Back in NYC

And after a month, this is the floor.

What a huge feeling of relief it was to see the "Welcome to Pennsylvania" sign coming in from Ohio.

Neighbors

Is it weird to know your neighbor by their park parked outside the public library, but not in person?

Cleveland vegan food porn!

Yum.

Coffee and bananas

are an amusing topic when you ostensibly are going to run a locally (bioregionally) sourced cafe in northeast Ohio.

Bananas are also silly cheap when you buy the $1 pre-dumpster produce bags at the supermarket.

Onions! Onions! Onions!

Second Xgiving dinner

Delicious second Xgiving dinner. With podcasts. And solitude.

Vegan comfort food

After spending much of the day doing burst pipe flood remediation and cleanup in a friend's house, alone, I needed some food comfort.

Onions, tofu, poblano peppers, garlic.

The best part about this meal: the checker at the Giant Eagle was baffled by the pablano peppers. As if they'd fallen from the sky. Even after I spelled it several possible ways (the shelf tag spells it "pablano".)

Mail

It's an odd modern world we live in when writing and mailing a post card is such a visceral experience.

Yep. Making that thing.

SAUERKRAUT.

How many of you, my faithful readers, have I played the "foods on a deserted island" game with?

Well, I think if it had to be only one, it would be sauerkraut. Preferably delicious homemade lacto fermented sauerkraut.

But, yeah: sauerkraut. It was the only thing missing in my previous hippie slop post.

Insanely delicious hippie slop

No, that is not internally contradictory!

Artichoke hearts, onions, tempeh (how the hell is "tempeh" not in my spacephone's dictionary?!?), Bragg's liquid aminos, with Veganaise (another critical word I just had to teach my phone) and chili garlic sauce. Yum! Even better with the Cheshire Cat watching over it.

It was in the single digits last night, and below zero with windchill. Similar tonight: record low.

Today I boarded the hole in the front door, grabbed a space heater from across the street, tacked plastic sheeting a broken window, and tried to get an update on getting my heat radiators working.

Sigh.

One of the happy notes

This is my kitchen wall.

Flat head screws:

are an invention of satan.

But have I mentioned that I really enjoy working on old houses?

There is fungus among us.

Because I've been neglecting you, dear readers. And because mushrooms are pretty.

Last meal

green Thai tofu mushroom curry fixins. 'cause they're prettier than the final product.

Just said to my friend:

'cause nothing says party like a fifth floor walkup.

Confidential to M:

Thank you for a lovely rooftop lunch.

Food porn, road trip style!

As my faithful readers, all eight of you, have surely noticed, I've been a bit lax lately in blogging. Without going into too great of detail, since I think all of you probably already know some of the story, it has been a busy time.

Relocating from NYC to the Rust Belt. Finishing one job, starting another, flying across the country to pack up stuff to drive back across the country. In the last week, I have been in thirteen states, and slept in seven of them.

But I know why y'all come to my blog. So here is some road trip vegan food porn to satiate your burning needs:

This is from the lovely and strange Crystal Jade restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska. The fake meat was fucking delicious. The vegetables were astonishingly tasteless. Incredibly tasteless. (Yes, J: it defied credibility how tasteless the alleged sweet potato was. But it was beautifully carved.)

I can't say I'm sorry to be leaving NYC, as I look over in the public library branch I'm typing this from, and see the Bed Bug Survival Guide on the shelf.

The place I'm going is not without its challenges, but it also has immense opportunity.

Thus begins another chapter. I'm excited.

Holy tap root, Batman!

That's a Cherokee Purple tomato plant that was grown from directly sown seed. The tap root alone is over four feet long!!!

Bowling alone

Watching the World Series alone, in the midst of a huge city, where I have many dear friends, and where I'm so ready to leave.

Spent about five hours today in my remote office (which moonlights as the main branch of the NY Public Library). Also alone. And thinking about some dear friends.

Next stop: Oh me oh my oh.

How much I've walked

Faithful readers, you might have noticed it's been a while since I posted. To give you a rough sense, here is what my spacephone tells me I've walked in the last week (mostly in St. Louis, Ferguson, and environs)

Wednesday Oct 8: 12257 steps, ~6.6 miles
Thursday Oct 9: 11856 steps, ~6.2 miles
Friday Oct 10: 11592 steps, ~5.7 miles
Saturday Oct 11: 14205 steps, ~6.8 miles
Sunday Oct 12: 6682 steps, ~3.4 miles
Monday Oct 13: 18552 steps, ~9.0 miles
Tuesday Oct 14: 6738 steps, ~3.5 miles
Wednesday Oct 15: 11912 steps, ~6.3 miles.

No, I have no clue how my spacephone calculates the distance based on the steps.

