Tag: work

cooking

When eating tofu makes you a rebel…

wittychild

…you definitely need to loosen up a bit.

Okay, so my job has a lot going for it.  It has a comprehensive benefits package.  There is room for advancement for motivated employees.  It’s in a well-maintained building that is close to my bank, dentist, favourite restaurants, shopping, foxy former co-workers, etc.  They’re also remarkably understanding and accommodating at office functions re: my strictly voluntary dietary restrictions.  I am deeply grateful for that.

But…they don’t like people eating lunch at their desks.  The girl who trained me explained the philosophy thusly: “Nothing that requires a utensil!  If you’re fiddling with utensils, you’re not working.”  O…kay.  Yet Bake Club members are free to use forks to eat cake at their desks.  Bizarre.

So covert finger-food it was!  I’ve spent the past two years surreptitiously nibbling a PB&J at my desk.  Yes!  I became a walking vegan stereotype, and decided it was high time for a change.  (By now you might be wondering why I don’t just eat in the lunch room.  I tried that for a while, but prefer actually leaving the office to stretch my legs, run errands, etc.  Not unreasonable after a morning in front of the computer.)  I decided that tofu sandwiches were the way to go: whole grain and fibre from the bread, plus protein and calcium from the tofu, with only a fraction of the sugar of a PB&J.

A couple of weeks ago I made the Sweet Chili Lime Tofu from Vegan Yum Yum.  A little mustard, some lettuce, and it was delicious.  Last week, I was lazy and made Southern Fried Shake n’ Bake tofu.  I still had a package of the coating left and could have done it again this week, but I wanted something a little different.

I used the basic bread-and-bake method for the Cornmeal Crusted Chili Lime Tofu from Veganomicon, but made my own coating of panko crumbs and a Roasted Chili and Tamarind/Roasted Garlic and Peppers mix (both by Clubhouse seasonings).  It’s got just the right amount of kick, and a wonderfully crispy finish – and the only way it could be even easier to make is if it breaded and baked itself.  Seriously.

Behold, the healthy-eating rebel!

baking

Son of Cookie Monster

wittychild

Last week, I celebrated my two-year anniversary at my job.  That’s right: for 731 days, give or take, I’ve been delighting and entertaining my coworkers with my very presence in the office.  Okay, maybe not.  And not that anyone else would have remembered the date, but I wanted to do something just a little festive.  I had some extra time one evening and decided that mini cupcakes were in order.

The conversation went something like this:

“I thought I’d do vanilla cupcakes with a pink frosting.  Maybe I can use some maraschino cherry juice for flavour.  Ooh, or that Dr. Pepper stuff I got!”  (At this point, I was picturing something all princess-y.)

“Oh.  But your chocolate ones are so good, have such a nice flavour.”

“Okay.  Sure.  I can do chocolate with a cherry or Dr. Pepper frosting.”

“Why don’t you do blue raspberry frosting again?  It tasted really nice.”

Okay, so I did the blue raspberry frosting again.  (It worked so nicely with the pale blue liners you can’t really see for the chocolate cake.)  I thought I was smart by dissolving my drink crystals in the almond milk before adding it to the frosting, but they didn’t provide me with a sufficiently intense flavour or colour, so I added a smidge of raspberry extract and some blue food colouring.  Maybe it was the addition of the extract, but it had almost a blue-bubblegum flavour this time.  They might lack the characterization of their Cookie Monster predecessors, but they hold a certain charm nonetheless.

My coworkers loved them!  Between 8:00 and 10:00, they managed to polish off 30 of the little suckers.

I still have to try Dr. Pepper frosting, though…

baking

Free food always tastes better!

wittychild

I was sitting at work yesterday, minding my own business, when I thought I heard someone say “rhubarb” in the general vicinity of the kitchen.  Has Paul brought in his tasty rhubarb cake again? I wondered, and began a stealthy, nonchalant trek to see what was going on.  He had brought it in a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted in on the ground floor if there was more.  There was no rhubarb cake to be had, alas, but what there was, was free rhubarb (or deconstructed rhubarb cake, if you will).  In fact, its purveyor attempted to send me home with the entire garbage bag full that he had brought in.  I demurred, but decided that a few stalks  – or, ahem, sixteen – couldn’t hurt.  I had never cooked with rhubarb before (although I do enjoy eating it), but getting tons of it for free was like a carte blanche to try something new.

You’d be surprised how difficult it is to find a rhubarb recipe (that’s not pie, because it’s hot out and I’d prefer cooler temperatures to fiddle with pastry) in a vegan cookbook.  Hello!  It’s not kumquats, or something equally exotic, but a springtime farmer’s-market staple.  Fortunately, Hannah Kaminsky’s Vegan Desserts came through with Spring Fling muffins.  And since I had the day off today, I was up and baking first thing in the morning while it was still reasonably cool.

