Fingers in too many pies and too many hats on my head…..

I turned 35 last week! It’s the Presidential Birthday (American civics lesson: as stated in Article 2, Section 1 of the US constitution the president must be at least 35 years old.) I don’t want to be President. It seems like a shitty and stressful job. I already have too many “jobs” that are stressful enough, but at least I don’t have to deal with congress.

Anyway, I’m so over trying to organize birthday parties. They end up being too much work with too much expectations. I just went out for a yummy vegan meal with Paul at Portobello and had a drink with some friends.

But there are lots of other things going on!

The Portland Button Works distro and shop are humming along beautifully.

Derek and I released the 6th episode of Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast! We talk about what we have been up to for the past year as well as the upcoming International Zine Month.

Derek and I also organized a 31 Days of International Zine Month with zine related things for you to do each day! What? Last year I wore a zine shirt for each day. How was I going to top that?

We also just put together the Portland Button works Quarterly. It is part zine/part catalog for PBW. It looks like this and is available free with every Portland Button Works order, free at the shop and other places around Portland, or a self addressed stamped envelope sent to the shop.

Two color risograph print, 8 pages.

Let’s see…paul and I have also been working in the garden but I haven’t been taking photos. They all just seem to look pretty similar as years past. I’m working on a new zine to have out by the symposium. I just need to sit down and work on it. I’m also working on the Portland Zine Symposium again and getting stoked for all the guests we are going to have!

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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

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 really need a better name for this than “squash bake”

Right now I just finished eating some left over enchiladas  that are pretty yummy. Paul and I just got back from the grocery store and there aren’t many things that make me as happy as having a fully stocked kitchen. I even bought some cans to make some jam with the strawberries and blackberries from the yard that we have been stockpiling in the freezer.

Anyway, the other night I made a sort of casserole type thing. First I made saffron rice and placed that in the bottom of a dish.

Then I tossed some summer squash and tomatoes with olive oil and herbs and stuck them on top to look pretty.

pretty colors!

It looked pretty much the same when it was cooked.

I think I would add more liquid if I was to do it again, maybe some broth or use juicier tomatoes, maybe?

I served it with a warm bean salad with herbs and greens from the yard, some lightly steamed carrots chilled with mint from the yard, and an iceberg lettuce salad ( I know! I never eat iceburg lettuce, but my mom gave it to me) I also drank it with a really good ginger pale ale.

We STILL haven’t had any ripened tomatoes in our yard! It has been such a cloudy summer that the tomatoes don’t know what to do. We have lots of green beans and yellow squash so far and I see a nice pumpkin that is ripening. I had to cut down the skeletons of the daisies today, that’s always a hit to the end of summer. I have been making plans for moving some plants around in my yard when it cools down a little more.

 

 

vegan food photos

My first adventure with puff pastry! I made a creamy mushroom stuff for the middle.

pastie dough made with vodka rules!

pasties with mushroom gravy

More handmade vegan sausages with red bell pepper sauce

tofu scrambled with biscuits and gravy.

Creamy mushroom stuff with onions, thyme and a bit of vegan creamer or even vegan sour cream! Good as a sauce or a filling for puff pastry or ravioli or whatever.

tofu ricotta type filling with spinach, onions, those frozen cubes of basil a bit of lemon juice and the glorious vegenaise. This stuff is a great filling for lasagna, ravioli or tossed in with pasta shells and throw some maranara on top.

I’m horrible at following, writing or looking at recipes. I need to get better at that for the cook zine I’m working on.

Yup, my phone was stolen but cooking in my kitchen has been great.

If you call me I more than likely won’t answer my phone. That’s just how it is and it’s not because I see who calls and decide not to pick it up. I just have a tendency to leave it around the house, in the kitchen, in my bag, at the bottle of my panniers, on the coffee table in the livingroom, in the pocket of the pants I wore yesterday, etc. Sometimes I won’t even look for it for a day and lose it in the house only to find it when I make Paul call it so I can listen for the vibration since I hardly even have the ringer up.

Well, this happened Friday night. I went around the house listening for my phone that I can usually find and then I gave up. Yesterday morning I checked my online billing only to find that there were some weird calls that I can’t remember and some data usage and text messages. They were all 1 minute or 2 and nothing was outside my plan. I had to run and errand for my sister and scrambled to find out how to suspend my phone and deal with it later.

