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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raccoons love, love, love water.

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

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

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

This morning in the drizzle, I encountered this doe …

… and this young buck.

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

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

Summertime Black Beans and Quinoa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This also made a very nice, refreshing lunch today.

And now, a chipmunk.

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

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

… and Gomez!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homemade Deodorant

1 part coconut oil
1 part baking soda
1 part cornstarch

Mix together. Apply to underarms. The end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So yeah, here’s my beauty routine:

No wonder I’m so glamorous.

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

Look how tiny compared to the baby bottle!!

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

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

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

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

Taken earlier this year in Occoquan, VA

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

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

Turkey vulture, taken earlier this year

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

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

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

At the end of my last post I said my next one would be about Nice, but I’ve decided to do the animal post next. I’m indecisive like that. There are a lot of pictures, so there will be little gabbing!

A sparrow outside the Paris catacombs.

While walking along the Seine, I spied these three adorable ducklings curling up to take a nap.

Nearby, their mother had her back to them and watched the river. It’s interesting she was more concerned about trouble coming from the water than from pedestrians; she must be pretty trustful of humans. Or maybe she was just admiring the big mud puddle called the Seine. She had no problem with me getting within six feet of her babies.

I realized I take a LOT of pictures of ducks. My first word was “duck” and I probably still sound like a 2-year-old when I shriek, “oooooh, duck!” whenever I see one, grabbing for my camera. This one was at the Rodin Museum. He was lined up with two other ducks and a group of Americans spent 10 minutes laughing about “getting their ducks in a row”, which they found to be a jolly good joke. Despite their repeated urging, I failed to get a picture of the ducks in a row.

One thing we noticed is there aren’t many bugs – at least flying insects – in France. I saw nary a screened window and you can bet I kept those gorgeous floor-to-ceiling windows open at all times, yet there were no bugs in either of our hotel rooms. This is reason alone to move to France. I currently sport about 30 mosquito bites on my legs following about an hour of yardwork. Anyway, there ARE, of course, bees in France, pollinating all the beautiful flowers we saw. (Spring is a lovely time to travel!)

One of our favorite parts of the trip had nothing to do with where we were. The first time we approached Notre Dame, I was snapping pictures wildly when I noticed a figure ahead of us covered in pigeons. It was peculiar; I couldn’t imagine why this person had pigeons all over herself. I even wondered briefly if she needed help as at one point we saw her waving her arm as if to shoo them away. As we approached and passed her, though, we saw she had dried rice that she was feeding them, and Mark and I simultaneously said, “Ohhhh!”. She overheard us and motioned for us to come over. She didn’t utter a single word for the entire 10 minutes or so we spent with her, but she gestured for me to come forward and Mark to take my camera, then she plopped some rice on my head. And soon I was covered in pigeons myself! WHICH WAS AWESOME.

Then it was Mark’s turn and he loved it even more than I did.

This made a huge impression on Mark.

So then Mark decided he wanted to become a crazy pigeon person himself and bought a bag of rice. (By the way, eating dried rice does NOT cause birds to explode; I know someone is going to ask me.) After that we had to stop in every park and other pigeon-gathering area. (After that we also had a lot of rice all over our hotel room floors.)

So we saw a lot of this:

And this:

This little guy was hoping for his share of rice as well.

Now, this is not a good picture by any means, but I’m including it for the variety because it’s the only picture of a European lizard I have. It’s also another example of me stealing lighting from another photographer. We were making the long trek back to our hotel in Nice after an exhausting (but amazing) day; we were fatigued, poor Brad had just hiked a million rocky miles with a bad knee, and we’d just killed a few bottles of wine at dinner, so we were slowly but surely trudging back to the hotel to crash before heading back to Amsterdam the next day, when I saw another photographer examining a stone wall very closely. So I walked up next to him to examine it as well and found this lizard. The lighting in this picture came from his flash….I barely know how to turn my flash on. Also, I must be the most annoying person to go on vacation and/or hikes with. I stop every six seconds to take a picture; I’m sure it is very irritating, although I constantly tell people not to stop for me as I will catch up. I don’t think anyone bothered stopping this time!

