New and Noteworthy Veggie Burger

Our vegan adventure has led me to several products that I otherwise would have missed in my grocery store trips. One of the best discoveries has been the Trader Joe's Vegetable Masala Burger.

These little gems are made of potatoes, carrots, beans, bell pepper and spices. That's an ingredients list I can get behind. It only takes a few minutes to cook one up on the stove and they are especially good on a slice of multigrain bread with a .

Even Dave, who has spent more than a few minutes of his life making fun of his sister for eating veggie burgers, admitted that these were pretty tasty.

These are definitely worth a shot, whether or not you are vegan. 

Vegan Challenge

Confession time: For the last three weeks Dave and I have been...vegan. Not just vegan, but no-booze vegan. No booze, no meat, no dairy for three weeks. I am prepared to say that the no meat and dairy has been easier than the no drinking. Turns out I really like that 5 PM glass of wine while cooking dinner. Dave was not especially surprised that giving up beer was harder than giving up animal products in our food.

Why did we do this? Well, I had been feeling just gross at the end of the summer. Bloated, tired, grumpy, with a side dish of frequent migraines and indigestion. So I wanted to do a kind of "cleanse" but not the kind that involved drinking only lemonade and cayenne pepper like Beyonce. Veganism seemed like a good, and not completely unreasonable, choice. When I broached the subject with Dave and said I was "thinking about trying it," he responded, with less snark than I probably deserved, "Whenever you say you are 'thinking about' something like this, we are totally doing it."

So we jumped in. I invested in quite a few vegan-friendly products. The beans, greens and tofu have been great. And I love the coconut milk hazelnut coffee creamer I found at Whole Foods. The vegan "cheese" was a little scary, however. Which leads me to a couple of realizations I have had over the past three weeks:

-Being a rookie vegan has been a challenge. Not so much because I felt deprived of previously beloved foods, but because I have had to cook in a totally different way. When a bean product becomes your protein source, you have to really mix it up or you will go crazy. And since I am incapable of cooking less than 8 servings of beans at a time, apparently, I have had a lot of leftovers in my fridge.

-If you are going to go vegan, you gotta go all in and you can't rely on vegan alternatives of animal based foods. Vegan meatballs are pretty good. Veganaise is fine on a sandwich. And I could learn to like non-dairy milks. (Again that hazelnut creamer rocks.) But vegan cheese, sour cream, cream cheese...icky gross.

-Being vegan, and dry, has actually made me feel "cleansed" in many ways. I certainly feel less bloated. I did lose a few pounds. And for the first time in years, I have had none of my typical indigestion issues,.

So what now? We are breaking our vegan/booze fast on Saturday when we celebrate Josh's birthday at one of our favorite spots, Earth Bread & Brewery. Phenomenal beer and pizza - if you in the Philly area, check it out. After than, I will remain booze free during the week. But it is playoff baseball, so I think it is legit to have a beer on the weekend while watching the game. Also, Dave and Josh brewed amazing pumpkin beer which I am dying to have on a cool fall night. I will maintain many of the vegan ways we established these past three weeks, as well. I have learned to really like lentils and come up with more than a few ways to serve tofu. If nothing else this cleanse has re-affirmed my commitment to only eat humanely raised meat and dairy. I had sort of gotten away from this vow in the interest of time, money and convenience, but I am back on track. Now I know that if I can't get chicken or eggs or cheese from a sustainable source, I have lots of vegan recipes up my sleeve.

Phillies Family

Before Dave, I was not really into baseball. I loved other professional sports, but baseball didn't really do it for me. Dave, on the other hand, has spent his whole life rooting for the Phils. I can say that my relatively recent love for the Phillies is entirely Dave's doing. (It doesn't hurt that they have been amazingly good over the past five years.)

So now we are a Phillies-loving family.  Kara asks every morning if the Phils won last night. Jamie often asks to wear his Phillies t-shirt like daddy does. And even though it is outrageously expensive, we have managed to go to at least one game every year.

This year Dave and I took Kara to a night game. As it turns out, we were at the game when the Phils clinched the NL East division championship for the 5th year in a row. It may sound cliche, but the stadium was electric that night. Not only did the Phillies win, but Kara got to see Raul Ibanez hit a grand slam. I fear that future Phillies outings wont live up to this one.

