entire season of junior varsity field hockey, and because we had the bare minimum of players for a team, I played full-time in every game of the season. We even won a game, too! I must confess that I have absolutely no idea what the rules of field hockey are or what my “position” may have been. A couple of years ago, however, I realized it was very likely the powers that be strategically paused that stopwatch for a minute or five….

That was the pinnacle of my athletic career and quite possibly the last time I ever ran a distance further than a block. I just detest it. Walking I’m cool with – I can walk all day, but running makes me completely miserable. Unfortunately, I think the effects of my indifference to exercise are starting to show, especially since I stopped going to the gym to swim because the gym pissed me off. Plus Mark had been complaining that the company he works for now doesn’t provide a free, onsite gym like his previous employer. So last September I cashed in the ton of rewards points I’d collected on my credit card and bought a really nice treadmill with the cash. Since then I’ve been trying to fit treadmilling into my daily routine. I’ve been using treadmill as a verb because although I don’t run, I DO walk at a jogging pace and I also set the incline up as high as it will go, so I feel like I’m doing something more than just walking, in fact, I’m almost climbing half the time.

Anyway, I’ve been fitting a lot of my dinner preparations around my treadmilling. I’ll often pop home from work and begin prepping dinner, sometimes putting something in the oven to bake or roast, or rice in the cooker to steam, or tofu in a pan to marinate, or whatever, then I’ll go treadmill, then return to the kitchen to finish cooking. Last night’s meal fit this paradigm perfectly because it came together super quickly after my workout, which is good because by then I’m starving.

Banchan are the small side dishes that are served with Korean meals. Kimchi takes a few days to make, but many of the pickles and salads that make up banchan require little to no resting or fermenting time. They are therefore perfect for tossing together an hour or so before you plan to eat. Last night I made a bean sprout salad and a spicy cucumber salad, in addition to miso soup.

For the miso soup, to make the dashi, or stock, I’ll bring some water to a boil in my electric kettle, then pour it into a small, heavy pot over a piece of kombu, then I’ll put the lid on the pot and let it sit for a while. You can use the dashi after as little as 10 minutes, but it works perfectly if you plan some other task, like working out, before eating the soup.

Miso Soup
3 cups water, boiling for a faster dashi or room temperature if you have an hour or more
1 piece (about 4″) kombu
splashes of rice vinegar, mirin, and/or sake (optional)
3-4 Tbsp miso (your favorite kind; I usually use brown/yellow)
extras: my favorites are traditional – wakame, tofu cubes, sliced scallion

Put the water and kombu in a small pot and let sit for as long as you have (an hour in cold water is sufficient; 10 minutes or so is fine in boiling water). Remove the kombu. Bring the resulting dashi to a near-simmer, adding the optional splashes of rice vinegar, mirin, and/or sake. I just use these for additional flavor since I don’t use bonito, which is fish, in my dashi. Remove a few tablespoons of dashi from the pot and put it in a small bowl. Add the miso to it and stir until smooth, then add to the pot. (It’s easier to blend the miso in this way than trying to stir into a larger quantity of liquid.) Once the miso is in the pot, don’t let the soup come to a boil. Add any extra proteins or veggies you want and let them heat gently. Miso soup is a great starter to just about any meal and also a good, light breakfast.

Korean Bean Sprout Salad
3 cups bean sprouts
1 Tbsp sesame oil
2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar or 1 drop stevia
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp toasted sesame seeds
1/8 tsp Korean red pepper powder
1 scallion, sliced thinly

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil and lightly salt it. Add the bean sprouts. Cook for two minutes then drain and run under cold water until sprouts are completely cool. Whisk together the remaining ingredients, adjusting them to your tastes (the quantities above are approximate). Toss the sprouts with the liquid. Let flavors meld in the refrigerator for at least half an hour before serving.

Spicy Korean Cucumber Salad
1 cucumber, thinly sliced (mandolin preferable)
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
1 tsp sugar or 2 drops stevia
1/2 tsp salt
Korean red pepper powder to taste (I used maybe 1/4 or 1/2 tsp…it’s not quite as hot as “regular” red pepper flakes and not nearly as hot as cayenne)
1 scallion, thinly sliced

Mix together everything but the cucumbers, then toss with the sliced cucumbers. Refrigerate for at least half an hour to allow flavors to meld and cucumbers to relax.

