FOOD PORN, Kentucky style!

No, we're not talking Kentucky Fried Chicken on a vegan food porn blog. 

And to be honest, the food itself wasn't particularly unique to Kentucky, aside from being limited to grocery stores so sparse they made Grocery Outlet look like Whole Foods.

I was cooking for between six and fifteen people hungry from walking all day, which partially explains the vast amounts of food being consumed.

L has a small farm in Lexington where he grows garlic. This didn't show up until midway through the walk, but we still got plenty of use out of it.

 Breakfast potatoes with peppers -- one of two batches cooked.

Raisin bread toast, made with freshly baked bread that JB brought from Cincinnati.

A slightly elaborate dinner salad, made with ingredients on hand: fresh lettuce that a walker brought from Lexington, tomatoes, black beans left over from a previous dinner, olives that a walker inadvertently took from a church kitchen thinking they were ours (oops!). And in the background right is a fresh jalapeño, garlic, and olive oil relish. C'mon: relish isn't just the cut up green pickle stuff you buy at the supermarket!

Eggs 'n taters. Here's where I out myself: while the walk was entirely ovo-lacto vegetarian, yes, I did occasionally cook non-vegan food for the walkers. No, I didn't taste or eat it, and got compliments for this: being able to cook good food without tasting it. Please don't call the vegan police. (And no need to call the health department, either: I cooked the eggs way more than shown above...)

 Much garlic bread was made, much garlic bread was consumed.

 

What would a food porn post be without a mostly gratuitous shot of ONIONS?

 Leftovers here of lentil stew, fresh coleslaw, etc.

This is how you make a lot of pasta for a lot of people. Those cans of cheapass pasta sauce forming the bottom of the food pyramid? $0.50 each. The only cheaper food we ate was the excellent produce we pulled out of a dumpster in Prestonsburg.

One of the church kitchens I cooked in was super small and had, literally, one station that could be used for prep. So piles of stuff had to go everywhere. This was prepping for pasta, and flash-fried collard greens with garlic.

A shot of the mostly unadulterated cheapass pasta sauce, and ONIONS!

A shot of the now much tastier pasta sauce, brimming with vegetables and kidney beans. 

My lunch one day on the walk: the delicious freshly baked bread, this one with anise (?) in it, a ton of peanut butter, and some dumpstered banana.

Doing prep the night before for breakfast: peppers and ONIONS!

I have no idea what I was prepping this for. Maybe the lentil stew?

More still not cooked egg. The caramelized onions and garlic were for potatoes.

I wanted to feed people festively for the Superbowl, and the grocery store didn't sell refried beans (or tortillas.) So I bought some pinto beans, and, well, refried them. This was for the six layer dip.

 This was nachos before baking them.

 And nachos after baking them, along with the six layer dip.

The six layer dip you've heard so much about: from bottom, refried pinto beans, cheese, raw onions, tomatoes, sour cream, and green onions. Yuckola. But people really liked it.

And this was the main dish for the Pooperbowl: stir fried brown rice with veggies. The rice was a leftover, gussied up with broccoli, cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, and soy sauce.

I lost a dollar bet on the Pooperbowl, because I gave D the line of 3 and took the Patriots. I didn't really care about the game, but we were all going to watch it, so the bet at least made it interesting. Yet another reason to hate Tom Brady.

Kryptonite update

Alright, loogit: I'm not one to plug commercial companies. In the 688 posts in this blog to date, I'm not sure I've directly plugged any. (Sharp-eyed readers are welcome to correct this via comment, email, or writing it on the back of a $100 bill.)

But I gotta give it up to Kryptonite: they did right by their lifetime guarantee. As detailed in this lengthy post, I had some serious trouble with a Kryptonite combo U-lock. About three weeks ago I sent the broken down, 10+ year old lock back to them, with a print-out of the email response from the company website asking about warranty protection for a lock I had no receipt for. Today, poof: a brand new lock showed up in the mail (well, the UPS.)

