Vegan MoFo: Food is pretty

Vegan MoFo 2010: Food in bar form

Did anyone else find particular resonance when Homer Simpson was going to climb that mountain and bought a kitchen gadget (that looked a little too much like a sausage grinder for comfort) that made food into bars. He dumped a plate of spaghetti and meatballs into it, and I laughed with the comfort of knowing that if I could, I might do that too.

I eat a lot of food in bar form because of a (likely perceived) lack of time to cook. I'd like to point out a couple bars you might not have heard of, though.



I just noticed Skout bars in the school canteen and the local crunchy food stores. They're locally made (Portland, OR represent!) and are like Clif bars in texture, but have an ingredient list more akin to a Larabar. They're date and grain (usually oat) based, sweetened with apple juice concentrate. They're pretty tasty, and don't have that greasiness that Larabars sometimes have.



Full disclosure: I know the founder of this company from back home. The Core Method replacement bars are HEAVY. Since I bike to hell and back, I'm okay with eating one of these hyper-caloric, mostly raw monsters, but I wouldn't recommend it as a snack for less active folks. It's decidedly a meal replacement. The raw cashew and cacao is good, I'm less crazy about the raisin one. ONLY the Defender bars are vegan. The Warrior bars contain whey. (Disappointing considering Corey, the founder, was the first vegan I ever met - I think he's well off the wagon.) In Portland, I've only found them at Whole Foods, but that suggests they're widely available.

Vegan MoFo: I'm a slacker edition

To be fair, I'm in law school, and it's robbed me of my cooking time. Even before I joined these hallowed halls of stress and arrogance, though, I was a pretty lousy blogger. to that end, some introductory, beginning-of-MoFo remarks about my eating habits which will explain my blogging habits.

I have class Monday - Friday, and it's across town. Riding my bike from my North Portland abode to Lewis and Clark takes an hour and five minutes each way. Needless to say, I am a bottomless pit.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are my long-haul days. I am on campus from 8-8, and get home a little after 9pm. These evenings, I do not cook anything more involved than miso or a handful of almonds.

At least once a week, usually Tuesday, I spend the night at my girlfriend's. She is also vegan, and she's an amazing cook. More often than not, she cooks on Tuesdays when I straggle in from class, tired and dazed.

Weekends and Mondays (when I get out of class at noon) are heavy cooking days because I tend to cook for the week then. Mondays are also the days on which I receive my CSA. Woo!

Anyway, I just made a tomatillo salsa that I'm pretty proud of - it's just roasted tomatilloes, a ton of cilantro, raw garlic, and raw jalapeño all blended together.

I do not have any chips for this salsa. That needs to change.

"no diggity" is stuck in my head

in fact, i think no diggity was in my dream.

done signed up for VeganMoFo 2010. this means i'll blog more. hopefully, there will be a ripple of not only increased blog productivity, but increased all-around productivity.

to that end, i have homework.

For years, I was convinced that I would write for a living. I mean, really write, man. Words with grace and dignity and brawn. Words that will kick your ass and make you want more. Words like the ones I read while hunkered for the night or while sprawled in a lawn chair. Necessary words. Honest words. Urgent words.

No dice. It turns out I'll write for a living, and the words will be necessary, honest, and urgent in a very different way than I could have anticipated even two years ago. They'll also be dense and dry, and I will have to labor to work my favorite words into my pleadings (not poems) and memos (not memoirs). The rules of style and citation that I can barely keep straight now will be what Strunk and White was to me when this blog got started.

But when I reflect on all the collected years of ambitions to Really Write, I come back to something that a judge told a roomful of young legal hotshots and a few tag-alongs like me yesterday: Words are your craft. He followed this statement with a screed on why it's necessary to polish writing skills, why typos are the super-poisoned kiss of death in federal courts, and why he hates cliches. I was checked out a that point because "words are your craft" is something I've heard before from creative writing mentors/professors and from my editors at newspapers too.

