crack the plates

I finally took my pal Jeffrey’s advice and ordered the Tuesday vegan wings special at the Graveyard.  Beware: the friendly vegan bartender let me know that only two of the sauces are vegan, so do ask. Also, unlike the conventional chicken wings, there is no special Tuesday pricing. It’s around $9 for five wings and fries. Why no love, Graveyard?

Anyway, they were delicious and totally worth it. Our 20-lb baby girl Perl couldn’t get enough!

Go get ‘em!

One year ago today Nate & I emerged from a late-night study sesh in Dennis Hall to discover the world’s most adorable creature crouched under my car, worrying herself to pieces over the in-progress ice storm. Because she seemed house-trained/people-friendly and desperate, I swept her up into my arms and, shortly thereafter, our lives. (BAAAWW) To celebrate the first year, we gave her two extra scoops of cat food and lots of playtime with two of her favorites–Mr. Springy Foil Bow and Dr. Dental Floss. The latter is possibly her best-loved “toy”–every time she hears the rattle of the canister at teeth-brushing time she sprints into the bathroom and demands her own string.

Some of her other quirks include: snorting, snoring/wheezing, scratching everything (til one of us bellows “Hugs Time!” and she stops, fearing an embrace), getting in a box and planting, being a B, attacking her small bean friends Mr. Dog and Cow-Cow, hiding out in the shower, sticking her weird cat-arms through the holes in a particular laundry basket, and mauling mobile phones, especially while in speakerphone mode.

According to Unix, though, the best part of her birthday was the catnip binge. (Big thanks to Auntie Catherine for making it possible.) Photographic evidence as to why a run for public office is no longer an option:

Birthday kisses, Ra-ra.

First, the most important news: our katze Unix seems to be doing much better today than she has since the fleabath incident Sunday night. (Worrisomely, she’d put her appetite on hold and would mew loudly every time we touched her). She’s in fine furry form tonight, though, and is currently sitting in my lap encumbering my typing. And oh, how soft and flea-free her tortoiseshell fur is! (Alas, we’ll still be heading to the V-E-T in the morning.)

Tonight’s dinner was generously provided by friends N & J in celebration of Nate’s upcoming birthday. As a special surprise, they prepared some sushi–Nate’s favorite–with avocado, carrot, and cucumber. (I brought over the materials to make a quick miso–red miso paste by Westbrae, cellophane noodles from Jungle Jim’s, japanese-style firm tofu, two cloves of garlic sliced thin and some kombu kelp.) Observe the taller N coach the shorter one on the wily ways of sushi:

Those are taller N’s in the foreground (second picture). Little N…well, let’s just say he could do with a little more larnin’:

But hey, who am I to judge? I didn’t even try! On that note…

In the interest of full disclosure (because this blog ought not be about my triumphs only, but about my royal struggles too), I will admit that I f-ed up not one but TWO desserts tonight. I fail so comprehensibly so infrequently that it is quite marvellous that I was able to do it twice in one evening. Still, I admit: I ruined some rice pudding by using short-grain BROWN rice and not cooking it through; mere minutes after wiping the apron of this masterpiece, I whipped up some chocolate pudding that didn’t set because my arrowroot was so expired it had completely lost its potency. Oops?

Le sigh.

Hope you’ll check out tomorrow’s update on cooking for Peace Forum: butternut squash soup that isn’t (DUN DUN DUN) …pureed!!! Better yet, just come have lunch! Tomorrow’s talk: “One Hill at a Time: Supporting Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance at Al Tuwani.”

Too little time + not much of a taste for anything made lunch look anything but promising today. Until, that is, I happened upon an 8 oz container of Tofutti creme cheeze in our totally underused dairy drawer. Set to expire at the end of this month, I started to brainstorm…& recalled a lovely sandwich I used to eat on lunchbreaks & special occasions while working at Alon’s: “the Tuscany.” To make it, the line-cook slathers about three ounces of high-quality herbed goat cheese on either side of a ciabatta mini loaf, alternates layers of marinated roasted eggplant with sun-dried tomatoes, and tops it with fistfuls of arugula. Pretty charming, eh? So so unvegan.

My answer was an herbed creme cheeze of my own made of Tofutti and generous piches of ground garlic, organic basil, marjoram, & thyme from Frontier, a splash of Santa Cruz organic lemon juice and a little salt and white pepper. Whip this briefly with your hand mixer and then slather it on some delicious hearth-made bread (in our case, the last of Zingerman’s farm). Add some reconstituted sun-dried tomato pieces a dear friend kindly brought you back from Atlanta, where they’re available at a reasonable price, and then stuff some organic arugula on that mess. Ta-da, ta-die-for:

For dinner I made a simple take on a pad thai, based off of Isa’s recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance. As with the kale and tofu I made yesterday, the idea is basically to balance the flavor–here, you’ve got some tamarind concentrate (sweet, bitter), tamari (salty, pungent), unrefined sugar (sweet), and sambal oelek (spicy!). I sauteed the tofu with a lot of garlic, onion, and red peppers and japanese eggplant from the Saturday morning farmer’s market, see?:

And as a bonus, here’s a picture of the wickida Unixera protesting our closed-door policy:

Seriously, she just got a fleabath.

Love!