There are no photos of light pillars, but I was inspired to take night photos after a brief conversation about light pillars with a friend. While I live in Southeast Wisconsin, we rarely have the right conditions for light pillars. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has happened, but I have yet to see it. It is a life goal of mine. Here is a nice article explaining light pillars. https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/photos-what-are-light-pillars-2/433069
I am at work folding letters that I will be mailing and just before I was assigned that I had just learned of a podcast called Post Office Poems. A pure delight to get through the day!
Last Weekend I was in Chicago (I live a couple hours North of there), and I finally got a copy of Joanne Lee Molinaro’s cookbook The Korean Vegan.
As some of you know from previous posts I have been exploring more vegan eating. I am doing this as a way to eat healthier and expand my food vocabulary. I will never be vegan, but so happy with the new crop of vegan YouTubers. They make vegan delicious and approachable.
One of the first ones I found was Visha Nora of Rainbow Plant Life. In one of her videos she was cooking from the cookbooks of other vegans. That is when I learned about The Korean Vegan Cookbook by Joanne Lee Molinaro and I have been obsessed ever since. I LOVE Korean food! I couldn’t believe I didn’t know about this. TikTok is not my jam, but now I look at it to watch Joanne, though I see a lot of it on YouTube as well. Today and yesterday I made some stuff from the cookbook. Looks like I didn’t do much, but I didn’t get everything done, but I have a lot of the prep work done now.
Spicy Soy Sauce Dressing
Aside from chopping some veggies, one of the easiest things to make. Well a number of things are easy. This is nice and flavorful. I had a hard time finding brown rice syrup, but I finally found it. Or you could use maple syrup. I grew up on the imitation stuff and never took to the real stuff. I didn’t use either. I used sorghum syrup. It can be hard to find, but there is a place in Wisconsin that makes it and I got it at the Winter Farmers Market in Milwaukee WI a few years back. I can also get it at a local store. It has a similar taste and texture to molasses, but I like it better.
Gyerranmari – Korean Style Omelet
This uses an egg replacer called Just Egg. Otherwise like making an omelet, but rolled. I needed half for a recipe, the other half I ate and there is no way you would know it was vegan. Very delicious.
The Korean Vegan Spicy Mayo
This is not in the cookbook, but on her web site. I haven’t used it yet, but I did dip a spoon in it. Guess what? It is very spicy. I accidentally used chili sesame oil instead of regular chili oil. So hard to find chili oil without a ton of crisps and little oil. In the future I will make my own chili oil. So the sesame chili oil I believe affects the taste, but it is still good. I plan on eating fries and maybe blistered shishitos with it. https://thekoreanvegan.com/spicy-vegan-mayo/
Spicy Gochujang Dressing
I needed to make this because it was a part of another recipes. Only change I made was using a roasted garlic mustard that I got at the Mustard Museum in Middleton WI. I am not a mustard fan, but I found some I can tolerate. https://mustardmuseum.com/
Kimchi Bokkeum Bap
Basically Kimchi Fried Rice. I found vegan kimchi at Joong Boo Market in Chicago. I didn’t know we were going to go and I had just got the book, so I wasn’t prepared with a list of other things to buy there, but at least I got vegan kimchi. I also got chive kimchi which isn’t vegan, but for this recipe I used the vegan kimchi. This is the recipe where I used Gyerranmari and the spicy gochujang dressing. I did not make or use the bulgogi recipe, just left it out. It is super delicious and will be my lunch this week at work.
The Book and Upcoming Recipes
Make sure to look for the book, it is well worth it. If you are in Chicago and go to Unabridged Bookstore you might even get a signed copy like I did. Next weekend I am taking a 5 day weekend and hopefully I will make Japchae, Angry Penne Pasta, Jjajangmyun, and Rice Balls. Also in the future Sujebi (spicy turn noodles) and Korean BBQ and Black Bean Burgers. https://www.unabridgedbookstore.com/
Resolutions and goals are so boring! I have a bucket list! What should I add?
