More feelings toward trash-free eating

All and all, this diet is going just as well today as it was when I started. I'm happily chowing down on fresh fruits and veggies and I even made some cloth bags to get bulk produce in. My trips tot he store have to be far more calculated than ever before (especially now since many of the roads to my favorite co-ops have been damaged by the hurricane), but my everyday needs are easily met by the farmer's market and the local health food store.

We had a pot luck at work today, so last night I made some yummy peanut butter oatmeal cookies (nom nom nom). The food was mostly crappy stuff I would never touch, but OH MY GOD SOMEONE BROUGHT TRISCUITS! My immediate reaction was something along the lines of "come to me my precious, salty, crunchy, heaven-in-a-box treat!" I proceeded to eat a few more than I probably should have, but I would like to see your self-control when paired with a stack of Triscuits after abstaining from any form of packaged food for months on end. Those crackers won't stand a chance.

Baby spinach was also on the pot-luck menu. I took a few bites because I thought I should have some greens with lunch, if available. Mistake. Another side effect of only eating fresh unpackaged foods, is that packaged produce tastes terrible. Like eating leafy cardboard. I dumped some homemade salsa on it (made with tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro right from the garden) and that improved it considerably.

Then I ate a few more Triscuits.

Zucchini Salad

2-3 green onions
1 Large green zucchini
1 Large yellow zucchini (summer squash)
1 Large any other kind of in season squash (globe, pattypan, scallopini, etc)
1 Large cucumber
2 Large carrots , or 3-4 small ones
2 T Olive oil (not extra virgin) or veggie oil if you prefer
Salt
½ t Garam Masala
AC vinegar
Sugar

Chop up green onion and dice squashes into bite-sized cubes. Heat oil in a large pan, add garam masala and turn heat to med-low. Add onion and toss until coated, then add squashes. Salt to taste. While the squash is cooking, chop the cucumber into bite sized chunks and set aside. Continue cooking squash and turning in pan until it's cooked and a bit soft, but still has a bit of crunch. This should only take a few minutes.

Remove from heat and transfer into a large glass food storage container. Allow it to cool to room temperature, then add cucumbers, mix and put in fridge. Store until cool.

Grate carrots into a small bowl and add some AC vinegar and a sprinkle of sugar. Serve shredded carrot on top of squash salad.

Chocolate Mint Rice Milk

½ recipe of rice milk found here. This will make extra, but cutting the recipe down even further seems silly. I added a handful of raw cashews to each blender batch.
2 T cocoa powder
2 T Raw sugar
3-4 fresh mint leaves, bruised a bit to draw out flavor

Fill blender with rice milk, add cocoa, sugar and mint. Blend. Taste and adjust. Strain into small mason jars for single serving travel cups. Shake well before serving.

I actually didn't strain mine because I don't mind the mint particles, but some people might. You'll also want to make this as close to the time you're going to use it a possible, because in my experience, this rice milk does not keep very long.

White Bean Hummus

2 cups cooked white beans
1 large clove garlic (or about 4 scapes, depending on size and season)
4T olive oil
2T tahini
2T AC vinegar or lemon juice
Salt to taste
Water

Throw everything but the water into a food processor and process until smooth. Add a little water at a time until you reach the consistency you are looking for. Hummus is a completely personal experience, and rather hard to ruin. Adjust flavors to suit your palate. You can use more olive oil and less water to get a richer flavor, but water works if you're on tight budget or running low on oil.

Paper plate picnics are for parasites

I was reading this silly thing on the internet about famous picnics in literature and I suddenly got an unsurpressable urge to have a picnic. What better day than July 4th? My friend Gravy was coming to town that day to hang out, so I decided to drag him along. The weather has been hot and humid so I wanted something that would be cold and refreshing, but not too simplistic like macaroni salad and veggie burgers. At the farmer's market on Sunday the stalls seemed to be overflowing with zucchinis of all shapes and sizes, so I grabbed some greens and yellows and started a mental meal planner. Cold, seared zucchini with cucumbers, shredded carrots and white bean hummus. Perfect.