Korean-Style Tofu in a Spicy Fermented Paste

1 lb tofu, cut into cubes
1/2 small onion, chopped
1 small head broccoli, cut into florets and steamed lightly
4-6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1/3 cup spicy “mixed” fermented soybean paste (see photo below) OR 3 Tbsp doenjang (fermented soybean paste) + 3 Tbsp gochujang (fermented chili and soybean paste)
1 tsp sugar or 2 drops stevia
rice, for serving (I used sushi rice)

Not a great picture – I’m experience photo editing software issues over here and couldn’t clean it up – but this is the paste I bought at Super H; it’s essentially a combination of doenjang and gochujang, which are standard fermented pastes used in Korean foods. I bought it without really knowing what it was at the time just because it seemed like something that would lend itself to quick meals, although I already had both doenjang and gochujang at home.

Prepare the tofu by chopping it and the broccoli by cutting into florets and steaming for 2 minutes or so. Put the minced or pressed garlic in a small bowl and add the rice vinegar. Let it sit for a minute or two to mellow, then mix in the paste or pastes and sugar or stevia. If necessary, thin with some water (or broccoli steaming water). Heat a wok and add some oil, then stir fry the onions, then add the tofu. Cook until lightly browned.

Add the paste mixture.

Add the broccoli. Let it all cook for a minute or two, until the broccoli is heated and the paste has cooked slightly to take the raw edge off the garlic. Top with toasted sesame seeds and sliced scallion.

To prep this ahead, I got the rice going in the rice cooker, steamed the broccoli, chopped the tofu, and mixed the paste. It took 5 minutes, tops, to have it ready once I was finished exercising.

Here it is served with the banchan.

Between prepping dinner and exercising, I did a load of laundry. When I took it to the drying rack to hang it up, I got some help. I don’t think this looks very comfortable, but here is Gomez “assisting”.

So my work with the mangy fox in my yard has not gone well, I’m sorry to report, though I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of money and time on him. As you may recall, I got some medicine for him and started putting chicken out for him, trying to establish a feeding pattern so I could dose some of the chicken with reasonable expectations that he would be the one to consume it. This has proved much more difficult than I’d hoped. This fox is VERY unpredictable, showing up sporadically at all times of day and night. He did eat the chicken once or twice, then his behavior became even more sporadic. Raccoons ate the chicken most nights, and crows ate it every day. Then I didn’t see him for three whole weeks and finally gave up hope. I assumed he’d died or moved on and I was trying to come to terms with my failure when the VERY FIRST day I didn’t put chicken out for him, he reappeared that afternoon. Then at 5 a.m. Then not at all. UGH! I’m still going to see what I can do for him, but realistically I’m going to have to adjust my hopes of saving him. It’s SO frustrating to see him right outside my window when I have not one but TWO different ways of curing him (in addition to the ivermectin we use in the States, the awesome people at the National Fox Welfare Society in the UK sent me some homeopathic medicine), in the house for him if only he’d COOPERATE. I was relieved to see he’s not looking much worse but he’s not looking better and it’s getting really cold now, which is bad when you are missing a lot of your fur.

That depressing update aside, I do have some entertaining videos from the outdoor cam that I set up to track the fox. I switched to video mode because I couldn’t always tell what was going on in the still photos.

This is just the other night, when the sick fox made his reappearance. He looks strange to me, in addition to the mange, but it’s hard to diagnose that strangeness because of the infrared flash and resulting b&w video.

Compare him to one of my healthy foxes:

I have dozens to hundreds of videos to comb through every day, 75% of which are raccoons and the rest foxes and smaller animals, so that I’m shocked every time I find an animal taking up the entire frame (even though the camera I’m using is actually intended for hunters to track their prey, which I assume is mostly deer)! I at least have a small victory in this doe. In this video you can see her holding her rear hoof up. In other videos, she refused to walk on it. But in a video I captured two nights ago, she’s putting her full weight on it! I had nothing to do with it other than providing her a source of easy food while she recovered, but I’m glad SOMEONE has healed during this trying time for me.

