Just a couple of things

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't posted in over a week. I know but I've been uber busy. That said, I still wanted to keep you all in the loop of our lives.

1. Nessa got a bath the other day. She looks gorgeous! Without smell-a-ternet I can't even tell you how much better she smells.She was sinking up the house. There is very few smells worse than dirty dog. Maybe, cooked cabbage. That is a smell that I just can't abide.

2. I'm working on book with a friend. We think it will be awesome, well read and will make us a ton of money. We are more pie-in-the-sky thinkers obviously.  Our proposal is halfway done. Okay, halfway may be generous but it is coming along. Did you know that College Press' want to you write a boatload of the book before you even get a chance to propose it? Neither did I. FYI, it sucks. If I wanted to take the time to write the whole book before hand I would but I don't. I want them to tell me they effing love the concept and want to send us money so that we can do out of town research. See? I do have aspirations of greatness.

3. I hate writing a personal biography. It always feels so tawdry and narcissistic.

4. Blogger has been threatening to change their format for like forever. Well, they did and I hate it. It has taken me 3 days to just figure out how to get my reader to work. I hope this explains why I haven't been stalking all of you recently. Don't even ask me how much of a bitch this new format is to navigate on my iPad.

5. Today is World Vegetarian Day and is the first day of Vegetarian Awareness Month. I am all for people eating more vegetables and less meat but having its own awareness month? I'm not so sure. It seems that there is a celebration/event/special/awareness month for everything which lessens the impact to my way of thinking. I would hope that people know that there are many good reasons why cutting back on meat consumption is good for them, the planet, and of course animals.

6. This is so predictable...I pack up my paints and I get a commission. After the bar guess what gets set up next? BTW, I need to thank Jen Cohen for recommending me. Jen, Thank you! You are the best! I love you.

7. I find the Life Alert commercials annoying, I actually find most commercials annoying but this one particularly. Why? Because the overweight women with an oxygen tank says: "I'll give up beer, bread, wine and soda before I give up Life Alert." My thoughts are is that if she gives up all those she may not need Life Alert.

Wow! I just read all six of those points again and it seems to be a whole lot of complaining. Let me think of something good...*crickets*...*uhhhh*...

8. My presentations went really well last week, my aunt is on the mend, kind of, but that is a huge story that I won't go into but will say that there are some odd religious beliefs out there and my car got great mileage on the whole trip. See? All good things.

9. Oh wait! I signed up over an e-newsletter called Money Talks News. I'm really enjoying it. It is all about saving money.

This is the first post I've written since they changed the format so I need to finish it up and set it to publish because I have no clue how to retrieve my drafts. You've got to know that that situation is pissing me off.

Love,
M

Low-carb vegetarian diet does not mean "no-food" diet

As most of you know I was forced encouraged by my doctor to give up cut back on the number of carbohydrates that I eat per day. As a vegetarian this seemed like a daunting task. What was I supposed to eat? How would I get enough protein at every meal to ensure that I wasn't starving when my only high protein choices are soy and eggs?

After a couple of weeks of whining my creative cooking juices began to flow. Here are a few meals that I have prepared without grains, sugar, potatoes or any of those other bad white stuff. 

Fried green tomatoes on a bed of zucchini and yellow squash noodles drizzled with a balsamic vinegar reduction. It was yummy. JR loved the reduction so much that he wants it on everything. I think I'll try a port or Pinot Noir reduction next. I used almond flour to bread the tomatoes though soy flour would have worked well enough. I find I don't like to use soy flour all that often so almond flour works well.

Veggie eggs Benedict on a bed of veggie bacon sauteed spinach and grape tomatoes. This was a Saturday morning brunch thing. Very good. Really! How can you go wrong with homemade hollandaise sauce?

Portabella mushrooms stuffed pizza style. I was craving pizza one night. This satisfied. 

Cream of wild mushroom soup. Arrowroot my friends. Learn to embrace it. 

