So this is what Christmas feels like

I grew up in the South. Twenty plus years in Texas, then almost a decade in North Carolina. It's often tough to get in the "Christmas spirit" when it's 80 degrees outside. I have no idea how my buddies in the Southern Hemisphere do it!

This weekend has been a perfect "Christmas-time" weekend here in Ohio. Friday night was the Christmas extravaganza drag show at Axis in Columbus. A former co-worker of mine is a fabulous drag queen, and we went to see the holiday show. Fan-tab-ulous.

Saturday our new furniture arrived. "LOVE" does not even begin to explain what I feel about this furniture. It's hubs and my first ever REAL furniture that has not been either purchased at a thrift store or reclaimed from a dumpster. Really. And I love this stuff. It was like Santa showed up a few weeks early.

Hubs hanging out in the chaise reading the owner's manual for the new sweet-ass furniture

This morning, I got up to go to run club only to receive an email that due to inclement weather, we would be shifting the run to inside the gym (i.e. treadmills). Ummm, no thank you. I put all my stuff down and ran from my house. What inclement weather? You mean the rain and 29 degree temps? Eh, it will be fine. And it was - but by the time I got home and stripped down, my entire body looked like I had a major sunburn. The skin was ummmm, a tad chilly. But I got in 5.8 miles before the snow started. Although I kind of think it would have been pretty sweet to have the rain shift to snow in mid run. Maybe later in the winter :-)

When I got home, hubs and I started a fire in the fireplace, turned on the Christmas tunes, and we got to baking and decorating. Here's the fruit of our labors.

Merry, Merry all. Whether it's Christmas, Hanukkah, The End of the Year, Snow, Heat, whatever. Just Merry, Merry :-)

Tofu Virgin No Longer

I have been a vegetarian for 4 years? Three and a half? Something like that. It took a long time for me to learn how to cook all over again. In the beginning, I relied a lot on meat substitutes that provided a familiar style of food and convenience. I still eat fake meat things, but I would like to cut them out and save them for special occasions only. To do this, I knew there was a frontier I needed to conquer - tofu. I enjoy tofu. I order it when I am out dining places, but I have never attempted to prepare tofu in a dish at home.

So last night I tried it. One of the tofu dishes I love the most is at P.F. Chang's. They have a tofu version of their lettuce wrap that is mind blowing awesome. A great mix of salty, crunchy and savory. Just so good. It's normally what I order for my "meal" there. I decided to look up a recipe that would replicate that type of taste. I don't think the recipe I used work perfectly, but it did turn out mighty tasty. Here's what I used:

1 18oz block of extra firm organic tofu
soy sauce
red pepper flakes
3-4 cloves fresh garlic
handful of sliced baby bella mushrooms
half a can of sliced water chestnuts
canola oil

First, I attempted to dry the tofu. I should have done this longer, but it still worked out okay. I cut the block into about 9 slices and put it on folded paper towels on a cookie sheet. I put another layer of paper towels on top of the tofu and then put a kitchen towel on top of that. I gently pressed the tofu to get the water out. Overall, I gave about 5-10 minutes to dry out the tofu. Once that was done, I put some nonstick spray onto a cookie sheet. I cut up the tofu into half inch by half inch cubes and spread them on the cookie sheet. I drizzled soy sauce over all the tofu and then sprinkled on some red pepper flakes and freshly ground black pepper. I popped that into the oven at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

While that was baking, I used my handy food processor to cut up the garlic, water chestnuts and mushrooms. I think I ground them up a bit too fine - try to keep the water chestnuts somewhat chunky as they can add a great crunch to the dish (I lost a bit of that crunch since I ground them up too small). Once the tofu comes out of the oven, put a tablespoon of canola oil into a frying pan on med-high heat. Once warm, add in your mushroom/garlic/water chestnut mixture and lightly saute. Then, add in your tofu. I added about 3/4 of what I baked since i wanted to save the rest of the baked tofu for the panang curry we are making later this week. Mix in the tofu and let everything heat together. Splash on a a bit more soy sauce and salt and pepper to taste.

I served the tofu mixture over a thai rice mix we bought at Harris Teeter a few weeks ago. The tofu came out really well, and it was almost better today at lunch.

I am glad I finally mustered up the nerve to make tofu - it wasn't tough, and it was actually really tasty!!!!!

Running log: Saturday's run went really well. We lost about .5 miles because of a race taking place on the Tobacco Trail, but overall we did about 8.5 miles. Took us around an hour and forty minutes. This week we have a 5 mile run on Tuesday and Thursday, and Saturday will be a 10 mile run. After that, we almost go on a break for a week - just a 4 mile and a 2 mile run next week and RACE DAY IS NEXT SATURDAY!!!!!!!

A weekend of great food

Mike and I are finally back to cooking. My friend Rod pointed out as I was finishing up grad school, "You never talk about cooking anymore. You used to always talk about some new dish you made." And it was true. The last 6 months of the Masters was taxing, and the cool meals stopped. Mike was hard at work on papers, I was trying to finish my final project, and our meals turned rather normal. That or we ate out. But with school long behind me now and evenings that are a bit more open, I am back to cooking. And luckily this weekend, Mike cooked, too. If I may say so myself, between the two of us, we can make some yummy food.

A trip to the Farmers Market on Saturday morning set us out on the right foot. Fresh peppers, spaghetti squash, eggplant, tomatoes, oh my goodness. What a wonderful bounty. We got some amazingly beautiful produce this weekend, along with a dozen brown farm fresh eggs. Fantastic. That evening I was inspired to bake, so I made some pizza dough. Mike and I each made our own pizzas. I tried a new dough recipe this time around, and it came out well - a bit fluffier than Mike or I really wanted, but it was still yummy. On Sunday, after reading through the newest Vegetarian Times, Mike was inspired to make risotto. He had already decided to make fresh salsa from all the peppers we bought at the market, so there was some cooking to do!

