First Foodie Tuesday!

     As a 'foodie' and graduate of a restaurant management school, I could easily dine out every night if I only had the cash to do so!  As someone who works full time, sometimes for twelve-hour shifts, the cafeteria at work is a quick and lazy shortcut when I haven't planned ahead for meals and snacks to see me through the day.  And as a vegetarian with a limited food budget, I have to sometimes get creative when money is tight.  To this end, I have taken to cooking and baking on at least one day off each week.  Today was that day.

     First, I indulged my love of British cooking--and miniature cakes!--with the Vegan Sticky Toffee Pudding recipe from the September-October 2013 Issue #93 of VegNews magazine.  I am not usually one to splurge on a magazine in the checkout lane, but I could not wait to buy this one for three reasons:

1. Sticky Toffee Pudding! And an excuse to use my oh-so-adorable mini Bundt pan
2. The Vegan French Food feature (one day I'll go into why I want to live in 1950s Paris and my love for Julia Child, but not today) 
3. A profile of Tal Ronnen's vegan restaurant in Los Angeles, Crossroads Kitchen--he is my foodie crush!  I met him when I worked in animal rights, and had the great honor of not only sampling some test recipes during that time, but also once got to go the grocery store to fetch him a bottle of sake for a very important event he was catering.    

     Back to the puddings, though.  I made them exactly as directed in the recipe and they turned out GREAT!  Light as a feather and all whole-grain-y, and covered in sticky-sweet sauce.  Perfect with hot tea or coffee.  Great to grab for a snack attack at work, with the cakes packed in a box and the sauce decanted into an empty agave nectar squeeze bottle I re-used.  Me being me, I can think of at least two variations on this recipe I'd like to play with--one adding orange zest and juice to the cake and chocolate to the sauce, the other adding pecans and chocolate chips to the cake and coffee to the sauce.

Behold:

     Since the oven was hot, I decided to make another favorite treat of mine, the Banana Tea Bread from Ener-G, makers of a very useful vegan egg replacer.  I added chocolate chips to the recipe, though.  A lot of chocolate chips.  Today, I made a double-batch and split it into one loaf and eight muffins--nine if you count the half-muffin with no chocolate that I reserved for my dogs!  

Mmmmmmm-muffins!

     Before you start to think all I eat is sweets, I would like to mention an experiment with my weekday lunches I began on Sunday.  At the grocery store, a pair of accidentally-vegan sauces from Rick Bayless' line for Frontera caught my eye because I had just seen an episode of his cooking show on PBS, and there he was on the backward packaging on the shelf.  I bought the Garlicky Carnitas Slow Cook Sauce (a citrus, garlic, and chile infusion) and the Red Chile Barbacoa Slow Cook Sauce (chipotle accents in a barbecue-like concoction), both of which are intended for braising meat, though neither contain any animal ingredients.  

     At home, I loaded my slow cooker's 2-quart crock with the first sauce, Garlicky Carnitas, the 1 & 1/2 cup water specified on the package's instructions for cooking meat, one cup of dry quinoa, and a chopped onion.  I set it on high and let it cook for an hour and 45 minutes until the quinoa was cooked through, then I added a cup of frozen peas to the hot mixture and turned the slow cooker off.  With or without a pat of margarine or some olive oil for a little richness, the quinoa tastes excellent--spicy and slightly tangy from the lime and orange juices in it.  I ate it for lunch on Monday with a salad of raw radishes on the side, and would also recommend trying the quinoa with sliced avocado on top.  And there is plenty for one or two more servings this week.

     Tonight, I set up my slow cooker's 2-quart crock for the second experiment.  I added the Barbacoa sauce, 1 & 1/2 cup water, an onion, and this time, 1 cup of dry lentils, and set it on high to cook until the lentils softened.  The rich aroma of the barbecue-like sauce filled the kitchen!  I plan to eat the lentils atop quick-cooking grits for breakfast tomorrow, and on a baked potato later in the week.

     While the lentils cooked, I sliced up and seeded an acorn squash, tossed the rings with heavy dashes of cumin, chipotle powder, salt, pepper, olive oil, the juice of a small lime, and some agave nectar, spread them on a baking sheet, and popped them into the oven to roast alongside the baked goods.  Even though they got a little over-done, they are a perfect side dish for the leftover quinoa I'm taking for lunch tomorrow.  