Cheese souffle stuffed mushroom caps. We had these on Wednesday night. They were awesome! I'm going to work on this recipe a bit before I share it. The taste was perfect but the presentation was a little wonky. I also want to work on the mushroom to souffle ratio.

All in all we've had some very wonderful food lately without all the carbs. Though the 'proof will be in the pudding' when I go into the doctor's to have my glucose levels checked again. I will tell you that I have lost 15 of those 20 ugly pounds that I gained since moving to Texas. That made me very happy. I also don't feel deprived of food. I'm getting more than enough protein and haven't succumbed to lethargy.

I think the one thing that I proved was that lowering your carbs will let you lose weight and that vegetarians can safely go on a low-carb diet. It may take a bit more ingenuity but it can be done. 

Love,
M

Where I rant about the FoodNetwork.

If you are perfectly happy with the FoodNetwork please just pass this one up. But, if like me, you are finding them to be a little tedious, formulaic, and not responsive to viewer needs than read on.

I sent an email to the Food Network commenting on the fact that they put a show on specifically about meat but didn't balance that out with one specifically about veggies. I figure that if 6% of the population is vegetarian than maybe the Food Network could make 6% of their programming designed for vegetarians.

Let's do a little math (I know a librarian doing math is about as likely as the Food Network putting on a vegetarian show but stay with me here.). If the Food Network offers approximately 18 hours of programming per day then 6% of that would be.... 1.08 hours of programming (Please check my math. I'm a librarian not a mathematician.) So 1 hour a day should be devoted to vegetarian programming (I'd be happy with 1 hour a week). 

All this seemed perfectly reasonable to me so I fired off said email. I received this lovely auto-response back from them. Okay, it was in the evening and no one was in the office. I get it but it sort of rubbed me the wrong way because I've sent an email or two in the past and received nothing.

We have received your email message with the subject:

  OTHER comment

and we appreciate your taking the time to write to us.  Your comments and suggestions on our programming, as well as our website, are very important to us.  Your feedback will be shared with the appropriate departments for consideration when planning future programming and development.

Thank you for your interest in the Food Network and FOODNETWORK.com

Best regards,

Food Network Customer Service

Shall we break down their response a little.  

OTHER comment means that once you have taken the time to actually find their contact page, (no easy task mind you, there is a little tiny link at the very bottom of their homepage or you could do what I did which was to use the search box.), they don't give you an option in the drop down menu to comment about the network programming philosophy as a whole. Only to question or comment on specific shows or chefs. Unless you chose OTHER. Kind of made me feel second class or steerage.


Your feedback will be shared with the appropriate departments. Since my option was OTHER I take this to mean the appropriate department is the nearest trash receptacle. Since, I've written them before (only once or twice. Not enough to be a pest. YET!) and received no response the trash can seems the most likely place for my emails. This statement on their website pretty much confirms my suspicions. "Suggestions and comments will be automatically forwarded and shared with the Programming and Website teams, and no further correspondence will be forthcoming from us." I understand, they get lots of emails every day. They can't be expected to answer all of them but wait a minute; I work for a library that services 40,000 students plus faculty and staff and we seem to be able to respond to every single inquiry. We wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't. The ratio of staff to questioner is probably (or should be) roughly the same. I would be happy if I knew that they logged my comment into a database for further inquiry or that they thought it was stupid and couldn't or wouldn't be able to accommodate me. Makes one think a bit about their commitment to their constituents.

Thank you for your interest in the Food Network and FOODNETWORK.com. Which I take to mean; thank you for watching shows with ingredients you can't afford, can't find, will never use again after you do find them and spring for the exorbitant price, and don't have the time, equipment or help to clean up after you've made the meal that has dirtied almost every pan you own after working.all.day.long.  Oh, and thank you for having such low expectations that we can fill hours of programming with reality based shows that take little or no brains or money to produce.