Good on ya, Kryptonite. I'll buy from you in the future. No, I didn't get any additional incentive to post this, aside from the replacement lock.

I left part of the address unredacted for fun: I live on Peachtree St, not Beachtree St. But it got here all the same. Good thing there aren't any Beachtree Streets in Atlanta, unlike the 90+ streets that have some variant of "Peachtree" in their name.

Fancypantsy Steakhouse* Valentines Day Dinner

Look, just 'cause we don't do gifts doesn't mean I can't make J a fancypantsy steakhouse* dinner for Valentines Day.

(*Vegan, of course.)

Here are the plates. Clockwise, from the top of the lower plate: grilled marinated tofu "steaks", "creamed" spinach, caramelized onions, and in the center, fresh tomato salad with organic julienned basil from our herb garden. And a dessert wine. Yeah, for dinner: we're sophisticated like that. (Which is clearly further shown in the bottom of the image, by J dressing up for dinner in her very fancypantsy painting scrubs.)

We apparently liked the food. This is after seconds for both of us.

I have to say I didn't like the creamed spinach as much as some past recipes I've made, but it was still pretty good, and J liked it. It was a little sweet for me from the soy milk (I used plain, but next time will go get some unsweetened.)

And here are another couple random things I've been making lately. On the right is a big ol' jar of homemade sauerkraut, which turned out delicious. And on the left, cayenne infused olive oil, with cayenne peppers from my friend L's farm in Kentucky.

Here is some of the sauerkraut plated, along with a tempeh breakfast wrap, the likes of which TSA is so concerned about. We initially feared it would taste strongly of anise, which the mason jar a friend gave us smelled heavily of, but it's actually just a tiny little hint. J's sister A (ummm, let's make her A3) liked it, and a little more biased, I think it's fantastic.

I'm going to continue experimenting with fermenting foods, in part using a recent purchased book I'm very excited about: Wild fermentation: the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture foods, by Sandor Katz. I'd really like to make the red miso on p.60, but am not at all sure I have the patience (or pantry space) to wait out a full year of fermentation. For comparison, the sauerkraut fermented in the mason jar on the counter for about three weeks before I liked the flavor well enough to put it in the fridge.

Window project

We have this bigass walk-in closet that is kinda like a tomb. A month or two ago, I swapped out the light fixtures in the closet and the dining room area, who made more clear that there really isn't much light in there. 

Fortunately,  with a little detective work, I determined that on the other side of the mostly unnecessary sheetrock wall, there is window glass, covered with a heat resistant film. Perfect.

So I started cutting stuff. (First the wall, with a jigsaw and drywall saw.)

And in one of those "The World is GREAT!" coincidences, as I was literally taking my bike out through the loading dock to go to Home Despot to buy wood to box the windows out, someone had left a dismantled bookshelf on the dock. You know, one of the $40 cheapies from Target, pressboard and weird proprietary screw systems. PERFECT!

So I cut the crap out of that, turning it into various 8" wide pieces, and boxed in the windows.

Then I got some corner molding from the Despot, cut it up, primed it.

Then spent MANY hours on a ladder framing in the windows. Which is not a non-trivial project, at least to make it look good. And it looks pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

I also re-learned that mitering corner molding on the correct angle is a more complicated task than you might think.

Now I just need to paint it, but that's kind of a massive project of removing everything from the walk-in closet, and either taping or removing the shelving system. Ugh.

The whole project made me very glad that when we moved into a one bed, one bath condo, I kept the compound miter saw, table saw, air compressor, nail gun, laser level, and all the handtools that made this project possible.

I'm so glad J and I don't buy presents for one another out of obligation on stupid corporate Hallmark Holidaze. (We get one another gifts whenever we think the other would like something.)

Yay for XKCD: 

I know, I've had a distinct lack of blogging. I was walking through rural Kentucky. More soon, maybe, if I find my camera. Ahem.

