Winter blues, but not the foot-stompin', floor-shakin', eardrum-breakin' kind.

Let me preface this post by saying that I love winter. Really, I do! Although the winters in Montréal are intensely cold, windy, snowy, and icy, I find the winter weather refreshing rather than, as many people seem to find it, suffocating. Most days, I am grateful for the cold, because when summer comes along I find the heat and humidity make me feel tired and sluggish. Sometimes, however, winter can really just get you down. Maybe you're prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder, like some of my dear friends. Maybe you're clumsy and prone to slipping on the ice and bruising your knees, like me.

Maybe, just maybe, you wake up at 6 AM to finish your isorhythmic tenor for your Analysis of Early Music class, only to have a massive nosebleed (AGAIN, because the dry weather has been giving you major nosebleeds that last half an hour every couple of days all week), and then when blood stops pouring out of your various facial orifices (because perhaps you keep accidentally swallowing it, choking, and coughing it up), maybe you get into the shower only to realize that your hot water has decided not to cooperate so you get to take an awesome cold shower in your freezing bathroom.

No, I'm not complaining. NOT AT ALL.

My point is, sometimes even I need a little cheering up when it's freezing outside and I'm all bruised and bleeding. Here's a great comfort-food meal that kept me and my sister warm one cold February night:

"Chicken" pot pie pockets with roasted brussel sprouts

These "Chicken" pot pie pockets were the perfect meal on a cold night. Crispy little pockets of dough filled with steaming hot goodness... Mmmmm. All I did was adapt the samosa dough recipe from VWAV, omitting the turmeric and using whole wheat instead of all-purpose flour. Then I made a pot pie filling with all the usual suspects: onions, carrots, celery, potato, seitan, veggie stock (I used the broth from the seitan, which I had made the night before), thyme, sage, and cayenne. At the end I added some soy milk and flour to make it nice and creamy. Paired with crispy roasted brussel sprouts, it was a hearty and delicious meal!

But when you really need a taste of warmth and happiness, you've got to try these cookies! I'm really proud of these; they are everything I love in a cookie, and I came up with them myself! Not too sweet, but full of spicy, cake-y, chewy, goodness, with a hint of lemon to bring a little sunshine into your day! These cookies seem to remind people of Christmas, which, in the depths of February with no end to winter in sight (not here in Canada, anyway!), can't be called a bad thing!

Featuring my sister's hand... Also, I have MAD photo skillz. Not.

Molasses Oatmeal Cookies

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oatmeal (I actually used barley flakes, which made the cookies super chewy and yummy!)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup soy milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon zest

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix together the dry ingredients (up to the allspice). In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients. Combine and mix well. Drop heaping tablespoons full of dough onto a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes, let cool for 5 minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Enjoy!

Tiny bananas also make me happy

Correction

As my roommate so astutely pointed out, while reading my blog from beside me at his desk, I am missing a Little H.

• Watching the X-Files with my two lovely, if insane, roommates.

Happy, Marc?

Inspiration, and the lack thereof

Can you believe I've spent all this time cooking absolutely nothing of interest? Impressive, isn't it? I mean, I've been cooking some delicious things, but they've all been either very simple, straight from a recipe book, or so ugly my roommate's camera would break as soon as photograph 'em. So nothing blogworthy, in other words. I do, however, have some ideas brewing in my little brain, and as soon as they grow their feathers and become the fully-fledged recipes I just know they can be, I will certainly post them here!

What I do have for you, however, is something of a meme, I suppose.

I was inspired (as I always am) by reading one of the incredibly beautiful Gogogirl's posts about something called "Little H's." Don't even ask me why they are called that; some mysteries are meant never to be revealed. Actually, I genuinely have no idea.

Anyway, these Little H's are the little things that make life great and worth living. Reading about the lovely Gogogirl's H's made me realize that sometimes I, too, need to remember what makes me feel happy. This school year, especially, has made it hard for me to remember what I love about my life; it seems like all I do is work, and while I love my program and music in general, there are times when I just can't bring myself to get out of bed and haul myself through a snow storm just to embarrass myself in a sight-singing test in front of my whole ear training class.

