T is for food

Did I mention that I sent the yarn club yarn last week? Yep. I did. It was so fun to spin and pack up. To the left is a rather obtuse view of it, if you'd like to see the real thing, click on the pic and watch the magic switchy thing happen. If you haven't received yours yet (which means you're one of the 3 canadians), don't click it! Let it be a surprise! I'm so excited about doing this club. I have so many yarns I want to spin and send, i started to feel sad it that it's only 3 months, and then I remembered there's another one right after it. And on. And on. You may notice that each yarn is different. I still wanted them to be one-of-a-kind even though there are 11, so I used different handpainted fibers, different handdyed silk noils, lots of denim fluff, and then spun them using the same methods. Then I sent each person the color I thought they'd like best based on the little profile I've created for them. Yes, I'm an organized dork, but I love organization! I'm a sucker for office supplies as well.

Speaking of organization, have I mentioned my love affair with Ravelry? It's everything I've ever wanted in a website. and more. If I could put it in my bathwater and soak in it, I would. It's still invite only, but put in a request -- it rocks!

Also, this gal is raw no more. I lasted 3 weeks but for some reason or another I couldn't do a 4th. So, without further ado, here's the menu for this week, the week of the T (all our dishes start with T).

Tamales
Tacos
Tempeh stroganof
Three flavor pancit
Thai pesto focaccia
Thai coconut soup
Tempeh salad sandwhiches
To-fu yung
Tuscan white bean and fennel stew with orange and rosemary

and for dessert
truffles (date and cashew)
tofu coconut macadamia cheesecake

What's in your frig!?

Some raw goodies from the past week -- raw crepes and raw chili! Both were/are superb! No kidding. In fact, bill likes the raw chili better than cooked chili. No beans, but sprouted barely and sundried tomato blended with onions and dates for thickness, the rest is corn, bell peppers, onion, lots of tomatoes, orange juice, and chili powder. Soo good. The crepes are dehydrated bananas, with a macadamia/braggs, lemon juice, vanilla filling and topped with strawberry/agave nectar sauce. When left for a few hours, the sauce softens the banana wrappers and makes them crepe-like. So freakin' good!

In order to combat my lack of a social life, we've instituted a tuesday night dinner with friends policy. Every tuesday night we're having friends (ever rotating) over for dinner.

This past tuesday we had the Maneuvers (OFM drummer and partner) and S (who is hauntingly the spitting image/voice of an old Baltimore friend, strange) over and they got what you're looking at above. Well, they were also served grilled kabobs and wild rice salad...Are you a local friend? wanna have dinner?

Here is a picture of the inside of my refrigerator, as is, uncleaned and not organized, just opened and shot. If you click you can see it supersized! Lemme see yours! Post a pic on your own blog and leave a link! I think it's endlessly interesting to see into peoples closets, drawers, and refrigerators!

Winter holiday

Winter holiday is upon us, and for the Boggs' family it meant no internet service (except for what I could eek out of my neighbor by standing by the window on a chair) and loads of friends and food! Here's a short pictoral tour through our 2006 winter party, complete with vegan dinner menu and a special recipe (which I think I might start including each week!)

There were lots of people in our shrunken house -- 16 plus 3 kids! and of course, me, which takes up the space of at least 3 people. I tell ya, it's not easy weighing 165,000 lbs! I cooked all day (I actually started out at only 140,000 lbs but the licking of bowls and spoons really add up).

Our full menu consisted of:

3 Seitan loafs stuffed with sourdough and pumpernickel dressing

sourdough and pumpernickel dressing
mashed potatoes
gravy
braised fennel bulbs
baked mac n cheese
broiled sesame asparagus
green bean/potato casserole
coconut and cardamon rice pudding
2 chocolate pecan pies
key lime cheesecake
pinenut anise crescent cookies
crock pot apple cider

And honestly, who in these picture deserves the foot rub? Yeah, that's what I thought, and yet still I stood while little almost-5 year old feet squirmed and squealed.

Here's some homemade frig magnets we gave out as gifts to all our guests! We made them 2 years ago for the same things, I guess it's a ood thing we invited all new people, eh?

