30 Day Photo Meme – Day 22

Day 22- Something you cooked

"Stoner" cauliflower. That's what paul calls this. I made it up and he told me it seems like something a stoner would make. It is delicious! You lightly steam a head of cauliflower, drain it, then put it in a pot that can go on the oven, dump half a bottle of marinara sauce on it, then top it with vegan (or real) cheese. Put an oven safe lid on it and stick it in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes. Then you have this beautiful, in tact, baked cauliflower.

Day 23- Your desk or work area
Day 24- Something important to you
Day 25- Graffiti you have seen
Day 26- Something you do everyday
Day 27- Your favorite place
Day 28- A favorite piece of clothing
Day 29- Something you like
Day 30- A photo of you today

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writing in September, zine event listing, and food from my kitchen

I joined this Facebook group to challenge myself to write 15 minutes per day in September. It’s been really helpful. I expected to write for the fiction split but the muses had other things in mind. I have been compiling a zine about zine events. It has been going really well.  I have been kicking around the idea that there should be a calendar of zine events. Well, in true DIY fashion, I started one myself and attached it to this blog.

Go here and let me know what’s missing. I’ll add more when people tell me what to add.

I was also invited to the “Last Night’s Supper” group. I feel like I am posting more than other people. Maybe I have been cooking more? Here’s what I have made and forgotten to take photos of.

*Red peppers stuffed with quinoa, corn, black beans, kale, and onions. Green beans with slivered almonds, and sauteed summer squash from the garden with fresh herbs.

*House made BBQ seitan, coleslaw, and potato salad.

*whole wheat bread and strawberry/blackberry jam from fruit grown in our yard.

*multi-grain pilaf with lentils, quinoa, teff, a variety of rices topped with steamed kale, green beans and peppers with a green salad.

*roasted garden tomatoes with a sweet pepper, some olive oil, and balsamic vinegar for hours in the oven at a low temperature and made into a sauce served over spiral pasta and sauteed garden squash and greens.

*vegan perogies (potato, onion, mushroom) topped with sour cream and caramelized onions. Also with steamed corn, kale, and zucchini. I used some left over perogie dough and made tiny blackberry turnover with berries from the yard.

*Home made vegetable soup (veg, red and green lentils, split peas and alphabets) roasted beets, and store bought vegan Field Roast sage apple sausage.

Last night was pretty epic and super yummy:

* ravioli from scratch filled with tofu ricotta and topped with a coconut milk based alfredo sauce with mushrooms. And also bruschetta with fresh tomatoes from the garden.

I was asked on facebook for the recipe, and I’m horrible with recipes so I just explained what I did in this Facebook post.

tomatoes from the yard that were made into sauce!

Whole wheat bread and blackberry-strawberry jam, two great things that got great together.

Some graffiti from the guest cave. Up the witchy punx!

I’m looking forward to Mercury going direct on the 26th. How about you?

Last week was expensive. I spent about $400 in button parts, $400 buying all new toner colors, new laser paper, and a bunch of postal stamps. There were a couple other small expenses. I had the money, I just hate it when I have to spend all of it at once. ugh. So, if you were thinking of ordering buttons, now would be a good time. I’d like to have a little extra cash before my trip east at the end of September.

Stuff that happened at my house this week:

-Paul and I ate the first tomoto from our garden. There are seriously few things tastier than standing in the garden barefoot and eating a freshly ripened sun warmed tomato. I planted lots of tomatoes because I’m going to can them to make soup in the winter.

-I have been picking blackberries from the tiny patch in our back yard and I plan to make jam out of them instead of pie. I always make pie, eat one piece, and then try to get other people to eat it because I’m just not a sweets person. I have all these scratches on my arms from picking blackberries and I worry that people will think I’m a cutter!

