Meatless Monday: Dairy Salvation

You may have noticed that I've missed a few Meatless Monday postings in a row now. What can I say? Life intervenes. In this case, 'life' was preparing and traveling for a graduation, a baby shower, and several holiday celebrations in three different states. Very enjoyable, but it did require lots of shopping (and shipping) far in advance of the holiday and pulling work I would have done during vacation into the weeks that preceded it so I wouldn't miss any deadlines, and that left little time for writing blog entries ahead of time which I could have scheduled to post while I was gone. Technically, I could have done it, but it would have required stretching myself thinner than I like, which would have defeated the whole purpose of my becoming a freelancer in the first place. . . . Sooo, long story short, I haven't forgotten about Meatless Mondays and you'll be seeing more of them in 2009, starting with this one:

DAIRY SALVATION

During all the working, traveling, and holiday planning, my husband Matt and I came upon a food dilemma:

When you're about to go on vacation, what do you do with all the dairy products in the refrigerator that will go bad while you're gone (short of just throwing it all out)?

He came up with a couple of great solutions:


Homemade Ice Cream
I bought Matt an ice cream maker back when we lived in Pasadena for either his birthday or Christmas one year. It's what Matt's cooking idol Alton Brown would refer to as a dreaded "unitasker" and we don't use it all that often, but I would argue that it was still one of the best kitchen appliance purchases we've ever made. While we packed for our trip, the milk we would never finish before we left churned away in this puppy. When it was done, we popped it in the freezer. Then, later that month, we returned to delicious ice cream! Some of our favorite ice cream recipes have come from a book by the masters themselves - Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book.

And ice cream can be just as fun to make as it is to eat. For Christmas, I got two of my cousin's boys an ice cream maker in the shape of a ball. Kicking it around churns the ice cream!

Jilted Eggs
There are so many recipes online for easy egg dishes, but this is one of our all-time favorites. There are very few ingredients and they're all pretty basic, so you'll most likely have them all in your refrigerator. The prep and procedures are quick and no-fuss too. Once you throw the ingredients together, you can just pop it in the oven and set at timer, which is perfect for when you've got a lot of other things to do (like put vacation holds on your newspaper and mail). It's also easy to reduce or increase the number of servings.

Alternatives: The recipe notes that you can use individual custard dishes in lieu of a casserole dish. We've found using a tin for large muffins works really well too. And, if you don't have English muffins, regular bread also works just fine.

Got any favorite vegetarian or vegan recipes?? Please share!

Other Meatless Monday posts

1st Anniversary

This past Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the day Matt and I got married . . .




Wedding - October 24, 2007










Ohio Reception - May 17, 2008









California Reception - June 1, 2008









Massachusetts Reception - August 17. 2008




After all the wedding celebrations, it was nice to have a very low-key anniversary celebration. We just took the day off, caught a couple of matinee movies, and had a nice dinner out. Sushi - yum. Keeping with anniversary tradition, we both gave each other paper gifts. I wrote Matt a poem. (Sorry, won't be sharing that. That's his and his alone.) And I also gave him two books:

The Hungry Scientist Handbook, by Patrick Buckley and Lily Binns, seemed right up his alley because he loves to analyze cooking techniques and recipes in scientific terms. (He adores Alton Brown's show Good Eats.) After I'd already purchased the Buckley/Binns book, I saw this article about another great science-focused cooking book. Doh! Sounds better. I guess I'll just have to get that for him next.

Matt read his first graphic novel several months ago (Persepolis) and really liked it. He'd heard that this graphic novel, Watchmen, is being touted as the best graphic novel bar none, so he was really curious about it.







And Matt gave me these three books:

At different times, Matt and I have read entire books aloud to each other. It's a really neat experience to share. The first time we did it was with Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, but we also did it with The Best American Non-Required Reading, 2003, edited by Dave Eggers. I'm hoping How We Are Hungry, another collection of short stories, will be another we read to each other. I'm a big fan of Eggers - the author . . . and the man. Matt knows this because he stood in line with me forever waiting for Eggers to sign my books and was totally amused by the fact that I shamelessly flirted with him once I got up there. The people in line in front of me wanted him to sign their books, but they weren't even talking to him. (I think they were the type who collect signed books regardless of whether or not they liked or had read the author. Their books were probably up on Ebay later that same day.) By the time I got up there, the poor guy was totally bored, so he drew a piece of balsa wood on the title page of one of my books (in addition to signing it). I told him he could make the other one out to "a fellow sock-slider" (an A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius reference). He gave me a big smile and wrote "Sock Sliding = En Fuego." Wood? Fire? He was so hot for me. ;)

View with a Grain of Sand, by Wislawa Szymborska, is one of my favorite books of poetry. Because I love it so much, about a year ago, I found myself in one of those moments where you're torn between wanting to share something and selfishly wanting to keep it for yourself for fear that it won't be returned. Well, I'm happy to say I decided to share, . . . but what I feared would happen did happen. It was never returned. Matt knows how much I love it, so he bought this as a replacement. I'm still not opposed to sharing, . . . but I will be more careful about it in the future.

Sharon Olds is probably my all-time favorite poet. I've got just about all of her books, but The Dead and the Living is one that I didn't have.








And, a gift to myself while we were out and about celebrating:

Kay Ryan is the current poet laureate. I had read, and heard her reading, some of her work online, but I really wanted to get one of her books. Unfortunately, there was a run on them when she was first announced the new laureate; many bookstores had to wait to get more until the publisher could crank out another print run. Then, of course, there's the usual problem of most bookstores just not carrying much poetry to begin with. So, I was very pleased to finally find a decent selection when we were out on Friday, and, after inspecting three, I chose this one - Elephant Rocks. I'm loving it so far. And it's kind of funny because my style of writing poetry is very similar to hers - well, except that she does it brilliantly and I'm a hack.