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.