Back At Last

Sorry I've been gone for such a long time! I got back from Alaska July 19th or so, and then only had a couple of weeks to pack, clean, and move out of our old apartment and into our new one. Then we were unpacking, had company over twice, and have just generally been busy. I haven't been on the computer much the last month or so (I know, I'm shocked too). Also, my laptop has a virus, and hasn't been repaired yet, so getting on the computer has been a little trickier than normal.

But life has been very very good. I've spent the last two weekends canning 15lbs. of tomatoes and 10 lbs. of apples from the farmers markets, and tomorrow plan on picking fresh organic blueberries from a local farm and freezing some and making blueberry syrup with the rest to can. I wish I would have asked Cousin Diane a long time ago to teach me how to do all this canning. It's a lot of work, much more than I really thought it would be, but it's a lot of fun and makes me feel good knowing I'm doing something that hundreds of women have done before me and many others are doing the same thing this time of year. In the next few days I'm picking up some knitting needles and yarn from a fellow freecycler and will start teaching myself to knit.

With school starting on the 25th, I'm starting to feel a change in pace though. I won't have much time to do all the things my "domestic homemaker" self would like to (knit, canning, try making soap, baking bread), and am starting to gear up for the stressful, high-paced "student/working woman" self that is going to have to deal with my tough course load. I'll be taking physics, chemistry, biological oceanography, and oceanography seminar for a total of 15 units and about 20 hours of lab every week, not to mention day-long trips on the R/V Coral Sea every other weekend or so. Whew. I can feel my stress level rising just thinking about it! I'm also still the project director of the PG&E Marine Sampling program, and will have all that to deal with and take care of, plus my part time job at HSU School of Business. Most days I will leave the house at 7 am and not get back until 5:30-6:00 pm.

I sometimes feel bad about having to rely on my parents for financial support, but when I think about it, it really is like they're paying me to "work" at school. I'll spend about 35 hours a week between classes and homework (not counting weekend trips), and if I made $8.00/hour (less than what I'm making now at either job), it works out to over a thousand dollars a month that I'm not able to earn because I'm going to school. Looking at it that way, I feel a lot better about it, and it makes me want to do my absolute best, just like I do at a "real" job.

I'm off now to make a grocery list for tomorrow and to see what sort of school supplies I will need.

Going on the Big Trip

Tomorrow my sister and I are leaving on our month long road trip up the Pacific coast to Alaska. I won't be posting anything to this blog until we get back home, but I will post updates about our trip in a journal dedicated solely to the trip.


Bye for now!

Relaxing at the 'Rents

I have been at my parents' house the last couple of weeks, and so have not been posting. All of the meals I've been making have been repeats of the best things I've made since the last time I was down here. That way I get to impress everyone with my yummy vegan food. Even my dad has liked most of it, although 99.9% of the time he claims the meal would be better with meat.

I did try a couple new recipes though. The lemon bars from The Joy of Vegan Baking are very good, and pretty simple to make. The lemon cheesecake from the same book would have been excellent, but when we bought the Tofutti cream cheese, we picked up the herbed kind and didn't notice until too late. It's not bad, a little weird tasting, but I think with some little adjustments it might actually make a really good savory cheese cake. I also made up a crunchy chocolate truffle pie, which had a little too much peanut butter in it for my taste, but it was still very good and all the omnivores it's been served to have liked it.

We experimented last night with a veggie lasagna made with the vegan alfredo sauce I blogged about before. In a compromise with the family, I made it with mozzarella cheese. It came out pretty good, but still needs some tweaking. More veggies, more flavor in the sauce, and some Teese should do the trick.

Now I'm focusing on finishing up my sister's late graduation gift, a cookbook with all of my best vegan and vegetarian recipes (she's lacto-ovo vegetarian). I also want to look up good vegan restaurants along the route of our up-coming Great Alaska Adventure, with stops in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Juneau, Anchorage, Denali National Park, Fairbanks, and many little towns in British Columbia. I should probably find some good and cheap camping recipes. Any recommendations?

Oprah goes Vegan!!! - UPDATED

Yesterday Oprah announced her plan to do a 21 day cleanse involving going vegan. I'm so happy to see veganism being portrayed as a positive, healthy thing in mainstream media, but especially by Oprah who has so much influence. I hope that even if she decides not to stay vegan, that she inspires others to give it a try and if nothing else, is dispelling the myth that veganism is unhealthy, hard, weird and crazy.

I noticed some of her recipes that she gives involve "beef-flavored broth", which is a little confusing. Hopefully what's meant is a vegan beef-flavored broth, and not broth with actual beef in it. I think it gives the idea that vegans still consume some animal products like beef and chicken broth when we don't.

I don't usually watch Oprah (well, I don't have TV anyway...), but I'm looking forward to keeping up with her experiment and seeing what happens. It seems like she's been leaning in this direction for a while, with her shows about puppy mills and with several authors of vegan books.

UPDATED - Now that I've had some more time to think about it, I've found some bigger flaws in this. For one, Oprah is doing a 21 day cleanse, which contributes to the image of veganism as a fad diet that one does for a little while to lose weight and then quits. She's also giving up all caffeine, alcohol, sugar, and gluten which could make others think that this is part of a vegan diet. As far as I know, Oprah is not looking at the animal products she is consuming outside of her diet, so really she is eating a strict vegetarian diet, and is not going vegan.

