Happy New Year 2011, and other holiday stuff.

Happy 2011 Everybody!

If you ask me the best thing about 2010 is that it came on quick and left ever quicker! Well there's that and the fact that  Melisser Elliott included me and Tattooed Geek in her super awesome book The Vegan Girl's Guide To Life.  Ooh, and that the powers that be  at The Style Network brought us the hot mess that is Jerseylicious.

Now on to Christmas.  The best Christmas present was delivered on December 23, Mike had his follow up body scan and was given a clean bill of health - he's completely cancer free!  We expected as much but it was still great to hear.  We kept Christmas very low key this year, but we did try a few new recipes that I wanted to share.  

I made Kittee's Buckeye Balls, http://www.pakupaku.info/sweets/buckeye_balls.shtml.  What drew me to this recipe was how quick and easy they seemed to make. It's true, they were  really easy and took just a few  minutes to prepare.  Buckeye Balls are more of  candy than a cookie - but who cares, they were delicious.  Every one of us gave Kittee's Buckeye Balls two thumbs up.

 

Nanny (my mother in law) came for Christmas baring jars and jars of fresh marinated artichokes, roasted red peppers, olives, sun dried tomatoes with garlic and a ton of Eggplant Caponata (sometimes called Eggplant appetizer). Eggplant Caponata is a thick Italian eggplant stew/spread. It's naturally vegan and is perfect served at room temperature with lots of crusty bread.  My kids go wild for it.  You can find it canned or jarred in the Italian sections of most grocery stores.  However it's much cheaper to make your own.  Caponata is the perfect addition to  Antipasto platters (especially vegan ones.)

Eggplant Caponata

(recipe originally found in Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium-sized yellow onion, chopped

1 celery rib, minced

1 large eggplant, peeled and diced

1 medium-sized red or green bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1/3 cup black olives, drained pitted and sliced

1 tablespoon capers, drained and chopped

1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley leaves

1.  Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat.   Add the onion and celery, cover, and cook until softened.Add the eggplant, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the eggplant begins to soften, about 5 more minutes.

2. Transfer the mixture to a 4-quart slow cooker. Add the bell pepper, garlic, tomatoes, tomato paste, vinegar, sugar, basil, oregano and red pepper flakes.  season with salt and pepper. cover and cook on low until the vegetables are soft but still hold some shape. (in the slow cooker about 6 hours.)

3. When the vegetables are cooked, stir in the olives, capers and parsley.  Taste, adjust seasonings. Transfer the caponata to a bowl and let cool.  Serve at room temperature. If not serving right away cover and refrigerate until needed.

I've made this recipe without a slow cooker. I cooked it all in one large pot, instead of transferring the sauteed onion, celery and eggplant to a slow cooker just lower the temperature to medium and continue the recipe as listed.  Stir often.  Caponata is much better the next day. I recommend always preparing it a  day in advance

Nanny also very graciously occupied the kids with gingerbread baking and decorating while Mike and I slipped away for some last minute Christmas shopping.

Mike planned Christmas dinner Cajun style. He made a vegan jambalaya, gumbo and (my favorite) Cajun Seitan.  As it turns out I'm not a gumbo person, and maybe not a jambalaya person either. I am definitely a Cajun seitan person though. 

All of our Christmas decorations are getting packed up as I type. Usually it makes me sad to stuff our wooden soldiers into their plastic sarcophagus  for another year.  Not so much this time though.  Maybe I'm still in a food induced stupor, but this time I'm glad to be packing in all the holiday hoopla.  I'd rather focus on the new year ahead of us.

New shop location.

By popular demand, the shop is opened for the holidays!  You can find us at http://www.tattooedgeek.com/.  Several new candles have been added with more to come soon. Solid fragrances, fragrance oils, lip balms and pocket mirrors are being added throughout the coming week.  The Etsy shop remains closed for now.  I was reluctant to change the shop location from Etsy to Big Cartel, but I have to say I am really loving the design freedom  Big Cartel offers. I still absolutely love Etsy.  But from a shop owners perspective with Etsy it always seems like "Etsy" comes first, with Big Cartel my shop comes first -if that makes any sense. Check it out and you'll understand what I mean.  Your purchases still go through paypal and are subject to all of the protection paypal offers.  The holiday candles will be available through New Years.  Any outstanding Etsy business will of course be honored.  I'm still catching up so wholesale orders are on hold until after the new year.  As always, please feel free to contact me at anytime about anything.

Not only did our shop move,  we moved too.  We got the keys to the new place 3 days before Mike's surgery.  With Mike not well and surgery looming, moving wasn't exactly on our agenda at the time.  With all of the doctor co pays,  missed work  and the online shop closure (after several screwed up orders I had to close the online shop until things settled down) we had a moving budget of exactly; zero!  Plus, Mike was soon tied up healing from his neck dissection and thyroidectomy. The actual physical "move" was left to the kids and I.  We spent the next two weeks moving like the  band of white trash Gypsies that we are; we loaded all of our belongings into dozens of black garbage bags and piled up the minivan (cause we're classy like that!)  It took about three thousand round trips but we got it done.  It was during that hectic chaos that I realized how truly blessed I am.  The children worked their butts off helping me move.  It's not right to expect people so young to do so much, but they did it without even so much as a whimper.  I probably would have ended up in the loony bin if it wasn't for them.  Thankfully we walked away from the toxic house that we were living in, which by the way still sits empty.  Since moving I found out that the family before us also left that house due to health concerns.  Our landlord knew about the mold and the problems it caused and never informed us, bastard!  That will never happen again.  We went to the local building inspector and gave him a copy of the air quality report. The building inspector issued a citation so the landlord would have to have the house properly and professionally cleaned up.  No more sick families-woohoo!

There was one little unfortunate mishap during the move.  On a  late Sunday night moving spree we hit a deer with the van.  Actually the deer hit us I swear.  After hitting us the deer ran away fine.   Our van on the other hand was a different story. That deer left our van a mess -he left us a mess too!  It had to be one of the worst experiences of my life. I never hit an animal before, it's been hard to shake off emotionally and financially.  I'm pretty sure there's over a thousand dollars worth of damage. Fiberglass and Styrofoam do not hold up well against a 200lbs+ deer.  I'm not kidding when I say that behind my broken fiberglass bumper was a big block of black Styrofoam.   How is Styrofoam suppose to protect people?  Dodge sucks.

Cancer update: Mike has his radiation appointments this coming week.  He'll get a shot on Tuesday, a shot on Wednesday and a radioactive iodine pill on Thursday.  On December 23 he'll have a full body scan, he should be completely cancer free.  By Christmas we'll most likely be able to put all of this behind us -fingers crossed.