I'm such a slacker

I just haven't felt like cooking, and I've been pretty busy lately, but I finally made some stuff tonight. Sadly, the pictures did not come out. But I made the molasses-marinated seitan (yum!), and the millet-quinoa pilaf from Dreena Burton's Vive Le Vegan. I'm always experimenting with recipes, and this time, I made the mistake of dashing a little dried fennel into the pilaf. It does not work in a grain pilaf. Next time use coriander or nutritional yeast or something savory. I chopped up 1/4 of a purple onion that I had left over from prior recipes, and some green onions. The green onions were an improvisation that's a maybe. I like mine a little crisper than in a pilaf.

Cooking is experimentation. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. Being vegan has sort of unleashed my creativity, and there's the serendipitous feeling of trying something that works--like adapting the molasses-marinated meat recipe for seitan--and the disappointment with things that flop--such as trying to bread tofu that isn't quite defrosted that happened last week. Hey, if everything you cook turns out, please tell me your secret.

It's gotten rather hot here lately. It was near 90 degrees over the weekend, and supposed to get near 90 today. But when I left work today, it was storming something fierce. Ever been out in one of those storms where the only thing that an umbrella keeps dry is your head and shoulders? This was one of those storms. I experienced storms like this growing up in Orlando, Florida, but it's advantage DC, as afternoon storms here actually help cool things off. In Orlando, the storms typically came mid-afternoon, and for the rest of the day, it felt like walking in a steamy soup. The humidity here is also a few percentage points lower, it seems, and that makes 90-degree days more bearable--not to mention we have fewer of them. I will take the once-every-few-years snowstorm and the bitter cold of winter if it means not living more than half the year in a giant steam room.

Next Thursday, the 29th, my local Whole Foods is having a class on raw foods, and I'm looking forward to it. If it's one less thing I have to turn on the stove for, that will certainly help over the summer.