Escape from Baltimore, Part I.

Over Labor Day weekend, Red and I fled town. We did this because of a small traffic jam known as the Baltimore Grand Prix (I’m not linking because get bent, you assholes). This is an event which, starting on the Thursday before Labor Day, turns the city into an Escape From New York-style nightmare in the name of tourism, cars that go really, really fast, and people dumb enough to want to sit outside on metal bleachers while the asphalt reflects the scorching summer heat. Once would be bad enough, but it is supposed to happen annually. I could write a book about all the ways it sucks, but I won’t because last year we decided that we would simply do an end-run around the whole clusterfuck by leaving town every Labor Day.

Every day for a month, I drove to work through a cage. Photo ripped from wn.com. 

This year, it was a no-brainer. We have friends in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, so we hopped a short little flight up to Manchester and prepared for a weekend of food and camaraderie. New England did not disappoint us.

Our first stop was at my heart-sister Jess’ place. I miss her every day and hope that one day we’ll live in the same city again. She and her husband Matt are new parents to the most adorable, magical little stinker. I’m completely in love with him. He didn’t get to have any of this, though:

Hello, lover.

I was overjoyed to learn that Trader Joe’s stores in more civilized states (read: not Maryland) sell alcohol. Not only that, but they’ll also give you a list of all their vegan selections. Finally, cheap vegan wine! Turns out that Three-Buck Chuck is highly drinkable. So is Green Fin, which is about a dollar more. I don’t think I’ve ever bought two bottles of wine for under eight dollars before. It all went marvelously with the massive quantities of Indian food we powerhoused while gossiping and playing Scrabble.

Confession: Until this trip, I had never actually had a dosa. Sure, I’d eaten my fair share of my low-budget dosadillas, but those are crap compared to the real thing. The spongy, injera-like dough! The savory filling! The little cups of chutney and dipping sauce! These dosas were fantastic. That’s a samosa on top there, as a bonus. Basically we ate a lot of fried dough and carbs, then wondered why we couldn’t move.

Surprisingly, we were hungry again the next day, so we all met up at Life Alive Café, a hella hippie place that is also the most gorgeous restaurant I’ve ever visited. For real, look at the bathroom:

It was a tiny tropical paradise.

Tell me you don’t want to just hang out in there for a while.

All the dishes have ridiculous but friendly names. It’s hard not to feel like a spaz when ordering The Romantic:

It's basically tofu, avocado, and broccoli, but it hit the spot.

Jess ordered The Hot & Healthy Bachelor, though, so I think she wins. Everything was delicious. If only my latte had been bottomless. Endless caffeine makes everything better.

The utterly scenic Lowell, Massachusetts (I am not even being sarcastic; Lowell has come a long way since my dad grew up there):

Side of the New England Quilt Museum.

Obviously.

I don't know. I just liked it.

This cool-looking building houses one of the UMass Lowell bookstores, among other things.

After that, there were many many hugs and baby snuggles before we hit the road to Providence. Come back soon and check out the rest of our trip! I promise to post the second half before winter arrives.

Lazy snow day.

Lucy and I had a snow day on Thursday. It was awesome, because I spent 75% of the day in my pajamas watching TV (there was an American Gothic marathon on, and I lucked into some Buffy and X-Files as well), and she hung out on the couch. She’s been dying to go out, though, so I managed to close off our deck so she could have some fresh air:

Not to be confused with Longcat.

She tolerates her coat. It’s the third one, so she better—she nearly destroyed the other two, which were made of cheaper stuff. This one’s L.L. Bean, and so far we’ve got no complaints.

Eventually, all that strenuous TV-watching got me hungry. The night before, I’d made dosadillas, and they are totally a gift that keeps on giving. Buy a pack of tortillas, make your filling, and you’ve got a 5-minute meal whenever you want it. Lately, I’ve been enjoying them with a bit of sour cream on top. We have Tofutti in the fridge (that stuff lasts forever—I had forgotten all about it), but you can use whatever. I won’t judge you.

Om nom nom, dosadilla will eat your face!

Here’s a picture of a nice salad I made last week. It’s only spinach, cucumber, and kalamata olives with some random vinaigrette on top, but it was incredible. The perfect pre-yoga dinner.


And that’s it for now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell you about baking granola bars. You’d like to hear about that, wouldn’t you?

Random nibbles.

Apologies, dear ones. I have been a very lazy blogger. I have no excuse, save the usual cop-outs of lack of energy and/or inspiration.

