Vegan Madness in RI, and Pasta con Broc-occoli

GUYS. Get this – according to Go Dairy Free, the world’s first vegan ice cream truck is based out of – wait for it – Rhode Island. For serious! I’m swelling with Rhody pride for my little Ocean State. Why wasn’t I aware of this when I actually lived in RI?! Not only can RI vegans get their ice cream fix from a bangin’ purple truck, but they can also satisfy sugar cravings at a vegan bakery and juice bar that opened recently. When my mom visited me in February, she brought a bag of their cookies for us to share, and they were yummy! Admittedly, they needed a turn in the microwave to restore them to optimal softness, but they’d traveled 1200 miles across the country, so can you really blame them? I’ll ask Mom to buy me a fresher cookie when I go back home in May for my little brother’s college graduation (eek).

Speaking of my mom, she has a weird little habit of saying “broc-occoli” instead of “broccoli.” Not all the time (that would be annoying), but fairly frequently. So sometimes, when I cook with broccoli (more than fairly frequently), I call it broc-occoli in my head. I definitely did that a couple night’s ago when I tried one of the recipes from Appetite for Reduction recipes that’s garnered the most attention – Pasta con Broccoli.

Now, lemme just clarify something here. I do not actually have an appetite for reduction. I am not trying to lose weight. Being a bit on the skinny side, I’m a bit hypersensitive about those sorts of misunderstandings; I don’t want anyone to think I’m unhappy with myself and am on a diet. I was even a little hesitant about buying AfR because I felt like people would see it on my cookbook shelf and make silent assumptions. But a good cookbook is a good cookbook, and I am not going to deprive myself of delicious recipes just because someone might silently assume things. Pshaw.

Anyway, Pasta con Broccoli. It’s gotten rave reviews from many of my bloggy friends, so I decided to give it a whirl a couple nights ago. I’ll admit that I had my misgivings; it seemed a little… boring. And, honestly, it doesn’t look extremely exciting.

PCB

It’s pretty, sure, but it doesn’t look like a dish that’d send you into throes of culinary ecstasy or make you starry-eyed with gastronomical pleasure. And honestly, I was a little underwhelmed at first. Now, I’ll admit that I omitted the balsamic vinegar because that shit is nasty (sorry, 99% of the world), so probably I lost some flavor there. It was tasty, sure, and the broc-occoli itself was excellent, but overall I didn’t quite get what everyone had raved about. But I had extra, and despite my distaste for leftover pasta, I ate it for lunch the next day. And you know what? Because the pasta had soaked up the leftover sauce, it was so much more flavorful! I can totally see why people add this to their regular dinner rotation; it’s easy and yummy. If I made it again, I’d let it sit in the pan for longer to let the flavors really get it on. Rawr. Nothin’ like hot broccoli-on-pasta action to spice up your night.

Do you have AfR? Have you tried the Pasta con Broccoli? What do you think? And more importantly… how awesome is RI for sporting a vegan ice cream truck!?

Unintentionally Mushy Peas

Last weekend, I hosted a party.

Half of you probably read that and thought, “…yeah, okay?” You’re probably thinking, “Is hosting a party even worth mentioning unless something ridiculously awesome happened at said party, like aliens?” Well, haters, there were no aliens, unless my social ineptitude rendered me particularly un-humanlike. The thing is, my roommate and I are both rather introverted, and we. don’t. host. parties.

Okay, that was a lie, because obviously we hosted one last weekend. We had many things to celebrate, so we shoved our introversion aside and planned and planned and planned, and then we planned some more. As part of our planning (some might say “over-planning”), we created a [physical] drink menu for guests, and in preparation for making said drinks, I might have gone a little overboard on supply purchasing. Not only is our liquor cabinet now overflowing with more booze than I’ve seen outside of a bar (shut up; I’m sheltered), but our pantry is overflowing with citrus. We currently have a giant bag of limes and a giant bag of lemons to use up – turns out most cocktails only require a relatively small amount of citrus juice, not the juice of 5 lbs of fruit. Who knew?

So, in an effort to not waste said citrus, I’ve been on the hunt for lemon-y and lime-y recipes. I got to use 4 whole limes yesterday during a curry-making adventure with a delightful fella, and today I gave my lemons some attention with this Lemony Yellow Split Pea dish.

