Greaseball Hates Your Plant-Based Foods

Greaseball is a straight up carnivore, and as such, he frowns upon my plant-based food experiments. They leave him hungry.

Speaking of plant-based food, I watched "Forks Over Knives" last week, and everyone in that movie avoids the "V word" and instead says "plant-based foods." Come on! Just say "vegan" and don't dance around it! At first, I thought they were avoiding the word because they were going to talk strictly about diet and not lifestyle changes, but that wasn't the case. It reminded me of the movie "Let Me Be Frank," when Frank who had already signed a contract to let Cafe Gratitude take over his diet and lifestyle, was dumbfounded when his keepers cleaned out the microwave from his apartment. You know why? Because no one told him, or he didn't figure out, that Cafe Gratitude was a vegan raw food joint. I understand that there is power in words and many people have negative associations with veganism, so it was interring to see how "Forks Over Knives" rebranded vegainism as "plant-based diet."

As many of you know (and probably why my RSS subscribers are leaving by the handful every week), I am a bit obsessed with nut cheese. I even went to a panel discussion on vegan cheese during Oakland Veg Week, although that was a little weird. The woman next to me said earnestly "You are very brave" during a show of hands of omnivorous audience members - I suspect I was the only one there who was an omnivore because I didn't see anyone in front of me with a raised hand I a felt too weird to look behind me in the room of about 100 people. I was the most excited person in the audience, though! The discussion was interesting, but it was more geared towards vegetarians who were thinking about crossing over to veganism and not those of us who just want to make a good nut cheese for the sake of nut cheese.

And speaking of nut cheese, a phrase I find myself saying often, I made the most amazing vegan nacho cheese sauce from Kenji at Serious Eats. We paired it with corn chips and black bean burgers and we felt fat and happy afterwards. Why is oozy cheese sauce such balm for the soul? The most interesting part of the recipe was that it achieved it's stretchy properties from russet potatoes that have been put through a high speed blender. There was no kappa carrageenan, agar, or xanthan gum added. Just potatoes! I want to tweak with the flavorings to make a smoked gouda cheese sauce because my last attempt with some carrageenan was a little funky. This nacho cheese sauce is going to get a second life as mac and cheese very soon.

The Face of Optimism

We pass by this sign often, and today I finally got around to snapping a picture of it. It's on the side of a fairly busy residential street, and the thought of a cat crossing right here makes my heart skip a beat. The world is dangerous for outside cats!

Greaseball only goes in the backyard, and I supervise him when he does that because if I didn't, he'd eat all the weeds and then throw up. I suppose we're lucky in that he's never wanted to climb a tree or climb a fence. Fifty-Fifty would periodically escape, and we'd have to convince her to come off of the roof of out from underneath our neighbor's deck. She was an adventurer, but Greaseball? Not so much. He likes napping.

Ballerina Dreams and Vegan Cheese

When I saw Sesame taking over the chair, I thought she was dreaming of being a goofball. My friend Jenni, however, said she was dreaming of being a ballerina. I like Jenni's description better than mine.

I've been dreaming of vegan cheese since tasting the lovely non-dairy cheeses from Miyoko's Creamery. Cheesemaking has always been something I wanted to try, but the boy is allergic to dairy and raw milk is hard to come by (and a pretty penny). Nuts, however, store better and are a bulk bin away.

I checked out Artisan Vegan Cheese by Miyoko Schinner, and I've made two cheeses from her book. The first was the basic cashew cheese mixed with sun-dried tomatoes. It was good, and it would have been even better if I mixed in basil and some pine nuts. Since I had so much cheese, even after halving the recipe, I used some of it to make raviolis, and those were delicious! The filling held up well to boiling.

The second cheese was the vegan Gouda. This cheese was air dried, with a little bit of salt spread on the outside to keep it from molding. It's now been aging for 4 days, and although I want to age it longer, I don't know if it is going to last. It is so delicious! The texture is creamy on the inside with a semi-hard rind. For this recipe, I made my first batch of soy/cashew yogurt, and that yogurt is also a treat, especially when mixed with lemon verbena marmalade. As a side note, my Vitamix and my foldable proofer box (incubator) are two kitchen tools I cannot live without.

