Chipotle pasta sauce

Sounds maybe a bit weird, but try it out, I think you'll like it. This recipe comes from a co-worker of an ex-girlfriend, and it originally called for chicken, but f that.

start with some soy curls. A handful or two? probably two. Rehydrate them in some kind of liquid. I use water with some soy sauce mixed in. While they're hydrating, make the sauce.

2-3 cloves garlic
3 chipotle peppers (the canned kind in adobo sauce)
a couple spoonfuls of the adobo sauce
1/4-1/3 cup of white wine (I usually use a cheap chardonnay)
same amount of extra virgin olive oil

whiz all this together really good in a food processor of some sort. Then add some green onion that's been chopped up kind of finely.

once the soy curls are hydrated, squeeze them out a bit and put them in a container, and then pour the sauce over and stir and let them marinate for a little bit. This part can be skipped if you're hungry.

Boil pasta, sautee soy curls with all the sauce while the pasta is cooking, drain pasta and toss it all together in the end. I like to put nooch on this too, but that's totally optional.

Thanksgiving test run

Jess had some people over tonight to test her thanksgiving recipes on before she presents them to people at a talk next week about vegan thanksgivings. She made a pretty awesome pecan pie (recipe courtesy of Toddx on the PPK), and a sweet potato casserole. Plus she baked some awesome tomato-rosemary scones and mocha chip muffins from Isa's upcoming brunch book. Oh yeah and roasted potatoes factored in there somehow too. Tons of food, and it was all delicious...thanks Jess!

Favorite Things

My friends are posting lists of their favorite things on their blogs, and in the interests of killing time, I'm going to do so as well.

1. Avocados
Avocados are what got me off of cheese when I first went vegan. They're creamy and fatty and they've got kind of an almost-cheesy flavor. I probably eat too many avocados now, but they're finally back out of season so I'll be less likely to get them. Here's a few ways I like to eat avocados:
sliced, on toast
cubed, tossed with pasta and olive oil and nooch
with a spoon
sliced up, wrapped in a tortilla
mashed with some minced garlic and nooch, spread on toast
What do you like to do with avocados?

2. Video Games
Video games have always been a major recreation of mine, starting back in the day with the Atari 2600. I don't even remember how or why we got it, I was so young, but I remember playing the game with the tanks (Tank Battle?), and hangman on it. More recently, I have an Xbox 360, but it's at my parents' house, and mom won't ship it back to me until I get a job. So mostly I've been playing World of Warcraft. I got Fallout 3 recently as well, and that's a pretty cool game too.

3. Really hot showers
Pet peeve: luke warm showers. I want my shower water to be hot.

4. Riding my bike
Portland is awesome for this. There's a bike repair collective literally across the street from my apartment, for all my repair needs. Lots of grocery and restaurant options within easy biking distance. Riding my bike makes me feel more connected with my neighborhood. I can better see/hear/smell whats going on around me than if I were in a car.

5. Hoodies
Cozy, comfy, and secure. Zip hoodies preferred, but pullover ones are ok in a pinch. I hate the way the zippers get weird after you've had it for a while though, does anyone know of a way to fix that?

Heat

Turns out the gas going to the pilot light in my furnace was turned off, which is good because it means my apartment wasn't slowly filling with gas, but bad because I haven't had heat. However, my landlord came over today and figured out the problem in short order, and now I have delicious hot air pumping in.

In sadder news, my grandfather passed away this morning. The last few years have been difficult, watching his mental and physical health decline, but he was a good man, and he will be missed.

Nhut Quang...Vegan Vietnamese food in a box.

The box being their sparsely decorated restaurant. The food however, was pretty darn good, and everything on the menu is vegan which was a surprise to me. I went with some of the usual crew, plus Dazee, who is in town for a bit for a law conference. (I may have talked about Dazee while I was in Louisiana, he's Kittee's husband.)

Anyway, I had number 28, which was a bowl with noodles and veggies and fried gluten, and it was pretty delish. I had to take the bus to get there, which was a bit of a pain waiting for transfers, but I'd definitely go again. I'll have to try the egg rolls next time I go...and bring a book for the wait between buses.

In other news, it's getting colder here, and my windows are quite drafty, so I've taken the initiative and gotten plastic sheeting to put up over my windows. I finished installing them today, and it seems marginally warmer in here, but I'm sure it'll help a lot with gas bills once I actually figure out how to turn my heat on. In the mean time, I'm cooking and baking and taking hot showers, which is keeping me reasonably warm. That makes it sound like it's 20 below, but it's really only gotten down to about 40. But 40 degrees indoors sure feels pretty damn cold.

I just fell back onto the face of the planet!

I was totally abducted by aliens and that's why I haven't posted on my blog. I just got back, it was pretty cool. We cruised up and down the solar system and ate vegan hot dogs.

Anyway, too much has been going on to catch up here, but I'm settled in Portland, I'm having fun, and I still don't have a job, so there's the important parts.

Now I'm off to an all-vegan brunch at my friend's house!

"Interesting" trip statistics

Since I left Iowa City on July 31st:

Total miles driven: 5632.3
overall average speed: 52.0
moving average speed: 59.8
Travel time: over 100 hours, my gps blanked out after 99:99