the veg out

marjorie says...

This post is for Erik mainly, who told me over the holiday how much he liked my cornbread post. As it turns out, I did document the all day cook-a-thon a few weeks past in honor of my 2nd decade as a vegetarian. Dishes included:

• Homemade cheese stirfried with cauliflower, tomatos, cumin and turmic.
  
• Stirfried tofu, portabello mushrooms, green onions and peanut sauce.
• Basmati rice, red beets, cashews and green peas.
• Pizza with grilled eggplant, sundried tomatos, and goat cheese.
• Grilled vegetables.
  
• Cucumbers with yogurt.
  

Plus folks brought lots of food too. It was a feast! Here are a few pictures showing how the cooking went...

Kudos to Eric B. who hung out all day and grilled the vegetables.

I love beets...both golden and red.

I mixed them with basmati rice, cashews and green peas. This is how it looked:

Homemade cheese? Yes...it's easy. See:

You heat milk until it just starts to rise, and you then turn the heat off and pour in a separating agent, in this case it was lemon juice.

Then stir it and you'll see the milk separating into curds and whey. The curds make the cheese.

Pour the milk into a colander lined with cheesecloth to collect the curds and strain the whey. I then tied the cheesecloth around the curds and weighted them with a bowl in the fridge to press out the liquid.

I sauteed the cheese with steamed cauliflower, tomatos cooked in cumin seeds, and turmeric to make a dish which I learned how to make in the very beginning years of my vegetarian days...yes, it kinda looks like scrambled eggs:

Here's how the buffet looked...before and after:

Mikaela spent all day making the house look pretty. Thanks, Mikaela! You're a great housemate! I also really enjoyed getting my fast food gift certificates from Gene and his lovely daughters. Gene, how did you know that BK has that veggie burger? Yep, we've come along way from 20 years ago when I couldn't order a meatless sandwich from a fast food joint if my life depended on it...

Color Blind

Mikaela ponders:
Marjorie and I were discussing the other day the implications of Angelina Jolie playing the lead in The Mighty Heart, a movie dramatizing the events surrounding the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002, based on the memoir written by Daniel's wife, Mariane, and produced by Angelina's new husband's production company. (Ahem.)

Mariane is Afro-Cuban and Dutch, a woman of color.

Okay, stage set. Here's Angelina heading to the set, courtesy MSN.


Here's a photo comparison provided by another blog.


The first picture was juxtaposed jarringly in MSN today's photos with the one below.

Here's Michael Jackson, heading somewhere. Is it just me, or has he passed the wanting-to-be-white stage and moved straight toward wanting-to-be-Martian?


I have no answers, but these pictures certainly left me wondering what it means in today's world when people change their own color.

On the other hand, if we don't allow actors to play all roles, are we dooming them to type-casting? Or should there only be freedom in fictional characters?

Opinions, anyone?

Ruth Brown & Motormouth

Maggie says:
Ruth Brown died today. Ruth Brown is known for many things: her voice, her soul, her passion. But I got to know Ruth Brown much differently: as a preteen obsessed with the movie "Hairspray." And I mean obsessed.

Ruth Brown played Motormouth Maybelle in Hairspray and delivered lines like "Oh Papa Tooney... We've got a Looney!" She had a huge heart, the coolest record shop in town, and saw those crazy dancin' fool teens as... teenagers, not black kids versus white kids. And yeah... I know it's John Waters and completely over the top, but still. Man I loved that movie.

And Link Larkin! Swoon!!!! Yeah, he of this idiotic line: "Tracy, our souls are black, though our skin is white." And said so earnestly! But hey, I was a kid, it really meant a lot to hear that then!

Be well, Ruth Brown. You were an amazing woman, and only a tiny piece of that is my love for one silly '80s flick.

M + Viggo

Maggie gushes:
Not that the Ms really needed more reasons to crush on Viggo Mortensen, but the Times just gave us some.

Viggo's portrayal of Lord of the Rings protagonist Aragorn is what makes most girls love him. But he's this nerdy girl's hearthrob for the rest of his resumé:

• Director of the Center for Multireligious Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark
• Editor of an anthology called “Theology and the Religions: A Dialogue”
• Author of art books
• Interests include antiwar politics and music
• Founded and runs (with family members) Perceval Press, a publishing house
  
• Poet
• Perfectionist editor
  
• Totally rocks the nerdy thrift store striped t-shirt
  

November Horror-scopes

ERIC Francis divines:

ARIES: What you seem to be reaching for is an understanding about some deeply sensitive matters. Nothing we're normally exposed to in our culture, certainly not on television, prepares us for the kinds of discussions that you will have in the coming weeks. It's also fair to say there's no right way to do it. But we could establish some basic guidelines. Nothing is going to be resolved quickly, and by that, I mean in one day or one conversation. Anything that matters will take a few weeks. Also, given all the circumstances, listening counts for more than speaking. The better you listen, the more you'll understand, and the more what you do say will make a difference. But if others do not feel heard, you can be sure that they will not trust what you say. Last, you need to leave a lot of space for misunderstanding, which means everyone has plenty of room to be wrong.

CANCER: Evolving as an individual is more complicated than upgrading your computer's memory or adding a line to your resume. To the chagrin of control freaks and those who pretend to be alive more than they actually manage to do it, there is a chaos factor involved; and there is a sexual aspect, which is deeply involved with any process of becoming an individual. And there's always a risk. So it's necessary to trust your own higher intelligence in the midst of apparent uncertainty, including about whether you will succeed or fail at any particular effort. If you can do that, you'll tap into something larger than yourself that is expressing itself through you. You've been living with that 'something' for a long time, and it has been trying to acquaint you with itself. You alone can mediate your responses; you decide what value fear holds, and what value freedom holds.

VIRGO: How deep do psychological patterns go? Well, they seem to reach back many generations, but for a version of the story with good practical application, we can learn a lot by considering the years before we learned how to walk. We bumped into a lot of things, people, feelings and experiences in those days. We were picked up and carried around against our will. We had a lot to say but lacked the words to say it. Think of yourself as going through a phase as a cosmic toddler. Notice, over the next few weeks, what just comes to you, what you bump into, and what you are told without having to ask. Notice what seems to pick you up and move you. Apply the metaphor to the contents of your mind. What has been coming to the surface lately, and why does it do such a good job of defying words, or even coherent ideas?