Cheery peas!

This is meant to be a side dish, but it totally works as a main dish. If you were not lazy like me, you might serve it up with rice or some veggies, but I’m super lazy and ate it all by itself. It’s surprisingly tasty for such a simple recipe; the major players are yellow split peas, garlic, lemon, and cilantro. The recipe also calls for freshly grated ginger, but I didn’t have any so I substituted the powdered variety, which was totally overpowered by all the other flavors. Even with the absentee ginger and the garlic I might have slightly burnt and my overcooking fail (it was much more mushy than intended), I really enjoyed this dish, and topping it with cilantro totally sealed the deal for me.

However, it only used 1.5 lemons. Curses! Help a girl out – what awesome lemon-y or lime-y recipes do you like?! Also, have you ever had intentionally mushy peas? Like the kind they serve across the pond? I tried some in Ireland, and I really enjoyed them!

Sicky McSickerson and the Inherent Awkwardness of Blogging During Major World Disasters

Hey y’all, guess what? I’m sick! I rarely get sick, so this is quite novel. I spent the weekend on the couch, reading and watching movies and bungling up my knitting because my brain’s so addled. It sucked. Except every time I think, “Ugh, this sucks,” I then feel ridiculously guilty, because you know what sucks a whole lot more than being congested and headache-y and sore throat-y? Earthquakes. And tsunamis. And definitely nuclear power plan explosions. Their suckage totally dwarfs my suckage.

Sometimes I avoid blogging when Major World Disasters happen, because… what do you do? Totally ignore it and go on talking about the mouthgasmic brownies you ate last night? Preface your post with a sentence about how shitty the Major World Disaster is, and how you feel guilty talking about your brownies, but then go on to talk about your brownies anyway? I mean, I guess I’m going to take the latter route (minus the brownies; sorry), but it just feels… inadequate. But at the same time, what else can I do? I can read news stories until I’m overcome with crushing despair, I can make offhand comments to friends and family about how unbelievable it all is, but is that going to help anybody who’s actually hurting? Nah. I can donate money. That’s about all I can do to tangibly help anyone, and it just feels like such a cop-out. Meh.

So… yeah. Here’s the part where I awkwardly transition into the food-related point of my post by saying “Oh, looks like I took option number 2; I’ve acknowledged the Major World Disaster, and now I’m a-okay to talk about food because y’all know that I know that things in the World at Large suck, so you won’t think I’m totally selfish.” Again… meh. Anyway… awkward transition, activate!

So being sick does suck. But I’ve managed to keep myself pretty well hydrated and pretty well fed. Between chain-sucking Ludens and filling a small forest’s worth of Kleenex with nasal excretions, I’ve been drinkin’ a lot of this:

Image nabbed from Google.

and slurpin’ down a lot of this:

Recycled image alert!

My current miso incarnation trades leeks and scallions for the tofu in this version. Ah, miso soup – so versatile! So delicious! So slurpable!

What do you eat when you’re sick? Do you get sick often?

Like I said, I really don’t… in fact, I’m currently taking my very first sick day since starting this job over a year ago. I actually feel better than I did yesterday, but not well enough to go into work, and I don’t want to spread my germiness to everyone else. I’m just glad I’m getting this out of my system now – tomorrow’s my 24th birthday (…), and this weekend I’ve got plans that would not play nicely with illness.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for ya. I think I’m going to put on some real person clothes and take a short walk to the drugstore to pick up another box of Kleenex… maybe the sun will kill all my germs. That’s how it works, right?!

Dusting Off Ye Olde Blogge

Oh.. oh, hi, blog! Yeah, I sort of ignored you for a while there. I pretended I didn’t see the WordPress Dashboard link in my bookmark bar, and I glanced the other way when I got an e-mail about a new comment. I don’t really know why, either. I’ve been eating food lately (shocking, I know), and it’s been yummy, but… I haven’t felt like blogging about it. And then I avoided you for so long that when I went to WordPress at long last, it didn’t even remember my username. Oopsies.

But I’m alive, srsly I am. And I’ll be back soon with food & photos & all things that are good, I promise! In the meantime, have a blurry photo of the ongoing protest in Madison, taken a couple weeks ago.

This is what democracy looks like!

More fun coming soon, for realsies.