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.

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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.

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