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...