Asking an adventurous pesco-vegetarian, a finicky omnivore, and the master of Lipton side dishes and grilled cheese to decide amongst themselves what meal they can collectively cook and eat is somewhere between comedy and challenge. Last Tuesday Laurel came over to make dinner with Kat and I, and after a limited amount of fussing we wound up taking a stab at a spinach quiche recipe that my mother and i have been making for years now. The quiche met all of our pre-requisites … meatless, cheesy, and relatively basic in preparation. We added a side order of perogies and suddenly we had a healthy (and rather yummy) meal assembled within the span of an hour. While serving up the food i lamented that i wanted a cookbook that was “Vegetarian, but with meat. You know, like, a cookbook for lapsed and reformed vegetarians.”
We all got a laugh out of my meandering description of the perfect cookbook, and yesterday while wandering in and out of used book stores in New Hope with Elise i actually found what i was looking for. Almost Vegetarian is a smartly compiled book that veers between rare herbivore delicacies and more modest meaty fare, peppered throughout with tips on advanced preparation and vegetable shopping in green ink. I bought it immediately, for a surprising eight dollars, considering it’s in absolutely perfect condition.
I love those coincidental moments that life offers up, as though a bookstore was fated to carry a particular book on a certain day just because i was too inarticulate after baking for nearly an hour to describe what my ideal cookbook would really feature. Chalk one up for serendipity, i suppose.
[…] At some point during which i was surely raving about my website and how much fun i have writing for it and meeting people through it, Elise decided to set up house on BlogSpot, though she didn’t tell me about it until i mentioned something to the effect of that she could only get sexier if she — in addition to being incredibly intelligent, acting as an op on a MUDD via telnet, and playing a bit of guitar — had a blog. Of course she did, because her sexiness rates off the scale, and she’s actually had some really sparkling moments of blogging in the month she’s been writing so far. Funny anecdotal entries from math class, reminiscences reminiscent of the stylings of Martha & Rabi, and entirely flattering opposite-view accounts of things i’ve mentioned us doing here. Without much discussion we decided that my linking to her, via sidebar or upon any mention of her name, would result in too much strangeness to be worthwhile. As such, our two respective blogs exist in entirely separate universes… while hers is anonymous in name and design, mine is here for all to see along with over a year of context, songs, and occasional photographs. Somewhere in that distinction, i have found that i rely on her accounts of our collective life to remind me of what has gone by rather than my own. My reluctance to air actual personal details aside, i am simply uncomfortable with making more than an obscure mention of a day spent in New Hope, marathon sessions of Secret of Mana, and her having fallen asleep in my bed. […]