breakfasts

Ken's home, but only until next Sunday. Bah.
After the airport pickup, we went to R. Thomas for a late dinner. The food at R. Thomas is always good, but the atmosphere is noisy, crowded and uncomfortable overall. I guess that's why we don't go there very often. But they are open 24 hours, so there you go. I didn't take a picture of my dish, but I'm sure you know what a veggie burger looks like.
Anyway.
We did have a couple of nice breakfasts this weekend. Saturday's was a spinach tofu omelette, toast, Tofurky breakfast links, and fresh raspberries.


An omelette is a nice change from our typical tofu scramble, although it's still kinda similar in taste to a scramble. It would have looked more like an omelette if I were better with a spatula. Flipping it in one piece is kinda difficult. We both dug the Tofurky breakfast links, although they taste almost exactly like the Tofurky Italian sausage. And why five to a package, Tofurky? Odd numbers of food like that are weird. But anyway. Here's my easy omelette recipe:

1 package extra firm tofu(not silken), drained
3 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp Bragg's or tamari
4-6 Tbsp soymilk
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
a few shakes of pepper
1 tsp tumeric
1 cup fresh spinach
1/2 cup Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella, shredded

Crumble the tofu into a bowl and mix in the nutritional yeast, Bragg's, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and tumeric. Use a hand blender to blend the tofu mix until creamy (no lumps). Add the flour, then whisk in enough soymilk to make a thick batter.
Heat an oiled skillet over medium heat. Pour in the batter, making a solid disk, kind of like a big pancake. Cook until the edges are brown, then carefully flip the disk over. On top of the cooked side, layer the spinach. then the "cheese". Once your other side is browned, carefully fold the disk in half to sandwich in the spinach and "cheese". Cut in half and serve. Yummo.

This morning we were pretty low on food. I had to work with what I could, and I ended up turning out a decent little batch of french toast. Our bread wasn't stale, so I just toasted the slices a bit before dunking them in batter. For the batter, I used some leftover Wildwood Creamer, and whisked in about 1 tsp of cornstarch, a few sprinkles of cinnamon, and a scoop of nutritional yeast. Wowie. This turned out better then the heavily battered french toasts I've made in the past. The bread was light with crispy edges, and slightly sweet from the creamer. Awesome. Topped with some bananas on their last leg, and real maple syrup. The sausage is Publix's house brand of soy sausage, which is surprisingly good. They make good links that are vegan, too.


But I must go grocery shopping today, or no more eating for us. All that's left in the fridge are some olives, ketchup, and old salad. Hmm.

I didn't do much cooking while Ken was away, of course. I have a hard time cooking for just myself. Because of this, I ate like crap most of the time. I did take the time to whip up a quick Indian dish on Thursday night, that left me with more to take for lunch on Friday. it was pretty good, too. A simple kidney bean curried tomato sauce over coconut rice. If you've never cooked rice with coconut milk in place of the usual water, I highly recommend doing so. It rocks the house.



Okay. I need to go buy some food now. Oh, and by the way- the reason why this coming week is my last at my current job... Cosmo's storefront is a'comin' May '07!!! Whoo!! Hold on to your hats, Highland Avenue.

long ass post with various ramblings.

I left Ken at the airport again today. He'll be gone for a week, and he has to go again two weeks from now. Waahh, I hate it. When I came home, I whipped myself up into a much needed cleaning frenzy. I didn't finish cleaning the whole house though, because my frenzies don't last long enough for that.
I used the Swiffer on our hardwoods for way too long. I knew better, but had let the convenience get the best of me. Since I abandoned the P&G-owned Swiffer some time ago, I really haven't gotten into using the ol' mop and bucket as often as I should. So I was thrilled to see that Method now has the Omop. I love Method's stuff. Everything I have used works great, and they are very clear about their policy on animal testing and animal ingredients. If they were nice enough to sell to companies other than Target and Lowes, then I would totally sell their products in our store.
But anyway... the Omop. I bought one today. It was easy to assemble, and the almond scented hardwood cleaner smells lovely. It was a little bit tough to push when using the cleaner and microfiber mop pad. I had to put some shoulder into it. But all and all, I like the Omop. I certainly don't feel guilty using it like I did the Swiffer. Oh, and whoever is writing the instruction booklets for Method deserves a batch of vegan cookies. Funny as hell.
Speaking of cleaning, I'm tired of Miles' smell. He needs someone to show him how to lick his butt, and that someone is not me. I purchased some of these, and promptly wiped his ass with them. It helped somewhat. Now he's kind of lemony.
Speaking of Miles, he's one of the reasons why I'm so tired during the day:


