Corn & Chipotle Bread Pudding

The last time I bought french bread for something, I actually remembered to freeze the leftovers to use later in bread pudding.  Last night I made this recipe, found via googling.

It was good! You should make it!

Bike Commute!

I am very, very lucky in that I can ride my bike on greenway trails to work, almost door to door. I do drive about a mile to the greenway entrance nearest my house, because otherwise I'd have to ride on a very busy (45 mph) road, which is still a little much for me at this point. The area is safe to park my car, though, and then from that point it is a gorgeous, easy ride the entire 9 miles to my office.

I usually only ride in the spring & fall, because summers are too hot and winters are too dark, but as a result of having the most weirdly cool summer I can remember in my life, I was able to ride one day last week and I took some pictures of the trip.

Bike! I had to pump up the tires before I left, since it's been in storage for a few months.

This is the beginning of the trail near my house, a little messy from recent rains.

Chipper, thanks to iced coffee and the prospect of not sitting in traffic.

This long wooden bridge is one of my favorite parts.

Most of the trail is paved, though, like this part at Shelley Lake.

The last bit near my work is a long series (maybe a half mile or so) of wooden paths that go up and down and around corners - very fun! Except there are a lot of bees here in the spring. I have nearly killed myself trying to avoid running into them before.

By the time I got back to Shelley Lake (about 2 miles from home) in the afternoon I was decidedly NOT chipper. The only flaw in this whole bike commute plan is that the last few miles are steadily uphill going home. It's not terrible, but after 3 months of being off a bike I was hurting for miles 16-18.

Still, it only takes a time or two to get used to it again! I'm glad summer is starting to wrap up so I can get some more bike commuting in before the time changes.

Navajo Tacos

We made a new thing last night! I had almost talked myself out of going to the trouble, but once I said, "Do you think we really need to deep fry bread?" out loud to Ben I knew the deal was sealed. He will NEVER say no to deep frying anything.

You were supposed to roll the dough into 6 inch circles.  Haha.

but, you know, ugly still tastes good so who cares.  We used a stock pot to fry because our deep fryer is not big enough to handle 6 inch roughly circle shaped items.

Here is Ben being fake cheery about having his picture taken while he fried things.

Yummmmm.

So this recipe is in Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day, and is essentially fried bread with taco fillings piled on top. The protein is "chickpea chorizo," according to the book, but I am sort of over this vegan/vegetarian thing of calling non-meats by meaty names when they do not even come close to resembling the real thing (example: eggplant bacon. Just no).  The chickpeas were delicious in their own right, without being compared to meat. They were spicy and tomatoey and good. I did un-veganize it by adding some Mexican queso fresco, but that's okay.

They were good.  Really, really good.  I could only eat one and a half of them.

The Fiction Kitchen!

Raleigh finally got a true vegetarian restaurant last winter when The Fiction Kitchen opened up. It is super small and they don't take reservations, and I kept hearing you had to wait forever for a table, so we kept putting it off. Finally, though, I decided we just needed to suck it up, and then coincidentally Ben and I both got off work early on Friday, so we went straight down there in hopes of beating the crowd.  We arrived a little before 6:00 and got the last two seats at the bar. It really is popular! And small. We really like to sit at the bar at local restaurants (it is our New Thing of the past year) so this worked out great for us anyway.

We ordered corn & onion fritters to start, served with agave vegan butter. I would love to know what kind of vegan butter they're using because it was amazing. And this huge portion was $6.

For my entree I ordered the "chicken" and waffles, also vegan. (Not everything on their menu is vegan, but most things are and everything can be made vegan upon request, I'm pretty sure.)  The "chicken" they use is a locally made product called Delight Soy, which I hope someday will be available everywhere because it's delicious.

They do a daily special that is always made from local farmers' produce - Friday it was house-made falafel with tomatoes, eggplant, and rice. Ben ordered it and he said it was great.

We did not get dessert (I know! Who are we?) but I'm pretty sure we will be back here soon. We don't mind eating early and it really exceeded my expectations by quite a lot. It is miles better than The Remedy Diner, Raleigh's other decent downtown option for vegetarians.

Miscellaneous

Benjamin said I need to start updating the blog more frequently again.  I don't have any pictures to post but I can write some stuff so here goes.

After most of the summer being bored with food and the idea of cooking dinners, I seem to have turned a corner and am getting back into it.  Not coincidentally, I have finally gotten interested in Star Trek: The Next Generation and am finding myself genuinely wanting to know what happens next instead of thinking, "this is the dumbest show in history," every time I watch it. I think maybe having a show to watch is key to my whole cooking methodology. Fortunately, if I run out of new things I can just watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the first three seasons of Alias over and over for the rest of my life.

So far this week I have made two things I remembered fondly but had only made once, the Manzana Chili Verde from Veganomicon (I thought for sure I had posted about this, but apparently not - it isn't very photogenic) and the Yassa Lemon-Mustard Tofu from Vegan Eats World, which even though I said in this post was "the best tofu ever in history" still exceeded my expectations. One bonus of making that dish is seeing Ben's unenthused expression when he learns we are having baked tofu and carrots for dinner. But he was blown away, too! The sauce is amazing.

I have also gotten into making iced coffee at home, using The Pioneer Woman's method. I halve her recipe, because who has a 2-gallon container that fits in their refrigerator? A half batch keeps us both in iced coffee for an entire week and costs about $7, including the sugar and almond milk. This has basically changed my life. It takes about 20 minutes to strain out on the first day, but that's a lot less time and hassle than stopping at Dunkin Donuts every morning on the way to work.

One other thing going on over here is that Ben is on the quest to develop the perfect key lime recipe. He has made (and singlehandedly eaten) three entire pies in the past 9 days and has learned a few things, but still has a ways to go before perfection is reached. He tries to explain it to me and ask my opinion all the time but I do not especially like key lime pie and have nothing to contribute. He's going to make a blog post about it once he's figured it all out, though, don't worry.

Finally, we have at last reached August, which is the month before it's time to go to Spain. I had originally tried to be low-stress by booking modern hotels in Granada and Cordoba that were easy to get to by car, but last weekend I decided to throw caution to the wind and find more interesting places to stay. Ben agreed this was a good idea (and I made him promise to remember that when we want to kill each other as a result of driving around on narrow, poorly-marked, one-way cobblestone streets in ancient city centers trying to find our hotels) and now I am super pumped about our accommodations throughout the entire trip. Now I just want it to be time to leave!