Are We Ever Truly Settled?

Well, it's been almost four months since I picked up and moved from my beloved Minneapolis to the amazing DC metro. I love my apartment and I love my location, so I think I'll be here for a couple of years. Therefore I'd like to make it a bit more homey feeling by painting a couple of walls. I'm thinking about doing that this weekend. Just a couple of accent walls, nothing fancy.

It's weird, I feel like that's the last thing on my to-do list since moving. I've hung curtains, gotten some extra furniture, hung the pictures and unpacked the last box. What am I going to stress about and write lists for once that's taken care of?! I guess I'll have to find a hobby. :)

Speaking of making things homey, let's talk comfort food! I've discovered this great recipe on my friend's (and fellow animal activist) blog. It's a vegan mac & cheese. I'm getting to a point where it's hard to tell how things taste from a meat eaters' palette. I mean, I think this tastes like delicious, creamy mac & cheese. But if you taste it side-by-side with the cruelty-filled version, would it taste strange? It's been over a year for me, so I don't know! What I do know is that I LOVE this version and not a single animal suffers for it!

Vegan Mac 'n' Cheese

Ingredients:

Full package of macaroni
1/2 cup margarine or vegan butter equivalent
1/2 cup flour
3 1/2 cups boiling water or vegetable broth
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs. soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/4 cup (or less) canola oil
1 cup nutritional yeast flakes
Cajun seasoning to garnish (I topped with a little cayenne pepper, as that's all I had)

Directions:

Begin process of cooking the noodles.

While you're doing that, make the sauce:

Mix the vegan butter and flour and melt on a very low heat until they are thoroughly mixed.

Add the boiling water or vegan stock, salt, soy sauce, garlic, turmeric.

Bring to a very low boil.

Then add vegetable oil and nutritional yeast and mix.

Combine the noodles and the sauce in a large baking pan and sprinkle Cajun seasoning on top.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

Running My Butt Off....Literally?

I'm running another marathon! I'm super excited to have a goal and something to work towards. AND something to get my butt out of bed and out for a run in the morning. One of my friends from high school who now lives in Florida is running the Jacksonville Bank Half Marathon in December, so I decided to bite the bullet and run the full marathon. The one problem is it's on a Sunday and since it's the week before Christmas, I don't think I'll be able to get Monday off. So the flight home the afternoon after the race is gonna be a rough one. And my two mile walk into work the next morning ain't gonna be so pretty either. But who cares?! I'll feel so good after completing marathon #4, that it won't matter. I'll be walking on air. :) (I know, that's total b.s.)

Along with my running, I'm also altering my diet. Which is something I should have already done, but I'm focusing more on veggies and less on cookies. I wish I didn't love baking so much! But I need to do this to optimize my training. I've never trained for a marathon as a vegan.

I found this great recipe for a mock tuna salad - it's a chick pea salad, but is so tasty. It was on Compassionate Action for Animals' website -- that's the animal advocacy group in Minnesota that first got me interested in the cause. Tonight's dinner was a delicious chick pea salad sandwich with steamed fresh green beans with sauteed onions. YUMMERS. Recipe below. See ya on the roads!

Chick Pea Salad

• 2(15oz.) cans chick-peas, drained
  
• ¾ cup vegan mayonnaise
• 2/3 cup minced celery
• 1/3 cup minced dill pickle
• ¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes
• 2 green onions, chopped
• 2 teaspoon soy sauce
• ½ salt, or 1 tablespoon miso
• pepper, to taste

In a medium bowl, mash the chick-peas coarsely with a fork. Mix in the remaining ingredients, using ½ cup mayonnaise at first, and then adding more as needed. cover and refrigerate. Use on sandwiches or on a bed of salad greens. (Note: makes a big helping, may want to half the recipe!)

Typical DMV Love Story

Well, it's Saturday. Normal people use Saturday as an opportunity to sleep-in and relax. But not those of us who recently moved to Virginia and need to get our car registered and a new driver's license. I tried going a few weeks ago. They open at 8:00am on Saturdays, so I woke up around 7:30, got all dolled up for the DL picture, and showed up a little after 8:00 to a ridiculous line out the door and not a single parking space in the lot. I got annoyed and left.

This morning was round 2. I got up at 6:30 and got all dolled up for the DL picture, and arrived around 7:40. So did about 70 other people. Oy. The line moved relatively quickly, though. And by 8:40, I was in the door....with my ticket to sit and wait some more.

They finally call #C210 and I go up to the counter. I get the most disgruntled DMV employee in the history of time. She HATES her job, I promise you that. I mean, she did us the favor of showing up to work...but didn't think we worth a shower. Or a change of clothes. Or a comb through the hair. And she actually stopped working on getting me logged into the computers on several occasions, so that she could pick up her cell phone and text message someone. Um, really? I was sugary sweet, since I was just desperate to get everything taken care of, but it took everything in me to maintain that compsure.

To top off the miserable woman helping me, I get over to the wall for the DL picture, apply a quick coat of pink gloss, adjust my hair, and bust out my best "natural" smile. And it's at that point that pleasant DMV lady informs me that they just just changed the law, and you can't show teeth in your DL picture -- they don't WANT you to smile! Ugh. Enter: awkward, closed-mouth smirk. I can't wait to see that awful picture when my DL arrives in 7-10 business days. :)