Spring

Once we got back to Ontario last week, it was clear that Spring had finally arrived. Even though it snowed last week, it's finally stayed warm enough for me to plant my herbs and tomatoes.

 John brought me some lilac from a neighbor's tree while walking home yesterday, and I found lily of the valley growing along our driveway. They make the kitchen smell so nice! My mom always picked lily of the valley from our backyard when I was growing up and she would put them in a water glass in the kitchen. That flower always makes me feel nostalgic.

This year I tried to let my rosemary and thyme come back on their own, with only partial success. I trimmed the rosemary too much and I think I ended up killing it, so I ripped it out and put in a new plant (shown here on the left). The thyme, however, survived. It just started turning green one day, so I didn't have to replace it (center). This year we decided on sweet (regular) basil, rather than lemon basil, since we want to have it in the greatest quantity (far right). 

I also sprouted some basil from a package of it I bought at the grocery store to cook with. I let it sprout in a water glass for close to a month before planting it so that it would grow a lot of roots. I have a glass with mint growing in the kitchen now that I will plant beside it once it has enough roots. In the mean time, I've gotten to use both plants when I need a bit of either herb. 

And on the inside of our house, we've been busy making Mexican food.

For Christmas, my mom got me Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen. We've been kind of intimated by the recipes and put off trying it, but last weekend we went for it and I'm so glad. I should mention that a lot of the recipes in the book are vegetarian. But a lot of them are fairly involved, so we've been saving them for the summer when our schedules are more flexible for cooking dinner.

First of all, the Topolo margarita was the best margarita I've ever made and one of the smoothest, best I've ever had. You start by making a limeade and letting that sit in the fridge for a few hours. After that, it's just the usual ingredients. Now I'm excited to try the other margarita recipes in the book. 

We made a simple enchilada recipe from the book that was more like pancakes than enchiladas. It involves making a smokey, rich tomato sauce and then dipping tortillas with it. Then you top them with onions, cheese (feta, here, but it called for a Mexican queso), cilantro, and more of the sauce. Simple, right? But so flavorful. We had lots of sauce leftover, too. 

So we put the sauce on more tacos: roasted chickpea and broccoli tacos, with avocado, cilantro, and more of the sauce above. This recipe is from Thug Kitchen, a hilarious (and very profane!) vegan blog that I recommend for the laughs alone.

All this warm weather makes me want to go to Lake Huron, so I hope we get to do that soon. I hope the weather is nice where you are!

AMS/SEM/SMT New Orleans 2012

Last week, John and I traveled down to New Orleans for the academic conferences we normally attend, except this year, all three of them happened at once: AMS/SMT/SEM, aka 

THE TRIUMVIRATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a pretty good time and saw a lot of interesting papers. I think my absolute favorite was an SEM panel on women who play guitar in various pop/rock music settings, and the gender implications. It turns out, if you are a black woman playing guitar, people feel free to come up to you and say racist/sexist things while you're playing, or otherwise insult you, or put money into your jean pockets as though you are a stripper. The panel included three smart women talking about their field work, one of whom is from Toronto. After speaking with her, I decided we have to try to get her to come to UWO to speak. 

My second favorite (though in some ways better than my favorite, it's hard to say) was another SEM panel on music in prisons. Unfortunately, one of the presenters was unable to attend, but the two who were there did an excellent job. The first spoke on music as a way for women in a Louisiana prison to create private spaces and maintain relationships with other prisoners while incarcerated. The author was simultaneously working on a documentary about the same topic, so he played some clips of the women who he spoke with, and it made his paper very moving. The second presenter spoke on his own experience as an inmate in a prison in NY state. Once he started talking, I immediately wanted to ask him a million personal questions, but shied away. Somehow this guy ended up serving a 6 month sentence after earning a PhD at NYU, so there must be an interesting story there. His paper focused on the way men used the special music room available at the prison, and it was also a very personal, moving story. I almost didn't make it to this panel because of the CSW 7 AM breakfast, after which I'm almost always exhausted. But I'm so glad I stayed up and went to it. 

I also went to the Committee for the Status of Women breakfast and lunch meetings, and had productive discussions at both. I have high hopes for a good session at the 2013 meeting in Charlotte. I think I've mentioned before that SMT has a pretty awful gender discrepancy, and the CSW always has a thoughtful discussion about it at our lunch meeting every year. For next year, I'm hoping for us to extend that discussion to the actual paper session that we get on the program, so that the relatively private lunch isn't the only place where that conversation happens. 

