The Week of Really Good Breakfasts

Ho hum, where has all the time gone?  It's already February!  I've been keeping busy:  A month of classes has gone by, and rehearsals are starting to pile up with orchestra, opera pit, and quartet.  I signed up for a month of meditation classes that are culminating on Saturday.  One recent weekend was devoted to a project of thorough insulation installation around the apartment.  Then the apartment gained a new tenant - a mouse that lived a decadent lifestyle chewing up vast quantities of bread and butter and leaving remnants in shoes around the house.  (The new tenant's formal application was not accepted; he was caught and released back to his former home in the nearby meadow.)

And, a lot of good food is coming out the kitchen!  I've decided this week will have a theme to glorify the morning - The Week of Really Good Breakfasts - and I started with steel cut oats (which I've always wanted to buy, but never have because they're about 10x more expensive than rolled oats, until I discovered that a certain grocery store in Lexington sells them for an incredibly cheap price) with pears, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, and topped with yogurt, grape nuts, and honey.  I cooked them in whole milk to make them creamier, and added the pear slices in with the milk right away while it heated to a boil so they cooked through.  Steel cut oats are so good - great texture and flavor - and are definitely worth the extra stovetop cooking time.  I'm brainstorming for the rest of the week; suggestions are welcome :)

Birthday Breakfast

Happy Happy Birthday to my best friend in the world!  Carolyn turned 24 today, and we celebrated with a great brunch on the porch, cocktails in the very late afternoon, and a festive dinner with lots of laughter and stories at night.  Food, family, and friends; what more could you need?  Well, we all gave her presents too, I guess :)

Vegan: Day 19

The grad school application process is completely finished, and my schedule is now wide open, leaving more time to experiment in the kitchen!  A friend lent our apartment two cookbooks, The Conscious Cook and Veganomicon.  The first is good, the second, really good.  It has tons of awesome recipes and gives practical information and tips on how to make the most out of ingredients, making it easy to develop basic skills for your own cooking repertoire so you don't always have to be staring at a book.  I like looking at a recipe, getting the general idea of it, and then leaving it behind and tweaking it however I like.  I  was looking for something warm and satisfying because it was really chilly outside, and ended up staring at a spinach lasagna with tofu ricotta filling.  Woo! I still hadn't tried cooking with tofu yet during this vegan adventure.  It turned out really well and tasted even better as leftovers.

If you want to try making it at home, the only thing you really need to know is how to substitute for the ricotta. Mash up tofu and mix it with lemon juice, basil, salt, pepper, nutritional yeast (which we like to put on popcorn), and some olive oil.  Layer it with sauteed or steamed spinach, and tomato sauce.  Then, instead of sprinkling the top with parmesan, put some nuts in the cuisinart with salt and lemon zest.  They add tons of flavor and texture.  Yum.  Clever tactics are needed to survive in a world without cheese :)

The Temporary Vegans

Today marks the start of Lent, and our household is saying goodbye to meat and dairy for 40 days!  We're actually not big meat eaters at all, but eggs, yogurt, and cheese are a huge part of our daily pleasures; giving them up will eliminate a lot of the foods we automatically turn to at meals.  It should be a cool experiment and encourage us to try recipes we might otherwise brush aside, and I will post about our exploration into the world of vegan eating throughout the process!  Day 1 is nothing too out of our usual habits - peanut butter toast and coffee at breakfast, roasted green beans and potatoes with a lemon and balsamic vinaigrette at lunch, and sweet potato and black bean tacos at dinner.  Yum.

Eating Alone

 

 

  

 

The other day I walked down the road into town and went to a little restaurant where I sat and ate breakfast by myself.  I sipped coffee and read my book, and then relished a monstrous breakfast with some people-watching on the side.  I've never actually gone to eat a complete meal alone...it was awesome - just me and the food totally focused on each other.  Next experiment:  solitary trip to the movie theater!