Soup Night!

What binge blogging day would be complete without a little good ol' fashioned food porn?!?

Last night was soup night (for 25). I made, from top left: veggie chili, more veggie stock for next time, potato leek, and that's a skillet of ONIONS and vegan soy crumbles for the chili.

Oh, and: my phone has a soup emoji, but it doesn't make the leap from phone to blog. Instead I have to settle for ramen: 🍜

How did we ever possibly survive without adorable minute cartoonish images on our phones and blogs?

And as a totally separate complaint, with every new update to android, my phone makes more typos and ridiculous auto-corrects, and Swype doesn't work as well. Apologies in advance. 

Adventures in plumbing!

Unfortunately I already discarded the photo i took of the p-trap this one replaced: it had a hole rusted right through the bottom.

Damn you, google, and your unnecessary auto backups and account storage quota.

Long-time readers will find more nasty hair logs and biogoo photos under the home renovation label. This relatively tame one was just dangling from the pipe when I removed the old p-trap.

Television

I've now watched the first four or so episodes of The People vs. OJ Simpson, and I almost stopped after the first two. I have no idea what folks think is so fantastic about it.

I honestly think it contains the weakest performances I've ever seen from both John Travolta and Cuba Gooding Jr. ... I mean, Gooding is just terrible as OJ. He's way too small to plausibly play an NFL Hall of Fame running back. He's whiny and squeaky and immensely unlikable. Travolta swings wildly between forgetting to chug his Adderall and pitching totally unconvincing temper tantrums. 

Sarah Paulson is weak and her character shown as incompetent. Her almost nonstop stylized, affected smoking is an utterly unnecessary contrivance, and wasn't allowed inside public offices in California in the mid 90s. Sterling Brown is working mightily to portray struggling with an existential crisis but failing. Pretty much every character (except Johnnie Cochrane) is thoroughly unlikable.

Folks say it's gritty and realistic and gripping: Noppity nope nope. It's none of the above. 

So: got any binge watching recommendations, dear readers? Netflix (thx mom!) or free on Amazon Prime, please.

three and a half dozen peanut butter oatmeal vegan cookies

Res ipsa loquitor.

One more

Since you've missed the food porn. Here is garlic bread I made for a family dinner:

SAUERKRAUT.

While not necessarily the prettiest photo of this food porn blogging binge,

the sauerkraut prep is definitely my favorite. Two big heads of cabbage that lead to one decent sized crock of sauerkraut. It's been a while since I made sauerkraut, and needless to say, I'm excited!

BANANA BREAD!

We had a whole bunch of extra bananas:

So I made five loaves of banana bread:

Received many nice compliments. A couple folks were baffled that it was vegan.


fsdsdffds

ONIONS. YES.

Kinda of amazing how this many ONIONS:

results in only this much (delicious) caramelized onion:

Catching up now on West Virginia food porn blogging. More to come!

Veggie broth!

Thank goooodness, some more West Virginia food porn! This is what one small part of my afternoon looked like:

This is making veggie broth from scraps, my second batch of the week. They'll turn in to a big soup on Friday when we're hosting several dozen people. We cook big enough meals here that one or two generates enough vegetable scraps to make six to eight quarts of stock.

I might post the soup or stew that comes from this. Woulda been nice this morning when it was 2 degrees above zero. (I'm still working on the frozen pipe problem.) 

Tedious projects

I actually volunteered for this project:

And thoroughly enjoyed it. I got to do it while also maintaining breakfast for a couple dozen people, and enlisted the help of half a dozen curious people.

I didn't actually count, but roughly half of the pens didn't work. And while I really dislike waste, I confess that I derive immense satisfaction out of throwing away pens that don't work. 

WV food porn!

This is the beginning of the prep for two big lasagnas I made last night.

Anaheim peppers, yellow squash, cauliflower, mushrooms, and lots and lots of stuff off screen. 

DO NOT

This is just outside the toilet at the Food Lion in Blacksburg, Virginia.

I guess it can speak for itself.

But... doesn't it just kinda, sorta, make you want to push the red button?

Just a little?

Just to see what happens?

Wild and Wonderful Recycling.

On my first full day back in West Virginia, this is by far the cleanest and tidiest pile I dealt with.

We spent a couple hours sorting recyclingpocalypse in a small town. These bags were only the properly pre-bagged #2 plastic (think milk and laundry detergent containers.)

And in case you're wondering, that's the old police station we're in front of. It's now mostly storage for lawnmowers and other landscaping equipment.

Headed to Wild and Wonderful!

With snow bike, and XC skis.

Hope we get some snow!

Road trip vegan

A dressed up trader joe vegan masala.

