cat toy + cell phone video capture = friday night

Animal News

(click to embiggen)
I love this section of the newspaper so much.


LEESBURG, Shenandoah St, Jan. 25. A portly dog wanted to eat some Spam for his Sunday breakfast. The Spam was fried in a pan. The dog waited. When the Spam was cool, the dog ate the Spam. Then he took a nap.

the only fun thing about zero degrees

the sea and the tick

It was freakishly windy today so we went to look at the lake because that is what you do in Buffalo when there is weather. It was pretty cool because the water was crashing up over the breakwall.

In the car I found a giant tick on Oscar. I don't know where he got it but it confirms the one thing I knew about Virginia before I moved there, which is that it is completely crawling with disgusting ticks.

I got a little plastic thing at the pet store that works really well for extracting them, though.

christmas puppy

I hope everyone is having a nice holiday season.
The weather is crazy. There was a ton of snow but then today it was 59. So there is a lot of water in the creek.

oscar enjoys civil war history

We went to Harper's Ferry.

odd things about virginia

Apparently these mutant grapefruits grow on the trees.


Avocado lemon pie. From Sunflower Vegetarian Restaurant.

moving in winter

So fun.

I have injured my right hand and right knee loading the truck. Perhaps I shall injure my left hand and left knee unloading the truck.

Tomorrow we drive!

cupcakes for babra

I made the chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting from VCTOtW for my co-worker's birthday.

Sometimes at Starbucks they write "Babra" on her cup and I find that endlessly amusing.

They told me to use natural peanut butter, but I used Peter Pan peanut butter. Technically everything that exists in the world is "natural," so whatever.

I also used Earth Balance shortening because I forgot I hate it, so the frosting had a little plastickiness to it. Otherwise it was just like the really good cake we had at Farm Sanctuary Thanksgiving. Maybe one day I will make this in cake format!

carcass-free thanksgiving #2

I made dinner for my mom, aunt & uncle, cousin, grandpa, and my mom's friend Jim.

I made a hubbard squash the size of a portly dog.

Actually I only made half of it because that is all that fit in the oven.

I made some warm artichoke spinach dip.

I didn't use a recipe, but it is just a sliced leek and 4 minced cloves of garlic sauteed in olive oil, mixed with a block of frozen spinach (thawed) and a can of artichoke hearts (drained-n-chopped), 4 ox of tofutti cream cheese, a scoop of tofutti sour cream, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of cayenne, and a little sprinkle of nutritional yeast. Bake til hot. Serve with pita chips so everyone ruins their appetite and forgets to be angry that there is no turkey.

Speaking of no turkey.

The fake turkey was really good and definitely worth all of the work. Although I guess I could have arranged it a little nicer on the platter. Nonetheless, is MUCH better than tofurkey - the texture is much better, it is not rubbery at all. Next time I wouldn't do the roulade though. The stuffing inside was a little damp and the structure of it made it puff up in a stupid way while it was cooking and it was hard to turn. In loaf format I think it would be perfect.


Pretty standard: mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry chutney, stuffing, squash, fake turkey, roasted brussels sprouts, the ubiquitous Pillsbury crescent roll.

I made a rather dreadful pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. Luckily I also made some backup sparkled ginger cookies.

You can see the bad cheesecake there lurking in the background. I should have just made regular pumpkin pie. I feel deprived about it now so I will have to make one to go with the leftovers.

More pictures.

it broasts AND it bribles

Today I spent a million hours making Bryanna Clark Grogan's Soy & Seitan Turkey. (I had to go on an emergency trip to Kmart to get a tiny roaster, during which I could not stop thinking of the 8-in-1 Super Pan.)

The fake turkey looks kind of creepy or maybe I just think it looks creepy because yesterday I watched a creepy show on TLC about malformed conjoined twins.

Before baking. Like a giant toe! It is the roulade format so there is onion/apple/sage bread stuffing rolled up inside. Anyway now it is all baked and resting in the fridge, which is supposed to improve its texture for tomorrow.

I also recreated the tempeh salad with cranberry vinaigrette that I had at the Garden Cafe in Woodstock last weekend.

I shall tell you how to make it because it is really good.

8 oz package tempeh, cut into bite-size squares
3/4 c vegetable broth
Put in skillet, cover, and cook until broth is absorbed. Cool.

2/3 c fresh or frozen cranberries
1/4 c sugar
1/2 c apple cider vingar
Combine in small saucepan and cook on medium 5-10 minutes, until cranberry skins split. Cool slightly and puree in blender or food processor. Put in bowl and whisk in:

2 t dijon mustard
2 T canola oil

Add the tempeh and 3-4 cups of shredded raw cabbage. Then mix in a big scoop of Vegenaise and season with salt and pepper. Mmm. We ate it with roasted sweet potatoes and whole wheat couscous. The cafe served it with wild rice vegetable stew and steamed kale.

carcass-free thanksgiving #1

Welp I see from my helpful poll that my year of blog neglect has diminished my readership to four people, one of whom is a liar, so that frees me up to unselfconsciously ramble about crap just like back in the good old days.

This weekend I continued my trend of forcing Chris O to go on a 6+ hour road trip every five days (This Time With NonStop Christmas Music) and we went to Thanksliving at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary.


