Your Vegan Mom

A Simple Summer Sandwich in My New Kitchen

Paul painted the kitchen for my birthday.  My birthday was three months ago, but I hemmed and hawed over colors and how daunting the job seemed (the silly-putty-hued paint on the trim and cabinets was peeling off in sheets like that nail polish popular in the eighties).  

And then last weekend I just couldn't take it any more - the silly putty and the peeling - and so I ran to the hardware store.  We sanded and slapped up some paint.  It's not perfect, but it's so much lighter and brighter.  Three days later with the paint dry and everything put away, I was just so excited by the light on my easy sandwich, that despite the fact that I had accidentally skipped breakfast and was absolutely famished, I ran and grabbed my camera.  Here's what's in there - 

good bun + aioli + slab of fried tofu drizzled with Bragg's (a la my friend Alana) + huge slice of beautiful yellow tomato + a few leaves of basil 

So simple and so good.  

Thanks for the kitchen, Paul.  I love it.  

Do you have an easy lunch you're digging right now?  

The Vegan Quesadilla

Tomato, Avocado, and Sweet Onion Quesadilla

A long time ago, before any of us had kids, Paul and I went to Mexico City for twelve hours with our friend, Levi.  He worked for an airline at the time and did extragavagantly spontaneous things like take his friends to Mexico City for twelve hours.

We arrived just before dawn and wandered along the cobblestone streets of the old quarter, stumbling upon churches and coffee and murals and narrow arcades and grand piazzas.  As the day got hot, we stopped in the blue-tarp shade of a quesadilla vendor at an open air market.  She was patting out masa next to a big burnished hot iron grill surrounded by dozens of quesadilla fillings.  I remember squash blossoms and mushrooms and rajas and potatoes and some sort of greens, but there were more.  We pulled up stools and worked our way through every possible vegetable combination.  

The Vegan Toddler

I cried at breakfast this morning.  We're on the second to last chapter of The House At Pooh Corner .  Have you read it?  Do you know what the last chapter is called?  I'm going to start crying again.  Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There.  Yep, crying again.  

I'm not generally overly sentimental.  I don't even scrapbook, but this one got to me.  I've really been noticing that whole fleeting nature of childhood lately.  Kindergarten?  Over.  In like five minutes.  Do you remember a school year when you were a kid?  It was a lifetime, a world.  I could not imagine a time or place before or after or apart from kindergarten or first grade or even seventh grade maybe.

My own kids' growth sneaks up on me.  Suddenly Desmond is tall.  And he lost his second tooth yesterday.

 So, when the boys asked what the last chapter was called, and I cried and then had to explain why I was crying at breakfast, a semi-coherent (particularly for a six and three-year-old) stream of words began to spill out of my mouth...

You're so tall.  And remember Rocket John?  (His imaginary friend that used to zoom him off on worldly adventures.  In case you don't know, Rocket John had 100 pet lemurs that slept in tiny sleeping bags in Desmond's room.  They had a swimming pool in our front yard with a diving board and sometimes they would jump as high as the moon.)  And I'm so excited about all the big dude adventures that you guys will have (without me, I add to myself and start crying anew), but I'm also sad about your little dude adventures ending.  

I watch Desmond's sensitive face trying to grasp my uncharacteristic emotional spillage and, of course, there's Felix laughing.  Between the intensely real imaginary world and the inappropriate emotional responses, it can be difficult to discern a three-year-old from a schizophrenic sociopath. 

From the middle of it, without the hazy filter of nostalgia, it's hard to heed that omnipresent advice about cherishing every moment, yada, yada, yada.

So, let's look way back, through enough time and space that we can no longer feel the unrelenting clamp of teething gums on your finger and hear the crying and see the mess under the highchair.   I made this for you almost five years ago.  Time slips by so quickly. I should probably start a scrapbook.

Here's what one vegan toddler ate when he was one.  If you click on the collage, you'll find some short notes.

Tami's Black Bean Burgers

We're headed out of town for the long weekend, so I'm going to let Tami do the cooking.  Have you checked out her new book, Grills Gone Vegan?  To celebrate, she has fun events going on all week.  (Hurry up.  There are prizes.)