So thank you, Gogogirl. You have been an inspiration to me since the day we met, and today is no exception. So without further ado, here are my Little H's:

• Snuggling with my kitty, Arvo
• Successfully cooking something with weird ingredients or difficult techniques
  
• Reading all of your blogs - I know I've been utterly awful at commenting lately, and I promise I will correct that in future, but I want you all to know that you are awesome, and that I read your blogs with as much devotion as ever.
• Writing limericks about my 19th century analysis professor with my friend Mary during class
• Reading fanfiction (what?)
• Picking up some soy ice cream after a particularly long day
• Getting an A
• Chocolate pudding
• Bringing cookies to people at school - everyone always looks so happy when I offer them a cookie! And so impressed when they find out that they are vegan...
  
• When my family comes to visit
• New episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Ugly Betty
• Turning a wheel on the chore wheel chart
• Clean laundry
• Brightly coloured clothing
• Lee's green Thai curry that he makes for me specially because I luuuuurve it
  
• Getting an email from somebody who is far away or with whom I haven't spoken in a long time
• Tea!
• Sharing food with people I love
• Watering my sage plant, Monsieur LeSage
• Going home and watching ridiculous movies and Food TV shows with my sister and mom while getting totally drunk on wine
  

So what are your Little H's? Anyone who reads this blog and wants to post their Little H's, please consider yourself tagged!

(Sorry for making this into a meme, Lyss; is it okay with you?)

I hope you and your stalker are very happy together...

Overheard at the mall today, on my way to replenish my waning supplies of painkillers: "Yeah, well, my stalker loves my hair!"

I started giggling so hard I had to stop and lean against a wall! I just had to share that with you guys.

Back from the dead!

Hey, so how about that completely unintentional temporary hiatus, eh? Sorry about that. Lots happened during the months of November and December that took up all my time and left me utterly exhausted. Between the three concerts in one week, the exams, and trying to make Christmas presents for all my loved ones, it was a really busy time of year. Then came the hols, during which I went temporarily brain dead for three weeks and just hung out at home with the fam. But now I'm back, and wishing you an extremely belated happy New Year! Can you believe it's 2009? I'll be graduating from university next year. Yeesh, who allowed that to happen?! What a frightening thought.

So, food. People who know me well will probably have heard me say at some point that I could live off of soup. That if there were only one form of food I could eat for the rest of my life, that food would be soup. Ladies and gentlemen, I am fucking sick of soup. Officially. I don't want to see any more soup for quite some time, thank you very much.

How did this come about, you ask? Well, it was the return of my most hated nemesis that did it. Yes, that's right: tonsillitis. God, do I hate tonsillitis! This is the absolute worst I've ever had it, too. I can't swallow or speak without experiencing excruciating pain. Hence, I have been consuming only liquids. Soup, soup, soup. Smoothie. Soup. Today it's "chicken" noodle (with little alphabet noodles and with all the veggies chopped up super tiny because I can't swallow anything big), yesterday it was garlic soup from LDV, the day before it was miso. I can't stand drinking every meal any more!!

There was a moment today when I swallowed almost normally, though! I drank a huge gulp of freezing cold smoothie and for a few swallows afterwards there were only a few twinges of pain. Yes! So freezing the tonsils works well, it seems. The smoothie was delish, by the way, and a great change from soup. It was really simple, with just a banana, orange juice, and mixed frozen berries, but it was really great! Plus I got the bananas super discounted because they were overripe. A 69 cent bunch of bananas, people!

So, I need my soup groove back in order to make it through this torture. What's your favourite soup? I need inspiration, people!

P.S. Something seems to have gone horribly wrong with my header. What up, Blogger?

Concerts and soup!

Don't you just hate it when you microwave a bowl of leftovers and the bowl gets so hot you can't touch it, but the food stays lukewarm? Grrr! Microwave, you are my nemesis.

The food I'm talking about is a very delicious mushroom, bean and barley soup, which was scrumptious even though it was lukewarm. I'll post the recipe, but first it's story time! Come on kids, gather 'round now!

I have two stories, one of a vegan pioneer failure, and one of a success! But it doesn't matter which goes first, because the failure ended in happiness anyway. So I'll go with the success.

