Hey New Year. Guess I’m a bit late introducing you to Crack the Plates. Oh well! Better late than never!
Sadly, my resolutions did not include blogging more often or making fewer super-long posts, so here goes.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Got 2013 off on the right foot with lunch with two of our most favorite people in the world: Stephanie and Colin. I made the southern new year essentials: greens and black-eyed peas. The main course was a Grit-style casserole of rice covered in fried tofu and smothered in savory gravy.
I love how Nate’s mom always makes these sweet little hand-drawn place cards for special meals, so I made some too – only without any lovely art. Instead, I wrote corny New Year’s questions on the back for us to answer.
We gave C&S their Christmas gifts: a giant basket of our homemade goodies. And they, knowing our taste so well, gave us homemade gifts, too – Stephanie’s amazing green tomato chow chow, luscious apple butter, and a seriously tasty looking apple relish. I love homemade gifts!!
Treats from Stephanie
Auspiciously, some red-winged blackbirds stopped by while we were dining.
We drank buckwheat “soba” tea for extra good luck.
After a long, leisurely lunch and hours of conversation, we parted ways and Nate and I headed over to Criminal Records to see our pal Lillian at the annual New Year’s Day Vegan Good Luck Potluck.
Food was graciously provided by Dough Bakery and volunteers, and donations were collected for Ahimsa House, Atlanta’s companion animal-welcoming domestic violence shelter.
Gorging ourselves with good luck…
We spent the rest of the day in quiet contemplation of our 2012 shortcomings and the promise of 2013. I think we’d both been looking forward to the new year for a while. I was able to handily make a list of things I wanted to work on.
When I wasn’t taking a million pictures of Lua, that is:
Hey, they’re only little once!
Wednesday, January 2
My first Vegetable Husband route of 2013 delivered a giant cabbage, kohlrabi with beautiful greens, sweet potatoes, broccoli, green onions, kale, parsley, and collards.
I made a modest cabbage soup, and afterwards worked on New Year’s Letters.
Thursday, January 3 & Friday January 4
…I devoted to preparing a boatload of New Year’s Letters to go out to friends throughout the US (and a couple overseas). I barely made it to the post office before closing time.
Believe it or not, this is just a sample of the letters mailed that day.
I also made muffins for our mail carrier. Here’s the recipe for these healthy beauties:
We had our friends Vic and Ashley over for dinner that night, which reminds me – it’s high time we had them over again! We played Dominion
Saturday January 5
The BEST thing happened! We received a package from my penpal Danielle and it was filled with homemade lovelies! Beautiful coasters (that we now use constantly) and best of all: CAT TOYS!
Lua with her new best friend / enemy.
Perl is all teeth.
Except when she’s all claws. You see what they do to our chairs.
Even Miss Rar got into it.
Sunday January 6
Not too much going on. Went to church. Talked to my lovely grandma. Took it easy.
Monday January 7
Dinner with Colin and Stephanie at their place:
We had a French-inspired menu of kohlrabi gratin, french onion soup, and braised cabbage with vegan bacon.
The gratin was my favorite! Stephanie thought it was a bit too cashew-creamy, but I thought it was perfect. I love how raw cashew cream sauces lend a bit of smokiness, which was perfect in the ultra-creamy dish. S is such a great cook!
I also nabbed a few pictures of their photogenic cat Leela. This one is my fave…
…probably because she looks like she just threw back three of those Mother Earths.
Where the hell did my beer go?
Tuesday January 8
Wrote this post about the end of 2012 (Christmas in New York).
Greeted another auspicious flock of red-winged blackbirds.
Today was also remarkable because I made the final payment on the smallest of my three student loans – the $3K that Nate and I lived off of while we were both in school. Two bad the others are much, much bigger.
Lunch: crispy chickpeas and a raw kale salad. For dessert? One of my favorites:
I have been enjoying these little Croatian treats since college, when I stumbled upon the from-scratch vegan version in one of our little heath food stores (Rainbow in Decatur). Make no mistake: it’s no health food. It is yellow cake drenched in chocolate and then covered in sweet coconut flakes. (And it’s virtually the same as Australian lamingtons, if you’re familiar with those.) So simple, so divine. If Rainbow ever stops making vegan cupavci, I will cry a river… though it obviously wouldn’t be all that difficult for me to start making these myself.
Dinner: tofu jalfrezi with greens and roasted romanesco (the green fractals!). Romanesco might just be my new favorite vegetable.
Tuesdays are great because Nate works from home. Well, tries. There are lots of distractions.
Like this.
And this. Too much adorableness, no?
Later that night we went to Wrecking Bar for a snack and a beer (Nate). He tried the Husker (Squared) Imperial Red Rye: “We took a small batch of our Husker Red Rye and boiled the heck out of it and added more hops. The result is a high gravity Imperial Red Rye – nice spicy undertones from the 30% rye, and loads of hops bitterness, flavor and aroma from the generous use of Centennial, Falconers Flight and Zythos. This one will sneak up on you, so beware.” I’m not a beer drinker, but maybe you are?
I went for one of the Tuesday night vegan specials, homemade naan with a sort of saag paneer with fresh nut-based cheese, served in a cast-iron pot on a rock slab. A fitting end to a lovely food day.
Wednesday January 9
Wednesday morning I was a bakin’ fool, preparing all kinds of goodies for Nate’s work friends (and the ones I like). I made cowboy cookies (from Vegan Cookies Invade…) and my own special oatmeal cream pie. You know the ones:
I also prettied up all their other homemade gifts (spirits, etc) with bags and bows. Better still, I delivered everything to Nate’s office so he wouldn’t have to worry with bringing them on the bus! Yes, I am a magical fairy of deliciousness.
Good deeds done, I headed off to Vegetable Husband headquarters in East Point to sort with one of my bestest friends, Christin, and our fabulousness-in-charge, Margie.
My route
We had all kinds of good stuff this week: carrots with tops, organic grapefruit from Florida, black radishes, curly kale, sweet potatoes, pea shoots, young komatsuna greens, and a big bag of parsley. Everything except the fruit was organically grown around Atlanta.
Thursday January 10
A big day!
I got up early to go to the hardware store – more on that to come. But first, breakfast:
A scramble with two salsas and the last of my Treeline Cheese from NY.
I spent the whole day helping Ken of the Hudson Valley Seed Library put together his booth for AmericasMart. It was damaged on the way to Atlanta, hence the hardware trip. It was so amazing to see this beautiful display come together from damaged wood and a pile of boxes. It was also a lot of work.
More on this in a moment.
Friday January 11
I put together a certifiably awesome care package for my penpal Danielle and her cats.
Nate and I met up for lunch at Dua downtown, one of our favorite spots. The lemongrass tofu pictured above is the best! I always request noodles instead of rice (though their rice is really good).
We splurged and got some of the “Award Winning Samosas” at Naanstop down the street. Naanstop is kinda like Chipotle for Indian food, as you can see above. They have a number of vegan options.
I enjoy watching the naan-making process.
Went home and played with the big girls.
Saturday January 12 – Tuesday January 15
After setting up on Thursday, I returned to the AmericasMart to help Ken sell seeds. Mostly I stayed in the back and recorded his orders, but occasionally I covered at the front and interacted with potential buyers. It was easy to gush about HVSL’s gorgeous, unique merchandise, and I over the course of a few days, I even made handful of sales! Here are some highlights from our booth:
Bookmarks!
Saying goodbye to Ken after packing up our booth and webbing it in plastic. We were so tired. Do we look it? Ok, yeah, a little. I slept well that night!
Keep reading about our January adventures in the next post…