Yum!  I love the streusel-y topping, and the little extra crunch that the sugar gives.  The recipe said it made 12, but I’m not sure what sort of oversized muffin cups the author used, because I got 15 nicely-sized muffins out of the deal.  (Not complaining…now I have more to share with an eager test audience.)

I thought the watermelon cupcake liners were a nice touch, as their main purpose seems to be to send mixed signals about what kind of fruit is inside.

baking

You can’t spell “fibre” without… “brief”?

wittychild

This is probably the kind of thing that could get my citizenship revoked, but I hate Tim Horton’s.  Oh, sure, they used to be good, back when their donuts were actually baked on-site, fresh, in each individual store, before these dark days of par-baked pastries that are frozen and sent to the stores to be “finished off”; back when they focused on being a half-decent coffee and donut shop instead of expanding their lunch menu to include sandwiches that probably taste better from Subway, salty-yet-flavourless soups, and institutional-sized vats of (shudder) beef lasagna casserole.  Unfortunately, flash-frozen donuts and subpar lunch items seem to be the order of the day, and I no longer have any interest in them.  Also, their coffee smells like cat pee (and I live with both cats and Tim’s drinkers, so trust me on this one).  But I digress.

I had some oat bran left in the cupboard from my last adventure with the Applesauce-Oat Bran muffins from Veganomicon, and thought I ought to bake some muffins this weekend.  Last time, I made them pretty much according to the recipe, and added raisins.  This time, I had planned to add some dried cranberries, when my mom reminded me that there were oodles of fresh blueberries in the fridge.  Lightbulb moment!  What about a cranberry-blueberry-bran muffin, much like the ones found at the above-mentioned national treasure of a coffee chain?

Ha!  Tim’s can suck it!  Not only did these come out beautifully, they have almost half the calories of one of those flash-frozen abominations (based on a rough calculation using calorie counts for my individual ingredients, divided by twelve muffins).  I followed the recipe for the most part, increasing the cinnamon by 1/2 tsp and swapping out the cardamom for 1/2 tsp ground ginger.  I also added just a touch of molasses to give them a deeper flavour, and then folded in 1/3 cup dried cranberries and 1/2 cup fresh blueberries.  Now that’s a satisfying 174 calories!

But don’t worry – I haven’t gone totally health-food on everyone.  It was my turn for Bake Day at work last week; check out the margarita cupcake redux:

The minis are so cute; the public loves them; I may well spend the rest of my days making margarita cupcakes to slake the desires of friends and co-workers.

baking

Margarita Cupcakes – After Dark

wittychild

I remember now why I like quick, small crafty projects: instant gratification.  For example, right now I’m working on a rather large (14″ x 14″) needlepoint.  Although I’m genuinely loving every stitch, and it really is progressing at a reasonable clip, I still have nothing completed to show for my efforts.  Ditto my recovering project.  Waiting for my not-so-silent partner to hold up his end of things means I don’t yet have an awesome “finished” photo.  For someone who blogs about her crafty exploits, it can be frustrating.

Thank heavens for cupcakes.  Who doesn’t like foodporn photos of cute, tender little cups of love?

And look!  With a different finish than usual!  I usually follow the prescribed decorating from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World; that is, a demure little layer of icing spread evenly on top while coloured sugar coyly mimics the salted rim of a real margarita.  (This can be seen in an earlier post.)  Somehow, though, the fluffy piped swirls and haphazardly sprinkled sugar just scream, “Fiesta!”  Perfect, since I’ll be taking four to a coworker who has just a) turned the big 6-0 and b) announced her rapidly approaching retirement.

Public opinion will determine whether this flirty new approach sticks.  I’m sure my test subjects can hardly wait.

baking, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Paws up for birthday cake!

wittychild

What is it with Margaret Sherry and cute cat designs?  While flipping through a back issue of Cross Stitcher magazine on New Year’s Eve (is that a debaucherous evening or what?), I found the perfect design to turn into a card for my mom’s birthday.  While the red velvet pancakes were charring cooking, she opened a rather unassuming white envelope to find this staring back at her:

I used 18-count fabric instead of 14 as called for by the magazine to get it to fit in the card, and used random colours that looked close enough to those on the model – perfect way to use what I had laying around.  I love the concerned look on his face, and promised to use fewer candles on her birthday cake – if only by one.

(Please excuse the “arty” shot.)

I don’t think the cake could have been any simpler to make: a double batch of the basic chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, divided between two round layer pans, topped with a coffee-and-Kahlua’ed version of the chocolate buttercream frosting from the same.  Because I had serious doubts about my ability to wield a tube of decorating gel, I had the foresight to trace the words onto the top using a toothpick, and then follow the lines.  Hey, it may not be terribly skillful, but it worked.

And now that it’s all over, I get to breathe easy again, at least until Mother’s Day.

General Sewing

Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind…hey, Mickey!

wittychild

One of my coworkers is pregnant with her first child.  There’s been some dispute over whether it’s a boy or a girl, but we do know that it’s definitely a baby of some sort (I mean, it can really only go one of two ways, right?), and that she went Mickey Mouse-happy when choosing nursery decor and clothing.

