Cousin Road trip

Most of my family lives within an hour's drive of me. I'm lucky that way. It's easy for us to spend holidays and birthdays together. My uncle Ron, Aunt Wendy, and baby (she's 19) cousin Ivy live in California. We get to see them about once a year. They've been trying to get some of us to come visit for a while and finally my cousin Samantha took some initiative and planned a weekend for us to go. It was quick since neither myself or my brother could take more than a day off. Samantha, Andy, myself, and Samantha's sister Randi drove down on a Thursday night, arriving at about 4am. (This is not the first time we've made this drive. When I was still in high school, Samantha, Andy and I drove down to Sacramento for a couple days during spring break. To this day, I can't hear Remix to Ignition without thinking of that trip. Samantha honked her horn all the way through the passes to keep the deer away.)
Before our drive, we stopped at WalMart to pick up some essentials like massive amounts of junk food for the drive. I decided to get a subway sandwich at the in-walmart subway. There was one lady in front of me and the woman working was sweating and ranting about how busy she was because the kid who usually works with her is on drugs so she had to send him home. Fair enough, but since there were just two of us standing there, I didn't really see how she was so overwhelmed. The woman in front of me ordered a pizza because the rotten kid she was with was refusing to eat vegetables. So the subway lady puts the pizza in the oven and just stands there, staring at the oven, waiting for it to cook....she waits the full 3-5 minutes for it to cook which happens to be roughly the time it takes to make me a tuna with spinach, olives, lettuce, and cucumbers on wheat. She doesn't address me until the pizza is cooked, packaged, and paid for. She makes my sandwich and then when I give her my card makes fun of my last name, asking me if high school was awful. My last name isn't dickmouth, okay? It's Ridderbusch. I don't think it warranted the reaction. When I walked away, she was discussing my horrible last name with the line that had formed while she waited for that pizza to cook. I digress.
My brother managed to lose his wallet at about 1am at a rest stop. So I called the highway patrol and the security at the rest stop which happened to be run by Seven Feathers Casino and the nicest rest stop I've ever been to. Everyone was very helpful but nobody found the wallet. Bummer, Dude.
When we got to Sacramento, we took a nap and got up 3 hours later to get on the double decker boat that my uncle had rented for us to hang out on for the day. We got to lounge on the lake and eat all the great food my Aunt Wendy packed for us and just hang out together all day. It was really relaxing-just a great way to spend the day with my cousins and uncle. I did manage to fall asleep on the top deck, completely frying my back, ass, and legs. And I also lost one of my favorite clip-on earrings because I forgot to take it off before I jumped in the water. Gotta take the good with the bad right? Wendy had delicious enchiladas waiting for us when we returned.
The next day they got us bagels and then us girls went vintage-shop roaming while my uncle and brother had man time or something. We spent some time in old town where my aunt insisted on continuing what was turning out to be quite a fat-kid weekend by buying us tons of candy and taking us to lunch.  When we got home, we laid out at the pool and played Kinect. Which I kick ass at, by the way. If someone has one they don't want, send that puppy my way. Dinner outside, a nice family walk, and smores in the backyard ended our day. Oh, and I dropped my phone in the pool that day. I put it in a bag of rice hoping it would heal itself but while I did get it to turn on, it wouldn't stop vibrating and was just generally ruined. Which is why I now have an iphone, as mentioned several posts ago because I do things out of order. Sue me.
Another thing that happened is that my brother bought a turtle. He does shit like that. I think it's name is burt, having to do with a conversation earlier in the weekend about hazelnuts/filberts and how only an Oregonian would EVER call a hazelnut a filbert.
We got up Sunday morning and began our long drive home, which included stopping at the Seven Feathers rest stop to try once more to recover Andy's wallet. And, YAHTZEE! They had it. Pretty awesome.
 I really enjoyed spending time with my cousins. Samantha and I always have fun together and Randi just moved back to Oregon so it was nice to have her there. And I even enjoyed my brother who is so old these days (he's only a year and a half younger than me but still) and is always hilarious. Ivy is so grown up, too. There are pictures of me holding her as a baby so it's weird and awesome that she's now a beautiful, smart, and sweet as can be college sophomore. 

lazy

I'm lazy when it comes to food. This is because often I don't take action to remedy my hunger until I get to the point of: I MUST HAVE FOOD NOW. When I was vegan, I felt like I was always eating either well prepared and planned out meals or hummus with pita. There was no middle ground. It seemed like any real meal required tons of effort and also expensive ingredients. My brother's friend posted a link to this site. Herbally inclined or no, it has great simple recipes for those looking to avoid meat and dairy.

