Pretty Picture Postcard Perfect.

Wintry. Albert Lea, Minn.

Soundtrack: Radio K (the best radio station in the world) -or This Minneapolis Band

Calle Limon!

A modest working-class street of houses in Southeast Austin where everyone gets all holiday cheery and adorns their exteriors with LEDs galore. We've visited every year that we've been here. Yes, the name of the street really is Calle Limon.

2nd Edition!: Cooking Plant-Based Recipes -- a SIX day retrospective

The almost-vegan (we eat honey!) cooking team has returned to show off their awesome yumminesses. Annnnnnnnnd, here we go!

Thursday: Drunkard's Noodles
A delicious Thai dish, usually made with fish sauce and/or oyster sauce. Matt's recipe uses vegan oyster sauce (available at an Asian supermarket near you!). Matt's really perfected the art of deep fried delicious tofu, and I am grateful.





















Friday: Creamy Pesto
Yep, that's correct; I said creamy pesto. It's actually super easy and decadent to make one's own vegan cream. Just throw a bunch of nuts (we used cashews) and water into a food processer until, well, creamy. So delicious and fatty (just like real cream, but with the healthy fats).
















Saturday: Vegan Pizza
The key to our amazing pizza? A marble rolling pin! Seriously, don't skimp on this amazing tool. The heavier, the better. Ours was a I'm-cleaning-out-the-basement-,-so-take-what-you-want kind of gift from my mother-in-law, and it's the most wonderful inadvertent present I could have ever hoped for.

Oh, and we know a superb soy-based mozzarella cheeze, if you're interested.

When my brother visited last month, we made some pizza, and he gave us one of the best compliments on it. He said, "It tastes like pizza!" So there you go.
















Sunday: Pumpkin Muffins (breakfast) -and- Pearled Barley, Tofu, and Kale Stew
'Tis the season for pumpkin stuff, which is convenient because this prettiest veggie works well for as an egg substitute when baking.































Monday: Braised Butternut Squash in a Tomato Sauce, with quinoa
This recipe actually calls for any pumpkin or squash of one's choice. In Chile, we made this dish often with this amazing, unique pumpkin they sold everywhere. It was great. Butternut squash worked fantastically, too. This is such a simple recipe with minimal ingredients but with so many taste dimensions. Plus, one of the ingredients is wine, so that means leftover wine TO DRINK!
















Tuesday: Bulgur Chile -and- Cornbread
This chile recipe has a special taste component--reconstituted dried chiles of one's choice (e.g. chipotle, guajillo, ancho, etc.). The bulgur is nice and filling and takes the place of ground meat or soy chunks.

Austin, Part 2: Rust Never Sleeps

'Tis the season for all things new and Black Friday-ish. Ish is right. Give me old, worn-in, and/or rusty. I'm happier with that.















In the heart of the East Side (the supposed and oft-dreaded "other side of the tracks") behind a fancy, dazzling fence, there lies a fascinating, puzzling RV graveyard.






























And, adjacent to this building...




















...there lies a huge tin can graveyard...















...with very, very old cans...















...seriously old...















...just rusting away. why?

12.8 pounds of the sweetest "guard dog" you'll ever meet

Matt made these

VEGAN PUMPKIN CINNAMON ROLLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'tis the season.

Click here for recipe!

Veins / Vines

November rain, golden sunsets, balding trees, and random doves.

Frederickburg's quintessential Texasity

Fredericksburg is a little town that is just so picture-perfect Central Texas Hill Country. The main street of this small German Stadt is a touristy (yet charismatic) stretch that deserves at least one visit. My second time there, I eschewed the main drag for the less glossy side streets. I was more charmed this time. To me, the best part of Texas is not the fancy facades and gradiosity but rather the gritty, dusty, rusty, cowboy charm that is engrained in our collective psyches as What Texas Is. The good news: What Texas Is still exists, if you choose to look hard enough.















































Found this gorgeous skeleton of a building and much to my delight, I was able to enter and peer inside:

This is my favorite, an old farm warehouse:

Cooking plant-based recipes from scratch: a five day retrospective

We have become a husband-and-wife cooking team. As of late, a vegan cooking team. A lot of heart goes into our food. Matt is a gifted cook, and I can do a few delicious dishes really well. Usually, Matt is the line cook to my executive chef (i.e. I tend to coming up with ideas. find recipes, crave specific ingredients, and/or sometimes I just demand my favorites of Matt's repertoire. In other words, the poor dude is a slave to my whim. Hope he doesn't mind my role, because, well, too bad; it ain't changin.').

It's funny, though, because the more we cook at home, the more restaurant food disappoints. We can often do it better; and moreover, making it at home costs a shocking fraction of the price of eating out.

A lot of times people say, "Well, going out to eat is a special treat." Sure, but cooking and creating together is just as spesh to me.

Below, what we ate for dinner (and for lunch the next day, as leftovers) this week

Sunday: Caramelized Onions and Quinoa -and- Collard Cole Slaw

Monday: Crispy Cajun Chickpea Cakes

Tuesday: Indian Style Spinach and Potatoes (the naan was not homemade--this time) -and- Dessert: Sweet Couscous with Cardamom and Pistachios

Wednesday: Yellow Curry with Sweet Potatoes and Tofu

Thursday: Root Soup -and- Boule (french bread made by Matt)

Tonight: Vegan Pizza...can't wait!

barbie girl, barbie world, etc.

Amidst the grannies, the middle-aged moustaschioed miata-driving men, and the hard-working single moms, we have a new neighbor at our condo who's doing his or her part to preserve Austin's peculiarities.

Austin, Part I

autumnal. (soundtrack.)

I can't say that I like you, but I do respect you

I was reading a book on my patio about the Cold War, and then the wind blew. The gentle, cool, refreshing fall breeze distracted me from the words on the page, and I looked up. Blue jays squawking in the trees above me, such annoying (but beautiful) avian beasts. Then, at eye level, a few feet away from my face, a dancing prismatic wonder caught my eye. A perfect spider web. It was reflecting the late-morning autumn sun and was undulating slowly in the breeze, the same gentle wind that distracted me from my words on the page. The web was so very gorgeous. I've never said that about anything related to a spider before, but it was. Truly. That spider, if only he had the capacity, ought to be proud.

Pretty Stuff in Hill Country

We've been eagerly awaiting temperatures falling below 327-degrees here in Central Texas so that we can, once again, go outside. If you wanna know the reciprical of Minnesota winter, well, it's pretty close to Texas summer. I feel equally homebound, cabin-fevered, and stranded here in late July as I do back home in mid-January.

Today, we meandered through the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. Big fancy name, yes, but it's free to enter and just a little blip of trail on the rolling hills radar. The hike smelled piney-fresh as the crumbly limestone trail leads through a charming coved corridor of live oak, cypress, and juniper trees. And all this with a perfect cloudless azure backdrop.

Beautiful days in Texas (and there are quite a few now for many, many months) assist me in not falling into the yearning-for-midwestern-comforts trap, to which I sometimes fall prey.