Summer continues apace

I seriously can't believe June is almost over. What the heck, you guys? I don't even really remember June STARTING. Where was I when that was happening? Jeez.

I don't have much to tell you, really. We have been busy but we haven't been doing anything fun, if you know what I mean. C is finishing up his summer Communication Applications course this week and I find myself wondering how it would be if EVERY school semester was only 12 half-days long, with the kids only taking one class per semester. Judging by how things went this year, C would be getting WAY better grades if that were the case. Oh well.

H still is busy with community theater rehearsals. Opening night is in just a few weeks! Wow! I absolutely cannot wait to see my kid perform someplace other than a school cafeteria or rec center or library meeting room. Not that those aren't fun, too, just ... this is a real theater! People are paying like $20 to see this thing! I am just so excited for her. Acting is her absolute favorite thing in the world and I love to watch her play to an audience.

Now that it's officially summer, howsabout a quick check in with those summer goals, eh?

1. Lose 17 pounds. I am more than halfway there! Yes! No one is more surprised than me about that, trust me. Here are my weight-loss secrets: 1) smaller cocktails; 2) fewer junky snacks in front of the TV; 3) Jillian Michaels workout DVDs (specifically the 30 Day Shred, Ripped in 30 and Six Week 6-Pack DVDs). I know. I kind of want to punch MYSELF right now, but that's what has worked for me.

2. Read more. Eh, let's see ... I finished Travels With Charley and it was okay. I'm glad I read it, but it's not something I'd go back and re-read. Also finished Marion Nestle's Why Calories Count, which was fascinating. Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating was equally fascinating, but while the Nestle book was more food-sciencey, the Wansink was more human psychology-y. On the fiction side of things, I really enjoyed Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back, a Scandinavian mystery, and now I'm reading the next book in the series, He Who Fears the Wolf, which is very good but a bit confusing at the beginning. And continuing my non-fiction jag, I'm also reading and very much enjoying Terra Brockman's The Seasons on Henry's Farm. So yes, I guess I have been reading kind of a lot. Just not very quickly. As usual.

3. Make peace with the whole shorts thing. Er, well kind of. Thanks to the aforementioned Jillian Michaels DVDs, I am pretty much okay with the way my legs are SHAPED now. But the pasty white skin and plethora of spider veins still give me pause. (Although my mom told me the other day that one cluster of spider veins on the back of my right knee looks like a flower tattoo! So that's fun, right? MOMS ARE JUST THE BEST.)

4. Quit buying coffee mugs already (also cute drinking glasses). FAIL. My new drinkware obsession is BPA-free reusable plastic cups with lids and straws. Cold-brew iced coffee to go, baby! I had to get rid of some stuff to fit them into the cabinet. (But NOT any of my cute mugs or glasses, dammit.)

5. Hit the farmers market every week. Does every other week count? Sigh.

6. Kill all the hornworms in the world. Well, no. But the ones that ate my tomatoes back in the spring are dead, and that's good enough for me.

It's already in the 100s here but we're not going to talk about that. Let's talk about how lovely the morning and evening light looks streaming into my north-facing back windows, shall we? SO LOVELY. And how I can't get enough raspberries right now. And how limiting myself to 5 oz. of wine in the evening doesn't really do it for me, but I'm trying to adapt. And how there are officially LESS THAN TWO MONTHS until high school football/marching season, which will be the beginning of the end of my backwards seasonal affective disorder.

Yep. So. What's new with you?

A thousand words (or less)

It happened yesterday evening. After Plan A (a microbrewery tour) for an early Father's Day celebration with my dad fell through, we switched to Plan B: beers and a movie (Prometheus, thumbs up) at the Alamo. Afterwards we met up with Mom for frozen yogurt and a sunset drive. We were headed north, just crossing the northern branch of the San Gabriel River, when my dad and I both happened to glance to our left, toward the setting sun. And then we saw it.

Six or eight school-aged children, all lined up across a little two-foot-high dam in the river about 100 feet off the road, backs toward us, silhouetted against a gorgeous pinky-orange sunset: they raised their arms in unison and then, a gleeful attitude apparent in every silhouetted limb, they jumped as one and disappeared from view.

We were too far away to hear the splash and the squeals, but was a beautiful sight, a perfect Augenblick of summer. It happened in a split second. It made me wish I'd been able to capture it on camera.

But I'm glad I got to see it. And I'm especially glad I got to see it with my dad.

Happy Father's Day to my awesome dad, my amazing husband, my little brother (whose children are a bit furrier than mine)(well, most of mine), my 92-year-old grandpa, all my uncles and boy cousins and brothers-in-law, and all the rest of you dads out there. May you have many special moments today with your kiddos, regardless of age or species.

'Twas brillig

Summer is humming right along here. It's hot, though. LORD is it hot. And busy. And hot.

Our week started off with a bang when, in the space of a single hour on Monday, H burned her right hand and wrist really badly with the aid of some boiling-hot soup and, when I tried to get her something cold to put on it, the kitchen tap just fell right off in my hand. FELL OFF. IN MY HAND. There's a plumber in my kitchen as we speak (not a euphemism) installing a whole new faucet assembly (also not a euphemism).

H is okay though she's probably going to have a whopper of a scar. The timing was unfortunate because she was a couple of hours away from a Very Important Audition at our local community theater. Thankfully it was an open audition taking place over the course of two days, so she rallied the day after and went in for a cold reading and now she will be uttering the opening lines of the play on opening night, huzzah! (It's an adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. She's part of the narrator chorus. They're doing "Jabberwocky" just at the beginning there, for some reason. THEATRE! We are not meant to understand. Only to appreciate. And clap politely. And not mention The Scottish Play EVER, no matter how badly knowing you can't makes you want to. Shhh.)