Earth Pizza!

The indulgence of having used or thrown out almost all of your food.

Okay, so: I had pizza for dinner last night (and for lunch and road trip food today.) There was a pretty picture, but like many others lately it didn't upload properly, and I have no idea why. So: apologies. I'll work on this when I have connectivity from a real computer. But for now I'll just blame the little kids. 

moving out of Red Bank

For this moment, all the way to the storage unit. The pile on the left goes into the car.

I finally fully sorted and organized and culled the bathroom and toiletry tubs today for the first time, kinda since 2014, but in a cumulative way since 2007 or so.

Six oranges

Okay, minus a couple sips. But very close.

Leaving Curacao

Res ipsa loquitor.

More food porn!

Post-prep, pre-cooking. Clockwise from bottom left: green peppers, sauerkraut, olives, black beans, raw garlic, kale, and ONIONS!

Wrap making central!

For the 5 hour flight tmrw. All the usual trappings with, of course, ONIONS!

Four onions.v

This, my friends, is four onions. FOUR.

guess the location?

Only hint: I swam in the ocean today.

That eggplant, onions and garlic. And red beads and rice. And fried broccoli, cauliflower, and garlic. And Daiya cheddar on lavash.

Vegan wrap assembly line!

Res ipsa loquitor!

Potatoes! And onions! Oh my!

Just a plain, run of the mill, food porn post. Yep: that's six pounds of potatoes, and two pounds of onions.

The View From Here

It doesn't quite compare to the view from the South Lake Tahoe library, but the view from the Red Bank, New Jersey, public library is pretty nice:

And with bright skies and temps in the mid-80s, the air conditioning is nice, too!

House painting all done!

This was the before. Here is the after:

I was going for the early 19th century Federal / Colonial. I'm pretty darn pleased. I hope V(i)P is pleased too!

Vegan sammich

Red Bank style! On a delicious salt bagel from Bagel Oven, with tofurky, ONIONS, Nathan's kosher dill pickle, and some fancypants vegan cheese.

It's delicious, especially with the view to the Navesink River.

Another installment about treating my tools well.

I only spent about twenty minutes with rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to clean this one up. 

House painting

What I'm doing with my evening. In addition to watching the Blue Jays vs. Rangers, that is.

The view from here

Alameda, California.

vegan lunchtime hippie slop

This is what lunch looks like when you're trying to eat through your food to fly out early in the morning.

On top are gardein chicken nuggets and (heavily doctored) mandarin orange dipping sauce. On bottom are Moe's mini bagels, friend onions, and gardein chckn patties, and sauteed peppers and onions.

Whole Paycheck thinks the peppers are Hatch, but since Hatch season ends in early September, I'm going to guess Anaheim.

Boulder vegan food porn!

Here is tonight's homemade dinner, as I'm beginning to try to eat through the food I have in the fridge and on the counter in the vacation rental.

tortilla, pepper jack Daiya, black beans, fried tofu with Herbs de Provence, sauteed onions, black beans, and of course, the star of the show, ONIONS!

Today was Day 16 in the ICU. I'm leaving on Wednesday.

Boulder food porn!

Black beans and onions. Simple, yet oddly pretty.

For comparison's sake

This is yesterday morning's breakfast: a (several) day old bagel from the venerable Moe's Broadway Bagel, with earth balance, onion, sauerkraut, and Indonesian sambal.

Labyrinth

Boulder Community Hospital has gorgeous grounds and fantastic outdoor spaces. It's so very nice to be able to walk out of the building and just be outside. And breathe. I'm doing a lot of conscious breathing these days.

This is a beautiful labyrinth in the main courtyard. It takes almost exactly five minutes to walk at an intentional pace.

I do love this state

Even under challenging circumstances...

Today is day 13 of the ICU (I've been here for eight.)

Looks can be deceiving

It may not look it, but this is the tastiest breakfast I've had in a week. It's the leftover half of my vegan buffalo wing wrap from the iconic City O' City in Denver, where I had a lovely dinner with my good friend H last night.

Also from Day 9

This is an odd, beautiful rock cairn sculpture on the multi-use path that runs behind the hospital.

Day 9 lunch

We're onto Day 10 in the ICU, but ya know, sometimes your don't find time to blog right away.

This is my lunch yesterday at Native Foods in Boulder. It's the Portobello (Sausage) Burger. The taste was solid, though the seitan "burger" patty was kinda skimpy.

The View From Here: Boulder, Colorado

At least the views from the hospital windows are pretty. (I'm fine, here for family.)

More adventures in sink biogoo

I just can't resist unfucking other people's sinks. Sometimes I even do it in hotel rooms. See my home renovation label for past entries.