I have a bunch of other videos but I think I’ll save them for future posts, so I’ll close with raccoon party:

Do you remember boredom? I can recall a time, so long ago, usually mid-summer-vacation, whining to my mother, “I’m boooooooooored. There’s nothing to dooooo.” (This was probably followed up with, “Take me to the liiiiiibrary.”) I think the last time I was bored was when I was ten. Sometimes I miss being bored. I hardly even get time to read any more. Most of my reading lately is done on the treadmill, although my brother recently caught me reading a book while brushing my teeth and found that hilarious for some reason. (Is that not normal?)

Anyway, I am TOO BUSY. Ironically, though I haven’t posted in a while, I have been cooking a lot, and even doing some experimenting, which should be perfect for post ideas, except most of my experimentation has been so experimental that I don’t remember what I did once the food is done (a lot of it has been fermented, so there are usually several days or more between putting it together and the final product). I need to remedy this because I’ve actually made some pretty good stuff that I’ll never be able to recreate. Shame on me.

One thing that takes a lot of waiting time (but about zilch active time), but is so simple I can’t possibly forget what I’ve done, is making vinegar. I love vinegar and am becoming a bit of an aficionado. Types of vinegar I keep constantly in stock are: apple cider, rice, malt, tarragon, sherry, Chinese black, balsamic, and of course distilled white. But perhaps my favorite is red wine vinegar, which I often use in salad dressings and various other dishes. We’ve converted almost exclusively to boxed wine these days so I no longer have leftover bottles of wine as I did when I started my crock of vinegar (at the time, Mark wasn’t yet a wine drinker so I had to drink the bottles by myself), but I’ll still sometimes pour myself an overly ambitious second glass of wine that I can’t finish before going to bed, and my reluctance to waste it (or gulp it down without savoring it) was part of the impetus to start making my own vinegar. The other part was just the dearth of high quality wine vinegars in the shops.

I don’t really have a recipe for the vinegar. All you need are wine and a “mother”. A vinegar mother is a strange-looking, slimy substance comprised of cellulose and beneficial bacteria that converts the alcohol in the wine to acetic acid. Some commercial vinegars (frequently apple cider but sometimes wine) contain some of the mother, which you can save and use to make your own vinegar. (You would want to make the same type of vinegar as what you found the mother in, however, so if you want to make red wine vinegar, you’d look for a red wine vinegar that had some mother.) You can also order a mother online, which is what I did. (Unfortunately, I don’t recall from which site.) Or if you know someone who makes vinegar, they can share with you. In fact, part of the reason I’m making this post is to offer my mother to you. (My mother of vinegar, that is…although you can make offers on the mother of Renae. JUST KIDDING, MOM.)

Other than wine and a mother, the only other thing you need is a gallon crock or jar. Because light is damaging to the bacteria, I suggest the crock. I had one with a spigot, which allowed me to have vinegar on draught, but first the spigot got clogged (presumably with mother), and then it leaked, so now I’m using a regular pickling crock, purchased from an antique store and sanitized in the dishwasher. It’s covered with a porous fabric (cheesecloth works great).

To start off, pour a bottle of wine into your crock. Add the mother. Cover with cheesecloth or something similar, securing it with a rubber band. Stow somewhere out of direct sunlight for about 3 months, occasionally tossing in a cup or so of wine. Every few weeks, check the growth of new mothers, removing any large, thick, old mothers and keeping maybe a quarter cup or so of young mother.

This is what my crock looked like today, maybe a month or so since I’ve last checked the mother. I just washed my hands thoroughly, reached in and removed the old mothers. Don’t forget to do this periodically: I once neglected my crock for so long that ALL of the wine had converted to mothers – layer after layer of mother and no vinegar. I had to save the youngest mother and start from scratch. Fermentation occurs faster in warmer months, so check more frequently in the summer.

I usually scoop out all but the youngest mother and put it in a strainer over a measuring cup for a few minutes, which catches the dripping vinegar, which I return to the crock or bottle. This picture gives you a better idea what a mother looks like. These aren’t too old: older ones are thicker pads (usually about 1/4″ thick) the same diameter as the crock.

What to do with the discarded mother? Share it if you can – as I mentioned, I’m willing to send mine (any time I have it available) to anyone the United States (sorry, international friends; it doesn’t seem like a Customs-friendly item). Otherwise, it’s great for your compost pile.

The vinegar is ready when it tastes ready. I know, I’m so precise. This is usually about 3 months. Once you have a crock going, all you have to do is periodically feed it more wine and you’ll have a constant supply of vinegar. When fishing out old mothers, I’ll generally remove a small bottle’s worth of vinegar, in which I’ll also include a little of the mother, and then I use that for cooking and salad dressings.