Today's experiment is going to be a vegan truffled brie, this time from Miyoko's website. I don't see the recipe currently up, but I was able to find a link to it on the Wayback Machine (update: link no longer works because I suspect this recipe is very similar to the truffled cheese sold my Miyoko's). I have high hopes for this brie!

While at Berkeley Bowl, there were two of us staring at the 6 different truffle oils. The other person had his smart phone out and was furiously typing away, and he was still trying to figure out which truffle oil to get for his scrambled eggs when I left. I wonder if he's still there? I grabbed the second smallest bottle that was around $10, because in my experience, I don't use the stuff up fast enough to pay anymore than that for my oil. The volatile compounds that make it so good dissipate after a few months. I also found agar powder, bulk cashews, and an economy sized jar of refined coconut oil.

The boys are hanging out a lot together, I think mostly because they are stubborn. Greaseball was the first one on the couch. He barely cracked an eye open when Mingus wanted to get on the couch, so I think they've assumed these positions before.

Cats and Dogs and Monkeys and an Elephant

Cat(s) on a Hot Tin Roof in Negombo

The worst part about traveling is that I miss my pets something fierce. Luckily, my cousin was keeping all of my beasts company, and he would periodically text me that everything was ok and they were having a ball without me.

Cute house dog on a coconut plantain near Negombo

The hard part about traveling to countries like Sri Lanka is being seeing so many stray dogs and cats in need of medical attention. Still, we did see many happy animals, and some of them were even cherished household pets.

Sri Lankan Sesame on the Negombo beach

I was on the lookout for the Sri Lankan version of Sesame, Mingus, and Greaseball. Thankfully, we didn't see any malamutes there. I think a malamute would die of heat stroke in Sri Lanka. We did spot a few GSDs and some GSD mixes, but not a lot.

Another cute house cat I bribed with chicken

In the city of Negombo, there is a spay and neuter clinic called The Hope Foundation. We stumbled into Lords restaurant (great food!), whose owners also run the clinic, and were handed brochures with their mission statement and the work they had done thus far to take care of the local animals. Negombo did have the nicest animals - at least by that restaurant. They looked well fed and clean.

A temple cat in Dambulla

Peaceful naps in the humid city of Tangalle

It's not like we don't have cats and dogs at home. You'd think by the amount of pictures dedicated to cats and dogs that I took during our trip that they were as exotic to me as elephants and monkeys.

This reminds me of the Australians (you know who you are!) being enchanted by chipmunks and squirrels in Sri Lanka. As I sit here typing, a squirrel is going past the telephone wires outside our house. They are no big deal to us! I consider them pests because they drop half-eaten apples on my dogs from at least 20-feet up in the trees.

A temple dog in Sigiriya

 Even when we ascended many stairs, there would be a dog or cat waiting at the top. They just hang out and enjoy the view.

Temple monkeys

Many of the templed also had monkeys who raided the garbage cans and the ate the offerings.

Fried fruit bat!

Fried bats were a disturbing sight along power lines. Poor, poor bats. The live bats gave me the creeps, but this is probably because they were larger than my cat. I was assured that they only ate fruit, but kept my distance and would involuntarily duck if one flew overhead.

If you squint hard, you can see an elephant

We did see one elephant in the wild in the Yala National Park. It made the post-park diesel headaches and the early morning trip worth it. This is the only elephant I've even seen that didn't have a chain around his foot or neck, and from what I could tell, he was relaxed.

On a totally different subject, I have a proofer box coming in a day! I'm hoping that my sad attempt at dosas can be remedied with this box, and I'm looking forward to better kombuchas and sourdough breads.

Fifty-Fifty, You Were a Good Cat

It's never easy to say goodbye, even when you know it's the right decision. Sadly, my little orange ninja  kitty, only 13-years young, left us a couple of weeks ago. I went to the vet because she suddenly wasn't walking right, and I left the vet 2 hours later, alone, sad, and stunned.