A journey of a hundred miles:

is about to begin. Walking through rural Kentucky for ten days, with lovely people, bringing attention to the horrors of mountaintop removal mining.

Super excited. More soon.

Saccaminnow bound

Okay, at the airport, and once again thinking the annual 50k miles I spend on Sky Club access is worth every penny. If nothing else, dear readers, it provides free wifi for me to blog. I know, tantalizing, right?

First: the TSA Pre Check program is pretty damn nice: to be able to walk through security without taking out my stupid 3-1-1 compliant toiletries, leave my shoes on, leave my laptop in my bag. OH, WAIT: that's what it was before all of this ridiculous security theatre. Okay, neeeeeext...

 The Atlanta airport has a pretty nice Atlanta history installation going in in the pedestrian walkway between the B and C terminals. As many of you know, I'm a big fan of history museums, and this stuff is pretty solid. That said, it sort of pretty paints some of the uglier parts of Atlanta history, e.g., highlighting the 1996 Olympics without mentioning Christian Right terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph's bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed two and injured 111, and doesn't bother to even mention a formative part of Atlanta history, the 1906 Atlanta Race Riots.

But actually, one of my main gripes is that it puts an ellipsis my favorite part of my favorite Atlanta quote:

The complete quote: 

South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a Hundred Hills, peering out from the shadows of the past into the promise of the future.

 -- W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter 5: Of The Wings of Atlanta

In other news, here is what an angle grinder and set of cheap bolt cutters can do with a little time an initiative. No, I'm not a bike thief. But my plane is about to take off, so more later.

mapleoatmealeggsandwich

File this emailed coupon under "Absolutely Fucking Opposite of Food Porn".

No, I don't think they're being ironic, or facetious. Some genius actually thinks that (a) this is a food product that (b) is going to sell.

Seriously: who eats this crap?

Not that impressive, but: FOOD PORN!

Okay, they don't look that impressive, but these stuffed tofu steaks were pretty damn tasty:

 

 I mean, they started out as this:

Well, actually, they started out with this: ONIONS, broccoli stem, and fresh jalapeno, stuffed in the slit tofu steaks:

Pan fried, braised with a sauce of tamari, chili garlic, and sesame oil, then baked for about an hour. Delicious.


And here is some other random food porn, since I was on a stress-reduction cooking binge last night:

$1 @ a time. Or $5.

My little holiday season project was to give at least $1 to everyone who asked me for money in San Francisco and the East Bay. I didn't keep track, but since i was mostly staying with A & R in the Tenderloin, it wasn't an inexpensive undertaking, and I'd estimate out of pocket around $45.
This was in part inspired by A, the first morning i was in SF, giving a guy selling Street Sense in the Civic Center BART station $10. We had just heard the overhead announcement "Attention BART Police, attention BART Police, panhandler on the platform, panhandler on the platform!" Except it was a little more shrill than text can capture. Then this guy shambled up, and could barely articulate the offer to buy Street Sense for $1. Without going in to too much detail, the guy had clearly had a very rough time of it.
A gave him $10 as i was going to my wallet, and said something like "What kind of a heartless motherfucker do you have to be to kick that guy out?" Indeed. So i decided i would give money to everyone who asked me on this trip.
Walking toward the BART station this morning to head to SFO, i found a folded $5 bill laying on the sidewalk in front of the Great American Music Hall, possibly from last night's Primus show.
The next guy who asked, half a block later, had a fairly big ask: "a couple bucks to get me something to eat?" He got the $5, and thanked me all the way down the block. It felt great, as did every other one of the 40+ gives.
Happy New Year! May all of yours be bountiful, gratifying, and unpredictable.

Food porn, travel, and reading -- year end extravaganza

This is a very nice dinner J and I had out in mid December at Eclipse di Luna in Atlanta:

As you can see from the photos they choose to use on their website, it's a little business crowd Buckhead-y, but we didn't feel at all out of place in biking shoes and our normal (REI heavy schlubby) clothing. We had a halfoffdepot, but even without it, there was plenty of vegan selection, and the food was pretty delicious, so it was worth it.

