The return of "Lumpy Fart" chili

Mark cooked this weekend, which cut my kitchen time a bit (no dessert) but also provided a meal I didn't have to make.  He only makes chili, and he had to make a huge pot of it for a potluck at the gardens.  I won't be going, because potlucks are a) disgusting; b) not usually vegan friendly; c) disgusting.  One less meal to cook is always a good thing from my perspective.  I made the following:

• chickpeas-pressure cooked, packaged, frozen
• potato chips
• chana masala (sort of--maybe closer to aloo chole): I've made this dish before, and it's delicious, but I had some potatoes I wanted to use up this week, so I made a double batch of it, using 3.5 c. chickpeas and 3.5 c. diced tomatoes. It turned out really well, and Luce loves potatoes so much that she's giddy whenever I add them to a dish. :)  I made way too much, so I sent some with Dej.
• shepherd's pie: Mark's favorite, but I fucked it up this time and am so unhappy with myself.  I used unsweetened (good) vanilla (very bad) coconut milk instead of the original. The mashed potatoes had a decidedly vanilla twist to them which I did not at all enjoy. My family didn't complain, so I'm not sure if they were being really polite or truly didn't notice.
• cashew gravy (for the shepherd's pie)

Mark's been gone almost every weekend again and many weeknights.  I'm feeling like a garden widow already this year, and it's not going to get better until somewhere around July or August. I think he's getting very tired/burned out already, because he was unusually crabby/rude last night. I'm still annoyed with him.

L has been a little challenging and hormonal this week, too. I need this week to start getting better really soon!

Last Weds., L & Dej went out to do some shopping and returned with a 30 gallon aquarium, filter, light, rocks, etc.  L set the tank up in her room on Weds. and conditioned the water.  M took L & her friend, Katie, out Sunday afternoon to get the fish--two goldfish.  They're quite cute. She has always wanted fish and is responsible enough to care for them herself.  She used her own xmas/birthday money to fund the endeavor.  I hope it goes well for her. I still retain many childhood scars from some of the nasty things our childhood goldfish did (you never get over going to bed with two fish in the tank and waking up with one bigger one), so I'm fairly trepidatious about this.  I don't like that when they get sick or diseased, the options are so limited for them.  It will be an adventure, I'm sure. 

Last Saturday morning I noticed a little sparrow fluffed up on the ground and became concerned when he didn't move with all the other sparrows when the dogs went running out by him.  Then Damon circled back to sniff him, and the little guy scrambled under a container and tried to hide. I walked over and picked him right up. He was very cold, so I held him to my chest for quite a while. I know he was in bad shape, because he was totally relaxed on my chest (not a good sign with a wild animal!) while I warmed him up.  I gave him some Pedialyte (more animals die in the winter due to dehydration than starvation) then put him in a cage with food, water, warm towels, etc.  He hung out for quite a while, looking pretty docile.  After a few hours, he started to move around, stand up straight and tall, and become frightened and try to hide when I approached the cage. There was nothing physically wrong with him, other than being weak and cold, and at this point he was doing great. I carried the cage back outside (it was fairly warm and sunny by this time), and he immediately got excited and started flying around the cage. I opened the door, and he flew perfectly over to the conifers in our back yard where he and his friends live (or at least hang out most of the time).  He stayed in that spot for 15-20 minutes, and then all of his friends came back, and I lost track of him. I've been carefully monitoring that feeding station to see if he weakens again in this cold, but no problems so far.

The heat lamps and warming pads in our garage are getting heavy use.  We had to replace one of the heat lamps this weekend.  We also picked up another heated bird bath. We have one in the front, but that's so heavily trafficked, we wanted to add one to the back yard.

Poor Charlie has been looking for a snuggle buddy since Basil died. He and Basil were always touching when they slept and often hugged each other as they slept. He is a very affectionate guy, and keeps trying to creep up on the other cats and stealth snuggle them. He generally gets shut down but will still try to creep closer and closer, or slip out a paw, slowly, moving a hair's width at a time until he makes contact with his sleeping snuggle candidate. Sometimes the hand holding is tolerated, sometimes not. He just needs to work on building relationships more slowly.  Tica does not like Charlies snuggling advances. The girls snuggle humans or sleep alone. They boys tend to want to be in physical contact with someone (human, cat, or both) while they sleep. Tica's face says it all. He got close enough to make contact, and she tolerated it but only because I was right there. If I'm not close, she moves as soon as he gets within about 6 inches of her. I don't think he's ever been mean to her, but he's three times her size and it frightens her.
I was back to working alone in the kitchen this weekend.  I made 2 batches of dog food, so I'll be good for a few weeks again.  Damon went to the vet this week (his chronic ear condition took a nasty turn), and he's gained a little more weight, so I'll have to cut his food intake back a bit. I don't want to stress his arthritic back end with any extra weight! I made the following but didn't get to pressure cooking the chickpeas. I'll have to do that at some point this week.

