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Archive for Food
July 4, 2010 at 2:14 pm · Filed under Beer, Food, Holiday
Yeah, I know, once a week isn’t working out so well for me, is it?
Since D is spending part of the 4th of July tending to his delicious homebrew (smoked porter is on tap, and the apricot wheat is on deck), I decided to attempt some culinary creations with the profusion of lavender in the front yard.
I checked out the cookbook The Vegan Table from the library and made the lavender lemonade and the lavender tea cookies. Both have a subtle, fragrant lavender taste to them. Pretty yummy!
I also infused some (cheap) vodka with fresh lavender. My obvious error here was using the crappy vodka, but I didn’t want to ruin good vodka if it wasn’t going to work. The lavender vodka is really nice, but the harsh vodka kinda ruins it. I’ll have to try again with our regular Monopolowa.
April 28, 2010 at 9:41 am · Filed under Art, Blog, Food, Home
Ahem. I’m still around! I was going to blog way back in January about O’s Indiana Jones themed treasure hunt birthday party. Unfortunately I got sick and was a coughing mess for a few weeks. Then we went to Vancouver BC for my birthday and I never quite got around to blogging about the trip because I got to have three moles excised. Good times! Shortly after that, XM brought home the chicken pox. I was quarantined with her for a couple of weeks, and then the rest of us - yes, O, D and I - got the chicken pox too. Talk about misery! Then I had to help wrap up the yearbook for O’s school, which was pretty time consuming. When I did have time to blog I did it on my art blog, where I’d made a deal with myself to update it twice a week.
Anyway, here I am again, and I think about blogging here often, I swear.
Here, let me give you a homemade, vegan creme egg to make up for it. I miss blogging here, so I’ll try and do it once a week or so.
In the meantime, check out my art Shameless Self Promotion Facebook Fan Page Facebook Page of Me That You Can “Like”.
December 4, 2009 at 5:36 pm · Filed under Family, Food, Holiday, Kids
Ever since O was little, we’ve let the kid or kids help rip the bread for the stuffing. I now present to you a retrospective of stuffing making:
2003 - this requires a lot of concentration!
2004 - hmm, no picture of stuffing ripping, but clearly we had help in the kitchen
2005 - still serious business.
2006 - we were in China, but we did have bread!
2007 - XM’s first time!
2008 - she still thinks it is awesome to have her mouth wide open when we take her picture…
2009 - by now they are old pros at this.
I can’t wait for the teenage editions, you know the ones, where I force them to at least hold onto a piece of bread near the bowl and they do their best glare/withering look/eyeroll as I take the picture…
May 18, 2009 at 10:51 am · Filed under Food
Tonight we had one of my favorite dinners: matzah ball soup and Humboldt bagels. What makes them Humboldt? Not what you might think. One of our favorite places in Arcata is Los Bagels, a spot so great it has its own Facebook group: Los Bagels Aficianados. Our supply of the delicious North Coast delicacy that is Larrupin Swedish Style Mustard Dill Sauce was recently replenished (thanks Pam and Kevin!), so we were able to recreate a Los Bagels classic: the Tom Onion with Larrupin.
Yep, that is a bagel with a thick helping of cream cheese, topped with slices of tomato and red onion and slathered in Larrupin sauce. I was so full and all I wanted was another bagel all to myself. Divine.
March 28, 2009 at 6:44 pm · Filed under Food
We decided to treat ourselves to a homemade vegetarian sushi dinner tonight. D sliced up the ingredients while I made the rice. We found an interesting sushi idea using tempeh in Isa Chandra’s Veganomicon cookbook that was a huge hit and it was so simple - steamed tempeh mashed with vegan mayo (we had regular - sorry Isa!) and chili-sesame oil (we had chili oil and toasted sesame oil so I used about half and half). We rolled that up with some avocado.
In the past we used to buy a ton of veggies and tofu and make a variety of random rolls. Some were good, some were okay, none were the same so if you really enjoyed the carrot-smoked tofu-scallion there might only be a few pieces of it. Pretty soon all the rolls started to taste the same. Recently we’ve been coming up with 3 or 4 rolls and sticking with those combos. Tonight, aside from the tempeh roll, we had carrot-fried tofu rolls and cucumber-cream cheese-toasted sesame seed rolls.
While searching the web for some sushi ideas D ran across someone that made nigiri with vegetables. We bought an orange bell pepper and he roasted it outside on the burner he uses for brewing and sliced it up for our own nigiri. It was delicious! Roasted and sweet with a little crunch. They made up for the fact that we couldn’t find any inari wrappers.