It's been a veritable vegan food orgy in the San Francisco bay area: Souley Vegan in Oakland

is legitimately one of top ten favorite restaurants ever, of all time, no debate, no discussion. This is the "chicken fried steak" style tofu burger W got, which was insanely reminiscent of something you'd buy at Wendy's, yet actually tasted unbelievable. I could eat this every day.

And this is the before and after of my "choose 3" plate with aforementioned "chicken fried steak" style tofu, "mac and cheezy" and BBQ tofu. Res ipsa loquitor:    

This was the night after I had an INCREDIBLE (yes, J, it defied credibility) dinner with E & K at Burma Superstar in Alameda

In case you're wondering, those images are from the pedestrian "path" in the Posey Tube which connects Alameda and Oakland underneath the water. It was a moderately unpleasant walk: loud as shit, and the path is only about 3.5 to 4 feet wide, so had any other pedestrians or cyclists needed to pass me while i was walking precisely ten minutes from one end to the other, we would have contributed to the weird soot wipe-offs on the wall.

The only good shot I got of the Burma Superstar food is the fantastic fermented tea leaf salad:

I know, it sounds a little funky, but this was off the damn charts.

Then last night A and W and I had an AMAZING (yes, J, I was amazed) dinner at Gracias Madre in the Mission. In case you're wondering why I didn't link to the restaurant website, unfortunately, they're looking for a buyer and will be closing down. So figure it out and get there QUICK. The food is delicious. The only decent picture I got was of the "creamed" brussels sprouts and A's tamales:

Then today for lunch I tried to go to Gracias Madre's sister restaurant, also about to close, one of the Cafe gratitude locations, but it was packed to the gills, so I walked back into the Mission proper to Herbivore on Valencia.

When this super delicious seitan BBQ sandwich and the (!) vegan potato salad were one of the less astonishing dishes I've had in the last 72 hours, that's really saying something.

Okay, okay, enough with the food porn! (At least until I process and resize some more images.) Today on the Muni I added up all the books I've completed in 2011, and they amount to 3758 pages read (not counting the crappy ones I put down.)

Probably the best book I read: Mudbound by Hillary Jordan.
Probably the worst book I finished: The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle.
Totally not even worth reading more than a quarter of: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. (Yep: sure, it was "witty" and "incisive". And also "profoundly mediocre" and no way I was going to read 576 pages of it.)

Another terrible picture of another delicious dish

This is the BBQ seitan sandwich at Herbivore in the Mission in San Francisco. Definitely not as good as Souley Vegan in Oakland (which is truly one of my ten favorite restaurants of all time) but very good nevertheless.

Xmas cheer. Sorta.

Twas the night before the night before Xmas, and all through the airport. Wait, that's not how that goes.

Here in Atlanta, it's the predictable scene: busy, frenzied travelers, bored, lazy TSA agents, and tons of kettles shocked that they have to remove their shoes. At the Sky Priority line, there was a dude never before seen, and likely never to be seen again, with a radio and a smile but no uniform, happily chatting up the 75 or so of us in the "priority" line, claiming "oh yeah, it's usually like this, maybe just a bit more for the holidays, but at least it's not out the door! It usually is!"

Ummmmmmm, no. It's not out the door, almost ever, at the south security checkpoint at ATL. What the hell are you talking about?

Okay, gotta go catch a flight. To sunny California!

Small Change

A emailed me this morning quoting a song from Tom Waits' album Small Change, which caused me to put this too-seldom played, incredible album on.

If you don't know it, I suggest you consider listening to the classic The Piano Has Been Drinking.

While I'm still getting used to blogger's new interface, I LOVE the new image interface, which to test, I uploaded this Mystery Picture taken near Alamosa, Colorado:



I love that you can now modify the images once uploaded by clicking on them to get a context menu.