And that’s my “recipe” for red wine vinegar.

A couple of you asked me to keep you updated on my mangy fox, whom I’m planning to treat. I got the medicine he needs from a local rehabber, but I’m having a bit of a problem building a feeding routine with him. The problem is you need to dose the fox during the day, because if you put food out at night, the chances of the fox eating it are at best unknowable, and probably pretty slim. Around here, if I put out food after dusk, it’ll be scarfed down by raccoons within 5 minutes. The fox doesn’t stand a chance. So I need to establish a daytime feeding pattern with the fox. To do that, I need to put food out during the day and then watch to make sure the mangy fox is the animal that eats it. The problem is that I am almost never here during the day, and since it’s practically winter (lovely 70-degree temps this week notwithstanding), I don’t make it home before dark even on the best of days.

What is a girl to do? Install a surveillance camera, of course. (That’s normal, right?) Now, I didn’t buy the camera JUST for the fox. We have a lot of wildlife in our yard and Mark and I have been talking about getting a camera for a long time. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with knowing who is in our yard at all times, but I can tell you that the wildlife and birds we have here (a surprising amount for our suburban home) bring me a ton of joy. So I should totally be spying on them…that’s my conclusion. And now that I need to monitor this fox, the time just seemed right to take that final step towards crazy animal person and buy a wildlife camera. I had to decide which kind to get; basically I had to decide between a wireless security cam I could monitor over the internet and on my phone, or a “trail cam” that I could leave outside and periodically cull pictures and videos from an SD card. I chose the latter because it just seemed a lot easier. Most wireless security cams aren’t meant to be set up outside and most require an external power source. And I can’t put an infrared camera inside to take pictures through glass for night photography. Unfortunately, the market for the type of camera I chose seems to be hunters and the instruction manual for the camera even assumes I’m planning to murder the animals I’m photographing. So between buying a hunter’s camera and actually purchasing chicken from Whole Foods (to feed the fox, not me! And yes, it was hard.), this week I’ve felt like someone is going to revoke my vegan card. But believe me, after this week I’m only more vegan than ever. (I am going to have to get more used to the whole dead – and living – animal as food thing though; our raccoons don’t usually eat anything too gross, but once I start working with raptors it’s going to be a whole other story…)

Anyway, the camera is all set up and I dealt with the whole chicken thing, and now I wait. This morning I managed to NOT TURN THE CAMERA ON when I left for work, like a big dummy. I guess it doesn’t matter since the chicken I put out was still there when I got home. So I’ll try again tomorrow. Once I see the fox eat the chicken for a couple of days in a row, I’ll inject his next serving with the first of three weekly doses of the medicine. And by then I should see his fur starting to fill out. So I don’t have much real news on the fox front, but I DID get some pictures last night I can show you.

There were really no surprises. THIS is definitely NOT a surprise!

We have tons of raccoons. If you live in North America, you probably do too!
<img src="http://ineluctable.org/ieatfood/red_wine_vinegar/raccooon.JPG".

This is an opossum. We have a lot of those too. Everyone always says they are ugly – it's like no one can mention the word opossum without the word ugly – but I like them anyway. (I'm actually permitted to rehab opossums as well as raccoons, although we didn't take any in this year.)

Skunks make me super happy! They are shyer than the raccoons and opossums, so I don’t see them as often, but when I do I’m thrilled, although I know they are out there every night prowling around. I intend to rehab skunks in the future.

THIS is a fox, but not the right fox. This is my healthy fox. He’s very pretty. I’m always glad to see him, of course, although I don’t want him eventually eating my mangy fox’s medicine. It won’t hurt him (if anything it will kill any worms or parasites he might have), but I want the mangy one to get it.

And guess who showed up at 5:14 a.m.? Mr Mange. COME BACK DURING THE DAY AND EAT THE STUPID CHICKEN, MANGY FOX.

More updates as they happen…and perhaps even recipes that are actually recipes and not “pour a bottle of wine in a crock, add some bacteria, and voila!”.

