Foul Bachelor Vegan

Somehow, over the course of our marriage, my husband became the primary cook. In the beginning, I cooked. I was better at it, and I enjoyed it more, mostly because he had never really done it. It was one of those "we're conforming to gender roles but just because the wife happens to cook" things, but probably resulted from him growing up in a traditional Italian household where teaching the son to cook didn't even occur to them.

Anyway, when I was in law school, I had zero time, so he took over. Gradually, with practice, he became damn good. Also, it allowed him to cover everything in hot peppers, which he loves. So when he became the insanely busy student, the planned switch back never happened. I became addicted to his pasta with rosemary from the cooking water still sticking to the noodles (with jarred sauce and Daiya shreds). I crave his boxed cous-cous with tofu crumble. Even when I come up with the concept for our simple dinners, he is usually the one to execute, partly because I have a bad back, and partly because that lets him cover his half in peppers.

So when he spent four days staying on his out-of-state campus for a research project, my laziness lead me to new depths. I think I had cereal for the first four meals. Then I cleaned the freezer out of frozen dinners.

 Nothing left, I realized I would have to spend more than 20 seconds preparing something. Out came the can of vegan re-fried beans. Day one I put them in a tortilla with Daiya pepperjack. Day two was sour cream and salsa. Then he got home, bearing fresh avocados. You can guess what happened next.

 The sight of that mound of bean mush in the tupperware, bearing the shape of the can like Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, was a little sad. It reminded me of the Sims before you taught your Sim to cook, when she would eat the beans from the can then leave the can on the floor like some Alphabet City heroin addict.

But you know what? Tasted good. Has some nutritional value. Not terribly fattening. So all hail the mighty bean burrito, savior of lazy vegans everywhere.

Grilled Cheese

By now many of you have already come across this winning recipe for the "The Aurora Borealis" which took third place in a mainstream grilled cheese contest. I drooled over the picture and description for a bit, and had the urge to recreate the sandwich. And while grilled cheese is usually a simple affair, the need to hunt down rustic sourdough bread and make a "berry reduction sauce" wasn't in the cards.

But when I went to make a simple sandwich today, the memory of the aurora borealis nonetheless inspired my own lazy ass to perk up the process. I had a bunch of Daiya cheese on hand, including the cheddar and mozzarella shreds and the cheddar and jack wedges. Since the wedges and shreds use a different recipe, I ended up including both cheddars as well as the others, because whynot. This would easily have worked with just two, or with cheddar and vegan cream cheese (that's tomorrow's plan).

I melted the cheese by putting the two halves in the microwave before dabbing a little blueberry jam in the center. Of course, I then melted a generous amount of Earth Balance in a small skillet and crisped the bread. Yum. I'm sure it isn't as good as the fancy original, but it certainly upgraded the simple grilled cheese. Jam. Who would have thought?

Blog Rebranding

When I left the world of corporate law (hello recession!) I cut back my shopping, and the blog stagnated. However, I'm still a New Yorker and I still have an aesthetic that is far more corporate than your average vegan offering. In order to keep generating new content in a life that involves far more re-imagining than spending, I'm going to integrate more than just shoes & fashion.

For example, there are countless vegan cooking and recipe blogs, but not too many about NYC's vegan restaurants, assembling quick meals from grocery finds, and hunting down gems in ethnic takeout joints. I'll integrate these with makeup and beauty products and all the other travails of living an urban lifestyle as a vegan. Enjoy.