things are gonna change. i can feel it.

Classes started back up on the main campus today, which I just completely forgot about it. My office for the online school is on the edges of campus by the hospital where students dare not tread. I felt like some kind of intruder when I wandered over to the student center to get a burrito for lunch today - I got back to the safety of my office right quick and breathed a sigh of relief. Since I'm taking the year off of the grad program (and I'm done with classes and proposals and even undesirable colloquia), I have a long year ahead of me of not dodging dumbass undergrads on bikes and iPhones, and, now that the move is complete, I also no longer have to dodge dumbass facebook employees in downtown Palo Alto on their bikes and iPhones.

kteighty: one, generation 2.0: zero

that'll do

I have, for some time now, been considering the possibility of getting a pig tattoo to match my mom's pig tattoo. Darling, I know. So I was googling around last night to see what kinds of pig tattoos are out there, and I was a little surprised by what I found.

First of all, not that many people have pig tattoos. Or at least the ones that do are not the sort to post pictures on Flickr. I've decided this a good thing - there isn't some mad hipster rush on the pig tattoo (as there currently is on the finger mustache tattoo. seriously, go search Flickr).

Second of all, the Google image search 'pig tattoo' reveals pages, yes pages, of pictures of pigs with tattoos. As in, people brought in a professional tattoo artist to tattoo their pig. wtf, my friends? w.t.f.?

And, finally, this search for some reason yielded pictures of tattooed babies. I'm guessing the same people who thought it was a good idea to tattoo their pigs also though it was a good idea to tattoo their baby. Cuz, you know, that kid's skin isn't change at all or anything.

I, personally, am still not entirely resolved on the whole matter for myself. Picking a good spot is tricky, and picturing myself wrinkly and old with a faded, crumpled pig somewhere on my body just bums me out. But picturing myself as a hip young professional with a hip little pig on my wrist in honor of my dear mater makes me pretty happy. So, basically, I'll end up waiting until I'm the age my mom was when she got her tattoo. Or I'll just buy a pig and tattoo a picture of my mom on it. Either way.

to have and to hold in custody

last night the miso came bursting into the apartment after biking home from campus, completely out of breath, pale-faced, and immediately dashed to the window. his explanation: 'i just outran a cop'.

now, i'm not so concerned that my dearest one takes his life into his hands every time he gets on his bike with brakes that 'kinda work', and splits lanes, and will, on occasion, go flying through intersections with both middle fingers raised, and, on at least one occasion, will yell back at a truck driver (who is yelling at him for riding down the middle of the street) 'fuck you, sarah palin' (=right now, in our house, calling someone 'sarah palin' is just about as horrible an insult as you can hurl). none of this worries me so much. he wears a helmet, right? no, what worries me is that the 'I just outran a cop' statement (and furtive, nervous glancing out the blinds) was followed by one simple word: 'again'.

broadcast nihilism

watching biggest loser and america's next top model on back-to-back nights somehow cancels out any warped body image I may gain from either show. it's a television programming miracle.

if only gossip girl was immediately followed by an anne of green gables rerun on PBS.

I came, I taught, I felt a small sense of pride

There a lot of reasons I like teaching Latin to high schoolers. I like that it takes me back to my happy place of taking Latin in high school (wow, that is a totally lame happy place), I like that I know what the heck I'm talking about, and I really like the age group. They're old enough to be within the grasp of emotional maturity, but still young enough to respect authority, to think that I know everything, and to absorb all the dumb stuff I say in class.

Case in point, I have a thing for the paradigm of the second person singular pronoun, tu. It just makes me giggle. And my students were well aware of this fact. So aware, in fact, that today I received the following gift from one of my students:



Yes, that would be a needlepoint of the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus, bordered by the paradigms for ego and tu. and the first Latin phrase my students ever learned. How can you doubt your career choice when this kind of thing shows up in the mail?

kapow

The video itself is pretty amusing, but I'm more fascinated by the resemblance of the interviewer to swellner.

the phantom photo booth

One of the new hip things to have at your wedding reception is a rented photo booth for your guests to take pictures. The photos are definitely awesome (just check out the recent pics on merlinmann's flickr stream), but to rent an actual photo booth is scads of money. money that could be spent on booze. and booze is really the secret to great photos.

But I do still like the idea of letting your friends and family take pictures of themselves (especially if you leave them a whiteboard for personal messages...), so I have been hunting around the web for some DIY options. The easiest solution would be to set up a laptop with mac's photo booth ready to go and use the apple remote to 'release the shutter'. There's a nice little app called remote buddy that will let you program the apple remote to do just that. But then I started thinking, do I really want to leave my laptop sitting unattended? I would be a basket case.

Enter option two, a wireless shutter release for my D40. I could just set the camera up on a tripod, provide some height guidelines and people could snap their own photos while maintaining a very comfortable distance from the equipment. I could set the camera to 'burst' mode and basically achieve the same multiple shot effect that you get in a booth.

I'm still left with the tricky problem of potentially inebriated guests (particularly those sneaky plus-ones who have not yet been completely vouched for and can't hold their free liquor very well) around my expensive toys. I'm also realizing that setting up a space for a make-shift photo booth at our venue could be pretty tricky - but I'm not admitting defeat yet. If my Doppelganger Ellen Page looks this adorable in a photo booth, it clearly bodes well for my own wedding day photo booth potential.

in love with letters

The miso and I have a new deal. Whenever he talks about academic/job/livelihood stuff, I get to talk about wedding stuff. Top of the list right now is save the date cards. I was surfing the tubes tonight and am currently inspired by this gem from Smock Paper:



I think what I like most about it is the lack of any graphics or design. It's just letters. And, what with being academic sorts who translate dead languages all day, the idea of an invitation with nothing but words on it in a cool font sounds pretty fitting. I'm also digging Smock because they use bamboo paper and are a small letterpress company.

I found smock through my other letterpress crush, bellafigura. The Tender is the Night design is just lovely.



Not that any of this gets me closer to deciding on save the date cards. But I now have even more things to add to the binder. So that's a small triumph, right?

alliteration nation

Me and the miso are moving to the mountains. He will be my mountain man and I will be his mountain momma. It will be a two-storied, two-bed, two-bath, two-car garaged, too hot to handle home. Woot.

And I will post more entries on a regular basis. I promise. So long as the electricity doesn't go out for too long or the dish for the internet isn't overpowered by bushes and weeds or the snow in the winter doesn't freeze the pipes and I'm forced to sell my lappy in order to get a room at the four seasons. Barring all that, I'll post more.

The move happened as all moves should - our friend from the department and his wife are moving to LA and passed along our names to his landlord. I'm pretty much totally jazzed. It's a house. As in, no more 'Apt #' 'Unit F' 'Number 4' after my street address. I am the street address. Well, kind of. Apparently getting packages up at our mountain retreat is a little tricky, so we got a PO Box here on campus. But at the very least my credit card statements will go to a one-line street address. Welcome to adulthood.

While the amazing scenery, gazebo and wrap-around porch will all be lovely, I think I'm most excited about adding the words 'upstairs, downstairs, laundry room, and dishwasher' to my domestic vocabulary. As in, 'Hey lovey, when you come upstairs after you're all done in the laundry room, could you run the dishwasher?' Note that my fantasy world also involves the miso engaged in all household chores. I think I'm in the hammock drinking a beer and eating chips while all that happens indoors.

On the weddin' side of things, I'm also excited to spend 'the year of the engagement' in a proper house with the miso. As odd as it sounds, I couldn't picture myself addressing save the date cards in our current apartment or even keeping my wedding dress there. And, on the superficial weddin' side of things, the new place has the counter space to hold a kitchenaid mixer and le creuset casserole dish.

The house also has some good marital mojo since our friends moved in right around when they got engaged and spent the first few years of their marriage there. And there still together, so that, you know, bodes well, right? All I know about the last girl in our current apartment was that she moved out when she got married. That would be bad marriage mojo. Or marriage juju. Not quite sure how all that works.