This is another picture taken walking back to the hotel after dinner in Nice, on a different night. This gull suddenly swooped down and started fussing a bit at this window. I could hear him impatiently thinking, “KNOCK KNOCK! Anyone home?”

Back in Amsterdam, Brad and April set themselves up for another “walk” that would more properly be termed a “wait for Renae”. Although they live just a block from a metro and tram station in the suburb of Amstelveen and are close enough to bike into the city proper, they also live just a couple of blocks from a cow and sheep pasture, with a creek to boot. The best of both worlds! Because I see a heron every time I’m out, of course that’s the first thing I saw, and although this looks a lot like a great blue heron (which is what we have at home), Brad informed me it is actually a grey heron. They also have purple herons, but I didn’t see one. April said she sometimes sees grey herons sitting on cars. That must be a strange sight.

The promised cows.

Just before “charging” April’s toy poodle…

Sheep!

Why is it I always feel like sheep want to steal my soul? I don’t trust these two.

Brad and April are so lucky. Gorgeous apartment, a stone’s throw from Amsterdam, and THIS is their backyard:

Oooooh, ducks!!!!

Baby ducks!

I really wanted to steal this one.

So many ducks.

This isn’t the greatest picture, but I think it’s funny because I think they are gossiping. Silly gossiping ducks. One headless duck.

I learned that this is a coot.

Look how so-ugly-it’s-cute their babies are!

Awww!

White swan.

Black swan!

The next day, Brad rustled up four bikes and I tried to remember how to ride a bike with pedal brakes (and promptly fell off the bike onto the handlebar, crushed beneath the weight of my backpack full of camera equipment, and bruised a rib – which I’m still dealing with…Brad thought it better after that incident if he carried my camera stuff while we biked), and we biked to Amstelpark, which boasts among other attractions a petting zoo. I’m opposed to zoos for ethical reasons, but I have to say, I was completely baffled by the petting zoo in the otherwise beautiful Amstelpark. It seemed to consist of three animals: a white peafowl, a wooly mammoth (or some other very wooly beast) standing in a bucket, and an albino kangaroo. Does that strike anyone else as completely bizarre? I think the albino kangaroo is praying, “please send me home to Australia!” in this picture.

A male peacock was perched on a nearby roof, looking into the petting zoo area, feeling “cocky”, no doubt, that he is able to fly and thus escape the fenced-in area containing the wooly beast in a bucket and the incongruous albino kangaroo.

I admit I stood and stared at the spectacle of the albino kangaroo for quite a while, dumbfounded, but finally the others were able to draw me away. We wandered along a path with Brad in the lead, when he suddenly stopped and whispered for me – I was, as usual, bringing up the rear – to quietly come up to where he was standing because there was a peahen sunbathing around the corner. She was magnificent, I tell you!

Then we arrived at a pond where I was completely overwhelmed by waterfowl, including the black swan above. I think I felt something akin to what an infant feels when they get sensory overload. I don’t even know what this is. (Do you? Let me know!)

And…

Not all the animals I encountered were wildlife. This picture was taken in Nice and is titled “I miss Gomez”.

After Amstelpark we biked into the city. The restaurant we wanted to eat in (Ethiopian, yay!!!) wasn’t open yet so we stopped in a bar for a snack and some beers. I was super happy because the bar was playing nothing but the Rolling Stones and there was a very sleepy cat next to our table!

I missed Torticia too!

My favorite animal of the trip, though, was our faithful companion Carrie, who went everywhere with us in Nice and Amsterdam. Here she’s smoking a Cuban. (Mark insisted on buying a Cuban cigar “because he could” and ended up smoking it for about 30 seconds before deciding it was disgusting. Mark doesn’t like cigars. He just doesn’t like the government telling him he can’t BUY cigars. Carrie didn’t think much more of the Cuban than Mark did.)

