Becoming Isis, putting Osiris back together

I finally got paid today, which was very relieving due to the fact that I was stony broke, due to unfortunate circumstances, slight mismanagement of money, a folk festival and CHRISTMAS. I also forgot, between the delicious organic BBQ chips & nachos for dinner that if I have too many chips with their salty goodness, I get a headache. But it was almost worth it.

Besides work, where I am working on a book I do not love, with software programs I really do not love (Dear Microsoft. I haaaaate you. And everyone who worked on PowerPoint. Ever), today was pure awesome.

Jess and I went down the street for lunch, where we sat outside in the shade and ate burgers, and got amazing gelati to eat on our walk back. I got lemon and blood orange, and the blood orange, MMm. Doing that again.

And then, on my way home, I read this fic recced by Copperbadge. I've never watched Merlin (or been a BNF in any fandom), but this isn't about Merlin. It's about fandom, and my gods. I've been part of LJ fandom since first year (of uni), which, for those of you that are counting, was ten years ago. I may not be active anymore, but these? These are my people. <3.

I got home, and did a half-arsed job of unpacking the groceries, and I watched the latest White Collar while making "dinner" and soup for later. AND LO, IT WAS AWESOME. Peter on a horse, people. This episode was everything I love about White Collar rolled up in a tight package and then dusted with, I don't know, crushed vegan tim-tams or something. (I've been eating them all week with my tea. Don't judge me.) SO GOOD.

And then, and then? The December edition of Omikuji by Cat Valente was in my inbox. And it was so amazing. My heart grew three sizes. Just, wow.

Also, I got a message from my girl today. And that was lovely.

See, I knew there was a reason I put on my pretty purple silk dress, and my favourite seamed stockings and my straw cloche hat today, despite being under the weather. Some days just need you to dress up.

Didn't sleep last night due to the heat and having a wee meltdown of my own. Went into work today for a meeting, determined that it'd be a brief stay; wound up being there for about four and a half hours. Which means that either tomorrow will be really short, or I can have short days for the rest of the week. Either way, this is a win. I should do this more often.

***

Came home, still hot. Fell asleep on my temporary couch-cushion bed under the air conditioner for two-and-a-half hours. Bliss. (Woke up a few times, but fell back asleep quickly, so who cares.)

Took The Dog for a lovely long walk to make up the previous two days. She was very, very excited. Guess she hated being cooped up yesterday, too. We walked to the slightly-less-near park, which is lovely and large and there were other dogs to play with. We both enjoyed ourselves immensely.

***

Delicious dinner. Two mini pizzas: one basil pesto with pumpkin steamed with balsamic, spinach & tofu, the other dill & chive pesto with eggplant, spinach & tofu.

.

I was very good tonight & cooked some extra eggplant and pumpkin to go in a salad tomorrow, and cleaned up the kitchen, which was starting to look messy. After everything was done, and tomorrow's lunch was packed, I went up upload the photos and realised I hadn't eaten dinner yet. It was still in the oven, which was luckily off. The pizzas were still warm & delicious. Nom nom. Totally doing that again.

***

In one of those good news/bad news things, my phone will not talk to my computer, then, when trying to fix that, my laptop stopped talking to me (briefly), then to its built-in keyboard, touchpad and fingerprint scanner. The last is the most annoying because if it were working I could work around the keyboard being broke. Still, Raven very kindly picked it up from work today and apparently it is nearly fixed! Hoorah! I don't hold out much hope for the mobile magically talking to it when it returns, though. We'll see. (Knew I should have got another E63. Stupid E71.)

***

This is ADORABLE:


I wonder if Evelyn Evelyn will come and support Amanda Palmer at her February gig (which, by the way, I have TICKETS TO and it's practically on my birthday)?

***

It's finally getting COLD now, and the air smells of rain. Time to shut up the house.

The household is going raw food for six weeks. There's a lot of reasons behind this. Part of it is that raw foods really are very good for you, part of it is just culinary experimentation. Another part is that Steph and I had both put on weight over the last year and a half (almost 10 kilos for me, slightly less for Steph) for varying reasons. And as I have stated before many, many times, I want to be able to fit all my clothes comfortably again. And I have never seen a fat raw fooder.