Anyhoodles, so she has rehearsals now 3 or 4 nights a week for pretty much the rest of our summer. C starts three weeks of summer school for "credit acceleration" on Monday (read: getting some required courses out of the way so he can free up room in his actual school-year schedule, which is packed sardine-tight because band is double-blocked, blah blah blah you don't care and I don't blame you) and then he has a few weeks off during which he'll likely have his wisdom teeth extracted (fun!) and then he has summer band until school starts, at which point ACTUAL band takes over (this all in addition to the usual 2x/week neurotherapy for his misophonia) and OMG, it's a good thing we didn't plan to travel at all this summer, eh? Right.

I don't mind so much being busy. I like routines. If I go without them for too long, I get weird(er).

I have been reading books: Marion Nestle's Why Calories Count, which was fascinating; Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back, which I enjoyed very much; and now I'm trying to finish Steinbeck's Travels With Charley which is (finally) picking up a bit now that our author and his standard poodle have reached the west coast of the U.S., although I'm not liking this one as much as I'd hoped and that makes me sad.

I'm not in much of a reading mood, to tell you the truth. Nor a watching mood since there's nothing on TV. Nor a music-listening mood, which is unusual for me. I suspect this is my Summer SAD rearing its ugly head, oh dear.

Thank goodness Breaking Bad is coming back soon. I could use a good meth lab explosion right about now.

Grilling for vegans

No meat here!

I was reading an online health and fitness forum recently where the topic had turned to grilling, and one of the participants said she did not grill because her family was vegan.

Oh, you guys. My uncured nitrate-free certified-humane grass-fed beef hot dog nearly fell out of my mouth.

Now you know we partake of the delicious meats here at our house, and you know why (my inability to metabolize non-heme iron, P's and H's allergies to most vegetable proteins)(see also: deliciousness), but I am here to tell you: I grill WAY more than just meat. WAY MORE. Just because you're not down for some elk or pastured chicken or wild-caught Alaskan salmon does not mean you should turn up your nose at the concept of grilling.

Here is some stuff I make OFTEN on the grill that's either 100% vegan already, or can be easily adapted as such:

Fresh asparagus tossed with a bit of olive oil can go directly on the grill racks. Just keep an eye on it, turning the spears with a pair of tongs every couple of minutes until they're done. Slabs of zucchini (sliced lengthwise) and eggplant can be grilled this way as well, just brush them with oil and season with salt and pepper or whatever spice mixture you like. I know they've become kind of a vegan barbecue cliche, but portabella mushroom caps are also excellent brushed with oil, seasoned, and grilled over direct heat like this.

Lettuce is amazing on the grill. No, I'm not kidding. Get some heads (or hearts) of Romaine, cut them in half lengthwise, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, sprinkle on some salt and pepper, and stick them right on the grill racks for just a minute or two. You can serve them as-is or chop them up and drizzle with vinaigrette dressing for a warm salad. Delicious.

I do a mixed veggie grill (pictured above) that is awesome -- mushrooms, onions, yellow squash, zucchini, bell peppers, eggplant, okra -- pretty much any tender spring/summer veggie (try baby artichokes with the choke scooped out), cut in slices/chunks of more or less the same size, drizzled with olive oil and tossed into a perforated grill pan (you also could cover the racks with foil, poke a few holes in it, and cook them right on that)(or if you're feeling fiddly, thread everything onto skewers). Serve these on a pile of herbed quinoa and you've got yourself a meal.

Corn on the cob is awesome on the grill. I know some people peel back the husks, remove the silk, then put the husks back over the corn and grill it that way but I can't be bothered. I just remove the husks and silk altogether and wrap the ears in foil. Either way, so good.

I cook a lot of veggies in foil packets over indirect heat on the grill (either on an upper rack or an unlit burner). Green cabbage is awesome this way -- cut it in wedges, drizzle with a bit of oil (I actually use butter, but feel free to substitute) and season with salt and pepper, seal it up in some heavy-duty aluminum foil and stick it over indirect heat for about half an hour. I also layer 1/4-inch slices of waxy potatoes and sweet onion in foil packets, drizzling and seasoning liberally with each alternating layer, sometimes tossing a few sprigs of fresh thyme or rosemary in there, and cook them the same way as the cabbage. Believe it or not, carrots are also fantastic cooked in foil packets on the grill. I slice them 1/3-inch thick on the diagonal or use baby carrots, steam in the microwave until crisp-tender, then grill in foil packets with minced garlic and herbs (again, I use a bit of butter here, but a drizzle of olive oil would work just fine).

Stone fruit is AWESOME on the grill, if you've never tried it. Cut peaches or nectarines in half, remove the pits, and grill cut side down. Some people sprinkle sugar on the cut sides before grilling but that has made an unholy mess whenever I've tried it, so I just grill 'em plain. Pineapple is also awesome on the grill, cut in rings or wedges. You can either eat the grilled fruit as-is, chop it up and make a kick-ass fruit salsa, or put a couple of scoops of coconut milk ice cream on top of the hot fruit.

In short, I'm pretty sure the only non-meats I HAVEN'T tried to grill are beans and grains. If I figure out a way to make those work, I'll let you know. I'm sure grilled slabs of tofu, seitan, nut/grain loaves and other vegan "meats" would be awesome, but we don't eat those so I can't help you there.

If you can't grill it directly on the racks then thread it onto skewers, plop it into a grill pan or cover the racks with foil. If you can't grill it any of those ways either, stick it in a foil packet over indirect heat. But whether vegan or omnivore, for crying out loud, get your ass out of the kitchen this summer! It's too hot to cook in there.