Saturday night of the conference usually involves a bunch of parties hosted by different universities. Before we started party hopping, though, we went with our friend Anna (who also delivered a pretty great paper!) to a reception/sing-along hosted by the North American British Music Studies Association Reception and Musicale, where they had free finger food (alligator sausage), beer, wine, and a booklet of part songs. This was one of the most fun and memorable parts of the weekend, especially getting to see so many academics trying to sight read after 2-3 glasses of wine.  

                       

Especially these academics:

                                  

Of course, we spent a lot of time wandering around New Orleans, especially on the first night we got there: Halloween.

We traveled with our new friend Ian, a masters student at Western. He and John eventually settled on drinking "hand grenades" while we were walking around Bourbon street. I think it was at this point that another colleague, who shall remain nameless, shouted, "What makes a conference better? Street drinking!!!"

We ate a bunch of different good restaurants. For lunch: Remoulade's, not far from the hotel. Dinner: Bourbon House, actually attached to our hotel. Ian tried a sampler flight, and after dinner we both had "bourbon milk punch," basically a bourbon milk shake. John also had raw oysters basically every chance he got.

(Milk punch, above, John with oysters, below)

We also made our way to Cafe du Monde twice for beignets, coffee, and hot chocolate. 

(Here's a half-eaten beignet, below...I think I will try to recreate this at home at some point)

Also dinner, somehow not pictured: El Gato Negro, for Mexican food. They made guacamole at our table and served us tasty margaritas in to-go cups. I also had a pretty sweet veggie taco there with squash and tomatoes. 

John and I stopped in to Cafe Beignet so that he could get espresso at one point. Even though the pastries looked amazing, it was the near the end of our trip and I was starting to feel kind of gross from so many days of really heavy food.

On Sunday morning, we were able to eat at the Green Goddess, a great place for vegetarians and omnivores alike. I had some amazing grits and sweet potatoes biscuits (yes, carbs only for me, thanks). It started pouring while we were there, so they moved us inside to a very small courtyard. I took a picture, looking up:

Sunday afternoon, John and I went to the Audubon Aquarium for a mental break from music.
They have a big, scaley fountain in the lobby.

We spent some time in the Amazon rainforest section, which also had some big catfish. 

They also had a lot of beautiful sea horses. We watched them swim and wrap their tails around these stems, then lick the algae off of them (I guess? Who knows what they eat?).

They also have a big "Carribbean" tank with a lot of rays, giant fish, and a bunch of sharks.

Oh yeah, and this awesome sea turtle.

Sunday night, we walked along the street a final time and saw the gallery belonging to this artist, whose dog painting is all over town:

I think my only real regret is not seeing inside St. Louis cathedral. Another time, I guess. Here's part of the back at night. My other regret would also be not completing a conference Bingo, but that's my next post...

Summer Foods, 2012

Since this used to pass for a poor man's excuse for a food blog, I thought I'd post a few recipes that we've enjoyed this summer.

First up: Caprese Salad. 

We didn't use a recipe for these, so I'll talk you through what happened.
I thinly sliced two large tomatoes, and a big ball of mozzarella. We actually had 4 tomatoes total, and I wanted to make the mozz go a little further. So I mixed up a couple big hunks of goat cheese with the juice of half a lemon, and the leaves from about 3 sprigs of our lemon basil plant. Lemon basil is amazing! It has a sweet, lemony taste and aroma, and it went perfectly with these. After that was mixed up, I spread it on every-other tomato, so the stack alternates: tomato, basil, mozzarella, tomato with goat cheese spread, larger regular basil leaf, and then I started the process again. The mozzarella ball was definitely enough for each of these stacks, and the goat cheese added a little flavor. We each ate two, and we also made some herbed dropped biscuits.


Next: Chocolate Chia Pudding with Peanut Butter Crunch Balls.

I've been using a recipe from Hell Yeah It's Vegan for the basic chocolate pudding recipe. It's just chia seeds, cocoa powder, almond milk, sweetener, and vanilla. It's ready in 30 minutes, though it's also good if you let it set a bit longer. We had this for dessert after sushi night, and I love to serve it in these Japanese rice bowls my mom gave me. When I was a kid, she always used the bowls to serve pudding or jello, and it's really a great size bowl for each portion.
After I had the hang of this version, I did a google search for a peanut butter-chocolate version, and I found one here. Then I had the idea to add the peanut butter crunch balls that recently appeared on Oh She Glows, and they are a perfect topping. They're super easy to make, and I just stored the extra ones in the freezer (though they didn't last long!). Chia pudding is my new favorite way to combine omega 3s and 6s with dessert (see a description of chia seeds' nutritional info here).