The land? You'll be hearing more about it. Probably.

Blog Archive, by year

Sure looks like I had a lot of time on my hands in 2010. Sure didn't feel that way.

Always hit it with a hammer.

Well, so, that kinda sucked. But not quite as badly as it could have. Here's a long story about bikes, locks, and how I spent a couple of my hours last night.

It started when I rode my bike down to Whole Foods to buy some produce for dinner. My whip was the trusty Sitba. I locked Sitba up with my decade+ old Kryptonite U-lock, the combination model. Essentially an older version of this lock:

I've had it since long before I started law school, so... that's a while. No, it's not super high security, but I've long liked the combo lock, and visually it looks strong to non-pro bike thieves. In significant part, it's visual deterrence: a smart bike thief will skip over the U-lock and go for the cable lock most every time, unless they know bikes, and have plenty of time to spend on stealing.

From a user perspective, it's quick and easy.

Yeah, well, it's quick and easy until it gets stuck and you can't open it.

Basically, you turn the numbers to your combo, then push the button right to release the lock. The button was stuck. Really stuck. I tried and tried it, tried to leverage it with my bottle opener, tried every possible angle. No dice.

So I called J, who was riding home from elsewhere, and asked her to gather a bicycle liberation kit: the 4.5" angle grinder, extension cord, ear and eye protection. And kind of on a whim, a hammer. (Hey, why not, right?) And a printout of the spreadsheet I keep on the computer for insurance purposes, detailing our bikes including serial numbers, and hopefully the receipt for the bike. I also pull up a photo of myself on my phone with the bike, and if needed, once it's cut off, could pull out the seatpost and turn it upside down, and my business card (folded into quarters and taped) will fall out. Basically, conflict management with cops and security if J can't find the receipt or other clear proof I own the bike.

I then went in and explained to Employee A at customer service what I was going to do. Basically, make a big ol' loud hot mess right in front of their store. Employee A is totally cool with it: oh, and I can borrow their cutter, no, even better, she'll get someone to do it for me. I'm doubtful that they actually own an angle grinder in the store, but she gets Employee B, who clarifies that it's a set of bolt cutters, and he can't do it for me without me proving it's my bike, which I'm completely comfortable with, and it's kind of moot, since bolt cutters won't work anyway.

So Employee B gets Store Manager A, who is super sympathetic, agrees the bolt cutters won't work, and is highly enthusiastic about my angle grinder plan. Absolutely, anything he can do, of course I can plug in to their power outlet, yeah, sure! I say my wife is on the way, I'll let Store Security Guard A know when I'm about to do it. Sure! Great!

So I stand around outside for a while, keep messing with the lock, have a nice conversation with Homeless Guy A with a bike, who I'd given money to on my way in to the store. (I also gave money to another guy on my way out. Apparently good panhandler karma doesn't translate into good bike lock karma.) Homeless Guy A is chilling out at the outside tables in front of Whole Foods, which Parking Lot Security Guard A and Off Duty APD Cop A don't dig, so they hustle him out of there with a mix of fake friendliness and slightly cruel sarcasm. I glare from about ten feet away, but they ignore me. Probably for the better to avoid direct conflict, since I'm going to look like a bike thief in a few minutes.

J arrives, I go back inside and mention to Store Security Guard A what I'm about to do, and he's almost as enthusiastic as Store Manager A. (And doesn't bother to inquire whether I own the bike.)

First power outlet doesn't work, second one father away does, so while J is unraveling the 100' extension cord, I decide to bang at it with the hammer, mostly for fun. Two bangs on that nasty little button, and it opens up just fine.

So we collect our little middle class bike theft kit, I put the bike on the back of the car, and Store Security Guard A comes out to congratulate us, and tell us to have a good night.