Monday finally came and I headed to the kitchen to start my plans when I realized that the perfect companion to this meal would be pita bread. Being on a no-trash diet means making everything from scratch, and I was out of yeast. The health food store in town pre-bags all of their bulk yeast, so I have to make special arrangements to fill up my own jar, which doesn't work for last-minute plans. I also realized that chocolate milk would be needed. Obviously. As usual, my quick projects turned into huge and frantic undertakings.

Rice milk takes about three hours to make and a big pot, which I didn't own. I decided to finally use that money the parents sent me as a house warming gift and bopped over to the local kitchen store to buy a nice stainless steel stewing pot. Then I scurried over to a friend's house to snag a few teaspoons of yeast. 1:30pm and I hadn't even started yet! The pita would need time to rise as well! At least the white beans were done though.

Gravy got to my place a little after 2pm and I put him to work shredding carrots while I cooked the zucchini. When the rice was done cooking I put him in charge of straining, and he promptly spilled a bunch of it all over my pristine kitchen. Taking deep breaths is the key to sharing a kitchen. Luckily he brought his dog who took care of anything that managed to make it to the ground. Hummus in the food processor, cocoa in the rice milk, zucchini in the fridge, pitas on the counter cooling and all at once the food was together in time for picnic supper. A July 4th miracle!

Everything got packed in reusable containers. I took two normal, totally breakable and oh-man-I-have-to-wash-these-when-we're-done plates and forgot the spoon for serving (good thing I remembered a cloth napkin when our fingers had to be used instead). Everything got carefully packed into two fabric bags along with a blanket and some hippy-dippy bug spray. Presto! Delicious trash-free picnic!

Along comes another multi-part post of recipes; White bean hummus, zucchini salad, and chocolate-mint rice milk. I won't be posting the pita recipe because it wasn't mine and it didn't turn out as I had planned. Mine were a semi-failure and Gravy laughed at my dismay. Jerk. If anyone has any good pita bread recipes to share, please do!

Fiesta Food! - Part 3 of 3

Red Chile

1/4 Cup water
2 T oil (I use olive for better flavor,but you can go neutral)
1 T flour (your choice, I use whole wheat pastry because it's what I have and adds no flavor)
4 tablespoons (at least) red chile powder
pinch of cumin
salt to taste

In a small sauce pan, combine water, oil and chile. Heat and mix until everything is combined fully. Add flour and cumin, heat until thick and bubbly. Add Salt. Adjust spices (aka, add more chile). Heat a bit more to bring out the heat. It should be thick and red and amazing and unforgettable.

In terms of what is “traditional” or not, I don't really care. You can email me and tell me I'm doing this all wrong and that it's not really traditional red chile unless you make it standing on one leg with a gila monster stuck to your head, but honestly, I don't care. If it's vegan and it tastes good, I'm eating it. That being said, you can make this sauce with any red chile powder, but if you really want something amazing, you'll make it with red chiles grown in NM. Specifically Hatch, NM.

Shit. I misplaced my gila monster again.

Fiesta Food! - Part 2 of 3

This isn't exactly fiesta food, but since I used it for tacos, it's fiesta food today.

Seitan

1 cup vital wheat gluten
3/4 cup veggie broth or water (you might need more or less, so add slowly)
2 T soy sauce
Spices of choice (stick with powders and nothing chunky)

Mix up your dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Pour water in and mix by hand. Mix in soy sauce. Knead. And knead. And Knead for about 5 minutes. You MUST do this by hand. Let it sit for a few minutes, then knead again. Break up your glutenous ball of yum into three or four pieces and stretch them out as flat as you can. These will expand when cooking, so the thinner you get it now, the better. Bring a large pot of water or vegetable broth to a boil and drop these bad boys in. Simmer for about an hour. They're going to expand, so make sure the pot is pretty huge.

You can store seitan really well in the freezer. Just be sure to cut it up before freezing, which will make it easier to work with later.

