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Hey guys, check it out – ancient cookbook envelopes! You know the kind of cookbook that has the index with the illustrated alfalfa leaf and the recipes for brown rice pudding with apricot and kale and buckwheat egg-mash? Yeah, the kind that wouldn’t suffer much from being folded into something beautiful and useful, I think.
I’ve been really into making envelopes the past day or two, it’s pretty easy – just take an envelope you like, unfold it flat, trace the outline onto another paper and glue it up the same way – brilliant! I’m going to use these for my Etsy orders from now on.
Hmm, yes, speaking of crafts, I may have mentioned an art show I had a table at last weekend? It went pretty well for a first time at active capitalism – I made 5$ (after table cost), got some buttons, met great people, and probably most importantly of all – got A LOT of insider information on how to make laser cutters, business cards, japanese sculpture-cards, postcards, felted fabric, etc. That and………… a custom cookie portrait on a vegan cookie no less! Yumm-me! haha. The woman next to me was also friends with Jae Steele and we went on about Get it Ripe and co-ops for a while and I got to try her awesome spelted blueberry muffins and banana-chocolate breads!
Yum, corn salad! I have no idea what made this one so special, but it’s what I brought for lunch with me to the sale. I remember it was very acidic, with fresh dill, mayonnaise, perfect tomatoes, a bit of sugar (shhh don’t tell), cayenne, cumin maybe?… whatever, it was creamy and really good when the ubiquitous wasps weren’t attracted by the sweet smell of it.
I also brought these, and I can’t even tell you how much of a wasp-attractor they were, but omg were they worth it in every way. Donuts! Like I hadn’t tasted in years! The chocolate-y ones I was especially pining for, and Lolo’s donuts (via Vegetarian Times) are just the texture and richness I remember. So fudgey, so so so very good. The apple ones had about 3 different dimensions of apple in them, too, spicy and perfect for fall!
It was good to have a box like this to pass around to fellow crafters when the rain started coming down.
smile and the cashew cucumber dip will smile with you ;)
In other news, my mom and brother came up for a few days last week, and we had a really lovely time, during which it became obvious to me where I learned to sup and savour food like a real hedonist. My family gets it!
I’d had some cabbage rolls stuffed with cinnamon-tomato-lemon-millet left over from a previous lunch, so I decided to expand on that Greek-style and with my bro’s help it was really fast and easy. We ended up with the tomato & zucchini tofu fritters from Veganomicon, with the accompanying cashew cucumber dip, as well as some lime-broiled green beans, some artichokes, and olives. We briefly bemoaned the lack of good thick greek pita to eat with all this, but then remembered there was a bottle of Riesling to be had (a good dry German one, haha) and anyway, that’s all *I* needed.
Hi mom! This is my second favourite park, but my #1 choice for picnics.
In the morning with a sleepy brother! I couldn’t really leave well enough alone when he said he wanted oatmeal. If he really wanted oatmeal I would have made some afterwards, but I was so geared for brunch. (I didn’t hear any complaints in the end). Just enough food for three people, it was Isa’s basic fluffy pancakes, potato & sausage fry, steamed broccoli with cheesy sauce, and um… because I’m me, a firecracker-hot thai cucumber salad that I ended up just eating myself. I’m probably weird (no, I’m definitely weird), but I think eating a whole thai chili along with breakfast is a pretty good idea. Kinda like coffee, but more burninating.
Yummmmmm. Those pancakes are so perfect. Need I say more?
Oh, okay, just one more thing. A quick bottomless apple pie made with the crust from Fran Costigan’s More Great Good Desserts. Amazing! It’s made with frozen oil and it’s the flakiest darned thing I’ve ever managed to top a pie with! Really easy, too, and stood up to my adaptations (mostly spelt flour, some whiskey added). Makes me think I might master pies someday. I’m still no expert, but this one was getting close… the apples were just kissed with 5-spice powder, ooh. We drizzled it with coconut cream and it was very good.