The moral of the story? I dunno. Maybe that being a white middle class Whole Foods customer with power tools is a really effective modus operandi for being a bike thief? Or maybe: "always hit it with a hammer." Yeah. Maybe that.

Colorado beer, food porn, etc.

The important stuff, of course.

Our Colorado vacation included visits to four new breweries, as well as a return visit to an old friend, Wynkoop, and the previously posted Trinity Brewing Company in Colorado Springs.

San Luis Valley Brewing Company, Alamosa:

Denver Beer Company:

Strange Brewing Company, Denver, before:

Strange Brewing Company, Denver, after:

Tasty beer, and tasty food:

A terrible picture showing the incredibly tasty vegan buffalo wings, and a fun vegan poutine, at City O' City, Denver (sister restaurant to the always lovely Watercourse, where we had breakfast yesterday before flying out):

Unfortunately, they seriously upscaled City O' City and jacked up the prices. I'll still keep going for the wings, but it's a big disappointment.


We also did a fair bit of our own cooking when the hotel rooms provided for it. This is a pasta with fresh broccoli, green peppers, and fake chicken from Gardein. Tasty. The Full Sail Wassail and bourbon were nice too, since it was COLD. Like, really, seriously cold. -4 before windchill, with stiff winds.


This is at Root Down in Denver, which is fancy and somewhat spendy, but has some great happy hour specials (pdf), and all vegan items clearly marked on the menu. Vegans should make sure when they order the sweet potato fries (right) to get a dipping sauce other than the "Curry Lime Dunk" which has sour cream in it. Boo. The portobello slider (top) was tasty but a little too sweet, while the Edamame Hummus with fried wonton chips (left) was RIDICULOUSLY good.


This is a semi-artistic rendering of our drinks, including the $3 happy hour draft, Odell's Isolation Ale. J's Rosemary-Lavender Lemonade (left) was actually $2 more!


Root Down has these super cool "smart" toilets: after you do your business, you wash your hands in the sink on top, then it uses the gray water as the next flush. The only problem is that the temperature of the sink water is cold (granted, it's December in Denver) but it seems like this could easily be fixed by just plumbing it with warmer water.

And, since no good food porn post would be truly complete without: ONIONS! Before flying out, we knocked out a bunch of tofu and onions to make wraps:
Yes, it was a bit of a risk, since the last two times J and I have taken wraps through the ATL south security checkpoint, it has resulted in false positives for bomb residue. It didn't happen this time.

Incidentally, that's a Thomas Hardy 2005 in the wine glass in the background of the photo.

Okay, with all this blogging about food, maybe I should go buy some so we can have dinner tonight. Just food, though: here in Atlanta, we remain in the dark ages until January 1, 2012.

Denver Beer Company

Solid. Just, solid. The basic pale ale, Bunny Trail Pale Ale, is one of the best I've had in a long time.

Denver Beer Company

New favorite brewpub

At least in the top five: Trinity Brewing Company in Colorado Springs. Exciting beers, great people, shitty location, and some of the best vegan buffalo wings I've ever had.

Don't worry, A2, we're going to go update the vegan wings competition today at City O' City. We'll toast you!

J is a genius, again.

Toasting bagels with an iron for hotel room breakfast. (J gives credit to Top Chef for this surprisingly effective technique.)

Yep, we're rocking it super classy style here at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort, in the shadow of NORAD. Hey, it was Priceline, okay?

Vintage, indeed.

The  Vintage Resort Hotel  in Winter Park, Colorado. Putting the vintage back in vintage.

We sat in the outdoor hot tub last might when it was 4 degrees, then ran like hell for the indoor dry sauna. Priceless!

Google+ = SUCK, Part Deux

Following up on the preceding post, this asshat spamming me through Google+ is what led to it:

I still haven't figured out a way to block someone from my "circle" without first joining Google+. Lame. Suggestions welcome.

Well, I'll make it all feel better by going skiing in Colorado with J. We leave tomorrow. Yay! Time to pack.