     I also added a large foil-wrapped potato to the oven while making my baked goods, which is this week's Foodie Tuesday tip--the plan-ahead potato.  A baked potato is very versatile, and if you keep a few raw potatoes in the pantry, it's easy to pop one or two in any time you're using the oven to cook something else.  It will keep well in the fridge in its foil wrapping for a few days.  The potato can be sliced and fried up with tofu scramble, or eggs (if you eat them), or veggie sausage (or meat, if you must) for breakfast, or it can be topped with any number of toppings and veggies for lunch or dinner--in this case, Barbacoa lentils.  I vary the types and sizes of potatoes I buy for this purpose--Russet, Yukon Gold, red, purple--but I only buy organic potatoes, because they grow directly in the soil into which any pesticides seep after they're applied to the plant above, and because I eat them skins and all for the taste and nutrients.  

Yumm-o!!!

--Kelli

The long and the short of it.

     When it comes to my hair, I change it up often.  It is stick-straight and brown, now with a few strands of silver, and sometimes I dye it--red or black usually.  I've grown it out and I've chopped it off.  I've never been as uptight about a haircut as some people I know, who never seem to be satisfied after a trip to the salon.  My philosophy is that if I get a bad haircut, it'll grow back eventually anyway.  And I love having my hair washed and the actual process of getting it cut . . . it makes me feel so pampered!

     So why has my hair become such a loaded subject lately?  The root of the problem (lol, pun!) is that a woman's hair is traditionally--and unfairly!--considered an expression of her sexuality and gauge of her attractiveness.  Judgements about who you are and which gender you are attracted to, can be made by people--unfairly!--based on your haircut.  And for most people of either gender, and the media, long hair on a woman is more desirable than short.  

     My ex-boyfriend specifically asked me to grow out my then-shoulder-length hair, and I remember acquiescing with a shrug, because I would never think to ask him to change his appearance and anyway, it was only hair.  I continued to let it grow for a few months after we ended things, but my first haircut post-breakup was emotional and a little cathartic; it was a symbolic end to the person I felt he had wanted me to be.  

     I've kept the length of my hair somewhere between my shoulders and my ears since then, but with the heat of the summer here and the fact that I just simply adore pixie cuts on people, I started going shorter and shorter under the care of my trusted stylist, BiBi (Bianca).  And with my short hair came my collection of fun hair accessories--bows, headbands, and scarves.  I'm known for them at work now, as our uniforms leave few other ways to express personal style, to the point that people I don't even know by name comment if I'm lacking 'headgear' of some sort.  And one of my co-workers calls me that as a nickname. Headgear.  So why do I feel I should grow my hair out when I like it short?

     Dating.  Rationally, I know that there are men out there who either like short hair or don't care what a woman's hair looks like so much as who she is.  But I guess I've bought into the hype about women needing long hair to attract a man, at least a little, because I decided to grow my hair back out a couple months ago.  I even changed my profile picture on Facebook to one in which I have longer hair as a motivational tool to get  me through the awkward middle phase of growing it out, and announced my intentions there.  Even my father commented that he 'prefers' me with long hair.  I feel torn between the preferences of future potential dating prospects and my own.   The argument in my head goes like this:  

     Short-haired me:  "Isn't a genuine expression of my inner self better?  There is such a genuine glow about women I see with cute short haircuts." 

     Long-haired me:  "But it's only hair, and you're tired of being alone, so why wouldn't you sacrifice this in order to appeal to more potential partners in the long run?  More people have commented positively on your beautiful long hair in the past than on your current haircut.  Long hair is in style now--look at all the women with long, perfectly-curled hair at work and on tv, Pinterest, Facebook . . . you are competing with that for the attention of the few remaining quality single men out there.  Besides, we could rock a sock bun, and you know you kinda want to!"  

And I'm tempted to leave it up to a vote by my friends on social media about what looks better, because at this point I simply cannot decide what to do!

Here's a timeline of styles through the last few years (and months!).