My sister, meanwhile, is at Burning Man. :O
Well, Liz has broken out the nerdy google-searched JPEGS of sci-fi references again – and that means of course that it’s time to go back in time! Woooo-eeeee-oooooooooh.
Back to a time way yonder… the wee beginning of August when I was just as likely to accidentally eat a blob of quinacridone pink as I was to absent-mindedly get soy sauce on my paintings. Ie; (in simple terms) I was busy! Meals had to be almost cute in their ease of preparation, with the notable exception of some bento experiments, but I’ll get to those later on….
Avocado kinda saved my life, the patron saint of summer classes, I think. And while these look humble, and I’m a pure sucker for anything wrapped in a warm corn tortilla (and I mean just about anything) – this was a good and special combo. Guacamole, corn, & chicken-baked white beans, with big chunks of onion ’cause I roll like that but you could leave them off I’m sure. Addictive but satisfying.
And then avocado with fritterFAIL (it’s now hash!)
Even better than the tacos? It has sweet potato this time.
I got a huge bag of white pitas for free because there was a big nasty fly paper stuck to the side and the store couldn’t sell it, so I tasted white flatbread for the first time in forever. Can I confess that it’s kind of particularly delicious? At least if you haven’t had it in a while. Way sweeter than whole wheat, and makes excellent sausage, pepper and onion pizzas. With big chunks of onion. Because I roll like that!
Believe it or not, dorayaki are a quick lunch, too! You just have to really cheat with the anko paste. And cheater anko paste can be way healthier, too, because you can pull the sugar WAY back. Basically just mash up some hot cooked adzukis with just enough sugar to make them lip-smacking, and just enough salt to make them more-ish, then make two fairly rich pancakes to sandwich it with. And put loads of vegetables on the side so you can pretend it’s a sort of balanced meal. (which okay it probably is, just sucrose heavy. MMMMMM sucrose. MMMM dorayaki).
MMMMM CHOCOLATE PANCAKES DORAYAKI
I am feeling the Japanese, can you tell? This lunch took forever. Like, all morning to make, no joke. Worth it in every way, though! My first onigiri, everybody, and let nobody tell you that it’s just rice in a ball shape, it is so much more than that. Even if you’ve made them yourself, they still taste all full of the love it took to construct them (the reddened burned hands, the totally occupied stovetop, the swearing at nori seaweed as it refuses to cover them completely).
The first day I made 3 -
1 triangle filled with avocado (yes again!), tiny cubed cucumber, wasabi, green onion and salt.
The 2nd triangle was filled with tiny cubes of braised sweet potato and shitake mushrooms done in kombu no tsukudani style except without sugar ’cause they’re sweet already. (SO umami)
And the 3rd piece was mixed up with red beans, sesame seeds and umeboshi vinegar. yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum !
(rounding out my oh-so stylish tupperware is some lightly steamed broccoli sprinkled with shoyu, an Nin Jiom herbal candy, a strawberry lollipop, and some yellow baby carrot pickles I made myself and have been eating like candy from the back of the fridge.).
It was a terrible blustery sweater-weather day when I took this downtown to eat it before putting in a long night at the studio, but after I got my green tea and an interesting seat to watch people from, and I took the first bite of my first pointy rice-ball…. I couldn’t help but smile like a tyke. Really! It’s all worth the effort for that first nori-wrapped bite.
oh yeah, Mr. Wasp thinks rice balls are delicious too. I have mixed feelings about this one. Shooo off my meticulous lunch there, little guy, sheesh!
Back on the fast track – the quickest cookies to make are shortbreads, of course. And an herbal-loving friend had a recent crisis requiring me to spend at least a bit of time baking. Basic basic shortbread, but with rose oil and black tea leaves. The tea didn’t impart any flavour I don’t think, but it added a really pleasant crispy texture!
And finally, my favourite – muffins! Featuring (do you see this coming?)…. avocado! Yep, avocado replacing almost all the oil, date syrup replacing all the sugar, 50/50 whole wheat & oat flour, with orange juice, cloves, and a scattering of chocolate chips to seal up the deal. 100% eyeballed recipe, but it’s really hard to screw up a muffin, which is why I secretly adore them more than cake maybe. These ones were surprisingly decadent with their buttery nuggets of green dotted throughout. Totally a win.