Here is one example which, by the way, looks amazing. And I love the way they present their recipes.

Heart Day

We actually celebrated yesterday with sake and dessert followed by a wonderful vegetarian lentil loaf dinner at his place. We watched Strange Brew and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And drank red wine. He gave me sweet framed photos of the two of us and I gave him a brewing book and handmade card.
I was so smitten with our day-early valentine's celebration and on top of it was surprised with flowers at work today. Wonderful, asymmetrical flowers.

A very thoughtful and lovely first Valentine's day. We realized that there are very few photos of us together when he gave me my gift. I went digging and found this on my cell phone. The quality is too poor to make it big enough to frame but I like it. It's pretty old, from probably last April or May.



Happy Love day to whomever reads this little blog. I hope your day was half as lovely as mine.

I love me some red40

Sometimes you are presented with such a beautiful opportunity that you just can't turn it down. Sometimes that beautiful opportunity is a BUCKET of cherry sours. Cherry sours are a weakness of mine. I've only ever seen them in small bags, though. However, the downtown Rite Aid carries them in 1.5lb buckets. This is both dangerous and wonderful.

This is the bucket I brought back from Rite Aid at 3pm yesterday.

This is the bucket right now. It's 4:45pm.
I used the word weakness, right? That might have been an understatement

A Ridderbusch Christmas

I really loved Michelle's post about images of Christmas and thought I'd try to take a few pictures of my Christmas with my family. So I'm already being a copy-cat and on top of it, I was just looking at her blog and it turns out we both must have discovered the same wonderful retro camera app. So Michelle, thanks for the inspiration and also, great minds...

Christmas with my family is pretty low key these days. I spend most of Christmas Eve day wrapping gifts for everyone. We go over to my Grandma's house and eat deviled eggs (or if you're me, crackers dipped in the yolk of the deviled egg), cookies, cheese, crackers, etc and open gifts from extended family. Oh and drink. There's always drinking.
This year, my lovely and amazing cousin Samantha made Camp Ridderbusch T-shirts for the whole family. I can't remember how in-depth, if at all, I've described Camp Ridderbusch but it is an annual gathering of madness and mayhem. It is amazing. All of the cousin's T-shirts say "I understand that you think you are right" which should probably be our family motto. I know it's mine. One of the best gifts, ever.

We spend that time together and then we all go our own ways to celebrate with our immediate family. It's kinda nice to still get that big family get-together but then be able to just go home and celebrate your own way. My family opens gifts on Christmas Eve. We started doing this a few years ago because one or both of my parents was always working on Christmas Day. We go home, make a drink or pour a glass of wine, and sit down to open gifts. I really enjoy our late evening. It was also nice to be somewhere with lots of decorations. My mother (however begrudgingly) covers our house in Christmas decorations every year and since I've been moving during Christmas the last two years I haven't had my own so I really miss them until I'm home.
Below is a picture of my mom's Christmas tree. You can't see it but the woman has something like 5 layers of ornaments on that tree. It took her days and days.


So, we opened gifts. My most exciting score was a variety pack of hot sauce. Seriously, I'm really excited about it. I promptly fell asleep IN my pile of gifts with Joseph. He was tired too. We've been moving and were tuckered out. This isn't him sleeping but it is him being adorable.



My favorite thing about opening presents on Christmas Eve is that we get to just relax and enjoy Christmas day. I slept in and my mom made bloody marys to start the day off properly.