It's also a way of adhering to our favourite diet plan (eat lots and lots of low-calorie, high-nutrient foods until your stomach explodes). I have certainly found that I don't make proper dietary changes unless they're drastic, and Fuhrman is no longer drastic enough for me. (When we went vegan originally, we also went wholefoods at the same time. I lost multiple kilos when we did that.)

So far so good, although I find the raw food community's habit of putting fat (nuts & seeds or avocado, or out-and-out oils) in EVERYTHING very offputting. I'm used to Drs Fuhrmann, MacDougall and Esselstein, who are all very adamant in their NO OIL (except for 1 tB of ground flaxseed or small quantity of nuts for the fat-soluble vitamins and Omega 3s) message. And yet I'm losing weight, and largely enjoying it. I was craving salad on Friday at lunch, if you can believe that. (It had non-raw felafel and hummus dressing, but still.)

Cint and I went shopping to the Organic Wholefoods place on Lygon St, which I hadn't checked out before. It's very exciting, and quite large. We bought Maca and Lucuma powders, which I have never tried, and so am eager to use. I bet they'd be nice in baked goods once I'm not being raw anymore, too.

I also bought a sprouting greenhouse. Previously I had a hemp bag, which was quite good for sprouts rather than shoots, if I can make that distinction. This one is more geared towards shoots; it suggests only putting in about 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of seed per each tray; I'd generally chuck 1 cup of dried beans or lentils in my bag (after soaking them first, of course). I'm planning on ignoring directions in my greenhouse for large beans/lentils/etc that I just want for sprouts, and using their small quantities for shoots. There are three layers to my greenhouse, so I currently have a layer of adzuki beans, one of quinoa, and one of cress. And I still have my hemp bag, so I might do another round of chickpeas in that for either raw hummus or an experiment in raw felafel. Because I will be able to get through six weeks if I am allowed to have hummus and felafel.

We actually made raw hummus yesterday (I plan ahead when it comes to my addictions). We found BLACK TAHINI at the wholefoods place, presumably from black sesame seeds. It really is black as pitch. When we're not eating raw, I'm going to make goth hummus with black beans and black tahini. It will be awesome. (I'd have a go at it raw, but apparently sprouted black beans aren't worth eating.) So our raw hummus is a kind of purply-grey, since we mixed some of the black tahini with normal tahini. Raw hummus, by the way, seems to need more flavourings like lemon juice and garlic, but that may be because Cint didn't measure the sprouted chickpeas, so there may have been more than we were guesstimating for.

So yeah, hurrah food experimentation! And hurrah for my new awesome sprouting greenhouse! (I like lentil sprouts. They are delicious.)

So, Steph and I are going to a ball tonight, which is a story that I don't have all the words for right now, because I'm tired and with low blood sugar because there was NO MILK when I got up this morning, so I had no muesli ...

... anyway. It's organised by her work, and its a (HORRORS) buffet, which means heaps more options for "normals", but anyone with different dietary requirements (coeliacs, vegans etc) is completely buggered. There's no "special plate for table 5" with a buffet.

Here's the menu (Typos are theirs, not Steph's, who emailed it to me):

Tasmanian Oyster Tower - mounted on creushed ice, lemon wedges, five dressings
Platters of 'Nori' Hand Rolls - tuna, crispy chicken, pickled vegetable
Hickory Smoked Turkey Breast - curried water chestnut salad, cranberry jelly
'Sumac' spiced Calamari Salad - on smokey babaganosh, baby cress
Baby Gem & Tandoori Chicken Caesar Salad - coddled egges, shaved reggiano
Roasted Plum Tomatoes - marinated in aged balsamic dressing, buffalo mozzarella, vigin olive oil & basil
Soba Noodle Salad - Milawa three seed mustard mayo, spring onions, grilled pancetta
Wild Rocket - jinki blue cheese, toasted walnuts, pached 'nashi' pear salad
Mixed Salad Leaves - wild cresses, champagne vingerette
Blackened beef & Singapore Noodle Box - cripsy shallots & coriander
Smoked paprika scented salmon - dried tomato & olive crushed southern
gold's char-grilled spring onions lemon & basil dressing

Traditional self-saucing chocolate pudding - whipped navilla bean cream
cold set raspberry cheesecake - raspberry salas, Persian fairy floss
'Sharp' possets lemon & lime
Strawberries rubbed with toasted coconut, Yarra Valley clotted cream

For those of you paying attention, Steph and I can eat ... the mixed salad leaves. And probably pickled vegetable hand rolls. That's it. We'll probably be able to eat the roasted plum tomatoes, providing the mozzarella hasn't been melted over them. For dessert ... well, if the Persian fairy floss is a separate dish, and not part of the cheesecake (hard to tell &ndash; is it bad formatting, or culinary design?), we can have that.