Tuesday night was the first concert in a brutal series that will be taking place mainly throughout next week. My trio was playing in a percussion studio concert. Here we are:

As you can see, the harpist and I tried and failed to look Indian since we were playing a Ravi Shankar piece. Oh well. Also, my hair is insane, because what you cannot see in this photo is the day of classes and dress rehearsals and essay editing that occurred before the concert. Anyway, I was really happy with our performance, even though my dear friend the harpist make a couple of mistakes that had me jumping around a bit to catch up with her. This piece is really a test of endurance on the part of the flutist, since it is insanely fast and the flute plays almost the entire 13 minutes of music, non-stop. So I think we did pretty darn well. And we played in bare feet! Always so much fun.

Okay, on to the point of the story, which is that afterwards, the harpist and I met up with some her friends, and they wanted to go to a little place called Juliet et Chocolat. Very popular here in Montréal, since they make incredibly delicious chocolatey creations. The one problem: it is so very very much dairy-oriented. I warned my harpist about this, and told her that I didn't mind them going, but I would not be able to eat anything, so I would just come in and sit with them until they were ready to go for a drink afterwards. And it looked at first as though my prediction was correct: everything on the menu was full of dairy! I was pretty resigned to waiting and drooling over the delicious-looking chocolate. But then the waitress came over, and although she was a bit stand-offish to my Anglophone friends, she was very very nice to me when I spoke French, and went to check with the chef to see if there was anything they could do for me. She came back super excited, saying that they could make me a hot chocolate with soy milk and extra bitter dark chocolate! She asked if I minded the super dark chocolate, and I told her it was my favourite kind! When she came with everyone else's treats, I was so happy to be included as well, and to be given a totally dairy-free, and really really scrumptious hot chocolate! So here we are with our treats. Score one for the vegan pioneer!

Vegan Pioneer Tip: When in Montreal, speak French! Or get someone else to order in French for you. If you don't know anyone French and are visiting Montreal, just give me a call! Haha. Yeah, the Québecois aren't always friendly to Anglophones, and I bet if I had asked for something vegan in English all I would have gotten was a rude look.

This post is getting super long. Anyway, my other story is about this past weekend, when my brother came to visit me! We had some fun times. On Saturday, we went and had lunch at a place called Santropol, on the corner of Saint-Urbain and Duluth. This café is adorable and I often take omni friends there, since the sandwiches are quite famous. Only a very few items are vegan, but the millet pie is really delicious! Also, the soup of the day is usually vegan, which brings me to the point of the story. On Saturday, there were two soups of the day: mushroom, bean and barley soup, and cashew potato soup. I reeeeeeally felt like the barley one, but when I asked the waiter if it was vegan, he told me there was chicken stock in it! What?! Who puts freakin' chicken in an otherwise completely vegan soup? Grrr. Okay, so I had the cashew potato. And dudes, it was DELICIOUS! At some point in the future I will make it, and then I will post the recipe. Because this was a fabulous combination, and who would have thought? So, I was happy with my soup and millet pie, and the afternoon was lovely.

But then... the craving struck! Suddenly I needed that barley soup. So, here it is: my on the spot, oh so tired from all the concerts and rehearsals, but damn do I need that -

Chicken-friendly Mushroom, Bean, and Barley Soup

1 large onion, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
2 medium carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 potatoes, diced
8-10 cremini mushrooms, sliced
6-7 cups of stock (depending on how thick you like your soup)
Tamari (Sorry, I didn't measure!! Probably around 2 or 3 tablespoons)
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup pearl barley
1 can beans, rinsed (I used kidney beans, since I had them on hand, but whatever's good)

Sauté the onions in the olive oil until translucent. I forgot about mine and went and checked my emails, and when I came back they had caramelized. Oh my dear Godard, they were delicious! The only reason you shouldn't let these caramelize is that if you're anything like me, you will start eating them out of the pot and forget to add the other ingredients! Throw in the carrots, celery and potato and sauté for another 5 minutes. Add the stock, mushrooms, salt, pepper, and tamari and bring to a boil. Add the barley and beans. Reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about 45 minutes, or until your barley is nice and puffy. Consume!

