Domestipithecus

So, apparently Earth Day is coming. Do you know how I know this? The glut of ‘eco-friendly’ wedding posts in an old wedding community I used to frequent during planning, but now go back every now and then to look at pretty dresses.

Reminders of how to have a ‘green’ wedding go from corn based disposable plates and cups to recycled paper invites. People seem to have some sort of ‘I’m soooo much greener than you’ thing going on. It pissed me off last year and it still does.

CORN? Yeah, lets give Monsanto more money by using even more of our valuable land to grow yet more of their GMO corn that is not meant for food. Not to mention the boatload of chemicals used in making corn products. Sustainable? Sure. Eco friendly? Not particularly.

People don’t seem to understand that ’sustainable’ and ‘eco-friendly’ (or whatever you wat to call it) do not mean the same thing. Leather is a sustainable product. Leather is NOT an eco friendly product.

I want to yell at these people, “If you are so concerned about the environment, don’t serve meat at your wedding!” but we all know how that would go over.

The best thing you can do for the environment is to stop consuming animal products. It is not knitting with bamboo yarn (again, sustainable but not eco-friendly), it is not using corn plates and it is most certainly not buying into this whole “green” label.

I agree that every little thing counts. Yes, use recycled paper for your invites! Use live, potted plants for your centerpieces (a friend of mine is doing succulents!). Do as much or as little as you want to make your wedding what you want, but please, don’t brag about how ‘green’ you are and then talk about your menu of steak, chicken or fish. Hell, serve a whole cow and pig on a spit (not that I condone this), but don’t tell me how green your wedding is because you had DIY seat covers.

I like to educate about a vegan lifestyle. If people ask, I’ll talk to them about it. I don’t like to be pushy about it. I certainly dont like being proselytized to, so I don’t do it to others. But if someone asks me how they can be more ‘green’ I am going to tell them to cut down their consumption of animal products. Cutting them out all together is better, of course, but baby steps are good.

I’m not the most environmentally conscious person out there. Far from it. I went vegetarian because I love animals. I had rats for pets and loved them like crazy for crying out loud, how could I justify eating a pig or cow? When I met Mr. Pithecus, he was vegetarian as well, though for environmental reasons. Our decision to go vegan was based on both.

I am not saying we are better than those that eat meat, but don’t try and get into a ‘green’ pissing contest with us. I am not saying don’t bother with the recycled stuff if you are still going to eat meat. Just don’t be all righteous about your recycled toilet paper while chowing down on a plate o’ ribs.

I know I have a lot of meat eater friends who read this blog. I hope I don’t offend them with this rant. Most of you don’t buy into the whole ‘look how green I am’ thing anyway. You all have brains.

Now I have to go make some non organic coffee in my department store bought french press and drink it from my commercially bought mug on my non-eco friendly couch while watching my giant, ungreen TV.

Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to kiss me once ore even twice, but it has been a long, long time. In internet time it’s been almost a whole generation!

I have been cooking away and taking pictures when I remember. I think the wedding stuff settled down (oh the thank you cards I had to write, my hand be cramped up!) just in time for the holiday buzz. Not to mention we have THREE weddings next year (possibly 4) of good friends and relatives.

A good friend and ex co-worker got engaged in Vegas this year. She and her guy have been together for years and have been friends for even longer. I used to ask her all the time if she was engaged yet. She finally was able to beat me to the question by telling me she was This one is in June.

I think I mentioned that Boo’s sister got engaged in August. If not, Boo’s sister got engaged in August. We had all traveled to Hawaii for his brother’s wedding and she and her guy stayed an extra week. He proposed on the top of Diamond Head on their one year anniversary. Soooo romaaantic… Boo is officiating his sister’s nuptials and I will be a bridesmaid! Wait… I’m married now, does that mean I will be a bridesmatron? Ugh. This one is in October.

Our friend that officiated our wedding proposed to my other awesome friend after 5 years together. They are so perfect together and Boo and I are crazy happy for them. They are the awesomest. Is that a word? This may happen in Sept. They don’t have a date as they just got engaged this past weekend.