I suppose those of you who aren't vegan would be saying triumphantly here, "I bet you just wish you'd eat like a NORMAL person, instead of expecting people to make a fuss over you!" and I'd say, "Not really," although I might add in my head that it might be nice if a few more people ate like us.

Steph and I try to be accommodating. If we're going over to someone's place for dinner, we'll usually offer to bring a salad or something, partly to help out, and partly because it's nice to know that you'll be able to eat more than white bread, tomato sauce and lettuce for lunch*. This doesn't really fly with balls, especially since we've paid $55 each for the privilege of watching the fish in a wall tank.

Plus I'm tired and cranky, and just in the mood for a big bitch, but there isn't another food-freak in the office at the moment. Well, there isn't anyone in the office at the moment, but that's just points on a technicality. I shaved my legs for this, dammit. They feel weird in my trousers.


* True story.

I've been re-reading Living the Good Life: How one family changed their world from their own backyard, by Linda Cockburn (and her accompanying website) I first heard of Linda back in July–August 2005, when Steph and I were babysitting a beautiful house in Kingsville (I want to say "cottage" – it was pretty small), living out of home together and for the first time, going vegan, and embracing wholefoods ... and losing weight without trying. There was an article on what they were trying to achieve in Gardening Australia's organic gardening magazine. Later, when the book came out (February 2006), I snapped up a copy and wolfed it down as fast as humanly possible.

The book charts Linda and her family's attempt to live for six months without spending a dollar (barring things like medical expenses and rates). And they succeed pretty well, considering they're in Queensland and it was one of the dryest six months on record in their region (and frankly, probably in the whole of Australia). I found it so inspirational, as if someone had just projected my desires into a book. THIS is what I want to do with my life.

I have since found Cauldron Farm and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who've also got pieces of the puzzle. These people are all so inpirational. I can't wait until Steph and I have enough capital built up to take our own step.

I just re-took the Global Footprint test online, and my results were pretty good:

CATEGORY	GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD	0.4
MOBILITY	0.8
SHELTER	0.6
GOODS/SERVICES	1.1
TOTAL FOOTPRINT	2.9

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.6 PLANETS.

It's slightly bollocks: it didn't take into account (for example) that I eat organic food (fewer nasties getting into the environment, less water use); that we flush the loo with shower water (and sometimes with discarded laundry water); that we switch our appliances off at the wall to avoid phantom loading; that we only switch the TV on about once or twice a week (to watch Robin Hood), that we source our electricity from Green Power; that S and I try to shower together, and briefly, only every other day and that on alternating days we bathe out of a sink; and so on and so forth. Still, I got markedly below the average for Australia – 7.6 global hectares per person, meaning that if everyone lived like that, we'd need 4.2 planets.

Still, it gives us something to aim at, and we're improving, too. We're going to get rid of the car indefinitely in the next six months (the only difficulty will be intra- and interstate morris trips – there we'll either have to rely on other people's goodwill or V-Line) and replacing it with electric bikes. Mine will have to get another basket affixed to it, as my pushbike has, and possibly a basket in front, so that I can market shop if we move somewhere further away than we currently are from a market & public transport. Once we have our own place and are not renting, we'll be moving towards sourcing most of our food (we'll probably still be buying sugar and flour). We also plan on getting a composting toilet, solar hot water, and solar panels for electricity.

And we plan on moving out of the city. I want to smallhold (just like Hugh ...) The current plan is to move to Marysville (she says, having not yet visited it). It's sub-alpine, has more rainfall than Melbourne (currently a BIG factor), and apparently has four distinct seasons and tends to the COLD. This all makes me extraordinarily happy. I have planned on moving to England for years and years, but Steph was moved around a lot as a child, so the idea of permanently relocating again moves her to tears. This way I get an England-esque climate, not to mention RAINFALL, and we'll only be a bit further away from Melbourne than the distance between our parents' places.

