Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Recent Things

Cheeseburgers are fine and good, but being able to eat real sushi again is maybe the most exciting thing about omnivorosity. There's a good place right near our house that we hadn't been to in years, but we stopped in Friday night and stuffed our faces.


Saturday we went to see a Porsche exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art. I'm always proud of us when we have a cultural outing in lieu of sitting in the house watching six episodes of some Netflixed TV show in a row. It was pretty interesting, even though I am not into fast cars.




We usually get Christmas ornaments when we go on vacation as a souvenir from the trip, but maybe Spain isn't as big on Christmas trees as we are here in the US of A because we couldn't find any! Instead we got a print at the Granada Cathedral and managed to successfully get it home without destroying it. I picked it up from the framing shop yesterday and I think it looks great! The framing cost approximately twenty-five times the price of the print, but whatever.


And finally, since my dad died of melanoma three years ago, I started going to the dermatologist for regular skin checks. He wanted to remove this tiny spot on my leg even though it was only 3mm, so I did that, and it was precancerous!!


Go to the doctor, everybody!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Out and About

Last weekend we tried a new restaurant that opened near our house, Latin Quarters. The theme is South American specialties, which as far as I know is a unique idea for Raleigh, and I've been anxious to try it out. It's been there a few months and is apparently working really hard to drum up business because they were very, very excited to see us and everyone came over to talk and offer us free cocktail samples and take a picture of us for their facebook page. Which reminds me to go check and see if they ever posted it.

Oh, good.


Well, anyway, you can see our food there - Benjamin got chorizo arepas and I got the mofongo with shrimp and crispy pork. Here is a better picture of my entree in case you care.


It was delicious! The desserts were especially amazing, but I did not take a picture. I really hope this restaurant makes it, because it's a unique concept for this area, plus we can walk there from our house.

The next day we met my friend Erin and her family for brunch at the Remedy, one of our downtown standbys. Erin is my oldest friend in the world - I have clear memories of playing Mastermind with her during game time in the third grade - but she is in Chicago now and we had never even met her kids before! Gus is the oldest, at age four, and he LOVED Benjamin. Kids always love Benjamin.


It was awesome to see Erin and makes me wish we all still lived in the same place. Too bad the only place we have in common is St. Joe, because who wants to live there?



Saturday, November 16, 2013

Mango Fried Rice & Coconut Curry

I haven't been blogging much but I'm continuing to cook from Isa Does It pretty much every night and so far there have been zero duds. It's super fun!

Here is a thing I made a couple weeks ago - mango fried rice. She says to put toasted cashews in it but I didn't feel like dealing with that, so I put some tofu in for  protein instead.


I also made this freaking amazing coconut chickpea curry with kale.


I always think I will be bored with curry but I'm usually not, and this one was especially good with the full-fat coconut milk base.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Harira Take 2

I made a harira recipe from Bean by Bean last year and really loved it. This one from Isa Does It is totally different, and a quick scan of internet recipes shows it is probably more authentic compared to the standard (lamb-containing) recipe.


It looks just like a boring noodle soup but it was really hearty and spicy and flavorful, full of chickpeas & lentils & eggplant. I used ramen noodles because I had some to use up (which is funny, since the previous blog entry reveals I used Japanese noodles the last time I made harira, too), but noodles all taste the same so it's fine.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Updates

I have had intermittent back pain since we lived in Santa Clarita over ten years ago, but for the past six months or so it's been more or less constant, some days worse than others. My doctor told me essentially that my discs are a mess and there's nothing he (or anyone else) can do to make it go away. Awesome! 

And then we went to Spain, where spending every day on my feet and every night sleeping on rock hard beds made me feel like a normal person for the first time in ages. It didn't hurt at all! A week after we got back, though, it was back to being terrible again. We decided our old pillowtop mattress had to go. Last weekend we went mattress shopping and ended up with a Tempur-Pedic, which was undeniably the best of all the ones we tried. It kind of annoys me somehow when the most expensive option turns out to be actually worth the money. 

Unfortunately, our old box springs barely fit up our stairs when we moved in and we knew we would never get them back out of there. Benjamin got to spend Thursday night sawing them apart. The cats were VERY interested in the entire process and played in the remnants all night long.



A lot of people told me it takes time to get used to a Tempur-Pedic but we both love it already. I start looking forward to bedtime at around 7:00 pm! 

I have also started walking religiously every day and the difference it makes in my back is incredible. Even a 45 minute walk can mean the difference between a terrible day and one in which I hardly notice it. So I guess I have to keep that up now - I'm going to try getting up before work this week because I think it will make my workdays, sitting in an office chair for nine hours, a lot more pleasant.

And here is my inheritance from Grandma Betty! Since she was trying to make her rural Missourian grandchildren eat weird stirfry back in the 1980s, I think she would appreciate my weekly menu of vegan dinners being held up by her magnet.



Saturday, November 2, 2013

Burger Fi Awesomeness

Hey, let's take a little break from vegan food to talk about cheeseburgers. If you guys have a Burger Fi you should go there. It seems overpriced, but then you eat the burger and it is amazing. They have a vegetarian quinoa burger, which is what I've always gotten before, but today we got the meat. Ben said today it reminds him of Fatburger, a California chain he always insisted was better than In & Out.

Plus, look: they brand their buns!


And check out this onion ring! I actually think the picture makes it look smaller than in reality. They were all about 2 inches wide.


AND FINALLY! They have one of those soda machines with a million choices to which you can add a variety of flavors. Burger Fi rules!

Sticky Orange Stir-Fry

I have made four things from Isa Does It this week but failed to take pictures of two. Here is our dinner from Tuesday, though, which was super great:


The sauce is mostly orange juice with some soy sauce and mirin. She calls for seitan but I used soy curls, mainly because Ben hates seitan. I also  used a yellow pepper from our friend's garden! It was good.