In any event, we're moving up to the woods and I could end up with lots of you-live-really-far-away-down-a-gravel-road-so-no-I'm-not-stopping-by-to-play-wii free time to keep the bloggy blog running along smoothly. I might even have the time to DIY the whole reception. Who wouldn't love a hand-knitted sachet for their jordan almonds? Actually, I'll just spend all that time looking at websites that detail the weddings of artists and graphic designers, become jealous and mildly inspired, and then remind myself that people usually just throw the invites out and remember the booze more than the centerpieces.

happened so fast, had me a blast

Summer has ended. Classes have started. And suddenly all that free time I just had (which I somehow couldn't fill with dissertation writing) is coming to an end like all those crappy summer reality shows. Oh, Stan, will you be the next HSM star?

In an effort to make my life easier this first week back to class, I actually prepared food on Sunday that I could eat all week. Looks like that subscription to Real Simple finally paid off. I blended some hummus and cut up veggies to have as a go-to snack for the week, and I also baked a banana coffee cake to get me and the miso through the doldrums of cereal and toast for breakfast. again. The coffee cake was so easy and so yummy, that I decided it was worth pasting below (compliments, as usual, go to the fatfree vegan blog. i've decided to trust all the 'kid friendly' recipes as 'miso friendly').

1 tablespoon flax seeds, ground
4 tablespoons warm water
1/4 cup turbinado sugar (I just used brown sugar)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup soy yogurt
1/3 cup vanilla soymilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup agave nectar
1 cup white whole wheat flour (or whole wheat pastry flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 bananas

Preheat the oven to 375F and oil a pie pan or an 8-inch square baking dish.

Mix the ground flax seeds with the warm water and set aside to thicken.

Mix the turbinado sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Combine the soy yogurt, soymilk, vanilla, and agave nectar in a bowl. Add the flax mixture.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour the soy yogurt mixture into the flour mixture and stir just until combined. Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan and spread to cover the bottom. Slice the bananas and place the slices over the batter. Sprinkle with half of the cinnamon-sugar. Spread the remaining batter over the bananas. Sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon-sugar. Bake for 25 minutes, or until cake appears set in the middle. Allow to cool for a few minutes before cutting into 6 slices and serving.

check yes

my crush is on the brink of becoming a real relationship. The event coordinator not only emailed me back but sent a proposal AND an hour-by-hour breakdown of the entire event, from the welcome lemonade to the palate cleansing sorbet to the open dancefloor. he likes us, he really likes us.

while my mind was reeling with dollar signs and I started to think of our friends in terms of their 'per person cost value' (hmm..is he really worth three drinks and a slice of cake?), I took frugal comfort in the miso's obsession with typography. I'm not going to leak any prototypes, but the boy has designed a pretty kickass save the date card and the most beautiful website ever. he even managed to avoid the 'kteightyandfastmiso2009.weddingchannel.com' url. I knew he was a keeper.

so this post is really just a shout out to my truly significant other. I am practically giddy with anticipation for the wedding invite he'll design in zapfino. oh the ligatures our names will create!

for those of you out there also interested in taking the DIY approach, check out www.sweetpenelope.com. It's an SF based company that will create and then send a wedding invite template on a disc, which you can then use to print out the invites at home. They can also just print the invites for you, but where's the fun in that?

a lovely soup

It is admittedly a bit too hot in el palo alto right now for soup, but this one was good enough not to notice. I halved the recipe, but I think the full recipe would yield a nice amount for leftovers.

North African Chickpea and Kale Soup
(from fatfreevegan blog)


1 large onion, chopped
2 carrots, sliced or diced
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8-1/4 teaspoon chilli powder or cayenne
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
generous pinch saffron, lightly crushed
2 bay leaves
1 3-inch cinnamon stick
3 cups cooked chickpeas (or 2 cans, drained and rinsed)
8 cups vegetable broth (or water plus bouillon)
1 large bunch kale, thick center ribs removed and chopped (at least 8 cups)
about 2 cups water
salt to taste

Spray a large saucepan with olive oil spray and heat it. Add the onion and carrot and cook over medium-high heat until the onion begins to brown (about 5 minutes). Add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the spices, including bay leaves and cinnamon stick, and cook, stirring, for another minute. Add the chickpeas and stir to coat them with the spices. Pour in the 8 cups of vegetable stock, bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the chopped kale and stir. If necessary add water to cover the kale and cook until it is tender, about 10-25 minutes, depending on how cooked you like your kale. Check frequently to see if it is becoming dry and add water as needed. Add salt to taste and serve.

If only event coordinators worked on commission.

I received a phone call today from a bridal shop out here in the Bay Area. This was the same one I called a couple weeks ago to get a price on the cupcake dress. The same girl I talked to then (who hunted down the best deal for me and called me back within fifteen minutes) called me today to let me know the store was having its big 15% discount this weekend. Oh, Audra, you must have a vacation to Mexico on your agenda in the near future.

The event coordinator of the place where we want to have the whole affair (and spend the majority of our money) is acting like the apathetic teenage boys we all got crushes on in high school. When he writes, he just seems so into the wedding and eager to plan it, but then he takes weeks (yes, weeks) to respond our emails. These are also notably emails which I draft for days and ask the miso to approve of before I send. 'Do I sound too eager? Too pushy? Will he still like us?' I think Seventeen magazine would inform me at this point that 'he's just not that into you' and tell me to move on. But, just like a teenage girl, I am ready to believe in the impossible - that our dream venue will come true and Lukka really is just busy planning other weddings (and slow food coop somethingorother. how dreamy).

While I wait him out I might just start visiting bridal shops and soaking up the attention and strong sales pitches. 'I do look fantastic in this dress! And we could hem the train! I would love to try on the veil!'

Sigh.

in a city of the future, it is difficult to concentrate

I happened upon this little gem on the SUV parked in front of my apartment. I'm officially nauseated by living in Silicon Valley.

free food freefall

One of the main reasons I decided to be vegan again was because I knew I would be healthier as a vegan than a vegetarian. This logic tends to blow some minds, but the past couple weeks have shown that I might just be onto something. I think I can say that in any dining environment, the vegan option (if there is one) will always be more nutritious than the vegetarian option.

Case in point, while back in Atlanta I had brunch at a little bakery that featured one pretty obvious vegan choice: tofu scramble. The vegetarian options, while plentiful, were loaded with cheese or butter: grilled cheese, omelette, grits. Not even a hint of protein in any of them. I'm beginning to find this true of most situations. Faculty meeting vegetarian option: veggie supreme pizza. Vegan option: soy cheese pizza. Soy, even in fake cheese form, still has more nutritional merit than standard cheese. Restaurant by parent's house veggie option: vegetable plate (with lots of butter-soaked vegetables); vegan option: black bean patty burger. Do you see where I'm going here? When a restaurant is forced to make a vegan option, they immediately go for the legumes, which are probably one of the best sources of iron and protein. Vegetarian seems to just mean vegetables and cheese.

This little epiphany came at personal cost to me. While in Atlanta and even when I got back home, I've been a lazy vegan. The new employee training I went to on Monday featured a catered lunch, and even though I had a lovely hummus wrap in my bag, I still ate the veggie option: grilled eggplant with mozzarella on focaccia bread with chips and a cookie. Cost: zip. Nutritional value: zip. And even last night out of respect for a really good restaurant, I had a bean salad with cheese and risotto with cheese. (Oh, Casey Affleck, if I promise to sit through the rest of 'The Assassination of Jesse James' will you forgive me?) But I've been feeling my lazy vegan ways. I've been exhausted all week and had zero energy thanks to the small amount of protein and iron I've been getting.

So I am back on the healthy vegan wagon. We had polenta with black beans and stewed tomatoes for dinner tonight and I'm making it my mission to whip up some hummus tomorrow and generally get back into trying out new vegan recipes.

i guess he does deserve an emmy

I don't know if it's my penchant for musicals or Doogie Howser, but I LOVE Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Seriously, go buy it off iTunes. I promise it is worth it. If only for Neil Patrick Harris' shoulder dance halfway through 'Laundry Day'.

i heart hotdogsladies

A string of entertaining NPR summaries from Merlin Mann's (hotdogsladies) Twitter (in which he confesses that he, too, listens to NPR eight hours a day):

"Prairie Home Companion: a gentle amble through 2 hrs of reminders why most Americans despise poems, theater, and harmonizing in fifths."


