No TV is a Lovely Thing

At least when it comes to being completely oblivious that it's Super Bowl Sunday! Michael and I spent the day Sunday out in the boonies. We left in the morning and spent a few hours in Washington, PA and then proceeded on to Morgantown, WV to try to grab a bite to eat at the vegetarian cafe - Mountain Peoples Kitchen only to find out when we arrived that the little cafe had been closed since July. The guy working in the co-op connected informed us that is was "closed to see how it worked out". We enjoyed a laugh about that - um...yeah, it ain't prolly gunna work out good cause yah ain't gunna get any business when yah ain't open. Anyway, it was a delightful ride regardless and we were happy to soak up the sun and be out in the country. We didn't realize it was Super Bowl Sunday until 3:00 in the afternoon - our first inkling was the complete lack of cars ANYWHERE. In honor of game day, Michael and I ate some homemade baked corn chips that I made, along with homemade guacamole and refried black beans. We also played a game of scrabble - which I lost by 2 stinkin points! bleck. Now doesn't that sound like more fun than a bunch of fat guys running around with a ball? Doesn't it? For reals!

I must have still been feeling a bit "country" on Monday because I made BBQ tempeh and sweat potatoes with black beans with a side a brown rice. I had the time to actually prepare something wonderful but instead, I spent the day rearranging the girls rooms, doing laundry, taking naked pictures of myself and praising seitan. All true! Why wasn't I at work, you ask? Of course you'd ask a thing like that. So silly. Why because when it's cold and the Pittsburgh Public Schools are closed, apparently my daughter's daycare center is closed as well. So, two complete cancellations and one two hour delay later and tomorrow looks like daycare should be open at "normal" time. Eva spent time with family on Tuesday (no well in hell I could take another day off work - even with all of my seitan praising).

This brings me to dinner on Tuesday night -Double Wide Grill . Yippee. I felt like I was living a double life - escaping after work to meet my boyfriend for drinks and vegan bar food! We skipped the "main stuff" and both ordered seitan wings - the Cletis' hot and BBQ. DE-Yum! Plus, my Blue Moon and Bell's Two Hearted Ale were tasty! Michael got an interesting brown ale and followed up with a Young's Double Chocolate Stout! We continued our "surreal" evening with a bitter cold walk in the snow to the Joseph Beth Bookstore. There, in the bathroom stall, I was informed that Ron Jeremy would be signing his book there this Friday. Hot damn. (I'll leave you determine whether or not I am being sarcastic).

I had a fun night in the kitchen tonight. Pictures and more rambling tomorrow...

It's February, I'm a Nerd and I ate Veggies Tonight

It's also cold as hell and Thursday - just for the record. My first matter of attention is the fact that I actually WON a scrabble game. Not only won, but won with lots of points to spare! This comes after a horribly saddening 5 game defeat. I think I had somewhere around 350 points! In one play, I got 71 points! I used a connector, got a double word score AND used all my tiles! Yippee. Look at our beautiful game! We used all the cubes. OK, I know they are called tiles but for some reason my brain always blanks out and I'll make dumb comments like "damn, all my cubes are vowels". And Michael, of course, laughs at me. I spent so much time losing that I decided I needed to come up with some good "excuses" and quick. Here is my list:


1) What do you mean QIS is not in our 1969 Elementary School Dictionary?! Everyone "cool" knows it's a word.

2) I totally would have won if I could have used the word QIS.


3) I'm sick.


4) Repeat any of the above adding on "and I've had too much beer".





Speaking of beer, we've tried a few new ones recently. Sam Adams had a homebrew collection that they put out which was really nice. Michael just brought home a variety case of "Blue Ridge" Beer yesterday. So far I've tried their Golden Ale and their Amber Lager. Nice, decent mellow brews. I'm enjoying this collection so far. It's hard to find a variety pack without an IPA. Neither Michael or I like IPA so it's a totally waste to buy that. At the same time, we don't typically want 24 of the same beer. Overkill. My most recent blunder was my six pack of Winter Storm ale. It's a 7.5% abv beer with quite the bite. Ouch.


And on to healthy stuff. Look at the yummy veggies I steamed tonight. First I sauted the carrots, red onion and red pepper with some nonstick cooking spray. Then I added the green beans, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. Saute a few minutes and then steamed by adding a 1/4 cup of water to the stock pot! Delicious with some earth balance and salt on top! Finally, Engel's Market was open. One of the things I love best about small businesses is how personal the experience becomes. The owner of Engel's immediately directed me to some of the freshest fruit that she knows we love - mmm - red d'anjou pears! She also informed me that their credit machine was down earlier that day but it wouldn't matter with us - she'd always be willing to start a tab for us. I don't know why - maybe it's the 1950's domesticated housewife in me - but that meant a heck of a lot to me. I feel jaded so often and it's nice to be trusted. We are, afterall, trustworthy folk!





So, that has it for Thursday.

Dinner!

So, I had to make some changes and simplify my recipe a bit. I used the quick pizza dough recipe I mentioned yesterday and added some Mrs. Dash and garlic salt. I also ended up having to add an extra 1/2 cup of flour in order to roll out the dough - it was quite sticky! I made the pizza sauce from scratch from The New Farm Cookbook! Delicious as always. I topped the pizza with artichoke hearts and carmelized onions and poured the melty nutritional yeast sauce on top. I was bummed that I had a difficult time working with this dough and didn't get the "perfect circle" that I so craved but, it's still pretty! Can you tell from looking that it's vegan??

It's Pizza Night!

And I finally found a recipe for Super Quick Pizza Dough! Now that we have our pizza stone, we've created some AMAZING pizzas - and Michael and I, well, we know pizza. We love it and I'm, personally, a bit obsessed with it. I'm including some pictures of pizza made prior to owning our pizza stone. Our best pizzas thus far have been with the stone, though. And with the help of this more Authentic Pizza Dough! It's definitely worth the effort and time. Tonight, I'm thinking toppings of artichoke hearts, carmelized onions, roasted red peppers, and roasted garlic. Maybe even some tofu or some Tempeh Soysauge Crumbles (PPK)? I definitely think this pizza needs to be topped with Melty Nutritional Yeast "Chreese"! I follow the pizza variation and, honestly, I think it's better than Follow Your Heart. Follow Your Heart is the best for melty "realish" chreese and certainly has it's place in the world of vegan pizza but I love knowing that I have all the ingredients I need to make pizza from scratch without an expensive trip to Whole Foods or
The East End Food Coop. Pictures of tonight's pizza to follow later. For now - check these pizzas from our vegan pizza/beer potluck...

Oooh, and check out the cupcakes I made last Friday! I made the sexy low-fat vanilla cakes and topped them with fluffy chocolate buttercream. I wasn't sure I'd be too crazy about them since I'm really more a fruity cupcake girl but they were pretty incredible - especially at only 125-150 calories per cake! Yum!

I Am The Anti-Everything

One Reason I Hate the World

This week has been a week of major unrest for me. I've missed Michael and our girls more than ever at work. I'm feeling hostile towards omnis and now I'm beginning to feel isolated again from most of society. I don't want to buy in any longer. At the same time, I realize it's not my buying into the system that is the root of the problem...