I can't WAIT to get started. In the short term, though, we have a couple more pots that need filling, which we're going to tuck in to this weekend. (Hooray! Finally!) And I just might plant some basil in the backyard to let it grow wild.

Further inspiring links:
A cute mindmap of things you can do to lessen global warming (I've printed it and it's going on our fridge)
A link to an organic gardening how-to site (this is mostly for me)
A website giving tips on how to lessen global warming, based in Tasmania.

I'll admit I've been looking forward for an excuse to go to the Hopetoun Tea Rooms for some time. Located in the genteel Block Arcade, I'd passed it with many a longing glance.

My main problem with the Tea Rooms is that they're not really very interested in serving tea. They have three types listed on the menu: English Breakfast, Earl Gray, and "herbal". Presumably I could inquire as to what herbal entailed, but I was here for old-fashioned English tea, and tea I was going to have. My companion, Ben, was quite disappointed that they didn't have Lady Gray, a tea that is reportedly difficult to find in the cafés of Melbourne. The Tea Rooms, I feel, have an opportunity to stock a range of actual teas, like Russian Caravan and the ilk, to distinguish them from many cafés, which will stock a wide range (well, a range anyway) of herbal teas.

The arrival of my tea came with two small metal "teapots" – the sort that look like the result of a sordid affair with a café milk-frothing jug, and the sort of heavy, thick, white china that one expects to see in a truck stop, or an airport waiting lounge. The fingerloop was too small to fit more than a finger and a half in comfortably, and the cup was too heavy to drink from delicately. It was definitely at odds with the décor. I felt that I was not being trusted not to break something and were Lady Hopetoun around, she would be outraged. I've been to several Asian-run tea rooms in Melbourne now, and they all trust me with a proper teapot and cup. In their favour, they at least used leaf tea instead of bags, and I don't think they were using Tea2, which use flavourings in their tea (chemicals; as opposed to infusing tea leaves with jasmine or bergamot, or adding whole cinnamon).

I also, in the interest of having something to eat (I could see no vegan options besides salad on the menu, and I'd already had lunch), I tried one of their cakes. It was supposed to be a flourless almond and orange chocolate cake, but it bore no resemblance to the either of the fabulous mudcakes I've made in the last while (I made one flourless with hazelnut meal, the other orange and spice flavoured). It resembled the packet mix cakes my sister makes – certainly not what I expected. They had drizzled chocolate syrup, and one taste sent me right back to my childhood – they'd used Cottee's chocolate topping. Another strike. The ganache was passable, though there was rather a lot of it (about a centimetre and a half – trying to make up for the cake?), and I wasn't really interested in eating chocolate-flavoured lard. I would have liked to be asked whether I wanted cream (undoubtably from a can) with my cake, so I could decline. I suppose that's too much to expect – many places only ask if they have the option of giving you ice cream instead. And – THEY WERE OUT OF SCONES. What is a tea room without scones‽ This must be a one-off, you say. But no, last time Ben was there they were out of scones too. Disappointed, Hopetoun. You're letting the side down.

On another point, I really hated the uniform the waiters wore. They wore collarless dark-green blazers as you might expect a bellboy to wear at the Highett, and they were shabby and looked as though they'd been kept at the back of the cupboard for years. Were I to take over the Hopetoun Tea Rooms (a fantasy that became more insistent the longer it dwelled) I'm not sure what uniform I would institute, but Highett Bellboy really isn't what I expected.

Overall, I am disappointed. I don't know why all the reviews I see online are so effusive. They all talk about "indulging in the whims of a more mannered era" (not actual quote) and similar nonsense, but as an anachronist*, they really don't do this. The staff don't show any of what Wooster would call "the feudal spirit", and they don't make you feel at home. Clearly the reviewers have never visited any similar tea rooms elsewhere – particularly in England, where they do quaint so much better than Hopetoun ever could.