We stayed in a cute little cottage at Phoenicia Village which was very convenient and nice, although the Catskills region in general has a kind of Headless Horseman/Rip Van Winkle creepy feeling about it.


Woodstock Farm Sanctuary is very nice and it was pleasant to go to a vegan-centric event in the midst of the American carcass-mongering holiday season.

Poor turkeys. Well, not these ones in particular. These ones are having some squash.

There were lots of nice goats.

For appetizers they had little phyllo dough cups with mushroominess inside and pieces of baguette with Dr. Cow's Tree Nut Cheese, which was good and goat-cheese like. Then for dinner it was Celebration Roast which I had never had before. I don't think it's that much better than Tofurkey though. It has a stuffing-like center, but the center still has a meaty, seitany texture, which is a little weird.



Dessert was pumpkin cheesecake and chocolate cake with fluffy peanut butter frosting and it was so good that I ate it until my stomach was all gurgley.

On our way home we saw a little jack russell trotting along the road. We opened the car door and he jumped in.

Then we wasted a bunch of time driving him to his house where no one was home and then dropping him off at his vet. He was very cute but a little stinky.

Anyway there are some more pictures.

I think I will update my blog again.

Here is the news.

1. I am moving to northern Virginia next month because I have a new job.

2. I am taking this one and this one with me.

3. All of us are vegan, except one of us cheats by stealing butter off kitchen tables when he is out visiting.

easter

Easter is way too early/sneaky this year which precluded me from doing any glitter-based Martha Stewart craft projects. But these pussywillows in my grandpa's back field are almost ripe. Despite the concerns.

Oscar thinks that if he sits at the table like a person, someone will serve him a plate of food. He acts confused and dismayed when it does not happen.

I am obsessed with veganizing placek. (Placek is a Polish sweet bread, like a yeasted coffee cake, which normally has a pound of butter and eight eggs in it.) After making a couple gummy bricks, I finally made an edible one, except I burnt it and had to cut the bottom off. Also it does not taste unhealthy enough. Also the crumbs all fell off the top. I think I am two placeks away from making a perfect vegan placek but I am really sick of placek now, so.

When I got home there was a starling in my apartment. It is bad luck! Or else it means there will be an Important Message.

More Easter Pictures

drear.

I have really had enough of the weather but at least fog is interesting. Now it is back to snowing. I am completely tired of snow.

Oscar = never tired of snow.

¡enchiladas!

Potato Kale Enchiladas with Roasted Chile Sauce. Mine are not as pretty as the recipe photo ones. I think because I put them together the night before I baked them so they comingled overnight and it was hard to get them out of the pan looking pretty. It is not really a weeknight recipe. It tastes much fancier than anything I normally make.

Black beans like so, except from a can.

this is the best idea I have ever had.

A couple weeks ago I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and then I froze most of them instead of baking them. Now I have constant access to warm melty cookies. Of course, it is potentially not brilliant to heat up the whole oven to bake two cookies and potentially not brilliant to eat two cookies every night at 11pm. But still.

I slightly modified the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. I think this cures them of the creepy translucency they come down with on day two. Of course if you do it my way they will not survive more than ten minutes out of the oven anyway. I will post the recipe since the VWaV version is already on the internets in five frillion places. I made them partly whole wheat and you can kind of tell, but I like that because it makes me feel better about eating them every day late at night.

1 cup Earth Balance buttery sticks, at room temperature
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp molasses
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp ground flax seeds whisked with 3 Tbsp water
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (check ingredients for vegan-worthy chips)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Cream together the margarine and sugar until fluffy.
Add the molasses, vanilla, and flax glop. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix well. Fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts. The dough will make you concerned with its unnatural stiffness. Form the dough into cookie-like discs. They will not be spreading out much at all so flatten them a little. Place onto ungreased cookie sheet. Put cookie sheet in freezer until solid then dump into ziploc bag for storage. Put straight from freezer to oven to bake (remove from ziploc). If you bake them in a hot oven (400ish) the outside browns while the inside is still gushy. GENIUS!

rainbow pox

I finally got a 1M tip but I am not so good at it. I thought adding some nonpareils (why NONpareils? Where are the pareils?) would draw attention away from the subpar piping but now they look like they have come down with a disease. Oh well.

in-like-a-lion cake

March is only somewhat coming in like a lion. It's sort of a wimpy lion. Definitely not a lamb though, so I went with the lion cake even though I felt more like making a lamb cake.

It's banana cake with chocolate mousse and sliced bananas inside, then covered in ganache. All the recipes are from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World - the cake is the banana split cupcakes, 1.5x, baked in a jelly roll pan and cut into squares. I could have done a nicer job on the ganache but my theme lately is "impatience."

dreary & not dreary

Cross-country skiing at Sprague Brook. Egregiously, this is the only time I have gone all winter. Good thing it is not a problem to wait until March.

Maybe this should be a secret surprise, but I am not so good at maintaining motivation on long-term secret projects. In fact I never finish knitting anything other than hats and dog sweaters, but this time I will...

It is SO freaky how the yarn sucks the dye out of the kool aid. Drinking kool aid really cannot be good for your insides.

Orange, lemonade, and tropical fruit punch or something like that. Boiling kool aid is not my air freshener of choice. It is maybe not AS bright as it looks in the photo, but it is pretty bright.