April 15, 2011 7:57 AM

Good morning!

OK, so on Wednesday I made a vegan lasagna - first time making lasagna ever! But this leads into yesterday (Thursday) and explains a few things. First of all, this is why I ate lasagna for every meal yesterday. Second of all, this is why I ate so much - I had forgotten that lasagna was so filling!

Anyways, yesterday I felt spontaneous and decided that I was going over to the guys for a movie/lasagne night (taking all the leftover lasagna and getting rid of it for once and for all). I grabbed some movies and Matt picked me up. We chatted for a bit and ate dinner - lasagna and salad with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing.

Then we watched "Eat Pray Love" with Julia Roberts where the main character goes to eat in Italy, pray in India, and love in Bali. It was pretty good, and afterwards we made tea and played "Go Fish" before he took me home.

This morning, I woke up at 5am and decided to stay awake. I took a long shower, took my time picking out the most colorful clothes I had to wear, made myself a huge breakfast, and did some kind of meditation where you just sit and picture yourself in different places using the sounds around you.

I think I felt that yesterday was Italy and today should be India. And I kinda like that idea.

So I listened to the wind and closed my eyes, thinking that it sounded like waves. I pictured the first beach that came to my mind - Corpus Christi. The waves sounded so similar to the wind, and I could even hear a seagull flying over the dorms in the distance.

Then I heard a bunch of geese take off, and I was sitting on a bench by a pond in woods somewhere - kinda like this one place in Lithuania that I visited with my family a year and a half ago. When the geese got out of hhearing distance, I shifted a little and heard Margaret move in the other room. The wall creaked.

I was on a wooden porch in front of an old house made of wood. The house was facing a swamp, and I could see a little wooden walkway going off into the swamp. The wood creaked as Margaret moved in the room behind me, and I heard something rustle nearby.

Margaret started talking on the phone, and I lost it. I opened my eyes and looked at the pale light filtering into the room. Time to go to work.

On the way to work, I still felt myself in the mediation sort of mind. I could feel myself in each place that I was walking through, and each sound wrapped itself around my mind. It was really cool (yeah, lame choice of word...)

At one part, I was walking out of the Sol-Gibson quad towards the field house, and I was in complete shadow. I could see light reflecting off of the shiny field house, and I felt (all of the sudden) that I was walking through the tunnel towards the light (like when people are about to die sort of thing). I wondered if I could see this image instead of the proverbial tunnel when I die.

And then, one of the custodians yelled in Spanish to another, and the one nearest to me started laughing. It was perfect. I hadn't yet reached the light/field house, and I was feeling life surround me in the dark. I felt really good, and when I reached the sunlight, I could still hear the workers chattering back and forth playfully.

And the best part? It was still only 7:15 AM, and the day feels like it's only going upwards from here.

At work, I got a free bagel (Student Worker Appreciation Week), and now I feel like I'm going to burst since I am so full but I feel amazing!

And I get to read the paper now!

Oh what a beautiful morning!

April 2, 2011 2:25 PM

Here are two pics of Cleveland (from the trip):



It was pretty cool.

Anyways, I've been super busy, so I decided to take this morning as a 'mental health half-day'. Tony and I went to the public market and had a blast. Not only did I spend 20 bucks total, I got enough food for the week with it too (if I also count the food I already had at home)!

3 potato pancakes, cup of coffee, and tip for our favorite waitress - $7
One socialist newspaper (for curiosity's sake) - $1
3 artichokes - $1
6 zucchinis - $2
Mushrooms - $2
1 lint roller (for my suit jacket) - $1
Smoked mackerel (whole) - $6 (yes, it's not vegan, but Tony and Mike and I split it three ways and I was craving it big time)

The smoked fish looked amazing when we passed by it, and Tony had never had it. So, I felt the need to teach him about smoked fish (other than salmon). We boiled some potatoes, ripped the fish into pieces, and took it out to his balcony, chatting and tearing up the pieces with our fingers. Mike came out and joined us for a bit (he had never had smoked mackerel either), and then he went to work.



And yes, we used to Socialist Worker as our napkin because the best way to eat smoked fish is on a newspaper using your fingers.

I'm gonna get to work now - but ya'll have a great day!

March 29, 2011 2:00 PM

Yeah, I really need to update this more often....

The trip to Cleveland that I've been planning happened! Everything went fine - no major accidents, diseases, deaths...

I'll be putting up a few pictures (of Cleveland - no people). In the meantime, I've been applying for jobs (again), studying polymer chemistry, and overall just working hard.

I feel a bit bad for such a short post, but I promise more is coming soon.

Have you read House of Leaves yet? It's really good!

March 19, 2011 12:25 PM

Good morning/afternoon!