-We had two lovely folks staying in the guest cave for a few days. They just got back to the US from WWOOFing in New Zealand. You can check out their blog about their adventure here. On their last day they made us a great meal and then…

-OJ jumped up on the table to get attention/entertain us. We had this berry basket on the table with candy and weird toys left over from the symposium. There were 3 or 4 DumDum lollypops in it and OJ would pick them out with his paws and drop them on the table. Sometimes he would chew on the end of the stick, sometimes not. But, if you put the lollypops back in the basket he would fish them out again. What a silly cat!

-Paul has to leave for work at 6:30am and he always comes up stairs to hug me and give me a kiss goodbye. Today, he came up stairs as usual and when he  let go he grabbed something under my pillow…there was a Sharpie there. Then he told me the Sharpie Fairy must have came to visit. I checked my mouth to make sure I had all my teeth! My hair is getting long enough again to put it up with pens so I think one must have fallen out in bed. it still made me giggle this morning to think about.

-I decided to tweak Brainscan: Nine Stories and Brainscan: it’s complicated and release them as issue numbers later this year. Hooray for tiny zines that require me to do a lot of work. I’m a glutton for that.

-I went to the book store at the community college down the street to buy a pen and a new notebook. I’ve joined a group on facebook where we plan to write 15 minutes everyday in September. Let me know if you want to join. I plan on using it to work on the fiction stuff for the split zine I agreed to do. I was also thinking I could spend a week using that 15 minutes to write down recipes for the cookzine I have been meaning to do.

Speaking of cooking…I’m going to go think about what to make for dinner tonight. We got out Organics to You box yesterday and we have some many vegetables!

Vegan sausages

Last week I decided that I was going to try to make vegan sausages. I did a bit of internet researching and found this which really comes from here. But seeing as I am incapable of following directions or recipes and I couldn’t stick to measurements I made up my own and went a little nuts on fun spices. Jess really likes fennel and I don’t really cook much with it but I ground some up and put it in the sausage.

While I was grinding the fennel I realized why I don’t cook with much fennel. When I was a kid my dad would let us spice out own hamburgers. He would open up the spice cabinet and tell us we could put anything we would like in them and we would mix in ridiculous spice combination. Well, I think I must have used to much fennel and it caused some sort of aversion. Anyway, looking back it was pretty rad for my dad to let us experiment with spices, but, on with my vegan sausages.

I used pinto and navy beans cooked from scratch. first.

more ingredients. It is sort of funny that I rarely meansure anything yet I really enjoy the cooking show aesthetic of little bowls of things.

Vegan sausage mash

before the wrap up

all wrapped up and ready to steam

Then you put them in the steamer... hey, this reminds me of tamales...mmm tamales. I should make those again.

While the sausages steamed I cooked some beets and parsnips...mmm parsnips. There's some olive oil and thyme was the prime spice.

I have two secret ingredients and one of them in vegenaise. This is a dressing made with a vegenaise base and some spices, primarily thyme and thined out with water. I also really like this bowl.

I also made an onion suace with carmelized onions and some garlic that I roasted in the oven to put over the sausage.

after steaming I grilled the sausages and thought about how I need to make them with the liquid being beer next time. mmm, beer.

So, jess has nailed down not only my palate in relation to wine but also my palette in relation to the spices I use when cooking and what wine would go with it. Damn, it is awesome to have my very own sommelier! She has often paired my foods with wines from the Montsant region of Spain. There has not been a single wine from there that I haven’t liked. Now I need to do more research. Gee, thanks Jess for giving me yet another expensive snobish taste to add to beer, coffee and writing utensils.

Anyway, on with the meal

yum!

vegan “rabbit” stew? yes please!

My housemate Dan is rad and a good cook. He’s not vegan, he’s an omnivore, but he took an alpine rabbit stew and made it vegan! (WARNING: there is a rabbit carcass. If this would be gross or offensive do not click!) It turned out awesome!

So, while Paul kneaded some bread dough and I made seitan from scratch Dan went out in the cold and the rain to find juniper berries. Wow, what are we some sort of hippie house?