Medium hair pretending to be short up in two little buns. Also the first time I had ever dyed my hair black.  Fall 2005.

February 2011, pre-relationship. It was shorter, just above shoulder length, when I met my ex.

Four months post-breakup, December 2011.

Short haircut, July 2012.  Didn't really like this one.

Above haircut grown out a little bit, Fall 2012.

Shortest haircut this summer. Near-pixie! 2013.

Celebratory week and lazy weekend . . .

     This past week, I attended two very different celebrations.

      On Thursday, one of my supervisors at work had a retirement party to celebrate the end of 16 years at our organization and the 40 years (or so) of her nursing career.  I can't imagine working in one place for so long, or all the changes in the nursing profession she must have seen over the years.  As far as the party goes, I find large group gatherings a bit overwhelming, and tend to be a wallflower at them.  I also am prone to overeating at parties out of nervousness.  Since the party was hosted by our unit, the food was supplied by our staff and I have never seen so much Indian food (oh, the heaps of pakoras!) or so many crispy Filipino egg rolls!  For me personally, the star of the buffet was the mango cake with mango cream frosting.  It was light and fluffy, intensely flavored and fragranced with mangoes, and the whipped frosting could just as easily be eaten as a trifle with fresh fruit as on a cake.  I am now on a quest to duplicate that cake, and I think I'm going to start by making the cake recipe I found for Eggless Mango Cake, as the cake itself is vegan, and perhaps make a simple frosting by whipping coconut cream with a bit of powdered sugar, Ener-G egg substitute (a starchy, gluten-free powder), and some fresh mango puree.  Results to follow in a (delicious) later post.

     The second celebration was much more personal--my roommate had a birthday this week!  Suzi had already received her two big presents from me--a ticket to a concert in Austin last weekend and part of the price of the duvet cover that my father gifted her as a housewarming present.  But to celebrate on her actual birthday, the two of us went out to eat at a fancy restaurant that she had a gift card for, and though the service we received was subpar compared to the prices, the food was decent, and they had a live jazz band and dancing on the patio where we were seated.  It was much more relaxed for me than the party earlier in the week.  And so fun!  By the time we finished our salad, crusty French bread and butter, and shared (huge) entree, we sadly had no more room for dessert, let alone birthday cake.  But there was still the fun of seeing Suzi's face when I gave her one last birthday gift--a giraffe print mug with a tiny ceramic giraffe sitting on the inside.  Happy birthday, Suzi!

     Since Friday night's dinner out, I haven't left the house.  I woke up Saturday with a sinus headache, took some medicine that knocked me out, and spent the day napping on and off.  My dear roommate was so kind as to get us pizza for dinner Saturday night, and to pick up The Hobbit on dvd, which we followed with the first Lord of the Rings movie.  And today, we are continuing our Tolkien marathon with the second and third movies in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with brief breaks to make breakfast tacos, brew hot tea, and to get ice cream.  While Suzi ran to the store for ice cream, I did get off my butt and make two kinds of pesto to eat with brown rice pasta this week--a charred tomato pesto and a fresh arugula pesto, both with raw macadamia nuts.  And tonight I will have to study and take a test for my online class.  I feel some regret for the to-do list I never got around to, but I love a lazy weekend!

     How did you spend your weekend?

--Kelli

"Pinspired" Project #1: Vanity Dresser

     Since I was a teenager, I have wanted a vanity dresser in my bedroom--I've always imagined myself brushing out my hair in front of a huge mirror while perched upon a velvety footstool, no doubt wearing a filmy pink peignoir and slippers trimmed in marabou.  A couple years ago, I finally found one that was within my budget on Craigslist.  For a mere $50, I purchased this rough beauty, in which I could see a lot of potential to be coaxed out:

Not visible in these pictures is the graceful bow of the round vanity mirror, as I had to take it off to get the dresser safely home in the truck.  The woman I bought it from said it used to be her daughter's dresser, and that explained why there was something that looked like a cross between an angel and the Little Mermaid painted onto the center bridge and shellacked over with glitter glue.

 The hardware and handles were tarnished and rusted almost through.  I had the vague idea that I would  strip, sand, and refinish the whole piece, and I bought some of the supplies to do so, but lack of an outdoor workspace meant I left the whole project to languish for over a year.

