Archive for March, 2008
Springtime and BBQ food
Although the weather here in Richmond today isn’t exactly spring-ish, it definitely was a few days ago when it was about 75 degrees and sunny. Richmond weather likes to trick you a lot, with the temperatures climbing into the 60’s and 70’s in January and then diving back down to the 30’s the next day. But even though the weather’s shitty today I know that technically it IS spring and I have very high hopes that the warmer weather will return.
Josh and I have been quite busy with our gardening. We have a front covered porch on our apartment that faces north and a back stairway/porch that faces south, so we’ve done some container gardening with flowers and veggies for both sun and shade. Last year we grew roma tomatoes (our favorite tomatoes ever) and some green bell peppers on our back porch, and this year we planted some more baby tomato plants. They do surprisingly well in a large pot! We were able to have fresh tomatoes all last summer and we’re hoping for even more this year. We also have a little herb garden that I started from seeds and a larger one with herbs that we purchased. I can’t wait to be able to use them in our cooking!
Our apartment building isn’t exactly the prettiest, landscaping wise, but we knew we could at least do something about the porch outside our own apartment. In the back we attached some brackets to hang two window boxes and we planted tulips (my favorite flower of all time) and pansies. They make the outside of our apartment look really beautiful and springy. Our two cats Stewie and Sara love to watch birds, so we hung two bird feeders back there and we get tons of birds now. Here’s a shot of all three babies watching the birds.
My sister Ally and her boyfriend William bought us a grill for Christmas a few years ago and we’ve had many great meals with that bad boy. The other day Josh got inspired to fire it up for the first time this year, so he grilled some veggie burgers, Tofurky beer brats, and fresh corn on the cob and I made my grandma’s famous coleslaw to go with it (because you can’t have a BBQ without coleslaw).
We have many BBQ and picnic recipes that my family loves, but I thought I’d start off the season with posting my grandma’s Summer Coleslaw recipe. I’ve tried lots of different coleslaw’s and in my opinion this one is by far the best. You can use prepared coleslaw mixes (which is just shredded cabbage and usually carrots too) to make the recipe a little easier and it still comes out great. I’m so excited for summer so we can start making all these yummy barbecue foods..we’ve got some ideas swirling around our heads for a kickass barbecue sauce..it’s going to be delicious 
1 comment March 30, 2008
5 facts from Josh and Chelsea
So Chelsea and I were tagged here at Lentil Penguins, and apparently we have to post 5 NEW things about ourselves.
Heres my post:
1. I love flowers. I know kinda girly but whatever. Flowers are amazing, and I hope to one day study botany…that’s my second greatest passion right behind cooking, oh wait no third. Both are behind teaching. Well……. its a passion.
2. I am a teacher! Currently I am an art/support teacher at the Richmond Waldorf School in wonderful Richmond Virginia.
3. I love vintage motercycles and scooters, and bikes, and cars, pretty much anything with wheels thats old.
4. I want to learn how to lay brick, both my father and grandfather are masons.
5. I want to write a Vegan Cooking Zine, with Chelsea, and sell it online for cheap, to all of you, SOON!!!!!
Here’s Chelsea’s post:
1. I have been in college since the age of 16. I am an interior design student at Virginia Commonwealth University. I am in the 2nd semester of my junior year and I can’t wait to finish!
2. I love gardening. Whether it be in containers or right in the ground, I love planting and growing flowers and vegetables. There’s nothing better than going out to your garden and picking vegetables to cook dinner with. We live in a small apartment but we’ve been able to create two different garden spaces on our front and back porches, using flower boxes and other non-traditional containers like old kitty litter plastic bins and planting right into a bag of soil. I don’t think I could go through spring and summer without planting.
3. I ride a vintage 1980 Vespa small frame. And by ride I mean it used to run, it’s now in the shop again being put back together since it was stolen last summer. It’s a work in progress, it may never be finished…(<–if you got that Mixed Nuts quote you get 100 points).
4. I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day, with very few exceptions, and it never seems to get old.
5. I have been vegetarian since the age of 4 and vegan for 3 years.
We are going to tag the following blogs: Eat Air, Kamutflake Girl, Veglicious, Bittersweet, and Vegan Yum Yum.