Wednesday was largely a travel day, but included four hours at the incredibly awesome City Museum in St. Louis.

Seen in a window

Confidential to E, K, and V:

Strong lines. Strong. Lines.

(Leftover vegan nachos.)

What I'm doing with my rainy Saturday morning

Seems like a great time to rehab a box fan that someone mistakenly thought should be landfilled, right?

Worst. Post. Office. In. America.

90 Church Street, New York, NY 10007.

Submissions will be accepted, but the competition is steep from 90 Church Street.

NYC and super garlic bagels

Confidential to Mama: THX THX THX for cleaning my stovetop!

I'm eating a bagel with three cloves of sliced raw garlic just for you!

Dear Downtown C Train:

I <heart> you. You look really good at rush hour.

This is what you get the big bucks for

Stuffing 500 folders into your suitcase.

Want to help pay for a nutritious meal in Ferguson?

Finally got a chance to cook a real meal after a very long week and a half of providing legal support and jail support in Ferguson and St. Louis.

Want to help? Your donations literally pay for meals like this for folks doing legal and jail support. Check out nlg.org/ferguson

Major home upgrade

It's odd how much something like a dish drying rack can improve your quality of life. And how few of the Crap-O-Rama bodega style stores selling mass amounts of container ship garbage sell them.

Living cheap in NYC

This cost a grand total of $3. Sure, it requires a little picking through, but I love that I have a produce bodega around the corner that sells seconds for $1/bag.

Dinner!

With another post pending, since the grand total for the produce was under $6. Yes. Really. You just have to explore Manhattan a bit.

This is home. For now.

pretty fancy looking, no?

Yes, you can:

With a kitchen smaller than the average coat closet, turn out a three course meal. Yum.

You can take the boy out of scavengeland, but...

Grabbed some perfect shit on my block to build a DIY standing desk for free!!! (Also grabbed some working power tools the other day from a trash pile, so I now have a circular saw here!)

Things interim executive directors (i.e., me) do to save money

Part II

Things interim executive directors (i.e., me) do to save money

Part I

Blossom

First NYC vegan food porn? Where the hell are my priorities?!?

Well, with errands, groceries, and four to six hours of work. Phew.

A New York City Education:

Or, How I Paid $5 For A Hot Dog Flavored Pretzel...

Yesterday I went to the bank with the outgoing Executive Director (who I officially take over from as Interim Executive Director tomorrow!) and another office staff member. Afterwards, I wanted a big soft pretzel.

You may know the kind: all over the  tourist-heavy areas of NYC, there are these hot dog and pretzel and pop stands taking up a lot of sidewalk real estate that is in critically short supply to begin with.

I have some hummus in the fridge at the office, so a big soft salt riddled piece of crap to dip in it, and a NYC semi-junk food classic at that, sounded great.

So I go order my pretzel with salt, stupidly thinking it'll cost $2.75-$3 like it does ALL OVER MANHATTAN.

But, no: here in the Financial District, after the pretzel is already in my grubby hands, and I fork over my ten dollar bill, the guy hands me five back.

SAY WHAAAAAAT?

But at that point, I had no graceful way to give it back. Transaction done, pretzel in hand, $5 gone, I'm a dope. And even if the guy would have refunded my money, the pretzel would have gone in the trash, which would severely grate on my (admittedly extreme) anti-waste anti-consumption principles.

But then I got back to the office, and the pretzel tasted like it had been dipped in hot dog/cherry soda flavored lip gloss. So it went into the trash anyway.

#lessonfuckinglearned

BTW, the photo isn't the pretzel stand in question. This guy sells them for $3...

A good place

My job is great. And very challenging. And I'm very happy, and very grateful, and very privileged, to be here, doing what I'm doing, right now. Even after midnight, headed home from work, on a crowded 4 train.

Last supper

Well, last big one any time soon for me in Sacramento. Headed to NYC Monday night!

Big ol' grilled dinner, with homegrown yellow crookneck squash and La Roma II tomatoes, and homemade sauerkraut.

Gliding rockers

are actually really complicated.

Fancypants vegan cheese quesadilla

With dipping sauces!

America Fuck Yeah!

Nothing quite commemorates throwing off the yolks of George III like deep frying your crumpets.

Vegan sushi al fresco!

What I did with my day

Got the oil changed, had Ethiopian food for lunch with mom, and hung a tree swing for my niece and nephews.

Vegan sushi for dinner!

Summertime, and the food porn is easy!

Grilled a pizza on our fancypants new gas grill last night (on a pizza stone.) Turned out pretty well, though I do need to fiddle with the details. I'll probably do it for longer on a lower heat setting next time.

Sauteed mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, ONIONS, and Daiya mozzerella.

