(Photo by Steve Rawley)

Honey is not vegan, fyi.

I saved this article from Thee O last summer. I like how writer Grant Butler has been covering veganism. He’s uncovered and shared some good recipes, including these. We made the sauce and quesadillas last week — they turned out great. I skipped the brownies recipe, cuz I made Mexican Wedding Cakes (with miniature chocolate chips stirred in) for a thing at school. (You can make those vegan, by the way, by subbing margarine for the butter.)

OK, where was I? Fresh corn isn’t available yet, so I subbed frozen. It was fine. We left out the sweetener, too. After the quesadillas were served up, we topped with avocado slices and sour cream. Also I used Monterey Jack cheese, not fake cheese. So technically, they weren’t vegan.

Vegan Policeman #2: [whips out notepad.] 12:47 on February 1st: You knowingly ingested gelato.
Todd Ingram: Gelato isn’t vegan?
Vegan Policeman #1: It’s milk and eggs, bitch.
Vegan Policeman #2: [still reading.] On April 4th, 7:30 pm, you partook of a plate of chicken parmesan.
[Envy gasps, then glares at Todd.]
Todd Ingram: [feeble.] Chicken isn’t vegan?

— from “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”

But they did come pretty close to tasting like our favorite sincronizadas from El Palenque and mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm indeed.

With the leftover filling, I made enchiladas. Super good, especially with the chili paste I made awhile back and kept in the freezer. (Recipe: My girlfriend sent home a big bag of dried red chiles with us last time we were in L.A. Here’s what I did with them: Remove stems and seeds; put in a big bowl and top with boiling water. Let steep 20 minutes or so? Then puree in blender or food processor, with as much water as you need. Freeze. To make sauce, blend up a can of whole tomatoes or a bowl full of fresh tomatoes. Add as much chili paste as you would like; blend again. I might have put a little cumin, salt, pepper and sugar in, too. Voila!)

(Here’s my enchilada recipe, but good luck finding it.)

Summer Succotash Quesadillas With Nacho Mmmm Sauce

Makes 4 to 6 servings. Dunk, dip or drizzle. Just don’t forget about the sauce.

Ingredients
Filling

1 sweet onion, sliced
1 ear fresh corn, kernels cut from cob
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons lemon or lime juice
1/2 teaspoon maple syrup or agave syrup
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sauce:
2/3 cup salsa, store-bought or homemade
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup raw almonds
1/4 cup canned garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried cilantro or 1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
8 whole-grain tortillas
1 cup shredded nondairy cheese (such as Daiya pepper-jack)

Instructions

To make filling: Place a large skillet sprayed with nonstick cooking spray or lightly coated with oil over medium high heat. Add onion and cook for 7 to 8 minutes, until softened and starting to brown.

Add corn, bell pepper and zucchini to the pan with the onion, along with garlic, water, lemon juice, maple or agave syrup and cumin. Cook the succotash down for an additional 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To make sauce: In a food processor or blender combine salsa, water, almonds, garbanzo beans, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, garlic, salt, chili powder, cumin and cilantro. Blend until smooth. Refrigerate until serving.

Place another large skillet sprayed with cooking spray or lightly coated with oil over medium high heat and add one tortilla. Top with 2 tablespoons cheese. Add about 1/3 cup of succotash filling. Top with another 2 tablespoons of cheese and another tortilla.

Cook for several minutes on both sides, until tortilla is crisp and cheese is melty.

Repeat with remaining tortillas, cheese and filling. Serve with Nacho Mmmm Sauce.

PER SERVING (based on 6): calories: 363 (28% from fat); protein: 19.4 grams; total fat: 11.1 grams; saturated fat: 1.8 grams; cholesterol: 0; sodium: 900 mg; carbohydrate: 51.6 grams; dietary fiber: 7.1 grams

From Sarah Matheny

ps Here’s Sarah’s blog.

Dear Some of My Former Co-Workers,

As you are drinking yourselves silly at the wake tomorrow for our late co-worker… let’s just call him DUI Guy, for his sake… plz you will remember that alcohol isn’t the best temporary solution. But it’s a pretty good permanent one.

Love,

nancy

ps yes i know this graf needed an editor.

Here’s a related story for you.