I wracked my brain to figure out how they hell my cell phone got stolen when I hadn’t even left the house! My sister came over Thursday and I had it then. The only thing I can think of is that I left it on  my porch and someone swiped it from there. jerks! To make matters worse my PayPal debit card went missing a few days before that. Stupid Mercury retrograde ruining everything!

On the brighter side I have been making kick ass food since redoing my kitchen except I keeping forgetting to take pictures of it. We have been feasting on tamales and zucchini bread for the past few days. The tamales have two fillings both have a base of onions and peppers from the yard mixed with coriander. One has tvp mixed with taco seasoning and the other has black beans, tomatillo salsa, cuban oregano and beet tops. They were both really hot but super tasty!

I also made a really great lentil soup. My lentil soups always seem to taste better the second day. I also made a layered pasta bake with tomato sauce on the bottom, a mixture of crumbled tofu, vegenaise, chopped spinach and bow tie pasta with a vegan nutritional yeast cheese sauce on top. I ate almost half the pan myself! I utilized the abundance of tomatoes in our yard but picking a bunch of romas, chopping them in half and putting a bit of olive oil, salt, peper, parsley and oregano on them and broiling them. Then I made some penne, chopped some kalamata olives and mixed them with pine nuts, a bit of olive oil and spices. When the penne was done I mixed up the olive mixture and the broiled mushy tomatoes and poured it all on top like a sauce.

Jess and I had a vegan food and wine pairing night and on the way home from buying ingredients I decided to pick up fallen fruits to make a crumble. I can’t believe how many people have fruit trees and just let the fruit fall and rot! So much so that there are even organizations that help get people and fruit together like Urban Edibles. There are even maps and tips about ethics. I just grabbed a pears and apples that had fallen on the sidewalk on my way home and mixed them with blackberries from my back yard and a tiny bit of sugar.

While waiting for Jess to get off work Paul and I sliced some olive cibatta , lightly heated some olive oil with garlic in it, dropped it in a bowl, poured some balsamic in it and dipped the bread.

Anyway, Jess and I had been thinking about this meal for awhile: Red and yellow peppers stuffed with quinoa, pine nuts, tomatoes and herbs plus roasted vegetables, marinated tempeh and a tofu cream sauce. There were two bottle of wine but really, they were insignificant compared to how great the meal was.

3 different kinds of potatoes, squash, corn, yams, beets, onions, herbs from the garden and a bit of my secret ingredient that always makes roasted veggies better. This is my perfect fall dish, my comfort food.

What you can't see is that I also added slices of avacado to the side with cabernet finishing salt.

The tempeh was marinated in something that I’ll never be able to recreate but it was good. The sauce tied everything together and it can also probably never be recreated. It went something like this: silken tofu in a food processor, olive oil, cayenne pepper, parsley, lemon juice. We all sort of sat around Rhapsodizing about the food that we didn’t pay much attention to the wine. Oh well. I remember I liked the first bottle we drank better than the one we had with the meal.

Lots of good cooking days almost makes up for having my phone stolen. I ordered a new phone but won’t have it until next week. It has always been better to e-mail me anyway. I can also chatted 9or video chatted!) with on Google and Skyped as alexwrekk.

Time to get out of bed and get to work. I have and IPRC shift this evening and the cats seem to be sleeping on their back which usually means rain.

Funeral Potatoes, record organization, playing bike mechanic…

So, I veganazied Funeral Potatoes the other night. Funeral Potatoes is a Mormon casserole that I guess they make for funerals. My friend Mox taught me out to make them but they are dairy overload lots of sour cream, cheese, milk and cream of mushroom soup. ugh. Not to mention the corn flakes on top which just sort of makes casseroles creepy.

I got to portabella mushroom soup, a half tub of better than cream cheese, a red onion, some vegan mozzerella and a ton of frozen hashbrowns. I get a certain perverse pleasure in veganizing things sometimes. It didn’t taste the greatest and let’s be honest? How can you really photograph a casserole and make it look awesome? But it was edible and filling.

hooray for casseroles.... and stuff.no, really horray for casseroles and stuff

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.

dude-pasta sucks but beer that wants you to worship the Goddess rules!