I totally understand that Alton Brown and a few others have real lives and can't be producing shows all the time but surely you guys are clever enough to come up with something better than reality shows? They are sort of the bottom-feeders of the TV show world (my opinion).


I, also, understand that not everyone is a vegetarian but I live with a bunch of omnivores and cook for them every.single.day. I make or adapt meals that usually include something for everyone. Because I don't chose to eat meat does not mean that I expect others to make that same choice. I am not on the PETA fringe.

What I would like to see is some alternatives. As Thomas Jefferson said; "(he ate meat) as a condiment to the vegetables which constitute my principal diet". FoodNetwork could we have a couple of 30 minute shows where the meat is the condiment and not the primary ingredient?

Thanks for letting me rant. Sorry about it but I just felt I had to get this off my chest. It was beginning to make me crazy. I'll be back to crazy photos and history tomorrow. I promise.

Love,
M


 

You say tomato, I say tomoto

What's in a name? It seems like a lot. We really are a vocabulary rich bunch. Let's look at just the ones that talk about diet. I don't mean diet as the nasty word that you use when you want to lose weight. I mean your diet of what you eat everyday.

You've got your carnivores, omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, lactose intolerant, gluten-free and everyone in between. This is not even counting those people that have religious restrictions. Yep, I'm so counting this as one of the reasons I'm agnostic. I give up enough stuff for health reasons just think if I had to do it for religious reasons. I'd be 12 pounds. Hmmmm......that's a thought.

What I can talk about with some (not a lot) degree of knowledge is vegetarians. I've been one so long I hardly remember what it was like to eat meat. I did start out as a pescatarian. What the hell is a pescatarian? Well, you should ask. Let's take a moment to break all these down.

Vegan: These people don't eat anything. Or at least anything that comes from, is associated with, smells like, or has a vague resemblance to animals. Things on the list of Thou Shall Not Eat are eggs, milk, butter, honey, and (wait for it)....cheese! *Gasp* I am not one of these people. Some vegans don't eat anything that has been cooked. They eat everything raw. They have started to use the word raw as a noun. I.e. I'm Raw. Yeah, I know, crazy isn't it? Potatoes are just not right without being cooked then mashed with butter, sour cream, and cheddar cheese. Just not right I tells ya. Oh well, to each his own.

Vegetarians: These people (myself included) don't eat anything that had a face. Okay, that was kind of flippant and clams don't have faces so you could make a case for eating them. We don't eat any animal proteins. So, no cow, pig, chicken, fish or shellfish. Yes, fish is an animal. Yes, chicken broth is an animal protein. No, I don't eat anything with gelatin (no Jello). What we do eat is butter, eggs, milk, honey, and (thank the good lord).....cheese! Just no cheese with animal rennet. I realize this is out of reach for some people but I gave all this up for health reasons and never felt better. I, also, don't think anyone has to give up meat. And seriously, no one needs to be as crazy as I am about the cheese they eat. I'm just nuts.

Pescatarian: These people don't eat most meats but do eat fish. They like to call themselves vegetarians but really they are just not quite there. That's okay. They are probably healthier than most vegetarians because they get a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids. I have to work pretty hard to get those and people that eat meat tend to not eat as much fish as they should. So if you felt inclined to get behind any of these diets this is a winner. It is also a great way to make that leap from dedicated omnivore to vegetarian without all the angst. My daughter-in-law is a pescatarian and like I said above, I was one for quite a few years. At least until I went over to the dark side (as JR likes to say).

Flexitarian: This one is the undecided child of the group. They don't want to give up meat at all but they know that reducing their consumption is good for them. JR and our boys flexitarian. For poor Jr, I don't cook meat at home so he eats it when we go out or I am out of town. He thinks he's getting away with something. Sort of like having a mistress except meat is his mistress. Without the sex part. Then again some would say that some meals are better than sex. Not me but some. I think I should shut up now.