And another one. Happy Friday, y’all. RIP, RIP, RIP to those who need it.

also, Peter Bhatia? kind of a wussy-boy. He’s all, You?! You! Are a Troll! and a… a… blogger.

oh my heck. This from the man who after he did yet another slice n dice on the newsroom, gathered us all around in an all-hands meeting, gave a big ol’ smirk and said, “The only person who likes change is a baby.” (Actually, he said that a lot. That was just the first time we ever heard it.) I told my co-workers, “This is a man who obviously has never changed a diaper.” oy.

So. You think they’re atoning today for Yom Kippur? Neil Goldschmidt, Sandra Mims Rowe, Peter Bhatia? And all of their cronies who helped them cover up years of sexual abuse?

I think they probably are not. (Here are Neil and his buddies, yucking it up at late Senator Mark O. Hatfield’s funeral.) (Sometimes, people try to make you look bad, and sometimes you look bad all by your own self.)

Rest in peace, sweet girl. You deserved a lot more. I send you love, and peace.

— wm

This column from (the now dearly departed) Molly Ivins is from 2006, but needs a re-run. We just canceled our subscription to the Oregonian — this time, the break-up is final.

We were only subscribing to it so the kids could read the funny papers. Then one of the kids decided that the funny papers weren’t so funny, and stopped reading them. So we were subscribing so one of the kids could read the funnies. It’s not worth 38 bucks every two months, sorry, kid. I can read the obits on line; that’s all I was using it for. They went back to the smeary (less-expensive) ink, so I can’t even use it to wrap dishes and breakables when we move.

And we don’t have birds over here.

No more Dulcy Mahar, gardening goddess at large. Miss you, sweet girl.

No more Sunday TV guide.

No more, uh, news. Or news staff.

No more, no more. So we’re done.

— 30 —

You know why I still subscribe to the newspaper? (We take three, actually — west side paper, Street Roots (homeless guys’ newspaper) and Thee Oregonian.) Four reasons: 1) Page One of the funny papers. 2) Page Two of the funny papers 3) obits (“hatched, matched and thatched,” as my dear departed Granny said of the birth, wedding and death notices) and 4) the FoodDay section.

I am sucker for recipes, y’all who have been reading me for awhile know that. Today, along comes this cute hippie guy, making some vegetarian burritos for himself and his girlfriend. Awwwwwwww… just like Stevie and me! So I had to make some for lunch and some to put in the freezer. Of course I only had the burrito-size tortillas, and no sweet potatoes. And I was too lazy to fry up some new potatoes. And I wanted to add rice, anyway, so forget about the spuds.

Also, I used some El Pato and tomato sauce, and did them enchilada-style.

What else? I subbed collards for kale, due to the fact that we had no kale in the fridge. But Steve’s not crazy about kale, anyway, so it’s all good! (As the hippies say. “It’s all good hemp!”)

Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. So there you go. Steve had a nice, home-cooked lunch, and we have a pan of enchilada/burritos in the freezer. This working from home thing rocks. I have had a hard time with it, in the past, keeping on a schedule, getting the writing/editing done, paying enough attention to laundry/cleaning/reading/bread-baking/gardening/bill-paying/kids/everything else. (No, not in that order. The bread-baking comes in second place, right after the kiddos.) (Probably helps that they’re in school most of the day, my little darlins. But with as many days as we have off? It’s not that different from when they were babies.) (No diapers though!!!!! Right on!!! Right on!!!)

(speaking of… Lelo posted some dynamite salad dressing recipes. Don’t get too skinny, girl! I like ’em curvy ;)

I also went all crazy and made the MAC Club’s Bran Muffins, from a recipe I cut out of the paper about two decades ago. So of course it’s not online. OregonLive barely has stuff that’s two weeks old online. I’ll type it up later, I promise.

Oh, Oregonian… Sorry I was hating on you so much awhile back. (Internet can’t see my fingers crossed behind my back.) I’m sorry! I feel so bad every time I think about you! OK, I’m not sorry.

Bon appetit!

Wacky Mommy

and… here’s the recipe. My changes (they all worked well): I subbed two real eggs for the egg substitute; dark molasses for light; soymilk with a tablespoon of lemon added instead of buttermilk (this is also a trick I use with real milk if I don’t have buttermilk in the house; and I added a little extra milk — maybe should have used three eggs? Yeah, I added a little honey, too, cuz sticky bran muffins = heaven.