We always fret that we don’t have enough rice or nori (somehow we always cut up way too much for the filling) and as always we ended up having the perfect amount of food. The kids were really into helping, so they got to take turns putting carrots and cukes on the rice before I rolled them up. They both devoured their dinners and they couldn’t get enough of the tempeh roll. It was awesome (except for the part where they almost ate all the tempeh roll pieces).
I am obnoxiously full. Yum!
November 27, 2008 at 10:27 am · Filed under Family, Food, Holiday, Uncategorized
We are gearing up for a small Thanksgiving with the family today, though we have enough food to feed the neighborhood. Hey man, we are all about the leftovers. On the veggie Thanksgiving menu today:
- Chicken-Fried Tempeh
- Mashed Potatoes and Cashew Gravy
- Italian Chard Stuffing
- Artichoke Parmesan Stuffing
- Ale and Garlic Stir Fried Brussel Sprouts
- Pumpkin Pie
- Blueberry Cobbler w/ ice cream
O and Grandma made these place holders this week while I helped out at XM’s preschool. XM is having a great time yelling “HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!1!!” to everybody.
O brought this home from school. It is a far cry from the days when he was thankful for Lego Star Wars (though I’m sure he is still thankful for that too). It says “I am thankful for ‘are envierment, my familie and are oxegin.’” Those are some pretty good things to be thankful for.
October 8, 2008 at 12:13 pm · Filed under Food, Home
I received several tomato starts via Freecycle this summer, and they all really took off and provided a ton of tomatoes. All but one. One little plant was stuck in a pretty bad spot, crowded by the rosemary and marjoram, in the shadow of the hulking roma tomato plant D brought home from work. But it plugged on, and last week we harvested its lone fruit. Thank you, tiny plant. It was delicious.
July 26, 2008 at 9:29 am · Filed under Food
July 1, 2008 at 2:12 pm · Filed under Art, Food
I took two pieces of art to Jace Gace today to be a part of their Overkill Show for the month of July. It is their 2nd annual all art accepted non-juried show, and their walls will be filled to the brim with what I can only imagine will be crazy mix of art. The show runs through July 27th.
The kids and I also shared a vegan waffle topped with coconut cream, brown sugar, banana and pineapple. It was really really good, and both kids gobbled it up and declared it to be “delicious!”. My only quibble with it is that the heavily sauced areas of waffle got too soggy. The flavor was great though, and I can’t wait to try one of their savory waffles.
June 15, 2008 at 6:47 pm · Filed under Better World, Food, Kids
Friendly faces and good service can be hard to come by in Portland, where much of the service community seems to be holding a competition to see who can show the most disdain towards their customers. Heck, McMenamins has made a killing off of it.
I’ve had three experiences that made me say ‘whoa’ recently.
XM and I recently lunched at Proper Eats Market and Cafe up in St. Johns. She is having some issues with gluten, so I have to watch what she eats. Fortunately Proper Eats serves strictly vegan and vegetarian foods, so that made it one step easier. A lot of the food had tempeh, which is generally made with just soybeans, but a lot of places seem to enjoy throwing in other grains as well, so I couldn’t be certain what kind of tempeh they used. I was hoping we could share the cornmeal tempeh plate (tempeh fried in cornmeal and served over sautéed greens, quinoa and pinto beans and topped with tofu-cilantro sour cream and pumpkin-corn-seed relish), so I asked what kind of tempeh it was. Our server didn’t know, so not only did he check out the stock he had, he called the tempeh company to double check! Turns out it was gluten-free, the food was insanely delicious, and he got a big tip.
Recently XM and I met an old co-worker of mine for lunch at the Lucky Lab. Same situation, different restaurant. Normally I find the service there to be half-hearted at best, but the guy that took our order overheard me telling my friend that XM couldn’t have gluten. When I ordered the bento, he asked if I was going to share it with her. I said I was, and he said that there is soy sauce (which has wheat) on the rice under the bento, so they could leave it off for me. I was surprised. The surprises didn’t end there, because he came out to my table and told me that the peanut sauce I had ordered also had soy sauce in it, but the sweet chili sauce did not. I thanked him profusely (I wasn’t going to give her sauce anyway, as it is a little spicy and she is generally anti-sauce) and switched my order. He didn’t have to care, but he did.
Today we went to Staccato Gelato. XM has recently proclaimed her favorite color to be pink, so she made this proclamation at the gelato shop (”Look! Pink! My favorite color!”) and ordered the raspberry gelato (”I want that one!”). She was excited to see that they had a pink cup, but the cup for the child’s size serving was yellow, so I told her sorry, she was going to get a yellow cup. The guy working there offered to put her scoop in the bigger pink cup, and gave her a pink spoon as well. One awesome worker, one very happy girl.
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