Kind hippie food

It was a dark and stormy night...and then I made some vegan comfort food. I don't normally cook something with the express intent of veganess. I love butter. I love cheese! Oh, brother. Do I love cheese. I love pepperoni pizza. [Editor's note: dear family, when I leave this mortal coil, please carve the bold text above onto a tree somewhere beautiful, beneath an artist's rendering of my likeness. A cypress overlooking the coast in Big Sur would be nice and I don't care if it kills the tree. I won't go alone.] Anyway, anyways, many ways! I tried this vegan recipe I found on Pinterest, where I'm still trying to eke out a hoarder's trove of Internet whimsy. I forgot who pinned it, but I was drawn to it because I can never get enough mushroom gravy in my life. It came out nicely. It had a deeply earthy taste that was made extra earthy by the nutritional yeast, and brightened by the kale and garlic.


I had a lot of mushrooms and kale leftover, so I made these sandwiches the next night:


This is inspired by the sandwich they sell at Magpie. It has crusty bread, lemony-garlic white bean spread, garlic-sauteed kale, mushrooms and more garlic. While it was so, so good, it was a total gout trigger for the old man. Sorry, babe. Blame the mushrooms.

I didn't mention the Halloween show yet. We played first, so many of our friends missed us. The organizers weren't kidding when they said it would start on time! I think it went well. I was being a total baby about playing bass, but that's what you get when you take me out of my comfort zone. I didn't do terrible, but I won't be picking that bass up again for a while. All of the other bands were great. Every single one. I had a couple too many brews and thought I was being really funny, which is a sure sign of me not being very funny. I definitely earned the next morning's greasy breakfast.

Today's post is brought to you by extremely shady, pork-barrelling kale and mushroom lobbyists.

Wild, Wild Nights

We had a really fun family outing last Saturday. First, we went to a few thrift shops to look for our Halloween show costume pieces (we're Rushmore). Halloween in March? Yes. What? I found a perfect Max Fischer tie and Leon found a drab brown, Herman Blume jacket. Ira was super bummed that he didn't find any cool toys that weren't busted up junk. There is no better way to depress the hell out of me than to cruise the toy section at at thrift store. Runners up on my list of sads makers include: holiday socks, lost helium balloons, sickly looking plants and "I love you this much" figurines.

Anyway, it was a fruitful trip and I feel maybe 10% less nervous about the upcoming performance. We were hungry after all that shopping, so we went to dinner. Disclosure: I was starving. I usually pack snacks in this big old purse of mine but Saturday, I just forgot. I became so hungry...I mean hangry, I was woozy and could scarcely think straight. We ended up at Jack's right in time for the dinner rush. We got our salads and sides as the dining room just about filled up. As I scanned the room, limping around like a emaciated zombie, a cheery older lady with rotten teeth invited us to share her table. She was alone and her table could easily seat 5. Having no other choice, we accepted. I instantly regretted it. She was relentless in her efforts to chat us up with inane banter for our entire meal span while perpetually pushing around the same 4 wilty lettuce leaves and nursing a 32 ounce cup of ice water. What was more painful is that she had a pal: a twin table miser! Right. Next. To. Her. This poor woman was engaged in the exact behavior. A single person, sitting alone at a 4 top table, eating her entire meal with a shrimp fork and an eye dropper. Please! Ladies, could you sit together? They didn't even make a move to sit together, but by that time, my hangry brain-finally soothed by sustainence, began to calm down. Or maybe I was lulled by their cackling. I was polite. I answered our dining companion's questions about vegetarianism: yes, I can eat bread (WTF?), no I don't deprive myself of sugar, no I won't finish this salad and be hungry an hour after. You know, the usual questions I get. We finished up, thanked her warmly for sharing the table and fled. She might be sitting there still, next to but not with her table miser friend.

Next we hit up the gelato shop around the corner where I had the creamiest macadamia, carmel, coconut gelato in all of Midtown. Ira had chocolate-chocolate chip. The kid loves chocolate. I snapped the above photo after I encouraged him to drink down the melted gelato at the bottom of his cup. I wiped his face down nicely and we flew some Supermans past Mulvaney's B&L. A Superman? Oh, that's when you pick up your kid by the middle and they stretch their little arms and legs out Superman-style while you fly them by some restaruant or shop windows. This game is such a blast for Ira. He loves it and I love to see him laugh. Such a fun night in Midtown.

