Vegan Baking: Banana Milk & Peanut Butter Cookies

So I know I promised pics, but these two weren't terribly exciting.

The book itself, The Joy of Vegan Baking, is beautifully illustrated. Just enough info on each page and appendices with all kinds of other useful information. I definitely see this one turning into a regular counter reference.

The drink, Bananas in Coconut Milk, was good until it turned to pudding, at which point I switched to a spoon and it was still good. Served with ginger snaps it makes a nice drink, probably better suited to colder temps as it is meant to be served hot and is spiced with nutmed and cinnamon and clove; while grinding the fresh clove I noticed there were five or six allspice berries in there and decided to go with it.

The peanut butter cookies were totally authentic; from the way they held the criss-cross to their dense and airy dome of sweet. Well, actually, authentic until I got my hands on them. The dome and the tines still came out great in spite of my tampering, and I followed the recipe, optional items included, and even made a double batch. I just topped the cookies with some sesame seeds for an extra toastiness. I have found sesame seeds are a great addition to anything that isn't killing it on the sweet front and could benefit from fresh toasted anything. In tndem with toasted and ground pepitas you've got a brain back flip.

Tonight my plan is to make pie with some of my frozen fruits. The pie crust will be the other half of the cookie dough. The filling after par-baking will have to be a set and forget; I'm thinking of doing a fruit filling and playing with a peanut butter and jelly pie theme. I'm pretty sure I have a bag of berry mix, which I will thicken with two bananas, flax egg, and corn starch then blend with almond milk? I dunno; will need to make sure I get it good and stiff though. No matter how good they taste anyway, I'm so sick of melty pies.

The Joy of Vegan Baking

Last night for a house-warming gift, miss kristin gave me The Joy of Vegan Baking: The Compassionate Cooks' Traditional Treats and Sinful Sweets . I super excited to get to play around with a new book. From what I've read so far this one seems to be cut from cloth of the Betty's of yore. Tonight I delegated dinner making to Mein Beth, for for I will be making peanut butter cookies, chocolate cake, and bananas in sweet coconut cream. Reviews and pics to come...

Aggressive and despondent

All the umbrellas in London couldn't stop this rain

All the dope in New York couldn't kill this pain 

I tore at some scabs before I moved. I'm still reeling with surprise that they still wrench and hurt and sting and burn. My ex-wife owes me somewhere between $350-400 for bills from after we separated, when we were living together. She also has a $1300 couch set that we financed with wedding money and $700 I paid out of pocket, including payments from April through October 2011 (after we separated) to pay it off. Since we bought it in good faith, and expecting it to be ours, and since she wanted it more than I did. I didn't fight over it and decided that instead of asking her for the $700 that it cost me, that $350 would be fine.

Also, I ended up owing the Federales $300 due to not filing jointly, which was the only provision of the divorce agreement. I suppose that not a debt owed though, but rather a breach of contract, oh well.

She accumulated an onerous amount of medical debt. Enough so that me harping on her about paying me back has never seemed appropriate. An opportunity arose last week for her to pay me back in not-money; she works from time-to-time cleaning, I was moving, and was willing to deduct $125 from what she owed me if she cleaned the (formerly, our) house once I got everything out. Basically, it should have taken 2-3 hours, I was willing to deduct $25 per hour for four hours work and $25 on top. I had all the supplies.

When I texted her the proposition, I included the qualifier that if she thought I was an asshole, that I totally respected that and would not hold it against her. What followed was ugly. I wasn't man enough to just back off her bruised pride but I bit down and escalated the conflict (reiterating that, basically, I didn't care if I was an asshole). A tit for tat was next of debt and woe, first she then me. I wasted a text on being sympathetic, but in the end we had to agree to disagree.

I still had to clean out my house, she still owed me as much money as she did at the beginning of the day, and we were both agitated. 

So what did it mean? I also still hadn't given up on getting my due, she still hadn't given up on simultaneously playing the victim and hurling insults and name-calling and punishing me when I didn't walk on egg-shells. Yet, honestly, it was admittedly invasive and pushy of me to lean on her, though I had asked nothing she didn't have, unless she really just didn't have time, in which case she could have just said so. So had we gotten any farther than last April? Well, I no longer have her stuff in the basement of my house, since I no longer have a house.

It's funny the things that make you want to drink. For some people it is a hot summer day and an Urquell, other's a crisp autumn evening that harkens to harvest and wheat beer, or a hot gurgling pot of chili and a stout beer. In addition to all of those, the one that gets me is when I am feeling despondent, but want to get aggressive. When I want more desperately than anything to subdue my anger for the sake of accomplishing what I set out for, but I just can't push it aside.

Also, I have yet to see Dime #1 from my landlord of my security deposit. So paying for cleaning may have been unnecessary.

Tonight I make Tomato Sauce

It has been awhile since I made a bunch of tomato sauce. I'm thinking six quarts or so, use a half quart for dinner and freeze the other five and a half in half quart increments.

I have a case of large cans of tomatoes, and a surplus of spices, and garlic about to go bad. I don't have any tomato paste, nor any parmesan to use, and this will be my first large batch of vegan sauce. Not that vegan tomato sauce is some kind of feat. Still a good tomato sauce is integral to so many dishes and a savior for those days where you don't want to cook.

I don't typically make meat based sauces, but they've typically had cheese in them for that thick mouth feel. It seems like parmesan is kind of a way to short-cut making the sauce thicker through cooking down. So basically I am planning on dutch ovening the batch and seeing how far that gets me. Anyway, just making notes.

Welp, time to go back to work.

Update on 8:15AM by mfg

Quick follow up: I made a farfalle and TVP crumble bake and a Cornbread, Tempeh, and Kale dish with enchilada sauce with the tomato sauce so far. However, after completing the sauce Tuesday, it's time to freeze the remainder!

Moving: or, Then mowing the lawn went awry

how to rip the cord from your lawn mower and wish you'd done it on purpose out of spite

Happy Me Day

We're going to get some pizza from Element Pizza Bar some time. I'm psyched.