I hope that clears up some of the confusion about vegans, vegetarians and a couple of others. I know that Flexitarian sounds like 90% of most Americans. Maybe what I should say is 90% of Americans are flexitarian wannabes. I think bacon is the deciding factor.

Are any of you among these groups?

Love,
M

WW - If I could have any T-shirt it would be this

You can find this here

Love,
M

TOFU GUMBO by the… BOY?

I've been out of town for the last several days so The Boy stepped up to the plate for me blog wise. He's been a cooking fool lately and wanted to share this recipe with you. I'll try to add some measurements since he didn't. My edits are in italics and parentheses.

I wonder where he got his "fly by the seat of your pants" cooking method?

Must have been his father.

And what the hell does he mean by his " genetic predisposition for slacking"?

Must have gotten this from his father also.

TOFU GUMBO by the… BOY?

I know what you’re thinking, what is the boy doing making a vegetarian meal? After making a long-winded diatribe in defense of meat a little under a year ago what has happened to this blog’s lone champion of eating animals? Well since my last post I have cured some of my genetic predisposition for slacking by picking up cycling and running with some pretty lofty goals. Nutrition is a key component to training for any kind of activity whether it’s a marathon or a century bike ride. Unfortunately it seems the only way to be healthy in this country is to cook your own food so that’s what I have been doing. This is a tofu gumbo whose recipe I originally I found on the internet but quickly tossed because I hate being told what to do, so I’m just going to tell you what to do instead.

First you have to make a marinade for the tofu to soak in for a few hours:

- ½ an onion, diced

- Some diced garlic (a teaspoonish)

- Some cayenne pepper (a half teaspoonish)

- A Thing of peanut oil (a quarter cupish)

- A Thing of apple cider vinegar (another quarter of a cup)

- Some brown sugar (2 tablespoons or so)

I also made a homemade mustard to throw in there because I forgot to buy Dijon mustard at the store (I always do this). The best part about making your own mustard is that it is easier than you think and you control the level of spiciness.

- Mortar and pestle some yellow mustard seed, turmeric, cayenne pepper, chili powder, brown sugar and salt. (let's go with equal parts except the mustard seed. Double it)

- Go hog wild with any other herbs or spice you can think of (I think a hog wild is a half a teaspoon)

- Once all of it is ground in the mortar gradually add some white wine vinegar (or water or BEER) one tablespoon at a time whilst whisking it in a mixing bowl. (just enough to make a paste. I'd say a quarter cup. If using beer, just drink the rest. You don't want it to go flat. Also white wine would work very well)

Now, prep your tofu into small cubes and press out all the water and chuck it into the marinade for a few hours.

It’s time to make the gumbo:

First sauté:

- ½ an onion, diced

- ½ a green bell pepper, diced

- ½ a red bell pepper, diced

- Some garlic, diced

- 2 ribs of celery, diced

What a good boy he is....eating his veggies. I couldn't be more proud *wipes a tear*.

Until the vegetables are soft and the onions are transparent. Then add

- A cup or so of canned diced tomatoes, drained (14.5 ounce can)

- Some thyme (a teaspoon or so)

- Some basil (another teaspoon)

- Some oregano (a half teaspoon)

- Two bay leaves

- Two cups or so of vegetable broth

- Some salt and pepper

- A jalapeño pepper, diced (throw in the seeds for some extra spice)

Heat on medium low heat for 15-20 minutes, you can make a roux to thicken it up but it doesn’t need it.

Now drain the tofu and collect what doesn’t drain and heat it in a skillet till the tofu is warm and brown.

Then serve over a bed of rice.

He drinks his milk. *sniff*

Me again: He said this was great. I believe him. Not because I'm his mother but because that Boy likes his food.When you work out as much as he does you tend to have a powerful hunger. Please pity me my food bill when he graduates this spring and moves home.

This can't be terribly difficult since it was made by a college student with limited kitchen utensils. Look at those pans? Scary.

And would it hurt to take a rag and some cleaner to that stovetop?

