Testers, holidays, and stuff

The crisp fall weather is starting to settle in. I'm beginning to think about apple picking and what kind of pumpkin to carve. Time really does fly by.

Speaking of that, sometimes I can be a terrible blogger...letting a month pass by before posting. Fortunately while lurking around reading everyone else's blogs, I eventually get motivated. Sometimes I wonder about bloggers that show up and then disappear forever. Even though most of us don't get to meet in person, we know each other on some level. Has any one ever emailed one of the bloggers that fell off the map just to see how they are doing?

The sourdough starter I got from a friend is gradually taking over the country. It has now been shipped to NY, NH, WA, and CA. Soon I will be mailing some to OH and VA. It is pretty neat to see how it is passed around and kind of amazing to imagine how many generations kept it going after making it through the Oregon Trail.

On to food stuffs...

The supermarket had the mondo green peppers. Of course, I didn't buy them as green peppers fall into the category of "Foods Jody Despises."


The family got together for Rosh Hashanah dinner last week. My dad's girlfriend is always very aware and cooks special dishes for me. She made some squash soup and almond rice. She was also sure to pickup hummus, tabbouli, babaganoush, and my favorite pita bread. Between all that and the side dishes, I had a full belly.

My aunt also cooked up some wonderful vegan desserts using margarine and egg replacer. She made a lemon apricot cake and also some molasses clove cookies.



I'd tested a batch of Mocha Snickerdoodles to bring, but didn't make more after my aunt mentioned veganizing her recipes for me. These cookies were adapted from Celine's recipe for Chai Snickerdoodles on her blog Have Cake Will Travel.


This weekend my aunt and I went for a hike at one of my favorite parks. The weather was beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera. Here's a quick shot from my phone.


Ok some Lolo/VeganYumYum testers:

Sugar and Spice Snap Peas


Roasted Eggplant and Caramelized Onion Marinara over red quinoa


Creamy Broccoli Mushroom Bake The side salad is something that I learned about from B&B at the PPKer picnic. Raw beets, roasted corn, arrugula, with lime and cumin.


Up soon, more testers for Melody and some other random recipes I want to try.

August Wrap up...

I'll be the first to admit, I'm terrible at keeping up with blogging. I've got a whole months worth of pictures that I've failed to post. I'm also always lurking around at other blogs and need to get into the habit of commenting more.

Let's see...

A few weekends back I was in Ithaca for a wedding with a friend of mine. I was most excited about this because I'd finally get to eat at Moosewood. We met up with another pal and headed over there for dinner. Unfortunately only a handful of dishes are vegan. I had the African Stew with grilled tofu.

Here's a shot from the outside of Moosewood


The stew...


The wedding was at the interfaith church on Ithaca college's campus. The church is pretty neat and located on a little man made pond.



Ithaca iteself, was very veg friendly and kind of crunchy. It reminded me a little bit of Burlington, VT. The co-op there was great and I dragged my friends around there looking at everything for at least an hour. We tried cactus jerky...not a fan.

I saw this newspaper box when we were out and walking around. Isn't it cute?


The folks at the wedding we attended, decided to have cupcakes instead of wedding cake. They asked us to bring vegan cupcakes. I cooked up chocolate mint, chocolate almond, agave, and peanut butter cupcakes and brought them along. When we got to Ithaca, we ganached and sprinkled them.

The chocolate mint/almond ones...


Agave and PB


On the way back from Ithaca we stopped in to meet Bazu and Daiku. Bazu cooked up some wonderful lunch and snacks for us and we had lots of fun hanging out with them. Check out the post on Where the Revolution?, to see what Bazu cooked. ---Thanks guys!

What else? Well, I am always cooking with the sourdough. It needs to be fed once a week. Usually I just make some variation of pancakes because it is simple.

This morning, I made plain and peach sourdough pancakes.

Cooking


Finished


Speaking of sourdough, Marti over at Tofu and Sprouts had always wanted sourdough starter. I offered to try sending her some. I mixed in extra flour and dried it out a bit. Then dropped it in the mail to go cross country. Neither us were sure how it would go, but it worked out wonderfully. Check out Marti's post on her first sourdough recipe.

One more sourdough photo. I made this wonderful recipe I found online as got two perfect loaves of bread.





Ok, I've got a few Lolo Cookbook tester recipes to post later in the week and I've also started testing for Melody over at Melomeals.

I'll checking out everyone's blogs this week.

Blueberries, Sourdough, NYC

Hope everyone is having a great summer.