• Spanish rice (to include in the next dish)
• Layered nachos/Mexican casserole (I have no idea what to call this; I just throw stuff together--Spanish rice, black beans, refried beans, tomatoes, spices/seasonings, salsa, topped with Daiya)
• Three-bean tomato curry soup
• Eggplant & chickpea curry (with quinoa)
• (Frozen) chocolate bananas - bananas dipped in cashew butter, dark chocolate, and topped with chopped walnuts & pecans; a delicious, protein-packed, healthy dessert

Damon had his swim appointment Friday, and we brought Sophie along (Dej's dog) to see if she would enjoy it.  She did not love it.  Damon loved it enough for both of them, though. He spend his entire hour swimming--not getting out of the pool at all.  He loved these stuffed chicken toys that she has there (Dunkin Dawgs), and spent most of his swim time carrying around 2-3 water toys at a time.  He didn't want to give up the chickens at all, but would let me take one (as long as he could keep the other in his mouth) to throw for him.  He repeatedly fetched and grabbed the toy without losing the two others in his mouth. It was so cute and quite impressive.  

When it was time to go, we had a lot of difficulty getting him out.  Every muscle in his 111 pound body fought to stay in the pool.  It took three of us to physically drag him from the pool, leaving me extremely wet.  He was so, so sad to go.  He really wanted to take "his" chicken with him and worked pretty hard to try to sneak it out.  Unfortunately for him, I noticed the bright-colored chicken hanging out of his mouth, though he did his best to keep his face pressed toward the door and away from me.  Our next trip to  Mounds will involve hunting for a chicken toy like that.  Damon really likes his toys. He plays with them; he shows them off to guests; he destroys them pretty quickly, though. I'm hoping he loves the chicken enough that he won't shred it so quickly.

Fiona & Przemek (and Fergus) Part 3

I've seen Przemek emerge from within the Fergus/Fiona pile but never caught a picture of it until last week.  Finally!  I've missed so many shots that would have been infinitely cuter than the ones I managed to capture, but I'm glad I got something. They are not easy to photograph. Przemek is so shy and so indescribably fast.  He's so fast, I can't even keep him in frame in a video.  Seriously--he's like the RoadRunner--he looks like a blur when he's on the move and even skids to a stop like RR.

I had a kitchen assistant this week.  I drafted L to help make another big batch of the black bean-quinoa burgers that she liked so much.  It's good for her to start to learn to prepare good, nutritious meals, and it's also good for her to learn how much work goes into food.  That may help curtail the "eating to alleviate boredom" habit she's acquired. She didn't love the process, but she did a good job, and learned quite a bit.  I'm going to try to get her involved at least once a month or so, as the help is nice, and I want to continue to teach her cooking skills. I got less done overall than I normally do when working on my own, but as she learns more and requires less assistance, I think it will be more helpful.

It's a good thing we made the burgers, as both my plan A and plan B for Wednesday night's meal fell through (didn't have necessary ingredients and can't go out once I get everything started), so I pulled six of the burgers (the remainder go in the freezer for emergency meals), and we'll have those with sweet potato puffs and apple nachos.  I got some (vegan) sriracha mayo that I'm anxious to try on these!

We ended up with:

• 6 bean burgers for a meal; 12 for the freezer
• 2 heads of garlic (cleaned/peeled and ready to use)
• Roasted red pepper hummus
• Spice Market Sweet Potato Lentil Packets - but I make a huge batch and just throw it all into a 9x13 Pyrex and cover with foil; The foil packets are a messy pain in the ass.
• Seasoned barley (to serve with dish above)
• Pizza
• Chocolate mousse
• It was a really long day, and that list seems fairly short. :(

Last week we lost one of our sweet rats.  Frances was an old girl, and she developed an eye infection a few weeks ago. She was on antibiotics and eye drops but the infection got the better of her and spread rapidly through her face and head. Things like that can progress so quickly with small animals. Given her age, the extent of the infection (indications that it had started to spread to the brain), and her pain, we had to make a late-night run to euthanize our poor girl. That is never easy.  We're down to three rats now.  I'm really glad we have the emergency vet clinic in town and available, but holy shit!! they are SO expensive!  I'm still fairly horrified by what they charged for a 2 minute (LITERALLY) euth.  It was triple what I would normally pay for a small animal euth., and given the minimal effort and time required, and the fact that we brought her home with us, it really was appalling.

Teaching C++ and Java in the same semester is proving to be absolutely brutal already.  Nothing takes longer to grade than code.  There is no way to do it quickly (and right).  Worse than that, though, is going back and forth between two similar but different IDEs and syntax that's also similar but different.  This might actually break my brain.  It's challenging and definitely not boring, though, so at least it's fun but tough, rather than a horrible experience.  I am having to use ever increasing levels of caffeine to keep my brain operating on high gear with minimal sleep (not doing to well on sleep quality or quantity again), which means I will need to undergo painful caffeine detox at the end of the semester.  