My dad then made us a late breakfast of banana and walnut pancakes, eggs and sausage (for the meat eaters). His boss brought over some hand pressed cider too, which was fantastic.


It's all about the food. Mom totally made egg salad sandwiches for lunch, too. Fat and happy, is what I was. We went to see True Grit (always go to the movies on Christmas) and then I drank wine and read my new book until dinner. Note: the book is very interesting. I read it with a highlighter and pen for taking notes.


And for the grand finale...MORE FOOD. My parents made an amazing dinner of ham(which I didn't eat...although it took a lot of willpower. It's usually my cheat of the year.), brussel sprouts, chop salad, and the most amazing scalloped potatoes. Fatter. Happier.






This post is missing the usual quotable moments that my family so obligingly provides for me whenever I'm with them. Those little tid bits are in my notebook at home and will, I promise, be shared.

Jelly Shot party anyone?

This is awesome. Thank you NOTCOT

Jelly Shot Test Kitchen

Eating Animals

I'm currently making my way through Jonathan Safran Foer's book, Eating Animals. Because he usually writes fiction, I find his book to be much more enjoyable than other books I have read on the topic of food choices. There is a voice. There are also, however, facts. Facts upon facts upon facts.
The most important point and the one that I have not seen addressed nearly as clearly and as well in other books covering similar topics is this:

The forgetting that people must do in order to eat meat.
People must purposely avoid the knowledge of what happens to their food before it becomes food in order to continue justifying it to themselves (or to avoid confronting the issue all together). This includes my best friends, my parents, and most of the people I respect. Most people refuse to read/watch/listen to things that will tell them about their food because they know that if they knew, then making the conscious decision to continue eating meat would go against their ideas of what is right and moral.
It tastes good and it is familiar. To know, and to be forced to consciously confront the issue of what that taste and familiarity costs, would be inconvenient. To face the idea that your food used to feel and think and suffer (as it certainly did. 99% of the meat consumed in the US is produced on factory farms. Every single animal on those farms suffers every day) in a real and honest way makes most people extremely uncomfortable.

Here’s the rub- if you are knowingly evading the knowledge, then you are knowingly choosing to participate in something that you think is wrong. If you felt good about the choice, you wouldn’t have to protect yourself from the reality of it.

If you're not willing to think about that- think about this:

Antibiotics.

We have to get prescriptions for antibiotics from our doctors because if people used them too much, then we'd build up a resistance too quickly. The idea is to only give them to the people that really need them so that we can use them longer.
Factory farming necessitates that animals be fed antibiotics preemptively, routinely. The conditions are so terrible and the animals have been bred/genetically modified into such distortions of their natural selves that they CANNOT survive without a constant stream of antibiotics. And then we eat them. Human resistance to antibiotics is skyrocketing because of this practice.

Epidemics.

If you’re still reading at this point, then maybe you’re willing to think about this a little more. Get a hold of this book. Read the chapter called Influence/Speechlessness. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Seriously.

Shitwater flavored Chicken

Part of processing 99% of the chicken you eat (the chicken they sell to you at Red Robin and the chicken your grandma makes you for dinner) is to cool the dead chicken after processing by submerging it in water. ‘Farms’ use this practice (despite how gross I’m about to tell you it is) because it allows the carcass to absorb water, therefore making it heavier and increasing the profit.
Fun Fact: Feces are considered a ‘cosmetic blemish’ by USDA health inspectors. So, when the machines used to slaughter and dismember your dinner hit the bird’s intestines and feces are released into the inside of the bird, the health inspector sends it on down the line and into the cooling tank. It’s fine, the damage is only cosmetic. The water in these tanks has been deemed ‘fecal soup’ because of all of the filth that comes off of the chickens and floats around in the water. This is the water that the farmers want absorbed so that they can get higher prices. Afterwards, they will douse the bird in chlorine in hopes if disinfecting it and then inject it with MORE liquid- usually broth or flavoring- to make it taste the way you expect it to and to further inflate the weight and therefore the cost of the chicken.

