Day 19

To make up for the less than mediocre day that was Sunday, Monday I had a day of extra special fun planned. Monday being my only day off for the week I booked both AM and PM engagements at my apartment. In the morning my friend Laura came over for knitting time. Knitting is a pastime that I'd essentially given up after making a handful of scarves in the early to mid-'00s. But as all things sustainable and self-sustaining have caught my attention of late, I decided to pick it up again. Laura's a really talented knitter and a generous friend who offered her guidance and some rad knitting books. Of course, what was knitting without some baked treat to accompany it?! I made banana nut muffins and tea. The muffins were excellent and didn't want for the exclusion of dairy. We also munched on a mock tuna salad that I threw together from a recipe that I'd seen in a blog (sorry, can't remember which.) Ultimately, it wasn't at all like the one in the blog except that it pinched the idea of using mashed chick peas in Veganaise. I couldn't remember the seasonings and improvised with a dash of tamari, salt, Cayenne and black pepper, a sprinkle of nutritional yeast, and chopped basil. We served it on top of some extra peppery wild arugula on rye pumpkin seed crackers.

In the evening, my friend Molly came over. Molly is a super cool vegan baker and we often get together to cook. Usually we try to create meals using only what we have on hand, but Molly introduced me to this delicious looking recipe that merited an extra trip to the market for cauliflower. It was an eggplant rollatini that used a blend of cauliflower and tahini for the "ricotta" filling. The recipe is from the blog GF in the City. We modified the recipe (for the filling the amount of tahini was decreased to about 2 tbsp and we added a teaspoon of miso, plus some slivered, blanched almonds) and served it over a lightly fried, garlicky spinach and basil polenta with lots of homemade marinara. Yum. Yum. Yum.