Baltimore Bucket List

Monday morning started off with a peach banana protein shake.  That's right, I had a can of peaches in the cupboard that needed to be used!  I don't normally think of peaches as a protein shake option, but it was delicious!  I'll definitely be having more of these in the future.  But maybe frozen peaches instead of canned next time ...  Seems healthier.  Plus frozen fruit gives you a nice, cold shake - more like dessert!

 

I had a lot of work to do, but also managed to spend a fair amount of the day stressing about the upcoming move.  It's hard not to think about it when you're looking at a growing pile of boxes in your living room.  Worse still when you're looking at all the stuff that still needs to go in boxes ...

 

Since we're emptying our house of all the spare food we can, it's getting pretty hard to cook meals for ourselves at home.  Fortunately, this means we can pack up kitchen stuff and eat out at some of our favorite restaurants before we leave Baltimore.  (I know we can visit, but how often will we really drive an hour just for dinner?)

 

For our last week in Baltimore, we assembled the following bucket list of eats:

 

1. Land of Kush

2. Cafe Spice

3. Johnny Rad's  

 

To start things off, we headed to Land of Kush Monday night for dinner.  It's a shame we haven't gone here more often while we lived within walking distance.  It's definitely a place we'll miss.  I ordered an entree plate with two sides - lentil burgers, macaroni and cheese, and kale salad.  It was all delicious, but the macaroni and cheese is always the best.  The picture here is actually of my leftovers in their to-go box.  Which were eaten just a few short hours after coming home.  Not leftover for long! 

Pancakes As Big As Your Face

Sunday morning for breakfast we were all out of bananas, but we still had plenty of other things in the cupboard to use up ... like chocolate chips!  So naturally I had to make pancakes for breakfast.  But not just any pancakes.  Pancakes as big as your face! 

 

I started by following this recipe, but then added a ton of chocolate chips and chopped hazelnuts.  Gotta use 'em up, right?  I actually intended to make nice, normal-sized pancakes, but when my first go ended up the size of the plate, I decided to just go with it and make them all that size. 

 

Needless to say, Josh and I felt like rolling through the rest of the day, which unfortunately included a trip to the climbing gym with his sister who is visiting from out of town.  We both felt horrible, but managed to get our climb on anyway. 

 

But by mid-afternoon when we were still feeling sluggish, Josh declared that pancakes should never be eaten again.  That may not last ...  But they definitely won't be eaten in the near future. 

Moving Errands and Lots of Italian Food

Saturday Josh and I were super productive in the morning getting moving-related errands done, but we still had a chance to recuperate in the afternoon and enjoy the beautiful weather Baltimore has been having for the past week.  The first thing we did bright and early was bring a few things over to Josh's parents' house to store because we don't want to move them to Silver Spring but aren't quite ready to part with them either.  Then we borrowed their big station wagon to take an arm chair to get reupholstered (two birds with one stone - we don't have to move it with everything else this weekend, plus it really needed to get reupholstered). 

 

Since the upholstery guy was down in Highlandtown, we decided to head around the corner to DiPasquale's for lunch.  This wasn't officially on our Baltimore bucket list, but I'm glad we made it there before we moved.  It's got wonderfully authentic Italian food, and it's so much fun to look around at all the interesting stuff in their market while you wait for your food. 

 

But because the weather was so beautiful, we grabbed our sandwiches to go rather than eating-in.  We headed over to Patterson Park and found a gorgeous spot in the shade to picnic.  There were lots of people out and about, but the park is so huge it still didn't feel crowded.  And check out this dead tree?!  I thought it was eerie and amazing at the same time. 

 

We both got the Calabrese sandwich, which comes with artichoke hearts, roasted peppers, olives, tomato, onion, cucumber, and baby greens.  (Josh kept the provolone, while I had mine without.)  It was delicious.  And can you believe that picture is of the "small" sandwich?!?  I don't even know what they kind of bread they use for a "large" ...

For dinner we had Italian food yet again (if you can call my random mixture of ingredients on top of pasta Italian ...)  I continued my quest to use up food before we move, including this package of Yves Meatless Ground.  Apparently I buy lots of Yves at stick it in the freezer, only for it to sit around for months while I merrily go about buying more food and eating that instead.  That's why I had Yves breakfast patties too. 

It's actually kind of fun trying to use up food, though I haven't had to get terribly inventive just yet.  For Saturday's dinner, I managed to use up the meatless ground plus a box of pasta and most of the rest of a jar of pasta sauce.  I sauteed the mushrooms and meatless ground in olive oil, added cooked pasta, and tossed with sauce.  Easy peasy.  Kind of like hamburger helper ...  which I only had once as a kid (at a friend's house, of course), but I remember being awesome :) 

Biscuits and Gravy

Friday for dinner I finally got around to veganizing one of my favorite pre-vegan recipes: biscuits and gravy.  I had long since made the recipe vegetarian (in fact, I'd never even had biscuits and gravy as a meat eater!), by using vegetarian breakfast sausage.  But the old recipe still called for buttermilk biscuits (occasionally homemade, but often store-bought) and milk for the gravy.  I figured subbing in soy milk to make gravy would be no issue, but making vegan biscuits was another matter. 

 

Fortunately, I found this recipe online, made it to a 2/3 scale, and they came out beautifully!  I applied some of my previously acquired biscuit-making-savvy as well, including making sure to use very cold "milk" and "butter", and pressing the dough out with my fingertips rather than rolling it.  Both of these tricks ensure you get the fluffiest biscuits ever.  Josh actually called them "perfect"! 

 

For the sausage I used one 8 oz. package of Yves Meatless Breakfast Patties, which (unlike Morningstar Farms breakfast patties) don't contain any eggs as a binder.  Simply brown the patties in a pan, then remove and cut up to add into the gravy once it's cooked. 