And words are my craft. (Notice that I began my sentence with a conjunction - it's not ignorance of the fine and revered rules of grammar, it's a device to get attention! Enough meta, though. You know I know how to write.) Words have never been my craft in any particular way, though, so signing my style away to the legal gods shakes me up a little. Going lawyer is a commitment to a writing style, among other things, that I'm not quite prepared to accept. I don't really have a choice, though. My emails are already shorter, more direct. My longhand letters lack the long, ponderous sentences they once had. That just might be a good thing.

Still, the effect of but one year of legal writing is not one of minced words per se, but ground words. Pureed words. They're made to be consumed and absorbed quickly. This, they say, is the big difference between legal writing and every other style of writing. I'm not sure there really is a huge difference. Simple writing will always rock, and simple writing will always be my goal.

Same suit, second verse

I will wear my only suit three days in a row this week.

pardon the whining

finals really, really suck. one of the many reasons is this: finals are not just the period immediately preceding finals and the finals themselves. law school finals encompass a period of weeks, if not months, during which every single thought ends with "I really should be studying right now."

food food food

In the ground: garlic (almost a foot tall!), a few onions, spinach and peas planted just this weekend.
After last frost: Carrots (in between our garlic grid - it's gonna be a delicious plaid), arugula, cilantro, strawbblies, zucchini, some kinda summer squash, kale, beets, pole beans, and maybe some cabbage if I can come up with a humane way to battle the slugs.
Later: tomatoes, jalapenos, tomatillers, basil, and whatever else we forgot.

As I announced to the world via facebook last month, I've gone vegan. Like, getting rid of leather shoes, haven't had cheese in a month, full-on. It's super, and I really enjoy not oppressing other beings as best I can. To that end, while I fully intend to post recipes I concoct and garden shenanigans, I plan to leave the vegangelical leanings aside. There are many, many blogs that are way more well-researched and well-written that can preach the benefits of veganism. That's not my goal with Champ of the Semi.

Illness Drink:
Ample splash lemon juice
Teeny squidge maple syrup
1/2 tsp cayenne
As much fresh ginger root as can be foraged in my present mess of a kitchen
Hot water

Combine ingredients. Drink while wishing your nose would just f'ing drain already.

where there's smoke, there's burnout

Some way, some how, I have to spend a certain number of hours on this exercise in masochism I'm told is law school. When that certain number of hours is not met because, say, I want to see my girlfriend and friends and maybe cook a nice meal or two, nights get late and mornings get earlier.

I didn't realize that last night was Daylight Savings Time, and I'm still lamenting the loss of that hour. Talk about a need for perspective - I'm fussing over an hour of my life that I spent sleeping curled up against M (or didn't spend at all - DST gets a little metaphysical for my taste) instead of poring over my Con Law.

If I had a time traveling DeLorean, I'd just bop ahead to next week: Spring fuckin Break.

What happened?

roughly chronologically:

Girlfriend.
Bike accident.
Work.
Garden.
Backpacking trip.
Law school.
Winter.
Holidays in AK with above girlfriend.
Summer job secured.
Veganism.

No promises on further, better posting. Still and all, I could use the outlet here. More to come, in messy bursts.

garden update

Beets!

Hops!

Peas on my genius trellis! (Twine and a curtain rod)

Spinach!

Jalapeno!

Kale!

Mustard greens!

Wear a damn helmet

Before I am chastised by the awesome hair set about my new Bike Helmet Evangelism, learn this: I was in a crash two weeks ago yesterday that woulda killed me had I not been wearing one. So wear a damn helmet. I've hashed and rehashed this story, so check it out elsewhere, please.

So the accident and the attendant Oxycodone haze explain the lack of posting, right? Yep. That and the garden taking over my whole life. Pictures at eleven.

Virus attack - don't click on links from me

Hi folks,

I got virused. Please don't click on any links from me for the time being.

Best,
Erica

Turbo!

Taken at a party with a phone. Quality pictures to come, eventually.

Enter Turbo

The Scene: A birthday party for a friend who answers to "Creepy"
The Time: About a beer into it
The Cast: Myself, my roommate, a couple buddies

Enter TURBO THE CAT, who looks like my mom's cat, if my mom's cat had been left outside for a couple months.

