One trick ponies

If you absolutely must ride a one trick pony in the kitchen, clearly all reasonable minds would agree that said pony should be ONIONS.

But when you have approximately a metric shitton of ripe miniature tomatoes just outside your back door near the end of their season, why not color it up a bit?

Just added these right at flame-out.

Onions for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tomorrow!

Okay, not _just_ onions. Also tofu, and loads of fresh ginger, and fresh basil from the garden. Perfect for making wraps for long airplane rides tomorrow!

Agenda

dangr-us thoughts HQ Agenda for Thursday October 8, 2015

1) Sleep until 11:30am.
2) Drink iced coffee.
3) Hydrate. 
4) Heat up and eat leftover hippieslop* from last night.
5) Get ready for back to back conference calls for volunteer work.
6) Listen to public radio.
7) Blog.

Some days FunEmployment is pretty great.

* Fancypants hippieslop, that just won't photograph worthy of a real food porn post its current state: whole wheat pasta, black beans, peanut sauce, multicolored curried carrots, spinach, shallots, scallions. Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but it's pretty damn delicious.

the best $10 you can spend today!

It's been a while since I implored all of you to donate money, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Dear friends run a really beautiful non-profit called Alderson Hospitality House. They provide hospitality to the women incarcerated at the Alderson federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia, and their families and friends, entirely through donations.

In a nutshell, from their website, which I encourage you to check out:

The Alderson Hospitality House supports the women of the Federal Prison Camp Alderson and their friends and families. We believe in the importance of visitors during incarceration. Our volunteers and staff, through donations, demonstrate this belief by providing temporary lodging, meals, transportation assistance, information and support.

What that nutshell statement doesn't include are the really critical intangibles they also provide: love, care, warmth, kindness, non-judgment, safety, generosity, and much more.

They have a fundraiser each year called 10-In-10: they encourage you to donate $10, and share it among your networks to try to get ten additional people donating $10 within 10 days.

Or you can do as I just did, and drop the whole $100, and hopefully share it anyway! Here is the link to donate:

https://www.razoo.com/story/10-In-10-4?referral_code=share

Please consider it. I'm pretty confident it'll be about the best $10 you could possibly spend today!

And because I like to hack other people's fundraisers, tell you what: if ten people I know donate any amount, and tell me about it, I'll donate another $100!

Thanks, Duracell!

A long time ago, this blog had regular posts about poor customer service and consumer protection law. I'm not sure I have ever posted about excellent customer service. Well, Duracall just made me a customer for life with their battery guarantee.

They're going to send me a visa gift card for $18.49 to replace a maglite that had a D cell battery corrode and destroy the inside (essentially making the outer case of one of the batteries chemically welded to the inside of the flashlight barrel.)

Welcome to sunset on Lake Erie

Nothing to add.

Uhhhh.. challah?

We're doing our best!

Yom Kippur!

My first attempt to make vegan (or any type) of challah. We'll see after it rests, and we come back from the Decemberists (!!!)

Cooking for a "roving band of anarchists"

Vegan nachos!

Yes: those are fresh tomatoes and fresh basil from the garden on top.

More chickpea tofu red curry food porn

Yes: a little over a hour later, I'm still working on prep. (And cooking, too!)

The start

Of a really big curry. With chickpeas, tofu, and lots and lots of vegetables. Oh, and: rice from Oberlin Xmas.

You're invited!

#postburningmanlaundry

Res ipsa loquitor, no?

Dear reader:

An apology food porn post, since it's been a really long time since I posted.

I went to Burning Man (which is amazing, and intense. I'll probably tell many of you more stories offline if you're interested.) Worked a few 11 hour days doing high price catering. Started to figure out a move to Boston.

This is a fancy assorted plate dinner with my housemates. Eat up!

Spied behind the Cleveland Greyhound station

Ummmm... anyone want some discounted grape jelly?

Mushrooms!

Soon to be turned into roasted stuffed mushrooms, so I gotta get to work!

From one to four!

Just repotted a single big healthy aloe plant into four separate plants.

Who knows - maybe I'm now responsible enough to take care of more than a single indoor houseplant.

Broccoli Pesto

Made a few tweaks, because I'm that kind of cook, but was pretty true to the recipe. It's delicious!

Something I made.

All the while aware that it was temporary, until the tide came in.

bhodi svaha.