I don’t really like doing this, but my first recipe tonight is going to call for another recipe from a cookbook, which I’m not going to publish. However, I know a lot of you have Artisan Vegan Cheese (which I am loving), and if you don’t, you can just substitute some other cashew-based, creamy “cheese”. This dish was inspired by a couple of butternut squashes I got before the farmers market closed for the season…and the soft “gruyere” from Artisan Vegan Cheese I had to find a use for.

Butternut Squash Mac & Gruyere

10 oz pasta shaped appropriately for macaroni & cheese
1 small butternut squash
2 Tbsp oil
2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 cup vegan broth
1/2 cup soft gruyere from Artisan Vegan Cheese, or some other creamy cashew-based “cheese”

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook the pasta to al dente, drain, and set aside.

Peel and chop the squash into bite-sized pieces. To peel the squash, chop off a little off both ends, stand it up bulbous side down, and carefully slice in half lengthwise. Remove and reserve the seeds. Use a sharp vegetable peeler to peel the squash. Slice it, then cut into cubes. Toss the pieces with a little olive oil and roast until soft, about half an hour. Remove from oven and set aside. TIP: put the seeds on a small pan, lightly salt them, and roast them as well for about 5-10 minutes, until lightly browned and crunchy. Let cool and eat them up, or reserve for garnishing the mac & gruyere.

Heat the oil in a heavy medium saucepan over medium heat, then whisk in the flour, nutritional yeast, onion and garlic powders, salt, and nutmeg. Cook for a minute or two, then whisk in the broth. Continue whisking as it thickens, then stir in the “gruyere” or other cashew cheese. Stir until well-mixed and thick.

Combine the squash and pasta in a baking dish, then stir in the cheese mixture. Cover and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest for 5-10 minutes.

If desired, sprinkle with the roasted squash seeds. Alternatively, you could top the casserole with bread crumbs before baking. This was creamy and yummy and pairs well with greens and anything that’s smothered in barbecue sauce.

Now, a bonus recipe since I kind of cheated you in that one, although I’ve just stolen this one from David Lebovitz, who got it from Epicurious.

Quick Pickled Carrots

1 lb baby carrots (or regular carrots, peeled and cut into sticks)
1 cup cider vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup sugar
2 garlic cloves, lightly smashed
1 1/2 Tbsp coarse salt
1 1/2 tsp dill seeds
2 bay leaves

Bring a pot of water to boiling and blanch the carrots by cooking them for one minute, then draining and running cold water over them. Place all of the remaining ingredients into a sauce pot and bring them to a boil, then simmer for a couple of minutes. Place the carrots in a quart canning jar and pour the liquid over them. Let them cool to room temperature, then put a lid on them and refrigerate for at least 24 hours before eating. (If you don’t have a canning jar, cool the carrots in the liquid in the pot before transferring to another container.)

It’s hard to make these look very exciting, but they are fun and tasty. I’ll be having them on the side of most of my dinners for a while.

The weather in Northern Virginia was gorgeous this weekend, so today found me at one of my regular haunts, Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I think this is a mockingbird, but I’m a little unsure because his wings seem a little too rounded. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

Eastern bluebird:

Cedar waxwing:

Circumhorizon arc in the clouds:

Time to go home!

Aunt Lynn, see the end of this post.

Last night’s dinner was inspired partly by Artisan Vegan Cheese, because I’d made some yogurt cream, and partly by my current love affair with dill. These two forces combined to form tzatziki, and from there I decided to go Greek. I wouldn’t say this meal was authentically Greek by a long shot – I used sriracha, for god’s sake – but I figured serving it with tzatziki was enough to label it so. I didn’t follow any recipes, just mixed up some ingredients I decided were Greekish. I’m also relying on my terrible memory to remember what I did, but it was pretty tasty, so here we go:

Tsatziki

1 cup vegan yogurt cream, plain yogurt, sour cream, or a combination of these items
1 cucumber, de-seeded and shredded
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
juice of 1 lemon
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 sprig dill, chopped

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Greek-flavored Seitan

1 lb seitan, sliced about 1/4″ thick (I used the basic seitan from Real Food Daily, but you can use your favorite)
1 cup vegan “chicken” stock
juice of 1 1/2 lemons
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp dried oregano
3 springs fresh dill
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1/4 tsp red chili flakes
sriracha or other hot sauce, optional

Whisk together all of the ingredients except the seitan and the optional hot sauce. My seitan was frozen, so to make the “chicken” stock, I used boiling water and bouillon, then whisked everything else together and poured it over the frozen seitan, then I heated in the microwave for a couple of minutes to bring it back to boiling again. After letting it marinate for an hour or so, the seitan was thawed. You can skip all the boiling if your seitan isn’t frozen and just pour the marinade over the seitan. If the seitan isn’t frozen, slice it before marinating for more flavor.