It was an amazing night. Baseball aside, it was wonderful to have some time with just our girl. She has been so accepting of her little brother, but I know how much she loves to have time without the little menace. We were so happy that we could give her this special night.

10 Minute Miso Soup

It's not even October and we have already had a nasty cold make its way through our family. Starting with Jamie last week, this little virus has infected all of us in one way or another. I am particularly enjoying the rattling, tubercular-sounding cough. Kara felt so cruddy yesterday that I had her stay home. A sick day in September? Really?

Even though it has been humid and warm all week, this little bout of illness made me crave some soothing soup. I had just read about the medicinal qualities of miso. And since everything you read on the internet must be true, I thought that I would make a little miso soup to help the healing process. (Also, I happened to have some miso in my fridge.)

Here's the thing, if you like miso soup, you should make some - even if you aren't suffering from an awful cold. It is really easy and tasted great. Most miso soup recipes call for chicken stock or dashi, a Japanese soup stock that you can buy in any Asian grocery store. I didn't have either of these ingredients, so I made a vegetarian miso soup. The whole thing was complete in about 10 minutes.

-Chop some vegetables to flavor your soup. I used one shallot, a stalk of celery and one carrot.
-Saute the veggies in a pot with a bit of oil for a few minutes.
-Add 4 cups of water or stock of any kind.
-Bring up to a simmer. At this point I added about a cup of cubed firm tofu. Completely optional.
-In a small bowl add 2-4 tbsp of miso paste. Scoop out some of the hot water from the pot into the bowl and dissolve the miso. Pour the now liquid miso into the pot.
*Note: There are lots of miso varieties. I had a mild white miso in my refrigerator, but other varieties would work too. Also, the saltiness and strength of miso can vary widely, so start small. You can always add more if the soup doesn't taste "misoy" enough.
-Taste and season. You can add some soy sauce or red pepper flakes if that works for you.
-One last important instruction: Don't boil your soup with the miso in it. The miso will turn gritty and yucky.

Fried Green Tomato...Salad

This summer has been rough on our tomato plants. First we had scorching heat. Then we got a full month of rain. Now summer is dragging into fall and our tomatoes are limping to the finish line. After getting a pretty good initial crop, a good deal of which was lost to thirsty squirrels and birds, the second wave of tomatoes were splitting as soon as they even considered turning red. I finally gave up on about half of the plants and pulled them out to make room for some fall greens.

One of the ways I have been coping with these tomato challenges is to embrace the fried green tomato. There are countless recipes and techniques for making these little treats. But the basic idea in all of them is to dredge the slices in some combination of milk, egg, breadcrumbs, flour and/or cornmeal and then fry them up in vegetable oil. I think I probably use a different "recipe" every time. I only have two pieces of green tomato frying advice: 1st Salt the tomato slices, let them sit for 15 minutes or so and blot off the water and 2nd double dredge them (i.e. coat them in flour, then a milk/egg, then breadcrumbs/cornmeal).

The last time I made these treats, I put them on top of a salad. Amazingly good. I used the recipe for the cilantro lime dipping sauce to make a salad dressing.

Tobermory Vacation

Well, we've been back from our vacation to my mom's place in Tobermory for almost a month, so I suppose it's time to actually post some of the amazing pictures from our trip. (You may be asking, "Where the heck is Tobermory? Here you go.)

Josh, who has joined us on our yearly jaunt three times now, gave the best description of a Tobermory vaction: "There isn't much to do...except relax and look at a lot of beautiful stuff." These sunset shots are a pretty perfect example of the incredible beauty of the place.

Tobermory has also been the setting for some of our best family shots.

Kara & my mom exploring the lake.

Kara giving Jamie some kind of Canadian sand treatment.

Daddy's girl

Kara and I at the Grotto. That's a cliff we are standing on. Nervous mommy.

This year Dave got some particularly cute shots of Jamie.

Thanks to Josh for this one.