Next post: Red Chile

Fiesta Food! - Part 1 of 3

I talk a lot about my job at the bookstore, but the truth is, that's a part-time job. The job that pays my bills is an office job I have for a non-profit. Things that I love about it include: schedule flexibility, no dress code, and we will accept any excuse to have a party at work. This month we lose our Urchin co-worker, Sarah. To see her off properly she would need a rockin fiesta. Sarah is my vegan partner in crime at the office, so I was ever so excited to make awesome seitan tacos for her.

I'm not going to post the recipe for the tacos, because it came from Terry Hope-Romero's cookbook Viva Vegan. It's an excellent book and you should all buy it. Also, I (not so) secretly want to be her. What I am going to post are three staples in my home that can be made with (little or) no waste: seitan, corn tortillas and red chile.

The only tricky parts about making this 100% waste free is the masa harina, a kind of corn meal that's treated with lime and is used to make corn tortillas, and wax paper. I can't find masa herna in bulk around here, but luckily I had a huge bag in my kitchen. If I run out before the year is up I guess I just cry. I also use wax paper with my tortilla press (instructions online always recommend plastic wrap, but that's just silly and wax paper can be reused much more easily). I use the same two bits of paper until they are totally ruined and I really can't get away with it anymore. I've had the same roll of wax paper for over a year and I'm only half way through it, so I can attest to the usefulness of wax paper.

All of these things are easy to make, and significantly cheaper and healthier than what you'll buy in the store.

Oh-my-god-easy Corn Tortillas

½ cup Masa Harina
1/3 cup water
Pinch of salt

Mix masa harina and salt in a bowl. Make a well. Pour water into the well and mix by hand for 2 minutes. Adjust if the dough seems too sticky or too crumbly*. Make into 4 balls. Heat a pan that is just lightly brushed with cooking oil. Depending on your pan, you can do this dry. You know your cookware better than me (I hope). Line bottom of tortilla press with wax paper, place ball in center. Place a bit of wax paper on top. Press. Toss into pan. Cook. Flip. Cook. Repeat with remaining tortillas. Done. Store in plastic in the fridge.

*Use cation when adding water and only add a teaspoon at a time. Too much water will create dough that sticks to everything but itself, is difficult to work with, impossible to please, and may even put bubble gum in your favorite pair of shoes. So easy on the water.

Make 4 tortillas. Duh.

Next up: Seitan

Hello potatoes!

Here are a few quick things you can do with potatoes which don't involve waste, or more than a few minutes of your time and attention. I'm in love with potatoes, so I make these things often. They're so easy that I feel stupid for posting them.

No waste baked potatoes

Take a potato, poke some holes in it with a fork, rub some olive oil into it, throw it in the oven directly on the rack and bake at 400 for about 30 minutes. Viola. Potato. Who says you need aluminum foil to bake a potato?

(Charles, you can even do this in a toaster oven. It will take a bit longer.)

Potato chips

Take a potato, slice it into chips (very, very thin, if you can), place slices on a baking sheet, brush slices with oil, sprinkle on some salt, bake at 350 until crispy and amazing. Goodbye bagged potato chips. Hello saving money and resources!

Mashed purple potatoes

Take several purple potatoes, quarter them, boil them until soft, transfer to a bowl, add a bit of rice milk, salt, pepper, olive oil, a tiny dab of coconut cream (trust me. Dooo it), minced garlic and then mash. Mash some more. Mash a little bit more....... now STOP! ACK! YOU'VE OVER-MASHED IT!!!! No I'm kidding, it's ready, just eat. Side note: Isn't it super cool how the boiling water turns blue??!

French fries (but baked)

Take a few potatoes, slice into wedges, put into glass bake tray, coat the bottom with a thin layer of olive oil, add salt and pepper and garlic, bake at 350 until done. No need to flip. Seriously. You'll need ketchup and mustard for these. Spicy ketchup...mmm.

Fiddleheads!!!

After several unsuccessful attempts to find fiddleheads I was getting ready to call up a few friends and ask them where they find theirs. Then one morning I was taking my compost out to the woods behind my house and nearly stepped right on a patch of fiddleheads! I gathered some up and tossed them in the fridge before heading to work.