Between plans, yard work, the office, cooking...it seems like I never get around to blogging.

Let's see, a few weeks back I went blueberry picking at a local farm. I picked 3.5 pounds of blueberries!

The local farmer's markets are great, I only wish I had started finding them sooner. If you are in Massachusetts, you can find markets near you on this site.

I'm also enjoying my 1/2 share at the CSA this year. Right now, they are picking onions, zucchini, squash, tomatoes and beans.

Here's what I've been cooking:
Crazy Vegetable Fried Rice a VeganYumYum tester recipe for Lolo's upcoming cookbook


Blueberry Pancakes - Recipe from The Rabbit Food cookbook


Tomato Cream Sauce with zukes and whole wheat pasta, also from VYY.


A friend of mine shared some sourdough starter which was passed down from the travelers on the Oregon Trail. I've been fooling around with that. So far, I've been successful with pancakes and waffles. I did make some biscuits that turned out, ok. The bread was not so tasty. If you've got sourdough recipes, please share.

Blueberry sourdough pancakes and waffles




Last weekend I met up with some PPKers for a picnic in Brooklyn. Though I took lots of photos, I really didn't get around to uploading them all. I brought lavender lemonade, chopped veggies from the farm, and Romanian cucumber salad. Some of the other food included: homemade hummus, beet and corn salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, quinoa salad, cherry ginger cookies, brownies, and earl grey cookies. The folks I met were really great.

After the picnic I had hoped to try one of NYC's famous vegan restaurants. Unfortunately, no one was hungry---if you can believe that. So, we decided to have some coffee and see if we could possible manage more food later.

The place we randomly picked is called the Cocoa Bar. We saw soymilk on the menu, so we sat down. When the waiter arrived, we asked about which drinks could be made with soy. He informed us that they have a whole vegan menu including 3 cakes. That would never happen in Boston. It is funny, the desserts that are vegan are not labeled as such on their regular menu either.

At any rate the 7 of us split 3 slices of cake and that was the end of our eating spree. Behold the 3 cakes. (Choc Death, PB Bomb, and Oreo)

Cupcakes, test recipes, lovin' summer

This weekend a friend's cousin was visiting and we headed to CT to see Gillette Castle. I packed a picnic for us which consisted of homemade New Farm cookbook rolls with greens and veggie burgers. The burgers are a test recipe from Veganyumyum's upcoming cookbook. They are mighty tasty seitan, corn and black bean burgers.

Here's a quick pic of the patties.

The castle is really neat. I took many pictures of it. This is one of my favorites.

After the castle, we stopped at another little park called Devil's Hopyard. There was a cute little waterfall there.Cupcakes were requested by our visitor, so I made pumpkin chocolate chip and gingerbread from VCTOTW.

With cream cheese frosting
Mini zucchini breads using extra CSA zukes

My lunch from a week ago. Homemade tabbouli, store bought hummus, farmer's market green beans with hoisin sauce and cracked red pepper, and sauteed green's. The greens have some leftover alfedo sauce which is also a veganyumyum tester recipe.
I've got lots more pics and post that I'll get to eventually.

Veggies, cupcakes...oh and hi again!

I've been around here...reading blogs when I can and posting occasionally on PPK. Ironically there are lots of pics on my camera memory card, but they've never made it to the blog. I'll do a short post today and try to do some longer posts with lots of photos soon.

My half share at the CSA has been great so far. Last Friday, I helped harvest the crops and it was really fun. I picked onions, radishes, strawberries and squash. I'd never picked onions or radishes before and it was cool to see how they grow and get my hands dirty.

This week's CSA haul was: 2 lettuces, 4 zucchini, 2 eight ball zucchni, 2 crook neck squashes, 1 romanesca zucchini, 1 small pint of strawberries, onions, and radishes.

Here's a photo of my pickup a few weeks back which included Red Russian kale, lettuces, onions, a few berries, and radishes.

So we seem to get lots of radishes from the farm. I'm not a huge fan of them. Do any of you have favorite radish recipes? I've been slicing them and tossing them in salads.

These are some pistachio rosewater cupckes from VCTOTW. I baked them for my friend's birthday and they went on a trip with us to Acadia National Park up in Maine. I'll post some of those pics in the future.

This is cranberry cinnamon bread which is a test recipe for Lolo's (of VeganYumYum) upcoming cookbook. It is supposed to be cinnamon raisin, but I pretty much despise raisins. Cranberries made a great substitution. This bread is really wonderful.