OK, so today I woke up at 8:30am to my alarm - I had gone to bed early in hopes that I would wake up and be productive. However, I had a terrible headache and decided to go back to sleep, in hopes that I would feel better when I woke up again.

I got out of bed around 11am, took a shower, and made it as far as the couch before I collapsed. Luckily, my laptop was within reaching distance, so I began wandering through the internet. I tried some meditation (which didn't last long), listening to soothing nature sounds (still am), and reading blogs about how to wake up with a smile on your face every day.

I think I'm going to try some of their tips over the next week and see what it does for me. The main ones would be: meditate each morning while stretching, asking yourself when you wake up what your goals are for the day and what you look forward to, and not turning on the TV, laptop, reading the news, etc every morning during breakfast. They also suggested playing music, but I don't want to put in headphones in the morning - and my only other way of playing music is my laptop...

As some of you may have found out, my laptop had problems over the time I've owned it. I get viruses more often than other people with the same make in the same area. This past week, I got a virus every other day. I kept doing 'System Restore', choosing points further back and further back until I was resetting my computer's settings back to what they were last year. Still had the virus.

So on Wednesday night, I saved all my important documents onto flash drives or emailed them to myself. Then, I wiped my hard drive. There were some initial driver issues after it started working, but Mike helped me fix them. Now I've downloaded only the programs I use the most and the security software Mike told me to get. I've started putting my files back on too.

Hopefully, this will solve the problem - otherwise, I'm going to have to live without a computer. I could do that, but I'd rather not.

I have some pictures on my camera that I was going to upload to this blog, but my camera isn't next to me right now, and my ability to move is severely limited. So you'll have to wait on that until next time.

Oh, and my goals for the day are:

- bake my "kick-ass molasses cookies"

- make lentils and kale for lunch (lentils are soaking)

- make dinner (don't know what yet)

- work on homework

- maybe mail out my taxes???

But yeah... my headache is slowly starting to go away, and now I'm craving chocolate/magnesium. Sounds like celery should be in my lunch....

Keep your toes warm today! And if you want to loose the ability to sleep at night, read "House of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski - it's a psychological horror/thriller that is amazingly well-written and the layout is absolutely fantastic!

March 14, 2011 10:30 PM

OK, so I just got off the phone with my mom - who had made a comment about how she didn't know what I was up to because I wasn't updating my blog.

Wow. Welcome to the 21st century, Molly. Not only does your mom read your blog, she expects regular updates. I don't know if I can live up to this kind of pressure (sarcasm).

So here's what I've been up to: not much!

Sausage - The Finale!


Yes, that rectangular stuff is deep fried tofu. How did I do it on my tiny stove? I have no idea...


I packed myself a lunch - an almond butter and honey (not vegan) sandwich with sliced apples!

I visited the guys' place for the first time in a long time (without VegAnn there to support me).

And I lived! (The sky was pretty that night)

And I spent Sunday March 13 peeling, grating, and frying potatoes!

Yum yum yum! Looks kinda like rice noodles!

I added some lemon juice (to keep it from turning brown), flax seed (to pretend it was healthy), 16 tablespoons of olive oil (to fry those babies), salt, and pepper.

So, maybe my pictures are a little blurry - but by this point, I had been working on them for several hours and my hands were tired....

I forgot to mention that on Saturday I baked my applesauce bread and added in some minced almonds - turned out amazing, and I gave two loaves away!

Delicious! My aunt in NYC would be proud!

So that is pretty much an update entirely made of pictures - but I can't say I'm inclined to do much more right now. Oh wait - here's a suggestion for those of you who like strange fruits and vegetables and end up buying them with no idea of what to do with them:

Melissa's Great Book of Produce: Everything You Need to Know about Fresh Fruits and Vegetables by Cathy Thomas

The pictures are fantastic, and the descriptions are dead-on when it comes to describing the taste, preparation, when the produce is commercially available, and serving suggestions. Many of the recipes looks amazing (and simple) too!

(and for those of you up at RIT, our library has it - but I've got it checked out)

Try not to eat too much fried food this week - even if those potatoes are calling your name!

March 3, 2011 5:02 PM

Hey ya'll!!! (haha I just wanted to say that)

Product review: same sausage as last time (number 2)!!

Overall - adding the extra spice helped, and cooking it longer was a great idea. The minimal number of ingredients made this great for my lazy cooking style and easy to clean!


This time I added a good dash of the spicy



I was making a Chipotle pasta sauce - I guess...



With a big can of diced tomatoes.... a REALLY BIG can....


Made it on the stove....


Holy cow, Molly! That's a lot of spaghetti! (I know...)


No guests for lunch, baby - all that's mine!


I was pretty sure I'd have left-overs of the sauce though... I usually don't eat over a pound of sauce....


Mmmmmm..... Looks good!


The smell is still present even though lunch was four hours ago!