 

For the gravy, melt 2 tablespoons of butter, then add 2 tablespoons of flour until the roux is golden brown.  Add 2 cups of milk of choice (I used soy), and stir until thick.  Then add sage and red pepper flakes to taste.  At the very end, stir back in the diced sausage and serve over aforementioned tasty biscuits! 

 

Not your typical dinner food, but super filling.  Obviously, it's also a great brunch option.  I barely noticed any difference from the old non-vegan version.  The only thing that seemed different was that I could taste the baking soda in the biscuits just a bit - which I'm attributing to the fact that I was supposed to use aluminum-free baking soda and did not.  I will stock up on some non-aluminum baking soda to see if it makes a difference for next time ...

Do You Really Need to Sort Lentils?

I always have the best intentions of blogging over the weekend, but yet it somehow always falls by the wayside.  And never has that been more true than in the past few weeks, with traveling and packing taking first priority, followed closely by recovery time!  So yet again I find myself way behind on my posts.  Apologies! 

 

Last Wednesday for dinner I made Italian lentils - which is quickly becoming one of our newly rediscovered favorite dinners.  It's so easy, satisfying, and healthy.  Josh said we should be eating this kind of food a lot more. 

 

The first step in preparing any lentil dish is supposed to be to sort and rinse your lentils.  I always wonder how necessary the sorting step is because most of the time (like last week), I don't find anything to sort out except maybe a lentil skin or something that would have been just fine to leave in the mix.  But every once in a while you find a little stone that somehow found its way into your lentil bag and you definitely don't want in your food.  The stones are so few and far between, sometimes I feel like I just want to be lazy and skip this step, but then I think about how much more annoying a cracked tooth would be and I do it anyway.

 

Do you sort your lentils?  Do you think it's really all that important? 

 

Once the lentils are sorted, the rest of the dish comes together quickly.  Just heat the lentils in a pan with water or veggie stock.  Then add your white bean of choice, a can of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce to taste (I think I use about half the jar), oregano, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper.

 

To serve I also added a generous sprinkling of vegan Parmesan.  Plus, the beauty of this recipe is that it makes enough for at least 2-3 servings of leftovers, depending on how much you wolf down at dinner.  Delicious insta-lunch for half the week?  Yes, please!   

Panda Visits the Vet

Happy Friday!  TGIF, right?  Not so much for me because we're moving ONE WEEK FROM TOMORROW!!!  Yeah, I'm pretty much freaking out.  We have so much crap, and so little of it is packed. 

 

To make matters worse I had to take Panda to the vet yesterday.  She hates strangers and the vet is the worst stranger of them all.  My sweet little girl just disappears at the vet and she turns into a homicidal maniac.  They actually have a note on her chart warning them that she's nuts. 

 

They were able to pacify her for most of the examination using wet food on a little plate.  She happily chomped away with only a few growls while they poked and prodded - even when she got her temperature taken you-know-where! But after a while she caught onto the trick and proceeded to have none of it.  They wrapped her up in a towel for the needle part, with a strategy they called "burritoing".  I'll never look at a burrito the same way again.  Poor Panda ...

 

But she survived and they said she looks good and isn't even too overweight.  Yay for small victories! 

 

Now I can go back to concentrating on packing and cleaning ...  I already killed 1/4 of my brain cells this morning using the super oven cleaner foam. 

Beach Weekend

Saturday morning Josh and I woke up bright and early to drive to Rehoboth Beach, DE to spend the weekend with Josh's family.  We each ate a quick banana for breakfast before heading out.  When we finally arrived at the beach we were both pretty hungry, so we headed straight for Thrasher's Fries for a beach tradition - a big bucket of fries topped with salt and vinegar.   Not exactly a healthy lunch but "hey, it's the beach!" 

After "lunch" we got our beach on - sitting in the sun and splashing in the surf.  When we got antsy we walked along the beach, checking out the other beach-goers, and some impressive sand creations.  Check out the crab and alligator!  This wasn't even the only sand alligator we saw on the beach, but it was the most impressive. 

 

We met up with Josh's family for dinner and headed to Grotto Pizza, another beach tradition.  Josh has been going to Grotto since he was a little kid coming to Rehoboth over summer vacation.  Everyone could get something they wanted - I got my pizza half sans cheese. 

 

The next morning we woke up even earlier than we had Saturday so that we could drive down to Ocean City (about 45 minutes south) where Josh had a surf lesson.  It was pretty cloudy and the surf wasn't great, but it was a fun excursion nonetheless. 

I sat on the beach reading a magazine while Josh tried his best to catch one of the tiny waves.  With the clouds and the early morning it was actually pretty chilly, and I ended up in my sweatshirt a lot of the time.  So much for getting my beach tan ...

Sunday night for dinner Josh and I made tacos for everyone.  We made seasoned black beans and Josh's signature guacamole.  Plus we had salsa, sliced lettuce, and shredded cheese (for everyone else).  There was a ton of food, and hopefully they're finding a way to use the leftovers while they're still at the beach this week ...

But Monday was the last beach day for us.  We got up first thing in the morning to rent a tandem bike for an hour and cruised down the boardwalk and around town.  It was definitely an interesting experience, getting used to syncing up your pedaling with someone else.  We also saw the most sun we'd had all weekend, so maybe I got just a hint of a tan from the morning on the beach. 

We drove home in the early afternoon so Josh could make his work softball team's last game - they lost :(  Before the game we grabbed a quick burrito from California Tortilla, where I ordered the No Meato Burrito.  Silly name, but tasty burrito.

After the game we drove home and got in with plenty of time to get to bed early and rest up from another busy "vacation" weekend.  I definitely need a vacation from all this travel!