Whew! Okay that is ENOUGH pictures for one post. There won’t be nearly as many next time, and there will even be FOOD. I even took pictures of dinner tonight – which involves purple cauliflower and garlic scapes – so I’m not lying about that.

WARNING! Portions of this post may be NSFW if you work for a particularly prudish osprey.

Yesterday I went to Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. In some ways it seems like the national park time forgot. It’s unmanned – the $2 entrance fee is based on the honor system – and the entrance road and parking lot don’t appear to have been paved in a couple of decades. There’s a vehicular trail that Mark and I have driven around before, which left us bored and confused because we didn’t see any of the abundant wildlife we were promised. I suspect, possibly because we were in a Jeep, we were expecting a safari. We didn’t stay that time, but I later had a hunch I’d have much better luck on the pedestrian trails, because wildlife would probably like a park no one knows about. I therefore returned on my own yesterday. Without my faithful tripod boy, I decided to forgo the tripod and try my luck hand-holding the rather-heavy telephoto lens.

The moment I set foot on the trail, a bunny crossed my path. I took this as a good omen, and it turned out to be so.

If bald eagles are Mason Neck’s claim to fame, osprey are apparently the neighboring Occoquan Bay’s. Within minutes of my lucky rabbit I was rewarded with:

Things quickly got a little…racy.

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for raptors. I think they are fascinating. When I came home and saw how well some of the pictures of the ospreys turned out, I was excited and sent a link to the whole set to Smark, my mother, father, and Fortinbras. Every one of them except my father said the osprey photos were nice but they loved the tree swallow. (My father said they were all great.) Don’t get me wrong, the tree swallow is adorable, but he was by far the easiest picture I took all day! He stood still staring at me for five minutes as I was a foot away – all I had to do was get far enough away to focus on him with my completely unnecessarily huge lens.

I’m enraptured by raptors, but I like little birds too. For example this Eastern bluebird.

Here she is again. I like this photo but I can sort of envision it as a Hallmark “get well soon” card or something.

I do love the gentle nature and sweet innocence of songbirds, but look at the power of this thing!

How can you not be in awe of a creature that is clearly looking at you thinking, “I wish you were a fish so I could tear your flesh to shreds and eat you alive.”?!

In other news, we are leaving for our trip to Amsterdam, Paris, and Nice in a few short days and I am busy preparing. I probably won’t have time to post again this week, although I will try to make a post from abroad. Here’s a quick raccoon update to tide you over:

We got five more tiny babies in. We always give them a stuffed animal in their cage to snuggle with, a kind of surrogate mom. Here they are after their first feeding of the day, snuggling under the purple bunny.

Aaand, we pawned another baby off on Emmie! What a generous mother she is! Here is (most of) her brood:

Smark was catching up on I Eat Food yesterday and said, “it’s turning into a raccoon blog.” Oops. Hey, that’s my thing, right? There are about a gazillion vegan food blogs, but how many of them have baby raccoons, I ask you? I have food posts planned, though. There was even a recipe in Life: a User’s Manual (which I finally finished), and you know how I love making recipes I find in fiction. It’s French of course, so it requires some heavy veganizing. When I return, the farmers market will be open (can….not….wait) and I’ll be so inspired….either by the fantastic food I enjoyed in France, or the starvation I endured there!

And now, I must get back to frantic preparations…beginning with some non-frantic sleep.

Shopping for dinner ingredients last night, I was attracted to the wide selection of fresh herbs at Whole Foods and grabbed on impulse some mint leaves, cilantro, and Thai basil. Inspired by Fortinbras’ favorite dish at Lotus Vegan, I came up with these Spicy Mint Noodles.

Spicy Mint Noodles

Once again, Gomez is in this picture.

