Springtime salad

It's been in the 60s and 70s in Boston: 76 a couple days ago, which shattered the record for the earliest that temperature has been reached in the year. #globalclimatechaos?

With the warmer weather, I'm beginning to move away from the soups, stews, and chilis I've been making (despite how mild the winter was.)

This is an Asian tofu salad, with blanched Chinese spinach, other Asian greens (I forget which I picked up), scallion ribbons, soba noodles, and carrots.

The dressing was also the marinade for the baked tofu, which was more or less just randomly pulling things out of the fridge and shelves, and putting them in the blender: apple cider vinegar, the liquid from pepperoncinis, pickle juice, mustard, soy sauce, tahini, white miso paste, canola oil, sesame oil, garlic powder, ginger powder, lime juice. Kinda random, but it worked out well. Having a rocket powered blender helps.

Today is looking like bike rides.

Hello spring!

Food porn!

After almost a week in Oregon, with almost entirely takeout and restaurant food, I was really excited to get back into the kitchen last night. We ended up with a four part one bowl meal that was damn delicious, and pretty too!

This is a spicy two bean stew with eggplant and tempeh;
fried polenta hearts;
pesto with broccoli and scallions;
and a (homemade, of course) kalamata tapenade.

YUM.

We ate this while watching the first episode of season four of House of Cards. I have to say that I wasn't as impressed with it as past seasons. It is, of course, still smart, beautifully produced television. But it felt a little more... affected? We'll see. 

Irony

I'm emailing a friend about irony now, and it reminded me of this great comic from The Oatmeal (one of my favorite webcomics, but tread carefully, it can easily wipe out an afternoon if you start reading the archive...) 

Long before I had a blog, I saw this wonderful flyer posted at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (yes, my millennial friends, back in the dark ages, when people put up photocopied dead tree to advertise events, rather than create a Facehole event.) 

It read, completely un-ironically, something very close to "UMass-Amherst Anarchist Club Monthly Meeting: Student Union Complex, downstairs, Room 123, next to the ATM." 

Thai tofu red curry, veggie broth, and pineapple broccoli

With fresh Thai basil as garnish, ave brown rice. Nom. Nom.

ONION RINGS!

Delicious vegan onion rings. What else to say? Sufficiently filling and heavy that we could only finish about half of them. So I'm about to re-fry them for lunch.

Yum!

Tools

As any of my readers who have ever watched me painstakingly clean one of my leatherman multitools (with rubbing alcohol and Q-tips and occasionally chopsticks) I really love my tools, and try really hard to take good care of them. I have hand tools that date from the 40s, 50s, and 60s that are still in good shape (not to mention my collection of manual hand tools that can stand in for power tools when, ummm, there is no electricity.)

With all of the moving I've done in the last couple of years, sadly, a few things have fallen into the void.

I had a bunch of drill bits and driver bits, as well as a beloved pair of needlenose pliers that had gone the rusty route. (And some of you know the biggest story behind the history of these needlenose pliers. Hint: it partially takes place near an alma mater of both of my parents as well as my sister.)

So I soaked them in a vinegar and water solution for a few days, then scrubbed them with 0000 steel wool, then neutralized the vinegar in a baking soda & water solution, then scrubbed them again with steel wool, then wiped off the excess, then wiped them with 100% acetone.

I guess many people would have just thrown most of this stuff in the garbage (or thrift store donation pile.) Not me.

Cookie baking party!

Yep, pre-staged cookie ingredients, for molasses ginger cookies, that we're taking to a cookie baking party. How adorable is that? 

An end of another era

I bought my Camelbak Blowfish in spring 2002, to go on a mountain biking trip in Moab. I have loved this pack close to death. It has been to six continents, and on countless adventures.

You can see the places I've sewn it, and can't see other places that I've repaired it:

The Playa is a cruel mistress, and both main zippers failed in August 2015. I cleaned and lubed the everliving hell out of the zippers, but they continue to fail. I sewed a new zipper into the smaller exterior pocket, and made the expansion zipper for the main pocket the primary zipper (by sewing the main large pocket shut with dental floss) but alas, this wasn't meant to last. At least not for more than 14 years.

After a bunch of ebay'ing with a bunch of packs that really weren't what I wanted, and without bladders (~$30 to replace) I realized I should just suck it up and get the new version of the same pack. Other than the candy apple red, I'm super happy with it. 

Vegan pizza

That... kinda looks like Australia.

Right?

You see it, right?

"Quick" pasta

Fake chikn, fried artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes and garlic, fried onions and Serrano peppers.

ONIONS, DAMMIT.

What else to say, other than it's the beginning of a vegan hot dog bar extravaganza?

super deluxe vegan taco bar!

Okay, dear readers: enough of that political ranting crap. Let's get back to the core mission of this blog: FOOD PORN!