* Word made up on the spot to mean "someone who indulges in anachronicity in dress or behaviour"

So yesterday I began on the Finnish Rye Bread as posted by wittgensteinian. This is the first bread recipe I've ever tried. I had a bit of trouble, needing to use 450mL instead of 300, though this may be because I stubbornly refused to use white flour and used wholemeal instead. I'm also not sure that I've used the right sort of flour. The only flour I could find in Macro that was listed as "bread flour" was the flour mixes, and seeing as slow food is what gets my juices flowing (salivatory, that is), I decided to grab the rye flour they had there that they claimed could be used for bread among other things, and use the wholemeal plain flour I already had. I also couldn't find muscovado sugar in Coles, and though I found it in a nearby foreign-food deli, it cost $4 and I just didn't have much money on me, so I decided to stick with plain dark-brown sugar for this time.

Bread goes against all my creative impulses. I like to throw myself into something for hours at a time, not surfacing, until finished. Instead I had to put the dough together, then I let it rest overnight. Doing things in sections like this isn't the way I work. It also put down my idea of getting it done in time for Liam and Hedda coming over last night. Still, they, Dave (who came over later) and my sweetheart were all introduced to my not-yet loaf, which made me pleased (I also introduced Dave to my bike. I don't know, I'm odd like this). This morning I squished it down, had most of the loaf stick to my hands and had to cover said hands with spray-on canola oil in order to knead it and then attempt to shape it, before putting it aside for more resting. I thought it would rise more than it did; it just seemed to grow everyway at once, so it's a bit of a discus-shaped thing. I don't mind, though, so long as it's edible.

I also don't know if I kneaded it for long enough yesterday. I have a piece taken out of one of my fingers on the knuckle, so I had to do what I could while avoiding using that finger. I'm pretty sure I didn't knead it for fifteen minutes, as I have since seen a recipe call for. I can only hope.

Anyway, it's baked (only took 45 minutes, which isn't much when you're doing other things) and now it's cooking on a baking rack. It looks very exciting, if not quite as neat as I would like. I can't wait until Steph comes home, and then we shall TRY IT OUT, ideally with some beetroot chutney, which I am not allowing myself to make unless I have got all my chores done, so I had better dash off.

... the beetroot chutney will also be an experiment. I want it to taste something like The Chilli Factory's beetroot chutney, but as I've never made any sort of chutney before, let alone beetroot chutney, and I can't find a recipe I like, I shall have to make it up. There will be no apple, though, but I might put in carrot as TCF does.

Oh god, I'm really craving a good baguette, now. A really good crusty one. Why can't bakeries ever make decent crust-so-crispy-it-snaps bread any more? The best I can ever get is almost-crusty-so-it's-just-really-chewy. My dad used to bring us home a loaf of crusty bread from our local bakery every Saturday, and I suppose it may be one of my comfort foods. It really makes me want to experiment with bread making (Don't want to use a bread maker, though. 1) Don't have one, and 2) I hate the little hole that gets left in the bottom from the mixer. Also the bread's always a strange shape) so I could make my own loaf of crusty bread. Mmm, crusty.

I'm hungry this morning. I've eaten my breakfast, and now I've eaten my combined morning and afternoon snacks (watermelon, pineapple, strawberries and apple. Mmm) and I'm still hungry. I'm a bit concerned, because I've been on a "diet" (it's more accurate to just call it a lifestyle change; we're just being especially strict with it at the moment) and for the last couple of weeks I've put on a bit of weight. Daharja says it's probably in part due because I'm starting to get down to my ideal weight, but I suspect it's also due to the treats I've been having. I had a couple of treats yesterday at writing group*, but they were so awful that I really don't think I'm going to be tempted to have treats there again. I may bring along my own ingredients for a decent nachos: baked corn chips, home-made salsa & salsa cruda – essentially what I had, but it'll taste better and won't have all this extra oil and sugar. Who adds sugar to a salsa? I ask you. It should NOT have been that sweet.

On the other hand, it's bollocking cold, and Steph said she was hungry all yesterday because the house was so cold. I suppose I should just tell my stomach that it isn't getting anything until lunch, and it can just go and burn some of that fat and sugar I had yesterday (which are probably even now clinging to the slopes of my hips) and like it. And I might go and have another go on the exercise bike in an attempt to warm up.