The kitchen was a hub of activity last night. Between roasting peppers, preparing the ingredients for the risotto, and prepping the salsa, we were busy (Mike especially). But by the end of the evening, Mike had produced an amazing roasted corn, mushroom and spinach risotto, fresh salsa, and I even contributed some fresh guacamole. A weird combo maybe, but we ate a lot of veggies last night!!!

Yay for the return of cooking!

Walking the walk

So, you have seen the proposal for my MALS final project. I am writing about how we eat and what we eat - and attempting to find a more ethical way for us to do so. Since I am working on this project, I am starting to experiment more with how I prepare food, where I buy it and what effects my shopping and consuming habits may produce.

As it has finally started to cool off here (last night it was below freezing), I decided to make some vegetable soup. Not Campbell's in a can, mind you, but actually make the soup. As Mike and I are huge fans of Alton Brown, I pulled his recipe for Garden Vegetable Soup off FoodTV. At Trader Joe's on Sunday, I picked up a few items for the soup - organic veggie broth, organic tomatoes, organic green beans, organic corn (still on the cob) and fresh garlic. I decided I was going to make the soup from all organic ingredients - that was, until Mike and I went to Harris Teeter last night. Since the Farmer's Market is only open on Saturday, I didn't buy any of this stuff before hand. Therefore, I had to hit the Teet.

Organic vegetables are ridiculously expensive. I admit, I normally buy conventional - I wash my veggies thoroughly and keep my fingers crossed that nothing too weird made it into the internal parts of the veggies. I needed: carrots, leeks, celery, and parsley to finish my ingredients list. After price checking, let's say the only organic vegetable that ended up in the cart was the parsley. The leeks were astronomical in price, the carrots were about $3 a bunch, and the celery looked like it had already been chewed.

So yes, I do understand that even if the veggies look rough, they are still probably good a lot of the time - but I have been groomed to look for the most perfect, the most round, the greenest, the most intact vegetables in the store - even though I will chop them up into unrecognizable pieces. How on earth did we get to this stage???

Anyway, Mike and I were having spaghetti and salad for dinner last night, so I spent a good 20 minutes chopping veggies for the sauce and the salad. Once dinner was ready, we ate that and watched a bit of TV. After we caught up on an episode of Boston Legal, I headed back to the kitchen for the 45 minutes of prep Alton gave me for the soup. Alton - YOU LIE. I think I cut vegetables for at least an hour and a half - maybe longer. Peel and cut the carrots. Peel and cut the potatoes. Clean and cut the celery. Clean and snap the green beans. Clean and cut the leeks (which are very dirty, let me tell you). Clean and cut the tomatoes. WAIT.

The tomatoes. I bought organic tomatoes at TJ's. They tasted like crap. Luckily, we had in the cupboard two cans of San Marzano tomatoes. We actually got them on clearance at Kroger for $1 a can. Who on earth priced them like that must have been nuts - these easily sell for $3-5 a can, depending on where you buy them. Anyway, I substituted the San Marzano's for the TJ tomatoes. Again though, cleaning and chopping them as well.

Last was the corn. I cut it all off the cob and dropped it into the pot. My idea was to use the crock pot and cook the soup starting last night and through the day today. This may be a terrible idea - we will see!!!! When I get home about 6pm, I plan on turning the soup off and letting it get to room temperature. I am hoping that allows some of the flavors to marry a bit. Then, for dinner, I will reheat a few portions for us. I hope it is tasty.

The whole point of this is, no wonder Campbell's came in and saw a market to make a killing off soup. We all like soup, it's good for us, and it can be made in very large quantities. But making it from scratch takes quite a while - especially in our busy lifestyles today. After working all day, hitting the gym, getting groceries, making one dinner - THEN starting on the soup, I didn't really get to relax until almost 11:30pm. Cooking well is hard to do - so how do we find a good middle ground? I don't know, folks, I don't know.

NOTE: Please do not think Mike was sitting idly aside while I did all this. He was hard at work preparing a workshop for today, as well as the class he is teaching this evening. He needed work time, I needed cook time. It worked out perfectly.

PIZZA

Sunday nights have now become rather serious cooking nights in Mike and I's household. We can usually relax a bit on Sundays after busy weeks and weekends, so with that time, I like to cook. Try something new, that we have never had - and see how it goes. This Saturday was something we had definitely eaten before, but not at this level. I wanted to make pizzas, but I wanted to make the dough myself. In the past, I assisted other people (when I say assist, I mean watch) making dough, but I had never done the whole process myself.

I scanned the internet and found a few interesting recipes, but I decided to turn to "The Joy of Cooking" and use their recipe for pizza dough. I followed it to the "t", so there is no need to describe an intricate process of production. I was a bit worried during the rising stage, as I thought the dough may have been too tough before. But, with Mike's help on the initial kneading and about an hour and 20 minutes to rise, the dough came out perfect.

As I do not have a rolling pin, I used a glass to roll out the dough. It worked just fine. The dough was very stretchy and smelled wonderful. Mike and I each made our own pizzas. He wanted pepperoni and Canadian bacon. I wanted lots of veggies and some soy pepperoni. Here was the end result:





This is Mike's pizza (left)!








This is my pizza (below)!!! I would love to share, but we both killed off half at dinner, then the next half for lunch Monday. This was such a great experience, I will definitely do it again!