Anyway, Dan documents his Alpine Rabbit Stew on his blog here. Including our happy faces eating it up. There are no seitan carcasses, I promise!

infused Vodka and a future cook zine…

I don’t know what it is about the cold weather that makes me want to drink liquor. I’m generally not a big fan of the stuff. I’m a craft beer geek but sometimes mixing drinks is fun! Especially when I can create my own weird concoctions!  I bought a half gallon of decent vodka last week and have been infusing them like a mad scientist!

The Habenero is great for Bloody Marys along with olives, cocktail onions, peperocinis, pickled okra or any other sort of brined good-ness. 2 shots served in a pint glass with chopsticks to test your drinking dexterity skills! I like my Bloody mary like and alcoholic salad!

I made some with strawberries picked from my yard that I have had the freezer. Strawberry Vodka can be put in soy milk for something like an alcoholic strawberry Qwick! Tonight I put some in fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and pomegranate juice that I made Paul squeeze out of the pom!

I had some Earl Grey vodka with ginger ale or orange juice, ginger vodka with juice. It’s fun! And even when I make a bad one I just have paul drink it! I like how all the bottles sit on my window sill and looks pretty.

I have decided to do a cook zine. I think I’ll call it “recipes are tools of the patriarchy” I’m not a fan of following recipes… I’m sort of bad at following directions when I think I have a better idea. I read at once point that recipes were created by women for men who were going to war and needed to know how to cook things. So, maybe recipes are more likely tools of war. I can’t really substantiate this claim and I don’t feel like doing the research, I’m just going to believe it and hope other people do too!

It will basically be a guide to stuff you can put together that taste good and I’ll just write “to taste” after everything! I acknowledge that baking does need specific amount but I’m not a baker! I’ll leave that up to my sister. I’m planning a “choose your own soup adventure” where you pick different veggies and food from different columns and get mystery soup!

Seeing as I plan for this to also be a zine I’ll write stories about recipes and people who taught them to me. Like my garlic bread recipe that a boy named Richard taught me. One time we were making out in the kitchen and I was sitting on the stove. Somehow the stove turned on while were were kissing and all of the sudden my ass was getting warm! Luckily I jumped off the stove before my pants caught on fire! We all have cooking and kitchen stories like the time in Columbus, Ohio where I drunkenly made several pounds of french fries in a fry daddy while simultaneously listening to AVAIL and  playing “keg hockey” with an empty beer key across the the wet kitchen floor. Good times!

So, as I have been busy with orders and Paul has been off work since it is the slow season. He’s been playing Metroid and we have been watching the Might Boosh for about the 3rd time. I keep threatening to make Paul my house husband. I actually sort of need someone to clean up after me when I get this busy.

Tonight we had leftover risotto from the other night plus roasted veggies and unphotogenic tofu.

sun dried tomatoes, pine nuts and mushroom risotto.

roasted veggies before I roasted them: brussel sprouts, carrots, squash and cauliflower plush herbs.

I guess that’s about it for now. I think I think I’m going to go make myself what I have been calling a Canadian Toddy with Canadian Whiskey and maple syrup instead of honey. Then I’m going to call it a day and read a book instead od staring at this computer screen!

Pie!

Tonight I made seitan steaks from scratch with mashed red potatoes and mushroom gravy… I ate it too fast to take photos.

Paul got up from his nap and walked into the kitchen as I was rolling out a pie crust on my new counter top using my great grandmother’s pie crust recipe. He laughed and said “You have been waiting to make a pie on that countertop haven’t you?” it was true!

I couldn’t figure out what to put for the steam holes for the pie so I went with the obvious.

This is a blackberry pie with blackberries from my yard.

fresh backberry cobbler time!

Just some quick pictures in between my busyness.

We have a tiny blackberry patch in the corner of our yard so I picked a bowlful

mmm fresh blackberries

and made two tiny blackberry cobblers!