* We've been having it in a food court because it's warm and one of the few places in the city open on a Sunday. Also, there are no waiters to guilt us into buying $15 entrees.<\small>

I wish I could knit, because I want one. Not for a kitty, but for me. I would wear it all the time. It would be AWESOME.
(P.S. Sylvia: http://squid.us/)


I went for a little trip yesterday, as I'd left my wallet and phone behind at my parents' (not the first time this has happened. GAH). I headed in to meet up with my dad in between his millions of meetings (my parents seem to spend all their time in meetings at their various jobs). He was late, but my essential items were retrieved, and I set off on a Tram Journey the like of which I have not undertaken for some time.

First was a trip to Bridge Road. Not knowing which route I needed to take, I hopped on a Swanston St tram bound for Flinders, figuring I could ask someone at the station. There was no need, though! I had carefully forgot that there are little tram maps in most trams, so I scouted out the route and discovered that it ran along Flinders St, so the interchange was straightforward.

I caught the tram along Bridge Road. bottleofred hopped on and we chatted for a bit. I accidentally gave him the cold shoulder in one of those "What's he leaning over for? What's going on? Oh, he meant to give me a hug. Whoops" sort of moments that you always feel vaguely guilty about. I was searching for the Mexican food shop that aphephobia had said was on Bridge Rd, but I confused all my geography, and when she said "Passionfruit" I assumed "Passion Foods", and then got Passion Foods (which is near South Melbourne Market) confused with Macro Wholefoods, and got off at (probably) the wrong stop.

Needless to say, though I walked quite a fair way up and down Bridge Rd, I didn't find the Mexican food shop. It was a bit of a mare’s nest, really. I mean, how was I going to find a shop I didn’t know the name of on a street I wasn’t even sure of when I didn’t know where on the street it was? Still, I got a look around Macro, which was very exciting. It was so nice to have a supermarket stock things I want to buy, like three types of dehydrated sea vegetable, and pomegranate molasses. I didn’t even know there was such thing as pomegranate molasses! I also bought my first black beans ever (very exciting as our favourite vegan cookbook, Vegan Planet, is American and uses them in half their recipes), and put some in to soak so I can use them today. I also bought a plain soy yoghurt, because I’ve been wanting to make Greek wraps for ages and no-one stocks plain soy yoghurt.

After exploring the breadth of Macro Wholefoods, I popped back on a tram and headed back into the city. I figured (remembering the “Passion Foods” clue) that the Mexican shop was probably near South Melbourne Market. I found out from the driver that I needed to catch the 112 tram to get there, and hopped off the tram by Spencer St, just in time to see the 112 glide up and await me.

The driver of the 112 was useless, and difficult to hear over the traffic noise, but an overly helpful woman told me that, yep, this was the right tram, and I needed to get off just here for the South Melbourne Market, or you could try the next stop, but no, this was best, and by the way, South Melbourne Market was closed today. I had an internal snort of annoyance, as last time I’d tramped down into South Melbourne (on a scorchingly hot day), SMM had been closed then, too. It seems unlike Queen Victoria Market, which is damn near always open (S-T-T-F-S, if I remember correctly), SMM has a more exclusive set of opening hours (W-F-S-S, and it’s only open until 4 on at least two of those days). Still, I was here to see Passion Foods, and possibly a Mexican Food Shop.

Although my Mother-in-Not-Law has been telling us to visit both Macro and especially Passion Foods for ages, I had no idea where Passion Foods was, except for “just by South Melbourne Market”. It wasn’t. I walked all the way around SMM, bladder fit to burst, and found no Passion Foods, and no way of getting to the number 96 tram (the other tramline that goes by the market) as it was up on an embankment. I stormed back around the market the other way, looking for the 112, little red warmths of pain in my right knee and ankle (I knew I’d been overdoing the walking thing at morris practice when I had constant twinges). I found the tram, but no Passion Foods, and no Mexican food shop (unsurprisingly, since I have since checked the comment and confirmed that yes, it was on Bridge Rd, though I still can’t search for it on the Yellow Pages or Citysearch until I have a name). It was a bit of a washout, except as an endurance test for my Iron Bladder, which made it back to Flinders St Station, and the appalling concourse toilets.

