Your Vegan Mom

Paul

Here's what he's been doing, and the reason I didn't have a lot of time to talk about food before Christmas:

He's on the left.  He's producing his first feature film.  That's our friend Sean on the right.  He's the writer and director of this incredibly personal, beautiful movie.  I am so proud of them.  They just launched a kickstarter campaign to get this project finished.  Check it out.  Pass it on.  Thanks.

I'll be back tomorrow with breakfast.  Or lunch or dinner, really.  I make this super delicious, incredibly easy dish whenever I have a few stray corn tortillas lying around.

2012 Holiday Gift Guide

*Dear People I Know in Real Life, You should probably stop here.*

I was at Veggie Grill on Sunday having one of the best dates ever...by myself.  It was raining outside, and I sat next to the window with my big ol' sandwich and my holiday to do list and the annual food issue of the New Yorker, trying not to eavesdrop on the not-best-date-ever going on next to me (lots of talk of energy and the yin and the yaaang) and being so, so, so very grateful for my husband and the totally normal way he pronounces yang and the fact that he doesn't do it very often.  It turns out that Veggie Grill is having a special right now where you get a free entree when you buy a 30 dollar gift card.  I did that.  Now I want to do all of my holiday shopping in that fashion.  Unfortunately nothing else on this list comes with a free sandwich, but they're all still really, really good: 

Clean Slate: What I neglected to mention last year

I'm cleaning blog house this month.  Here's several odds and ends that I forgot to mention.  

Crockpot Tapioca and the Art of Cookbook Pairing

Are you done shopping?  I have one more present to make and one more to buy.  (I'm not whittling legos.)   

We've really been enjoying Kathy Hester's new cookbook, The Vegan Slow Cooker, lately, and I was thinking that a thrift store crockpot and this book would make such a nice little gift set.   That, of course, got me to thinking about all the other cookbooks I love and how to turn them into tidy little packages, like -  

• Hannah's beautiful new book, Vegan Desserts: Sumptuous Sweets for Every Season and silicone baking mats or a pastry bag or a classic cookie cutter or a madeleine pan, actually this one could be more a lavish baking basket than a humble pair, oh but packed into a baking pan or big ol' mixing bowl rather than a basket
• Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (or the whole grain version, but I haven't had a chance to check that one out) and a dough bucket
• Cook Food and a cast iron skillet (perfect for someone just figuring out how to feed themselves)
• Clean Food and a bottle of ume plum vinegar (for the healthy-inclined)
• Ratio and a kitchen scale (for the scientific-minded, or someone wanting to move beyond recipes)

What else?  What cookbook pairings would you suggest?

I seem to be on vacation.

Today we are recovering from a nine day weekend.  (And when I say today, I mean last Monday, but like I said, I seem to be on vacation.)  The movie that Paul is working on had a brief hiatus, so we just took the whole week off.  We visited with cousins.  And played on the beach.  We took a trip to the California Science Center and then ran around the Rose Garden.  We swam.  And played with friends.  And had a picnic dinner at the Huntington Gardens (one of my all time favorite summer things to do).  We rode the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier and went to the Kidspace Museum in Pasadena.   

And then crossed two things off my summer to do list when we went to Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark and came home to make pickles.  

A couple weeks ago Desmond insisted, insisted, that pickles grew on trees.  I, of course, immediately scheduled this field trip.

And this farm makes an excellent field trip.  Way more than just farm labor tourism (Oh!  But it's that too!  Do you see Paul and Felix up there working on their farm-labor-is-fun attitude adjustment?), small children dig and scoop in a giant sand pit while goats climb nimbly overhead on wooden planks.  Animatronic chickens sing totally inappropriate songs to your vegan children (Desmond comes home singing, "What do you do with a drunken chicken?  What do you do with a drunken chicken?"  Nothing vegan, it turns out.) Kids clamber up into the driver's seat of a real live (and completely stationary) combine or slide down the shoot in back.  We visit with real live chickens and cows and horses and a couple emus.  We have a picnic on the grass.  And then willingly pay eight dollars for Desmond to mine for gems, we're just so caught up in our surreal bucolic morning.    

It was a good week.  Here's the rest of our summer to do list.  What's on yours?

• Take the train to Little Tokyo.  Have lunch at Shojin and run around this secret garden.
• Join (and actually participate in) a summer reading club (I have mixed feelings about this, but Desmond is all into it this year.)  (Too late.  We've gone once.  It's already almost over.  Maybe next year.)
• California Science Center.  Picnic in Rose Garden.  (There's a Chipotle across the street if you haven't packed a picnic.  Maybe someone in your group will be as nice as Paul and run over to pick up lunch while you and the kids play in the Family Discovery Room at the Ecosystems Exhibit.)
• Natural History Museum (We can't wait to visit the new Dinosaur Hall!)
• LACMA and lunch at Real Food Daily
• La Brea Tar Pits and lunch at Veggie Grill
• visit the turtles and have a picnic at Caltech (the campus is pretty and fun to explore and not too far from our house - I wouldn't drive across town for this one)
• Swimming Lessons for Desmond (He's doing so, so great!)
• Leo Carillo Beach (lunch?)
• Manhattan Beach (We usually walk up and get lunch from Wahoo's, but I'm open to more interesting lunch suggestions.)  
• Laguna Beach (Zinc Cafe is pleasant and I've never been to Taco Loco, but I was just looking at their menu and it looks like the perfect place to have lunch with sandy feet.)
• Cabrillo Aquarium
• Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica
• Noah's Ark at the Skirball
• bike day at the big park near our house
• plant an avocado tree?
• Audobon Center at Debs Park