I rode my bike that morning and as I coasted down the office driveway I peeked into the garden and what did I see? FIDDLEHEADS! The whole garden at my office is overrun. I gathered a bunch of them and had a wonderful fiddlehead stir fry dinner. I even left one on a co-workers desk as a present.

There is some mixed information out there about fiddleheads and how safe they are. Some websites and books will tell you that you need to cook them before they are safe. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of that. What is more probable is that the people who got sick had eaten a different variety of fern than the ostrich fiddlehead. Having compared the two kinds side by side, it's really quite easy to tell the difference between the different varieties and I'm not worried about eating the wrong kind. The key thing is that edible fiddleheads are smooth and shiny and have a very deep groove along the inside of the stems. When they are uncurled, they stick straight up and don't lay close to the ground.

I like to throw my fiddleheads into my stir fry and cook them just a little. They add a great, clean crunch and some healthy, early greens to dinner. Bon appetit!

Macaroni Salad

As it gets warmer I always start to crave macaroni salad. Delicious, cold macaroni on a warm day is a good indication that winter really is over and the next 6 months are going to be lovely. I almost never make it though because it means buying a jar of vegan mayo and I don't really use it for anything but macaroni and potato salads, which means it would just go bad. Buying a jar is out of the question anyway because of the no trash thing, so I did a quick google search for homemade vegan mayo and came up the modified concoction below.

I forgot to take a picture of my food, so here's a random one from the internet. Don't worry, it's vegan too.

Half a block of tofu
2 T water
2 T olive oil
½ t apple cider vinegar
pinch of salt
½ t sugar or other sweetener (I used agave syrup)

Put all of this into a blender and blend until smooth. You may want to add things a little at a time and taste as you go. The wonderful thing about making your own mayo is that you can make it as strong as you want. You can go sour or sweet. You can use veggie oil instead of olive oil for a more neutral taste.

I combined this with some pasta, chopped onion, sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, celery and PRESTO, macaroni salad for my spring celebration.

Dressing!

When I first started living on the farm a few years ago we ate salad all the time. Bonnie and Oliver never buy dressing, instead they just made it themselves right before the meal. I never really considered this before living with them. Salad dressing is just one of those things I took for granted as something that needed to be purchased pre-made. I had no idea how to make it.

Oliver seemed to think it was a silly to buy it from the store; a complete waste of money. He's right. I've been making my own dressing ever since then. I even wrote down the ingredients to my favorite store-bought dressing so I can make it at home whenever I want. This is not that recipe. Maybe later.

I was reading some cooking magazine the other night while it was slow at work and I came across a salad dressing recipe that used avocado. I instantly forgot what was in the magazine recipe (it was probably boring anyway). However, it did inspire me to create the one below the other night. I thought it was amazing and I threw it on shredded red cabbage. Instant treat!


Creamy Avocado Dressing
½ an avocado
1 small garlic clove
½ cup olive oil
2 T tahini
¼ cup water
Salt to taste
Chives or green onion to taste

Throw everything except the chives/green onions into a food processor. Blend until smooth. Add green onion a little at a time, tasting as you go. Depending on how strong they are, it can easily overpower the subtle avocado. Adjust other ingredients as necessary. Enjoy.

Eggplant steaks

This isn't really a recipe, so much as instructions, but I made some eggplant a few weeks ago and forced an eggplant hater to try it. Turns out it got a vote of approval and now she's asking for the recipe. Here is an attempt at one.

2 medium sized eggplants
½ cup olive oil (more or less depending on the vessel you use to marinate)
salt to taste
chile powder to taste
2 garlic cloves, minced
balsamic vinegar to taste
2 T maple syrup
2 T BBQ sauce

Slice the eggplant lengthwise into 4 “steaks.” Fill a large bowl with warm, salted water and soak the eggplant sliced in it for about 15 minutes. I weigh them down with another bowl of water on top. Don't skip this step, it will cut a lot of the bitterness associated with eggplant.

