off to the midwest

yep, i'm flying away tomorrow to play some roller derby in indiana. ready for my game day bagel and salad... ...see you back here early next week!

review: soy curls rule!

so it took me a while, but i finally made it down to food fight to pick up soy curls. (among other things, like vegan vitamins.) and, guess what? i love them.

sorry for the bad picture - i wasn't expecting to blog this, but it was really tasty.

good things about soy curls:

• since they're dry, they're easy to keep on hand.
• you can cook a lot or just a little at a time without worrying about the leftovers (i'm looking at you, half-blocks of tofu).
• they're fast - 10 minutes to rehydrate
• easy to flavor and use. just saute with a little sauce, and voila.
• they're local (to me), made in grand ronde, or.
• available in bulk. at least at food fight.

neat. their texture is kind of like fajita meat - chewy strips. i liked them a lot with the teriyaki sauce, especially. mmm. the teriyaki soy curl/roasted cauliflower meal was borne of desperation, but turned out really great.

it's my new food crush. you come here to me, soy curls.

shelling bean mania

the shelling bean is something new to me this year, but i've become pretty enamoured of them. just look how pretty!

i've seen them described as "teenage" beans - not young enough to eat the pod, ala edamame, or old enough to keep like dry beans, but just old enough to mouth off and get into trouble. i mean, old enough that you just simmer them for 20 or so minutes for creamy delicious beany delight.

at first, i thought i'd do a soup with these tonight, but i couldn't think of any grains we had on hand that would go well. so i decided on beans and rice, but we were out of rice. so pasta it was. the pictures don't really do it justice - we had green spinach, red peppers, and these purple-ish beans that held their color fairly well. throw in some garlic, red pepper flake and lemon juice, and you've got yourself a meal. all the produce was from yesterday's farmer's market except the lemon. yum.

help: compost.

help me. we have tons of kitchen waste that's going straight into the trash these days, and i'd like to compost. but i'm a city girl, meaning, i get grossed out by creepy-crawlies. i have considered worm composting, but never for more than a few minutes at a time. go ahead and tell me it's not gross. it's probably not. but it's not happening in my house.

also, i live in an apartment, so i'd need to have something contained that won't attract pests. we have some room outside for something that could get rained on.

has anyone used the envirocycle? it seems like something that would be

a) easy to use, and
b) low on the gross-out factor for my dainty sensibilities.

any opinions?