Goodbye Blogger

So I'm pretty horrible about updating this blog, and decided it was time to move on to something more straightforward. Tumblr came to my attention and seemed to fit the bill for a simple yet flexible blogging platform, so I'm going to give that a try.

The plan moving forward will involve less witty banter and more recipes, which is really what I should have set out to do in the first place. So, without further ado take a trip over to my Tumblr blog. Enjoy!

First box of the year, or how to dismantle an atomic bomb

The first true signs of spring appeared today in Minneapolis—our first CSA box of the season from Harmony Valley Farm has arrived! There is something wonderful about opening up a the first box filled with the best things that the spring in Minnesota has to offer. Alive and green, it is such a refreshing treat after the cold months of winter officially draw to a close—despite the prospect of snow tomorrow night.

One of the challenges I look forward to each Thursday evening after we've picked up our box is trying to find a way to combine all the bounty contained inside into a week's worth of meals, all without having to make too many additional purchases at the Co-op. It's like solving a big puzzle, taking note of what we have on hand in the cupboards and hanging around in the fridge from the week before, then mapping it all out for the meals across the entire week. Despite how procedural my brain might be, I usually like to keep things spontaneous in the kitchen. The problem is, if we don't have a game plan stuff ends up going to waste—something I found out the hard way when we started this the whole CSA thing two years ago.

Read more...

Keep your elbows on the table

For whatever reason, when we started up our CSA two years ago the amount of pasta we were eating at home went down. Way down. I guess the vegetables were so good we just started making them the centerpiece of the meal—not merely a side. The fact the we had just gone vegetarian obviously had a huge impact on this change as well.

Finally it hit me—two years later—while browsing the aisles at the Seward Coop, how long it had been since I'd made a pasta dish at home. At this point we were vegan, and of course the first thing I thought of was everyone's childhood favorite: macaroni and cheese. So, with a little help and guidance from the eternally awesome tome Veganomicon (and a failed veganization of a Mark Bittman recipe), I set about bringing those fond childhood memories back.

Read more...

Rainy day waffle party

A couple weeks ago, someone broke the carafe for our office coffee maker and all hell broke loose. Since we have a lot of serious coffee drinkers in the office and it was a Monday morning no less, the crisis had to be resolved quickly. A new coffee maker was purchased at everyone's favorite downtown shopping hotspot and the daily grind returned to normal. Or so we thought.

After about two weeks we came to the conclusion that the new coffee maker wasn't quite up to snuff compared to our last model, and was brewing some pretty sub-standard coffee. Considering the fact that we have awesome beans on hand from Peace Coffee, it seemed almost sacrilegious to commit such an act. On top of it all, we have some folks in the office who insist on making coffee without reading the posted guidelines for the number of scoops to use. Yes, we do actually have posted guidelines (believe it or not). Desperate times call for desperate measures, so we scrounged amongst ourselves and were able to assemble a killer pressed coffee station right in our department.

Read more...