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!

Key West

My mom called me last month and said she was spending two consecutive weeks working in Florida, so how would I like to fly down and road trip from Miami to Key West with her?  Uh, YES.  So we did that last weekend.

Our first stop on the trip was somewhere in Key Largo for a big plate of fried seafood.  It was much more impressive in real life than in this picture.

We stayed at the Doubletree on Key West, which is on the quiet (i.e. non-touristy) side.  The room was very Florida-esque.

And the view from our window was basically of a jungle.

We were both surprised at how Key West was not beachy in the least, and did some research to find out what the deal was with that. Apparently there is a coral reef that runs parallel to the Keys that prevents waves from reaching the islands; therefore there is no sand buildup, so people are forced to hang out at the pool rather than on beaches. Since I only like the beach in small doses anyway, this arrangement was fine with me.

Before we hit the pool, though, we took the hotel's free shuttle over to the touristy side of the island to see some attractions. I had mentally prepared myself for the fact that it was going to be extremely hot and humid.  I brought very casual, lightweight clothing and told myself it would be for one day only and I could handle it. Well, I guess technically I could handle it but also I will not be going back to South Florida in the summertime. I live in North Carolina - I know about heat and humidity - but this was beyond anything I have ever experienced. When we went outside my iPhone fogged over completely and water actually beaded up on it. It was insanity. ANYWAY so we braved the elements to wander around for a while.

There are chickens running around everywhere! It's like being in Tunisia! (Except in Tunisia it is goats, not chickens.) (But still.)

We went to the Harry S Truman Little White House and checked out the free exhibits, mostly to have a nice air conditioned break.

Then we went to the Hemingway House, which was interesting.  

There are 45 cats who live in the property, all descended from Hemingway's own cat. FORTY FIVE.  Here is a sampling.

I think this lady was pregnant. I sat next to her for a while. 

I firmly believe that more tourist attractions need to have cats wandering around. I cannot express how delightful it is to have parts of a museum cordoned off so that humans can't mess with the historical furniture, and meanwhile there is a cat asleep in the middle of it.

Key West was cute!

This is the southernmost house in the continental United States.

We got some matching flip flops. They're Crocs.  Shh.

The water was dirty-looking close to shore but gorgeous and turquoise farther out.

So after our time exploring we were about to keel over, and retired to the pool at our hotel. 

I drank three (3) pina coladas and mom went for the variety pack with a pina colada, margarita, and raspberry daiquiri.  Each of these drinks was delicious but had an extremely small amount of alcohol in it. We think they do this on purpose because they do not want their patrons dying of dehydration in those weather conditions.

After a while we snagged one of the cabanas, which was a good thing as spray-on sunscreen apparently does not work very well.

For dinner we went to an Italian place near our hotel.  We got key lime pie to split, and while it looks nice, it was sort of weirdly gritty.

The next day on the trip back to the mainland we stopped at a hole in the wall place on the water and tried again - this time it was delicious!

When we got back to Miami we had some time to kill before I needed to be at the airport, so we went to the Vizcaya Museum & Gardens.  Mom got a discount.

The house was amazing!  You may recognize it from The Money Pit.

The gardens are also beautiful, and enormous, but oh my god it was so hot outside. There was a bride and groom getting pictures taken and the photographer kept having to take breaks to fan her and mist them with water.

All in all a successful Florida weekend! but seriously do not go there in the summer.

Celebrating America

The only thing I did to celebrate America last Thursday was eat a bunch of delicious, unhealthy food. That seems like a pretty American thing to do, though, no?

For breakfast I made waffles with berries, but sadly we did not have any whipping cream so I just slapped some ice cream on there. Good decision.

Then I decided to make a cake. I've been wanting to bake something semi-complicated for a while and a random day off in the middle of the week seemed like a good opportunity. I found this recipe online that has universally positive reviews.

The bad news is that this thing was totally easy to put together and is absolutely horrendous for you. The icing! Two sticks of butter + 6 oz of chocolate! The first two pieces we ate were this size:

And then afterward we both felt like dying for hours. I was going to quit eating it altogether until it occurred to me I could just have a smaller piece. (See, this is why I am constantly having to start up with calorie counting again.)

It was real good, you guys. You should make it. Just don't eat 1/8th of the cake in one go.

Beach Trip!

Since we are not going on vacation (TO SPAIN DID I MENTION THAT) until late September, we decided we'll try to have at least one mini-trip, even if it's just a day trip, each month this summer. We were thinking about doing a day trip to the beach last weekend, but ended up deciding it would be better to go the night before so we weren't doing the drive there and back in one day.

On Friday afternoon, I picked Ben up at work and we headed out.  Two minutes later, before even getting on the highway, we were waylaid by a hit and run rear-ending! Someone actually hit the car behind us, and the momentum pushed her into the back of my car. Before I even knew what was happening, Ben had leapt out and was writing down the license plate number of the car that was speeding away. It was a hard hit - hard enough to give me some whiplash that was still a little achy the next day - but amazingly there is no damage to my car whatsoever. We stuck around for an hour regardless, waiting for the police to arrive and take the report, since Benjamin had witnessed the other car and could provide a description. They ran the plates and confirmed that the guy has a record and likely no insurance, which is a real bummer for the other lady, whose car had some significant damage.

So anyway!  After that we were on the road for real. We arrived in Wilmington just before 8:00 and ate at The Bridge Tender Restaurant, which was quite good. In fact, Benjamin told the waitress his scallops were "fucking awesome," and then kept bringing them up again and again the rest of the weekend. I didn't take any pictures of the entrees but dessert was also excellent. I got this brownie sundae thing that was easily big enough for two people.

Benjamin got blueberry cobbler which he also enjoyed.

We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott Wrightsville Beach, which was fine. 

On Saturday we drove down toward Carolina Beach, about a half hour from Wilmington. We stopped for a delicious breakfast at the Surf House Restaurant. I got an amazing breakfast hash with black beans, pulled pork, roasted potatoes, etc.

And Ben ordered the standard breakfast of bacon, sausage, grits, eggs, toast.

And then finally we were on our way to the actual ocean.  We ended up having trouble finding parking, and kept driving all the way to Kure Beach, a little bit south of where we intended to go. It was pretty crowded but we got a good spot.

My legs are roughly the color of the sand, I noticed.

The waves were huge!  We spent a lot of time floating and swimming in the ocean out beyond the surf, which was really nice.  I don't know that I've ever been in the ocean when I couldn't touch the bottom.  I was a little concerned a shark was going to eat my legs, but it worked out.

After a couple hours we'd had enough and drove back to Raleigh, making it home by late afternoon. Since we generally do almost nothing Friday night/Saturday morning, it seemed like we hadn't even missed anything by being away from home, and still had plenty of time to catch up on TV and run errands and all the usual weekend stuff.