And then I finished my last studio class ever! Hurray!
No more turpentine, no more (mounting) hooks, no more security guards’ dirty looks, la la la la la :)
Wee! So – I’m here drinking my mint & mushroom tea with large slices of ginger dropped into it because I was a little too brave this afternoon and added some (a lot of) questionable sauerkraut to my hummous wrap. It was worth it at the time… but now I need the tea. Yeah, white stuff in a sauerkraut jar is no good…
Anyway. More old pictures (I swear I’m getting through them, I do!) I made crepes! I made buckwheat versions of Veganomicon crepes, and stuffed them full of Columbian red beans with plantain (from Terry’s Vegan Latina), some broccoli too, and an avocado-corn-cream sauce that is essentially this recipe that I’d had mentally bookmarked since I went vegan in high school. Seriously that long ago. (*oouuuuuurrrrrgh…. waveof nauseau happening……RIGHT NOWurg*) XPPP
cough. ok better.
Anyway. avocado cream sauce! I ate in on pasta first, but it’s way more economical to show it here, even if it does look a little like ralf. tee hee. I swear it was tasty.
And then I had leftover crepes with sauteed peaches, coarse raw sugar, cranberry jam, and some malted soy drink mixed with enough water to make a sweet cream. Oh, frugal AND delicious, and even maybe healthy, how ’bout that? I love dinners that revolve around fructose.
Speaking of which, I made a tiny sweet potato cashew cream pie with a lone spud, because it’s just been so damned cold it seems not very weird to make food like this. Plus, it has a pumpkin seed crust a la Extraveganza, which in my weird mind makes it kinda summery. And when you pop it in the freezer and eat slices of it cold like spiced ice cream…… *drooooolz*. Also gives me a chance to use the tiniest fork ever imaginable that I picked up at a garage sale for specific things just like this. Fairy pie technique!
From now on I make my own thai green curry paste. Has anyone tried the yellow variety? I almost did but then I chickened out and returned it for a jar of the classic green, and while it resulted in a slurpily good skillet of hyper-spice, well… I’m still curious about the other variety. Maybe next time I’ll get the yellow (which boasts coriander and white pepper, yum) and just grind up lots of green chiles into it myself. I ended up throwing like, 3-4 extra thai peppers into this one anyway, cause I kind of like my thai curries to practically send off sparks into the atmosphere. Anything less and why bother, I say!
Speaking of skillets — I made the Vcon leek & bean cassoulet finally. That’s how cold it’s been around here! It’s mid-June and I’m still checking my bag for extra gloves, just in case… ack. So on a particularly blustery and charcoal-grey day I decided snap it I’m just gonna make a big old comforting stew and I am SOOOOO glad I did. It was the perfect antidote to my standard rut of cooking with loads of citrus & spice — the cassoulet is all…. comfy like a big herbal pillow. And far too easy to pleasantly spoon down while cuddled up in a blanket reading school work things. Very very nice…
(oh, and peas/leeks/white beans were replaced with corn/extra onion/black&red beans to good effect)
Enough for now? Probably… there’s red velvet, kittee muffins, cold soba, successful souvlaki rice to come, though. *phew*
Oh, what the heck, one more — I made Scotter Muffins, yay! I don’t remember what variety at all, probably apple and banana and cinnamon swirl. Gosh, I love muffins, don’t you? They’re so balanced, like the medium spectrum between the best of all baked goods. Or maybe I’m just a fan. ^_^b
I don’t particularly feel like sorting my pictures right now, there is just TOO MANY of them. So, yes, here is the first, what a delight of puffy strawberry muffs in a basket! Hannah’s recipe is perfect for basic muffins, in fact I memorized it and freestyled a batch of chocolate-raspberry versions later while I was groggy and in my dad’s kitchen at some ungodly hour of the night after breaking in un-announced and he didn’t even know I was in town! I raided the cupboards (after cleaning the place spotless, of course) and managed to at least find enough basic baking supplies to make them, lurvly brunette muffins, which will have a photo later in this post, because (of course) as I said – completely out of order. Why not, right?