The plate has some famous painting on the background - they belong to Margie....



Close up on the fake meat and the tomatoes!


It really looks like it could be ground pork or turkey, right?!


Tada! There was left over sauce - just enough for another lunch (or a different use!)

Final ingredients:
2 tbsp oil (for browning the 'meat')
1 sausage (mashed up with a fork and browned)
1 can diced tomatoes with garlic and spices
a hefty shake of cayenne if you want spicy from the first bite
spaghetti (enough for however many people are eating)
Serves 2-4 depending on portion size

March 2, 2011 1:49 PM

OK, I know I haven't updated since Feb 10 - but it's been rough.

So this post is not going to recap the past two weeks! Instead, I'm going to do a product review!! (OMG THIS BLOG ACTUALLY HAS CONTENT THAT YOU CAN USE!!!!!!!!!!)

The product is..... Field Roast's Mexican Chipotle Grain Meat Sausage!!!!!!

No, I do not normally eat fake meat - but I had a really big craving for chorizo (google it if you don't know) and I saw something that looked like it in the fake meat section by the tofu I was buying. So I grabbed it on impulse and it said vegan on it! So it went into the cart.

(yes, I am experimenting with pictures again)

So here's what I did with it - I've only used one sausage of the 4 provided so far, so more reviews may be coming.

1 tbsp oil in a pan for frying - added tofu (about a dime wide strip from a normal size container or about 1/5 of the 14oz or 397g Wegmans Extra Firm Tofu). I began to brown the tofu at about medium heat while I got the sausage out of the fridge. Then I cut open a sausage link and dumped it into the pan, squishing it around with the fork so it would break down into little chunks. It slowly started to break up and brown, but by then the tofu was getting a little too brown (bad idea, Molly). So I kept it in the pan for a little longer before singing a line from the newest Avril Lavinge song and tossing it on my plate for brunch. It's vegan, so it doesn't really need to cook to kill bacteria or something, right?

Imagine what it would look like if I wasn't lazy...

But then I had a couple phone calls I had to take, so it wasn't exactly hot when I got to it - oops. The crumbled tofu kinda resembled eggs, and if I had put more effort into it (and added the sausage to the pan first), it may have looked more like chorizo and eggs than it did.

Despite the fact that it was barely warm, it was good/decent. The flavors weren't as strong as they are in real chorizo, but the smell was pretty accurate and made me feel like calling home. Despite the label's claim of "HOT & SPICY!", it had less zing than I wanted, and I think the 'Medium' salsa I have in my fridge is spicier than this was. The grainy texture was the closest to meat that I've had, and the cooked pieces were almost dead-on. If it had been a little spicier, it would have covered up the faint wheat taste completely.

In other words, I cooked it wrong/incompletely, but otherwise it needs to be spicier. Those are the only improvements I could think of after eating it. Though cooking it with just plain tofu may have been the wrong idea - maybe next time I'll add some cayenne to the pan to give it that extra Boom Boom Pow that it needs.

Here's Company info, Nutrition stuff, etc:

Artisan Vegan Field Roast Original Grain Meat Co - est 1997 Seattle WA
"A Blend of European and Asian Heritage"
Vegetarian Grain Meat Sausages
Naturally made from Grains and Vegetables
HOT & SPICY Mexican Chipotle - with smoked chipotle and chili de arbol peppers
ney wt. 12.95 ox {368g}
Ready to Eat\Keep Refrigerated
1440 S Jackson St, Seattle WA 98144
800-311-9497
www.fieldroast.com

Peel Casing Before Cooking: Clip one end of sausage with scissors. Cut down the length of the sausage (half way) and remove plastic casing.
Preparation: Grill on outdoor grill, brown in saute pan with a little oil using medium heat, break up sausage with fingers and use in sauces, stir-frys, and scrambles. Avoid overcooking.

Ingredients: Vital Wheat Gluten, filtered water, expeller pressed safflower oil, onions, garlic, apple cider vinegar, naturally flavored yeast extract, chipotle peppers, onion powder, granulated garlic, brown sugar, spices, sea salt, barley malt, black pepper, chili de arbol peppers, cumin seed, paprika oleoresin and oregano

Nutrition Facts
Serv. Size - 1 sausage (92g)
Servings per container - 4
Calories - 250
Calories from fat - 100
Total fat - 12g
Saturated fat - 1g
Trans fat - 0g
Choloesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 520mg
Total Carb - 12g
Dietary Fiber - 4g
Sugars - 8g
Protein - 23g
Vitamin A - 0%
Vitamin C - 0%
Calcium - 2%
Iron - 10%
May have been previously frozen (Mine was 'cause I stuck it in the freezer for a few days :P)

Here's some more pictures too!

Thought I'd end with a pic of my meal - Overall, not bad!