12 oz wide rice noodles
8 oz firm tofu, chopped
8 oz spinach
2 cups bean sprouts
several sprigs each: mint, cilantro, and Thai basil, torn or roughly chopped
1 cup veggie broth or vegan “chicken” broth
sriracha or garlic-chili sauce, to taste (I used several tablespoons of homemade sriracha)
3 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp tamarind paste
1 Tbsp grated galangal or ginger
2 Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp cold water

Soak the rice noodles in cold water, then bring to a boil, then turn the heat off. When the noodles are almost completely soft, drain and set aside.

Chop the tofu. Whisk together the broth, sriracha or garlic-chili sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, tamarind, and galangal or ginger. Heat some oil in a wok over medium-high heat, then add the tofu and stir fry until golden. Add the spinach and let it cook down a bit, then add the rice noodles and stir fry (gently) for a minute or two. Pour in the liquid mixture and stir. When it boils, stir the cornstarch mixture. Toss in the bean sprouts and all the herbs and let it cook for a minute or so until the sauce thickens up.

I know I promised raccoons, but I think I’m going to give them their very own post, either tomorrow night or Friday – I promise!

In the meantime, here’s my buddy the cardinal. We have several cardinals but as I rarely see more than one male at a time, I tend to think of them all as one male and one female, whereas there are probably several couples. Cardinals mate for life, which I find sweet. My cardinals are always happy to have their picture taken…if I’m inside. They hide in high trees if I’m outside with the camera and swoop down to eat the second I go inside. I made Mark take the screen out of the window closest to their feeder so I could take better pictures. Conveniently for the cats, this window is right in front of one of their cat trees so they have a better view of Bird TV all day long.

One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning is go into the sunroom and look for signs of who was in the yard the night before (we have raccoons, skunks, opossums, and foxes) and to see who is in the yard at the moment. This morning I sleepily rubbed my eyes and saw:

Usually the blue jay senses me moving to get my camera and flits away. I guess he was more hungry than cautious this morning because he stuck around for quite a while and let me admire him.

The next pictures are for my mom. As I was watching the blue jay, out of the corner of my eye I sensed movement across the yard, then I saw a tiny animal which I at first thought was a baby squirrel. It suddenly raced towards the house and noticing it was more brown than gray, I realized it was the chipmunk. I was surprised to look down and suddenly see him at the base of the bird feeder; I’ve never seen him linger around there. Did you know that chipmunks can apparently make a standing jump of heights 12 times their size? I didn’t until this morning when I watched this chipmunk jump from the ground to the top of a 2-foot high planter. He missed the first time and slid down the side, poor guy…but it was hilarious. He made it the second time, then leaped over to the bird seed.

He’s becoming a more regular visitor. He was on the back patio the other morning when it was raining:

I have no idea why my yard is wildlife central – we live in the suburbs – but I love it!

Well, the general consensus seems to be people are not annoyed by my copious amounts of wildlife pictures even though this is a food blog and as a vegan, wildlife is certainly NOT food. I’ve already managed to amass more pictures than you may have bargained for, so here we go!

Not first chronologically but perhaps first in terms of “most exciting”, we saw an eagle!!! Yesterday we went to Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge, where they happened to be having an Eagle Festival, which was cool because we got in free (they usually charge admission but apparently not on festival days), although I was a bit concerned that the ruckus would keep eagles away rather than attracting them even if the festivities were in their honor. It turns out, however, that Mark and I never even managed to find the festival, although we weren’t looking for it and we did actually hear it while eating our lunch in the picnic area. Anyway, Mason Neck is home to some bald eagles, but I’ve never managed to see one in the wild. Yesterday we were near the beaver dam, where I was shooting (with my camera, of course!) a blue heron (apparently blue herons love me because I always encounter them) when Mark saw a bald eagle soar across the sky and land on the top of a far tree. Fortunately, I was trying out my brand new (to me) 400mm telephoto lens, which was conveniently already mounted on the tripod and I was able to take this picture:

He was so far away I had to crop the photo quite a bit despite the awesomeness that is my new lens, but this was a wonderful event for me. I think Mark, though he hasn’t uttered a word about the money I’ve spent on photography equipment lately, may have considered the new lens an unnecessary extravagance…until I was able to take that picture of the eagle, who looked a bit like a small dark blob without looking through the lens.