Boo’s cousin got engaged to his long-time love the day before our wedding. They kept it so quiet I didn’t even know until she had already flown back to their home (he stayed here to visit with family a little longer).  This one has no date and this is the “possibly 4″ I mentioned above. They talked about wanting something very small with immediate family only. Though, Boo and his cousin are very close and cousin considers Boo one of his closest friends, so we may end up going. We don’t know if this one will happen next year or in 2010.

Whew.

Married life is pretty much the same as before, with more stuff. Boo and I lived together for about a year before we were married so not a lot changed. Except we do the sappy “Good morning my wife” “Good morning my husband” thing.

So what have I been up to in the kitchen, you ask? Wait, you didn’t ask? Eh, I’m going to tell you anyway.

Broccoli and Noochy Mac.
Fresh broccoli from our box scheme

Amazing Mac and Cheez sauce from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook which is our favorite nutritional yeast (nooch) sauce

Horrible picture of the meal (it tastes awesome)

I mostly just steam the veggies we get, so this is how the broccoli was prepared. Veggies taste sooo good just steamed.

To give the noochy mac an even homier feel, I like to cook some chopped up Tofurkey Kielbasa and add it to the mix. Reminds me of a grown up version of the hot dogs and mac and cheese I had when little.

A while back I asked a friend of mine what to do with too many sweet potatoes. Our box scheme has them in there quite often and sometimes there are just too many. He had a lot of great suggestions, but I ended up doing a delicious sweet potato soup. I pretty much cut up sweet potatoes, onions, one yukon potato and garlic and then tossed them with olive oil, dried sage and thyme.

Then I roasted them until I felt they were done (sorry no real recipe here), pureed and served.

This freezes great. All pureed veggie soups do. Roasted root veggie soups are a favorite in this house so now that winter is coming there will be more of them. I love making a huge batch and using up the saved Earth Balance containers to freeze it for lazy, cold nights. A little bread for dipping and you have an amazingly comforting, filling meal.

As a side note, I have to go to Whole foods today. So. Not. Happy. Of course, it was my scatterbrainedness (bzuh?) that made this have to happen. I need Earth Balance Buttery Sticks for my sweet potato biscuits I am bringing to the Thanksvegan feast. I don’t want to use the tubs because it is softer and the biscuits may spread to much.

Yes, I said Thanksvegan. I am lucky enough to be going to Boo’s parents’ home for the holiday. An all vegan household. Mom is making her own “turkey” and sides and I will be bringing the biscuits and a Tofurkey, just because Thanksvegan isn’t Thanksvegan without it.

Oh and I made Bittersweet’s pumpkin pie “ice cream” last night that I may bring a bit of. But Boo and I might want to keep it all for ourselves. It’s crazy good.

I promise to be a bit more posty going forward. I will definitely be bringing my camera to the Thanksvegan (I love that word) feast so you all can share in the yum.

Though, I would never actually ride a horse.

Monday after the wedding, one of my oldest and dearest friends came over for a home cooked meal. This friend (I like to call her Super Girl or SG for short), drove (well, rode - I am such a control freak) cross country with me when I moved to California. We met under somewhat embarrassing circumstances, but we don’t talk much about that

I made chick pea cutlets, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans (fresh from the just delivered produce box) and gravy. Yep, an old standard in the Ape household, but SG hadn’t had the good ol’ vegan cutlet o’chick peas before. It was nummy and really, no need for pictures as I think I have made it and taken pictures more than once before in this blog.

Last night I made a nice angel hair pomodoro, minus the basil. I just didn;t have any and didn’t feel like going to get any. It was my and Boo’s last day/night before he went back to work so we were playing it close to home. We also had some Delicata squash we had  gotten in a previous produce delivery. Those Green Bags are absolutley wonderful. I have 2 1/2 week old zucchini I am thinking about cooking up tonight that looks like I got it Monday. Anyway, I cut the delicata into slices, removed the seeds and roasted with olive oil and kosher salt. They were like yummy, sweet potato tasting squash rings.

Again, no pictures as I am not sure where the camera even is at this point.