Miles sleeps on me in the weirdest positions. Many nights we put him in his room so we can sleep in peace, but after a few hours he starts clawing the door, and he's damaged the door to the point that we will need to replace it. The lil' bastard. It's a good thing he's so cute.
Hmm, food. I have some food pics stockpiled. Here are a few.
Tonight I wanted something light, since Ken and I had huge burrito bowls at Chipotle before the airport. So, I threw together some soup with udon noodles:


Frankly, it was like eating noodles in dishwater. I don't know what went wrong. The broth was a seemingly tasty blend of vegetable broth, tamari, garlic, onions, salt, and red pepper. Yet it had no taste. What a waste of noodles, broccoli, mushrooms, and edamame. But the picture makes it look tasty, with the steam and whatnot.

These are heart-shaped oregano biscuits:


I used a basic baking powder biscuit recipe. I think every cookbook has one, but I think I used a Sarah Kramer recipe this time around. I stuffed the batter into my heart shaped muffin tins, and made these cute little biscuits. We had them with the Leahey Chicken Noodle Soup. (Look! The soup has a five Cosmo Head rating! Ha.I never get tired of Moe in a hat.) The soup and biscuits were great, but this was during the time that my stomach was fucked up, so they didn't stick around for very long. But I do have fond memories of what was.
Here's a delicious pasta bake:


This is made with a current favorite of ours, the Tinkyada rice pasta. It tastes so much like regular semolina pasta, but without the heaviness and bloating. Anyway- this is cooked pasta layered with fresh spinach, red onions, basil, tomato sauce, Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella, and olives, baked to a gooey perfection. Basic but awesome. Speaking of Italian, I also tried my hand at vegan biscotti. I used a recipe from the latest online edition of Herbivore Magazine. This is chocolate dipped almond biscotti:

This was very delicious, but a bit crumbly. It was really hard to cut without it crumbling into pieces. The recipe called for anise, but I'm sorry. Anise is the devil's cologne, so no thank you.
One day I swear I will have a camera decent enough to take better food photos. Sheesh, and to think that I used to get paid to take pictures. How sad.
Okay, that's enough for now.

my life in 10 seconds.

Wow. There's so much to tell, with no time to tell it. Here's the 10 second version:
I was sick, had a CT scan, apparently I'm "normal". And a hearty ha ha to that.
We cook, we eat, we don't cook, we still eat.
We don't sleep at all.
Exciting news involving the store, more on that later.
I gave notice at my work today- woo to the who.
Our Power Plant experience is now in comic strip form! Lookie!!

The End. (whew!)

always underfoot.

Miles got his first bath today. I don't make a habit of bathing cats, since ours are indoors and they take care of the grooming themselves pretty well. But today, Miles was underfoot (as usual), and he jumped up on my dresser just as I was putting on some of my lucky "wolf's heart" perfume oil. He bumped my hand, and I dropped and spilled the vial on him! it was pretty funny for a second, until I realized that he might lick it and get sick. So I gave him a bath. He didn't know what the hell was going on. But at least he doesn't smell like Phoenix and Dragon anymore.
Actually, there is still a hint of the scent on him, but it's kind of nice. It smells like he went to the spa. Which is a nice change, since he usually has a weird little boy kind of smell, kind of like fruit loops and fart.