"Next 'On the Media:' Bob kicks his slippers at the web for 10 minutes. Because he's definitely not terrified of it. Edited. By. Brook."


"This American Life. Act I. 'Bet You Didn't See THAT Coming.' A Producer. Talks like me. Yo La Tengo. Two unexpected twists. Act II..."


"Later, on All Things Considered, Robert Siegel talks with a water fountain about how bear markets impact the silent objects we drink from."


"Up next on Morning Edition, our new 112-part series from producer, Jay Allison: 'Old Black Ladies Cry While Someone Fingerpicks a Guitar.'"


NPR reminds us how personally rewarding it can be to empathize with interesting poor people for as long as eight minutes.


Ah, it's funny because it's true.

we're going to get dressed for success

Wedding planning insanity, post number two: the wedding dress

Ah, the wedding dress. It presents something of a wedding planning conundrum. On the one hand, you only wear it for one day. Really only about six hours of that day. On the other hand, you will have pictures hanging in your house and your relatives' houses for all to see of you in that dress for the rest of your life. What is a girl to do?

Well, a girl like me totally lucked out and not only fits into her mother's wedding dress but actually looks pretty good in it (well, once we nixed the puffy sleeves and took out the full skirt and lowered the neckline). But despite the magical moment between mother and daughter, I did still feel a nagging in my brain for the 'wedding dress experience'. I wanted to try on dresses and stand in front of a big mirror with my mom and friends sitting behind me on a couch, getting sentimental when the bridal consultant puts a veil on me.

So while I was home for the past week, I did just that. My friends and I had a total blast at two different bridal shops in the ATL (Kellys' Closet and La Raines), and my mom and I tried to contain our 'how much?!' gasps at the bridal shop at Saks Fifth Avenue. I highly recommend the experience to all would-be brides. I think knowing that I wasn't seriously shopping for a dress made the whole thing so enjoyable - there was no must.find.the.dress stress.

But then I found the dress. The one that made me smile nonstop, the one I couldn't stop thinking about, the one that my mom and all my friends went 'aw' when they saw it. It was the most ridiculous dress ever - a giant cupcake-style dress that made me feel stunning with a dash of whimsy. And, as it is with all wedding dresses, it was just about as unpractical as a dress could be. Far too fluffy and formal for the casual outdoor wedding we're planning. Far too expensive for where the dress fell on my list of wedding-budget priorities. And far too frilly for the miso - I think he would have heart failure when I rustled down the aisle in all my silk shantung glory.

The dress also didn't meet my two requirements for any element of this wedding: no stress and no waste. This dress was definitely both. Figuring out where to buy it, where to alter it, and where to store it was giving me a headache. And I already had the perfect dress for the right price thanks to my mom. A second dress would just be a giant waste of money (and resources, and i'm sure there's some unethical practices somewhere along the production line).

But the dress kept its hold on me. I kept sneaking looks at pictures of me wearing it and stalking ebay for a discounted version. And then the best thing possible happened: I made the dress an option. I decided, screw it. I will say yes to the dress. It's my wedding, and I can wear a giant fluffy dress. I called a place in Cupertino that had the dress, made an appointment to come in, and sorted out where to store the damn thing. Once I did that, the dress lost its hold on me. Poof.

So now my mom's dress is being cut and sewn and tightened and loosened by some wonderful women at a local alterations shop in Atlanta. And, like a sign from the universe, on the way back from the shop, I found the perfect pair of ballet flats (all natural fabrics) that matches the yellow sheen of my mom's thirty-seven year old dress. On super sale.

All of which means I can now drastically increase the invitation budget...hello local artisan letterpress with vegetable inks and tree-free paper!

And I am totally reserving the right to put a picture of me in the cupcake dress on the save the date cards. I'm thinking of this for the caption: Katie's ready for the weddin'. Are you?

the tortoise and the hare

I want you to picture a cute little bunny and a debonair turtle. Now put a veil on the bunny and a top hat on the turtle. Now send them down the aisle.

Welcome to my world.

When I heard all the horror stories about wedding planning, I thought, 'I will not let this happen to me. I am so above this'. But I'm knee-deep in it. And there are a whole host of reasons that wedding planning is painful, reasons which I will do my best to outline over the next few posts. But for now let's focus on that bunny and turtle.

I am, in every respect, an impulsive person. I do everything quickly for better or for worse. I read fast (and sometimes skip plot points), I buy impulsively (and wind up with an iPhone that goes on sale), and I book tickets to Europe on a whim (forgetting perhaps that the dollar is crashing). For the most part, my 'hare' approach to life has served me well -- I get an idea, I search out all possibilities, I find my solution, and I move on. In some ways I view decisions as obstacles to be immediately removed so I can get back to living my normal life. And this has become increasingly true thanks to a lovely invention called the Internet. I can waste DAYS on craigslist, Kayak, and tripadvisor planning out my ideal life (that often comes to naught), so I tend to be in a hurry to just have the matter resolved so I can stop reloading websites and obsessing over RSS feeds.

Now apply this personality 'quirk' to wedding planning. bad news bears, my friends. For reasons I'll discuss in a later post, you can get married ANYWHERE nowadays, which means I need to research EVERYWHERE. This can take a little bit of time. And it can drive a person nutso. And since I'm a bunny, I will let these decisions and options drive me nutso until I finally come upon my final answer. I'll just keep hop hopping until I reach that finish line, going down every rabbit hole and chasing every carrot until I get there.

The miso, as you may expect, is my tortoise. Patient, calm, slow, and steady. Which is wonderful. And which is why I'm marrying him. And which is why I kinda want to strangle him. I'm sure you can picture me just bouncing up and down on his shell saying, 'hey, hey! lookee here! isn't this venue the BEST?!' And then there I am tugging on his tail saying, 'oh, no, no, no, wait - that one! that one there! that's perfect!' bounce bounce bounce. And he just keeps moving along toward the finish line with this amazing sense of calmness and surety that it will all be okay.

And I know the parable. I know he wins and I just exhaust myself and make it to the same finish line after him. So I'm trying my best from now on to 'be the turtle'. But it sure is hard giving up my bunny ways (especially when places book out FOURTEEN FUCKING MONTHS in advance). But whatever. I am calm. I am the turtle.

KIVA update

As some of you may remember, a few months ago I decided to try out KIVA and I donated $25 to a group of women in Africa. After just a month I was notified that the women had already begun to pay the loan back. So far I have gotten four dollars back of the twenty-five I invested, and that money basically stays in my KIVA account for me to reinvest. The website is also really great and it lets you see the other people that invested in the same women, and you can also read blog updates from the women and the NGO that works with them. So...KIVA gets a thumbs up from me.

hey neighbor

Dear Steve,

When I stood with the other fanboys at the Palo Alto store on launch day a year ago, I'll confess, I was pretty giddy when you actually showed up. And for a brief second I wished that I was one of the geeks standing in line all night and having my picture snapped when I emerged triumphantly from the store with my new iPhone. And even though I waited one whole day after launch to buy mine, those first few days as an early adopter of the iPhone were fantastic. To use an overplayed line, I felt like I was holding the future in my hands.

But then, Steve, you kinda broke my heart. You dropped the price on the iPhone. And I felt like a chump. And then you kicked me while I was down. My prized 4 GB model? Discontinued. Not only did I pay too much, but I clearly also got too little for what I paid.

Oh, Steve. The rebate was nice and all, but it was a bit like getting roses from your boyfriend who just cheated on you.

But the phone, Steve, the phone continued to charm me. Regardless of the new lower price, the need to buy a headphone adapter, and the fall-out-of-my-tiny-hands slickness, I love that damn phone. It was the MVP of so many roadtrips and vacations, stateside or abroad (with the ATT international digital plan), that phone saved me a bundle on internet cafes and overpriced hotels and overrated restaurants.

So you can imagine my concern when the 3G rumblings began. 'Here we go again', I thought, 'Time for a one-way ticket to chump city'. But then I watched the Keynote...silly Steve! That new phone is just like my phone! Only Ma Bell is going to charge you more to use it. Let me send a quick unlimited text message from my own plan to my fellow early adopters: ROTFL.

You have served us fanboys well, Steve-o. Free 2.0 upgrade, absolutely amazing free apps, and I still have my original phone plan that will, in the end, let my set up still be cheaper than those fancy 3G users and their discounted phones.