I mix everything in the baking pan (not a baking sheet, think large brownie pan), this works fine with glass because it's easy to clean later. Taste the marinade and adjust spices and ingredients as you see fit. It should be slightly sweet to counter any possible bitterness, but you're not making eggplant candy (wait... mmmm).

Make some slits lengthwise in the eggplant to help it absorb the marinade. Place all of the slices in the pan and try not to put any on top of any others. I realize you could put everything into a ziplock bag and not have an issue, but I never do this, 1. because I don't have ziplock bags, 2. because this is a no trash diet, and 3. because plastic leaches nastiness into food.

Marinate for 15-20 minutes, then flip and marinate some more. I kind of shake the mixture around to coat the tops as well as soaking the bottoms.

Throw the whole thing in the oven and bake at 350 for about 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on it. When the eggplants are nice and soft, but not mushy, they're done.

I like to serve it with brown rice.

Serves 4

VegFest!!!

On Sunday I packed up two vegan friends and one cyber hitchhiker and drove us all to VegFest in Worcester, MA. Why on earth would I travel three hours for a festival? Perhaps for the community? Perhaps for the free samples? Perhaps for the abundance of vegan food? Perhaps the plethora of information on veganism? Kind of. A little. I know that's why the three others in my car were excited, but I had another motivating factor: the chance to meet an author.

For months I have been jittery with excitement over Will Potter's book, Green is the New Red. How could I possibly pass up the chance to meet him and tell him in person what an inspiration his book and his blog have been? How could I miss the chance to hear him give a little talk in person? I couldn't! So I told him all of these things and shook his hand. (Yes, yes, I've washed my hands since then. Grudgingly.)

The festival itself was fantastic. I sampled some really amazing soy-free ice cream, got a cup of vegan soft-serve ice cream, watched Terry Hope-Romero make some seitan tacos (yummmmm), ate a ton of spring rolls, “egg” rolls, and other asian treats, and got a few business cards and pamphlets of foods and organizations that were interesting. Oh yeah and did I mention I met Will Potter?

I'm glad the food waste challenge doesn't officially start until May 1st, because all of those yummy samples came on disposable plates and cups and such. We did our best to reduce this by grabbing a bowl at the beginning and having the samples put into our bowls instead of using new ones. Lunch and ice cream didn't really conform to this, but I think we did an ok job. Strange that three environmentalist vegans didn't even think to bring our own utensils to this thing. Duh. Well, it's on my radar for next time.

This time, I just enjoyed being in vegan heaven.

The list of trash so far

Time to 'fess up I guess. As promised, I've been keeping track of all of my food waste. So far the list goes something like this:

April 1: An empty bag of frozen broccoli
April 2: Paper wrapping from a bagel I picked up for breakfast, THREE stickers on an avocado (apparently one wasn't enough?), Empty bag of frozen mixed veggies.
April 3: none
April 4: Empty can of chili, 2 stickers from eggplants, a teabag
April 5: Tea bag wrapper, a pair of chopsticks, 2 empty soy sauce packets, sushi take-out box, empty can of diced tomatoes, empty wine bottle
April 6: none
April 7: Empty Tortilla chip bag (in my defense, I didn't buy these, I found an almost empty bag at work and finished them off)
April 8: Hard cider bottle
April 9: Tissue paper wrapper from bulk carob bar
April 10: Empty tempeh package, empty bag of frozen broccoli
April 11: None
April 12: None
April 13: Straw and wrapper, napkin
April 14: Empty tempeh package

I imagine there will be a few things during my year of no food trash. I have decided that I'm going to keep using what I already have, even if it is packaged. I don't want to waste the food along with the packaging by letting it go bad. The product has already been purchased, so it's getting used. The point is not just to remove the trash from my life, but to remove myself from the entire trash-making system as a whole. In the case of what's already in my kitchen, I've cast my monetary vote and it's too late to undo it now. So the packaged food in my fridge stays. And there's not much of it.

Here's the fun part though: for every packaged food I consume because it's already in my kitchen, I will try to find a way to make it or get it without a package. Apparently I'm crazy for thinking about making miso.

May 1st, I'm getting ready for you.