That Time of Year

I have been a blogging slacker of late. My primary excuse is that my life is a little hellish right now.  It turns out that being a single mom most of the week with two kids at home all day and no naps anymore is really fracking hard. So hard that the thought of being on the computer after all the bedtime rigamarole is just really unappealing. My secondary excuse is that we were on vacation.(I intend to post photos this week for sure.) My final excuse is that it's canning time.

Last year I wrote about my deeply entrenched and completely insane tomato anxiety issue. I would like to say that this has abated over the year, but the fact that we actually used all of the tomatoes I canned and froze last year has only exacerbated the problem. On Friday I actually drove to Shady Maple Farm Market in Lancaster to buy five big boxes (about 1/2 bushel each) of plum tomatoes. (Huge Huge thanks to Marissa at Food in Jars for the lead on this really cool market.) And over the past two days, I have peeled, seeded, chopped and preserved all of those suckers. You know you have issues when it is 9:30 on Sunday night and you and your husband are not even half way done making salsa.

We did most of the heavy lifting yesterday, but I had one more recipe to make today. It is the most delicious tomato jam. I found the recipe last year on Food in Jars. Even if you aren't really into canning. Even if you don't have a bizarre need to freeze dozens of bags of tomato sauce. That is, even if you are a normal person, you should make this jam. All you need is 5 lbs of tomatoes, sugar, a little ginger and a few spices. It is so easy and delicious - makes a great holiday gift for a host, teacher, friend etc. Not for nothing, it also makes your kitchen smell fabulous.

Freshest Fish

One of the best things about visiting Cape Cod last weekend was having access to amazing fresh fish. My amazing friend and host, Ellie, is also an amazing cook, so I was happy to let her prepare fish dinners both nights.

The first night we had Striper, aka Striped Bass, that had been pulled out of the ocean within 24 hours of purchase. Ellie placed the fillet in a tin foil packet, doused it with some white wine, salt, pepper, lemon and thyme and basil from the deck garden and let it steam on the grill. Oh my goodness! It was some of the best fish I have ever had.

Let me note, that my bar for Striper is pretty high as my father in law catches quite a bit of it in Avalon, NJ. But something about being on vacation, seeing the pier where the fish come in, having a dear friend do the cooking, made this fish dinner particularly wonderful.

Oh yeah, we also got lobster rolls for lunch. Unbelievably delicious.

Thank you, Ellie, for being a gracious and generous hostess last weekend. And thanks, too, for the over 20 years of enduring friendship. You are the best.

Cape Cod Adventure

Last weekend I took the kids on a trip up north to see my grandmother in Boston and then visit with my friend Ellie and her lovely children on Cape Cod. While there were a few rough patches - with four kids, two moms, no dads and a lot of activity, that's to be expected - overall it was a wonderful adventure. I love that our children are developing a friendship that seems to transcend time and distance apart. The more they play, the more El and I get to actually talk to each other.

Though I am clearly biased, I think they were the cutest kids on the Cape, too. A few picture to support this claim...

Jamie - Hamming it up at our last dinner.

Luke - looking so much like his dad, it's scary.

The kids graciously agreed to sit for a picture...if I got them ice cream as payment. Sharks!

I love this portrait of Catharine - totally captures her impish charm.

I tried to get Ellie her Christmas card shot, but the kids wouldn't sit any closer together.

Ellie tried to get a picture of me with both kids - tickling was necessary to produce smiles.

Super Salads

I have been all about the dinner salads recently. Even though I vastly prefer someone else to make a salad for me (it just tastes better that way), my desire for something cool, nutritious and satisfying overrides my distaste for making my own salad. And though I have a tendency to get in to a rut when it comes to salad making, I surprised myself recently with some new, and delicious, creations. Here is one that was especially good.

Salad "recipes" always seem silly to me, so I will just give the gist of what I did.

Mediterranean Salad
-Assemble whatever greens and additional veggies you like on your salad. I used some chopped cucumbers, red pepper, tomatoes.

-In a frying pan saute some mushrooms and sliced onions until they soften. Then add some zucchini slices to the pan and fry them up with olive oil, salt and pepper. (Our garden produced a huge zucchini, and I have been using it in pieces for over a week.)