Orange kitties leave the biggest holes in your heart. I'm sure of it. Thank you, Fifty-Fifty, for schooling 3 dogs, for being a good sister to Greaseball (who we all know is a butt), for grooming the boy and me regularly at 2 AM, and for having the cutest, loudest purr.

Sadness.

Hot Dogs Are Evil

My hands reek of hot dogs on dog school day. Eager to get Sesame back into a training program, I signed up for Canine Circus School, appropriately dubbed "art school for dogs." It has been years, DECADES, since I've purchased hot dogs, and all I can think of is pink slime when I purchase those things as training treats per the recommendation of the instructor. I buy them covertly, ashamed, at places where no one who knows I'm an Alice Water disciple will recognize me.  But of course, the first time I had my cart loaded with hot dogs, I ran into a coworker who glanced at my hand basket (Meyers hand soap, Seventh Generation dish wash tabs, and 4 packages of cheap ass hot dogs - 4 of theses are not like the other).  Then, he proceeded to keep me there to talk about work stuff, while sneaking multiple glances at the hot dogs. Busted! I thought about telling him that they were for my dog, but he's no nonsense guy who probably doesn't know of Alice Waters and who would think it frivolous to buy human food (and I use this term loosely) for a dog, so that would make it worse. 

Still, Sesame works her butt off for a nibble of hot dog, more so then she would if I offered her my homemade, dolphin-free tuna, pastured eggs, and Parmesan cheese treats.  For the first class, I bought organic beef hot dogs, but when the instructor came by and offered her the crap hot dogs, she did back bends for him despite her "stranger! danger!" issues. I was sold. Pink slime hot dogs it is! I bought my second round of hot dogs at Ranch 99, where a cart filled with 3-liters of peanut oil, 4 packages of hot dogs, a carton of fermented rice, and salted turnips doesn't make anyone raise an eyebrow.

Did you know that the cheap, pink hot dogs are made from chicken now? I was shocked! I thought they were pork, because that's what I thought they were when I was a kid, but when I checked out the $2 hot dogs at the store, they were either chicken or chicken/turkey mixes. My childhood memories of hot dogs are fond, and I remember that, as a kid, a special treat was the hot dogs filled with a nacho cheese sauce. I could nuke it myself for an after-school snack, along with Spaghetti-Os and canned beef raviolis. They tasted good, and I'd probably still eat those things today if I didn't worry about things like type 2 diabetes which, unfortunately, is a disease both of my parents now deal with on a daily basis.

The boy hates melon as much as I hate hot dogs, so since it's melon season and our CSA is giving us one a week (one too many according to him), I have had to come up with ways for the melon to be useful. Enter infused vodka. I still have a lot of lemon zest infused vodka and some other bottles of plain vodka, so I mixed the vodkas together and added half a chopped melon. Perhaps I've made the most disgusting vodka in the world? Or, just maybe, I'll have a good ingredient for cocktails. I already have some black cardamon infused vodka and a bottle of Thai chile tequila, and those have proven to be good cocktail mixers.

My CSA and my modest garden are providing us with loads of tomatoes, so I've been saucing them, roasting them, and stuffing them. Tonight's dinner is tomatoes stuffed with quinoa, brown basmati rice, fennel, dill, pine nuts, and tomatoes. Currently, it's sunny and hot during the day, but the fog rolls in by dinner time, so it's a good time to have the oven on. Stuffed tomatoes and peppers have become an end of summer tradition here. Any other tomato ideas are appreciated!

The boys like hanging out on the couch, and I've given up on making the couch forbidden. I slays me how each of them has to have their head on the pillow. Spoiled! Totally our fault, though, so I can't harp on them too much. Often, I wish I could join them on that couch instead of working/cleaning/exercising. Someone has to pay for their loafing, though!

