Office Party

Terry and Isa of Veganomicon fame, quit making me like stuff! Before today, I would have said I don't like cranberries and that I can give or take cucumbers. But these two dishes made a convert of me. It goes to show that you really have to keep trying new ways of preparing produce until you find one you like. Vegetable haters, take note!

Tonight is the office holiday party. Another celebration, another chance to make healthy, tasty food.


Cashew Cucumber dip with olives and pita. Very Greek, very good.

Cranberry Orange Nut Bread. Tastes like Christmas, if you're into that kind of thing.

I make up the rules as I go along

I'm trying to use up as much of the food in the house as I can before I move to Texas at the end of the month. The problem with having ten kinds of beans is that you have to pack ten kinds of beans. So that's how I ended up making chickpea polenta.

I only had about half a cup of stone-ground cornmeal left, not enough for a whole meal. So I added half a cup of chickpea flour (sometimes called besan) to my polenta. It worked great, and honestly didn't taste much different. I might be doing this more often since chickpea flour is lower in carbohydrates and has more protein. Besides, we eat too much corn as it is.

I ate my polenta topped with stewed tomatoes. (Tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, Italian spices, and a pinch of sugar simmered for twenty minutes.) A good dinner made from pantry staples.

Thanksgiving and more soup

Third time is the charm for Thanksgiving. I made these mushrooms in puff pastry for the vegetarians at my Thanksgiving. It was a success, but what was even better was the pie. If you haven't tried Isa's smlove pie yet, do it now! My entire pie was gone before the family even sliced into either of the two Sara Lee pumpkin pies. Not that I bragged all weekend or anything.

I wasn't measuring since the mushroom puffs were just for myself, but it's onions, mushrooms, and pecans sauteed in oil with a splash of brandy, a big splash of soy sauce, nutmeg, and pepper all wrapped in puff pastry squares.

It's also soup season again. Here's cashew-butternut squash soup with red curry drizzle.

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

So a lot has happened since I last posted. Last you heard from me, I was exploring the storm damage from Hurricane Gustav in my neighborhood. Soon after that, I found out that my office building was badly damaged. We've packed up and moved to temporary offices way across town, and I am now a wretched commuter.

I got engaged. And I got a lovely kitten.

Meet Desomond. Some fool dumped this kitty off outside my work, and I just couldn't say no. Desmond enjoys sleeping in my lap and helping (or hindering) making the bed.

And lately I've been testing out Thanksgiving recipes. First I tried a Mark Bittman recipe: Autumn Millet Bake.

It's millet, squash, and cranberries with a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds. The very essence of all things fall. But this isn't The One for me. I don't think I really care for whole cranberries. I know the stuff is full of all that is wrong with food, but I'm an in-the-shape-of-the-can cranberry jelly kind of girl.

Next I tried a portobello mushroom en crote.

En crout is just of fancy way of saying wrapped in puff pastry. If you've been letting puff pastry intimidate you, don't. Working with this stuff is really easy.

This recipe is much more what I was hoping for. It's impressive (who wants dry turkey when you can have decadent, flaky puff pastry). I can serve at room temperature if I can't get to the oven to heat them up. And it's pretty easy. Unfortunately, it's just too much food. We'll be having salad (with my family's special only-on-Thanksgiving salad dressing), roasted Brussels sprouts, rolls, cranberry jelly, stuffing, and sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving. The side dishes are really the stars, and there's just no room for a main that will stuff you to the gills.

I think in the end I'll be going with some kind of cremini mushroom mixture en crout so I can make smaller portions. And I suppose I'll just have to suffer through a trial run. Mmm flaky.

Photos from my neighborhood

This is just a sampling of the hurricane damage in my neighborhood.


The sidewalk here buckled probably from all the water in the soil. I walk here every day.


Many people in Baton Rouge are still without electricity. Some of my coworkers don't expect to have their electricity restored for a month. That's a month without air conditioning, hot showers, cooked food, refrigeration, or the ability to charge your cell phone. Some people and businesses have generators. This generator is powering a hotel where many first responders (and politicians) are staying.


Even though my neighborhood is powered right now, it's a precarious situation. Many trees like this one are just a good gust away from pulling down power lines. This tree was outside the oldest home in my neighborhood and was likely over a hundred years old.

All throughout the city, power lines are down and stoplights are out.

Many streets are blocked because of fallen trees. People are piling the debris on their sidewalks in an effort to get rid of it before Hurricane Ike's winds hit. Right now, all these broken limbs are potential flying objects.

This is the Old Governor's Mansion.

And this is why we shouldn't be complacent about Louisiana's levee system. The levee outside of Baton Rouge is the highest, and probably the safest, in Louisiana. But when even the safest levee is bulging and losing sandbags, something needs to be done. This bulge in the levee first appeared after the Mississippi flooded in the spring.

On ice cream and evacuation

Hello everyone. It's been a while. I evacuated from my hometown for Hurricane Gustav, and I'm so glad I did. Pretty much all of my city was without power for days. It's four days later, and my workplace and many of my friends are still without electricity. I lost several trees, and one narrowly missed hitting my house. The city is under a curfew to prevent crime and new emergencies. (Lots of trees in the roads and dead stop lights make driving interesting.)

I've been holed up in Austin for about a week, and the city has been very nice to me. On my first night here, Dewey and I stopped by Amy's Ice Cream, an Austin tradition. I had a lovely grapefruit sorbet, and Dewey had Shiner Bock ice cream. I was so intrigued I had to recreate it myself. Since I'm in the land of magical second-hand shops, I picked up an ice cream maker at Goodwill.


I took a basic ice cream recipe (the one from Veganomicon) and dropped the vanilla extract and replaced 1/2 cup of soy milk with 1/2 cup of shiner. Dewey has been dying for cinnamon apple ice cream, so that will be our next try.

My Weekend: A Photo Essay