Once we get better pictures back, I will post the food and cake from the wedding. And maybe a few pix of the bride and groom

Now I’m off to do my daily Wii Fit. Boo and I got it as a wedding present to ourselves. It’s great fun!

and I am totally going to stop numbering these things as I feel bad as I get behind.

Today I received our shipment of white wine for the wedding. Finding white vegan wine is the biggest pain in the ass. Red isn’t too hard, but white is near impossible.

We decided to go with a local (California) company, Frey Vineyards.

Because we didn’t want to be too spendy, we went with their Sauvignon Blanc. A very tasty $10 bottle of wine. I sampled this and their “Natural White” table wine at my bridal shower and this one won out, even though it was more expensive. I don’t usually like white wine at all, but this stuff, I love.

We ordered a bunch of bottles because most of the wine drinkers at the wedding are white wine drinkers. There is a 10% discount when ordering 12 or more bottles from their site so really, it wasn’t too bad for what we were getting. We were paying for faster shipping because Boo was afraid that it would end up sitting on a truck in the heat somewhere.

Tuesday, we received a call from Julie at Frey. She said that we had paid for faster shipping but it usually gets to our area even faster than the shipping we chose if we just do regular ground and she would change that if we wanted. We thanked her and told her that would be great and that we had only done the quicker shipping because it was for the wedding and we were paranoid. She congratulated us and I told her that we really liked their wine and that we were having a vegan wedding and finding vegan white was so difficult. She was glad that they could help and wished us luck with the wedding.

The order arrived today with a sweet handwritten note on the invoice, “I imagine that every little bit helps out… so I increased your discount to 15%! Have a lovely wedding day and enjoy! Best Regards, Julie.”

So I am not so much blogging about vegan food as I am vegan wine, but it all goes to the same place, right?

I wanted to let everyone out there know what a great company this is and how amazing their customer service is. Not to mention, they have tasty wine.

So today begins a month of vegan food blogging. I was hoping to have some shots of wonderous vegan caramels, but it was not to be.

Not only did I drop the camera on the floor and have the button pop off and roll under the stove, I seem to have some slightly ok caramel sauce for “ice cream” instead. This is what happens when you have a lame candy thermometer that only has ticks for every 5 degrees. Guestimating doesn’t work in candy or caramel making. I should add a good one to our wedding registry.

Since I am now nearly out of sugar and light corn syrup, I cannot attempt it again until I get to the store and Boo has the car today.

We are also nearly out of wheat gluten. I hate being out of wheat gluten. I think we need to start ordering that stuff in bulk.

 Oooo… my LUSH order just arrived. I had a bridal shower (which was thrown by Boo’s family and was entirely vegan - I should have pix soon) recently and of the gifts, I received a couple LUSH gift cards. This order has all the new Toner Tabs in it. Very exciting.

Off to tone my face up.

I’m not sure if I am crazy or just crazy.

I signed up to be part of VeganMoFo this year (though it looks like my comment didn’t show up so I will try again). It’s based on the concept of NaNoWriMo except that all the blogs that sign up are to write about vegan food daily. I know I won’t make it daily as I am getting married right in the middle of it, but I will try.

I tend towards mostly vegan in this blog even though Boo and I only call ourselves vegetarian. We do eat mostly vegan, but saying we are vegan even though we occasionally eat cheese is about the same as someone saying they are a vegetarian that occasionally eats fish.

Perhaps I will use VeganMoFo as our “Ok time to go all the way vegan” jumping off point. Our wedding is vegan (though I think his suit is wool because it was so very difficult to find anything else to rent) so you can bet I will be blogging about that.

Boo and I had decided when we first got engaged that we would use shredded junk mail and the like to make the paper for our wedding invitations. When I finally got around to making the paper… ugh, what a job. Eventually I got into a groove and could turn it out rather quickly, but the learning curve was not easy.

I used this picture tutorial. It was thorough and very helpful.

So without further ado, the making of our invites (click small pictures to see larger version).

Ingredients:
Shredded paper

Coloring (this is crepe paper that co-workers had used to decorate my desk on my birthday two years ago - I only used the green)

Roses from when Boo proposed He had 3 dozen +1. The +1 was to ask for my hand *giggles* isn’t he sweet?