This is a banana-date scone from Veganomicon. Somehow I thought it would be more decadent, being from the Vcon, but granted the whole introduction does mention it’s healthy qualities explicitly, so I should have been duly warned. Don’t you love the background? This was to fuel some tarot play time with a teatime friend who lets me bake for her (very nice of her).
I love Nigella, it’s no secret to anyone who’s met me (or at least heard her show playing from my bedroom whenever I need some serious calming and indulgence for the soul). But strangely I’ve made .. well, none of her recipes so far. That needed to be remedied, which I did with her moroccan-ish eggplant rolls with cinnamon, capers and bulgur … YUM!! Like what I imagine most of her food to taste like, it is soft, nuanced, silky and doesn’t hit you over the head with electric or sour notes, so ultimately delicious, but I added more lemon. ;)
Pretty grill marks. :)
Ancient photo !!!!!I made nachos with no nooch in the house. I canvased the city (briefly) looking for a single serving of nacho chips just so I could have this to satisfy an immediate post-school craving. It was everything awesome and more. I made the cheese with cashews, oats, miso and hot chiles and it served the purpose mightily.
This is a pancake I made at my sister’s house, using her mystery bag of mystery organic flour (we believe it was likely spelt), as well as some honey-like natural sugar, lots of coconut, some cashews wedged in there… maple syrup. Other things. It was so very very punk, as their larder was BARE and we still managed to have a sizzling merry breakfast on the hob in time for a decent 11 am-ish kind of hour. I’d just read this book –
Which was a very anarchic ancient kind of (NON vegetarian) underground poetry/cookbook/highly vague anti-establishment montage of stuff, with many chapters waxing poetic about misty green mornings cooking rashers of bacon and potatoes and I was inspired at least to follow that part of the sentiment. Much of this book was a little too dated and silly for me, but I liked the non-political jumbo.
As promised, a chocolate-raspberry mini-muff in a cup with Hagan-Daaz raspberry sherbert I found like a special present in my dad’s deep freeze. Hurray! Went together like a dream, and though that iced stuff is sweeet, it is definitely top quality and I was definitely proud to call this lunch.
Like cocoa soldiers. Did you know it took me about 27 minutes and the help of a disgruntled 13-year old to help me find where they had counter-intuitively stashed all their muffin cups? (for the record: in the highest right invisible spot in the kitchen, behind the curry powder, above the plastic bags).
There’s more photo backlog, but this is probably browser-crashing enough with all the stuff in this post already, plus this random plate is a nice thematic end to a r-r-r-r-r-andom post. This was my favourite dinner by SO much last week. Probably the large luscious chunks of drippy tropical fruit had something to do with it, plus the arcade-style cacaphony of flavours all sharing one oddly harmonious restaurant-square plate. There’s papaya salsa, asian-dressed cabbage, an eggplant roll that didn’t fit in the container I put in the freezer, and the BEST ASPECT OF ALL — peanut butter and jam on rusks. Perfection.
ps. I swear I’m not on drugs or even feeling all that strange. I just rode a mechanical bull, though, (seriously!) and I’m mighty jazzed about that!
I’m sorry, I’ll make a real post tomorrow (pink soup!), but for now this is the awesomest thing ever:
It all started… with an ill-conceived attempt at a tofu loafy roulade thingy, with squash inside. I mean, it was pretty damn edible, except that it was u.g.l.y., it didn’t taste a lot like bird, and the wax paper I used to roll it up stuck like glue to the bottom and really did turn the whole first layer into an exercise in chewing crayons.
Much better cookie luck, I made freestyle coffee-chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and P made cakey ginger clouds. But enough of this playing…
Girls gotta bake. Girls gotta prep cook. (okay, I prep-cooked, P went to work)
I made almond-sesame nutty crackers from Extraveganza, with added sesame oil.