4 comments March 27, 2008
Easter Sunday
We took Olly up to my parent’s house this past weekend for Easter. Now when I say “for Easter,” it’s more of just an excuse for the family to get together, not because we’re celebrating Easter in the religious way. Josh and I like to call Easter “Jesus Zombie Day,” because, well, isn’t it?
As you can see my family is not the religious type, which is not to say that we don’t have our own spiritual traditions. Every Sunday my dad takes their two dogs (Jack and Susie) to church, and by church I mean the woods. My parents have 4 acres of land in Culpeper, VA and the land behind the house is hundreds of acres of woods, and every Sunday my dad takes the dogs for a long hike. He calls it “church” because for us being in nature is being close to what we believe is the higher power, Mother Nature. Jack and Susie’s biological clock is insanely correct. They know when it’s Sunday. Sunday morning all you have to do is say “Do you want to go to church?” and right away their ears perk up and Susie starts her barking and chasing my dad around the house until he finally lets them out into the wild.
This weekend we were able to get their Saturday so that we could take Olly to church with my dad on Sunday morning. Now I’m not usually the outdoor type. I am deathly afraid of ticks and I seem to be the one who despite how many times my family reassures me that it’s “Much too cold for ticks” or “Not tick season,” I still am the one who always attracts those damn things. I have been known to wear knee-high toe socks, long pants, boots, a sweatshirt, hat, and gloves on an 85 degree summer night in order to join everyone for a drum circle back in the woods. That’s how much I hate ticks. But they guilted me into it this time and I ended up joining my mom, dad, Josh, and the 3 dogs for church on Jesus Zombie Day.
Note the sweet hat my dad’s wearing? I made it for him
Yes, Josh and I were wearing matching bandanas….
It was a gorgeous day. All the puppies had a great time, and of course Olly found every single muddy stream known to man-kind and jumped through each one, awarding her the dirtiest dog of the day.
Here’s a shot of the dinner we had the night before. My dad had planned to make his famous Greek potatoes and grilled asparagus. When I asked him what else we were going he have he said, “Bread and salad.” Apparently he thought that was going to be enough for dinner but I thought otherwise. After convincing him that one more thing would make the dinner even better, I decided to make a pasta with a creamy cheese-like sauce. It turned out soooo ridiculously good. I’m going to tinker with the recipe a bit before I post it, but this sauce was so close to a creamy alfredo sauce that it made us all freak out. Make sure to check back for the recipe though.. trust me, you’ll want to try it!
6 comments March 25, 2008
Not to toot our own horn…
..but our White Pizza with Spinach and Roma Tomatoes is so effing good. We’ve been making it probably twice a week now and each time we make it it gets better and better.
We’ve perfected the cheese-stuffed crust technique and oh my god is it splendid. Isa over at the Post Punk Kitchen recently had a post about this new vegan cheese called Teese. Apparently it tastes a lot like Follow Your Heart cheese but melts a whole lot better. We’ve tried FYH, and we think it’s okay, but our favorite brand has to be Tofutti.
It tastes great, it melts, it goes great on grilled cheese, sliced up and put on pizza, but most of all it makes our stuffed crust pizza taste like the real thing. Here’s a few shots of Josh making the crust (and Olly sitting in the doorway watching the birds)…
He just rolls out the dough onto a pan and then folds it up and over a row of cheese and voila, vegan stuffed crust goodness. Notice the melted cheese oozing out of the crust? Yeah. Your welcome. So we’ve had this pizza a few times this week, and it really does keep getting better and better.
Now that I’ve talked about how good our pizza is, I’ll move on to the part about us realizing that we’ve gained weight again and since it’s almost “bathing suit season,” we figured now’s the time to start exercising and hopefully losing some pounds. Since we’re on spring break we’ve been taking Olly to the park and to the James River a lot these past few days. She’s been having a blast and it’s given us all a chance to work off some calories.
It’s hard to be on a diet/exercise routine when you have all these great ideas for cakes and cupcakes and sweets…but I doubt it will stop us from baking up a storm in the kitchen. Maybe we can make some low-fat cupcakes..?..ahh, who are we kidding.
2 comments March 14, 2008
