What I've been up to lately

So what have I been up to?

I've seen two more movies: The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, and Art School Confidential. The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till was really sad, but I felt I needed to see it. Since I wasn't alive during that era, I can't say I really know what people went through. I've read about it, of course, but I had no idea how bad the south was during that period. I have to say, Mamie Till-Mobley was quite a lady, and she's now one of my heroes. Moving on to Art School Confidential... Well, I have to say I didn't like this movie. I was really looking forward to seeing it, but it was just dumb. Some parts of it were funny, but for the most part it was just blah. That's all I have to say about that.

On Saturday I decided to make some cookies, because the weather was perfect, not too hot and not too cold. I made the recipe for Oatmeal Raisin Cookies found in Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Cooking, except I didn't have enough raisins so I followed the variation and added some carob chips. They turned out superb!


On Saturday evening we went up to the Catskill Mountain Foundation to see a cello performance. (The cello player was Paul Tobias.) Since Susan's boss Pam is lactose intolerant, I thought I'd bring some of the cookies up for Susan and Pam to share. Well, it was kind of busy, so Susan didn't even tell Pam that there was cookies (perhaps subconsciously she didn't really wasnt Pam to know? Susan's a little possesive of her sweets, as some of you might already know). After the concert, Susan was just going to give Pam two cookies, but we said she should give her the whole bag (about 8). Pam was ecstatic; she kept saying oh, they're vegan, they're vegan! Haha, the piano player who was accompanying the cellist said, oh, they're vegan, that's good. (Between you and me I don't think he knew what vegan meant.)

Anyhoo, on Sunday we went to Woodstock to see a performance that's part of the Maverick Concerts series. We saw the St. Lawrence String Quartet. On the way home we stopped at New World Home Cooking. (I brought the camera, but it was too dark to take a decent picture.) In the past, they have been very vegetarian and vegan friendly, but I have to say, I was quite disappointed with my meal. They always start out by giving each table (vegan) white bean dip and bread, but they seemed to have cut down on the amount of bean dip they gave out, and so we had to ask for more. I decided to get the prix fixe special they had. I started out with a bowl of miso soup (I made sure it was a vegan first), and I must say it was quite delicious. But then I had my entree of brown rice, black beans, and vegetables of the day, and I was really, really disappointed. First off, they cut down on the amount of rice and beans they give you, so it wasn't that much food at all, and secondly, the vegetables were not seasoned at all. Well, except for one of the veggies, but that's coming up in a little while. The kale was just steamed, which is fine, but that's never how it came in the past. It always came sauteed with onions and garlic and seasoned perfectly. The grilled squash didn't have any flavor on it either, it was just grilled. And the only other vegetable on my plate that I could (desired to) eat was grilled scallions, which were very stringy and difficult to eat. Also, I was asking if the bean dip and soup was vegan, so I figured the waitress knew I was a vegan, but the only seasoned vegetable on my plate was mashed sweet potatoes that contained butter. (I know that because I have his cookbook and the recipe's in it.) I do admit that's my fault though. (I just scooped it onto Rachel and Susan's plates.) For dessert I had Jane's lime sorbet. It was served in a fancy glass, and was delicous, but, come on, you can never go wrong with sorbet. Also, to add to the semi-annoyance, our waitress was really annoying and every 5 minutes she kept coming over and asking if we wanted anything else.
Please don't think I'm nit-picking, all of us are very displeased with Ric Orlando (the owner), starting from about this time last year when his food quality started going down. It's really sad for me because New World was just about the only place I could go eat at and be really confident that I was getting a vegan meal.

I guess I'll have to open a restaurant (just kidding).

On a more positive note, we went to the co-op today! Besides other things I got cute little purple potatoes, cherry nirvana soy delicious, mint chocolate chip soy delicious, and a huge bunch of basil (you know what that means!), as part of my bounty. For dinner tonight I had a hummus sandwich we bought there:

Yum, I love the hummus they make, it's so good.


Dessert: some kind of melon Rachel brought home, a nectarine, some grapes*, and organic blueberries from the co-op.


Uh-oh, someone (mom) was eating outside on the porch and dropped some food. I know the photo's kind of blurry, but there's a lot of ants and also a lone fly crawling about the food. I guess mom was just doing her part to help feed them. :)

P.S. coming soon..... Pictures I found from my younger years. If I do say so myself, I was quite adorable, but you'll just have to wait and decide for yourself.