What else has been going on? I turned 30 last month and to celebrate, I went skydiving. ---Note, the new profile pic with Andreas my skydiving instructor. During freefall it feels more like you are superman flying than dropping through the air. Because of that, I really didn't find it scary. My guess is your brain can't process what is happening, so it doesn't feel like you are actually falling.

After jumping, my dad took me to Crazy Burger in RI for lunch. There, I got a vegan burger and vegan carrot cake for dessert. Later, my family and I got together at Elephant Walk for dinner. EWalk has French Cambodian food with a separate vegan menu. Yay!

Though I'm not a fan of the radishes from the farm, the greens are wonderful sauteed with olive oil and garlic. Below on the left is some radish greens. On the right is some mizuna from the farm. Normally, we see mizuna in field green salads. Now I know you can also cook it up.

That's all for now. I have many pics to post still and will try to catch up soon. Hope everyone is doing well.

Pics From The Farm

My two birds Tommy and Nacho made the 4 hour ride up to the farm. Nacho really liked all the sounds of the other animals. Tommy took a few days to get used to it. Actually on the second day there, Tommy started chasing my friend's cat around the house. She is one crazy bird. The cat Alley, often followed me around while feeding/watering the animals in the morning or evening.
Above is Kitch. He is the older of the three male horses and the most shy. Though you'd never know it from this picture. As soon as I brought out the camera he started posing.
The painted horse is Sasha, one of the girls. I can't recall the brown horses name. Sasha is a sweetie and always came over to get some attention when I was bringing out hay or filling their water.
This regal guy is a Muscovy duck. He also liked to follow me around while I took care of the chickens, baby chicks, and the roosters. Muscovy ducks don't really quack they sort of make a wheezing/hissing noise.
These are two of the four Runner ducks. They don't waddle. They just hold their long necks up high and run around the yard all day. They were hilarious to watch. When I first pulled my car into the driveway, 4 of the ducks kept running in circles around quacking.


On the sides are a couple of the roosters. To the left is one named Roosty. You can't quite tell how big he is from this picture.




The patchy guy on the right is about 1/3 of Roosty's size.









To the left is a pic of some of the girls running around after I let them out of the coop which keeps them safe at night.



To the right is a cool little chicken. Notice the fluffy feathers on her legs and feet. I think she is a Silkie.









There were two geese parents wandering around. This is their nest which is under the rabbit cage in one of the sheds. I didn't get a photo of them because the male got rather cranky whenever he saw me because he was protecting their eggs.

Since I wasn't at home, I had plenty of extra time to cook. Unfortunately, I did a pretty poor job of taking photos. Some friends came up to visit on the farm and cooked up a some pineapple tofu curry. Another night I baked teriyaki tofu. For breakfast a I made pancakes with egg replacer a couple of times.

When I stopped at WF in Portland, I picked up the latest copy of VegNews which has some VCTOW recipes. I cooked a couple of batches of cupcakes to share with people at the office or with my friends who visited. I took photos of the Jelly Donut cupcakes, but forgot to take pics of the chocolate almond ones. The batter from the donut cakes is amazing. I swear it tastes better than the finished product.
The first picture is of the cupcakes in the pan. The second is with a dusting of powdered sugar before taking them into work.

Here's two shots from my hike. I'm pretty sure that the tallest peak in the distance is Mount Washington.

Well, I've got about 2 weeks of your blogs to catch up on. I'll be visiting soon!

Suburban Computer Geek - Farm Sitting

Ok I haven't posted in awhile, but I do have a better excuse than usual. I've been away for over a week and a half farm sitting for a friend up in Maine. My friends were heading to wedding in Tennessee and needed someone to look after the animals. Unfortunately, I was without Internet at their house.

Portland is a little over an hour south of their home, so I could work out of our Portland office while taking care of the farm. None of the animals are raised for food, otherwise I'd likely have a real hard time with it if I could even agree to do it. They do collect eggs from the chickens, but they have plenty of space and wander about the yard, so they are indeed happy birds.

I'm not a morning person, so waking up at 5am with the roosters was a little painful for me. Though I did eventually get into the schedule. Before heading out to work I needed to check to make sure the chickens, ducks, roosters, horses, bunnies, and geese had food and water. They also have a cat. Their kids have a guinea pig, 2 gerbils, and some fish I had to check on as well. We had some warm days, so I'd often need to check again when I got home.

I'll post some farm pics for you, a few cooking photos, and a couple of shots from a hike I did near their house later on tonight.