Yours,
kteighty

feed me seymour, feed me now

As you have probably noticed, I've been away from the blog for a bit. My apologies to all my loyal readers. All both of you.

I just finished up teaching a three-week course on Classical Literature for *gifted* high school students and right after that was the online high school "faculty" "retreat" (both words deserve scare quotes - I learned that I am not, in fact, faculty but simply an instructor, and the retreat was about as far from a retreat as a boardroom in Palo Alto is from a cabin in Tahoe). After the retreat was the big graduation for all the online seniors (real graduation - not virtual). And then I promptly got a cold. And then I had to sit on the couch playing MarioKart for an entire day. Cold cured.

The weekend was nothing but catered meals (including a wedding up in Berkeley on Friday night) and it was definitely tough to be a vegan. At the wedding on Friday I ate dairy because it would have been starve city otherwise (and it kinda still was - the woman dishing the gnocchi only gave me two little dumplings and then another two after I begged...but the wedding was LOVELY). At the faculty retreat I took the hunk of mozzarella off my sandwich, but the pesto spread wasn't going anywhere. And the graduation party at a student's house on Saturday featured a wonderful salad covered in crumbled blue cheese. Blast.

I was pretty good about packing snacks over the past few days to ward off any fainting spells, but I think if I really am going to commit to being vegan I'm also going to have to be more vocal about it. Case in point, when it did come out that I was vegan at the retreat a soy cheese pizza magically showed up for lunch the next day. I think the trick for me is finding that balance between speaking up and just keeping my mouth shut. If the bride wants to serve vegetables soaked in butter, I will eat it with a big smile on my face. But if the admin brings nothing but butter-soaked pastries as breakfast for a retreat, I might give a grumble or too.

free chocolate is vegan

it is. i don't need to look it up online or any veg resource to verify it. free chocolate samples of any variety are vegan. you heard it here first, folks.

just the smell of the summer

So I'm still doing that whole crazy vegan thing. Cooking included. A couple nights ago I discovered the secret to making gelatinous Chinese sauces for veggies: cornstarch. Who knew? I mean, other than American Chinese restaurants.

Here's my new favorite summer recipe, which is way easier than gelatinous sauces (from veganyumyum.com):

Tomato Basil Sandwiches

Makes 1 Sammich

2-3 Roma Tomatoes, sliced lengthwise 1/4″ thick
1 Generous Pinch Salt
1 Tbs Olive Oil
1-2 Pinches Dried Italian Herbs
1 Splash Balsamic Vinegar
2 Slices Sourdough
Tofutti Cream Cheese
4-5 Basil Leaves
Black Pepper

Heat a skillet over medium heat with oil and herbs. Once hot, add tomatoes in one layer. Give the pan a little shake and flip the tomatoes about. Add salt. Once they are beginning to soften, but not falling apart, add a splash of balsamic vinegar while shaking the pan. Turn off heat. This process should only take a few minutes.

Spread your bread with tofutti, add chopped basil and pepper. Place tomatoes on top of that. Grill sandwich with a weight on top. If you’re not grilling, simply toast the bread first, then add tofutti and tomatoes.

I ain't got nobody

While standing in line for Wall-e last night with all the other silicon valley types checking tweets on their iPhone, we started to draft the wedding invite list. At first it was fun. And then it got scary. And then it got sad. Simply put, fastmiso has way more friends than I do. I tried to blame it on the fact that he has a four-year head start on me, but the simple truth is that he is a good person with a good heart and is, therefore, a good friend. Who actually stays in touch with everyone he has ever known. Ever.

And then there's the family side of the list. While both my parents come from big families, neither of them so much care for their siblings. We never really spent summers in a beach house filled with cousins and aunts and uncles, so my family list is pretty small; immediate family and maybe an aunt or two. The miso, on the other hand, has a big extended family and they all must be invited. While I'm definitely excited about the possibility of traditional Greek dancing and saying 'opa!' with all his relatives, I'm also kinda bummed that the bride side of the aisle is going to be so small. And Irish. And probably drunk or miffed that it's not a Catholic ceremony.

I think I may need to start secretly contacting all of fastmiso's friends to try to become better friends with them behind his back, and then I can convince them to sit on the bride's side. Or maybe I can just hire extras. I wonder if Martha Stewart covers this...

i love the 90's

I saw someone today wearing this T-shirt.



I can't decide if the Levi's campaign is old enough to warrant kitsch appeal to the shirt or not. I guess it depends on whether he recently purchased the shirt or still wears it from 1992.

for your eyes only

One of the oddities of grad school is that when something good happens, you can't tell anyone. Who knows who else applied for a conference, scholarship, or even just a better room to teach in? So I turn to you, internets, to gloat.


See this place? It's an island in Venice. And I get to spend two weeks here in the fall. And then I get to go back for another week a year later. And the miso gets to go, too. Cuz we're smart.

Now don't go telling any other Classicist. All both of them.

toddlers should be a piece of cake

Yesterday morning as I was preparing to get out the door to be on time for the first class of the course I'm teaching this summer, one of the cats threw up all over the rug. And then the other cat proceeded to eat it. So there I am, in my fancy teacher clothes, down on my hands and knees cleaning up the puke, while simultaneously keeping the other cat away from it (because why eat the fresh, undigested food in your bowl when you have already digested food there on the rug? someone else has already done the work!). And then I go into the bathroom to finish drying my hair until I'm suddenly shooed out by my dear fiance, who now thinks he needs to throw up.

And off I go to conquer the world.

thai me up

Last night I made Thai food. From scratch. I feel like a superhero. The process was, of course, ridiculous, and I wasn't even hungry by the time we sat down to eat because I ate an entire baguette to stave off my hunger while cooking for two hours. But I made peanut sauce, and I baked tofu that had been dipped in glaze (glazed in a dip?). I bought coconut milk and actually used it, along with coconut extract, and coconut oil. My entire kitchen is covered in pureed corn (when your food processor says its capacity is 3 cups, believe it), and I'm pretty sure at least one of my cats ate half a lemongrass stalk. But I MADE THAI FOOD.

And I will never make it again.

PETA meets OPRAH

For those of you not in the Oprah loop, she went on a 'cleanse'. The amazingly difficult restraints of the cleanse? Being a straightedge vegan. No animal products, no caffeine, no alcohol (and no gluten). Please, Oprah, wasn't that, like, so 1995? Want to go to an Avail concert after you down that seitan patty? Maybe engage in some dumpster diving after the show?

Here's part of her blog about the cleanse:

"Well, I feel like I got baptized in Vegan Land today. Kathy Freston sent her chef, Tal Ronnen, to help me and three friends at Harpo who are doing the 21-day cleanse.

Wow, wow, wow! I never imagined meatless meals could be so satisfying. I had been focused on what I had to give up—sugar, gluten, alcohol, meat, chicken, fish, eggs, cheese. "What's left?" I thought. Apparently a lot. I can honestly say every meal was a surprise and a delight, beginning with breakfast—strawberry rhubarb wheat-free crepes. — Oprah "


And now dooce is going to do the 'cleanse'. Pretty soon well-intentioned would-be vegan bloggers like myself are going to be out of a job.

pasta and inner peace

I've discovered that cooking is a pretty calming distraction from wedding planning. Last night, after an exhausting conversation with my mother that kept my brain distracted all day, I made my first batch of vegan mac and cheese. The miso sorta poked at it a bit until I fessed up about the ingredients, but then he went in for seconds, so it must have been edible. The 'cheese' came from an interesting mixture of nutritional yeast, flour, soy sauce, and turmeric (for orange color) and the entire dish was baked in the oven for 20 minutes with some bread crumbs on top. It felt very wholesome and the miso swooned (a bit too much) at the sight of me in an apron discussing techniques for making the sauce less thick. I might as well have been barefoot and pregnant.

A few nights ago, after I found out my favorite Russian River winery doesn't have private events, I made another pasta dish (that was only vegetarian so we could use up the pesto), which was super easy and super tasty, so I've added the link below.


http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/PASTA-WITH-WHITE-BEANS-PESTO-AND-SUN-DRIED-TOMATOES-102472

I might just be able to cater my own wedding if things continue along this path.

favorite summer things

After reading all the 'summer must have' articles in the magazines which feature absolutely nothing that I must have, I've decided to pass along my own list of summer items, free of outside endorsement.