Back in the saddle

I started getting back on the bike. Slowly. While I ended my cycling season on a strong note last year, picking up again has been glacial in pace. Get ready for the Excuse Cannon® (patent pending). First, I was hit with a succession of sinus infections and respiratory viruses. I was sick from Thanksgiving until about last week. Seriously! I had maybe one glowing week in late January where I wasn't unloading a few tablespoons of phlegm every five minutes. Sorry. I said it and now you're thinking about my phlegm.

Second, it was cold. If I can be dramatic, it was arctic cold at times! Have you ever ridden a bike on a windy day? That wind will just go right through you.

Third, I got lazy. Finally feeling well and motivated as of two weekends ago, I got back in the saddle and did about an hour of intervals on my trainer, which is a metal stand that props your back tire up against a roller and you spin your pedals like you would a stationary bike. It's a convenient tool and I've used it indoors and outdoors. However, it's super boring. I usually try to watch a movie on my phone with earbuds or listen to a podcast. It's always more fun to be out on the bike trail, riding through all that nature and chatting with my brother, HH*.

I'd really love to get back on the bike this coming weekend for some much needed TITS (ugh, that's my most hated initialism, but it stands for Time In The Saddle), but guess what? I'm busy. Excuse number four!

The only thing I ever want any more is more time.


*Not intended to be a factual brother.

Phoning it in again

I'm so web weary! Here's a few photos from my phone to catch us all up. My phone! Can you believe it makes calls, too? Anyway, I'm not feeling so great today and some of these totally warmed my cold, cold heart.

These boys are the best boys in the known world.



I took Ira to Whole Foods last night and we had a lovely dinner. I swear he's the best dining companion when it's just me and him. I let him pick his plate and he chose a huge slice of cheese pizza, a hard boiled egg, melon cubes and grapes. I had some beans and rice dish which was nice and smoky. I ate most of it before I discovered that it was bacon that was making it nice and smoky for me. Here's Ira enjoying some veggie bacon and syrup some morning not that long ago.



Riblet made use of Ira's safety headphones when Leon brought his guitar home from the shop, plugged it in and turned it up to 11, you know, just to see if it worked. It worked. So did the headphones. Poor puppin dogs didn't care to take them off.




"bAc SAbETH MrNFIr" or Black Sabbath, Minds Are on Fire. This is some "album" art Ira brought home from school. He really loves Black Sabbath right now. At first I was a little worried, but now I think it's cute. Some other art he brought home this week was not so cute. It was inspired, shall we say, by a Coop girl he saw [I'm making the international sign for boobs]. We had a talk about appropriate art for school and all that, but I kind of had to let dad take that one over. I couldn't keep a straight face. I won't post the art because this is a family blog and if you clutch your pearls any harder, you'll get a bad case of the claw. Here's the Black Sabbath concept album by Ira instead.




We had our annual Soup Swap last month and we came away with a really fantastic Grilled Mushroom Bisque made by Katy's beau. I made these little gruyere toasts to go with it. After the soup was gone, I kept making the toasts for a snack, for a nosh, for dinner. Take a little bit of good bread, I used cibatta. Grate some aged gruyere over the top and crack some black pepper over all of it. Set it under the broiler until the edges toast up and the cheese goes golden.




For Valentine's Day, I made these sweet cards for my boys. They are super hero lollipops with a little message written on the capes: Have a super Valentine's Day! Ira's is the orange one. He's always loved orange candy.




We had a super romantic Valentine's Day. We shared a pizza and pitcher at Zelda's bar. If you haven't done that, try it. It was kind of awesome and I can't even tell you why, it just was. After that, we had every intention to get Gunther's for dessert, but Gunther's was packed like a club on Friday night in Vegas, so we veered over to Pangea where I had this little gueuze and Leon got a really, really bad case of the gout.