Chocolate Pecan Pie (roughly remembered from a recipe but not sure which one):
A pie crust, or make your own
2 cups of pecans, roughly chopped
3/4 cup chocolate chips (many brands are vegan)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup of grand marnier or more maple syrup
3 TBLS arrowroot or cornstarch
4 TBLS blackstrap molasses
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup soymilk

Whip cornstarch/arrowroot with soymilk until it's frothy, add all other ingredients, pour into pie crust, bake in preheated oven (350 degrees) for 45 minutes or until browned and firm. Let cool before serving, in fact, I like to completely cool and chill it before serving as it really firms up and is freaking delicious!

Hope everyone's winter holiday is glowing and warm and just what you want.

Raw...I mean, RAWR!

This is what I need -- maryland yarniers. Are you maryland handspinner or dyer? Do you sell or wanna sell your wares? Come on, are ya? If so, I need you. E-mail me...like right this minute.

Alright, since playing catch-up never works well for me, I'm just gonna jump right in with what's up right now and pepper the next few posts with pics and pieces from our trip, the one on your right is what I like to call vacation knitting, my mom rocks for giving me so much time to knit, if only I hadn't had to spend it knitting the same thing over and over and over again, but more on that in my next post after I gt through knitting it one more time.

I'm Raw, and not in that special dirty way either, food-raw, raw-foods. Nothing cooked, only raw foods. I'm doing a bit of a cleanse and metabolism jumpstart. I did two years ago for a good 2 months and felt fantastic so I'm hoping for similar results. And if I happen to lose the same 15 lbs, well, that's fine too, since I'm not being the least bit self-loathing or untrue when I say that these past few months have seen my whole body expand to where only my once loose and baggy dickies, fit. So, for a while there'll be 2 menus, the raw one for me and the regular vegan one for the boys. Regularly this would cause me some concern but when I'm raw I become a dynamo! Energetic and existing happily on few hours of sleep. I forsee much knitting in the wee hours.

Raw menu--
Pesto stuffed mushrooms
marinated portabellas and onions
marinated greens
spinach avocado dip
miso soup
chili -- seriously, sooooo good, the boys like it better than cooked chili!
dill cashew dip
date/raisen torte
lots of fruit and tomato/garlic/oliveoil/salt bowls and smoothies.

This week's vegan eats --
Raw chili, cause they like it
Mac n cheese
Roasted corn and orange quinoa
cloud nine tofu

flax banana tea loaf

oh yes, one more thing, one more desperate thing -- I returned to an inbox with over 900 spam blog comments as it seems that mt-blacklist has decided it's tired of doing it's j-o-b. Anyone use anything with movable type that works? Please share, I'm about to go freaking bonkers over here, either that or I'm gonna spend the next year in the ramada hotel, applying for loans at outrageous rates, taking cheap prescription medicine while enlarging my penis and watching scatalogical porn, and nobody wants that.

Homeschooling tastes good

Today so totally rocked my handknit socks (that I actually forgot to wear, lulled by 80 degree temps yesterday, and therefore was very cold). My homeschooling martha stewart (who's real name is Mary) eared us onto a homeschooling group activity at a nearby nature center and we got to spend the day learning about that brown sticky stuff you sometimes see in the woods...yep...maple syrup!

It was so super cool. Ten kids about LB's age, all making their own spiles (what you use to tap the tree), hiking through the wood, tapping a tree, watching how indiginous peoples boiled it down (in cool hollowed out trees boiled with dropped in hot rocks), how the settlers did it (of course, first old whitey butched lots of trees, thinking a hatchet would would better and faster than a finesse tool), and then how the preserve does it. Then we tasted. Man oh man, homeschooling tastes goooood.

Speaking of tasting good --

This week's vegan eats:
lentil loaf (no really, it's good!)
tofu pot pie (recylcled from last week, we didn't get to it)
chilleeee
chickpea and spinach curry (that's what i'm talkin' about)
mango and ginger tofu

flax muffins

raspberry chocoloate chip blondie bars (new recipe!!)