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove seitan from marinade, reserving the marinade. If necessary, slice the seitan. Pan fry the slices in a bit of oil until golden brown on both sides. Place the seitan slices in a single layer in a baking pan and pour some (not enough to submerge them) of the marinade over them. If you’d like, squirt or spread some hot sauce over the seitan. I don’t know that sriracha is used very frequently in Greek cooking, but that’s what I used. My theory with this meal is tzatziki, so cool and refreshing, exists for the sole purpose of providing a contrast to spicy heat, so I wanted some kick to my seitan. Bake for about 45 minutes, adding a bit more marinade if it all disappears.

Greek-flavored Potatoes

1 lb young potatoes, chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt to taste
several springs fresh dill, chopped

Whisk together everything but the potatoes in a small bowl. Boil the potatoes in salted water until cooked to your liking. Drain and toss with the vinaigrette.

I cut up some fresh veggies to dip in the tzatziki, which I also spread on the seitan as I ate it. I don’t know how Greek this really was, but it was very tasty (can you tell I’m really into lemon and dill right now?) and Mark enjoyed it. He asked what I was doing when I was sitting here composing this a few minutes ago, staring at the ceiling blankly, and when I responded, “trying to remember the ingredients I used in last night’s seitan,” he said, “awesome; you used awesome!”

In other news, my heart goes out to everyone affected by Sandy. NYC is one of my favorite cities and I can only imagine how hard it is to be there or in parts of New Jersey right now. I haven’t been to Ocean City, MD in years, having traded it for other beaches after high school and college, but I have many memories and the damage there and other coastal areas makes me sad. (So glad the ponies on Assateague are okay, though!) We were almost entirely unscathed. Our yard is still a bit swampy and there are tree limbs scattered about, but we suffered no real damage and never lost power. I took down all the bird feeders before the winds got bad, although the yard remained full of birds eating seed off the ground well into the hurricane. First thing Tuesday morning, while it was still raining but the winds were calm, I re-hung the feeders, and man, were the birds happy! They were so excited they didn’t fly away while I was out there. In fact, most of them let me get right up next to them and stick a camera in their face.

Mid-afternoon I happened to look out the window while working from home, and was surprised to see a fox. I see them in the yard occasionally, but they are always running away. This one was apparently eating bird seed mere feet from me and stayed long enough for me to grab my camera and snap a few pictures. See how scruffy he looks, though? His tail is hidden, but it was very thin, not full and beautiful like it should be. He has mange. He doesn’t appear to be too bad off – mange is often much worse – but I still need to treat him so he doesn’t get worse. Mange is easily treated with a drug called ivermectin. To treat a wild animal, such as a fox, you monitor the animal’s eating habits and/or create eating habits by leaving food out for him, then once you know when to expect him, you inject some food with the medicine and hope he eats it. So believe it or not, this 15-year-vegan/25-year-vegetarian has to go figure out where the meat department is at Wegmans (I seriously have no idea) and buy some raw chicken to give this fox. UGH! I’ll be having a crisis over that, believe me. But that’s what foxes eat and I want to cure him, so that’s what I’ll be doing.

And finally, I didn’t do a Halloween post, but Happy Halloween and Dia de los Muertos! In fact, I don’t think I usually do a Halloween post, because Halloween happens to be Mark’s and my wedding anniversary (8 years!) so we usually go out to dinner that night (Ethiopian this year, yay!!), but my aunt had requested that I share the following picture with you this Halloween and I forgot to do it that day and she has reminded me of my promise to do so. She came across this Halloween costume, which my grandmother made my grandfather many years ago, while cleaning out my grandmother’s house, and somehow while I was over there one day I ended up in it – I’m not even clear on how or why it happened – but please enjoy me looking thoroughly ridiculous. (To those of you afraid of clowns, I apologize. I hope I’m not too frightening.)

