vacationland

in maine, drinking champagne and eating sushi, listening to bluegrass and excited for fiddle lessons, watching cable television and knitting intricate mittens, enjoying hot toddies and being alone.

for sale

want to help me out of crushing poverty?

hand-crocheted of hand-spun and commercial yarn. tested in -20 wind chill conditions.

$45.

jacqueminot.etsy.com

adventures sans-yeast

upon a bus ride home last night, mr. adam and i discussed dinner options. I had cooked up a whole mess of pasta fagioli on Sunday, but it had reincarnated into Monday lunches, so the thought of more beans for supper was unappealing.

now, as you may know, i have the tastes of a 13 year old boy; consequently, pizza is my all-time favorite food. If i could only eat one thing for the rest of my life; pizza. realizing this is not the most health or calorie conscious food, i strive to launch pizza out of the once-a-month treat category and into weekly status.

quelle dommage – no yeast though . . . and it was raining and 30 minutes to the nearest grocery. so google it was, and i discovered a range of recipes designed for those who are allergic to yeast – something i’ve never heard of, but i guess if an edible substance exists, there’s someone who’s writing hypoallergenic recipes against in on the interwebs.

So, armed with baking powder and treading cautiously, adam bravely mixed together 1 ½ cups each whole wheat and white flour, a couple of tablespoons combined of oregano, basil, thyme and rosemary, a few glugs of olive oil and enough water to get the whole thing to come together. blerg. looked like a shaggy swamp beast. Rolling was out of the question, so adam patted him down into a greased pan [no cornmeal, alas] and, per the recipe, pre-cooked him for 10 mins. The outlook became more promising after the interlude, and i threw on spinach, soy chorizo, mushies over tomato sauce and some long-forgotten monterey jack in the fridge corner.

and you know, it came out ok! this crust does not taste like a yeast crust; it has more texture to it, to me, it’s reminiscient of cheap elementary school pizza crust. But it’s wicked fast, perfect for the weekday.

renegade craft fair

renegade booty

(1) bakelite-ish sea green bird ring

(3) dictionary pins, featuring a quail, octopus and miniature schaunzer [for adam, of course]

(1) explosion in the sky print poster

(1) print featuring a gratcatcher bird and nest

(1) set of “awesome” friends notecards

(1) print of “girl with glasses”

next expedition: target, to get frames

next goal: save up enough money to buy “the iceberg” print from tugboat printshop [above].

number one

lesson learned:

chopping up a whole bunch o’tasty things for enchiladas is a bad idea if you have recently taken part in a spiked hot chocolate bar, resulting in a 30% loss of fingertips.

the best day of the year

Why Do We Celebrate?

Repeal Day is not widely celebrated in this country, yet it commemorates the anniversary of the day the United States repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and gave Americans the constitutional ability to consume alcohol.

Here are a few reasons why we think Repeal Day should be a celebrated day in the United States:

It's the perfect time of year.

Conveniently located halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas — at a time when most Americans are probably not spending time with family — Repeal Day presents a wonderful occasion to get together with friends and pay tribute to our constitutional rights.

We have the constitutional ability to do so.

Unlike St. Patrick's Day or Cinco de Mayo, Repeal Day is a day that all Americans have a part in observing, because it's written in our Constitution. No other holiday celebrates the laws that guarantee our rights, and Repeal Day has everything to do with our personal pleasures.

It's easy!

There are no outfits to buy, costumes to rent, rivers to dye green. Simply celebrate the day by stopping by your local bar, tavern, saloon, winery, distillery, or brewhouse and having a drink. Pick up a six-pack on your way home from work. Split a bottle of wine with a loved one. Buy a shot for a stranger. Just do it because you can.

Thanks for reading about what we hope will become a celebrated day in this country. Please help spread the word about Repeal Day, and tell a friend.

