Tag garden

A cane, a popcorn machine and a compost heap

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I realized yesterday, after working for at least four hours on a political profile for Armchair Lehigh Valley on the upcoming Easton (Pa.) City Council race, that I currently spend about ten hours a week on political journalism for that publication, about ten hours a week teaching college and another twenty hours working my evening fast food job.

That’s 40 hours a week, before we consider the 30-plus hours a week I devote to my book publishing business, Parisian Phoenix (parisianphoenix.com). I thought I had everything perfectly balanced– but toward the end of the week, my sleep was starting to suffer.

And last night I fell. Not once, but twice. And not at home. Or even on the street. But at my fast food job. Both of the falls were trips. Both were quickly forgotten.

But when I got home, and when I woke up this morning, my body was struggling. And when I caught my right foot “catching” on my left ankle and almost causing a fall on the way to the restroom, I went and got my cane out of the car.

(And because I often have a lot of 21-year-olds in my house– Eva, her romantic interest, and one of her friends from high school staying with us– they thought my snake head cane was badass. They also encouraged me to change my outfit to match it as I am currently in sweatpants.)

After finishing my lesson planning for my class at Northampton Community College this week, I started the new Superman movie as I am a Superman fan. Since the movie includes Krypto the Superdog as a significant character, I restarted the movie an hour in so I could watch it with Eva.

When Eva left for work, I cleaned the cupboards and collected all the open and stale food items that were more than a couple weeks old. I also admitted what items I would never eat and I took these out to the compost heap. A lot of crackers including a box of Triscuit thins I treated myself to and forgot about.

This is really hard for me. I have experienced food insecurity and have gone mildly hungry, so I have a tendency to not waste food to an excessive degree.

I used to garden when Eva was little, and our neighborhood has terrible clay soil so I keep a compost heap under my porch. And believe-it-or-not, the regular digging and turning of the heap provides a great deal of emotional relief for me. Resuming care of the compost heap has given me some renewed vibrancy. And a lot of mosquito bites.

And if you haven’t cared for your own soil, it’s amazing to see the soil change and grow richer.

In addition to the maintenance of the compost, I also cleaned my popcorn machine. I’m hoping maybe the 21-year-olds might want to have a movie night with popcorn sometime.

All those memories of pizza and popcorn from Target Café.

Vegan food experiments

Angel Ackerman 4 Comments

There are several reasons why I love vegan cooking, but there are also several reasons why I won’t go vegan.

Why I love vegan cooking:

  1. It’s simple.
  2. When done correctly, it usually features fresh, whole foods.
  3. Gaz Oakley, the avant garde vegan. Look him up on YouTube.
  4. It’s a great way to empty the fridge.
  5. It’s healthy.
  6. It reduces the impact of seasonal allergies by lowering the body’s production of phlegm.

Why I won’t go vegan:

  1. I have a high metabolism and I require an unusual blend of macros higher in fat and protein and lower in carbohydrates than a lot of my peers. To reach those macro goals via veganism requires a large amount of food.
  2. I can’t drink my coffee black.

I was vegetarian for eight years, which ended when I was diagnosed was gestational diabetes at the beginning of my second trimester of pregnancy. I remained primarily vegetarian until my daughter was about 18 months old. At that point, I started craving bacon cheeseburgers even though I hadn’t eaten red meat in a decade and I hated bacon.

Why I went vegetarian:

  1. I hate touching meat.
  2. I hate modern factory farming practices (luckily I live in the middle of some great family farms and can buy milk, eggs, yogurt, cheese, honey and meat from them if I want to be ethical).
  3. It’s so healthy, when you’re not living on refined white carbohydrates— which I was.

Why I stopped being vegetarian:

  1. The teenager is a huge carnivore. As a preschooler she told my mom she had to go shoot a bear so she could eat the ham out of him.
  2. A French cookbook. A friend brought me a cookbook in French, from France. I had to cook the recipes.
  3. The onset of anemia, which is when I started craving bacon cheeseburgers.

Today I experimented with some vegan cooking. Do not try this at home until you read this whole post.

Pumpkin Tacos

A few weeks ago, I made vegan tacos with sweet potato in the filling. They were so good! (Recipe here) So I wondered if pumpkin tacos would be similar. The answer is NO!

I heated some corn tortillas— 3 — because you know what’s worse than a vegan pumpkin taco, three vegan pumpkin tacos. It reminded me of the vegan hot dog recipe that recommended steaming and sautéing a whole carrot and placing it in a bun and eating it like a hot dog.

Don’t do it.

Then I filled each tortilla with some canned pumpkin, organic black beans from the Grocery Outlet, and lots of lettuce that I got on clearance for 50 cents at Lidl, 10 days ago.

And I sprinkled each with fresh lime juice.

I ate them. But never again.

My second vegan experiment today involved making my own creamy, tangy hot sauce.

Now this, my lovelies, I encourage you to try.

Vegan black bean hot sauce—
upper left, 11 o’clock

Vegan Black Bean Citrus Hot Sauce

In the Nutri Ninja (or high powered blender or smoothie mixer) combine:

  • Hot peppers to taste— mine were from my mother’s garden and may have included habanero. I used about the equivalent of one cup.
  • 1/2 can organic black beans, rinsed—mine came from the Grocery Outlet
  • About 1/2 clove diced garlic
  • Juice of one small lemon
  • Juice of 1/2 lime
  • A few tablespoons water
  • Two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil—I like the cold-pressed imported from Lebanon that I buy at Forks Mediterranean Deli

If you try it, let me know what you think.

Nala approved, she kept sticking her head in the dirty Ninja cup.

Flecks of hot sauce on the bird