Fluffy lemony cupcakes with maple cranberries from More Great Good Desserts, with a lemon-cinnamon drizzle on top.
Caramel popcorn! Spicy-brown sugar pumpkin seeds! Oh, it’s those crackers again!
Pumpkin pie, the quality of which was indeed assured by the Satchmo-cat. I wonder if I make another pumpkin pie if I get a free tattoo or something? And I still keep loving them, making them… hiding the leftovers from everyone. Hee.
Allright, and then P’s folks showed up so we went to the Jean-talon market on the most crispest yet warm of gently-sunned fall days. Picked up some rambunctiously coloured food, asparagus by the bucket, beans, mushrooms, apples (real/perfect/nectar-of-the-heavens-sweet quebec apples), a bunch more of other wonderful things.
They had two among them who couldn’t do gluten, which was a fun challenge, even if I wish I had known sooner… I would have made more that they could eat… but anyway, did you know that brown rice bread is actually delicious and tastes like bread?
Then my posse popped up, with the usual pancake-breakfast request (this is an understanding that I think benefits all of us nicely). Maple syrup was off limits as an ingredient, so I boiled up a quick apple syrup that almost got drank up by my sister, and at least got the pancakes called “the best syrup delivery devices you’ve ever made”. Bro asked for the recipe. (Bro is becoming quite the little burdgeoning foodie – and you better believe I’m supporting that tendency! :P)
And then, and then! After finishing breakfast I was kitchen-maven all day with my sister, then we passed the invisible baton to P and her sister, and between us all we created this glittering harvest spread.
Amidst the hubub and wine-drinking and guitar-jamming and all the fake russian accents, my camera was only found halfway through the meal, hence the half-eaten shot – but I think it still looks great. Clockwise from the bottom is mushroom gravy, nutty crackers, broccoli rabe and carrots with pine nuts and herbs, brown rice pasta salad with peppers and heirloom tomatoes, fresh market beans, hungarian rye stuffing with apples, cranberries and walnuts, cranberry sauce, apple-sage seitan sausages, curry carrot dip, squash stuffed with wild and brown rice mushroom-almond-raisin stuffing, dragonfruit, smoky maple tempeh, and loads of garlicky mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.
phew.
Nom. Shall I say nom? And nom, and wow. I think we did okay?
And then there was too much dessert, and oh yeah, did I mention I made cookies too? Oh man… I mean, I know it wasn’t “turkey dinner” or something… but maybe made up for it in sheer tapestry-tasting complexity and connection to what is actually being harvested right now? I mean, I’ve been to thanksgivings where the vegetables are given the saddest passing effort, and aren’t they really the point? Ha ha, anyway… and next year you’re all invited to my tiny tiny place. For some reason it didn’t burst, and it kinda grew to fit us all (18+ at one point??). And you can help us with the leftover apple crisp!!!!
So I’m writing this from the comfy green rocking recliner in my mother’s living room, covered in flour and crossing recipes off of the veganomicon index faster than I can decide on the next thing I want to make, and that is to say – life (or at least my pseudo-vacation before school starts full throttle again in september) is good.
I even got to make a pie – a birthday peach and blueberry pie at my mother’s request, using the vcon pastry instead of my usual. It’s definitely easier to use, like those pie crusts you see on television that people just sort of toss into the pan… but I think next time I’ll stick with my madness-inducing-yet-extraordinarily-tender crust I usually use. Because personally I’d rather my pie disintegrate into buttery flakes at the touch of a fork than look pretty and pert, but that’s just me…. and I’m just a pie-obsesso who so rarely gets to make them… :p
Mmm… and I’m mentioning here that in an awesome and unplanned way, there is a tomato in just about everything in this post. Which makes sense! It being the season and all. But I’m mentioning it so you can play along and find them. Like in the vcon midsummer corn chowder, which is SOOO good, you have to make it! With rosemary focaccia it was perfect, and there was a big paprika’d mountain of hummus on the table, too.
My old old old old cats say hi! They’re still doing their thing where they act like mirrors or parallels of eachother. Haha, cute.
