Today was a pleasant day. I presented the bulletin board I made yesterday on the flooding in Pakistan at Richmond Church of the Brethren:
Though I was disheartened at the general lack of awareness of the tragedy, I was overwhelmed with support, love, prayers, and encouragement. We collected $197 towards Church World Service (a cooperative ministry of 35 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations, providing sustainable self-help, development, disaster relief, and refugee assistance around the world). RCoB is definitely a place where, if you have a passion, people will support you. That’s how the charitable knitting group Loops of Love got such a strong following, and how the (computer) hardware co-op got started, too. I feel blessed to be a part of such a caring, service-oriented community.
I have a tendency to belittle myself & my accomplishments. I’m simultaneously great at lifting up others even as I tear myself down: for example, just today I took someone’s attempt at giving a meaningful compliment & turned it, in two sentences, into a paean to their awesomeness. So it was good to acknowledge that, had I not put this thing together, it would have been just my little $35 going towards the food package of rice, wheat flour, beans, sugar, cooking oil, tea and salt (basics for a family for a month). But because I had the courage to invite others in, $162 (and perhaps more) was also given. I hope I have the guts to do this sort of thing again in the future.
If you’re interested in giving to help repair lives caught in perhaps the single greatest natural disaster of our time (yes, more people affected than the South-East Asian tsunami & earthquakes in Kashmir & Haiti combined), I recommend Church World Service (obvies) or Doctors Without Borders. Either of those links go directly to the gift pages.
I made some fried green tomatoes to go with a lunch of left-overs:
Nope, not much to look at.
Some vegan mac-n-cheese, topped with Daiya:
In the afternoon Nate & I played Lord of the Rings Risk on the front lawn and drank my favorite Rogue, hazelnut brown nectar. Several friends passed by; it was nice to experience the ambient people noise, as there are generally very few opportunities for that sort of thing in Richmond.
For dinner I made another bhindi with perfect little green zebras.
A little while ago we went to see Nagini, our friend Patrick’s little lady lizard. Her name is actually Kudu and she’s a blue-tongued skink.
Under Nate’s skateboard at the old apartment:
I’m still too afraid to pick her up, but I ADORE her. I bring her watermelon (a seeming favorite) at every opportunity. Patrick’s aware of my ardor; he dropped off a key with a note saying he’d be out of town for a few days and that she wouldn’t really need to be checked on, but I might appreciate the key anyway.
Risk is kind of a long game so we had to finish up just before bed. I am the Risk master; Nate didn’t stand a chance. I did so well I had to start using the other “good” color pieces. Check out this army invading northward from Osgiliath:
Enough for now!
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Only a reworking of the first two frames of Dinosaur Comics can adequately express my frustration with myself right now:
T-Rex images owned by Ryan North/Dinosaur Comics/Qwantz.
So there you have it. It’s pretty freaking hard for me stay on top of my blog as of late! It’s probably harder to admit it, which is why I’m saying it with a post, in hopes that this will jar me from my inaction!
It’s mostly frustrating because some interesting things have happened that I want to tell you about. I mean, I only did one day of mid-June’s San Francisco trip, when I ate at so many awesome vegan restaurants! (Donuts with in-house-ground organic flour, for goodness’ sake!!) There was also a drag show a few weeks ago, and a couple recent trips to see my gorgeous BF Jina beena. I want to tell you the exciting bits!
But alas, the non-exciting parts have been dragging me down. As I anticipate yet another move, I once more find myself in that tight “in-between” place. Waiting, waiting, for things to happen, in the meanwhile, hesitant to put down any roots. I’m also languishing in this heat/humidity, but then again, who isn’t? Except for what’s been mentioned previously, not much punctuates these days of languid reading, drinking iced oolong, eating chilled watermelon, and generally assuming a couchant position as much as possible. And when the temperature in your house climbs towards the mid-90s, who in the hell wants to use a laptop as intended?
In the interest of getting you caught up (turning a new leaf? or is that too ambitious at this point? sigh), let’s have a bit of a camera dump from the past couple weeks, with commentary. Deal? Deal.
I made a vegan shepherd’s pie, which was phenomenal. I spread the mashed potatoes over the filling just before putting it in the oven to bake:
There is no recipe, but here’s roughly what I did: re-hydrated large chunk TVP, cooked in tamari, nutritional yeast, and pepper; cooled & roughly chopped the TVP; added it to home-made no-fat gravy; added an assortment of fresh chopped and steamed vegetables; poured it all into a casserole dish, covered with home-made mashed potatoes, baked. Sounds easy, right? It took a couple of hours in one of hell’s hottest rooms: my tiny, poorly ventilated, very dilapidated kitchen (with two working eyes on the stove).