I then returned home, put the veggieloaf I’d prepared earlier, sliced up the pumpkin and potatoes for roasting (I was making a more “traditional” meal for the Not-In-Laws as apparently our love of spice had given M-I-NL stomach trouble) and cooked the strangely orange “brown sauce” Hedda had cooked for Yule (still very tasty. I love you, orange-brown sauce. I love you so much). I made it refined-fat free, too, with the addition of a little tahini in place of two tablespoons of margarine. It was all tasty. BOOYAH. Wer ist deine Hausfrau??

Afterwards, I used up some of our leftovers (some delicious chickpea patties from earlier in the week) and made up a vegan “chicken” Caesar salad for today’s lunch. It was very delicious, though I can’t vouch for its authenticity, as I’ve never eaten a Caesar salad, vegan or otherwise. I think the dressing was a stroke of genius. I’ll have to put the recipe up on my foodblog. Mmm. I’m still hungry. I should go start tomorrow’s lunches, though. Not sure I'm going to be able to top the Caesar salad, though.

I'm going to have my birthday party in late August (it'll be my 23 & 6 months party), and I'm going to go with a Mexican Fiesta theme. It'll be fun and exciting for me, because I'm going to do some research and go as authentic as I can with the food.

On the other hand, it'll be difficult as all hell challenging, as much of Mexican cooking relies on meat and cheese. Some dishes I've adapted, but there's a whole lot (particularly quesadillas) that I haven't even tried yet. I don't think I've made a Mexican soup yet, but I'm interested in the tortilla soup (it's a dry soup, or pasta. I'm learning stuff!) I don't want to resort to pretend food like fake cheese or fake meat. I may recant this for the sake of trying out a vegan quesadilla, but I'd rather such a thing be a bonus rather than the main thrust of the meal.

The other problem is that there's stuff you just can't get here. I've never cooked with cacti for a very good reason – they're generally not considered food here. I've never seen a tomatilla. Hell, I've never seen blue or white corn, or green tomatoes. The chaps in mexicanfood mentioned a herb I've never heard of (epazote?). I don't really believe in importing food, or using tinned food, though I might see if I can get canned cacti (I forget the Mexican word for it and it's too late to look it up) from USA Foods. I'd like to make everything from first principles, as it were. So, I hear you ask, why make life so hard for yourself?

Because I love Mexican food. I really, really love it. I love a vegetarian chili almost drowning in cumin. I love adding cayenne, paprika and chilli. I love what a good combination of tomato, red onion and corn can do. I love tortillas. I love home-made salsa and guacamole. And I love challenging myself to find ways of making non-vegan food.

I already know I'm going to include sweet empanadas, in ode to the recipe I begged off saunteringdown and then didn't get around to cooking before she defriended me (all her posts are friends-only, so I just can't get back into it. Sigh). I've also got this idea for making chocolate-stuffed chocolate-covered chillis based on this recipe – though mine will be stuffed with some sort of chocolate mole, I think, and then half-dipped in chocolate the way strawberries are. And I'm going to make wholegrain Mexican wedding cookies as per 101 Cookbooks. I'm probably also going to make my orange-spiced dark chocolate mudcake, not because it's Mexican, but because it's bloody delicious, and made with freetrade Central American chocolate.

I have what seems to be a pretty good resource book in my Mexican Cooking book, by Roger Hicks (that I borrowed from my parents), but I don't want to rely on it for all my recipes. I'd like to get as many "authentic" recipes as I can, ideally from friends and so forth, especially since there seems to be a dearth out there on teh intarwebs, and on Livejournal (shock horror!).

Also the number of my friends and family that I invite will affect what I cook, and how much. I'd love to have a sit-down meal – based on what little I know of the Mexican comida – but that's obviously impractical since I'll be inviting more than four–six people. It's clearly going to be a stand-up buffet sort of thing. I'd still like some sort of concept of courses, though.

Steph said that the day of the party she and I should eat In The Mexican Way, complete with marienda (second breakfast – which always reminds me of Hobbits) and siesta.

And now a final thought from my love, who hijacked my computer when I went to turn off the heater and blow out the candles:
It's the sleepy time now so I have to go byebye and turn off the heater and come snuggle.

sleepying time.


I have to go. I have so many more ideas to note down, and so many more plans to make, but my love is mewing for me to come to bed, and I can't resist that. Not to mention the now physical as well as emotional pain that she's in due to work.

To bed.