My Other Fave Commerical (IT'S BACK!!)

YESS, the awesome HM commercial that MADONNA starred in has returned via Youtube.

And I still love it!!

Favorite... Commercial...EVER

One of my beloved students from a class I taught this summer shared this with me. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

Favorite Albuquerque Eats

Okay, first on my list is a hole in the wall called Yasmine's Cafe. I got excited when my staunchly non-vegetarian father volunteered this Mediterranean cafe (he's a hot dogs and steaks kind of guy), that apparantly he frequents. I had high hopes for veg-friendly foods, but settled for this arabic salad and lentil soup (both were just okay, but nice to look at).


But the Manzana Lift! is what got me through it! A carbonated, caffeinated apple flavored soft drink. GENIUS! God bless Mexico!
My hands-down favorite place to eat in Albuquerque is the Flying Star Cafe.
My family ate there twice in the week that I visited. I really needed a third time because I missed out on their eclairs.

They have an excellent vegetarian sandwich called the Californian with grilled mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, avocado and swiss cheese:
My mom (a mostly-sometimes-vegetarian) opted for a pasta pomodoro with the soy "chicken" patty. It was super tasty!
I had to explain to my parents and their friends whenever I whipped out my camera at the dinner table... "It's for my BLOG," just before everyone dug in.

Late Summer Harvest and Fun

So it's been far too long since I've updated my blog. I ran off to visit my folks in New Mexico in early August, and with school starting again, we've been unable to keep up with the garden. Here's what we harvested earlier this week. It's probably the last of the tomatoes.

We still have celery growing, brussel sprouts, some parsley, sage, and of course my sweet basil. I plan to make a bunch into pesto to freeze. Of course I'll take photos when I do.

One of the last culinary adventures from the summer was deep fried Pepsi courtesy of the Indiana State Fair.
Okay, I was dubious (Pepsi?!). I had planned on keeping away from fried dough this year, but here they are:
I have to admit, they were adorable, tasty, and the portion wasn't excessive. And I didn't feel as though I had dunked my face in a vat of grease. The fried Snickers I had a bite of resembled a Twinkie, but was too warm, moist and, well, brown to be appetizing. The pepsi balls, though were a-ok.

In other State Fair-inspired adventures, I'm completely obsessed with fried green tomatoes right now. I purchased them once at a booth at the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival. I was a bit disappointed with the mushy, sour, egg-battered plate I got, but with my own premature tomatoes, I've taken to coating with whole wheat flour seasoned with Fiesta brand fajita seasoning (the secret ingredient for everything my whole family makes), and pan frying in olive oil. Mmmmmmm... I think the other two diners were served two apiece, and I ate the rest.
AND, another State Fair trick I've picked up is grilling corn on the cob with the husk on! Of course Martha could've told me better, but it's fun to learn things through trial and error (the husks are incredibly flammable!) They were the best corn on the cob I've ever had.

I had to try out the grilled corn as part of the perfect rustic weekend getaway we had over Labor Day weekend.

We rented out a log cabin in Southern Indiana for a couple nights, and I spent most of that time in the back staring at the fire and roasting Sweet & Sara vegan marshmallows! We haven't had marshmallows in years! Thank goodness Sweet & Sara figured out how to make 'em without gelatin! Zips and I made the perfect s'more. Zips is quite the expert at burning the marshmallows exactly right, I held the graham crackers with special dark chocolate bar on a spatula over the coals until it was just melty. Then together-- ShaZAM! The perfect s'more. (sorry, no photo. it was too dark, and the s'more was gone in seconds flat).

Here's the fully loaded grill from the second night. So as not to overdose on Yves good dogs, we made some barbeque chik'n with those Quorn naked cutlets. Not bad. Especially good as leftovers.

And our delicious big country breakfast with french pressed coffee, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, homemade blueberry compote for the griddle cakes, veggie bacon and sausage, and homefries, and scramblers. Yum!


I'll be adding pics and tales from my visit to Albuquerue. And dreaming of fair foods, country breakfasts, and not having to get up to go to school!

Favorite New Video

I have a lot of catching up to do, but stumbled across and felt I had to share this lovely, magical video.

I'll have to update you on new foods and travels and late summer harvesting at the garden. Perhaps once we lose the garden space, I'll finally get back to sewing and begin posting crafting rather than gardening adventures!

Tomato-Rama: Part 4: What the Hell do I do with all these TOMATOES?!

To begin with, we used up the leftover MAMMOTH zucchini by making zucchini bread (again, inspired in part by Dr. Stonielove, and partly from How it All Vegan). We fudged recipes and approximated (mostly because we ran out of both sugar and cinnamon and don't have any soft tofu or eggs in the house right now). The resulting loaves were excellent! I think we ended up using 4c. whole wheat flour, 1c. oat flour (which we just figured out how to make. god bless food processors!), applesauce, 4 c. shredded zucchini, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins, walnuts, and other odds and ends.
Excellent with coffee for breakfast, and excellent for luring little black cats into photographs.
Okay, so the hundred-plus tomatoes from yesterday added to the forty-plus tomatoes from earlier in the week need to be dealt with. We started off blanching, peeling, and freezing some for the future (but our freezer is sadly running out of space!)

We also found out about making fresh tomato juice. After blanching (1-2 minutes each), and peeling them (and after a while we even quit peeling or coring them), throw your tomatoes into your food processor or blender and whiz up until pretty well liquified

Following some recipes, we threw in a small onion, a couple ribs and leaves of our garden celery, and a squirt of lemon. Then we poured the juice through a sieve. I saved the leftover tomato pulp. I'm convinced I can make something with it. The JUICE has been employed in two ways so far:

Makes a bloody marvelous Virgin Mary:

(I'm not sure, but I think I just made up that name. I don't fancy the Bloody Mary, but I do like the IDEA of Bloody Marys..)

Then, after whizzing up a TON of tomatoes, we ended up with about 2 quarts of juice which then made a rather gratifying Garden Vegetable Soup!!

The whole peeled tomatoes, tomato juice, onions, cabbage, carrots, green beans, corn, and potatoes are all either fresh from our garden, or from our CSA. We also added some frozen edamame (although we WILL have some fresh ones soon), and some frozen mixed veggies for good measure.

We've also frozen a large batch of salsa. The JUICE, though, will totally be done again to stock up for soup for the fall!!!

Tomato-Rama: Part 3

Baked Oats with Blueberries for breakfast. Inspired by Dr. Stonielove (see her "branch platter"), but meddling with recipes, this batch turned out a tad mushy. I've since burned a batch. I'll post a recipe when I've figured out how I like it. Here's another unfortunate victim to melon splitting. I cry when there's too little rain. I can hardly complain when there's a little too much at once!And the GREATEST TOMATO HARVEST SO FAR THIS SUMMER.
Here's 38 Early Girls, 69 Romas
A handful of cherry tomatoes, a couple of tomatillos and various peppers.
Stay Tuned for What the Hell do I do with all these TOMATOES!!