Day 1: Starting a Blog: No Animals. Lots of Carbs.

So I have been inspired.

Perhaps due to reading Julie & Julia again.

Perhaps because I took a cooking class at Kitchen Conservatory last week (Margi was a g-ddess).

Perhaps on account of years spent faithfully reading several cooking blogs and finally deciding to join the masses.

Or, more realistically though also more grim, perhaps I am writing today largely because I have eaten the same pad thai for the past three years of dinners. Of course it’s great – why else would my husband and I (almost) never tire of silky noodles, crunchy peanuts and fried tofu? It’s easy enough to get when you live one block east of one of the best streets to live on in America. Honestly.

I know this street, the Delmar Loop, like I used to know the towns I covered in my other life as a beat reporter. I know by sight and smile the long-haired folks who play guitar in the spring at the Starbucks that used to be a Dairy Queen (yes even this street has a Starbucks), the skinny bandana-wearing dude who does cartwheels in the street when it rains and scares all the college freshmen, and the guy with a Santa beard who considers himself the town watcher (he actually called police once when he spotted a robber).

If I never moved away the Loop, I might be okay with that.

Yet it has become too easy to never fill my fridge but instead rely on the bounty of Thai restaurants (four, to be exact) along this street to fill me up.

So maybe I’m starting this blog as a protest to monotony and routinization, and also to thinking I’m healthy just because I don’t eat animals. So I think I’m going to let you know, dear faithful reader, which may just be the aforementioned husband, what we’re eating from now on. Please: hold me accountable.

Day 1.

I took the recipe from Kitchen Conservatory and made flat bread (3 c white flour, ½ c wheat flour, a pinch of salt, 1 cup hot water, 1 T olive oil mixed up and left alone in a plastic bag to rise for a bit, then rolled it out with a bottle of vinegar since I don’t own a rolling pin, put my thumbprint all over it like Margi suggested, and sprinkled the dough with parmesan, salt, rosemary and garlic. Then I placed it in the oven at 425 for 15-18 minutes – my oven is slow).

Then I made vegetable soup as an homage to Julie Powell, whose prose was so depressing to one of my friends that she quit after the first ten pages. Not I (I really only quit reading due to vapid prose…the darker, possibly the better).

Anyway, Julie’s first recipe was Julia Child’s first recipe, a potage parmentier, or potato soup. Well, it’s May now and I thought this a little hearty so I lightened it up: (placed green beans, a diced white onion, two garlic cloves, a couple sliced carrots and two ugly potatoes cut up in a pot with lots of water – I forgot to measure – with salt, pepper and bay leaves for about an hour, ran them through my miniCuisinart which was a bit of an annoying task, and then added some soymilk and a pat of butter. Strange but true. And tasty).

Voila. My first blog.