Red and I are now the proud owners of each variety of Go Max Go’s vegan candy bars! I splurged a little, because I’m very curious and Red needs convincing that vegan chocolate can approximate his beloved milk chocolate. We’re planning to sit down and do a formal taste test. Rest assured, you’ll get to hear all about it!

I can't tell you when I last ate four candy bars in a row. Photo courtesy of Go Max Go Foods.

Because I am awesome, I also bought him Sweet & Sara’s strawberry marshmallows. This boy loves him some strawberry, so you know he was happy when he saw those. He smiled blissfully as he chewed, so I intuited that Sweet & Sara has created another winner. Strawberry s’mores…mmm.

You should eat these. Photo courtesy of Sweet & Sara.

I haven’t done much in the way of vegan activism lately. A coworker at a meeting this morning urged me to have a doughnut. I politely declined. “You don’t do doughnuts?” she asked. I told her that I was vegan, explaining that the doughnuts most likely had eggs in them. “You don’t eat eggs?” she asked, clearly surprised. I explained about the eggs. Her response? “But eggs are good for you!” I sighed. The meeting was starting, so I decided not to get into it with her.

Red and I made a tasty chickpea casserole from a New York Times recipe. Their recipes can be hit-or-miss. (Go to hell, sweet and sour squash.) This was pretty hit, although I felt like I did a lot of work for what basically turned out to be hummus with chickpeas on top, baked on toasted pita. The yogurt topping was tasty, but it started going green in tiny spots after a day or two in the fridge. I ate it anyway until Red pointed out that it was probably mold. In my defense, it had a lot of mint on top, and I thought it had just dyed the yogurt. Shut up. I was flexing my immune system.

Ooh, and we also followed through on experimenting with less-Indian dosadillas. These were just potatoes, mushrooms, and peas with some sage, salt, and pepper. We used apple-cranberry chutney instead of mango-ginger. I was not too thrilled, I think because the chutney had too much clove in it. The yumminess of the vegetable filling was overpowered, and I was sad.

Tragically, that’s all I have today. I’ve ordered Carol J. Adams’ The Pornography of Meat, and I’m sure I’ll have lots to say when that gets here. Brace yourselves!

Dosadillas: This is not a recipe.

Well, I guess maybe it is. There’s not much to it. It’s more like the lazy vegan’s version of a very good recipe published in VegNews. The Internet tells me that Robin Robertson’s Quick-Fix Vegetarian also has an excellent recipe.

Dosas, you have my heart.

What’s a dosa, you ask? A dosa is basically the Indian version of a taco or crêpe. It’s samosa filling folded inside flatbread, and if you don’t know what a samosa is, then God help you. It is heavenly. What I make are more accurately called “dosadillas” (not my word) since I just use tortillas instead of making my own fancy flatbread. What can I say? When I’m hungry, all pretense goes down the drain.

Here’s what I did last night. You’re supposed to use baked potatoes, but we didn’t have any. I parboiled 4 red potatoes instead. This was a decent substitute, but red potatoes don’t mash nearly as well, so the filling was lumpy. No matter. I sautéed some garlic (Red used the last onion, but that’s okay because he used it to make fried potatoes), then added a 10-oz. bag of frozen peas and carrots. I stirred in the potatoes, which still refused to be mashed, and added a teaspoon each of turmeric and curry. And a few shakes of salt, too. (Here I feel the need to clarify that I am normally much more elaborate with my spices, but as I said, we were hungry and short on time.) When everything is hot, move it to the other side of the stove and preheat a little (just a little) oil in a skillet.

This is the fun part. Once your filling has cooled a little, scoop some (1/4 cup? 1/3? I don’t know, people) into a tortilla and fold it over. Try not to use so much that your filling squeezes out of your dosadilla. Plus, you want to have extra room for chutney.

Place 2 dosadillas in the skillet over medium heat. Watch them so they don’t burn! After a few minutes, check the bottoms. If they’re brown to your liking, flip them over carefully. When they’re done, remove them from the heat (duh).

Red likes to spread chutney along one flat side of the dosadilla, then eat it with a knife and fork. I prefer to eat mine with my hands, dipping it into a small bowl of chutney as I go. I love mango-ginger chutney, but we recently picked up apple-cranberry as well. Red suggested that our next batch of dosas be more savory, with less Indian spice and more sage, which would go well with the apple-cranberry chutney. I’ll keep you posted!

Tonight I’m feeling like crêpes. This will be my second crêpe attempt, so I’m less nervous than I was before. Breakfast for dinner!