Cheers!

from repeal day is december fifth.

and for some visual pleasure, the evolution of pbr advertising.

adam and i will be exercising our constitutional rights all weekend. ugh, that sounds dirty.

tofu, chard, mushhies, noodles

last night adam and I celebrated the purchase of delicious [but soon to turn skanky] rainbow chard. admittedly, not in season, but the stalks are such lovely colors, it’s hard for me to pass up, regardless of price or seasonality. sorry sustainable local agriculture! next time i will buy chicago-grown cabbage to atone.

since returning with two checked bags¹ i have become reunited with some of the comforts of montreal, including cookbooks. with the weight limits and the public transportation needed to get home [thanks crushing poverty!], i selected only the veganomicon and a thrift-store copy of the enchanted broccoli forest, leaving behind the 50s version of the joy of cooking, the 1960s versions of betty crocker and fannie farmer, and a perennial favorite, the healthy slow cooker. i’ve been relying on the interwebs for recipes, but nothing beats a cookbook for making notes and doodling in the margins.

after work, i ran across the street to pick up some udon noodles at the jewel supermarket. now, i have slowly begun to explore the wide range of options in chicago, because i love new grocery stores. more than a lot of things. and dominick’s left me underwhelmed; generic, vaguely scummy, doesn’t have a nice organic grocery section, etc. jewel, on the other hand, more expensive, but classssssy. so i picked up some black bean sauce, udon noodles, and, wonder of wonders, Real Live British Heinz Baked Beans, whose absence from the supermarket adam had been bemoaning for months. thanks british import section of jewel for selling me $2 tins of baked beans for my picky anglo-centric boyfriend!

anyway, I made this last night. i feel like there was excessive sesame oil, so you could probably cut that down a bit. this [local] brand of tofu must have been pressed a different way than the big-box generic stuff, because after freezing it had that flaky, layered texture that vegan abalone and duck has; adam thought it was seitan.

black-bean tofu with mushrooms and chard over pan-fried udon noodles

5-6 large porcini mushrooms

1 block tofu, frozen, thawed and drained well

1 bundle of rainbow chard, washed and bottom halves of stems chopped off [wash extra well if you take the bus and your chard rubs its face all over the floor]

3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

2 tbls soy sauce/tamari

2 tbls commercial black-bean sauce [shame, I know]

1 tbls siracha chili sauce

2 tsps sugar

1 ½ tbls water

2 bundles udon noodles

mix together black bean sauce, chili sauce, sugar and water – this is all to taste, so don’t worry too much about the proportions. the quantities above are educated guesses. but you should get something that looks like a slurry of black swamp water.

get yerself a big ol’pot filled with water and set her on the stove to boil.

while water is fixing to a-boiling, heat some sesame oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat. slice mushrooms medium-thin and chuck them in once the oil is hot. when they’re doing their thing, cut drained tofu into goodly chunks, and throw them in too. loosely chop the chard leaves, and cut the stems into like 2” pieces.

when the water’s boiling, throw in your udon and cook for however long the package says. I think I let mine go for like ten minutes.

after the mushrooms and the tofu have a chance to get cozy together and brown up a bit, throw in your chard and drizzle soy sauce over the top to gently wilt them. try to get everything moving around in that pan, i like to flip over the tofu and mushrooms on top of the chard to get it to cook down better. throw in your sauce mixture and let that holey tofu soak up even more deliciousness.

[if you want your sauce more thick, cook longer. I let mine go for a while and reserved some chard to stir in at the last moment, so I could have both deathly wet chard and some with a little bit more crunch]

when the udon’s done, drain and run cold water over it.

remove your tasty toppings from your pan, slick some more sesame oil in there, and throw in the noodles. let them sizzle around for a while until the water in them has evaporated and they start to get crispy on the bottom and you worry about burning them and ruining dinner.

throw your tofu/chard/mushies back in, let everything mingle, and serve!

this makes enough for one moderately hungry lady who ate a lot of raw tofu while cooking, one hungry boyfriend who contemplated thirds and one office lunch the next day.

1. [40$ for TWO checked bags on united!! absolutely ridiculous. but the very chatty woman checking me in in portland redeemed united, but just a little bit. thanks for bumping me to a direct flight so i didn’t have to make a detour to dulles!]