1. Trader Joe's steamed lentils. This is a very large bag of already-cooked lentils that has made meeting my protein and iron requirements as easy as lentil pie. For the past week I've been putting them on the salads I take to campus (they come with a bit of dressing, so no need to add anything), and a couple nights ago we heated up a batch to have alongside Indian food. There's no shortage of cold and warm lentil salad recipes out there, so I might even try to make some kind of main dish with them this weekend for dinner.

2. Popsicles. Cheap, grocery-store brand, buy-one-get-one-free popsicles. They make the absence of AC on the West Coast almost bearable.

3. The Rome series on HBO. Our trip to Italy inspired fastmiso, so we downloaded both seasons. We're only two episodes in, but I can already tell it is going to be a rewarding experience. I feel like a genius every time I recognize a name. 'Hey, Pompey! I know him! Grad school is really paying off...' And, as odd as it may sound, it's really nice to see Republican Rome represented with lots of color. I feel like I always forget that everything in Rome would have been painted with colorful frescoes, and that Cicero did not, in fact, walk around white marble in a white toga looking at white sculptures.

4. Odor eaters. Seriously. I picked up a set of inserts for the Italy trip and they are going to be my summer staple. I basically live in little ballet flats, which can have pretty disasterous results once the summer heat sets in. The inserts do an amazing job of controlling sweat and stink, so I can go sans socks, stockings, or footies all summer.

5. Greek. Not the language...the greatest tv show on abcfamily. With all my other mindless tv shows about thirty year olds playing seventeen year olds finished up for the season, Greek is still going on strong. I've been downloading episodes, but I'm pretty sure you can also stream them through the abcfamily website.

a new kind of bridezilla

At some point this blog is going to turn into something of a 'vegan wedding planning' blog, but for now it will remain a 'going vegan' blog with occasional bursts of 'jesus christ weddings are complicated' tidbits.

Here is one such tidbit: getting engaged is not a endpoint.

Who knew? I sure didn't. And based on the look of nausea on fastmiso's face anytime someone so much as mentions 'picking a date', I'm guessing he didn't know either. I think when you date someone for a long time around a certain age and stage in life, and you're a neurotic girl, you spend some time thinking about the engagement and all it entails: the proposal, the ring, the venue. And I'm guessing the boy thinks about these things a fair amount as well. But who the heck is thinking about the actual wedding? Weddings are for adults, people with new houses and empty cupboards that must be filled by a registry. Engagements are for the impetuous youth who are sick of saying 'boyfriend' when they fill out rental applications or getting hit on by sketchy dudes at Borders on a Tuesday night. 'See this ring, mister? Back off. I am now entitled to look at vegan cupcake cooking books in peace'.

But I am, according to all my eager relatives, engaged to be married. And I'm slowly beginning to realize that any good intentions I may have had about completely avoiding the commercialized behemoth that is a modern day wedding are being blown to pieces. Even if we were to go to city hall and have a quiet brunch afterwards (SintheC spoiler alert), we would have to elbow our way in past all the (rightly entitled) gay couples and then wait for hours at a restaurant for a table that could accommodate a party larger than two. Seriously, where in NYC or SF or even Omaha, NE, can a party of ten easily sit down together for brunch? And if the waitstaff so much as catches a whiff of baby's breath to indicate that it's a wedding party, your bill suddenly doubles.

Damned if you do, damned if you 'I do'.

But I am going to try my best to stay in engagement bliss. I'm going to look at my boy and my ring and remind myself that it is, in fact, about us and our life together. And maybe a kickass vegan wedding cake.

shiny happy people

The miso took this shot at Trevi our second night in Rome. I love it. It might be my favorite picture of the whole trip.

all roads

Ciao a tutti! I am now back from Italy and pretty much back on California time and ready to sit and blog. The trip was a-mazing. I don't know if the miso offered a goat to the gods before we left or what, but Fortuna was definitely on our side for the entire two weeks. I'll update more in later entries about specifics from the trip, but for now I'll just stick with the most pertinent question: is it possible to be vegan in Italy? Yes, yes it is. Was I vegan in Italy? No, no I was not.

My downfall was being a broke grad student who relied on the free breakfast provided by the apartment where we stayed in Rome. The landlady gave us a little card for the coffee shop across the street, which entitled us to a pastry and a cup of coffee or tea. There were (obviously) no vegan pastry options, and I was not about to go spend money on breakfast when a perfectly good marmalade croissant was sitting there for free. So it started with pastries and continued on in a downward spiral of pecorino, gelato, and ricotta ravioli. When in Rome, right?

But you can be vegan in Italy. I think every restaurant we went to had pizzas loaded with veggies and no cheese. There were plenty of pastas in marina. And even the gelateria by the Pantheon had a section of soy options. So in some ways Italy might just be the best country for vegans. Very strong-willed vegans who have no problem with a stifled culinary experience in the country that has probably the best cuisine in the whole world. But that's just my opinion.

One thing I did have trouble with was getting enough protein and iron. Beans only show up in soups and soups only show up in nice restaurants. Since breakfast was usually pastries, and our lunches were usually bread and cheese from a local market or pizza, legumes only made the rare appearance. Actually, beans were a little scarce in every place but Tuscany. Once we got to Florence there were Tuscan bean soups and even entire side dishes of 'fagioli' (typically white beans with garlic and olive oil). I also foolishly forgot to bring vitamins, and while I pretty much felt fine the whole trip, I'm definitely dragging a bit since I got back (though that could also be due to the large stack of ungraded final exams that await me).

I am (pretty much) back to being vegan in the states. We picked up some pecorino and pesto to have with the trofie pasta we brought back from Riomaggiore for dinner last night. And we went ahead and baked the chocolate chip cookie dough that has been in our freezer for many, many months. But by Monday I'm thinking I'll be back on the vegan wagon. And I'm looking forward to it -- the pesto in Vernazza was amazing and the soft cheeses at breakfast in Cortona were out of this world, but by the end of the trip I was pretty much done with dairy. And there is very little here in the alto that would make a convincing argument for eating cheese again. I think...

in the corner of my mind

My little Latin 1 students are taking their final exam right now, and I'm a bit more emotional than I thought I would be. This has been my first experience teaching a year-long course, and, I have to say, it pretty much totally rocked. I think the online setting smoothes over any possible issues with teaching high school students in a real classroom - I never have to see their bored faces, or shush them for whispering to their friends, hand out bathroom passes, or try to ignore the hand that is always raised. Why, I can even update my blog while they take an exam.

I think the best part, though, has been teaching a new crop of would-be Latinists all the same silly mnemonic devices I learned, and then watch them make all the same dumb jokes my friends and I made. Every time we learn a new Ablative, the 'another Ablative' jokes just come rolling out in TextChat ( 'idk: the ablative of ignorance?' 'the ablative of I hate Caesar'), and I get the same questions that I asked back in the day, which inevitably start with 'why did the Romans...', as though Cicero sat down one day and just created the Dative of Agent to piss everyone off.

Tomorrow we head off to Rome on the jet plane, and I feel like I'm just reliving my high school Latin club trip to Italy. I've finished Latin 2, I've learned the Subjunctive, so now I can go clap about Italians calling pools 'piscina'. I think I might even make the trek out to see Laocoon and experience again getting ditched by my tour group (shout out to the notoriousmle - that day at mcdonald's is still one of the best days ever).

So guess all I'm really trying to say is that teaching this class has let me reminisce about high school Latin, which was a pretty solid four years of good times and good people. Actually, up until graduate school, I've loved all my Latin classes, and my instructors, and the bond I made with the other students in the class. It's just very cool to be on the other side of that now and see my own students create their own nerdy inside jokes and send me goofy text messages like 'morituri te salutant' before quizzes.