Overall though, I think this has the opportunity to get veganism into the mainstream in a positive light. I wonder if the FBI is working on planting someone behind the scenes to keep an eye on Oprah in case she starts participating in terrorist vegan potlucks....

Free at last!

Last week was finals week and a weekend of PG&E sampling. What a busy stress-filled whirlwind that was. But now it's over and I'm free for the summer!

Meals definitely suffered last week. We ate out a couple of times, had frozen pizza another night. We did have a couple home cooked meals, like chicken sour cream enchiladas and sausage pasta.

I discovered that I'm not a very good cook when it comes to camping though. Or at least I wasn't on this trip. David and I left Sunday afternoon for Crescent City to break in my new tent on a little overnight trip. Since I don't really have any camping gear, I used my tiny BBQ as a heat source to make spaghetti. That doesn't work out so well. The water never boiled, and the spaghetti was a soggy, starchy mess. We ended up throwing most of it in the bear proof trash.

I finally got a chance to bake yesterday. It was David's birthday, so I made him the brownies from Joy of Vegan Baking. The recipe needs a little tweaking. The brownies are very very moist (almost raw in texture, even though I baked it 20 minutes longer than suggested) and have a strong applesauce flavor. They're starting to disappear from the pan though, so I guess they're not all that bad :)

There probably won't be too much home cooking this week either. Next week I leave to go to my parent's house for a couple of weeks to visit and see my sister's high school graduation. After that I'll be taking off for my trip to Alaska, so blogging will probably be less frequent than it is now. Hopefully we'll be able to eat plenty of good vegan food along the way, so there will be plenty to blog about when I get back.

Menu...Tuesday

I meant to get this up yesterday, but remarkably, I didn't get on the computer at all yesterday until almost nine, and then I only checked my e-mail.

We ended up not sticking to the menu exactly last week, but we made everything but the spicy sausage and peppers. That's showing up again this week. Fortunately, I use those green bags and my produce really seems to be lasting longer. Now I don't feel so guilty about not making meals on the day I plan them. We also threw in the mac and cheese from the cooking class on Wednesday.

Monday: Veggie sloppy joes, local potato salad (potatoes, thyme, rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper).

Tuesday: Leftovers. David will be gone until 9 or so, and I'm swamped with finals.

Wednesday: Spicy sausages and peppers, salad, local swiss chard

Thursday: David requested breakfast, so we'll have biscuits and gravy, scrambled tofu/eggs, hash browns

Friday: Teriyaki Tofu, rice, broccoli. I'm using the recipe posted last week by Laura. May just do leftovers though, since I'll be doing PG&E sampling in the evening and David won't be home.

Saturday: More PG&E sampling, so most likely leftovers.

I'm really starting to feel the end of semester crunch now. The next couple of weeks will probably be real simple and quick dinners, but after that I can start experimenting again.

Vegan Happiness

I have never been good at social situations. I am much like my mother, in that once I am home from work and school, I don't want to deal with anyone besides my family. I don't want people to come over, I don't want to go places. Tuesday I forced myself out of the house, and I'm so glad I did.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned CCAT (Campus Center for Appropriate Technology) before here, but it is a wonderful group on campus that deals with alternative technologies and sustainability. Tonight they hosted a vegan cooking class with AWARE (Always Working for Animal-Rights & Equality); another club on campus. I was a little surprised at how many people showed up (about 12-13?), considering a lot of the fliers had been torn down around campus. The food was excellent, and the atmosphere was great. All of us hung out in the kitchen (luckily a very spacious one!) and talked, helped out, and ate. CCAT is a really special place, and I wish every one had a place like this in their lives and communities. It really lends itself to making everyone feel at home and accepted. Drop in and sit down to read a book from their library, take a few minutes to weed the garden, sign up for a class and learn about herbalism, lost arts of living, organic gardening, thermal curtains, and a myriad of other skills and topics.

And did I mention the food? Because all of it was wonderful. Well, except for the mashed cauliflower with capers. I tried to be impartial to the capers, really I did, but it wasn't happening. The menu consisted of cheap vegan comfort foods (we are po' college students after all) including raspberry cole slaw, 50 cent tomato soup, mashed cauliflower, garlic and rosemary potatoes, mac and cheese, baked tofu, and thai peanut sauce. The big winners were definitely the mac and cheese, baked tofu, and the potatoes. I made the mac and cheese last night for dinner, and even David ate it and said it was good (but that it didn't taste like cheese).

My organic gardening class (put on by CCAT) is having a local and organic potluck on Monday. I've been thinking about doing a local food month (or just in general), but I'm not sure it's possible. While Humboldt is a great area for omnivores to eat local, there are almost no vegan protein sources and very few grains. For the potluck I think I'm going to make a potato salad with oregano, lemon thyme, rosemary, and (cheating-not local, but organic) garlic and olive oil. For my local food diet, I made a modified 100 mile radius that I'm going to try to work in. I had to modify a little because half of my area would be at sea, so now I'm working in an area roughly south of Brookings and Ashland, north of Willits and Willows, and west of Susanville. I think that gives me enough options, but with more research I may need to change it a little more. As things around the house get used up, I'll slowly start replacing stuff with things grown and (possibly or) made in my little area. I can't wait until the farmer's markets start carrying things besides lettuce and starts.

Only one more week of classes!

Picture from Arcata Community.org