This soup makes a LOT (I could barely fit it all into our biggest pot!), so gather up some friends and feed 'em dinner! Man, this soup is so good it's BARLEY legal! Ahahahahahaah. See what I did there?

Yeah, okay. Never mind.

Pad Thai and hot chocolate!

Ohh, pad thai. You make my life complete. You and miso soup are what have gotten me through 2 and a half years of university. And now I share my super special secret recipe with you, my fellow vegan pioneers/family/friends/roommate who stalks my blog! Okay, it's not that special or secret. But it is delicious!

Totally not traditional pad thai

Feeds all my best friends (or four other very hungry people)

Les noodles:
2 boxes of soba noodles, or about a package of rice noodles

Le stir-fry
1 block firm tofu or seitan, chopped (or cut into pretty shapes if your name is bill and you're weird)
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
2 inches fresh ginger, chopped finely or grated
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 green thai peppers, seeded and minced (taste, I like to add more)

Optional but delicious:
Lots of baby bok choy (stems and leaves separated)
Broccoli (the head and the stem separated)
Mushrooms (for the mushroom-inclined)
Green onions
Sprouts
Cilantro is yummy
Any other veggie you find delicious. Just don't throw something totally weird like avocado or tomato in there. Avocado pad thai? Not so much.

Le sauce
1/4 c soy sauce/Braggs (or to taste, if you have super salty soy sauce)
Juice of one lime (or two if you omit the rice vinegar)
2 tsp rice vinegar (or another lime, whatever. see if I care)
1/3 cup peanut butter
1-2 tbsp sugar or maple syrup
1/4 c hot water or coconut milk

Method:

Make the noodles. If you're using soba, rinse them in cold water once you've drained them. I never coordinate this dish very well, so I usually toss my noodles with a bit of oil afterwards to prevent them sticking together in a big gooey mess.

In a big wok, sauté tofu/seitan in oil until browned on all sides. This may take a while, especially with tofu, so make sure your pan is quite hot, and don't be afraid to leave the tofu there for a bit and go leave me a comment or something. Then when you come back and flip it it should be nicely browned, depending on the length of the comment. Anyway, then add the onions and shrooms. Sauté those for 6 or 7 minutes or until the onions are translucent (by the way, I can never see through my onions, so whatever, that's such a lie. but you know what I mean. and I probably don't chop mine fine enough anyway.) now you can add the carrots, bell pepper, ginger, garlic, chopped stems of bok choy, chopped broccoli stems, and hot peppers. Sauté those for a bit. Depends on how soft you like your carrot, really. After a few minutes (5-ish?), add the broccoli and bok choy leaves, if using. Cover up your pan and steam them a bit. You can add some water so the rest of the stuff doesn't burn. I don't usually do this because I never use broccoli, so I just add the bok choy leaves and stir 'em around a bit until they're wilted. But you should steam the broccoli. And broccoli's good in here, I just don't use it because I never use it in time when I buy it and it always goes horribly horribly bad.

All right, while all that shit's going on and you have a minute, make the yummy sauce. Just stir everything together in a bowl! Feel free to mess with it to your liking; I never measure anything so the measurements are all very approximate!

Once the broccoli is tender, throw in the sauce, sprouts, and cilantro and green onions and stir it a bunch to incorporate the sauce. Put the stir-fry on top of the noodles and consume! Garnish with roasted peanuts, lime slices, and cilantro leaves. If you have leftovers, combine the sauce and the noodles before tupperware-ing it; otherwise the noodles will be weird, and really, putting them in separate containers makes too many dishes.

The end to this epic post (by the way, sorry for how extraordinarily verbose that recipe was): my vegan pioneer tip for making hot chocolate! I just discovered this tonight, when I was considering what spices and stuff to throw in to my hot chocolatey deliciousness. I put in the usual sugar, cayenne, cinnamon, but then I saw allspice, and thought that would be yummy, so I threw that in there. But that's not the really great part; I spied my little bottle of almond extract and I couldn't resist! Oh... so heavenly. Why didn't I think of that before? It's the perfect addition to hot chocolate!

Well, I've got an 8:30 class tomorrow, whoopee! Goodnight, kids; I leave you with this incredibly attractive picture taken by my imminently lovable roommate: