A pictorial Thanksgiving

Pictorial is a weird word, right?  I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I decided to throw it in to switch things up a bit.  What I’m trying to say is, I have a lot of pictures.  So let’s get to it.

I managed to put together my vegan apple pie using a combination of these recipes.  I basically used Kim O’Donnel’s crust and filling and then the crumb topping from the Scranton Times, subbing Earth Balance for butter.  I even bought vegan sugar and soy vanilla ice cream from Trader Joe’s.  Hardcore, my friends.

The pie turned out awesome.  Really.  The vegans, however, didn’t eat it.

I don’t want to talk about it.

apple pie filling

 

crumb topping

in the oven

half eaten

I was so careful to document every step of the way, and then wouldn’t you know, I totally forget to take a picture of the finished pie.  Probably because I was stuffing my face.  Or drinking mimosas:

I am thankful that mimosas allow you to drink before noon

We also had turkey and stuffing and all of the other amazing things that go with Thanksgiving dinner:

Have I mentioned how much I love stuffing?  Because I do.  I wait for it all year.  I don’t even care if it’s been inside a turkey and that’s kind of gross, I still love it and I would eat it every day if I could.  My mom makes unbelievable stuffing, but this one was really good, too. In fact, it seems that our friends Rachel and Justin are very good cooks, something I was not aware of.  Chris and I might start showing up on their doorstep for scraps.

Anyway, there was also homemade salsa:

And vegan chocolate chip cookies:

Along with lots of other things that I didn’t get pictures of.  Actually, that’s kind of a lie.  I didn’t get pictures of anything.  All of these were taken by my friend Chelsea, who should maybe start her own food blog because she is clearly way better at it than me.

And finally, proof that even dogs get turkey comas:

Or maybe he was just tired from all the dancing.

 

Read Full Post »

Mexican pizza, take two

It was better last time, sadly.  But, I did make my own crust this time, using an amazingly easy recipe out of this Sara Moulton cookbook.  She’s my hero.  Well, she was my hero before because I’d worship anyone who was or is or might be on the Food Network, but I like her even more now because the pizza crust recipe was really good and very easy to work with it.

Oh yeah, and I’m back on the cheese.  This was a celebration.

Anyway, I’d post the recipe, but it wasn’t that good (I used refried black beans this time, and we didn’t have any cilantro) so refer to the last one if you want good Mexican pizza and not just okay Mexican pizza.

The rest of my life has been rather hectic and I’m sorry but I just haven’t had time to post as much as I used to.  I have been doing things like working and eating Sun Chips.  But I did find some time to catch up on The Hills with Jack the other day:

I know our apartment is a mess in this picture, but check out how enthralled he is.  He hates that Spencer Pratt as much as the next guy.

And, let’s see, what else?  Chris and I are staying in New York for Thanksgiving because it’s too much trouble to do anything else.  We are going over to a friend’s house and I promised I would make an apple pie and crab dip.  For the crab dip I plan on incorporating lots of things like cheese and mayonnaise (Mom, can you send me that recipe with the cheese and the mayonnaise?) but I am supposed to make the apple pie vegan and I’m a little stumped because as far as I know, butter is what makes pie crust so good.  So if you have a good vegan apple pie recipe, and you’d like to send it my way, I would love to steal it.  I promise to show pictures of the final product.

Read Full Post »

THIS IS VERY URGENT

Have I mentioned that Jack requires a lot of attention?  He is what you might call needy.  Basically, if he was a person, he would have no friends and any prospective girlfriends would dump him after the first date.

When I work from home, this is what he does for approximately six hours a day:

Pathetic

But as if that sad little puppy face isn’t enough, he also uses his chin to press the keys on my keyboard.  He is particularly fond of the caps lock button.  So, a few times a day, I’ll be working intently on something, only to look up at the screen and see that EVERYTHING I’VE WRITTEN FOR THE PAST TWO MINUTES LOOKS LIKE THIS.

Did you know that you can’t uncap everything all at once?  Because you can’t.  You can do that with italics, and bold, and even underline.  Who the hell uses underlines anyway?!  People use caps.  But yet if you change your mind and decide that whatever you’ve written isn’t that important after all, or if your dog has some kind of weird capital letter fetish, you have to erase everything and start all over.

It’s annoying.  And I’m glad I got that out.  I feel much better.

For dinner, I finally figured out how to make a little wine sauce for pasta:

I have been working on this for awhile because I get so sick of tomato sauce and cream sauce, if eaten on a regular basis, has the potential to kill you.  Here’s what I finally did tonight that worked:

1 clove minced garlic

1/4 cup white wine

1/4 cup vegetable stock (or chicken, if you want)

1/2 T butter

1 bag baby spinach

5 cremini mushrooms, chopped

Bunch of fresh basil

Salt and pepper

Add the butter to the pan, then the garlic and mushrooms.  Cook for about a minute, then add the wine and the broth and let reduce a bit.  Stir in  spinach until wilted, then add basil and salt/pepper to taste.

It was really easy.  It might still need a little work – I didn’t get it quite as thick as I was expecting – but the flavor was good.  I put it on some Trader Joe’s mushroom ravioli and made garlic bread for the side.