And they were fantastic! Just the right amount of sweet and just the right amount to eat.

Vegan Eggplant Parmesan

Jess missed out tonight! I had my first attempt at vegan eggplant parmesan and it turned out sooooo good! It was loosely based on this recipe… but you know how I feel about recipes. They are tools of the patriarchy and pretty much look at them one and tread them as guidelines

Sundtrack:

Buck-Back in Buck

The Dead Milkmen- Big Lizard in my Back Yard

Paul and I went big grocery shopping today. This usually involves us making a big grocery list and taking my two bike panniers and maybe a messenget bag. The we get to the store and fill a cart up with way too much stuff and then try to figure out how we are going to get it all home.

Our mother;s would be so proud of all the vegetables we eat... Paul's mom may question all the beer we drink but whatever.

Then we struggle with how to get it home. we even had a new mop this time

we even had a mop to take home up hill and into the wind. great.

Paul understand the value of a stocked kitchen and when Fred Meyer was out of a few things we needed we went home to drop everything off and walk to New Seasons for the rest. Where we found a wine tasting and tropical fruit tasting… which was weird because it was gloomy and started pouring rain on us as we walked home.

Paul bought a Eggplant and I decided to cook it. I made eggplant parmesan. It went a little like this:

Chopped an eggplant int 3/4 inch slabs, salted them, wrapped them in a tea towel and put a cutting board and a crock pot on top of them to press the water out.

Chopped up an onion, garlic, a few mushrooms, two roma tomoatoes, some green and black olives, a bunch of basil, pine nuts and put them in little containers as if I was on a kitchen show. Sauteed the onions until they browned up, added the garlic, mushrooms and olives and a bit of basil.

Ground up some stuffing mix in my cuisinart to stuffing dust and placed it on a plate with some vegan parm and spices mixed in. Put some more vegan parm and flour on another plate and put soymilk in the next one.

I added 1 1/2 diced roma tomato to the onion mix and let it cook down. Then I added about 3/4 cup of red wine. It’s a cheap Cabernet Savionion that I drink when Jess isn’t around to chastise me for my wine choices. It has a giant chicken on it and reminds me of Chickenboo from the Animaniacs… that’s a bad reason to drink a wine but it is innocuous and decent so shut up! I was cooking food and listing  to the Dead Milkmen, what do you want?

I let the wine boil down. In my Cuisinart I and added pinenuts, almost all of the basil (saved a bit for bruschetta), olive oil, a clove of garlic, salt, pepper and a bit of vegan parm to my cuisnart and presto! I had pesto! Put that in a a small pan to heat a bit.

I added what I thought was too much tomato paste to the onion, wine, tomato mixture but it ended up being pefect with the wine.

I umwrapped the eggplant slabs and dusted off the salt, dipped them in soy milk on both sides, then the flour/parm mix, then the soy milk again, then the stuffing dust and spices mix and tossed them in a skillet with olive oil and cooked on both sides til brown.

I grated up some Follow Your Heart vegan mozzerella cheese, waited for the eggplant slabs to cook. Placed them on a cookie sheet as they finished, put a bit of the vegan mozzerella on each, threw them in the oven under the broiler.

At this point Paul came in to be my bruschette man.. He chopped up some baguette slices and put them in the toaster over. I mixed the rest of the basil with the rest of the roma tomatoes, some vegan parm salt pepper and olive oil. Paul pulled the toasty things out of the toaster oven, rubbed the bread with a clove of fresh garlic and tossed the tomato basil mixture on top.

I pulled the eggplant out of the oven with the melty cheezy stuff and put them on plates, devoured two pieces of bruschetta before we even got to the table! The maranara was perfect, the pesto was amazing. It is rarely that I feel like I out do myself  but this was one of those times. yum!

yummy bruschetta!

vegan eggplant parmesan!

I am now suffering food coma and drinking a fancy winter beer. Today has been good.