Dinner tonight—peanut butter pasta = whole wheat penne + broccoli + banana peppers + peanut sauce made with delicious things like red pepper flakes, ginger, parsley or cilantro, and garlic. Adapted from my best friend’s homemade* vegan how-to guide that started it all.
Oh, and a glass of shiraz out of a box (the classy kind of box—environmentally friendlier than a bottle ‘cause you can fit 4 of those suckers in one box so it takes less energy to ship the same amount!).
*Does not mean she didn’t steal it from a vegan cookbook. But the banana peppers are all LDubs—usually it has red bell peppers but we were out.
PS Forgive the nasty flash lighting…too long of a day to make up a softbox.
“The Way Breakfast Should Be.”
Once again, I’m going with a Maine (“The Way Life Should Be”) slogan here. I should note, though, that as Dana at OneBigDork pointed out, life in Maine is not all blueberries and lobster. The state has a lot of rural poverty and some pretty crazy politics, and I can imagine that if you don’t live near the water (ocean, lake, or river), like Dana doesn’t, life might kind of suck. That is why I would choose Vermont over Maine (assuming I never win the lottery because that is what it will take to buy even a modest house on the ocean).
I digress.
Breakfast in Maine was a fortuitous confluence of factors: “happy eggs” laid by chickens that run around free and eat whatever they want on the farm next door to my in-laws’ New Hampshire home, which even my hardcore vegan sister-in-law will eat + the presence of Aunt Michelle who lived for a while in Spain and knows how to whip up Spanish “tortilla.” If you think this means making flat wrap-like products with which to encase burritos, you are mistaken. ”Tortilla” in Spanish is like a mix between our omelette and our quiche (both stolen from the French, incidentally) and often features just one ingredient in addition to the eggs: potatoes or spinach are common tortilla components. We broke the rules (but not the tortilla!) and put in all our leftover veggies: potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, and I’m not sure what else. Give it a side of toast and beans and a mug of coffee with a splash of soy milk and you have one tasty, practical, environmentally-friendly breakfast. Yum.
“Leftovers” Tortilla topped with homemade salsa.
The next day, we did a little mango (check out that grid perfection, thanks to my sister-in-law Patricia) and coffee tango. Mmm.
Our final morning, we spotted some wild blueberries right outside our back door and Patricia and I had fun picking and eating breakfast right where we were. No pics, though—our hands were too messy from berrying.
Stay tuned tomorrow for my final Maine post: local alcohol!
Vacationland.
Warning: Non-vegan food ahead.
If you are going to be about as enthusiastic as Haley the Greyhound is about lobsters, skip down a few photos.
The L-Dubs just returned from a much-anticipated sojourn to Maine, which is know as “Vacationland” according to their license plates. (What I want to know is, what if you live year-round in Maine? Does it then become “Staycationland”?)
Maine is also home of the world’s best potatoes, blueberries, and lobstahs. As we cook vegan primarily for environmental reasons (it takes a lot less energy for the sun/water/soil to produce a pound of, say, corn and soy beans than it does for a cow to produce a pound of beef out of close to 16 pounds of corn and soy), we are also aware that eating mangos from Mexico and asparagus from Peru does not a healthy ecosystem make. So when presented with locally-sourced dairy, egg, or seafood options, we are likely to give a hat tip to the animal that gave of its life or reproductive faculties to provide our meal and enjoy something both delicious and environmentally friendly. Hence, our Maine vacation cuisine.
Lobster…
Lobster + Clams…
Local corn on the grill…
Aunt Jeanne’s pasta salad…
Cousin Kyle surveys his feast (complete with local beer):
All was delicious. Thank you, bounteous Maine sea coast. We will be back again to partake of the fruits of your glorious waters.
More food adventures from the Great State of Maine to come! Bon appétit!
Burritoooos (again)
We eat burritos a lot. A lot a lot. (See previous post.) I promise not to put you through weekly burrito posting unless we do something different/creative with our burritos on a particular day. But since the homemade salsa and homemade hummus I made for my sister’s bachelorette party last night (yayyy!) were consumed post-haste, no photos, I am left with posting pictures of a typical burrito-making fest. The only difference between these babies and our normal burrito-ing is that we usually use black beans and red and yellow peppers are usually too expensive so we just use green. Hurrah for “Manager’s Special” (read: about to go bad) at Kroger.
Add a tortilla, avocado, homemade salsa, handful of spinach, maybe a dollop of plain soy yogurt (“sour cream”), and enjoy!
Dinner last night = leftover pasta sauce + soon-to-be-dead green pepper + onions + garlic + banana peppers (the secret ingredient to make everything tastier, trust me) over whole wheat penne.
PS. I’m not lying about the banana peppers. I was skeptical until Chris suggested I put them on a sandwich…and folks, I am now a believer. They give the perfect little ZIP to whatever you are eating without overwhelming it—turns a humdrum sandwich into a lunch with pizzazz! (Do I sound like I’m being paid by the Banana Pepper Growers’ Association yet?)
Burritos to your door
Our buddy LauraBeth came over to hang out tonight while her SO was out of town and brought dinner with her—how thoughtful! She made us burrito filling consisting of black beans, sweet potato, a little bit of onion and red pepper and some seasoning.
We added in rice, avocado, homemade salsa, and “sour cream” (plain sour cream) and wrapped it all in a wholesome whole wheat tortilla-y blanket.
The result?
Comma cookies from the UCC’s 28th General Synod, because, as Gracie Allen says: “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.” God is still speaking,
PS These were so not vegan. Sorry Mom.
We went to the United Church of Christ’s 28th General Synod this past weekend and picked up some sweet fair trade Guatemalan swag: hand-carved birds to adorn and identify our wine glasses. I will not go into the irony of people of privilege (us) buying items designed to help keep track of all of their many glasses of a luxury drink (wine) from an artisanal collective of economically underresourced women in order to even out the global wealth disparity (instead of not buying wine at all and sending the proceeds their way, perhaps?), but rather leave you to enjoy their avian cheekiness and maybe say a prayer for Karina, the woman who made these. Then you can check out the collective’s website here and support them yourselves! Over and out.
Brunch with the Brekksters
The Veganomicon’s Blueberry Cornmeal Pancakes (made with lime zest instead of lemon, though, since we can’t seem to ever make these ‘cakes according to the recipe…lime, orange, even grapefruit zest, but never lemon) + cantaloupe = Brekke’s welcome home brunch! We’re glad you’re back, Brekke darlin’, so we can serve you plain old fashioned American vegan food. None of this British stuff (except the delightful tea you brought us. We’ll drink that).
Today Chez LDubs (aka Casa de los Sickies, where we have some kind of nasty bug): 2 gigantic frozen bananas + soy milk + plain soy yogurt + 2 generous scoops of peanut butter + a swirl of chocolate syrup = epizeutics-friendly afternoon snack. Everything else lately has been cereal, English muffins, or thawed-out frozen leftovers stock-piled for just such an immune emergency.
SLurp!
PS Awesome straws from the local Asian market. Normally used for boba tea; Chez LDubs, used for everything.