Taking a trash inventory

In the month leading up to the start date of this project I'll be keeping a record of all the food trash I generate. I'd like to see just how much trash I produce in one month, that is strictly related to my food. I won't go so far as to weigh it all, but there might be some photographs and certainly a list.

I'm going to conduct myself as usual and not try to plan ahead too much for my year of no trash. I have set aside a bunch of containers for bulk food buying, but I won't be going out of my way to stock up on items I can't get without packaging (ketchup, mustard, alcohol, etc.). That's certainly cheating. I will, however, be making an order of bulk food from the buying club I'm part of, which produces some trash. It will be my last order before the year starts and I would have done it anyway. I've actually crossed a few things off that list to buy from the bulk bins locally.

The No Trash Diet

Now starts the reinstatement of a certain hooligan's blog. At least for now. I'm starting a project and, in true pop-culture style, it will need to be blogged about. Consider it a matter of public record.

I recently finished reading Colin Beavan's No Impact Man and became inspired to go on my own year-long no impact journey. I won't be turning off electricity or not using my car (though with the spring creeping and winter finally heading out, I will be using it much, much less). I've decided to go on a no trash diet. The reasoning is this: The only trash can in my apartment is a 5 gallon bucket. I empty that bucket every 2-3 months. That's very little trash, but trash is trash. I think 90% of it probably comes from food scraps and packaging. So! Starting May 1st I will be cutting out all food associated garbage. No packaging whatsoever.

All good challenges need rules, so here they are:

1. All food scraps will be composted, fed to chickens, or thrown in the woods
2. I will bring all of my own containers to the farmer's market and the co-op
3. If I have a choice between local and non-local, I always go with local
4. Eating food prepared not in my own kitchen will be limited to twice a week, unless I am out of town.
5. This challenge does not apply to friends who cook for me
6. Any prepared food I buy from restaurants or delis must not come in any packaging
7. My cat gets a free pass, though I will talk to local farmers to see if I can find a source of pet food straight from the farm (I don't have the stomach to make it myself).

Some of the challenges I foresee are things like tofu, tempeh, vegan butter, and rice milk. If I can't make it myself or find it in bulk, I will just have to do without. I think figuring most of this stuff out will be pretty fun and I've already gotten offers of help.

I'm hoping to keep this blog as a record of the challenges and the solutions. I also want to start reviewing books again, though I will keep them relevant to the challenge. Some days you might get recipes, some days book reviews, some days cost comparisons, some days bouts of frustration, some days might bring great thankfulness and joy (do I do that? I'm sure I must). For the days leading up to this challenge I'll be posting about my preparations and, of course, a bit about what I'm reading.

Stay tuned!

Rice Flour Pancakes

I realized when I was posting yesterday that I have never actually put up my recipe for Rice Flour Pancakes. The link I had there was the inspiration for what I make, but not the way I actually make them. So here it is:

Amazing, tasty, who-even-cares-about-wheat-flour-anymore, gluten-free, banana pancakes

1 c rice flour (I use brown, it has a fuller flavor)
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1-2 T sugar (if you have maple syrup that's even tastier. I use raw sugar because refined sugar is... gross.)
1 t vanilla(or almond) extract
1 T veg oil
3/4 c alternative milk of choice (obviously you should not DEFILE my recipes with cow milk)
1 medium overripe banana

Mix all the dry ingredients. Mash the banana really well in a separate bowl, you want it to be about the consistency of beaten eggs. Then add in the milk, vanilla and oil. Add wet to dry. Stir well. A banana is an inexact measurement, so you may need to add more milk or flour. Make sure your cooking surface is adequately greased, because these puppies will stick like crazy and then crumble apart, though if this does happen, don't fret they still taste just as good. Cook as you would any other inferior pancake, dropping about 1/3 c at a time.

I put a little lemon oil into The Logger's pancakes yesterday morning and he LOVED them. I also once made these with a bit of jam swirled into the batter, which was amazing. Basically, it's a flexible recipe and a yummy one.

Lemon Amazing!