Done preaching for now. I’m not going to sass you if we go to a restaurant and you order a fatty cheeseburger. I’m not perfect. I’m just saying that if you’re willing to eat it you should be willing to at least know about it.

Bologna Sandwich

I want one. And I want it bad. I want it on cheap white bread with american cheese, mayo and mustard. I want it with crunchy cheetos on the sandwich and on the side. And I want it now. (by the way, I didn't take this picture. Whomever did just happens to have the same distinguished tastes that I do. Poor pickle choice though. Those most definitely are NOT Vlasic Zesty Dills or Rick's Famous Hot Pickles)

It seems to me that they should be able to make meatless bologna that tastes like regular bologna. I mean, most of the flavor doesn’t come from the meat anyway. It comes from the wonderful salt and chemicals that they put in all of those mystery meat parts to make them palatable. Palatable-hell, delicious. This is what actually blows my mind about the poor taste profiles (in my opinion) of fake lunch meat/processed meat. They almost have hot dogs down- almost. But come on food engineers of the world, get your shit together. If you can make pureed hooves, ears, and rat bits taste that good, I feel like you should be able to do the same for my soy-based treat.

There should also be an identical dairy free version of American cheese because although it’s full of casein and whey, it sure as shit isn’t actually cheese. There must be a way to accomplish the same product without dairy.

Cherry Sours

I want them in and around my mouth.

Last month I cooked

So I made this delicious pizza last month and took pictures and everything and now I am finally finally putting it up. K, here goes

The first time I made this pizza I made it vegan. I found the croissant crust idea on some vegan cooking site. Sorry don't remember which. In June when I (hopefully) get the willpower to go back to being vegan I will do that again. For now, I will just let you know how to alter it to make it vegan, if such things appeal to you. However, I respectfully ask that you don't add meat to it. Because, gross. And sad.

First, you buy croissants. The Pillsbury ones are vegan. At least last time I checked. Then buy artichoke hearts, asparagus, Morningstar chicken meal starters, onions, zucchini, and tomato sauce (that is, if your daddy doesn't make it for you from his garden)

The night before, or whenever really, you should cook your asparagus and have like half of it with your dinner. Put it on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with seasoning salt. Put it in the oven and cook it until the tips are crunchy and the rest is soft. Unless that isn't how you like your asparagus. Then cook it a different way instead of my way. Eat half with your dinner and then cut it up into little pieces and set aside/put in the fridge for your pizza. Try not to eat all of it before you make the pizza. This is hard.

Now, open your croissants. Unroll all of them. You now have two choices. You can use the triangles to create a circle or you can mush it all into a ball and then roll it/smush it back into a circle. I smush because the triangles just never fit together the way I think they should. Put your croissant/pizza dough on a baking sheet and cook it for a little while. About half way-ish? (my recipe is really exact huh?)

While pre/half cooking your croissant, cut up your onions, artichoke hearts, and zucchini and saute with the Morningstar Chicken in olive oil and minced garlic until the veggies are mostly cooked and you can cut the chicken into smaller pieces with your spatula. Cut your chicken into smaller pieces. Note- while I am writing this I am thinking that green bell peppers would have been a good addition.

Pull the croissant out and put fresh garden vegetable marinara on it.

Or if you aren't a Ridderbusch, put prego or whatever tomatoey goodness you want on it. OR, the first time I made it I used home made vegan alfredo sauce and it was delicious. I did this to add the creamy taste that would be missing without cheese. Both ways are good. Or maybe next time I will use tomato sauce on the bottom and then drizzle vegan alfredo on top for fake cheese effect. Gosh I'm full of good ideas.

So now, you add chicken, onions, asparagus, artichoke hearts, zucchini, and maybe peppers. I sprinkled parmesan cheese on it this time but it really didn't need it and without it the pizza would have been vegan and therefore superior.

Put it back in the oven and cook until it looks done. I like the veggies to look crispy on the edges and the dough to be pretty brown/crispy on the edges.