And this is some brussels sprout prep before a hard coveredfry. Proportions shown: yes, I do use about eight cloves of rough chopped garlic for two pounds of brussels sprouts. Yum!

Travel season remains busy. Just got back from Appalachia, heading back to Massachusetts in a couple days, and then back to Appalachia in mid-June.

Seats you buy just for admission

Citi Field is huge and steep. I can more or less follow the game play from my cheap seat, and I like the mostly open main concourse. The condiments are decent but not amazing; I enjoyed a ton of sauerkraut on my vegan slice of pizza.

But it's not a park I'll go out of my way to return to.

Mixed message

Bad news? The flight is still delayed.
Good news? I'm still a star.

Sometimes, I love Google Voice

This is a partial transcript. I'm a star.

Fucking baseball prison

Jesus, no wonder the Rays attendance is dismal, despite their awesome performance. What a shithole.

Ballpark notes: Houston and St. Louis

Unfortunately I lost a bunch of draft text for Minute Maid Park in Houston. So some quick notes:

From the outside, it's without a doubt the ugliest stadium in major league baseball. It looks like a tornado ripped 2/3 of the roof off. Who knows what it looks like when the roof closed. I've seen better looking Little League fields.

Inside, the fan experience is one of the best in baseball. A wide open concourse with great field views all over the place. Nice people, good food, and positively the best condiment stations I've seen: pickle spears, pickle slices, onions, jalapenos, and the usual stuff.

The airport "express" bus, #102, between downtown Houston and IAH, is a miserable hour and a half long milk run, but only $1.25.

Compare Busch Stadium, which has dismal offerings: just Heinz brand pumps of ketchup, mustard, relish, ranch, honey mustard, and bbq sauce. Busch also has basically zero views from the main concourse, is huge, and features Mike's of walking to get to the upper levels. It is very well served by the Metrolink light rail, right across the street.

Tomorrow to Kansas City!

Can you guess where today's game is?

Bathroom graffiti: Minute Maid Park edition

I think the ignorant moralistic asshat means syphilis. And lifetime (which, no, it doesn't last. Either.)

It's Saturday, must be Dallas

Day two of Stadiumpalooza!

The Rangers game last night was fine, if a bit slow.

Globe Life Park is horrible: probably the second or third worst fan experience park I've been to, after US Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox. Both are concrete monoliths, though at least Globe Life Park is (deceptively) attractive from the outside. Both are steep and huge - even with a front row seat in the cheap seats, I literally couldn't follow the action - I had to watch the fielders move to figure out where the ball had been hit. The railing and cables obstructed the view, the seats were small and uncomfortable, the concessions suck, and it's in Arlington, a soulless, charmless suburb convenient to nothing.

Since I could barely see the game, I walked the entire stadium, including the long, hard, tall, cold concrete ramps that are angled rather than circular, but otherwise very reminiscent of US Cellular Field. According to Wikipedia, the upper deck is one of the highest in baseball. They also note that it's one of the so-called "retro" parks; if so, it's the worst example of one I've been in.

With the good retro parks, and even some old-school parks, the main level concourse has great, close views to the field. Not so in Arlington: only the outfield concourse, conveniently located in the next zip code, looks onto the field. And they allow smoking throughout the outer edges of the concourse, so it smells like a nasty bar, even outside.

Oh, and, I'm sitting at DFW, one of my least favorite airports on the planet. Getting through the security checkpoint, with exactly four people in front of me, took a full ten minutes. Sure, not that long on balance, but c'mon: there were only four people in front of me. (And the slowness was all TSA, not the passengers.) At least the people are pleasant.

But enough complaining: I'm on an eleven day tour of ballparks in nine different cities: life is GREAT!

It's not quite like being in a prison

But a Globe Life Park, home of the Texas Rangers, is... underwhelming. Still, it's a gorgeous night to see a ballgame!

Perhaps my final food porn from Tahoe:

Nachos: Daiya pepper jack, tomatoes, kalamata olives, green onions, pan fried onions and fresh jalapeños, tomatoes.

Two words: Strong lines.

Strong. Lines.

I made nachos the night my friend S was taken off of life support, a week and a half ago.

I couldn't say much about it then. I still have a hard time talking about it now.

We mostly new one another through cooking. Specifically, for me, cutting shittons upon shittons of vegetables, while chatting in the kitchen (or tent, shack, outdoor tables, or whatever.)

So it seems appropriate that my final food porn of Tahoe is very similar to what I made while thinking about S.

I don't use people's real names on this blog, but:

S: ¡Presente!

One last visit to the lake

This season, that is. I'll be back sometime.

I'll drive by the lake tomorrow on my way too drop off keys with the property management company, which will keep my streak intact.

Bye, Tahoe. It's been a good season.