And I left out the pineapple. My daughter wants me to add bananas next time. I think blueberries would be good, too. We’re anti-raisins and nuts over here, but you may feel differently. Also, I mixed it all up in one damn bowl because life is too short to mess with separate bowls.

We all four like this recipe. And even though I filled the muffin tins right up to the edge (muffin tops!! the good kind) it still made enough for lunches and snacks, plus some for the freezer. Done!

MAC Bran Muffins

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 cups wheat bran
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup liquid egg substitute
1 tablespoon light molasses
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 15 1/4 oz. can juice-packed crushed pineapple, drained

In a large mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour, soda, baking powder and wheat bran until uniformly mixed. In a separate bowl, mix oil, egg substitute, molasses and buttermilk. Add egg mixture and pineapple to flour mixture all at once. Stir until all of flour is wet, but do not overmix.

Fill lightly greased muffin tins (or paper-lined tins) 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Makes approximately 2 dozen.

Hmm.

“Don’t call me shrill, ho.”

The last time I was called shrill, hmm, let’s see. Hmm, hmmm, hummers! That was it! My boss wanted me to blow him and I wouldn’t.

Then one of the other managers (female, unbelievably enough. Oh, wait. Naw, I can believe it) wanted me to explain myself. Apparently he thought blow jobs were part of my job description, complained to her, she was dispatched to “deal” with “the situation.”

“It’s just, you don’t usually sound so… shrill,” she told me.

So forgive me, Anna Griffin, that I am a little “p.o’ed” at you for calling our recently-elected City Commissioner “shrill.”

Steve just wrote a good post about said column. Then told me, “Doesn’t matter, all their links go dead after two weeks, anyway.” So I won’t bother giving them a link. But I’ll give him one. A link! Settle down, now.

I have this problem. For me, it’s a small problem. For my husband, dear, sweet, understanding Hockey God, it’s a big, big, big, huge, frickin’ out-of-control problem. It’s all over the table, floor, stacked up in a rack next to the china cabinet.

It takes up a ton of room in the recycling bin and is heavy.

It makes his brain hurt when we talk about it, when I won’t pay attention to him at the table, because I’m absorbed in the obituaries, the recipes, the People column.

Newspapers. I have a pretty serious newspaper addiction going here.

A-hem. A few of his frequent comments go like this:

“Why don’t you read it online?”
“You know you can read it online.”
“Can I recycle these? All of these? No? Why not?”
“Really. Why the hell not?”
“Can we cancel our subscription? I mean, permanently?”

Yargh, the pressure, I cannot take it.

I like a newspaper. I like the heft of it. The thud when they throw it on the front porch. The slick ads. The metro section. The metro brieflys, about horrible, random things happening to random people (who are usually not horrible. But sometimes I suppose they are. Like when a drug dealer’s house burns down because his gro-lights got too hot. I’m supposed to feel bad about that? If he had little kids, I’d feel bad for them. But usually child welfare has already nabbed them. Or when two guys are drunk in a bar and beat each other up, then crash their trucks into each other in the parking lot and get arrested, and their girlfriends won’t bail them out. Hmm…).

I digress.

How will I know about these horrible, random things if I quit my subscription?

Then one day it occurred to me: Why do I want to know about horrible random things? It’s enough to give you a headache. Why give yourself a headache on purpose? That happens enough on accident, no?

Then one other day it occurred to me: This is the only reason I keep my subscription to the Oregonian. That’s right.

Don’t judge me, you. I never claimed to be all fancy-schmancy over here.

For Better or Worse is a good reason to stay married (ten years for us next month!) (and happy 25th to my younger-than-ever girlfriend L and her youthful groom, by the way). But subscribing to the paper just so you can read For Better or Worse? Not reason enough to pay out the money.

Subscription now canceled.

My daughter will miss the funnies but y’know? She can read all of them online.

I’ll get her a free subscription.

You know how many times the Nirvana video “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has been viewed? 11 million, eight hundred twenty-nine thousand, one hundred and 12 times, that’s how many. So far. Ah, what’s not to love about anarchist cheerleaders? So. So, so, so. Because I’m in an Oregonian-bashing kinda mood today… Did you realize the writers and editors there didn’t write shit about Nirvana until Kurt died? (more…)

Thursday 13ers and Usual Suspects, we have company today. The Oregonian is here. Sure, they won’t leave comments or anything, but they’re here.

Hi, guys. (more…)