Huge thanks and appreciation go out to the artist, Andreas Amador, who made this possible, and F, who invited me. 

Boston, you're pretty wonderful sometimes.

Boston vegan food porn

Making a big (TBD) vegan dinner after a long, lovely day in Boston. More soon, maybe, on the interactive art installation I participated in. Or maybe that'll be private on G+. We'll see. Feel free to email me directly if you're interested!

Baba ganoush!

Well, an attempt anyway, making it in the style J is so good at, but I've only been a prep assistant for. We'll see!

A better vegan potato latke picture

Yum. Just needs a couple hours prep and cooking.

Vegan potato latkes!

Well, the beginning of them.

Sometimes

The groceries don't all fit. Banana bread on the near horizon, due to the $0.99 manager's special ripe bananas!

Tonight's vegan food fest in Eugene

Cooked one pan at a time, due to logistical limitations. But it still only took about an hour. Nom nom.

You pick:

Really bored kid on a train? Or a really creative way to lounge on a train?

Headed up to Eugene to help K for a few days, then a big ol' trip to LA. Whee!

Thai tofu red curry

With onions, zucchini, a fresh jalapeno, ginger, and basil from the garden.

Hurry: it won't be hot for long!

Electrical

Replacing this busted receptacle is actually quite trivial as electrical jobs go.

It just gets a little tiring if it's on the third floor/attic, and the circuit breaker / electrical panel is in the basement. And you're home alone. And the last breaker you try is the correct one.

Ah, well: it's done now. And nice to have a electrical receptacle that is not half open.

I'm not bragging. But:

You got 58 of 60 possible points.

Your score was: 97 %

Congratulations, you passed!

Last night's dinner

Simple but delicious: pasta, sauce, and TVP made to be kinda sorta like vegan ground beef.

All duly assembled agreed: it was tasty.

Homemade vegan apple pie.

Yum.

Okay, some more complaining.

Angels Stadium is perhaps the third worst ballpark in the MLB. All of the shitty, charmless concrete prison features of the Chicago White Sox field, and Kansas City's Kaufman Field, and Toronto's Rogers. At least the latter two have nice people.

Okay, no more complaining. 30/30.

I've just completed one of the longer bucket list items. I'm seeing a game at Angels Stadium: the 30th MLB stadium I've seen a game at.

Go As! Um, I mean, go Angels. Oh, who really cares.

Probably the second

most depressing ballpark I've been to. Sad that it's 30/30. Angels Stadium, Anaheim.

Moving by bike

Hell. Yeah.

96 degrees = let's blow leaves!

But, um, it's a dry heat.

Libraries: temples of freedom!

Great story from On The Media today: Librarians vs. the Patriot Act

Many of you have heard that I firmly believe that literacy is a hallmark of a free, democratic society, and therefore by extension, libraries are temples of freedom, and librarians warriors for freedom. This wonderful story gives us yet another example of how true this is.

Damn, I love libraries, and I am so happy to support them, and sing their praises. Here are a few of my favorites:

• the cozy South Lake Tahoe branch of the El Dorado County Library, with its gorgeous views of the lake
• the breathtaking Beaux-Arts grandeur of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library
• the Salt Lake City main library with its five story wall of glass and huge atrium
• my small but bustling local branch in Sacramento, Belle Cooledge, named for the first female mayor of Sacramento, where many moons ago, I volunteered with someone's Eagle Scout project to move all of the books from a prior location. Even at age 12 or so, I was aware that I was part of something important (and it's not a small task to move all the books from one library to another, and not mess up their order.) I typed my college admissions essay at the then brand new branch, on an IBM Selectric II, an analysis of the role of the 1848 Gold Rush and its role and legacy in modern-day racism in California.  
• the library at my middle school where I volunteered for nothing other than the love of books. I had a reading contest with another student volunteer to see who could read more books in a school quarter. I crushed him, in part by tearing through almost the entire Louie L'Amour cannon of brain-candy Spaghetti Westerns. 
• the library at Hampshire College, where I spent many hours hanging out with the awesome College Archivist and talking about the history of Hampshire. 
• my law school library, where I had a work study job which made me realize that I could avoid buying super expensive textbooks, and just do my reading with the single reference copy every class had. 
• Honorable mentions to every library I've ever had a card for, from Alaska to Massachusetts. 