And take out the trash, clean your room, and pick up your dirty clothes.

Ahhh.....sorry. Went into mom mode and it kind of got away from me.

Let's give a shout out for The Boy and his cooking skills. I'm taking all the credit.

Love,

M

Lentil Soup - Meatless Monday

Brrrrrr.....it's cold out there. Not like 12 degrees cold. More like 22 degrees at night and my furnace was not made to withstand that kind of cold, cold.

What's better than hot soup on a cold winter's day? Nothing. Except maybe a fire in the fireplace, a good book in hand, and a hot toddy gently steaming on a side table. But, other than that soup is it right up there. Okay, so it is not even close but it's what I've got to work with here.

For those of you who turn your nose up at the mention of the lowly lentil stay tuned because this soup doesn't taste like your average lentil soup and doesn't look like your average lentil soup. This soup is down right yummy and low fat and yummy (I said that already but it bears repeating) and filling and yummy and easy.

Oh and, low fat! WooHoo! With this recipe your resolve to diet is done.

Oh and, good for the environment because it's meatless. We are so eco-friendly here at the Dogslife abode.

This recipe is a feel good recipe. Gawd.....I feel so selfless even giving it to you. (yeah right! I was a lazy ass all week and this is the only really good thing I made. Does it count as 5 decent meals because it is really, really, really, really, really good? Or that I made it twice it was so good? I didn't think so either.)


Lentil Soup
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup onion, chopped fine
1/2 cup carrot, chopped fine
1/2 cup celery, chopped fine
1/2 cup green pepper, chopped fine
1 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups lentils, green or red, picked and rinsed
1 - 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes
2 quarts vegetable broth
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 cup wild rice mix or brown rice

Directions

Clean and pick through the lentils to make sure there are no rocks or nasty bits. Trust me, there is nothing worse then biting into a rock.

Chop all of the vegetables into a small dice.


Place the olive oil into a large stock pot and set over medium heat. Once the oil in hot add the chopped veggies and salt.


Sweat until the onions are translucent and the carrots are tender. This takes about 6 to 7 minutes.


Add the lentils, rice, tomatoes, broth, coriander, cumin, and pepper. Stir to combine. Bring soup to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook at a low simmer until the lentils are tender, approximately 35 to 40 minutes. Using a stick blender, puree to your preferred consistency. Serve immediately.

This soup feeds up to 6 average eaters or 8 small eaters. There are only three of us so we had plenty of leftovers which became the most spectacular dip.

Leftover that are fated to become dip.

Going meatless one day a week is going city wide in Belgium. I wish I could plan a trip to Ghent on a Thursday. That would make all that traveling I do a little easier. I wish I could travel to Ghent anytime. It's Belgium! From what I hear it is all about the chocolate there. Anyway, I thought I'd pass this along.

From Vegetarian Times Ghent, Belgium, for becoming the first city in the world to officially go vegetarian one day a week. Launched this past May, every Thursday in the Flemish town is Veggie Day: cafeterias in public buildings and schools serve vegetarian-only meals, and all restaurants offer at least one option that's free of seafood or meat. (One eatery has banned meat entirely that day.) To help the city's 230,000 residents kick the bratwurst, street maps are available to guide them to the best meat-free fare in town.

Veggie Day is the brainchild of the Ghent-based Ethical Vegetarian Alternative (vegetarian.be). EVA Director and Cofounder Tobias Leenaert made it happen after garnering the support of city councilman Tom Balthazar. "It was really the first time that a government—even on the city level—is behind such a campaign," says Leenaert. In announcing Veggie Day, Balthazar noted not only its boost to animal welfare but also its potential to combat obesity and lessen Ghent's environmental footprint. The EVA estimates that if everyone in town observes Veggie Day for a single year, the CO2 savings will be equivalent to taking 18,000 cars off the road.

You all have a nice day. Try to stay warm.

Love
Shivering M