That was definitely one of the highlights of a really great day, but let’s back up and look at some other things we saw at Mason Neck. There’s the heron I already mentioned, who is eating a fish in this picture:

Cover your eyes and scroll down a bit if you don’t like snakes, because here is a black moccasin:

Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge is on the Occoquan Bay. A long, winding bridge takes you from one of the trails to the beach, over some wetlands. Like all of the B&W shots in this post, this one is infrared:

The wetlands:

The same picture as above, in “false color”, which is a technique you can use when you have an IR filter that lets in some visible light. I don’t ordinarily like false color, but I thought this particular shot looked okay. I actually found out by accident my IR camera will record false color images without me having to do any processing at all.

Here is the beach:

After a picnic lunch at Mason Neck, we went to the adorable little town of historic Occoquan. Every time we pass the town on 123 heading to 95 South, we comment on how cute that town is and how we want to see it. So yesterday we did. It was just as cute as we’d thought it was. You pass through a little park to get to the boat dock.

On the dock, we watched the frenzied mating dance of a little bird:

Unfortunately, the female wasn’t too impressed.

We also watched a vulture go dumpster diving.

Our thoroughly delightful day was drawing to a close when we stopped by a cute little cafe for both a wine AND a beer tasting. The beers were really good and we stayed for a pint. In this picture I want to show you some of the weird stuff infrared photography does. My glass is about two-thirds full in this picture – you can tell by the foam – and the glass and the beer are both totally normal, and looked totally normal in real life. Notice, though, you can see through the bottom half of the beer. I honestly don’t know why that is – if someone out there does, I’d love to know. I know infrared light can travel through some things visible light can not, but I don’t know why HALF the beer is visible and the other half is not. (Less of a surprise is the fact you can see through the sunglasses on the top of my head. You can’t normally, of course, but at least it’s consistent in the photo!)

That beer isn’t the first instance of IR pictures befuddling me. Last weekend in Burke Lake, I took this picture of a black heart painted on a tree, mostly because I like Joan Jett & the Black Hearts, because Joan Jett does not give a damn about her bad reputation.

But look at the infrared version! So strange!

Finally, Mark and I by the footbridge over the bay:

We had a wonderful day yesterday! I was going to give you a raccoon update tonight as well, but this has been so long, I’m going to save raccoons for tomorrow.

For Lisa G/K and others interested in an update on what I’m reading: currently, Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec. I think it’s great – the deeper you get into it, the more intricate and impressive it is – but it’s taking me forever to finish it, both because it’s long and because, unusually, I am reading so many other books at the same time. As I’m preparing for a coming-too-fast trip to Amsterdam and France, I’ve been reading French and Dutch books exclusively, including, The Discovery of Heaven, The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection, A Very Long Engagement, Chocolat (yes, I realize what the last two have in common), and its sequel The Girl with No Shadow, and a few others. I’m also reading Julien Parme in the original French, as well as a few French readers in dual languages and other “educational” books. I’m so excited about going to France that I can’t wait for our trip, but at the same time I wish it were further away so I had more time to prepare and get better at the language. I’m enjoying re-learning French so much I’m planning to continue my studies after our return.

Today would have been our friend Jeremy’s 34th birthday. Last year when I emailed his mother on his birthday, she asked me to think of Jeremy when I eat rice and beans. We eat a lot of rice and beans in this household, so I think of him often, and I figured there wasn’t a better meal to make tonight in his memory.

