Posts on cooking

I've fallen behind in the Kidlitosphere lately, both reading and posting-wise. I chalk it up to the season, in large part; I've been trying really hard to be nice to myself and not stress out about things like, say, keeping up with the blog. Here are some things I've been enjoying that have nothing to do with the Internet:

• Vegan cooking - I'm enjoying Isa Chandra Moskowitz's cookbook Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock. So far, so good! We've been using her seitan recipe for some time now, and over the past few weeks we've also tried the scrambled tofu, biscuits with sausage gravy (one of my favorite foods ever, from my meat-eating days), and onion miso soup. I'm planning to make the chocolate raspberry cake for my dad's birthday. If you've ever thought about reducing your dairy/egg/meat intake, take a look. Vegan with a Vengeance is a far cry from scary nut-and-twig vegan recipes from days of yore.
• Watching Doctor Who - When I put the "complete first series" of Doctor Who on hold at the library, I was expecting an assortment of kitschy episodes from 40 years ago. Somehow I completely missed that the BBC revived the series in 2005, and HOO BABY is it good! It's well-written, with terrific acting and quite respectable special effects. If you were a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation or The X-Files, you'll probably enjoy it. And maybe even fall a little bit in love with Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. Like maybe I did. Hypothetically speaking.
• Listening to New (To Me) Music - Iron & Wine and Calexico's joint effort In the Reins is seep-into-the-consciousness-and-take-up-residence music. It's so very mellow and pretty, it pretty much perfectly mirrors these snowy February mornings. I'll be using it as mood music for one of my writing projects I plan to return to once I finish this revision of another (slog, slog, slog). Some other new-to-me albums getting a lot of play: the New Pornographers' Challengers, the Finches' Human Like a House, and the Magnetic Fields' I.

And I'll be back soon with that post about unusual character names. Pinky swear.