Blender full of paper and with the rose petals and leaves

The bin and screen I used with the cellulose pulp/water

Paper drying on flat, smooth surface, my washer and dryer

Leftover pulp (you can’t pour this down the drain)

Paper folded for invite

Finished invites and rsvp’s

The paper for the inside of the invites, RSVP ans map were a parchment paper pack bought from Michael’s. The photo corners were something I had left over from previous craft projects. I created the map myself using Google Maps as a template. I fuzzed the map and blacked out the details on the invite because, well, this is the internet.

You’ll also notice the RSVP’s have names on them too. Each person invited got an RSVP with their name and the choice to select one of the meals or “Will Not Attend”. We are hoping to cut down on the amount of random +1’s and children added to a not-so-specific RSVP.

We sent out 39 invites for a total of 76 potential guests. We estimate that we will have 60 or so people that will RSVP yes. A nice, somewhat small event.

On the way up to the garlic festival, I got a call that my wedding dress was in. I was giddy for all of 5 minutes and then worried that it wouldn’t fit. Last night, my worries proved to be founded. It is too small. I am trying not to be too upset about this, but really, who wouldn’t be?

I had to take it with me but I am going to call today to make an alterations appt. The nice woman who has been my “consultant” at the shop told me that there was no problem. That there is plenty of fabric in there and it will be fine.

I looked inside the dress today and I think there may be enough. That and me starving myself for the next two months.

Don’t worry, I won’t actually do that. I can’t. Training for a marathon doesn’t allow not eating enough. I just have to be smarter. You would think that after training for these last 6 weeks or what have you that I would have lost something, but no. I do remember that the first marathon I trained for I actually gained a couple pounds, but it was all in the right places and muscle.

Enough of that.

I’m off to start making the paper for the base of our invites. I will be posting process pictures in the future.

Not like I post every day usually, but this has been a pretty long absence.

We’re settling into the new place, slowly though. We don’t have a lot of storage furniture like shelving and such so there aren’t a lot of places to put things. The last place had so many built-in bookshelves and things that we didn’t need any. Now we have no built-ins. We have a fireplace so there’s the mantle. Currently it is holding all of the knick-knacks and such that I have so far unpacked. It is full.

We do like this new place, though it is more difficult to keep cool than the last one (no central air here). The landlord just told us how to turn on the attic fan, so that shoudl help some. She also told us we could put a window unit in the bedroom. We will probably need to do that seeing as it’s only June and it’s pretty hot. It’s only going to get worse from here.

In other news…

Boo and I are still training for the Pasadena marathon. The released the course and I have to say I am disappointed. It’s rather… crappy I think. Too many “run down this street for a mile and then turn around and come back” sections. I hate that during training never mind the actual marathon. Eh, it’s not THAT big of a deal. I’m just being whiny.

We have a catering tasting thingy-do this Saturday. We’ll also do a tentative set up for the reception site so we can put in an order for the tables, chairs and such.

We have a cake tasting July 19 with this place. Sounds soooo nummy. Hello pumpkin chocolate chip with maple cream cheez frosting! All her cakes are vegan and organic so yay!

We plan on asking a good friend of ours, D, to be our officiant. He’s a really great guy who we like a lot and he’s very articulate and witty. Boo and I are very excited to ask him as is K, his girlfriend, and our other good friend. We ran it by her first so as to not put him in an awkward position if it was something he wouldn’t really just not want to deal with, and she thinks he would be honored. That made Boo and I feel honored that she thinks he would be honored so there’s all sorts of squishy good feelings going around. So we’re getting together the weekend of July 13th so we can ask in person. We can’t wait!

I think that’s all the updating for now. I don’t feel like cooking tonight though so we will be ordering from Egg Roll Express. It’s OMG delicious chinese food with amazingly yummy vegetarian “meat” dishes like sweet and sour pork and kung pao chicken. We obviously haven’t had any of their meat dishes, but their fried rice is the best I have ever had.

I don’t think I’ll have to do much work convincing Boo.