If only they got my Brady Bunch 'caveat emptor' reference.

foiled again

This year I am in charge of organizing the department's weekly Coffee Hour. This basically means I make sure someone else buys some bagels and I set up the coffee and tea. I used to dread the Coffee Hours because I would spend an hour surrounded by my mortal enemy: breakfast pastries. I heart pastries. I could polish off an entire tray of croissants if no one was looking. Coffee cake? Yes, please. Bagels? Keep 'em coming. And don't even get me started on cinnamon rolls, buns, or sticks.

So every week I would try to mentally prepare myself. I would eat a balanced breakfast thinking that if I were full of oatmeal the first, second, or second-and-a-half muffin would no longer look appealing. Or I would cut the pastries into tiny pieces and really try to focus on each morsel. And, my personal favorite, I would avoid Coffee Hour altogether and then secretly eat all the pastry leftovers in the kitchen throughout the morning. Yes, Coffee Hour was my secret shame.

But then I went vegan. And Coffee Hour was no longer a problem. I had a couple glorious months where I only ate the rare fruit people brought in and sipped my tea and felt incredibly superior to everyone else. But then I made the mistake of telling people I was vegan. The next week someone brought in vegan muffins and soy milk. And then there were bagels. And, finally, my crushing defeat, one of our visiting faculty members, who is the epitome of a fuddy old oxbridge greek scholar, brought in two (TWO) containers of vegan oatmeal raisin cookies. And none of these are any healthier than the real stuff. I mean, it might have a bit less fat but that deficit is totally made up for with sugar. Lots of sugar.

Stupid health-conscious, dairy-allergic bay area and its wide selection of vegan alternative baked goods.

forgive me, casey affleck

I realized I haven't made a vegan post in quite some time. Which I think is a good thing. I never wanted the whole vegan business to be any kind of defining aspect of my life, and I think I'm doing pretty well with it. And I am still vegan. And it is still pretty easy. I have been a bit more flexible on some things than I probably should be. Last week, for example, when I was up in SF I got a veggieburger sans cheese for lunch and there was some kind of mustard-ish sauce on the bun. I did my best to scrape the ish off and continued on my merry munching way. And this weekend my department had a beach Olympiad blowout (see the flickr badge) and I'm pretty sure the 'vegan' hummus sandwiches had some weird secret sauce on the bread. But at least they thought to get vegan sandwiches, right? I would like to add that the Newman O's I contributed to the party were almost completely devoured. The vegan brownies I also brought, not so much.

And while I'm confessing, tonight while I was standing on the sidewalk, holding the miso's cone (h-o-t-t) when he went into a store, I totally licked the dripping ice cream. At this point, dairy in my belly is better than dairy on my new pants.

a photo essay of determined laziness

It's been a busy week for all of us, Henry included. He was far too exhausted to figure out exactly how the physics of his cat bed worked.

new 'do

Has anyone you know transitioned from salon friends to real life friends? You know, actually hung out and gabbed with their stylist outside the haircut? I really think I want to make that leap with my Aveda stylist. She understands completely when I say, "I need this bob not to make me look like Velma." She goes to ugly sweater parties and plays the Wii and commiserates with me on all these tweens who have crushes on Johnny Depp, though they have no clue about this thing called 21 Jumpstreet.

I've been to her a few times already, but yesterday just sealed the deal because I finally got the haircut I always wanted. It's the haircut I resolve to get every time I make an appointment, and I try to explain but always fail to and then leave the salon with yet-another-borderline-soccer-mom bob. But this time I was ready. I had pictures. And a vivid description. She got it. I said asymmetrical. I said to sweep it across the back. And she did. She even offered to not use any product and basically airdry it so we could give the new 'do a real-life test drive. When it was all over, we hugged. It was that wonderful of an experience for all involved. I mean, I clapped. (Admittedly, I spent my formative years with halerino, so I pretty much clap at everything, but still. Clapping in the salon chair, even when you have that wretched black sheet tied around your neck so you look like some kind of tootsie pop ghost, is quite a statement.) And then, the icing on the cake, she gave me an obscene amount of free samples so I can figure out what fun new product to use with my fun new haircut.

So I want to be her friend. I want her to come over to play Mario Kart and we can drink Aveda herbal tea that she takes from work and bag on all the uptight palo altan moms who come in for their every-six-weeks haircut and highlight.

Oh, hairstylist, do you just like me for the tips?

my new shirt

Why did I make such a shirt? Because when I showed it to the 'miso his first response was, 'where's the arrow?' his second response was, 'what is that, Helvetica? Is that really what you want to go with?'

Crankypants. But I still adore him.

An open letter to the city of Palo Alto

Dear Sirs or Madams,

This weekend was the annual May Fete Parade, a parade which, as far as I can tell, is an opportunity for parents to show the world that they have children who can ride scooters and wear costumes. I am still trying to determine what exactly this has to do with May. While I appreciate that parents in Palo Alto need every excuse to flaunt their children in everyone's face, I do not appreciate, dear sirs and madams, the assumption that I would want to have such an event pass directly by my window. Or that I would happily move my car for such an event to occur. Or that my own children, who happen to be of the furry variety, would somehow enjoy this event.

Quite the opposite is, in fact, true. My little ones reacted to the marching bands as though suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. It was as if their little cat eyes were seeing the horrors of 'Nam all over again as they darted around my apartment, seeming both to look for the source of the noise and to hide from it. It broke my heart to see them in such a state of sheer terror at a brass band. Clearly in their previous life before I adopted them, they both endured some kind of horror at the hand of a snare drum and poorly played clarinet.

I will be suing the city for the following damages: my prized collection of Safeway bags that one cat sent into disarray as he tried to hide under the sink; my DSLR, which the other cat knocked to the ground as she found shelter in my closet; two cat carriers the first cat knocked off the top shelf of my closet while trying to find a new hiding place; and, finally, at least a full year of pet therapy.

For shame, Palo Alto. For shame.

Sincerely yours,
The Crazy Cat Lady on Webster (no, the other one)

I can't move

On Friday I went to my own personal slice of heaven: a shopping mall with an Old Navy, Nordstrom Rack, and Target. bring on the 5.99 t-shirts! The only downside, I was going through severe dehydration when I went. (I had woken up that morning at the unnatural hour of 6:30 to meet a friend for a hike. I thought the email said 2 1/2 miles; it said 2 1/2 hours. Uphill.)

So I'm at Old Navy in bit of a daze looking for lightweight travel clothes for my trip to Roma. I picked up a black cotton dress that looked like it could be a good bathing suit cover-up type thing and added it to the mass of other clothes I took into the dressing room. Now, I have a bad habit of not checking dresses for side zips. I typically pull the thing over my head, smear deodorant down the side and then, when my arm gets stuck, I find the side zipper. So when I was in the dressing room with one arm stuck straight up and another pinned to my side in this black dress, I just thought I would go find the side zipper. What I found instead was the tag on the dress, which, contrary to the 'S' on the hanger, said the dress was for girls age 6-7.

How embarrassing. But not a problem. I got the thing over my shoulders, surely I can just pull it back off.

Insert panic attack right about now. The dress is stuck. My arms are stuck. My chest is bright red from trying to yank the thing up. Okay, fine. Up is not an option. Let's go for down.

So I have these things called 'hips' which 6 year old girls tend not to have. So now my entire midsection is bright red and I have this damn dress (covered in deodorant) trapped around my waist. (As a side note, if you ever want to blow any self esteem ou have about your body in an dressing room, get trapped in a too small dress. you will see your once lean and tone figure in whole new (and devastating) light).

The question I ask myself now is whether it would be better to rip the dress to shreds and just pay for it or waddle out of the dressing room to give the bored employee the highlight of her day. I opt for private mortification and begin tugging at the dress. I can actually hear seams ripping. Fortunately, it's ON and the dress is from the children's department so it costs all of 10 bucks. But then I start picturing myself at the check-out with a torn dress covered in deodorant trying to explain what exactly just happened. So I start to pull more slowly.

At this point I have decided that down is so not an option and return to the upward movement. I think all my pulling down (and loosening some seams) gave the dress just enough give to allow me to essentially dislocate one shoulder and pull it out from the dress. Once that was done I had enough space for the next arm.

And, voila, I am freed of the beast.