Take a look at this super deluxe vegan taco bar, with convenient labels. It look longer to edit the photo this way, but seemed easier than trying to describe them in text in some sort of a lopsided logarithmic spiral.

The grand total cost for this vegan taco bar feast, and a couple days of delicious leftovers? Somewhere around $12-13. How is this possible, you ask? Most of the produce is "Manager Special" from the Super 88 Asian supermarket across the street. The most expensive thing was the package of tempeh.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I almost never shout out to brand name products. But Just Mayo by @hamptoncreek is that rare company who I think deserves it. Their product is hands down the best vegan mayo on the market: it just leaves the competition in the dust. They're basically the only product I'll consistently go to the Big Box Store Who Shall Not Be Named But Which Starts With W (because "W" sells Just Mayo for $0.12/oz, while at the Star Market across the street it's $0.43/oz.) And this kinda is random, but they have a very pretty website chockablock full of vegan food porn.

Hampton Creek really sealed the deal last year when I had a problem opening a couple jars due to the lid being essentially glued to the safety seal. (I'm strong, and have very strong hands. And these were very, very hard to get open.) I contacted them through their website with the product coding and dates on the containers, genuinely intending to only give them a heads up since I really love their product. They responded very quickly, very kindly, and asked for a physical mailing address to send thanks. Let's just say that their thanks was awesome.

Okay, enough corporate lovefesting. Back to delicious leftovers! 

Presidential election 2016

I dunno if any of you have heard, but there is an election for president of the United States in 2016.

Does it sound weird for me, a self-professed radical leftist, to say that I think I might prefer Michael Bloomberg over Hillary Clinton? (This is assuming Bernie won't be on the ticket. Or Nader. Or Feingold.)

There is a part of me that thinks that, at least when I'm listening to Bloomberg, I generally know what the smoke he is blowing up my ass is.

And maybe I'm still burned by actively volunteering for Bill Clinton in 1992, then watching the horror show that we got for eight years of the Clinton presidency (see, e.g., DOMA, PRWORA, IIRIRA, AEDPA, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, NAFTA, maintained the so-called "War On Drugs", pioneered "extraordinary rendition", authorized logging and clearcutting of old growth forest, and on, and on.) I'm not saying Clinton wasn't an extraordinarily gifted politician: he certainly was. He was one of the foremost orators and extemporaneous speakers of the last half of the century. He was also fundamentally conservative, and his positions and policies made Reagan and Nixon look like bleeding heart red diaper babies.

/rant

I almost made the below paragraph another post, but decided to keep the theme of the presidential election all in one post. Hopefully, this might be about the last you hear from me (anytime soon) on this year's presidential election...

I continue to wonder, as some of the pundits and talking heads did in the beginning, if Trump was paid by the Democratz to run. What a gift to Hillary Clinton that jackass is. Surely Sarah Palin was paid off to endorse him: the combination of tragicomic buffoonery with those two is just impossible to imagine without some palms being greased.

In all of these things, we reap what we sow, and honestly we don't have a great history. If we elect a hateful bigoted racist xenophobic classist elitist clown like Trump, it won't be that different than electing a B- grade movie actor who played short man to a chimp.

Move to Canada?

Overheard in a restaurant in Portland, Maine:

"Sarah Palin, yeah, sure, she went to law school. I'm pretty sure. I think. I'm 99% positive."

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

A view to Portland Harbor

When I regularly made photography, a long time ago, I came to accept that there were certain things that our eyes could see, and our senses could be lit up by, that simply couldn't be meaningfully recorded on film.

Yes, it was film, but the same holds for megapixels on my spacephone.

The sun is dancing in a bright glare over the harbor, the wind pushing the water along in a billion tiny diamonds.

I can't be the only person in downtown Portland who has been delighted by this this morning. But it wouldn't surprise me if in the only one who has now spent ten minutes looking at it and appreciating it.

Portland vegan breakfast

It's almost like they knew I love bikes at Local Sprouts Collective here in Portland. I mean, I don't think the cashier saw my bicycle spoke bracelet, or bicycle keychain.

Unfortunately the vegan tofu scramble was kinda underwhelming. But the place is delightful.

Deluxe vegan grilled cheese!

With fresh basil, tofurky, and bread baked around the corner in Brookline at Clear Flour. Yum!

Storage unit moving vehicle!

Also showing off my fancy new reflective tape.

Vegan fetruccine alfredo pasta bar!

Not a heck of a lot more to say on this snowy wet slippery Boston night.

Leftovers fried rice

Yep, just about what it sounds like. Brown rice, curried carrots with ginger, tempeh, banana peppers, onions, and (not leftover) spinach.

Even with my choking like mad for a few minutes when I added the banana peppers, it is thoroughly delicious.