Another Weird Dream

I had another weird dream the other night. Here we go:

• I was staying in a house with several other people, including the Dalai Lama. He had gone out for awhile, and I knew he wanted to eat some leftover homemade soup when he came back. There was only one bowl left in the refrigerator, and it was a really good, hearty vegetable soup. In his absence, this other girl came in, ate the soup despite me telling her not to, and then left the empty bowl on my bed! When the Dalai Lama returned, of course he thought I had eaten it. He was pretty mad. But then he meditated for a bit and realized he should believe me and that I truly hadn't eaten his soup.  And all was well.

I have been watching Michael Palin's travel documentaries, and recently watched one where he interviewed the Dalai Lama. (Those documentaries are AMAZING, by the way. They are currently streaming on Netflix, and if you haven't seen them, you really ought to.) I also found an old book called "Separated at Birth" that compares different celebrities it claims look related. The Dalai Lama and Jiminy Cricket were one pair.

As far as the soup, no idea. I do like food.

Three Days of Weird Dreams

People sometimes say they have weird dreams because of something they ate. This has never made sense to me. I have weird dreams no matter what. However, this week I've basically just been eating that chocolate cake I described in the previous post along with falafel chips and hummus, and I've had some unusually intense dreams.

• Night 1: My dog Theresa was digging in the dirt, and this triggered her evolution into a worm. (Even in my dream I thought "this wasn't my understanding of how evolution works...") The worm was small (worm-sized, not dog-sized) but had the same yellow and brown coloring as Theresa. I picked it up, but before I could get it somewhere safe, Evie, my other dog, ate it! I was horrified!
• Night 2: My sister was going to dogsit for Evie and Theresa. A common enough occurrence, except in the dream she lived in Florida instead of Wisconsin. "Just put them on the bus!" she said. We laughed about how it'd be funny to have greyhounds riding a Greyhound Bus. But I was concerned about their safety.  She assured me that when she'd recently dogsat for my mom, my mom's dog Fitzie had also ridden the bus.
• Night 3: My mother found the Holy Grail! It turned out to be in a park in my hometown in Illinois. It also turned out to be a large root vegetable. We told the government, who said they would award my mom $90,000 and we were free to eat the root vegetable.  It was delicious.

Chocolate Cake with a Secret Ingredient

The secret ingredient isn't weed, first of all.  :)

I got this recipe from a food blog.  Check it out!

A Tasty Love Story

OK, the secret ingredient? Black beans! And I swear, you would NEVER know they were in it.  It makes a dark, moist cake that's intensely chocolatey but not cloyingly sweet.  It'd be great with homemade whipped cream, but I didn't have any of that, so I doused it in powdered sugar.

Also, I know I haven't updated in quite awhile. I don't want to swear I will update more, because it's always disappointing to see a blog where the last entry, made years before, is a promise that the blogger will write more. So, how often will I write? We'll see.

Anyway, next time someone asks "How do you get protein as a vegetarian?" I'll say "Chocolate cake!"

The Canning Eagle

I tried canning this weekend! My friend Rachael and I had been planning it for awhile. She'd grown up canning with her mom and grandmother; I'd wanted to do it for years but had been too intimidated to try on my own.

It turns out it isn't hard at all! (Although I did joke that we should make cute little gift tags for our jars that list the symptoms of botulism.) I made an Indian curry simmer sauce (it's just the base for most of the curries I make: onions, garlic, ginger, a bunch of whole spices, and tomatoes), and Rachael made a berry/peach jam.

The most difficult part was that I'd bought 25 pounds of tomatoes at the farmers' market, and that's a lot of tomatoes to wrangle.  But I took them down, because I'm the Canning Eagle (my new canning nickname. what, you don't have a canning nickname?).

OK, here's how we canned: We cooked our foods while simultaneously sterilizing our jars and lids by washing them in the dishwasher. Then we filled the jars with our sauce or jam (I used a canning funnel to make it easier), sealed them up, and dropped them in boiling water for ten minutes. We used a special pair of tongs made to grab jars, but you could use regular tongs.  Anyway, after they were pulled out of the water, they cooled, and as they cooled, they sealed! You can actually here a popping sound when they seal sometimes. To test them, you just push on the top, and if the lid doesn't snap back, it's sealed! (If it does snap back, just put it in the fridge and eat it semi-soon, instead of keeping it in the cupboard.)

In summary:

1. Sterilize (in the dishwasher or in boiling water for ten minutes)
2. Fill, wipe the sides, seal
3. Drop in boiling water for ten or so minutes (time depends on the recipe), remove

I made 16 pint jars of sauce!  And then, tonight, I made 6 pint jars of applesauce!  I am truly the Canning Eagle.

Photos!

So many onions!

Delicious jam!

We can can!

The finished product!

Tofu, a new way

I made a very springtime-ish meal the other night: tofu, asparagus, and morel mushrooms all sauteed with olive oil and garlic.  What was noteworthy was that I tore the tofu into pieces instead of cutting it up into cubes, like I usually do.  This made it easier to evenly brown, or perhaps just made the parts that weren't evenly browned less noticeable.  (With cubed tofu, there's always one or two pale white sides on the cube when I'm done.) I got the idea to tear up the tofu from one of my new favorite cookbooks, Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

I reheated some at work (it tasted shockingly good as leftovers), and had two different college kids ask about the tasty-looking chicken dish I was eating.  They were right; it looked just like chicken! One of them even thought it smelled like chicken.

This makes me think that tearing up tofu and sauteing it would be a good food to serve people afraid of tofu, as a sort of entry-level dish.  On the other hand, maybe it would just trick them, since their mouth and their eyes would be giving differing reports...  Regardless, if sauteed tofu, asparagus, and morels sounds at all good to you, definitely try it! Super springy and delicious!

Don't forget to enter my contest for a free copy of The Year of the Gadfly and a tasty snack! Deadline Monday May 7th at noon, CST.

"Turn the Beat Around" (homophone edition)

Homophone: 

Each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling, e.g., new and knew. I think you should watch my youtube video now. The less explanation, the better.