And now my secret confession: I put the dress back on its hanger (which I now notice is very small and plastic, quite unlike all my other hangers, almost as though it was designated for a CHILDREN'S section) and hand it back to the girl working the dressing room with all the other clothes I didn't want. The dress now looks like some kind of dead animal, limp and mangled, barely staying on the hanger. And I feel a little triumphant. My heart is beating and my adrenalin is rushing as though I had just encountered some black bear in the woods (and hidden up a tree until it sauntered away).

So the moral of my story: as women's fashion becomes 'younger' and children's fashion becomes 'older', always check your labels. Or learn how to pop your arm out of its socket. Either way.

i am ironman

I've become a little obsessed with my iron and protein absorption, especially since in the past I would blame any problem I had on deficiencies in either. 'I can't concentrate on my chapter draft - must be that damn iron deficiency.' 'I just don't have the energy to go for a run, clean the litter box, do the dishes. Clearly I need more protein.'

One of the tips to boost iron and protein levels for vegans is avoiding caffeine and alcohol when eating iron, since it hinders iron absorption (plant iron, not animal iron - you meat-eaters are just fine). You're also supposed to have vitamin C with iron to help absorption. For the most part, this has been pretty easy to do. I have some OJ with breakfast and save my tea for mid-morning. And I make sure to have tomatoes or red peppers with my lunch and dinner. Cutting out wine with dinner? Are you kidding?

So to offset my vino, I decided to incorporate another iron tip: cast-iron cookware. It supposedly helps to maintain the iron content of food while you cook, and lifting the damn thing also has muscle-building health benefits. I had been steering clear of that one since cast-iron tends to be pricey, but last night at Ikea I discovered their Le Creuset knock-off series. Swoon. I got the small-sized skillet but I have a feeling I might go back for the casserole dish. If I can pick it up.

where's the mouse

Clay Shirky at Web 2.0

It might not be your standard YouTube length of a minute thirty, but Shirky is smart and a great speaker. And he's talking, I think, in a smart way about the internet and the cognitive surplus being created as people realize sitcoms are crap and start to do other things. Like write a blog about going vegan. Worth a view if you have a spare fifteen minutes while you pretend to do work.

i'm friends with people who date famous people

notoriousmle is dating the sousaphone player, who, as you may not know but certainly should know, is just about the funkiest japanese-american out there. Seriously, if I asked you to pick out the kid who went to school in East 'Snob' County could you, my friend? Could you? He's a chameleon that one.

you can call me tootie

My second post for this 'going vegan' blog (almost three months ago...how quickly the time goes by) was about my attempt to make vegan oatmeal raisin cookies. As you may recall, they were a disaster. Tonight, armed with a new spatula, a food processor, my apron, and the right ingredients, I decided it was time for kteighty vs the cookies, Round Two.

The results: kteighty 1, cookies 0. Not to toot my own horn, but toot toot. They came out soft and chewy (something I thought impossible for vegan cookies) and not a single raisin burned. I'm starting to feel like a proper vegan.

I also made my first Kiva donation tonight. I logged on to the site and saw that one woman was only $25 short of having her full loan request. I've been curious about the microloan business for a little while now, so I am interested to see how the whole process works. I am also still feeling guilty about eating at Cheesecake Factory on Friday night (friend's birthday. her choice. whadda ya gonna do?), and I am hoping that maybe the loan will function like a carbon offset. Not to rant, but beyond the name itself representing all that is wrong with restaurants in America today, the portion sizes and the sheer waste of food produced by every single table should be enough to make Oprah shake her new-earth fist in rage.

what a perfect day

I've been in a pretty lousy mood for the past couple weeks, and I think a lot of it had to do with the standard problems that come with being grad student. Since I'm technically never 'at work', I'm also technically never 'off work'. It can get a little exhausting, and I made the mistake for the past couple weeks (or month. whatever) of not taking dedicated days off, and instead I would take off mornings or evenings. When I spent Friday in the library watching 30 Rock and making a pro/con list of going on the job market, I realized things.must.change.

So yesterday me and the 'miso (I call dibs now on that as an indie rock band name) took a proper day off. We slept in, we got bagels (vegan cream cheese!), and we listened to a full NPR morning. In the afternoon we ran some errands, and while at Fry's we intentionally checked out the Wii aisle to show the rest of the world that WE OWN A Wii. Take that, thirteen-year-old Asian kid looking at the DS games. Then we played some tennis and fastmiso ended the day by making some vegan pizza (a-mazing. he used a red pepper/artichoke spread from TJs with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, and artichoke hearts. there was also supposed to be caramelized onions, but guess who was in charge of messing that one up...), which we ate while watching Across the Universe.

I feel like a new woman. Not that I've managed to get back around to working today. Right after my morning cardio class (yes, I go to a cardio class. and i love it. i can do the grape vine AND the double grape vine. so there) we went to Best Buy to buy Mario Kart. And then proceeded to sit on our couch and almost break up about five times. Learning to be a good loser is still on my to-do list (at the very bottom).

yummy soup

Time for an indie mac developer plug: YummySoup, created by Hungry Seacow (hungryseacow.com). It is a super spiffy recipe organizer for Mac that makes deciding to cook all the more fun. Aside from having a sleek layout, the application has really useful tools, such as emailing the recipe or creating a shopping list for whatever recipe you decide to cook.

It works out well for me since all my recipes come from the web and I can easily cut and paste and drag photos of the food. Then I email the shopping list to myself and use my handy dandy iPhone at the grocery store. When I get home, I can access the emailed recipe from the iPhone, which I keep in the kitchen cradled in a business card holder (kudos to 'miso for picking up that little gem for me) while I cook.

For those who mainly use cookbooks, it might not be so great, but it has been a little miracle for me, since I've spent the past couple months haphazardly emailing web links and searching in vain through my inbox for past recipes I really liked. All that said, I'm still running the trial and feel a little hesitant about handing over 20 bucks for the app. We'll see.

i want a hobby pony

I have never really had a 'hobby'. I mean, I've managed to watch crap television on a pretty regular basis, but I have never had something continually in my life that makes me a member of some group that subscribes to some magazine and watches some event. If I do have a hobby it seems to be the actual act of finding one. And once I do find one, I progress about as far as being able to have superficial conversation with people who actually engage in that activity. I stop short of mastery, excellence, or depleted bank account.

Case in point: photography. I got a DSLR, I took a class, I bought Lightroom. Done and done. I know (kinda) what all the dials do and I know (kinda) how to fix problematic photos with editing tools. I don't have a Nikon 300 nor do I have Photoshop, but I can converse with people who do have these things.

Cooking seems to be progressing in the same way. I have a few cookbooks, I read a few recipe blogs, and I have some minimal cooking tools (like the food processor and the olive oil spritzer). I try on a weekly basis to make up a recipe and see whether it will make my head explode. I can also converse with my friend who actually does know how to cook about egg substitutes and binding agents in cakes. I also refuse to drop the hundreds of dollars it seems to take to actually be really good at cooking (a thermometer just for muffins? really?).

The only reason I'm blogging about this is because my blog itself seems to be a testimony to this fact. The Flickr badge, the entries on vegan cooking, and the concern for fonts all represent hobbies that I most likely will not keep up with any intense fervor. And I've decided this is a good thing. I'm not lazy, or a dilettante, or too inept to master things. I just really like the initial learning curve. So this blog may sometime soon go the way of skateboarding, knitting, and learning Italian, but at least I can now have conversations at a Bay Area dinner party about my failed vegan blog.

Hmm, I wonder if writers using their form to discuss their form counts as a hobby? Oh wait, it just counts as a played-out trope. Damn.

best brownies ever

...well vegan brownies. but you know what I mean. These come from blog.fatreevegan.com (which, in case you haven't noticed, is pretty much the only vegan food blog I use) and they came out soft and fudgy, not dry and cakey. I added a bit more cinnamon because I'm on something of a cinnamon kick right now (cereal, oatmeal, toast - you really can't wrong), which the 'miso seemed less than happy with (he could also taste the maple syrup - me, not so much). Your call on that one.

Fatfree and Fabulous Fudgy Brownies

1/2 tbsp. ground flax seed
1-1/2 tbsp. hot water
3/4 cup lite silken tofu (firm), crumbled
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup unbleached white flour or cake flour
1 cup unbleached cane sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional--depending on how nutty you like your brownies)

Mix the ground flax seeds with 1- 1/2 tablespoons of hot water and set aside. (Mixture will thicken slightly.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Mist an 8-inch x 8-inch x 2-inch glass baking pan with non-stick cooking spray and set it aside.

