Give the people what they want!

And I know what you want, right? FOOD PORN!

These are all from prep and cooking the night before I flew to San Francisco. As I explained in an earlier post, I have an irrational concern that J won't eat well when I'm out of town, so I try to leave a fridge full of leftovers to ensure she doesn't need to scavenge in the dumpsters of midtown Atlanta. (Though that would probably be pretty fruitful.)

Prepping some garlic with the crazy sharp ceramic paring knife my mom bought me. I mentioned the chef's knife from the same series in another post; I was recently washing that knife with a dish sponge in the sink and it was sharp enough to slice right through about half of the sponge. Note to self: exercise caution when operating heavy equipment, and washing knives.

Who doesn't love some ONIONS?

Here's a couple secrets, don't tell anyone, since only five of us witnessed each: A ate an onion at dinner the other night in San Francisco! And L ate mushrooms, and LIKED THEM! ¡qué horror!

More onions!

Cleaning fresh jalapeños with the shortcut K taught me.

All the clean little jalapeños. Setting 'em up, and knocking em down:

Intentionally random and fast, since I was just throwing them all in the:

food processor, to make a marinade/sauce from page 218 of 500 Vegan Recipes. Basically, it's all of the above with some soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, and cumin.

The tempeh and tofu, waiting for a bath.

Sleeping with the peppers.


Some frying tofu.

A cut up portobello mushroom cap, soon to look much more appetizing:


My own enchanted broccoli forest.

Enchanted broccoli forest after a clearcut.

Enchanted broccoli forest and crowns, quick frying.

Deep red,

with a splash of char. Yum!

Some pretty pedestrian zucchini, no? Hold tight:

With some olive oil and time in the pan, and:

then some of the marinade added.

I make sure to leave base starches for J so she can easily throw them in tupperware and take them to work for lunch. Here is some organic whole wheat penne boiling.

Continuing a theme, here is polenta before, and:

polenta after.

Here is the tempeh after marinating and baking.

This is what just one shelf of the fridge looked like, with convenient labels. One reader of this blog can earn some bonus points by identifying the bottle in the upper right (EDIT! LEFT!) hand corner. Bueller? Bueller?