Here's my support team

Clockwise from L: Charlie, Ivan, Tica, Lexi, Carrie, Jasper, Oliver

The first week of classes was intense, as always--fun, busy, exhausting, exciting, stressful.  Next week will be our first normal week, and then we'll start to fall into our groove, and it will be so much easier. It's going to be a real challenge to keep up, as my email inbox is already inundated with messages from my students, particularly the distance ed. (DE) class. They are already very engaged, working hard, and generating many, many questions. 

This weekend I spent a few days in the kitchen, and need to do so again Wednesday as well. I'm not thrilled about it.  I had to slightly change the cooking plans, due to Sunday's blizzard, which derailed my much-needed trip for some supplies/ingredients.  I had to readjust the menu to make the most out of what I do have on hand.  It worked out fairly well other except that I ran short on red peppers and so couldn't get any farther than marinating the seitan for the jerk until I get to the store.  It was made extra unpleasant by huge blisters on my thumb, first, and middle fingers from cutting so many sweet potatoes for the dog food Friday night.  Saturday I worked with the painful blisters, and today they had ripped open, making them even more painful. I felt every piece of garlic/onion/pepper, the spices, the hot dishwater--OMG it was awful! This week I made:

• An enormous batch of dog food, so I can take a couple of weeks off
• Thug Kitchen's Roasted Sriracha Cauliflower Bites with Peanut Dipping Sauce; this time using half sriracha and (replaced the other half with dijon mustard), so it wasn't so spicy.  We all liked it better this way. I also made and served it with:
• Wraps (roasted red pepper hummus & tofurkey)
• peanut-butter-chocolate protein smoothies
• Pindi chana (spicy chickpeas & potatoes). Also made and served it with:
• Coconut basmati rice (served with both the pindi chana and jerk seitan later this week)
• Mango-pineapple-banana smoothies 
• Sweet Potato Black Bean Chili (made this a few times, and it's delicious!)
• Jambalaya
• Marinated and prepared seitan (for jerk later in the week)
• 9 cups of black beans (pressure cooked and froze)
• a dozen dark chocolate peanut butter cups

Wednesday afternoon, I'll need to pressure cook a batch of kidney beans, make another batch of post-workout smoothies, and more roasted red pepper hummus.

I forgot to mention last week that I made 16 (large) black bean burgers to keep in the freezer (for lunches, snacks, emergency meal). I tried a new recipe, and it was the most flavorful I've made so far. I absolutely LOVE the flavor, as does L., who has already gone through 2/3 of what I thought would last for a good month. It was so delicious, I kept eating chunks as I was making the patties.  The texture came out very moist and didn't hold together, so I added a couple of Tablespoons of gram flour (besan/chickpea flour), which firmed it up enough that I could form patties, but they don't hold together well after cooking. M is very picky about the texture of veggie burgers (he is picky about very few things, but is sensitive to any texture that reminds him of liverwurst, which I fortunately never had to eat), and these won't work for him. I'm going to make another batch, because these are almost gone, but I need to experiment to get a firmer, chewier texture. Here's the original recipe:  Black Bean Quinoa Burgers.

Streaming:  M & I finished this season of American Horror Story. The last couple of episodes were the best of the season, but we did not particularly enjoy Freakshow. There was absolutely nothing supernatural, it was simply a study in how much of the grotesque could be incorporated into each show, which I don't enjoy at all.  We toyed with giving up entirely mid season but decided we needed to stick with it to see how it ended after having endured the first several horrible episodes.  It was so disappointing, because this was one of our favorites. We were not as entranced with season 3 as with the previous 2, but season 4 may be it for us.

On a positive note, we watched and loved the first season of Mozart in the Jungle. The show is original, interesting, and the characters are well written. Gael Garcia Bernal as the maestro is infinitely watchable. We are excited for the second season.

NDT's reboot of Cosmos has just arrived on Netflix streaming. We watched them all when they aired (we got Hulu Plus just so we could watch these without the wait), but I'm happy to have them in my queue for my insomniac viewing.  

L & I are currently reading Pride & Prejuidice, and when we finish the book, we're going to watch the Collin Firth version of the movie.  L has decided that the insufferable Mrs. Bennett reminds her of one of our relatives, and she giggles her way through most of Mrs. B's awkward/inappropriate behavior stating that she can see said relative doing just that. I admit that as I'm reading Mrs. B's lines, I now picture and channel that relative for the role. It makes for an interesting twist on the old classic. ;D

This is Jasper's very unhappy face upon discovering that Tica was crunching away at his food bowl.  He did not chase her away (they're all pretty nice to tiny Tica), but as soon as she left, he jumped down to eat a few pieces.