Tuesday, September 11, 2007

A rant. And then some food.

Yesterday in the mailbox we had a booklet about "Talking to your kids about illicit drugs", courtesy of the Australian government. Contents aside (they are silly!), there was a letter along with the booklet from John Howard. This letter was two pages long, printed on shiny magazine-quality paper. Why couldn't he double side it? He claims to be committed to the environment, but then he sends out a letter to every household in Australia with two sheets of paper that could have been just one. Even better, the government could have made this booklet readily accessible without sending it to EVERYONE. We read through it and laughed but just chucked it in the recycle bin. We don't have kids, and there are many households like ours. Why did they waste money sending us all booklets? What an idiotic thing to do.


Hokay, now that I've got that out of my system, some foooood.

Some bread, inspired by the Pleasantly Plump Vegan's crazy bread. Instead of a sweet glaze, ours had herbs and sesame seeds in the dough and on top. Though it was delicious and the look was cool, ours didn't separate the way hers does in photos. The balls all sort of stuck together. Maybe it was the dough I used, maybe it was my double-layer technique, but either way, my bread was only a little crazy. Still, it was good enough to eat half the loaf still hot with vegemite...

Andy made the Three-Seed Lemon Tea Bread from Vegan Planet, but baked it in a cake pan instead of a loaf pan. The texture was sort of weird, but it was very tasty! After so much bread and cake, we wanted a small dinner, so Andy made a concoction of beans, veggies, and tomato sauce to have on toast.
Zucchini-Tomato Fritatta from Vegan Planet. It didn't quite set, but this was great scooped up with garlic bread.
Coconut lime rice pudding, inspired by Veganista, topped with frozen mango from last season.
Last night, what felt like an All-American Summer Dinner. SusanV's seitan ribz with steamed broccoli and cheez sauce (made by Andy), and potato salad. The ribz were good! I did them under the griller since we don't have a bbq, and they got crunchy around the edges but stayed chewy inside. The pictures were not working, though. With the flash, the potato salad glows. Without it, the ribz are too dark. So here's both. First, with the flash.
Now in natural lighting.The potato salad was maybe my favourite--Potatoes, cucumber, lime juice, olive oil, coriander and salt and pepper. It was a nice cooling side to the slightly spicy bbq sauce. For dessert, supa green fruit salad, aka kiwi and honeydew melon.

10 comments:

Amy said...

I know what you mean about the waste of paper. The DC government has a law that says all copies produced in govt offices have to be double-sided unless there is a really good reason why not. I like that.

I have been thinking about trying that rib recipe but dismayed that I don't have a grill. I will try it under the broiler now, thanks to you!

Amy said...

I haven't opened my drugs booklet yet. Given that my eldest is just 8 I don't know that drugs are an issue just yet.....(but I could be wrong in this day and age I guess ::creak, crack, where's my walking stick?::)

I've been wanting to try those ribz too but got a bit scared after some icky one's I made once that were pretty much like bread. I really should give them a go!

Amy said...

Oh and I meant to say the food all looks fantastic! (not that it ever doesn't). OK, will stop spamming your blog now :P

Anonymous said...

Sometimes people (and governments) are just so dumb! Yesterday I read an interview with an animal rights activist here in south Sweden. He mainly works with abandoned cats and dogs and abused animals and he goes on and talks about how animal cruelty is wrong and bad, and THEN he tells us that his favourite food is chicken. And I'm like.. WHAT? How can you EAT animals and still preach about animal rights and animal cruelty? Does he not see that it's the same thing? Raising and abusing baby calves and then slaughtering them IS animal cruelty! God damnit.

Other than that, the food looks GOOOOD. And I love the look of that weird bread, someone needs to show weird bread some love :)

ChocolateCoveredVegan said...

EVERYTHING looks so good! I think I'll have to make some vegan bread soon (no vegemite for me, though hehe. I much prefer jam, even though I'm sure vegemite is healthier).

bazu said...

Oh YUM! I would like to try a little bit of everything you have here. Coconut rice pudding? Crazy bread? Ribz? Potato salad? yes, please.

Oh, how I long for a day when we're paper-free. How is it that since the advent of email and the internet that our use of paper has actually gone UP? Grrr. There's one catalog that I get in the mail every 3-4 weeks. I've tried contacting them so many times to ask them to remove me from their mailing lists, to no avail. They say they will do it, but then I get another catalog. And another. Drives me insane, can you tell?

Anna said...

Ha, fortunately they haven't delivered that package to our mailbox yet, but your rant is spot on. I heard from someone else that the content was pretty useless--this from someone who has three kids, a couple of them teenagers.

Yummy, yummy looking food Theresa. I keep meaning to try those ribz. And I'm so flattered to get a mention, thank you!

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

unfortunately, a lot of people can be hypocrites when it comes to protecting the environment. for one of my classes, I have to print out EACH story that we have to read, and bring it to each class session - the stories are 20 pages long!!! so now I just bring my laptop to class, and save all that paper :0)

mmm, that bread, frittata, cake, EVERYTHING looks delicious!!

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

p.s. I tagged you for a meme! :0)

Anonymous said...

Everything's for 'show' with politicians. John Howard committed to the environment I doubt it. He's looking forward to opening more nuclear power plants as is our own PM here in Canada.

Didn't Chernobyl teach them anything.