It’s 11 p.m. on Monday night and Hurricane Sandy is whipping around outside. Our lights have briefly blinked a few times but has so far our power held steady. The wind is definitely raging and the rain has been fairly intense for a few hours, but I think Northern Virginia is faring a bit better than NYC and other areas north of us. So far we’re safe, dry, warm, and enjoying our electricity here at I Eat Food.

I mentioned my homemade garlic and onion powders and their awesomeness in a recent post, which earned a couple of interested comments, and since Saturday was the last farmers market of the season, I grabbed a bunch of garlic and onions so I could make up some more of each of the powders and document it for you, although believe me, if you have a dehydrator, it’s dead easy. Basically you simply dry the garlic or onions and grind them up. But if you’d prefer to see some photos and read my commentary, by my guest! (If not, scroll down for pictures of a wonderful hawk!)

I haven’t done this without a dehydrator, although I’m sure it’s just as simple to do it in your oven set at its lowest temperature. It’ll just take less time and you’ll want to check it periodically. Actually, garlic takes a REALLY long time in the dehydrator, so for small amounts, there may be some benefit in doing it in the oven. The onions might be a different story; you’d have to watch them much more closely and make sure they don’t cook.

I started doing this because, well, I’ve been going nuts with the dehydrator since I got it, but really mostly because I LOVE the garlic (a potent German variety) at my farmers market and I was thinking how sad I was going to be when it was no longer available. So I started buying a few more heads than I needed each week and dehydrating them to make garlic powder. Of course, the powder isn’t going to replace fresh garlic; I’m just going to have to resort to grocery store garlic throughout the winter (I just shed a tear), but it’s nice to have the good stuff in some format. And my powders are soooooo much better than that bland, tasteless stuff you can buy in stores. When I’m feeling really lazy – or if, god forbid, I’m snowed in (or hurricaned in!) this winter – I won’t be ashamed to toss in some of these powders instead of small amounts of fresh garlic or onions. But enough introduction, here’s what I did:

I’ll start with the garlic. You can make any amount of this you want. For this batch I used 10 heads of garlic from the farmers market, which resulted in over 2 cups of garlic powder.

This is the worst part of making either powder: peeling the garlic. I saw this tip on The Kitchn a while back so this time I thought I’d try it. I think it might work better for grocery store garlic, but it didn’t hurt to do it. One of the great things about the garlic I get at the market is it’s actually pretty easy to peel; it has a thick skin I can often pop off without even banging it with a knife. Anyway, the first thing I did was smash each head of garlic on my chopping block. They are strong, so I had to bang each one a couple of times, but soon the cloves fell apart. (You can see that for many of these cloves, I could just take the peel off them at this point without a struggle.)

Of those cloves with peels that were a bit more fussy, I put 2 or 3 heads worth into a mason jar and then put a lid on it.

Then I shook the jar vigorously for several seconds …

… then dumped them out. I was able to remove all the peels without using a knife using this method.

Look at the mess of garlic peels I made in my sink!

And here’s my peeled garlic:

Next you want to slice the garlic as thinly as possible. The thinner you slice it, the faster the dehydrating time, and as I mentioned, garlic takes a long time to dehydrate enough to powder. If your garlic has sprouts in the cloves, you can optionally remove them at this time. I removed the sprouts, small versions of which existed in most of the cloves. This took a long time and I’m not sure it was really entirely necessary, but I remove them at any other time, so I went ahead and did it.

De-sprouted:

Slice each clove at least in half lengthwise. Depending on their size, you may want to slice some into thirds or fourths. The thinner you slice them, the less time to dehydrate.

Arrange the sliced cloves on dehydrator trays; don’t allow them to touch. My ten heads took about 2 1/2 large trays.

Pop them in the dehydrator and fire it up to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Next I started on the onions. This is less fiddly. Simply peel and dice as many onions as you want. I used four quite large onions, which resulted in about 1 1/3 cups powder. If you are sensitive to onions when chopping them, as I am, definitely wear goggles.

Arrange the diced onions on dehydrator trays. With onions, you don’t need to worry about the no-touching rule; just spread them out in a single layer. I put about one onion’s worth on each large tray.

Slide those trays into the dehydrator to join the garlic. Dehydrate until the onions are completely dry and very crisp. I usually wait 24 hours, though they are probably ready before that. It’s hard to over-dry them. Remove from the dehydrator and let cool completely on their trays. Don’t skip the cooling step because you don’t want them to sweat on each other if you mix them up while they are still warm. You must keep everything as dry as possible.