Read Full Post »

More eggs…

I have a carton of eggs to use up, as you can probably tell, so I decided to make this frittata for dinner.  For once in my life, I pretty much followed the recipe, except I left out the two extra egg whites because I didn’t have them.  I thought it turned out really well for my first frittata attempt.

Here is my frittata cooking:

And out of the oven:

I made garlic bread with part of a whole grain baguette to go with it.

My plate:

It’s a weird angle.  Or maybe the garlic bread really was twice the size of the frittata slice.  Hmm.

For a snack earlier, I had a Z Bar.  No picture, sorry.  I know you’ll recall what they look like.

And, because of the overwhelming demand, here is the pup:

He’s feeling rather forlorn today because he accidentally peed on his own nose earlier.  That’s what happens when you sniff the ground and pee at the same time.  It generally doesn’t end well.

Read Full Post »

Jack’s birthday extravaganza

Chris was off work today, so I took him to my gym this morning since his is closer to his office than our apartment.  He has recently taken up boxing (not with other people, just a bag…I enjoy teeth on my men) so I put on some gloves and hit the gym’s bag with him.  It was awesome and a crazy good workout.  I might have to do it more often. The gym has these little pink gloves that are really cute as long as you don’t think about all the sweaty hands that have been in them before yours.

Anyway, after I finished up work this afternoon, we took the pup to Prospect Park’s dog beach for a birthday swim.  He had a lot of fun splashing around and stealing another dog’s tennis ball and terrorizing children.  On the way home, we stopped to get the best ice cream ever:

You have to share this ice cream.  It is physically impossible to eat an entire cone on your own.  I learned this the hard way a few months ago.

We also picked up a special treat for Jack:

Isn’t that cute?  Apparently dogs can eat carob and whatever else this thing is made out of.  They had donuts and cannoli too, but he wanted what we were having.

He enjoyed his birthday splurge while wearing his birthday hat:

Sorry.  I had to.

Read Full Post »

Puppies and cookies

Seriously, what’s better?

I was a slacker with the photography this weekend, but Saturday night was a long one and I decided that we needed cookies yesterday:

I used this recipe but subbed chocolate chips for the raisins, and left out the walnuts and flax because we didn’t have any.  I also halved it so it only made about five cookies.  Needless to say, they are all gone.

And now, for the Big Puppy News:  After two long, agonizing months, we finally got an email that Jack’s photo was selected for the calendar – and I didn’t even have to bribe anyone.  Here is how he will be represented:

I’d say it’s appropriate.

I’m pretty sure that almost every dog was picked, but don’t tell Jack.  He’s already acting like a diva, demanding things like sparkling water instead of tap and extra walks to keep his figure nice and trim.

Read Full Post »

More peaches

I’m sorry.  This is boring, I know.  I will try to make something really fantastic and exciting for dinner.

Also, here’s a puppy:

Read Full Post »

Dogs are good for something

Dry cereal:

We’re out of milk.  I could, of course, go buy some.  I’m sure Chris would appreciate that.  But I don’t like to put Jack through the trauma of getting in his puppy prison just so I can run to the bodega for two minutes.  And I can’t take him to the bodega with me because then I’d have to tie him up outside and apparently there is a dognapper on the loose in my neighborhood.

I think we can all agree that Jack and his cute little ears would be napped for sure.  This effectively gets me out of doing errands.

On another note, I think I am going to start doing a little weekend wrap-up instead of trying to post on Saturday and Sunday and then failing miserably.  So I will be back on Sunday with pictures.  I hope the majority of them will be of fruits and vegetables and not ice cream and beer, but we’ll see what happens.

OH!  One last thing – you should go watch Kristen bake because her daughter is the cutest little butterfly I’ve ever seen and the cookies don’t look so bad either.  Plus she’s funny and I like funny.

Read Full Post »

This is not about food.

So about a week ago, Jack and I were walking past a playground, and we heard this kid scream, “Look at that dog! What’s wrong with his ears? They’re so weird!”

Well, the poor pup was rather distraught about this, as you can imagine.  I had to spend the next few minutes patting his little head and giving him the whole “kids can be so cruel” speech.

But to drive the point home, Chris and I have decided to enter him in a calendar contest for the dogs in our neighborhood.  You have to upload pictures to this site, and the best ones get featured in a 2009 calendar.

I know.  It’s ridiculous.  But that’s not even the worst part.

The worst part is that I am a stage mother.

Last night, while Chris and I were carefully selecting the pictures to submit, I found myself saying things like:

“They’re going to want him for every month!”

and

“These other dogs totally don’t stand a chance.”

and

“If he’s not picked, I’m going to have to have a word with them.”

I had no idea I had it in me.  I’m really not the stage mother type.  I don’t try to dress him up or make him perform tricks (mostly because the only “trick” he knows, sit, isn’t all that impressive, let’s be honest). I do sometimes show his picture to random strangers my friends at the bar, but that really has more to do with a drinking problem.

But seriously, would you look at this:

They are so going to want him for every month.

Read Full Post »

This is really a dog blog.

I was really busy all morning and therefore slightly stressed, so I decided to take Jack on a little mid-day walk and get some fresh air.

We stopped at a cafe and I had an iced coffee:

And I bought Jack a little bone biscuit:

He carried it in his mouth all the way home:

And then left half of it in crumb form all over the carpet.  Portion control.

Read Full Post »