My boss reminded me to eat more broccoli rabe because it is awesome. He is right. Especially when you cover it in spaghetti, but what isn't amazing when covered in spaghetti??


Alex and I hit the shop-up so hard, you guys. Most recently, in one 6-hour stint at a Saturday Shop-up I ate a BBQ slider, split an Ethiopian feast from Bunna, mac n cheese, a cinnamon bun with peanut butter, a macaroon, a chocolate caramel, a bunch of fudge, a cup of chai, and drank 4 beers. Whaddyagonnado...


For St. Paddys Day some friends came over and I made some Irish stylee food to enjoy over beers. This is my Irish Soda Bread, which looks a bit freakishly huge, but it was freakishly tasty too, so I'm not sweating it either.




Oh, and I made the Roasted Red Pepper Mac from Isa Does It again. What else is new??

This past weekend it was so nice out, so we ran with our Springtime jackets on to BK and went to Champs, my first love, and got breakfast, went wandering through McCarren Park and flipped through all the vinyl in Human Head Records, scoring a few 7"s and ultimately our weight in doughnuts from Dunwell. It had been too long. I had an apple pie doughnut there and it reminded me that I haven't made a pie since like, Thanksgiving? What gives?? Pie soon. For days.




Perusing the #vegan hashtag is a little depressing for me, since it's just a bunch of pictures of skinny girls in their underwear, or pictures of food that looks so good but I can't eat because it is only on a screen, or pictures of really wholesome-looking food like smoothies with flaxseeds and goji berries and maca powder and spirulina and green tea extract. All of the pictures usually look great, and make me feel like the worst junk-food vegan. So to console myself, I made this smoothie today! It has a frozen banana, 1/2 cup of coconut yogurt, 1 tablespoon of coconut crystals, a big ass spoonful of peanut butter, 1/4 cup of chia seeds and some almond milk. I put walnuts and chia on top for maximum instagram cuteness. It was so amazing and I felt so good that I walked to work! I beat up all the punks on Crescent Street because I was so jacked up on chia, and got to work 10 minutes early, all while googling the health benefits of chia seeds. I eat chia, so I'm a good vegan, RIGHT YOU GUYS?!?!?

Also, check out my new Summa-time vegan kicks I got today!! Ready for Spring time fighting Crime! I will be back soon with a bunch of baby shower cupcakes and the lasagna recipe of my dreams <33

The enchilada is filled with a red chile pesto and chopped avocado with sauteed poblano peppers and red onions. The rice is brown basmati with annatto powder and the beans are black eyed peas with chipotle chiles in adobo. It totally did the trick.

Avocado and Red Chile Pesto Enchilada

4 large whole wheat or corn tortillas
1-2 avocados, diced
1 red onion, sliced
2 poblanos, sliced into strips

red chile pesto:
2 cloves garlic, peeled
3 red jalapeño or fresno peppers
1 dried ancho chile
2 dried chile de arbols
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons nooch
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon chile powder

Place dried peppers in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let stand for about 20 minutes and remove them from the bowl. Pull out their stems. Remove stems from fresno peppers and add to a food processor with the reconstituted dried chiles, garlic and pine nuts. Puree until smooth. Pour in the oil, add the salt, pepper, chile powder, and nooch. Puree and taste for heat and seasonings.
In a large skillet, sautee poblanos and red onion in a little olive oil, if desired, until soft. Toss with 1-2 tablespoons of the pesto. Turn off heat.
Heat the largest skillet you've got over med-high heat, and spray with some canola oil. Lay a tortilla out and place some onions and peppers down the middle of the tortilla and add some chopped avocado on top of that. Drizzle another tablespoon of the pesto over that and fold edged over the filling.
Place the enchilada seam-side down on the hot pan. Sear for about 3 minutes, the flip over and sear 2nd side. Repeat with remaining tortillas.
Serve with Rice and beans!

Enchilada, above, is filled with seitan, salsa, chiles, onions, peppers, and "queshew". You like it? I thought of that this morning. I ususally make the ppk queso. It's delicious and queso-y, but it takes a little too long for me to throw together at a moments notice, because when the queso craving hits... well, we could all be dead by then. So to save the planet, I came up with a quick version.

I am definitely going to be needing an iphone, if only for a sweet accessible camera through various apps with which I can photograph (and not forget to photograph) all of my creations and reproductions. But alas, I will not be getting one for a very long time, as I am what most refer to as flat broke.


But I can certainly make due with what I've got for the time being.

 This morning I made a tofu scramble with leftover enchilada filling and made it into breakfast burritos. I guess the addition of tofu makes me feel like I'm eating breakfast... It's kind of a rationalization, but I'm sticking to it. On a side note, yesterday I made baked falafel pitas for lunch with homemade hummus and cucumber salsa and decided that it is my favorite food in the whole world. Just sayin'...

This morning I read this really cool blog by this awesome chocolatier who made vegan devilled eggs, and I want to make them so bad, and as soon as I find an egg mold and make it my possession, I will. But as I was scrolling down and looking at the rest of her site I saw this sad post she wrote telling the sad truths of how mainstream companies make and manufacture their chocolate, and the steps she takes to make sure none of her products support such horrible industries, but also how people are unwilling to pay more for products that are made ethically using materials that don't harm the environment. It just made me really sad to realize how hard it is to do the right thing, especially when you have your own business, which I hope someday to have. What a buzzkill this world is...

Anyways you should definitely go on her site and check out her awesome work and maybe even buy some of her chocolates. Because there aren't a lot of people doing all the awesome things she's doing, because it's really hard. I hope that when it comes time for me to make the decision to buy something that costs more because it's responsible rather than something that's cheaper because it's cheap in ethics, that I'll make the right decision, because it's the right decision.

More light-hearted food pics and witty explanation will follow soon.
Thanks for reading.