Off Topic

When I was growing up it was tradition that my mom would always make me some variation of strawberry shortcake for my birthday. I am not entirely sure why. Maybe it was because of my love of the Strawberry Shortcake. Or maybe it was because strawberries were showing up on grocery store shelves in April. No matter the reason, I loved it. The cake. The strawberries. The whipped cream. Mmmmm...

A few days ago when my...ahem...30th birthday was approaching (ahem!) I decided to honor tradition by making vegan strawberry shortcake for myself and my husband.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) season is soon upon us again, and we cannot wait. We've been members of a local CSA for several years now, and finally this year we decided to just purchase the fruit share. Twice. We love fruit - that fruit from Hepworth Farms - so much that we decided to get twice as much.

In the meantime we rely on our local Greenmarket in Union Square. We bought so many apples a few weeks ago that we're overloaded. We do love apple crisp, though, and we've had it a couple of times already.

One year ago we embarked on the vegan cheesecake quest. It was my husband's birthday and I made him a cheesecake from Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. We didn't love that first cheesecake, but the texture was there, as well as the creaminess. It seemed that we had a mission. My husband had that gleam in his eyes that he sometimes gets when he sees a worthy challenge set before him. This year it's a different gleam, because now peanut butter has entered the picture and we've both realized that the possible flavors are endless.

Tomorrow is my husband's birthday, and of course you know that we must have cheesecake. Again. That said, he jumped the gun and decided to make cheesecake a couple of weeks ago (this post is slightly late).

This time, for round two, he decided to layer it. Chocolate on the bottom and plain on top. I decided it would be even prettier with some raspberry sauce.

Last weekend I purchased a few apples from the farmers market in Union Square, and had a couple of large ones left this weekend. Usually when I have a bunch of apples on hand I'll make apple crisp, but I wanted to do something different. Considering I only had two apples, I couldn't make a full apple pie, so I decided to try making single-serving pies. I had no idea if it would turn out okay, but hooray - they're great!

One of our more frequent breakfasts is biscuits. I'm not a big one for biscuits and gravy, but I usually make some gravy for my husband. Me? I'm more of a biscuits and jam kind of girl.

For the last few weeks I have been really looking forward to this weekend, because it's a long weekend (Happy President's Day!). I joked around with one of my co-workers on Friday that I'd probably be sick since I sometimes manage to get sick when I am able to wind down from the stresses of work. I think that I cursed myself, because I started my day at 5:45 on Saturday morning (when I was supposed to be fully in the middle of sleeping, thank you very much) with the most miserable and disgusting bout of stomach flu I've had in a while. I'll spare you the gory details, but let's just say it wasn't pretty.

And to be honest I have not been this sick in years. Husband and I kept trying to figure out how on earth I managed to get it. Did he somehow give it to me? Was it from the salad bar at work? Did I get it from that girl that I shook hands with on Friday? Alas, no matter where I got it my weekend plans were busted, and I spent the majority of it eating applesauce and these:

I just wanted to let you all know that we have been experiencing some server issues for the last few days - so if you came to www.noveleats.com and you found nothing, don't worry! I am still here, and it looks like things have been resolved.

I'll try to post again over the weekend, so stay tuned.

About three years ago or so I was introduced to the concept of community supported agriculture.* My husband and I found out about a CSA in our neighborhood (Hellgate CSA, formally known as Ravenswood CSA), and decided to join mid-season. It was probably one of the best and most influential decisions we have ever made, and I owe them a tremendous amount of gratitude. My appreciation for locally grown food by small family farms is much greater, and it has inspired us to try to grow our own food as well as visit the farmers market more often.

I have meant to share this and other recipes with you for the last several days, but we have all been sick for almost a week. Even our cat, Pixel, is sneezing while looking cutely pathetic or pathetically cute. Now we're on the mend, which is probably a good thing since it's back to work tomorrow.

Weekend before last we went to the year-round farmers market in Union Square. Since we are now in the winter months farmers are mainly selling root vegetables. There are other goods to be had - fresh meats and eggs, wines, cheeses, and assorted odds and ends. My mission was to obtain some fingerling potatoes, which I have never had before, and prepare them for our Christmas meal. It was a success - although I had a hard time figuring out which varieties to buy. I settled on three, but I'll admit that I forgot which ones they were.