Holidays

Dec. 27th, 2015 04:48 pm
vintagewitch: (Gilmore Car)
This was a very odd Christmas.

Went up to see Grandma. She has a really bad cold at the moment, and was up coughing most of Christmas Eve. She is much more frail than the last time I saw her.

I'm mentally bracing myself for her funeral. She's 93, mostly blind, mostly deaf, and since she broke her arm, hasn't been able to do much of anything. I think her activities around the house are largely to thank for keeping her alive and happy, and this time she just seemed ... a little defeated. Frail is the really the best word. 

So it's important that I make time to call and see her. 

There wasn't much for around-the-dinner table debate, except for when my uncle came out for lunch. He and dad got into it over taxes. Of course, these are things that I know about, but it was much more about them duking it out than about learning. So I zipped my lip and didn't really participate, which I think was probably the best move.

Had a weird health thing happen last night. Had a friend over to make pierogies, and right after we made some to eat and were to continue with the second half of pierogi forming, I had to go to the bathroom and throw up a bunch. He actually stayed and finished making the pierogies (we figured it happened waaaaay too soon to be food poisoning from the pierogies), and left.

I woke up this morning feeling tired, but not bad. So that was odd. It's almost like there was dehydration or some vitamin weirdness going on. 

So that's weird. Today I've just been cleaning and prepping the remaining pierogies to be frozen. They'll make for nice, quick, tasty food when I'm too busy to cook. 

This evening, I'm going to take it easy, maybe continue cleaning a bit, and get ready to head out for Christmas/gift exchange with my folks. I'm taking Wednesday with me in case we get snowed in. 
vintagewitch: (crystals)
So ... I might have made up a brilliant, healthy, accidentally vegan recipe for dinner tonight. Thought I should document it here, because someone somewhere might want to try it. I know I'll want to make it again in the future.

I'm gonna call it ... 15th Street Hop!

Ingredients:

1 cup black eyed peas, soaked, drained, rinsed, then cooked
1 cup dry brown rice
1 can diced tomatoes (no salt added)
Like, 5 fistfuls of spinach
2-3 cloves garlic
2 T Tahini (I'm guessing?)
Dash of olive oil
Spices! (Oregano, Italian Seasoning, a LOT of Chili Powder, Red Pepper Flakes, Nutritional Yeast, Dried Parsley, Lemon Pepper Seasoning)

So how you make it is, you soak the beans. At LEAST six hours.

When you're ready to start cooking, put the rice on to boil. Rice takes 2 cups water per cup rice.

Boil the black eyed peas until they reach a good consistency - not quite done, but almost. Drain.

Chop up the garlic, put in pot. Dump tomatoes in pot. Warm up. Add a dash of olive oil. Start putting fistfuls of spinach into the tomato-y mixture. This will cook down quite a bit, I had to add much more as I went on and the spinach cooked down. Finally, add the beans back in. Now, add the tahini. I did one large spoonful - probably about the same as two tablespoons, then a little extra. Then I started adding the spices. At one point I added way too much chili powder, so I added some nutritional yeast to balance it out - which turned out to be an awesome idea! Really, I just had fun with this part.

Finally, serve up over the rice (did you forget about the rice? don't forget about the rice.)

This is really great as-is, but I bet it would also be good with some cheese sprinkled on top. If you are vegan, you should probably not do that.

Aaaaaaaanyway, life is ... ok. I have Life Things to Write About, but I'm in too good a mood. I went to yoga after work (was desperately needing it), then got creative in the kitchen, and now I'm gonna read. Tomorrow is a big fundraiser for work, so I will probably have More Things later. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the rest of this evening.

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