Please excuse my even-more-lax-than-usual “recipe”. This was really casual. First I put some rice in the rice cooker and got that started. Then I took 8 oz of Rio Zape beans from Rancho Gordo and cooked them, unsoaked, until not-quite-done in the pressure cooker. How long did that take? Ugh, don’t ask so many questions – I don’t know! Until I sensed they were almost done, I’m afraid. I was outside doing other things while they were cooking and wasn’t paying attention to the time. Let’s say maybe 20 minutes?

When they were not-quite-done, I did a quick release and drained the beans. Then, in the pressure cooker to save a pot to wash, I heated some oil and then added a chopped onion. Once that was cooked to translucent, I added a bunch of pressed garlic, and continued cooking until it was all starting to brown. I deglazed with a bit of the red wine from my glass, then added about 1 1/2 cups veggie broth, two bay leaves, a healthy splash of Worcestershire sauce for tang, some liquid smoke, and a bit of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning. Once that was all boiling, I returned the beans to the pot and let it all simmer until the beans were creamy, maybe another 20 minutes?

Serve with LOTS of hot sauce. If you haven’t had Rancho Gordo beans, by the way, you’re cheating yourself. You could use pretty much any bean in this “recipe”, and you’re definitely never going to go wrong with Rancho Gordo beans, which don’t even need seasoning. The Rio Zapes have the creaminess of pintos, but they taste almost like chocolate. And I don’t usually taste chocolate in things people like to say things like wine has “hints” of. They are definitely a flavorful bean.

I cooked for Jeremy every night when we lived together. I think he would have liked this. He may not even have pretended to grumble about the lack of meat. We miss you, Jeremy. “WHAT?” WE MISS YOU.

In other news, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about blogging over the last week or so. I’m starting to get much more serious about photography (although I’ve been “into” photography since high school), but I’m not going to lie to you: although I hope to improve my food pictures somewhat, I’m never going to be a great food photographer. Mostly because I cook in order to eat, and when I need to eat, I NEED to eat. I get bad headaches if I get hungry, and 99% of the time what you are looking at on this blog is my dinner – which I probably need to ingest right away. I’ve been finding myself thinking of blog posts I want to make, usually because I have pictures, but they aren’t about food. That’s not to say I don’t want to make food posts; I do. Very much. Even if they are more laid-back recipes like tonight’s. But I was wondering this week if I should set up a second blog for non-food-related pictures and rambling, so I don’t need to worry about straying too far off-topic here. I even looked to see if by remote chance itakepictures.com or .net was available, which would match ieatfood.net AND sound like an early Depeche Mode song (it’s not – available, that is; it IS an early Depeche Mode song).

The thing is, though, I didn’t really FEEL like setting up another blog. I could, easily. We have a server; I run other blogs for people. Adding another for myself wouldn’t be a big deal at all. But I just don’t know that I feel like dividing myself up that way. I think most of the readers of this blog would probably be at least somewhat interested in the other posts I want to make, because most vegans are interested in animals (and we’re mostly talking wildlife photos here), and anyway, I’m pretty sure most of my readers aren’t even vegan (which actually makes me very happy), and non-vegans who are open-minded enough to read a vegan blog are probably open-minded enough to not care if said blog sometimes features posts that aren’t about vegan food. Right?

What made up my mind, though, was when I thought about myself as a blog reader. I subscribe to a lot of blogs, and usually read most of them, but sometimes someone will make a post I’m not interested in, and you know what I do? Scroll right past it without even thinking. What I don’t do is think, “oh god, I can’t BELIEVE this person has gone off-topic, what a heretic!”. I don’t unsubscribe. I don’t think anything at all about it. It’s kind of crazy to think people are going to be upset if I sometimes unapologetically make a post to show off some pictures that have nothing to do with food. I don’t mind at all when food bloggers make an occasional post about themselves outside their cooking, in fact, I usually like getting a glimpse of them from a different perspective. So on that note…LOOK AT MY PICTURES THAT ARE NOT OF FOOD.

First up:

I’m not very pleased with this one because I should have used a smaller aperture so that the whole spider was in focus, but it’s a fun start to macro photography. This spider was about the size of my pinky fingernail; about half an inch long.