Sleeping beauty, vegan eats

So we've been reading fairy tales, biding my time before I can get into myths. We've got a book of greek myths for kids -- which means all the bloodshed, none of the sex -- so we're doing fairy tales first. Not that they couldn't freeze your blood, some of them. Absent mothers and pushover fathers make way for evil-stepmothers and mysoginistic storylines. But we talk about that too, thanks to a brain and a tiny book called PC fairytales that's nice to reference every once in a while.

Okay, this last week we did Sleeping Beauty, or Napping Average-girl, heh, kidding. We read that story many times, talked about it, retold it to each other, acted it out and then I read it aloud and he told he each characters he thought would need a puppet if we were gonna do a puppet show. I made a list. Then we sat down and made little paper and stick puppets. Little Bit drew them all except 2, and I'm not even sure you could guess which 2 (the evil fairy and 'sad prince that gets caught in the briars #2').

Listed in order from left to right and then top to bottom, here's who they are --

king, queen, bad fairy, 3 nice fairies, baby sleeping beauty, 15 year old sleeping beauty, guard that falls asleep, sad prince that gets caught in the briars #2, prince that mades it through the briars (notice only the small bloody splinter on his forehead - hehe), sad prince that gets caught in the briars #1, frog, flower for briars, briars, spinning wheel, fire.

How cool is that? We're performing a puppet show later today. Our audience will consist of B-ill and about 10 stuffed friends. Two drink minimum.

oh, and vegan eats menu below, some meals heald over from last week because we were out, at a birthday party in NJ, or otherwise indisposed.

This week's vegan eats
Mains--
Pesto linguini (last night)
winter veggie stew
quinoa with panfried corn and orange zest
adzuki beans and winter squash sautee
tofu pot pie

sides -- broccoli, brussels, greenbeans and garlic, spinach

dessert -- keylime cheesecake

muffin - banana bran muffins

Chickpea-a-al-king

Mmmmm...Chickpea-ala-king! Since there was so much interest, comment, e-mail, heck, even phone calls, here it is. I forget where this recipe came from as we've been making it for so long now it's automatic.

Ingredients:
olive oil
package of mushrooms, sliced
red or yellow bell pepper, sliced
2 cups chickpeas, cooked
2 cups some kinda milk (soy, rice etc)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon tumeric
some salt and pepper

Alrighty, sautee the mushrooms and bell pepper in the oil for a few minutes. Stir in the flour, yeast, salt, paprika, thyme, pepper, stir to coat and cook for a minute or 2 to toast. Turn heat to low and slowly add the milk while stirring to combat lumps. Raise heat to medium and stir until whole thing boils and thickens. Add chickpeas and continue to cookk for a few minutes until it's all hot and thick.

Serve over rice.

It's yummy! Even the flying fox on our homemade placemat thinks so!

This week's vegan eats

We used to eat all willy nilly -- whatever, whenever. We'd buy randoms at the store then each night we'd attempt to throw together some sort of tasty and nutritionally sound meal. I'd always make some sort of noodle dish, or stirfry and B-ill would invariably whip up some a one-pot rice and veggie meal. We got bored, you can imagine.

About two years or so ago I started making weekly menus. I sit down on Monday evening and pick 6 meals, sides are whatever fresh veggies are in season and/or on sale -- which are usually steamed or sauteed, a muffin for the week, and a desert or two. Then on Tuesday we hit whole foods and trader joe's and get just what we need. It's really seemed to make us eat better and have less waste. So, back by popular demand (I used to list it on the side bar on my old blog), and in case you're interested in what a vegan family eats on a regular basis (because I know you're picturing brown rice, cold blocks of tofu, and half steamed broccoli) --

this week's vegan eats:

Mains:
Zuchinni grinders
tofu pot pie
spinach enchaladas
chickpea-a-la-king
winter veggie chowder
Pesto linguini

Sides:
creamy coleslaw
broccoli
fennel and brussels
spinach
corn

Deserts and breads:
raisen bran muffins
keylime cheesecake