Now, you can stop here if you want to keep some dehydrated onions in this diced format. I have a couple jars of these and they are nice to have on hand. You can throw them into super-quick soups, use them in dips or dressings, or even use them as a crunchy topping on casseroles, salads, and other dishes.

If you are making powder, simply grind them in batches (I do about a cup at a time) in a very dry spice (a.k.a. coffee) grinder or blender. Don’t blend too long; just enough to make the powder.

Now, the garlic. You have to be a bit more careful with it than the onions. Remove each tray from the dehydrator and examine each clove to decide if its dry or not.

What I do is take a bowl, pick up each clove individually, and attempt to snap the clove in half. If it resists or bends at ALL, put it back on the tray. If you are unsure, put it back on the tray. If it breaks in two but feels at all soft or mushy, or doesn’t break with a satisfying *snap*, put it back on the tray. Only accept cloves that are brittle. Garlic takes a really long time and it must be bone dry before you attempt to grind it. Usually the first time I go to collect it, about half of it is completely dry. When I’m in a dehydrating frenzy, I’ll just leave the remaining cloves in the dehydrator as I load it up with other items. You can’t over-dry it, so err on the side of caution. It’s been 30 hours and I still have half of the cloves I put in last night in there. The good news is they are dry enough that if we do lose power, there’s no rush to finish them. In the summer, I’d sometimes let the “almost-dones” sit in the dehydrator while it was off until I’d had a chance to slice up some other vegetables or fruits.

Again, spread the cloves out and let them cool completely before grinding them. When they are cool, grind them in the spice grinder or blender until powdered. This is about half of the 10 heads I started with and is about 1 1/4 cups of powder.

Transfer both powders to clean jars. They both, especially the onion, have a slight tendency to clump, although I’ve found it less pronounced than some brands of store-bought powders. Any lumps I do see very easily stir right out. Stick a silicone packet in the jar to prevent lumping. I’m using silicone packets I found in a tub of miso, but any will do. These smell amazing when you open the jar – like actual onions and garlic! Not dust, like store-bought powders. I’ve made a ton of each and I’m worried about going through it before spring brings me more farmers market garlic!

Last week I had to transport a red-shouldered hawk that had fallen or flown into a half-drained swimming pool (where he perhaps saw or imagined he saw some prey) and was unable to get out. This is because hawks can’t swim and once they end up submerged in water, they can’t get back out. Fortunately for this guy, the owner of the pool called Animal Control, who collected him from the pool. Then I was summoned to take him to the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia. Now, when I got the call about this I was very excited. I love all the little birds and squirrels and bunnies I usually drive around, but a HAWK?! Now THAT’s exciting! Plus I’m a huge fan of the Raptor Conservancy so I was thrilled to drive out there with my new hawk buddy. Kent Knowles is a really good educator and was happy to let me sit by as he gave “my” hawk a once-over to check for injuries (fortunately, he was just wet), and he showed me some of the other birds. And now I need to decide if I have the time to volunteer some time with them. I really want to because RAPTORS! I LOVE them. But I’m SO busy as it is I think I might be crazy. This full-time job of mine is a real hindrance…

Anyway, here is my red-shouldered hawk friend. Isn’t he beautiful? He’s lucky his shenanigans didn’t do more damage, but he was prescribed a few days to dry out, then he was to be put in a flight cage where he’ll have to prove he can a) fly and b) catch his own dinner. As soon as he proves himself, he’ll be released near where he was found, and hopefully he’ll have learned his lesson about swimming pools.

Checking his wings for damage (none was found):

Okay, finally, this has NOTHING to do with food or even wildlife, but IT’S THE MOST HILARIOUS VIDEO EVER so I just have to share it. I hardly ever watch Youtube videos but this is completely awesome. (A young) Glenn Danzig shares his book collection. Mark and I can’t stop quoting it, and Mark’s been hopping around the house parodying it non-stop (“Welcome to my stuffed animal collection,” etc.) Welcome to my book collection!

And now to try to fall asleep to the wrathful sounds of Sandy…. I hope those of you in the Mid-Atlantic with me are faring okay, especially those in areas harder hit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I later helped some baby bunnies.

And saw a two-headed raccoon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black barley. Never seen it before!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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