Went out for dinner at Corners on Bank. Not much to say… I mean, it was crazy delicious, but it was just a Boca burger. I guess to people who never ever eat those things it’s a special treat, though. And they very happily let me pick my own toppings off of the menu options, so I got chipotle salsa, caramelized onions and guacamole, and the calabrese bun was teeth-sinking yeasty and notably fresh, so really, who’s complaining at all?
Okay me, for forgetting to ask for my salad sans dressing. :p
I’m in love with hoecakes now, too. So easy to make and really surprisingly good. I made mine like…
1 cup cornmeal
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup almond milk
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp chopped pickled jalapenos
1/4 cup sauteed onions
pinch of sugar
pepper
Fry them up, eat with salsa, say yum yum yum and think why didn’t I make DOUBLE that amount because now I have to give my lunch to my sister who just came in the door with hoecake longing in her eyes. Alas, alas…..
….at least I got the vcon mexican millet all to myself! It wasn’t gonna happen like that – I was making it for everybody, but everybody went to bed, and then a forkful of it went in my mouth and any plans to eat anything else went ~poof~ and I had half the pot all for me, and it was so good. I love millet! Especially when it’s buttery and nutty and crisp/creamy, and eaten out of a dainty little rice bowl.
And then vcon blintzes, with dill-tahini sauce, applesauce and pickled red cabbage. A lot of work for something that tasted pretty perogi-like, but delicious nonetheless. Especially when all the toppings glooped together to form SUPER GLOOP of the potato-y sauce-y goodness.
Slice of Pie! Look at that structural integrity! ^.^
And lunch today – vcon creamy tomato soup (+ broccoli) with celine’s cheezy crackers (YUM!) and vcon mushroom-walnut pate with more lentils and less walnuts because that’s what I had.
(in conclusion: I love tomatoes! <——- ze obvious) :D
Curiously enough, I have a habit when drinking to RUN NOT WALK to the kitchen and see if I can’t whip up something edible with blurry vision. And I usually can! Maybe it’s the challenge… and it’s certainly better than singing off-key, I should think.
My most classic preparation is some sort of seitan barfood after stumbling home. I guess 3 am and soused isn’t the best time to attempt to recreate a vegan hotdog, but I tried! It wasn’t hotdogg-y, but it was delicious, even if J was passed out like a rock by the time I set down a warm fresh chapati with a seitan-dog and all the fixins in front of him. (It made a perfect breakfast the next day, though!)
A week or two later some crepes were made, and turned out more perfectly than any sobre pancake I’ve ever attempted. The Vcon recipe is lightning-fast, delicious, and got rave vegetarian reviews (“these are even better than the kind with eggs! more flavourful and chewy!”). I did add a bit of extra oat flour, too, which gave them a nice homey touch.
Yum jam! Strawberry, blueberry, merlot, sour cherry, plus caramel sauce, cinnamon and fresh peaches.
And then last night (we all get off work on wednesday. we call it “fake saturday”), some whiskey prompted a mini-muffin adventure. What kind? Uhhhh…. banana! With blueberries! (we are also blueberry fiends, oh my yes). Use a recipe? Bah! That takes time and reading. Better to just throw some whole wheat pastry flour in a bowl with some ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, soymilk, brown rice syrup, oil and vanilla. And they TOTALLY turned out. Not too sweet, loaded with berries and banana, and perfect for munching on while playing with plastic dinosaurs and discussing 37 ways the world is an unfathomably weird place. Rarr brontasaurus rex!
There were even 3 (oops, I ate one – 2) left over the next day!
Smashed Vegan’s Warning: please please please do not attempt to drink and bake at home, unless you’re of legal age and are prepared to find a huge mess waiting for you in the morning. I don’t want to be a bad influence… :o
Blub blub! Miso soup with real kombu (finally) required some sort of infantile time-wasting awesomeness, hence carrot-fish. I swear it made it more delicious!