Then, this past spring, I was introduced to Pinterest by a friend.  I began pinning in earnest, and along the way found many examples of painted furniture, complete with instructions on how to achieve good results without having to strip or sand off the existing finish.  Armed with this knowledge, I headed to Home Depot to exchange my previously-purchased supplies for a small can of a miracle primer called Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3, a small foam roller kit, and at another retailer, I got a small can of "oops!" paint for half price that turned out to be a gorgeous, milky gray.   I followed the instructions on the can of primer to the letter, allowed proper time between coats for drying, and within the space of a three-day weekend, I achieved the results below:

 Part of the dresser could not be simply scuffed with steel wool and painted over, however, as it had a patch of chipped veneer.  Inspired by the Art Deco lines of the dresser, pieces I've coveted in designer magazines and furniture showrooms, and the color of the new paint, I decided to cover the chipped area with a small mirror mosaic, and to repeat the mosaic in the same place on the other 'leg' of the dresser.

 Once more aided by advice via Pinterest, I measured the areas on both sides to be covered, carefully purchased supplies from a craft store and set about carefully applying large and small mirror squares.  I came up with the idea to use an old debit card from an account at a now-nonexistent bank to evenly scrape the adhesive onto every single tile, as well as onto the dresser itself, as the two tacky surfaces are then pressed together.

I will reveal the finished mosaic and vanity in a later post about my bedroom redecoration, but I am extremely proud of how the project turned out every time I look at my new vanity.  Now to find a matching gray pair of those satin slippers . . . 

--Kelli

Trying to find the good in a Monday

     I find Mondays particularly trying.  

     True, they may have a somewhat undeserved bad rep, but there is something inherently demoralizing about being surrounded by people who are all wishing it was still the weekend and that they didn't have to get up and get on with it, whatever 'it' may be.  For me today, 'it' was work.

     As a rule, I don't post much on social media about my job.  But I will say that today at work was a prime example of why I usually self-schedule to work any combination of days that leaves Monday free.  The first few hours held all the stress, crabby co-worker attitudes, and tasks left to languish over the weekend that someone (me!) had to clean up that I typically enjoy avoiding by not being there.  I would much rather sleep past my 4:30 a.m. work wakeup time, start my day--and my week--at a gentle pace, possibly with brunch, and interact with my rather pleasant and cheerful roommate, two adorable and adoring dogs, and even my roommate's teenaged and unpredictable kitten, than face Monday in a busy and chaotic hospital.  Today, I was relieved to make it to lunch relatively unscathed.  

     My lunch break is a welcome respite from the drama of my department because I no longer eat or take my breaks with the people in it.  Instead, I have carved out a place among a group of new friends who are by turns sympathetic, interesting, thoughtful, comedic, challenging, and brilliant.  The thirty minutes I spend with them is the brightest part of my workday.  I try especially hard to be the kind of friend to them that they have become to me, and I am thankful that they have taken me in.  Especially on Mondays!

     Because I had a short shift today (eight hours instead of twelve), the rest of my shift was all a quick downhill slide from lunch, and I was able to spend the late afternoon running a couple of necessary errands via the city bus. I will write my ode to the Via Bus system in a later post, but the general mood on the bus was one of weary relief for many people that their Monday workday had come to an end, and I seconded that emotion.  

     The whole day took a serious upturn when I had the opportunity during my errands to do a bit of shopping for small gifts for two close friends, which is a lot of fun for me.  I am always on the look out for small trinkets and presents that might bring some joy to a friend or add to a particular collection of theirs.  In the midst of doing so, I stumbled across the absolute PERFECT paisley duvet cover for my room.  This may sound trivial and stupid to some, but I have been looking online and in stores for the past few months for a new bedspread, or comforter, or quilt, or duvet, in an attempt to cheer the space up and bring together several elements of my decorating style.  I haven't found anything that spoke to my soul until today of all (Mon)days!  And, to top it all off, my father graciously gifted both my roommate and me with new bed linens as a housewarming present--in my case, a 100% cotton, dark teal sheet set--and they arrived by mail today, too.  

