NakedSushi

I saw a post by Vegan Dad with a recipe for veggie lunch meat and it didn’t look all that hard. I already had most of the ingredients (other than vital wheat gluten) in my cupboard and vital wheat gluten was easy enough to get at Whole Paycheck. The recipe itself isn’t difficult, but there is a lot of “standby time” so I saved it for this weekend.

The end result was better than I expected! The ingredients by themselves didn’t seem impressive, but as a whole, they work! I followed the recipe fairly closely this time, but I’m probably going to make some variations of my own next time. Maybe a spicier lunchmeat? Curry lunch meat?

The first sandwich I made out of the veggie lunchmeat was just a boring ‘meat’ and sprouts sandwich with thick slices of seitan, sprouts, mayonnaise, mustard, and some sourdough bread I baked a long time ago that I found in the freezer. Since the sandwich was so plain, I could really taste the seitan in it, which isn’t really a bad thing since I don’t mind the taste of seitan. But don’t go in expecting it to taste exactly like meat.

The next night, I wanted to jazz up the seitan a bit, so I made a BBQ seitan sandwich with my own bbq sauce I made from scratch and some collard greens. Yes, it was southern food comfort night. For the BBQ sauce, which was thick, sweet, and vinegary, I looked up this recipe on chowhound for the basic proportions and made my own changes:

• I halved the recipe, which makes enough sauce for 4 sandwiches
• Instead of ketchup, I used 5oz of tomato paste
• I didn’t have onion powder, so I left that out
• The original recipe was way too sweet, so I added a healthy splash of soy sauce and a bunch of salt till it tasted more salty
• I also added in some healthy splashes of white wine vinegar (regular white should be fine too) because the BBQ sauce I’m used to is vinegary
• I wanted more kick in the sauce, so I shook in a bunch of cayenne pepper
• I don’t like the taste of chili powder, so I left that out
• I put in about 1/2 tsp liquid smoke even though I halved the rest of the recipe

After the BBQ sauce was ready (all the stuff I put in was nicely mixed in), I sliced the seitan thinly on a mandolin and put it in the sauce and stirred to coat. I already had some caramelized onion sitting on the stove so I threw those in too. I turned the heat on low and stirred every so often. It’s ready to eat when the seitan is heated all the way through.

Maybe sprouts aren’t the traditional condiment on a BBQ sandwich, but I have to say they are delicious on this. They soak up the sauce wonderfully and add a crispy texture. If you want to be really white trash, you can slather some margarine and vegannaise on the buns before putting the sandwich together.

The southern-style collard greens were easy to make as well. I chopped some onions and let it cook in a few tablespoons of olive oil till soft, and then threw in a clove of chopped garlic and put in pinch of salt and pepper. After another minute, I put in a tablespoon of tomato paste, turned up the heat, and stirred so the paste would coat the onions and garlic. By then, there will probably be some burnt bits of tomato paste on the bottom of the pan, so I deglazed with some vegetable broth and scraped the bits up to mix with the broth. Then, I poured in  1.5 cups of vegetable broth and then dumped in 1lb of chopped and washed collard greens. Covered up the pot, turned the heat to low and let it cook for 30 minutes. Every 10 minutes or so, I’d open the cover and give it a stir. After 30 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste, and a small pinch of smoked paprika to give it that campfire smokiness. The paprika’s optional, but since I can’t put sausages or ham in the collard greens, it’s the only thing that can give it that southern-greens smoke.

I drank my first Little Italy a week or so ago at The Tar Pit. It’s a Manhattan variation with more depth in the aftertaste thanks to the Cynar (Chi-naaaar). Because the drink is on the bitter side, it’s one to be sipped instead of gulped and might not be for everyone.

Cynar is an artichoke liquor that’s bitter-sweet, leaning more into bitter. It sounds gross, but it’s pretty good if you’re a fan of bitter liquors.  I think it knocked Campari out of its spot as my favorite bitter liquor. It has the bitterness of Campari, but is more syrupy sweet upfront. It’s good in mixed drinks because unlike Campari, it doesn’t have a distinct enough flavor that screams, “Hey look, I added some Cynar to this!”  Instead, it hangs around in the background waiting to be appreciated.

According to this post, the cocktail consists of:

2 oz rye
1/2 oz Cynar
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 brandied cherries skewered on a stick
flamed orange twist

The drink is made even better if Carpano Antica (the best vermouth evar) is used for the sweet vermouth. This sweet vermouth makes every drink magical.

I wanted to find a new friend for Sheldon after Gregory passed away since Sheldon seemed a bit bored. I contacted Family Affair Ratz, a rattery near my house after I found out they had some rats from a litter available.

When I visited the rattery, even though I planned on just getting one rat, I ended up getting two. They were just too cute to separate and it was hard for me to choose just one of them.

I present to you, Cecil and Holden! I’m not sure which one should be which yet, but we’ll see. The red-eyed one is more outgoing and social for now, but I’m hoping once the black-eyed one gets more acquainted with his surroundings, he’ll be more sociable. They’re both Siamese rats, but I think the black-eyed one is a Siamese Russian Blue.

This Lamy Al-Star actually belongs to the BF.  It’s fairly similar to the Lamy Safari except for two obvious things: the body, unlike the plastic body of the Safari, is aluminum and the section is a tinted, clear black, making the feed visible. He got his with a (M)edium nib.

The Lamy Al-Star still has its original Lamy black ink in it. Even though the nib is a M, the pen still feels a little scratchy on regular paper. I think it’s the ink.  The black ink goes on black, but dries to more of a dark grey color and doesn’t have as much saturation as the Noodler’s Ink Black.

For an extra $10, is it worth getting the Al-Star instead of the Safari? Depends on if you like the aluminum body or not. It does look more chic, but I’d rather save the $10 and put it towards buying another bottle of ink.

An easy thing to make for dinner is a plate full of roasted vegetables. Once the vegetables are washed and cut into bite-sized pieces, it’s only a matter of throwing them in some olive oil, seasoning, salt and pepper, and then letting them roast in the oven for 45-60 minutes.

This batch has sliced sunchokes, cauliflower, sweet potato, and kale. I put the cauliflower, potatoes and sunchokes in the oven first, then the washed and trimmed kale halfway through, on top to crisp. The kale turned out super crispy, like little kale chips. I enjoyed those, but the BF not so much.