Saturday Market & North Port Fishington Cookie Factory

There are 30 vegan cookies in my kitchen, and I can't eat them until Monday.

We'll come back to that. It's a cold, sunny day at Clark Park, maple-syrup weather, and chilly yellow daffodils are in bloom. White sunshine glances off the mud or is absorbed by bare branches. Food is plentiful, sweet and variable. Even the bean-and-spice lady is here, and I think she may be back for the season. She has chickpeas today.

Saturday Shopping List

1 lb of chickpeas
1 bunch of kale
baby spinach
2 heads of green leaf lettuce
a carton of micro-greens
a paper bag of small white potatoes
2 parsnips
1 quart of white mushrooms
1 portobello cap
a 23-oz jar of homemade apple sauce
1 oz. of "chicken seasoning"
a really big butternut squash
a loaf of multi-grain bread

total: about $35


Hadn't gotten a butternut squash in a long time. I'm going to bake it, of course. Going to try to make hummus - that's what the chickpeas are for. I also have a recipe for falafel I want to try. Still did not use the leek from last week, so I think I'll start off the week with a potato-leek soup for lunch.

I also purchased today 30 vegan cookies from a local bakery for my students. Milk & Honey Market special-ordered them for me and they came in today. I would tell you the name of the bakery but I'm afraid to open and look at the cookies. I have to keep them until Monday. Since two days were lopped off of spring break due to snow days, I wanted to bring my kids something for having to come to school those days. And I want my kids to know I like them, and what better way to show someone you like them than by giving them cookies. And I wanted cookies.

UPDATE: I braved a look at the cookies. They look so good! There are ten chocolate chip, ten snickerdoodle, and ten oatmeal-cranberry. They were baked at Philly Kitchen Share on South Street by North Port Fishington Cookie Factory (the name is an amalgam of several northeast philly neighborhoods: Northern Liberties, Port Richmond, Fishtown and Kensington). The baker apparently also makes donuts! And the donuts look good!

Sixty-Five-Cent Meal

I was almost out of everything. Had the perfect potato, a little bit of falafel mix, and some lettuce. Added some oil and salt to the lettuce and used it as a bed for the falafel, which is spicy and good. The falafel was crispy and the lettuce was crunchy. The potato was perfectly al dente. It really came together beautifully. It was a surprise gourmet meal, because when I first went into the kitchen, I just didn't think I had anything. As far as nutrition goes, this had legumes (protein, the garbanzos from the falafel), green vegetable and root vegetable.

Money: The box of falafel mix was $2.39, so this portion was maybe 40 cents. The individual potato was maybe 20 cents. A head of that lettuce is 75 cents, so that portion was maybe a nickel. So about 65 cents for this meal.

Falafel in the rain, with light activism

I found this 1923 Russian galoshes ad on Wikipedia's entry for galoshes. It says, Rainy rain, you cannot hurt me. I would not go out without galoshes. A good mantra.

Here in Philadelphia, we're having a bit of a Nor'easter... or two. Yesterday, the weather turned cold and rainy. Today it turned colder, continued raining, and turned windy.

In response, did I bring a nice hot bowl of soup for lunch, so that I can stay warm in my office building and eat my soup and look out the windows at rainy Philadelphia? Nope. That's what I did the first three days of this week, when it was nice out.

Yesterday, out of soup, out of fresh butter beans, and momentarily tired of okra, I decided to buy lunch. There is an Au Bon Pain in my building, so I could have gone there. But I wanted something hot, something filling, something delicious... and that was on 20th Street.

I went out in the rain to Mama's. Got a small falafel and eggplant and brought it back here under my hoodie. Ate the delicious, still-hot falafel in the breakroom while chatting with folks on Daily Kos about PETA and the merits of adopting cats and dogs.

A well-meaning diarist had posted a diary about the damaging effects of purchasing exotic pets, such as snakes, and then letting them go when you're tired of them. I recommended the diary and tipped the writer. But the diary also included that all-too-familiar disclaimer: I'm Not A Member Of PETA Or Anything.

Being "a member of PETA or anything" is the new gay, circa 1995, apparently. You can sympathize with animal-rights activists from time to time, but you need to acknowledge publicly that you are not affiliated.

I advised the diarist that it would actually be OK if he or she were a member of PETA. Someone else advised me that, no, it would not be OK for anyone ever to be a member of PETA.

Someone suggested that PETA thinks we should use human breast milk in Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I explained that, no, PETA was just using high-impact language to point out that there is breast milk in Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Then someone wanted me to provide a source for that information.

Did you get that? They wanted a source showing that ice cream has milk in it. (This is where you end up when you bring up PETA.) That's a little out-of-touch, is it not? To not realize immediately that ice cream has breast milk in it?

That's OK. Someday, it will become normal to say: I'm Not A Member Of PETA Or Anything... "Not that there's anything wrong with that." And we'll work from there, just like we have with gay rights and other civil liberties, until eventually members of PETA will be allowed to intermarry. Er... Did I confuse the issues? Ah, yes, I meant to say we'll become familiar enough with our food that we'll know right up front that there is breast milk in ice cream.

Anyhoo. I was talking, not eating, so I ran out of time and had to get back to work. I stashed the eggplant at my desk and ate it cold at 3:00. It was perfect.

Today, I'm going back. In the rain. In my rainboots. For falafel and eggplant.

A co-worker of mine is going to join me today. She's not vegan, but I can reassure her that if a non-vegan eats something vegan and enjoys it, it doesn't mean they're vegan, too.

[beat]

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

lunch spot

I've gotten in the habit of occasionally going to Mama's Vegetarian restaurant on 20th Street for lunch and having a small falafel (in a whole-wheat pita with tahini and slaw and awesome, slightly tangy, cucumberish sauce), for three dollars and fifty cents.



They're not a vegetarian restaurant; they serve fish, but there's no dairy on the premises, the falafel is amazing, and you can get a side of roasted eggplant for 75 cents.

I'm keeping tabs on a flock of pigeons. They landed on the dome of the building outside my window at work at around 9:10 this morning. It's now 10:30 and they are still out there but they're fluttering around a little bit. I counted 22 birds. We used to tell time by the movement of the cows in the neighbor's pasture.

Probably going to Mama's for lunch again today. It's payday.