     Tonight, I will go gratefully to bed and say goodnight to this Monday swathed in my brand new, freshly laundered, lavender-scented cotton sheets and swirling patterned duvet in all the colors of utter happiness. 

And when I wake up, it won't be Monday anymore.  

--Kelli

P.S. For those interested, there will be a post or two about my bedroom redecoration, with pictures of the process, in the near future. Happy almost-Tuesday! 

     

On expectation, iteration, and fortune cookie messages from the universe . . .

     Like many people, I always thought my life would follow a predictable sequence, that I would arrive at certain milestones within a certain timeframe. That during my four years of college I would finally get it together, end my struggle with my weight and get skinny, then God would lead me to meet the man I wanted to one day marry. That school would then flow effortlessly into a fun and invigorating career of some sort, followed by my dream wedding and of course, the purchase of our first home, and possibly, maybe, only if we both wanted and only after several years of enjoying marriage, the birth or adoption of a child. And in my head, though I didn't assign a hard timeline, I always imagined it would happen by the time I was thirty. I would keep in touch throughout this process with all my best friends from high school whilst making new lifelong friends in college that would blend seamlessly into one large social group. I would finally become good friends with my sister, and with the far-flung members of my family that I only saw sporadically. Everything would come together into a neat and tidy package, and from then on, life would be nothing but work, love, fun, and friendship. And they lived happily ever after. The End.

       I have a pretty active imagination, but I NEVER imagined it would take me three colleges, four majors, and eight years to earn my two bachelor's degrees. That my weight would reach new highs with a few brief periods of temporary weight loss in between. That I'd have a twelve-year drought in my dating life that would only be broken by a brief mockery of a relationship, followed by a handful of disappointments that never quite reached actual dating status. That I would achieve a huge job dream--working for a non-profit in a cause close to my heart--only to become utterly disillusioned and burnt out, and end up falling back on a job I found minimally tolerable and hardly fulfilling. That I'd still be doing that job four years later, feeling stuck, and enrolling in community college for a two-year certificate that would give me a more marketable skill set. That today I'd be pushing thirty-four and contemplating the age at which it is no longer considered dignified for a woman to wear a pouf-y white dress down the aisle, should she manage to one day make it there at all, and that the answer to that question would mean I'd also have to think about the steadily closing window of reproductive opportunity as the years advance, though I have also had serious doubts about my suitability as a parent as well. And that being single and under-employed, with eight years' worth of college loans, would make purchasing a home on my own virtually impossible for the length of my repayment period, at least.

      Along the way, I lost friends I thought would be in my life until we were old and gray, and I made new friends only to suffer more saddening losses. I continued to struggle with the relationship I have with my sister, and to have only a minimal idea of what is going on in my other relatives' lives. Nothing came together the way I had imagined. For those failures, I railed against both God and my own nature. Though there were (and are) a LOT of good things going on in my life, it was hard to feel positively about myself when the critical voice inside my head said I had to be the biggest misfit ever to live. A failure, disappointment, loser, freak.

     Then I came across a concept that completely changed my thinking about this seemingly disjointed conglomeration of experiences that make up my life.

     In an article for CNN titled "A Creative Life is a Healthy Life," author Amanda Enayati defines iteration as "a design concept which involves the continuous prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining of an idea or product."

     What if my life is in iteration? I began to imagine that the various growth-inducing events and stages of my life were actually iterations. I was Kelli version 1.0 . . . then Kelli 1.5 . . . then Kelli 2.0 . . . every iteration spurred by whatever lesson I learned or choice I made in the face of difficulty or change. One of my very best friends pointed out that I should ask myself what changes I wanted to make, rather than stressing over the expectations of my critical inner voice and well-meaning family and friends. Life is a process, and I will never have achieved all the things I imagine I should. I realized that though reality did not meet expectation, I was actually ok.

     And one night I opened a fortune cookie, and the universe (or God, if you like) seconded my epiphany with this message:

 "You will make many changes before settling down happily."

This blog is dedicated to the idea of iteration and growth, written in a spirit of shared human sympathy, fun, love, and friendship.  Please share your thoughts along the way.

--Kelli