And I actually ate something besides oatmeal for breakfast the other day! I love how sleeping in means I have to budget my time which means pancakes, ooh, life is hard. These weren’t perfect (oatmeal chocolate chip, for the record), but maybe I’ll fix the liquid ratio and put them in the zine someday. Chocolate for breakfast, though… it’s great.
This was another one I was thinking of putting in the zine, but then I was like, “uh, no. Everybody has a banana bread recipe and I actually suspect I got this from the ppk years ago, before I even knew what the ppk was.” Tasty, but I mostly just made it to see if I could still make banana bread, ha. (quartering a recipe and making it in a tiny pan turns it into banana bars, though, which is pretty cool!)
Yummy black bean and wheat berry salad, with corn, red onion, radish, carrot, cilantro, lime, cumin and cinnamon. It could use bell peppers and/or tomato, but not bad at all for an empty fridge kinda thing!
And banhi mi, banhi mi!! Okay, “vietnamese seitan sandwich with savoury broth dip” (from what else but Vcon). I was too excited to eat it to take a decent photo at all, but you can probably see that I deviated from the recipe and tried to make it more authentic, I suppose. So there’s cucumber sticks, sweet pickled carrot, green onion, radish, jalapeno, tomato, mayo, cilantro and delicious satan. I mean seitan. I’d never dipped a sandwich before, it was lovely, mushy spicy and bready.
Another cleaning out the fridge deal, this time minestrone, with the expected vegetable guests, but also corn because I really really like corn. And macaroni noodles. And I even resisted making it spicy. Oh, and I added ground up toasted almonds to approximate parmesan and this was a good decision, it totally made it right.
So very nourishing!
Happy Valentine’s everybody!
I wish I had time to make more heart-shaped food, some part of me loves a useless holiday that embraces little more than a funny symbol. Hehe. When I was in high school I used to treat it kind of like Halloween for softies, and dress up in pink and white taffeta and striped red stockings and give out chocolates to my friends and anyone in the halls who looked like they wouldn’t be offended by an overly friendly “happy valentines!!” and a little dark chocolate square. Today I don’t have time, and I don’t know how amenable the militantly awkward art school kids would be towards pure fluff and hallmark celebration (maybe they would get the irony?). So I’m off to paint two brazilian men kissing, and then I’ll buy pecans for the smlove so I can make a big wonderful pie for my family when I go home for reading week tomorrow.
On an unrelated note: I listen to CBC radio every morning while eating my breakfast (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and this is the second day in a row that they’ve had an extensive discussion on veganism! Yesterday they hosted Rory Friedman (the author of Skinny Bitch), and then a reaction interview with Debbie Rasmusen (the publisher of Portland’s Bitch Magazine) and Annahid Dashgaardt (the Executive Director of Anima Leadership, a Toronto-based organization dedicated to community building). I’m not the biggest fan of the Skinny Bitch book, but there were some interesting points brought up – like the fact that the information on farming and animal rights in the book is actually somewhat sound, and that it’s the first mainstream piece of vegan literature to be embraced in popular culture. I can’t wait to hear what they talk about today. I do have to say… Rory kind of rubbed me the wrong way in how she almost greasily sidestepped direct questions about the so-called “healthiness” of the diet proposed in the book (it’s a diet book! IT IS A DIET BOOK! and not a good one). And Debbie and Annahid thankfully made a strong argument for healthy body image and rejection of (even vegan) fad diets. Ideal solution being intelligent integration of the information offered in the book and ignoration of the idea that we all stand around hating the thinnest girl in the room? Could take a lot more social change than we’ll see in our lifetimes…
They even brought up the racism factor – by flat-out demonizing meat and cheese, the book is creating guilt on a cultural front, too! Oh god, I hope I’m not getting preachy. Ha ha ha. Does it help that I don’t know exactly where I stand with all this and so really can’t be preaching at all? It was interesting to listen to, I know that.
I propose a day in the garden and a rainbow-bright spread of veggies and grains for alllll the skinny bitches (people of all sizes and temperaments) of the world. Or maybe a square of dark chocolate and a flurry of fuschia lace. La la la la! This bitch is off to go paint…