Cook a recipe every month from a community cookbook
Weigh only once a month
Put effort into blog and YouTube channel
Learn to juggle
Make paper mache antlers
Enter a cooking contest if any are happening
Use my Tagine
Practice piano once or twice a week
Publish a poem and/or article somewhere that isn’t my blog
Get involved in something in the community
Eat healthy and exercise more
Start learning Spanish
Four mile walk once a week
Make home made cream of tomato soup
Make a sculpture
Take a pottery class, maybe make a bowl
Maybe take some writing classes
Take more photos of the world
Wear earrings more frequently
Learn chess
Bake a cake from scratch
Create a milk and honey cheesecake
Go to a cooking class
Make a cookbook zine
Make a fictional map
Draw funny faces on eggs in the fridge
Sleep in a yurt
Create my own stationery
Make pasta from scratch
Make peach cobbler
I never liked the word “resolutions”, but I have done a goals list off and on for years. Sometimes even making a practice of 100 goals inspired by others who do the same. I don’t really do 100 anymore, just what comes to mind as well as look at past lists and see if there is anything I want to keep. But I don’t like calling them goals. It is more a loose list of maybe would be fun and/or beneficial to do. My friend John was like “a bucket list”. I think that is perfect!
I am sooo done with cooking, for the time being anyway. I mean I love cooking and I even find washing dishes meditative (I don’t have a dishwasher). But I need a break. But before I take a break from cooking, I need to cook. Have to cook potatoes for potato salad. I need to cook sausage and eggs so I can assemble more breakfast burritos. This is all simple cooking. So then from Sunday through Thursday, no cooking, except maybe to fry an egg on occasion. I know, not a full week, but then of course, I am visiting family for the holidays.
I don’t like tuna (unless raw in a Japanese restaurant), so I will buy canned chicken and mix it with mayonnaise. Maybe avocado toast. How do people have avocado toast everyday? So hard to find a ripe avocado the exact moment you need it. I will snack on tomatoes. Of course there are any variety of sandwiches that can be made. What are your ideas?
All the cooking I have done in the last week or two means all my spices got all messed up. So I am reorganizing them. Put warm spices together (nutmeg, cloves, allspice, etc), Indian spices, Mexican spices. Cumin, my favorite spice, is multicultural, so I will have to figure that out. This is just the start, the photo maybe shows 55% of my spices! Every one essential and necessary! 🙂 And yes, my baking stuff is there too as I house it in the same area. Perhaps more photos on Saturday.
Breakfast was toast. But by lunch I decided I had it with tofu and got tater tots. Still vegan but that isn’t why I am doing vegan, more on that in a bit. Dinner was Barilla Red Lentil Rotini pasta with a pasta sauce made with fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic, spices, tomato sauce. Next time I will use canned tomatoes. I love red lentils and I cooked the pasta two more minutes longer than the package said, but the texture was still harder than Al dente in my opinion.
First let’s talk about emotional eating. Today it was like everything was being thrown at me and I couldn’t dodge any of it. I wanted all the food in the vending machine. Of course I didn’t have any. I am sure emotional eating is how I get to be obese and diabetic. Vegan is a tool to eat more fresh foods, though it can be done unhealthy like those tater tot’s. Still, how to deal with stress when you are chained to your desk with too much work to do.
My history with tofu. Before this year I had it 3-4 times at people’s houses and just HATED it. People would say oh you haven’t had it cooked right. Like how many times do I have to eat it before you leave me alone! This last year I have started following a lot of vegans on YouTube. One of them is Nisha Vora of Rainbow Plant life with her crispy sesame tofu. It was sooo good. But I made the mistake of making three dishes that featured tofu and it turns out I have my limits. I would be okay never touching tofu again. But it is good to know there are ways I can tolerate it.
I may get through all vegan tomorrow, but then I am done. I still want to incorporate more vegan meals in my life though and with the new breed of vegan YouTubers, I think that is quite possible.
I didn’t take so many photos today because it would turn repetitive. Toast for breakfast, ground tofu bulgogi for lunch, snack of gingerbread pancake square with peanut butter, dinner was a roasted potato with ketchup.
Should I do this next month, and I likely will, there are changes I would make. One problem is I made three very similar recipes and I am getting bored. These are recipes I have been itching to make and they are all incredibly good, just should have only done one for this week. That is why I threw together the potato in a quick sloppy hurry. Turned out good though.