Photo Tuesday

Mingus knows that the first rule about being a model is to work it, work it, work it! He can work it with a sleeping person in the background. I have a collection of photos taken with the boy sleeping and various pets draped across him, proof again that the boy can sleep through anything, even suffocation.

Sesame, as always, is more demure when she hams it up for the camera. That squeaky toy lays dormant until 5:30 AM on Saturdays and Sundays. What was I thinking when I bought it for her? It's like buying your kid a drum set!

Greaseball, as always, is boss. What you don't see in this pictures are two large dogs laying off to the side because they don't want to disturb him.

What is this? Why, it's a Soulritto: mac & cheese, fried chicken, collard greens, and yams all wrapped up in a flour tortilla. This is American food at its finest and fattiest, but boy was it good (especially when consumed with hot sauce and Arnold Palmers).

FIfty-Fifty is a Confused Cat

This was my submission to Confused Cats Against Feminism, and I'm pretty sure that it didn't make the cut. Was it too weird? Probably. It makes much more sense if you are a Dr. Who fan. Although, truth be told, I know more about this fez quote because of others talking about it so much. When I originally designed the hat, the thought of Fifty-Fifty donning the tiny fez was my motivation.

For those of you not clued in to the Confused Cats Against Feminism phenomenon, rest assured that Fifty-Fifty really is a feminist. The confused cats are meant to parody the Women Against Feminism website, which, sadly, is not a parody.

Thanks to Carey for her Photoshop skills. I tried adding text to the photo myself, but it made my eyes bleed. Photoshopping, wrapping gifts, and folding laundry are tasks that take me 10 times as long as anyone else, and the result is as ugly as if I had spent 1 minute doing the task. It's my anti-superpower. Now you know.

He Tries So Hard to Fit In

Sadly, Mingus, you are not a cat. Greaseball and Fifty can see you, even when you curl into a tight ball and squeeze your eyes shut.

Yes, the cats are cliquey. No, I don't feel sorry for you.

Now, get off the bed!

Holiday Flow

Can you spot the dog? Yes, that's him running amok with the poison oak!

The time from Thanksgiving until New Year's is always a blur. Traveling to fulfill familial obligations, holiday prep and festivities, and work combine with shorter days and colder weather. This, in turn, makes the passing weeks speed by and I'm always left wondering how it got to be the middle of December when just yesterday it was August.

Does this photo make her butt look big?

Fifty-Fifty and I have been fighting over who gets to sleep on the hearth. Yes, it's stone. Yes, it's dangerously close to the glass window that is so hot my bare skin will stick to it and sizzle off. However, it's the warmest place in the house and that little kitty and I can sit there most of the day (and we still are too cold). Maybe we are both part snake.

Evidence that Mingus is a dork, part 1.

Last weekend was the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Sears Point, and because I'm part snake and because a company holiday party with an open bar was the evening before, I was miserably cold and underdressed for the event. Mingus, however, loves this day and he looks forward to it all year long. He's told over and over again that he is a beautiful dog (*rolls eyes*), and he gets to shake his pom pom and lure suckers over to him. Once a sucker is near, he leans on them and leaves a metric ton of white fur on their black pants. He's an asshole like that.

Evidence that Mingus is a dork, part 2.

Evidence that Mingus is a dork, part 3.

I have so much crafting going on, but none if it is sharable just yet. My newest pattern (a cowl!) should be ready to release next week, and I'm busy knitting my 3rd one for a LYS sample. I also have some adorable knitted things that I really want to show you all, but it has to wait until after they are gifted.

Speaking of gifts, for any of you local Bay Area peeps, The Crucible's art sale is this weekend! It's the only holiday craft fair I attend, and I usually finish off my Christmas shopping there. Can't wait!

Picture Thursday

Little Scarlett

Slightly larger Mingus

Peanut-sized Fifty-Fifty and Greaseball

My first time pressure canning with the reusable lids! I'll let you know how it goes.

Further proof that we grow mutant vegetables. This eggplant has a kickstand.

It Burns! It Burns!