A few notes:
Whole Foods and other such places carry vegan pizza dough usually. This is classier and also much more expensive than croissants but might be tastier. The croissant is a different taste for sure. It's a little sweet and I think it's good but maybe not for everyone.
Vegan sausage can be REALLY good and would probably be delicious on this pizza.
Roasted garlic would also be delicious.


So, there you have it. Last month I cooked and it was delicious. And I'm bad at writing recipes. Or any kind of instructions really. Sorry.

pepperoni stick romance

Stockings are the favorite part of christmas in our house. We just all love the random little gifts. Anyways, my mom was opening her stocking, which my dad did for her, and she pulls out this long package and gets the happiest look on her face. "Are these what I think they are?" she smiles. She unwraps four tillamook pepperoni sticks and just couldn't be more pleased. I don't think I have seen my dad win so many points from a gift...ever. Not with beautiful jewelery, not with a day at the spa...never. She was so touched. Almost moved to tears I think.

but seriously though

I know the food posts are getting a little out of hand, but seriously though...
I made the most amazing sloppy joes for lunch today. Better than any sloppy joe I have ever encountered. This is going to be the meal I make for people who are used to eating meat because it's so damn tasty.
Basic ingredients are fake ground beef, onions, green peppers, nutritional yeast, garlic, soy sauce, ketchup of course, dijon mustard, vinegar, and plenty of cholula. I also decided to put some shredded cabbage on mine. It was so damn good.
But seriously though...check this out.

successful cooking adventure!

I made delicious nutritious fajitas last night. For others this may seem like a small victory but I am by no means a cook. I took pictures of my tasty dish.
This is the recipe I used. I didn't add the spices, instead I used cholula. Next time I will use even more cholula. And I added corn.I mixed cholula with follow your heart brand fake sour cream. I'm a dipper. I like to have something to dip my food in.
This is my bowl of fajita mix, full of peppers, onions,corn, chilis and tofu. This was my first time ever cooking with tofu and it was super duper easy.Okay, I'm done bragging now. But seriously, go me. :)

vegan is a four letter word

Since I decided to change my eating habits, I've been using the word 'vegan' because I find that its the easiest way to explain that I'm avoiding meat and dairy products. It's a recognizable word. However, I'm not technically vegan, I don't think. There are actually lots of different perceptions of exactly what being vegan means. Some vegans don't eat honey because bees make it. I eat honey often. Some vegans won't eat sugar that's been processed using a system that includes charred animal bones. I am not nearly this intense. I am avoiding meat and dairy. I've been known to eat chips with whey and chicken fat in the ingredients. I had clam chowder at Mo's(and it wasn't very good). But for the most part I am being good. I'm trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup and other shitty ingredients.
Anyways, the point of this rant is that once people hear the word vegan or even vegetarian they feel as though they need to help you monitor what you're eating. I'm not allergic to meat. I'm not gonna die if I eat dairy. It's just a choice I'm making. I'm choosing to change the things I'm eating.So, I don't need food police. So dammit, i'm not a vegan. So please, don't feel the need to tell me that my meal isn't totally vegan. I probably already know. And I don't care.
Okay, I feel better.
I made asparagus last night my favorite way, which is drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with seasoning salt and baked till soft. I ate a lot of it and then this morning I put it on an onion bagel with follow your heart fake cream cheese. It was freaking delicious. I was going to take a picture but I really needed to put it in my body. so, maybe next time.
Tonight I'm making tofu fajitas and I'm stoked about it.

20 going on 50

I will turn 21 in three weeks. I've been waiting to turn 21 forever (or at least it seems that way) and I can already feel that it's going to be anti-climatic. This is probably because I feel like I've been twenty since I was twelve, and that these days I feel like I'm creepin up on 30. I'm practically married, with one baby (Winston my Bunny). We live in a cute house in a neighborhood full of young married couples and bicycle riders (I feel bad every time I get in my car, but I'm too lazy not to). Nothing gets me quite as excited as buying housewares. My back and hips go out on me constantly and my first priority most mornings is to water the garden and feed Winston. I made pork chops and corn last night. This seems ridiculous but that made me feel very grown up, even though the pork chops were terrible.