Like the spider, the following pictures were taken at Burke Lake Park.

I was stoked to come across some blue herons!

As I was heading back to the car, rushing a bit because I had a French lesson, I saw a squirrel way out on a limb over the lake.

I watched him slowly move ever further out, with some trepidation, wondering what in the world he was doing and whether or not squirrels knew how to swim, because I was going to be late meeting my tutor if I had to wade into the lake to rescue him.

Turns out he wanted a TWIG. Why he wasn’t satisfied with any one of the BILLIONS of twigs on the safe, sturdy GROUND, I do not know. (The twig is in his mouth in this picture, if you can’t tell. He’s feeling damn proud here.)

Suddenly, in one fell swoop, he was upside down and scrambling for dear life! Note, though, the twig is STILL in his mouth. This squirrel had his priorities.

Slooowly he righted himself.

Finally he inched himself to a thicker branch and had himself a good gnaw on his precious twig.

When he was done, he turned to stare at me like I was the crazy one.

I have some cute raccoon stories and pics, but I spent too much time on that ridiculous squirrel so I’ll save them for the next update! For now, here is the top of a pile of sleeping baby raccoons…

Ready for another “really more a suggestion than a recipe” post? Well, ready or not, here comes such a post. I worked from home today, to allow some contractors access to not really do anything in our house. Earlier in the week I had thought vaguely of taking advantage of being at home to bake some bread today, perhaps to be served with some soup for dinner, but I’m really busy at work these days and when I looked at the clock with a mind towards starting dinner, it was 6 p.m. Ordinarily I’d tell you that any loaf of bread I’d bake will take a minimum of 18 hours from start to finish, because I always use some sort of pre-ferment or starter. But even if I were willing to lower my standards and bake a “same day” dough, starting at 6 p.m. and having bread in time for dinner would be an impossibility…right? I mean, you’re looking at at least 3 hours rising and proofing time, close to an hour baking time, and an hour to cool. (Cooling is non-negotiable, sorry. Slicing hot bread ruins it.)

Not only THAT but my scale is broken. How can I bake without a scale??? (And WHY is my scale broken?!)

There was an answer, though. I thought back to an earlier time, when I didn’t have a scale. I didn’t have my faithful mixer Hieronymus. I didn’t even have the two Kitchen Aid mixers I destroyed before Hieronymus graced me with his wonderful presence. I didn’t have a Thermapen, hand-crafted proofing baskets, multiple peels, a sourdough starter named Sally, or a Fibrament baking stone. What I had was a bread machine I hated and an incredible desire to turn myself into a bread baker, despite producing several paperweights the first few times I tried.

I was a much newer vegan, and still learning how to cook, back then and I spent a lot of time on Vegweb looking for recipes. I found a promising recipe for homemade bread: Outrageously Easy BIG Bread. Back then I think there were only about 10 comments (it looks like the old comments from before Vegweb updated their site a few years ago were removed; this was much longer ago than 2006), but they were all positive, so I gave it a go. And I was successful! I quickly began building a reputation among my friends for always having fresh homemade bread…people would regularly show up at 2 or 3 a.m. demanding some!

I’m a bread snob now. I’ve been an official tester for Peter Reinhart. People come to me for advice…and starter. I ordinarily wouldn’t deign to put more than a tablespoon of instant yeast(!) into a single batch of bread…ordinarily I’d use no instant yeast because I’m a sourdough gal all the way. But tonight, sans scale, I broke out my unused measuring cups and spoons, googled “outrageous bread”, and followed the familiar recipe…well, except for throwing all the ingredients into Hieronymus and having him knead them for a little bit for me. But if you don’t have a mixer and you want to try baking bread and you’re frustrated that EVERY recipe assumes you have a Kitchen Aid, except the famous no-knead recipe, but that takes a million hours…I’ve made the recipe as instructed, without a mixer, many times, and look where I am today!