One of the perks of working at a bookstore is that I can borrow books. If I'm really interested in reading a book, but I don't really want to commit to buying it, I can simply allocate a copy to myself and take it home for a few days. Of course I need to be insanely careful with it and not spill anything on it, or accidentally bend the cover. I NEVER dog ear pages, so that's no problem.

Getting to the point: Monday is The Loggers birthday. And if you are a devoted blog reader (AKA my mother), you'll remember the ridiculous lemon cake I made him last year. This year he said he wanted to be a little more low key and that he wanted cupcakes. Lemon cupcakes. There's been a major change in our lives since last year's cake, and that is veganism. The Logger isn't actually vegan (though he gets closer and closer every day), but since I am, and I do most of the cooking and all of the baking, that means vegan baked goods for birthdays.

I knew I would need to get the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, but I didn't want to buy a copy. I was just going to email a recipe to myself while I was at work, but I completely forgot until about 5 seconds before we were shutting down the computers. Shit. So I quickly allocated a copy to myself. It was the last copy. So I'm sorry bookstore, I know I'm not supposed to take books home when there isn't another copy in the store, but I think I'm pretty much 100% of the Manchester vegan market, so I'm not too worried anyone is going to run into the store and demand a copy of the vegan cupcake book. Anyway there's a copy of the vegan cookie book, so whatever.

In order to be as careful as possible (and because I generally make a mess when baking) I copied the recipe onto another piece of paper before attempting to make anything. I transformed the basic vanilla cupcake into a lemon delight. The Logger loved them, and so did I, though I don't especially love lemons. Win.

Maybe I do need a vegan cupcake book after all...

Ice House - Dorset, VT

Well, I can check 'Find A Job' off of my list of things to do. I just confirmed my second job today. I'm currently working for a non-profit web-based company just outside of Manchester, and on Wednesday I start training at the bookstore. Pretty crazy. I'll be working 7 days a week, but only until January, so I think I can manage. I need the extra income to get more aggressive with my student loan payments. The internet job is so easy, I just sit at a desk for a few hours and handle paperwork and phone calls. I actually really like it, because I like the people I work with and I think the company does some really good things.

Part of my job is to call public schools and speak to receptionists to verify that the people who order from us are eligible for the discounts we offer. Navigating the phone systems of American public schools is a scary and frustrating thing. It takes forever just to get to a person at times. My time pressing buttons through the automation system is usually longer than the calls themselves, and for once I'm not exaggerating. There are some schools that take weeks of calling before anyone actually answers the phone. It's kind of scary when I think about parents trying to reach the people that are responsible for taking care of their children for most of the day. It would be like leaving your kids with a sitter and the sitter never answering the phone. I find it a little reckless actually. When I worked for a phone-based ticketing company it was my job to make sure someone was ALWAYS there to answer the phone, and that was just ticket sales. These are public schools I'm calling, and half of the time no one is there. Today I had a lot of phones answered by students, which I thought odd. Are schools saving money by having students answer phones instead of receptionists? Awkward.

Things at the Ice House are good. Still no internet. Luckily I've started using my personal laptop as my computer at work because I got tired of using slow machines, or using extra laptops that get taken away without warning. Long story. Anyway I can update my blog from work. Plus the bookstore has internet, so both of my jobs will keep me connected and I don't have to pay for it.

Speaking of awesome things I didn't pay for, my parents got me The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Jo Stepaniak. Amazing. I made this awesome cheeze sauce with pasta tonight because I was feeling lazy, and it was so good The Logger said that he did not need to add real dairy to it. I win! I'm looking forward to trying some block cheeses so we can have cheeze slices and mozzarella for pizzas. Yum. I was kind of thinking that I wouldn't ever feel like cooking after work anymore if I was going o be working so much, but I think I'd rather cook than do dishes, and since I always make The Logger do the dishes after I cook, maybe I will still be cooking. Anyway Jessie won't want to cook every night either and The Logger is pretty limited to pasta and burritos, so I don't think I'll be giving up cooking any time soon.

I guess that means my blog can look forward to more yummy recipes in the future.