I generally have an aversion to pasta. I think it has to do with living with too many punks, bachelors and dudes who think that they can dump some pasta in a pot filled with water and leave the room while it boils, drain  it and dump half a can of cold Prego on top and call it food.

*Shivers*

I think that food is something that needs love and nurture like everything else in your life. I mean think about it, the food is what sustains you. If you don’t care about what you make and put into you body then what does that say about you?

Today I wanted pasta.I don’t have a preference but Paul likes thin pastas and angel hair so that’s what we had. We had some bottles of pasta sauce but I wanted something different. So this is what I did. I put on the water and added salt to boil.

Funny side note: one time my sister and I were watching a cooking show and they kept talking about putting sea salt in the pasta water because it was supposed to taste like the sea. It has sort of become this joke between my sister and I about how your pasta water needs to taste like the ocean filled with seaweed and fish poop yum!

I sauteed some red onions with garlic in olive oil, red and orange pepper rings, mushrooms, ones fresh roma tomato, some capers, red wine vinegar, and kalamata olives. When the pasta was done I tossed some of the mix on top. It was fantastic!

pasta yum with vegan parm

Also, I haven’t had a beer in three days since I have been sick and the two fancy beers I bought on Sunday have been tauntung me every time I open the fridge!  I decided I would split one with Pal. We went for the Ninkasi Spring Reign.

Ninkasi Spring Reign

I love the stylized poppies on the label! Ninkasi Brewing was named after the Sumarian Goddess of beer, brewing and fermentation. I have read several books about this history of beer and brewing and she comes up often. She even has a song written about her that pretty much explains the process of brewing still. It is appropriate name for a brewery.

good beer is good.

So, you could call this a session beer because it is light .It doesn’t have a characteristly Northwest hoppy nose but what struck me was the malty back bone it had. It was very present and I enjoyed it.  It was enought to remind me that it’s not quite spring yet for the light bodied beers.

and also, when the beer bottle tells you to worship the Goddess how can you complain?

for the goddess Ninkasi

Paul’s at practice right now but it is Full Moon Dance Night even if we live in Portland and can’t see the moon. So, I’m going to go clear the dining room for dancing.

Recipes are tools of the patriarchy….

Today was a beautiful spring like day in Portland. Paul, Dan and I rode down to Southeast for Paul to look a guitars and Dan to look a yet another synth… I swear there are a dozen different ones in our basement! Paul ended up not getting a guitar but we did get food at Los Gorditos. We ordered a vegan burrito and a vegan Nacho with Soyrizo… we devoured the  and had no room for the burritos! Paul declared them the best vegan  nachos in Portland.

We walked around Southeast, stopped at the Bridgeport Ale House on Hawthorne for a pint and checked out records at Jackpot. I’m still on my 90’s punk kick but didn’t really find anything I was looking for. I did pick up the 45 of the The Cure Just Like Heaven. I’m stoked to have it as a 45 with Snow in Summer on the flip side. It was getting cold then so we headed home to North Portland since I didn’t have any gloves.

We got home and I found that my record has a skip… and it is even in the title track! drat! I made some buttons and about to watch some Dollhouse and Battlestar.

I rarely use recipes. If I do look at them it is to use them as guides…. I also don’t do a lot of baking which  I understand is more dependent on recipes. I remember reading years ago how the  first written recipes were made for men at war. The recipes were written down so that men knew how to cook when they were off killing people. I always thought it would be funny to write a cook zine called “recipes are tools of the patriarchy!”  for that reason.

So, here’s some more food pic. If you wanna know how to make something I might be able to give you a bit of instruction. But as my sister learned as well as my friend Jess now, you gotta use your own imagination for the rest.

dinner last night: stuffed pepper, zucchini bites and salad with avo-ranch

Theresa taught me how to make tamales last month and they were awesome with soyrizo in some and chilis and vegan chese in others.

Vegan gluten pot roast with mushroom carrot gravy and roasted veggies

camera phone photo of vegan alfredo made from coconut milk. yum!

asparagus and lentils.

Make your own polenta scramble and put it in a tortilla!

make your own hummus

Today was my first longish bike ride of the year clocking in at 15 miles. I’m sort of tired and my lips are a bit wind burt. Time to watch Dollhouse!