TURBO
Meooow!

ERICA
Well, hell-O! (Starts petting TURBO. TURBO immediately starts head-butting ERICA, and showing a desperate need for affection)

ROOMMATE
(coos at TURBO)

TURBO
(works her way onto our laps)

FRIEND WHOSE APARTMENT WE'RE AT
Take that cat! She's my neighbors, and he's going to abandon her. On account of his eviction and his laziness, you see.

ERICA AND ROOMMATE
Oh great heavens! We must adopt her!

TURBO (From ERICA'S arms)
purrrrr.

Once said friend confronts the cat's neglectful owner, Turbo is all ours. Turbo is a new name. Old Owner called her Macaroni. Unacceptable.

Also, I've been at work for more than 2.5 hours and just now noticed the box of doughnuts on my desk.

the verdant hills of north portland

I do love these tiny beet sprouts and their purple stems.

DINO KALE! RAAWWR! If only the leaves were dinosaur-shaped.

These peas are growing so quickly that I don't think I can afford to wait until the weekend to put up the trellis. Uh oh.

The chard is the only green in the self-watering containers that is still going strong. Perhaps we didn't trim the mesclun mix back enough (too much?), but they're bolting like banks from Bernanke. (Does that make sense? Topicality isn't my strong point these days. Bolting like hysterical tourists from Mexico?)

Hops! Mt. Hood variety. I biked them home and they've been reacting well to the transplant. A home-spun dry-hopping this fall? A girl can dream.

Remember when this strawberry was but three leaves and no flowers? They grow up so fast...

Garlic.

Pretty little spinach, row on row.

Arugula! Better, cheaper, pepperier than the store-bought stuff by a mile. Verily, by a hectare.

bikus

woodpeckers rattle
as dogwoods slink into bloom
how alive we are

wafts of hops and malt
as I pass widmer's mash tuns
a shame their beer sucks

In your face, Houston!

That's right, suckas. 107-103. In your collective face. Even you, Brooks, although I secretly hope you and Pretty Boy Roy will swap someday soon.

it's true

The greens taste better when you grow them yourself. These salads were picked about 30 minutes before dinner. Subsequently devoured with just a hint of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The mesclun had a thickness and - dare I say it? - meatiness to it that I seldom encounter in salads. Our baby rainbow chard is downright sweet. Yum.

food not lawns!

Sugarless Update: Easter ain't easy without sugar. I allowed myself a little hit of celebratory dark chocolate, but have been otherwise confined to agave when sweetener is needed. This has been a great excuse to avoid the peanut M&Ms at work. I can be strong. Aiming to drastically reduce my intake of refined sugar has been a far more manageable goal than cutting it altogether, but I've still gone over a week without any at all. Again, major progress.

Garden Update: We kick ass. Here's the 7'x4' raised bed in the front yard. Contains (left to right) arugula, oregano, mesclun mix, bitty kale starts. (I had a dream about tupperware cloches for the little things - that will probably happen today.)


The backyard. Note the raised beds and tomato planters on either side of the door. Also note the buckets, which are the self-watering containers that I may have raved about recently.


Detail of the left side. Left to right: directly sown peas and spinach in the large bed, strawberries in the repurposed peach crate, empty bucket, lavender in a pot, future site of tomatoes. In the right bed (not shown), we've sown beets and will plant jalapenos and broccoli later.


We made this raised bed yesterday out of cinder blocks that our landlord had just abandoned in the backyard. Soon to house tomatoes and basil. It didn't take too long, and I think it looks rather awesome, especially since we had to build it up around the rosemary. Salvaged materials are beautiful.


Self-watering containers! There are holes in the upper bucket that allow water to wick into the soil and condense back into the lower bucket reservoir. Here's a better description of how they work.


Mesclun mix and rainbow chard are totally BFF with their SWCs.


Tomatoes and jalapenos. We have more seedlings than we know what to do with. The little blue house has experienced a bit of a population explosion.


We may need to start a CSA once all this gets rolling! We're not even done planting, and I haven't yet made the bean poles.

ETA: Forgotten link for SWCs