How do you piss off a malamute? By transforming your once frigid house into a furnace with an insulated roof and a gas insert. Mingus thinks we suck, but Fifty-Fifty thinks we're the best people ever.  You win some, you lose some.

We're coming up on 10 years in this old house, and there were some project that were always earmarked "nice to have" but not "need to have," so these projects were oftentimes scoped out, then promptly abandoned. Four years ago, we visited a fireplace insert store in the hopes of knocking off a "nice to have" project, and the whole experience reminded me of buying a used car. I hated it, and I was so turned off by both the sticker shock and the sales technique that I decided that walking around the house like the Michelin man wasn't such a bad thing.

Near the end of January, I was tired of being cold. Again, we went shopping for a fireplace insert, and this time we found a place that was upfront with their prices. Since we were putting in an insert, it would be the perfect time to update the ugly, smoke-stained tile on the fireplace surround, right? So, in one really long day where I had earmarked for a hike and a pedicure, I instead spent 7 hours chipping off tile with a mallet and a spackling tool. The boy was supposed to help me, but he had a last-minute meeting in Seattle, leaving me to do all the work the day before we had contractors scheduled. Ugh, those 7 hours were made extra miserable by bad television and numb hands. Judge Judy really bugs me, and Mario Batali is a smug man who shouldn't wear orange crocks, shorts, or put his hair in a ponytail. 

For those friends who haven't seen me in ages, sorry, but I'm content to hang out in front of the fireplace most evenings.  And since I'm still in my cocktail phase, I'll be drinking something delicious like an apricot flip. That fireplace makes me very, very happy.

A second batch of kombucha is brewing now, this time with some fancy tea the boy bought me in Taiwan. Normally, I'd feel guilty about using it, but since it has been sitting in the pantry for years, I figured this was better than throwing it away. My first batch made with jasmine tea is sitting in bottles, hopefully getting fizzier by the day. My preliminary taste tests have been positive.

Pressure cooked 6 bean soup uses up those annoying leftover dried beans

How to feed two people homemade meals who have limited time? That has been the question for as long as we've been together, and we never quite nail it. As our standards for healthy, tasty meals go up, the more time is needed. In addition to the pressure cooker, slow cooker, weekend cooking marathons, an arsenal of cookbooks, and our produce CSA, we recently added a meat CSA.

Kale from our garden, right before their massage

Split Rail Family Farms has a booth at our local farmers market, and that's where I pick up my box. This is our first week, and we are in love! I made a goat and carrot stir fry with cumin and dried chilies on Monday, and last night we had pork osso bucco that I braised with bacon, sauerkraut, leeks, green garlic, potatoes, and beer. I didn't have to go to the market to pick up any ingredients, which is part of the time saving master plan. The trickiest thing to remember is to defrost the meat a day ahead of time. The CSA provides enough meat for 2 meals a week, but the portions are so generous that we're finding it's more like 3-4 meals a week.

To help with meal planning, I used my phone to take pictures of each meat, and as we consume it, I delete the photo. This keeps me from standing with the freezer door open, staring for minutes at the contents. If the contents of the refrigerator weren't so dynamic, I'd adopt this system for it as well.

So, to those of you out there who like to eat meals made from scratch, yet have multiple obligations (everybody, right?), what tips and tricks have you picked up along the way to make sure you're not eating out all the time? Please, please share in the comments section!

Ethan, your mom is on to you! Go home!

February wasn't all work, fortunately.  Due to unusually warm weather, our annual snow trip to Arnold and Bear Valley turned into a biking and skiing trip. The XC skiing was fine, although a lot of the trails were closed, and the biking was awesome. What would have made that trip even better would be a ban on burning yard waste - the air was thick with pine needle smoke.

I know we need more rain and snow. I really do. However, I am loving this weather! Now that the days are longer and I no longer commute both ways to work in the dark, everything is better. I even have my knitting mojo back! Expect to see a completed cardigan soon.

Monday Cats

I have a collection of pictures of the Fifty and Greaseball, sans hats, napping in similar positions. They are ridiculous.