This one is in the lovely apartment in Cambridge where we're pet-sitting and house-sitting. It was a little tricky, since the P-trap is soldered copper pipe.

This is certainly not the nastiest one I've ever pulled out, but one of the more satisfying. The sink was taking about a full minute to drain after brushing teeth or washing hands, and now is draining like a champ! Just for funsies I did the baking soda and boiling vinegar trick after pulling out all of the biogoo hair with chopsticks. 

Letting go

Another installment in the "I really don't need to be dragging these back and forth across the continent for another twenty years" series.

These are my high school sports letters, JV and varsity, earned for soccer and swimming. They come from what was once the second oldest high school west of the Mississippi River, which a certain alum and mid-quality NBA point guard bought as a vanity project to help launch his mayoral career and turned into a charter school. Oh, and some really old teabags. 

Still more food porn

This was the first dinner I cooked upon our return to the Boston area (we're actually pet-sitting and house-sitting in Cambridge, having moved out of our Roxbury apartment at 3am on the morning we flew to Nevada for Burning Man. An excellent decision to move out, though given the opportunity I might do the timing a little different.)

Delightfully, the friends we are sitting for have a nice garden in the back and are gone for a month, so they implored us to harvest and eat their garden veggies.

From top left, that's ONIONS!, kale (from the garden), eggplant (from the garden), garlic, hot red peppers (from the garden), lime, and green bell peppers (from the garden.) Unfortunately I don't have any photos after I oven roasted them. While they're more delicious after roasting, they look better raw. 

Travelin' hippie slop!

This was our back to Default dinner in hotel room in Reno after Burning Man. Greasy, delicious, hot, didn't come from a vacuum sealed bag, had tons of vegan protein, and someone else cooked it. CHECK!

These are from Golden Flower Vietnamese Restaurant in Reno, which we could see from our hotel room window. It's a big open room that was populated with a bunch of just-post-grimy Burners, so takeout was a nice option.

After an eleven hour Exodus from the playa, and sleeping sitting up in the compact car on the side of Highway 447 from 2am to 6am, and then running all over Reno finishing up Burning Man returns and errands, this was a lovely dinner. Also breakfast before flying out the next morning.

Refrigeration, reschmidgeration! It's amazing how Burning Man can lower your food safety standards. (Another reason I'm glad I'm vegan.)

Time to get rid of more shit.

This may or may not be the first in a series of posts of stuff I'm getting rid of. After a hectic couple of months (years?), I finally have time and incentive to sit down and go through some more boxes.

There is a part of me that enjoys the memories that some of this stuff stirs up, and there is a much larger part of me that cannot believe I've been dragging this crap around the continent. In this case, since 1987 (okay, my long suffering mother held onto these for a while. THX, MOM!)

These are first place ribbons from a single season of swim team, 1987. For the record and posterity, there are:
5: backstroke (this was my best stroke)
3: freestyle
1: breaststroke (I'm honestly baffled by this one)
3: freestyle relay
3: medley relay

And one from 1986:
1: freestyle, heat winner at championships.
This was after another swimmer's parents told me to breathe less, and I learned to do the 25 yard freestyle at a sprint without breathing.

Well done, Boston Fire Department MAINTENANCE IVISION

I hope you maintain Engine No 43 better than you maintain your building.

Hippie slop!

Tempeh, ONIONS, Anaheim peppers.

It's Planning Man O'Clock!

Tubs packed for tomorrow's container load-in. Whee!

ONIONS!

ONIONS! ONIONS! ONIONS!

this is what $30 in quarters looks like

When your landlord doesn't want you to move out.

We'll see. 

vegan Philly cheese steak!

Yup. That.

Smells

Smell is such a powerful memory trigger. I'm working with 3-IN-ONE Oil, and the distinct smell is making me kinda nostalgic for my childhood.

UPDATE: I was just looking through previous posts, and pondered how old this can (of still completely good) 3-IN-ONE oil is. I realized the pricetag is a hint. Woolworth went out of business in 1997. 

food porn!

It's been a while since I posted, but mostly I have to beg your pardon, dear readers, for how long it's been since I posted FANCYPANTS VEGAN GRILLED CHEESE!

This is mostly leftovers: tidy, broccoli, caramelized onions, and pepperjack Daiya on whole wheat.

I'm packing to go to a couple quadrennial shindigs to provide medical support to protesters. Should be interesting.

I'll likely be quiet for several weeks here. Get in touch directly if you want!

Onion O'Clock

PAGING A1, PAGING A1: onions available in Boston. Repeat: onions available in Boston. Please advise.