So today’s post isn’t a recipe, at least not one of mine. It’s an encouragement to those scared of bread baking to give it a shot. And it’s a reminder to those who aren’t scared of bread baking but are snobbish like myself that sometimes you CAN make bread in two hours. Some photos to prove it:

After kneading for about two minutes. (But again, kneading is technically unnecessary.)

I let it rise for 45 minutes, then did a quick “stretch and fold”, which is a technique I’m sure I’ve documented somewhere on this site, but instead of searching for it, here is Peter Reinhart demonstrating it.

Partially because I was super busy with work and partially because I wasn’t really thinking, I returned the dough to the rising container after the stretch and fold, even though the recipe says to shape it and do the second rise on the baking tray. I was planning to make four small loaves for bread bowls and if I’d been concentrating on the bread instead of work, I’d probably have done a stretch and fold at 20-25 minutes, then let rise for another 25 minutes or so, then shaped into four rounds and let them proof for 45 minutes on the tray. But instead, I let the dough rise for another 45 minutes in the rising bucket, while pre-heating the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and realized when I was ready to bake that I hadn’t shaped them. Here’s the dough, risen quite a bit, but not shaped.

No matter. I decided I’d just hope for a lot of oven spring and merrily but roughly divided and roughly shaped my loaves.

Then I baked them for the prescribed “exactly” 23 minutes, although I’m here to tell you that REALLY baking time is going to depend on your oven. After years of experience with all kinds of breads I can tell you that 23 minutes is not enough, especially if you use all that dough for a single loaf; even my tiny loaves really should have stayed in at least 10 minutes longer. However, I was too busy to worry too much about it so when they looked fairly golden at 23 minutes, I took them out and later regretted it. There IS such a thing as paying too little attention to your bread.

Now, ESPECIALLY if you are making bread bowls like me, COOL the bread before cutting. I know it’s hard. Mark managed to time his grand entrance home from work about two minutes after I’d removed them from the oven – I had JUST sat down – and he walked through the door loudly and excitedly exclaiming, “SOMETHING SMELLS AWESOME!! I can tell SOMEONE worked from home!” To which I shouted, “DO NOT TOUCH THEM! NO TOUCHING!” It’s true I worked from home, but as I didn’t start this bread until just after 6 p.m., I could easily have made it any other day, even if I had gone into the office! Well, if I had gone into the office and left at a reasonable time instead of some stupid time like 8 p.m.

I made Creamless Asparagus Soup for the bread bowls.

Okay, so not only is this post “more a suggestion than a recipe”, it is also more a shameless excuse to post completely non-food-related photos than a recipe. First of all, we have a cardinal family that lives in our yard and I’m always delighted to see how loyal Mr and Mrs Cardinal are to each other. They’re always together. I love it! And today I caught them kissing! It’s not a super-sharp picture because it was taken through a screened window, but the cute factor made it a keeper nonetheless.

I was alerted to the presence of these little lovebirds by Torticia, who suddenly took an “OMG!” stance while looking out the window:

And guess what else it’s time for?!? BABY RACCOONS, that’s what! These sweet little babies – a family of four boys – are about 10 days old in this picture, taken on Saturday, a few days after their mother failed to claim them after they were evicted from a chimney. I’m very sorry they won’t be raised by their mother, but very grateful that the homeowner opted for a cruelty-free eviction and spared the lives of these tykes, who would have been killed by most “pest” control services. If you find animals in your chimney or home, PLEASE search for a humane eviction alternative. They almost always result in the babies being reunited with their mother, and they never result in baseless wildlife murder.

Outside at the sanctuary, we found a friendly wild and pregnant raccoon having some breakfast. Because she wasn’t afraid of us, she is definitely a rehabbed raccoon from a prior season, returning to give birth in the safety of the sanctuary grounds.

She was hamming it up for the camera! Raccoons have huge personalities. I’m so glad I chose to work with them!