I love weekends

Every once in a while, my boyfriend and I like to do cooking nights, which usually means that I find a few recipes and do much of the cooking. That's primarily because of my aforementioned teeny tiny kitchen. Saturday evening, my boyfriend and I met at the local Whole Foods, did a bit of grocery shopping. I'm getting a little ticked off with them, ever since they started hanging cheese where they used to hang the tempeh, and put the tempeh on the shelf under where the cheese hangs now. It's also harder to find my favorite varieties, the Flax Tempeh and the plain Soy Tempeh. Luckily, I had a package at home. A local store has it for just 50 cents more a package, and they carry the varieties I like. If there were a good co-op closer to home, I'd be shopping there. But I found most of what I needed for Salisbury Tempeh (yes, the one my cat went bonkers for) and Quinoa/Sweet Potato patties from "Conveniently Vegan," a book of incredibly simple recipes published by the Vegetarian Resource Group

At home, I began cooking the yam (I have to remember not to call it a sweet potato as tempting as it is, as they are different) and the quinoa. Quinoa is a lovely little South American grain and is one of the few plant products that is considered a complete protein, although you really don't need to combine proteins at meals. According to Wikipedia, it also is a source of omega-3 fatty acids. Like many grains, use a 2:1 ratio of water to quinoa and cook for about 15 minutes. Because of the saponins on the surface of the quinoa grains, rinse your quinoa before cooking it. Just measure, pour into a strainer, and rinse well, and then dump into the pot for cooking.

While I began preparing the Salisbury Tempeh, I put Bryan to work forming patties of the quinoa and yams. After cooking up the tempeh, I fried the quinoa/yam patties and dinner was prepared! My boyfriend hadn't tried either recipe and while he's fairly easy to please when it comes to food, we both managed to polish off all the tempeh and all but one of the eight quinoa/yam patties. I ate that tonight with leftover stewed tofu and potatoes from "Vegan With A Vengeance."

Yesterday, we rented a car and drove out to Vienna, Virginia, to one of my favorite restaurants, Sunflower Vegetarian Restaurant. As its name suggests, it has a charming, cheery, sunflower motif in a little cafe. Sunflower is basically pan-Asian vegetarian with beautifully named dishes, such as As-You-Like-Garden, which is pan-fried noodles with chunks of soy protein, carrots, and snow peas. I always tell people to get the appetizer called Fried Chicken, a mix of soy protein and mushrooms fried up and served with a spicy ketchup-like sauce. We rented the car because we were going to see Nellie McKay at the Birchmere Theatre, which is not very Metro-accessible.

It's hard to classify Nellie McKay's music. She has a sort of jazzy riff going on, but also does piano-laced rap. She is apparently not amused by comparisons to Norah Jones, but I am amused by one reviewer who said she was sort of like Doris Day crossed with Eminem (but without the violent misogyny). Something was clearly on her mind, as she kept slipping up--maybe she's not used to performing with a band, maybe she's upset about her contretemps with her (now former) record label which wanted her to severely shorten her second album "Pretty Little Head." She played stuff from that, which I hadn't been able to hear before. Before the show, while waiting in line to get a good number so we could get a good seat, we saw her in the parking lot walking her dog, a smallish mixed-breed. Before performing "The Dog Song," she talked about having adopted a dog who she called Georgia.

Now, I like both dogs and cats, but my life just doesn't permit me to live with a dog. For that matter, nor does my apartment management. When I'm out and about and see people walking their dogs, I almost always say hi. Sometimes, the dogs approach me, recognizing an animal lover. The good humans will let me pet their babies and talk to me about them. One of the greatest joys in the world is cuddling a huge bundle of fur. My cat likes to cuddle with me just after I've gone to bed or when I'm ready to get up (on weekends, she'll act almost as an alarm clock. Mom, it's 7:30. Don't you have to get up?). My alarm clock doesn't have a snooze feature, so I can't hit it and spend a few more minutes communing with the kitty, and she protests when I get up.

And unfortunately, that's just what I had to do this morning to get ready for work. Oh, well.