I love that so many librarians take their jobs so seriously, and yet are still generally so damn nice. I love that public libraries provide warmth and shelter and connectivity and bathrooms to some of our society's most vulnerable, unhoused, and homeless persons. I love that libraries work really hard to keep up with the times, even as I mourn how few people I see check out real paper books to read these days. I love that I can be something of a hypocrite and find almost any book I want to read on my tablet through one of three libraries I have a current card for. I love the librarians on the third floor of the Seward Park Branch of the New York Public Library, one of the original Carnegie libraries, who immediately and loudly enforce the no cell phone ringing or talking rule. I love that almost every library in almost every US town has free wifi when you're traveling (and bathrooms, and drinking fountains.)

I LOVE LIBRARIES.

Leftover surprise!

A wrap I made a couple days ago in Cleveland, given new life in Sacramento.

R.I.P. Tamir Rice

I'm here handing out water and sunscreen. There are many beautiful folks doing beautiful things.

The wallshelves are in!

And the door is framed, made of 100% repurposed/scavenged/curbed wood. Downstairs, old palettes are being deconstructed and cleaned and sanded. This whole build a new bedroom in the attic project is coming together!

More on cargo bikes. And mean, nasty, aggressive people.

So, this started out as a pretty vanilla taking cans to the recycling center trip. I was amused that the photo showed the end of a (long disused) stretch of railroad track just down the street from my elementary school.

Then, less than a block after I took this photo, on a slow residential street, a very angry woman who was having a hard time keeping her mail on top of her car screamed at me (yes: screamed) "IF I WAS A COP, I'D BE HAPPY TO GIVE YOU A TICKET!!!"

I briefly considered my options, mostly stopping to ask "Um... what would you give me a ticket for?" since I genuinely wasn't doing anything wrong, much less anything worthy of a ticket. (Side note: the only thing I could even remotely think of is that she doesn't actually know what California Vehicle Code 23115 says about "rubbish vehicles", since it was absolutely covered and secured in such a way as to prevent anything from falling. I am guessing that she thinks anyone transporting aluminum cans by bicycle is a criminal.)

But I made an almost instantaneous decision to not interact: she struck me as the type of angry nasty aggressive person who might very well pack a personal sized pepper spray.

So I rode on. And went through various possible responses in my head. And tried hard to decide if this was a #driverwhohatescyclists or #driverwhohatespeoplewhomightbehomelesswhorecyclecans sort of thing. In the end, it probably was best to ignore her.

Made me sad for Sacramento, though. Especially since, if we could have had a reasoned conversation, I'm pretty sure I could have explained what I was doing, and why, and that I've lived here at least as long as her, likely longer (p.s. I went to elementary school less than a quarter mile away.)

Part One

No adorable nephews were harmed in the refinishing of this cutting board.

Bought six

But only needed five. So a return trip, also by bicycle!

Cutting board project part two!

Rubbing the silly expensive mineral oil in.

Who says Sacramento has no wildlife?

On my mom's front porch. Reader bonus: can anyone identify the species?

Broccolipalooza!

It's good, and good for you. Yum.

Flying out of Colorado Springs. Hopefully.

#adorablethingsoverheardinairports

"And that's why you love me, and I love you."

She looked up from her phone call then, and we had one of those strangers-never-going-to-interact-more mini smiles.

Another project!

A sunshine chicken run. Whee!

a classic(?) vegan hot dog

I started pulling out various leftovers to make a vegan hot dog for lunch, and then decided to dial it back, and go classic: sauerkraut and spicy mustard. Some might say New York style, some might say it's a relatively minimalist Pennsylvania style dog.

But is it really classic at all if it's vegan?

Vegan hot dog extravaganza!

Fancypants, right? Pasilla peppers, sauerkraut, smart dogs, and sauteed onions. Yum.

Onions. Lots. Of. Onions.

Green!

And a little bit of red - the prep for pasta sauce. From top left, clockwise:
Celery
Zucchini
Chives
Radish
Green onions
Broccoli (stem)
Broccoli (crowns)
Leeks
Carrots

Just how I roll

That's a four foot long raised bed garden. The bike cargo trailer rocked.

More vegan food porn

I'm just outdoing myself today! Sweating the onions with the parsnips and rosemary.