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.

How to Buy a Plane Ticket to DC

Travel advice from yours truly in twenty easy steps:

1. Go to kayak.com and type in your airports: SFO to WDC; type in your dates: May 27-May 31; hit submit.
2. Drop jaw.
3. Go back to Step One and type in other dates.
4. Drop jaw.
5. Accept the price and try to find a nonstop that gets in at a reasonable hour.
6. Try to find a one-stop that gets in at a reasonable hour.
7. Go back to Step One and type in new airports: SFO to LON.
8. Laugh and clap.
9. Weigh the pros and cons of dragging boyfriend to five year college reunion versus European vacation.
10. Go back to Step One and type in original airports: SFO to WDC.
11. Seriously consider staying in a hostel in DC. Come to senses and look at bank account again.
12. Sleep on it.
13. Log in to farecompare and type in your airports: SFO to FRA.
14. Laugh and clap.
15. Check exchange rate and stop being happy.
16. Get a big fat paycheck for editing a manuscript and resume happiness.
17. Go back to Step One and type in new airports: SFO to ROM.
18. Decide being in Rome on a lark when the reunion rolls around would be the perfect homage to a Georgetown education.
19. Buy a ticket to Rome for two weeks.
20. Hope college friends will take a raincheck.

les sans seriousness

Last night me and 'miso went up to the city to see our favorite faux-French pop band, Les Sans Culottes. The show was tres magnifique. I've tacked on below a youtube clip of the band covering My Sharona in French, which they also performed last night along with a French version of 'These Boots Were Made for Walking'. Sadly, the clip doesn't quite capture the absolute insanity of their stage performance with everyone wearing a bizarre mix of French mod and 70s psychedelic fashion and refusing to break faux-French character. And I think the bassist might have had an orgasm on stage. Maybe.




On the vegan front, we hit up a taqueria next to Cafe du Nord which had tofu tacos. They tasted way better than they sound -- it was tofu mixed up with salsa and some veggies so it basically tasted like a chicken taco. Not that I really know what chicken tastes like any more. The coffee place we went to afterwards had vegan cookies and I felt obligated to buy one. At some point I will need to realize that just because a vegan food exists, I do not need to buy it and eat it. But for now I will slowly consume my way to becoming the first fat vegan.

just mind your business, that's all, mind your business

Remember my recent post about those 'crazy' ladies yelling at each other in the movie after one shushed another? Right...let's go ahead and swap out those two women for yours truly and a Stanford undergrad, and let's change the locale from a movie theater to the library. Okay, now we have my new post.

Yes, I went batshit crazy on an undergrad using his cell phone in the library. Given that my hatred of the Stanford undergraduate population (particularly with regard to library etiquette) has been building for four years, the kid is lucky he left with working use of all his limbs.

There's no real need to go into the details, but I can say that I had to email fastmiso to come escort me out of the library for fear of personal safety.

La di da.

wake up, maggie

In my adventures in cooking I have been trying to eat food that I once deemed 'ick' a long time ago to see if I actually dislike them. Last night, for I think the first time ever, I had mint chocolate chip ice cream. Sweet jesus.

Fastmiso and I went to our favorite faux-Chinese restaurant and absolutely stuffed our faces. Veggie rolls, tofu corn chowder, sweet and sour pork, beef and broccoli, and then, the coup de grace, vegan mint chocolate ice cream. The ice cream was from a company called Maggie Mudd (maggiemudd.com) up in San Francisco, which apparently makes vegan ice cream cakes that you can order online. I have never wanted so desperately for my birthday to come sooner. I might have to have a half birthday. Seriously, it was hands down the best vegan ice cream I have ever had (which wouldn't have been saying much about five years ago, but the soy ice creams have come quite a long way).

After dinner we went and saw the Bank Job (quite good) and a full-on catfight broke out behind us in the middle of the movie. One woman hushed another and it was GAME OVER. At one point I heard 'If you touch me again, I swear to God I will call the cops.' Fastmiso was bold enough to hush them, but the the husband and boyfriend of the women behind us were stone silent. I guess they were just mortified, but if some crazy woman threatened to call the cops on my wife, I think I would jump in with some diplomacy.

the best text message ever

Dinner.@8.blossoms.howdoimakeaspace

Sent from my mom to me while on vacation. Further proof that my mom needs an iPhone.

dippity do

The best possible source for protein and iron when vegan are legumes (yes, I could say 'beans', but c'est tres gauche, non?), and I have a hard time getting enough. It's pretty easy when I eat out and during the winter soup season, but for some reason the day to day cooking at home just isn't amenable to legumes. My solution: puree everything. Last night I made a white bean hummus (as inspired by the one I saw at TJ's this weekend) and for lunch today I had a creamy black bean dip. Once the white bean hummus is gone, I'm pretty sure I'm going to make a standard chickpea hummus. Then maybe some five-layer dip.

When my teeth fall out from not getting enough calcium, I will be so set.

a hilary I could vote for

On my flight back to SF I had an in-seat entertainment set with a gazillion radio channels, so where do I head first? The kid's channel which has the new(ish) Hilary Duff album. I read in some interview/review that she used the album as a vehicle for talking some smack about Nicole Richie, so I was curious to see just how 'vicious' Lizzie McGuire could be.

OMG, ROTFL, ETC.

Seriously - the album is HYSTERICAL. It has choice lines like: where'd you leave you dignity - back in the Hollywood hills; the gypsy woman swallows knives and swallows lives; and you're letting down your family name. Oh, Hilary, you're so angry!

Next time any of you are on a cross-country flight and can listen to the album for free, I highly recommend it.

you say tomato, i say cheesecake

There's just nothing like a good muffin to snap you out of a funk. This morning I made up another batch of the carrot spice muffins from blog.fatfreevegan.com and they just turned that frown upside down. I didn't have any soy yogurt on hand so I mixed up some vanilla rice milk and vegan cream cheese, and the muffins came out super moist and springy. I think most of the credit is due to my new apron I got back in Atlanta. I feel like a pretty domestic princess when I wear it.

The vegan lasagna from a couple nights ago (also from fatfreevegan) came out pretty well. The filling was a tofu spinach mixture with some nutritional yeast added in for 'cheesiness'. I think I just need to add some spices to make the flavors pop a bit more, but it definitely served the purpose of making me feel like I ate a real meal (as opposed to a bunch of side dishes put together on one plate).

I think I have vegan chocolate chip cookies on my baking horizon. Earlier today Fastmiso was telling me about the computer app he is designing which involved 'a top layer of cocoa', so now all I've been thinking about today is chocolate. My misinterpretation pretty much sums up our entire relationship: he talks about programming and I hear dessert. I think it's a win-win situation.