Blend the tofu, water, maple syrup, cocoa powder, flax mixture, and vanilla extract until completely smooth. (I use a hand-blender, but you can do this in a regular blender.)

Place the remaining ingredients, except the walnuts, in a medium mixing bowl and stir them together until they are well combined. Pour the blended mixture into the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl, and stir them until they are well combined. Fold in the walnuts, if using.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. Bake on the center rack of the oven for 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Completely cool the brownies in the pan. Cut and serve.



I took these over to a dinner party at a friend's house this weekend and served them warm with some TJ's cherry chocolate chip soy ice cream topped with frozen cherries. yum yum, indeed.

an apple a day

...keeps the hot ladies away.

A few days ago I went with the 'miso to a cocoaheads meeting at the Apple complex down in Cupertino. He went to learn some programming stuff, I went to gawk. About halfway into the presentation on designing a useful UI, I realized I was the only girl in the audience. And I think 'miso was one of the only attractive male members of the audience. I have to admit, it was quite the self-esteem boost. So my question: is it wrong to push your significant other into a field solely because it will make you feel pretty and him seem all the more handsome? Feels like a win-win to me.

And while I'm confessing, we were so inspired by being on sacred ground that we finally pinned down good old steve-o's house and did a drive by. It has a kind of Hobbit cottage look, but it is otherwise just another fancy house in Palo Alto with a silver Mercedes convertible parked outside the gate.

Qui fit, Maecenas?

Back in my day a Roman Culture Project for Latin class meant I made a bulla out of some aluminum foil and twine, glued cut-up pieces of construction paper together to replicate the Cave Canem mosaic, or turned a shoebox into a Roman house. This is what I get from my own students ten years later:




Welcome to Latin 2.0.

shoe business

The shoe-buying drama that began this weekend ended with a whimper yesterday when my new kicks arrived in the mail (not that zappos.com needs another plug, but it really is a fantastic website. great selection, great pictures, great reviews, and free shipping that is still fast). I went over to Nordstrom to try on the Simple hemp shoes and they were exactly as I had feared: too loose, too hempy, and too ugly. The flats were super cute but the fit was weird.

I gave up on Simple and decided to look into a pair of Chuck Taylors or One Stars or Jack Purcells and found the most beautiful pair of off-white Jack Purcells designed by Varvatos. I was all set to justify 90 bucks on canvas and rubber when I came across articles about Converse being bought by Nike. So the once ethically-sound shoe company is now based in Asian sweatshops. Sigh. It was one of those moments when I wished for blissful ignorance. Those were some damn cute shoes.

I went back to the Simple website and found that they have another line called ecosneaks. This line is more normal looking, still vegan, and still made of organic and recycled materials. Again, not that I'm some Greenzo only buying environmentally sound goods, but if you can to do it I figure why not.

The shoes are comfy and solidly built, and hopefully with some added insoles I should be able to flit around Rome in cute skirts while pronouncing Italian in a way only Latinists can. Sal-way, ah-me-key! Quid agis? Bene!

making bad soup better

Last night the 'miso was working late on his dissertation so I had a single gal's dinner of soup. Normally soup is a solid vegan standby (great source of veggies and legumes without any sugar or other bad stuff I don't want), and I even opted for the uber-healthy version without any salt added. Imagine my dismay when I dumped the can into a pot and saw all of five sad little kidney beans floating around in tomato sauce and potato chunks.

I decided to boost my soup's health potential and it turned out well, and I've decided it's worth sharing since it is so insanely easy and makes soups all the better. All I did was add a can of pinto beans (kidney or white bean would probably be better, but pinto was all I had) from my pantry to the soup. I put in half the can whole and then mashed up the other half with a fork to make the soup a little denser. I happened to have some vegetable stock on hand so I added that and some tomato paste I had leftover from lasagna night. Toss in some herbs and you are good to go. Crappy low-nutrition soup is now fit for a veg blog.

Wow, I just blogged about soup. I promise this will get more interesting soon - my new kicks just arrived in the mail so I can go on ad nauseam about those later this week.

cookie for you!

As I had promised myself I would, I attempted chocolate chip cookies this weekend (read: found yet another excuse to wear my new apron, this time with a skirt. take that, donna reed). I actually tried two different recipes because one) they were different enough to use as a measuring stick of what mixture of ingredients work, two) I actually already had all the ingredients with the exception of chocolate chips in my pantry (that would be a first, ladies and gentlemen), and three) I really didn't want to work on my dissertation.

One batch came out pretty well, and I've posted the recipe below in case any of you have some extra blackstrap molasses that you just need to use up, and, really, who doesn't? The successful recipe came from the Vive le Vegan cookbook (the author has a handy blog viveleveganrecipes.blogspot.com) and other than not being as chewy as I like my cookies, it seems to be a good go-to recipe. It was super easy and super quick to make and the 'miso has yet to complain.

The other recipe I tried was from the Vegan Sourcebook and it involved rolled oats, which I thought for some reason might make the cookies more chewy like regular oatmeal raisin cookies, but instead it made them more crappy like my disasterous vegan oatmeal raisin cookies.

I'm beginning to notice that vegan blogs and cookbooks written in the past five years by people around my age have pretty simple recipes that yield tasty results, while the recipes in the more 'educational' (or 'brain-washing', either way) books on veganism produce dishes that are both unattractive and inedible. It's like they want to make that hurdle to vegan elitism all the more painful by forcing you to spend lots of money on obscure ingredients that, when combined, really make you notice that you are eating healthy vegan food. Why would you do that when there is an entire book (BOOK) on vegan cupcakes. Why?

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (see note below for wheat-free version) (I actually used whole wheat flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1⁄2 tsp baking soda
1⁄4 cup unrefined sugar
1⁄4 tsp sea salt
1⁄3 cup pure maple syrup
1⁄4 tsp blackstrap molasses
1 - 1 1⁄2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1⁄4 cup organic canola oil (a little generous 1/4 cup)
1⁄3 cup non-dairy chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F (176°C). In a bowl, sift in the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add the sugar and salt, and stir until well combined. In a separate bowl, combine the maple syrup with the molasses and vanilla, then stir in the oil until well combined. Add the wet mixture to the dry, along with the chocolate chips, and stir through until just well combined (do not overmix). Place large spoonfuls of the batter on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and flatten a little. Bake for 11 minutes, until just golden (if you bake for much longer, they will dry out). Let cool on the sheet for no more than 1 minute (again, to prevent drying), then transfer to a cooling rack. Makes 8-10 large cookies.

these recycled materials are made for walking

Now that I'm going to Italy I've decided I finally need to invest that pair of comfortable walking shoes. Back in the fall when I eagerly waited for my ankle to heal so that I could once again wear my embarrassingly large collection of flats, I tried to find some shoes with good ankle support (read: hideous). Once the ankle was healed and I made the thirty-minute trek up and down University to campus in my chucks and my heels burned (and my ankle still hurt), I once again swore to get comfortable shoes and once again was turned off by the selection at the local walking shoe store.

But now, now that I am ready to finally get the shoes, what do I find? Leather. Lots of leather. Clarks now has this line called 'unstructured' which has some uber-cute flats but they are all leather and pretty pricey, too.

So I decided to risk typing in 'vegan walking shoe' and covered my eyes as some pretty unattractive shoes popped up. But what also popped up was pretty exciting. The majority of New Balance is animal free and Zappos has a 'vegetarian' filter, so you can sort out all the animal-free shoes. Through Zappos I found out that Simple is still around and has a line called Green Toe that is all animal-free and, I think, pretty cute: http://www.zappos.com/n/es/d/722581234/page/1.html.



But I realize that being veg may have altered my perception of hip. So I turn to you, my faithful readers, all both of you, for opinions on these shoes. Do they scream bay area vegan or could I possibly fool people into thinking I'm an Irish tourist who loves the meat? The flat is definitely cuter than the maryjane, but I will need a fair amount of support to get from the Forum to the Pantheon, so I'm willing to go function over form on that one.