For next month I want to plan more variety, meals that can be frozen so I can make them 2-3 weeks ahead. Remember that this does not have to be complicated. I am still planning on doing four more days, but I did myself in a little by really wanting to try all those recipes.
The only thing I am really missing so far are eggs, mayo, and my home made breakfast burritos. Junk food too, but it has been nice to consider junk food off limits because I don’t know what is vegan. Don’t tell me. I am doing this for health reasons.
I started off with toast for breakfast, but this morning I tried the vegan butter. I am a girl who loves real butter and won’t touch margarine with a 10 foot pole. I tried the Earth Balance butter and it was quite good. I also put some peaches on top. I probably won’t keep that up.
For a snack I did the gingerbread sheet pan pancake with peanut butter on top.
For lunch I did the Miss Kim’s Fried Tofu. I brought in all the components separate, tofu, sauce, rice. Yes, I have a hot pot at work, microwaves aren’t good for everything. First put in the tofu to try to re-crisp it. That didn’t work so well but it did re-heat it. Maybe I need to add a touch of oil. Then I put in the rice and sauce. Most people are still working from home, but my coworker and I have to work in the office but we sit far from each other. She came to visit my desk and said it smelled good.
I came home to cook a couple more things I didn’t get to on the weekend. The blistered green beans. I would say where from, but I would make so many changes it wouldn’t be the same. It was still good though. Then I made Wil Yeung of Yeung Man Cooking’s Ground Tofu Bulgogi. Just delicious! I had it for dinner tonight but this will be my lunch the rest of the week. The recipe called for 200 grams of tofu but my tofu block was over 400 grams, so I doubled the recipe. So glad I did. I love all the cooking I did, but I love this one the best. https://youtu.be/bOpzP0ldlBI
I think I am done cooking for a few days. I will still be posting what I eat everyday. Later this week I will make a pasta sauce to go with red lentil pasta I bought. I am just going to wing the pasta sauce recipe.
I once did a week of vegan years ago. It went fine. It was easier than a week of paleo or three days of Whole 30. I have no intention of being 100% vegan, but I want to eat more vegan meals. For me it is a way to challenge my bad eating habits and eat more nutritious food. I wouldn’t normally consider this. One, I believe moderation is best no matter what or how you eat. Two, more importantly for me, there is a new generation of vegan food creators. I mostly watch them on YouTube. Nisha Vora of Rainbow Plant Life, Wil Yeung of Yeung Man Cooking, Joanne Lee Molinaro of The Korean Vegan, and Andrew and Larisha of Make it Dairy Free. While you might still have some unusual ingredients, at least for us non vegans, their foods look much more delicious and approachable than the vegan foods of old where you might think you are eating like a rabbit.
I am thinking once a month I will do a week of vegan and outside of that one or two vegan meals a day. For now don’t hold me to that. At least this week I will do vegan. As usual I am over planning and over ambitious and when it comes down to it I wonder what I am doing. But it doesn’t have to be hard, I made it that way because there are so many recipes I want to try. I did three of them anyway. Gingerbread sheet pancakes by Nisha Vora, Miss Kim’s Fried Tofu by Ji Hye Kim of Miss Kim Restaurant in Ann Arbor MI, recipe published by Food & Wine Magazine, and Spicy & Crunchy Garlic Tofu (Kkanpoong Tofu) by Joanne Lee Molinaro of The Korean Vegan. I will provide all the links I can for right now. Web site, YouTube, recipe links.
The gingerbread pancakes are a part of a pdf link provided in the description of the YouTube Video:
Gingerbread sheet pancakeBreakfast was whole wheat toast with peanut butter and peachesI the left the sauce for Spicy and Crunchy Garlic Tofu and on the right the sauce for Miss Kim’s Fried Tofu. By the way, I have always hated tofu, but crispy and fried tofu is quite good!Spicy and Crunchy Garlic Tofu with rice.
It is my intention to post daily this week what I am eating. And if you want to do a week of vegan you can also keep it simple like with toast with toppings of fruit or vegetables, a nice rice bow, a salad. These recipes looked so good I had to try them!
Rainy Saturday Creative 