Next: Gnocchi with Zucchini, Sweet Corn, and Goat Cheese.

The Kitchn's Facebook page shared this last week, and we immediately decided to make it. Everything in it is summery, starchy goodness. Since the goat cheese doesn't come in until the end, it melts and coats everything a light, flavorful sauce. Here's a fun fact: I don't like parsley. Ever. This is only a real (white girl) problem when a recipe calls for it, but we usually sub some other herb. After those caprese salads, we had a lot of basil on hand, so I just julienned it and added it to this, for some more herby flavor. This meal was really easy and will probably show up again on our weekly menu.





This week we decided to make the BBQ Chickpea Burgers, also from Oh She Glows. 

They are only slightly complicated to make, and they are SO GOOD. The carrots and spices give every burger a ton of flavor, and the pumpkin and sunflower seeds add a good texture. We used cilantro instead of parsley, and I used the same bbq sauce from the recipe as a condiment. The recipe for fries in that same post is also a pretty good one, though we had to stop ourselves from finishing what would have been a 1/2 lb. of potatoes...each. The burger recipe made 8 burgers, so we had a lot of leftovers - something John and I both love.



We also recently made: Summer Sweet Corn Tacos, from Vegan Pandamonium.

These are super easy and tasty tacos. We cooked the sweet corn, but it actually calls for raw corn, which would take even less time. Throw the corn in a bowl with a can of beans, some spices, and a chopped tomato, and you're basically done. We made a slightly larger batch of the corn/bean mixture, and had this for a couple nights in a row. It's a great weeknight, summery meal. 

And finally, I improved a simple dessert when I had an INTENSE OMG CRAVING FOR CHOCOLATE RIGHT FREAKING NOW! the other night.
As a joke, someone at our engagement party gave John a box of graham crackers (I should say, a neighborhood inside joke from way before my time), but he doesn't like them anymore. So I've been slowly eating the whole box, spreading each one with peanut butter. Then it occurred to me that I could make a very simple chocolate sauce and pour that on top - because how could that be bad, right? I make this very simple chocolate sauce from time to time and put it on frozen strawberries: about 2 tbs chocolate chips and a couple splashes of almond milk. You melt it with the heat on very low, stirring constantly. If it's too thin, add more chocolate, or turn the heat off and let it sit for a minute or two, and it will thicken up. I spooned that chocolate onto these little graham-pb sandwiches, and then put the whole plate in the freezer for about 30 minutes while John and I watched more of Avatar - the Last Airbender (no spoilers, please! I love that show!). That hardened them up and made the whole thing taste more like an ice cream sandwich - I'd highly recommend them!

How the Universe gave me a burrito and a cold.

For this week's post, I've decided to make a list of lessons I learned, and things the Universe dumped on/gifted me this week.

1. A cold.



















2. Autumn colors.


















3. The ABT Nutcracker with Mikhail Barishnakov (just picture him in tights, or click here.). John says it's too soon for Christmas-related anything, so I secretly got this version of the Nutcracker from the library and watched the first act while he wasn't home. Ultimately, though, he figured it out and looked at me in disgust. Whatever, John. What a scrooge. As Dave said, I love pizza, so why would I only eat it one month out of the year? It's past Halloween. Time for Christmas!
I've been looking at the National Ballet of Canada website to see if we could go see the Nutcracker there, but it's kind of cost prohibitive. The cheapest, worst seats would still cost about $100 and then there's the issue of getting there and parking. If only Toronto were a little closer, or I guess if only London/Western had decent enough ballet to put on their own Nutcracker. That's one thing I really miss about IU - going to see good ballet productions at the music school, especially the Nutcracker.



4. A rejection to a regional theory conference, but also, the motivation to revise my abstract on George Crumb.





















That's the Agnus Dei from the Makrokosmos, a piece I wrote about a while back. This paper is on a song cycle, but it has a fun graphic score like this one. This rejection stung a bit more since I feel like I've been struggling to catch up on work ever since SMT last week, and that's been compounded by getting sick. Meh. Can't win 'em all. I still have a bunch of other conferences to apply to, and my abstract is getting better over time, so maybe I'll get on somewhere else.