-Take the zucchini out and sprinkle some grated Parmesan on top. Don't skimp. Don't wait until the rounds get cold or the Parm wont get melty and extra delicious. Cut up the zucchini to a size that suits you.

-Add the grilled veggies to your salad and dress with oil and balsamic vinegar. I also added some diced fresh mozzarella and some chicken tossed in pesto.

Yep, I put more grated Parmesan on top. I didn't say it was a "lite" salad, I just said it was yummy.

Pesto Pizza - On the Grill

It is hardly news that this summer has been fracking hot. Even though my house has central AC, I am loath to heat up my kitchen with the oven unless there is a really compelling reason. Normally, making pizza would fall into this "compelling reason" category. But last year, I finally learned to make pizza on the grill, and now pizza is in our summer dinner repertoire. Yay!

If you have a grill and some pizza dough, give this a try. Super easy.

-Heat your grill on high. My lamo grill thermometer, which may be entirely inaccurate, says that high is 400ish.
-While the grill is heating up, roll out your pizza dough and assemble your toppings on a plate to bring out to the grill. This is key: pizza on the grill is quick, so you need to be ready to go all at once.
-Slide the dough onto the grill and close it up. Let it cook for 3-4 minutes. Take a peak. If it has firmed up and getting grill marks, use tongs and flip it over.
-Quickly put your toppings on and close up the grill again. Wait another 3 minutes or so. Peak. Melty cheese? Browning crust? You are good to go. Pull it off and let it cool for a few minutes before you serve it.

Last week I used the grill method to make a delicious pesto, chicken and fresh mozzarella pizza. It rocked.

The beauty of using the grill, in addition to preventing your kitchen from becoming a sweat lodge, is that you can easily grill vegetables to adorn your lovely pizza. I grilled up onions and zucchinni for this one, though the zucchini ended up being a side dish.

Also, if your children, for reasons unfathomable, reject pizza as a dinner option, use some of the extra dough to make grilled pita. Just roll it super thin, toss it on the grill and don't flip it. It will make a super cool bubble for your kids to pop.

Summer Reading

I will admit that I am not always thrilled by the prospect of my daughter growing up. (Maybe it was four days looking at scantily clad teenage girls on the beach. Maybe it is the increase in eye rolls. Maybe it is fact that in the not too distant future she will be as tall as me.) When they are babies, it is so easy remain focused on just getting through the most recent phase and mastering the next milestone (sleeping through the night, sleeping in a bed, crawling, walking, talking, giving up the bottle, drinking from a cup, eating real food, potty training, binky relinquishing, etc.) But as they grow up, and those milestones spread out, I find myself clinging to the wild fantasy that my kids can, maybe just for me, stay young forever.

But the one thing about a growing up girl that I can embrace without ambivalence is Kara's reading repertoire. We still read lots of picture books, which I still love. But we have now fully entered the age of chapter books. Granted our first forays into this new, big kid arena have been the Magic Tree House series  and the Rainbow Fairies books - neither of which could be characterized as rich or deep . But we are getting close to the age for E.B. White. (Stuart Little is waiting in the queue behind a seemingly endless supply of fairies.) And he is just a gateway to Roald Dahl. And before we know it the Narnia books will be on the shelf...and from there it is just a short walk to Ender's Game, and all of Dave's plans to make Kara in to a super-nerd will be realized.

I realize I am doing it again. Looking ahead to the next book when I should be enjoying where she is at right now. But I can't help it entirely - those fairy books are killing me. Except that she loves them. And I love that she loves to read. And I love to read to her. I suppose E.B. White can wait. For at least another couple of months.

For a great resource, check out Pam Allyn's What to Read When.She not only makes recommendations by age, but she also groups books thematically (books about school, books about imagination, books about death of a pet etc.).

Also, if, like me, you have a nostalgic pang for all things E.B. White, check out this review of The Story of Charlotte's Web on Fresh Air. I was all choked up driving home. Sounds like a wonderful exploration of the author and his masterwork of children's literature.

Pure Joy

We just got back from a long holiday weekend at the beach. Is there any better place to capture the pure joy of summer?

All pics by Dave. Amazing.