Here’s the finished product:
Oh, cute story about the framing of this photograph. While I was in San Francisco, we dined at Millennium, SF’s chicest (read: simply most expensive) vegan restaurant. I called the waitress (seemingly pretty laid back) over to make a joke about the fact that my apricot-glazed portabella stack looked somewhat cheaply made. I pointed at the familiar threesome of just-so cut carrots, peas, and corn and teased, “This trio comes from a can, and it says VEG-ALL on the side!” Apparently she took herself more seriously than I did, because she didn’t get the joke, insisting the ingredients were harvested at the peak of freshness from local, organic ingredients. But she went one further, claiming that the chef meant the dish to be an “homage” to Southern cooking.
Uhhh…. are you laughing yet? I wish I had a picture of it to share with you, but suffice to say it looked nothing like the above. This desiccated morsel with hardly any of the advertised apricot glaze, sitting dumbly atop stiff, flavorless mashed potatoes and the inspid trio of carrots, peas and corn, was the furthest thing from “Southern cooking”. Just to confirm that she did mean Southern US (rather than Southern CA?) I shared that I was from the South, the deep south, northwest Georgia, in fact. Undeterred, she claimed “the South” as well–Bloomington, Indiana.
Hm.
Sorry, Millennium chefs. That dish was the furthest thing from the cooking I grew up with and loved, and you’d do your otherwise highly competent wait staff a favor by not trying to pass this disaster off as anything but. You know what, just scrap the damn dish. Everything else–appetizers, spirits, main courses, desserts–was superb!
Wow, side-tracked.
On the subject of a proper apricot barbeque glaze, though, here’s the first I made using Isa’s recipe from Veganomicon–and about ten fresh apricots! Thick, hearty, oozy, shiny:
Plated:
Would you believe I’m not a huge broccoli fan? Alas, it’s true. I had to cover mine in extra apricot sauce.
Earlier this month I went to see one of my favorite queens from season two of RuPaul’s Drag Race with Nate & Michael at the famous Union Cafe in Columbus Ohio. We had dinner at Indian Kitchen before the show. Complimentary papadums:
The view from our table.
Greasy snacks.
Michael’s lovely plate.
What is that you say, dear server? Complimentary aloo parathas, as well? Don’t mind if I do!
Sadly, we were the only ones in the place. Highly recommended! Try it next time you’re in Columbus, instead of the Taj Mahal (which is basically across the street).
Fireworks in the sky:
Fireworks on stage.
Gorgeous Columbus gal Nina West chides an extremely drunk Polish man.
Jujubee prepares!
Look at that body!
I am also in possession of an extremely embarrassing shot of Juju, but I’m choosing not to post it out of RESPECT! (E-mail me if desired.)
I made some orange cranberry scones on about three hours of sleep for church brunch. They were great. The best part was when an elderly member of the congregation asked for the recipe and where, exactly, to get soymilk.
I made a couple of dark-chocolate-bottomed peanut butter silk pies (with a couple teaspoons of agar-agar; recipes modded from Vegan with a Vengeance). Here’s one:
Sing with me now, isn’t she lovely?
Sorry if three pictures is overkill. I rarely bake.
Did I mention I have another cat, now? Her name is Perl, but Nate & I have been calling her Perlba recently (Perl+[goom]ba). She’s not much like a cat, actually. She was abandoned as a kitten & very likely orphaned, so she wasn’t socialized by/with other cats til adulthood. She didn’t learn how to drink water properly til a few months after she moved in, & she’s not yet totally clear on cleaning herself or using her claws, either. It’s sad. The upside is that she kind of acts like a dog, lolling on her back, showing her belly, never getting upset like a normal cat. She likes to sit on computers and in her raspberry box. She’s mostly looks up to her “big sister” Unix, but she eats waaaay too much.
I made the quintessential vegan summer food, The Grit’s vegan chicken salad. A hellish recipe, consisting of separately cooked tofu, gravy, home-made vinaigrette, and vegan mayo, apart from the ingredients in the actual chicken salad recipe. In short, the reason I make it once a year. This time I tripled the recipe so it’d last a week & we’d have enough to share.
And finally, a couple trips to see my lovely Jina Beena in Ann Arbor. I spent a fair amount of my mornings getting caffeinated at Zingerman’s:
A view of the cafe.
The best part was our picnic at Pickerel Lake. Jina is the queen of picnics!! We raided the People’s Co-op for our favorites: baba ghanoush, watermelon, peaches, and a new wonder, coconut milk ice cream!
Sorry the photo is a bit blurry. It’s hard to hold still when you’re witnessing such beauty.
A close-up of our Zingerman’s bread and assorted treats.
Okay, that’s enough for now! There’s a blue-tongued skink upstairs that needs a piece of watermelon! (No, really, I’m helping skink-sit.)
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