And finally (because 5 is a nice round number),
5. Delicious butternut squash black bean enchiladas.

Peeling and chopping butternut squash is such a pain, but so worth it. This recipe takes a little time to put together because you have to roast the squash, but once you've done that, it's pretty simple, and very tasty. Definitely different from the enchiladas I've had in the past, but the flavors work well together. These didn't come out very...photogenic, so no picture. But if you click on the recipe you can see the ones on the original site and they're pretty good.


Here's to next week being a little more cheerful with a little less cold medicine!

Ithaca and Fall Foods

Last week John and I drove across the border to see eighth blackbird perform at Ithaca College in New York state. I didn't think to take any pictures of the gorgeous fall colors until we were almost done with the trip, but the leaves were peaking and the landscape there is very hilly. It was beautiful.





Road trip break to take a photo at Lake Seneca.
























I spent a day working in the college library while John followed 8bb around and took field notes. We got to stay with our friends Djillian and Bryn who we know from UWO. Bryn is a theorist and he's teaching adjunct there. The scenery and the liberal environment reminded me a lot of Interlochen. And now, of course, I want to move to Ithaca.*


Totally switching topics, here are some awesome foods we made this fall.
Most of them are not actually fall foods in the sense of cinnamon, fall spices, and squash, but we ate them this fall.




















These bars were from the end of the summer, technically, but we froze a few so their wonder lasted until fall. They are Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies, from Brown Eyed Baker. I've always drooled over her pictures but this was one of the first recipes I made from her site, and I'd say it was a success. People went crazy over these brownies. They're super rich, and I feel like they'd be fairly easy to re-create vegan-style, since the cookie dough doesn't have eggs in it anyways and it's going to be baked.





















Next up, Jen's Lafayette's Red Velvet Brownies. Jen is a friend from Bloomington, and she's participating in Vegan Month of Food, or Vegan MOFO, and her fundraising dollars support Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, a Bloomington food bank. As a draw for her blog, Jen has created this elaborate True Grub theme, based on the plot and character's of True Blood, and it's hilarious. Also, these brownies were delicious - really chocolately, crisp on the outside, and gooey on the inside. A great balance.


And finally two more vegan dinners that I wanted to give a shout out to:

Texas Tater Tot Casserole from Meet the Shannons. Tater tots! Nostalgia! Yum.




















And Butternut Squash Mac n' Cheez from Oh She Glows. We added broccoli to ours, and it was tasty, though I would say it's not really a lot like mac n' cheese. But it is delicious! I would make it again..




















This fall is really busy, and I will probably keep the weekly blog posts simple until some of the big things are over. I hope you're enjoying the change in seasons!



*I know, I say that about every place we visit. I guess it's good that I feel that way, and not the other way around.

Chicago Birthday

I was so excited when I realized that we would be in Chicago for my birthday. John says he knew right away what I would like - Mexican food and dinosaurs.



















I did a five mile run along Lake Michigan that morning and then met John at Frontera for lunch. Frontera is one of Rick Bayless's restaurants and it had fabulous food. John asked me to order him a margarita while he went to the restroom, but by the time he got back, our server was only half way through explaining the margarita menu to me. I think the one I ordered had cilantro and cucumber in it, with a cilantro-salt rim. Delicious. I also ordered a chocolate empanada for dessert (pictured above), and they were kind enough to write happy birthday in chocolate sauce along the top.


















































Then we made our way to the Field Museum.
























We saw some of the permanent stuff, like Sue the Dinosaur.








































We also saw Whales: Giants of the Deep, one of the special exhibits (where they don't allow photos, unfortunately). I am apparently the last of my friends to know that whales evolved from a land-dwelling mammal that went back into the sea and eventually stayed there. It makes sense, really - how else would there be mammals in the ocean? Anyways, I was impressed.


We spend the majority of our time in Evolving Planet, where you get to walk through different phases of the earth's development. Naturally I loved the part with the dinos.












































































































John posed so naturally with all of them.
I could have stayed at the Field forever, but they closed early on Friday so our time was a little short. We zipped through ancient Egypt and then it was time to go.
I wasn't sure John would top last year's present (Li'l Choppy), but he really out did himself this year.