I swore up and down that I was going to stay uninvolved in all the baby craziness – though I somehow got appointed Baby-Pool Collection Agent – but then I got a flyer for Fabricland and saw Mickey Mouse fabric front and centre on the first page.  I knew I had to do something with it, but what?  Quick and simple would be good.

Enter Simplicity pattern 4225 and its plethora of cute, easy projects.  I dug the bib, so I made two, and had enough fabric left over to make a small drawstring bag to package them up in.  Cute and “green”!

I managed to centre a different Mickey pose on each one.

My favourite part is the way the flannelette on the backs contrasts with the binding tape.

The stylish and practical bag.

She was surprised and delighted, especially when she found out I had actually made everything myself.  Now we just have to wait and see whether she has a boy or a girl to wear them – only two weeks to go!

baking

You’re a cute l’il pumpkin, aren’t you?

wittychild

I don’t hate my job, per se.  I do, however, hate that the eight hours per day spent at work, plus travel/preparation time, is severely cutting into my crafty time.  Hmm.  Maybe I’ll enjoy it even more if I don’t get to do it all that often.  Or maybe I can learn to cleverly invest my paycheques and retire within the next two years, thereby freeing up all sorts of time.  Or not.  In the meantime, if they’re happy to pay me to hang out in the office, being helpful and productive and generally not screwing things up too much, then I’m happy to be there.

One thing I definitely love about my job, though, is the Bake Day Club.  There are about 20 or so of us now who take turns bringing in delicious home baking (or even purchased donuts; we’re not picky) every Thursday.  This week was my turn – my first time.  Eek!  It had come out some time ago that I do the whole vegan thing, so I was super determined to prove to everyone that I can bake just as well as they can, without the use of dairy or eggs.  I whipped up a pan of Cranberry Lemon Zing Oat Bars from Kris Holechek’s The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes – a crowd-pleaser if there ever was one – and these little gems:

Top-down shot:

How autumny!  (Thursday being the first full day of fall, of course.)  These are a variation on the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.  I left the chocolate chips out, replaced them with ground walnuts, and added a little extra ginger, nutmeg, and cloves (about 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon of each) to give them a spicy pumpkin-pie feel.  Oh, yes, and used mini-cupcake pans, obviously, instead of standard ones.  People kept asking if I had baked them from scratch, and no one thought to ask whether there was, you know, like, tofu or something in there, ick.  Yay!  Chalk up another victory for tasty vegan baking!

Despite the aforementioned time crunch and sad lack of craftiness, I have managed to finish a couple of UFOs (or does that make them FOs, now?).  Stay tuned….

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Make it “sew”.

wittychild

I want it known that I am not a Trekkie.  Never have been, never will be.  Sorry, Bill, Sue, Rick, and anyone else who doesn’t get why I don’t get them.

*whew*

So, then: what’s a girl to do when her contract at work is up, and she’s grown rather attached to her coworkers, and wants to do something nice for one of them to remember her by?  One doesn’t want to get extravagant, obviously, but to just leave having done nothing didn’t seem appropriate to the situation.  The coworker, unlike the author, is a Trekkie, albeit a TNG fan (Philistine!).  Enter black-lupin (http://black-lupin.deviantart.com) and her fabulous array of mini-Star Trek characters!  This is what I came up with:

(What horrible lighting!  His uniform is partly burgundy, I swear.  DMC 814, if you want to check!)

I wasn’t quite sure I had done Captain Picard justice, but both the recipient and another coworker knew immediately who it was.  I feel so validated.

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Last project of 2009/first project of 2010

wittychild

How appropriate that they’re for the same person, n’est-ce pas?

Okay, so when I found out in the summer that my coworker was going to have a baby, I was excited.  Not because I like kids (I don’t), but I do like her, and this was an excuse to stitch something different!  I chose a design by Cinnamon Cat called “Pitter Patter”, which I liked for its colours – she wasn’t going to be finding out the sex beforehand, and this one wasn’t full of your typical pastels.  (It was a boy, by the way, born Boxing Day.)  I finished the bulk of it in December, and just before we left work on New Year’s Eve, the e-mail came around with a name and date.  It might be a sad comment on my social life that my New Year’s Eve was spent at home stitching, but to this I say, “Bah.”  It was too cold to go out, anyway.  I put in the final stitch just shortly before 10:00, effectively making it my final project of the year.  I spent the next two days applying coats of purple spray paint to a black six-inch frame, and voila:

I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am that she chose a short name.  “Ren” means “lotus” in Japanese, according to her e-mail, and I thought maybe a stitched card would be a nice touch.  I Google-searched the Japanese symbol for his name, and hope against hope that I’ve charted it correctly and haven’t called him something offensive in the process:

First project of 2010, w00t!

And now…now it sits, wrapped in vintage baby shower paper, in a bag under my desk so that if she should swing by the office for an impromptu visit, I’m prepared!