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I do NOT cook vegan dishes normally, but I was trying out a variation on my creamy tomato soup and realised that this recipe is indeed vegan. Of course, I also added heavy cream as a variation and liked that best of all, but you can use 100% coconut milk and get great results. Caution, this soup is SPICY. If you don’t like a lot of spice, cut down the curry paste.
1 large can whole San Marzano tomatoes
Olive oil for sweating veg
3/4 cup mirepoix (carrots, celery, onions diced) Feel free to use frozen.
1 Tbl garlic paste (or 3 cloves minced garlic)
2 Tbl flour
1 Tbl red curry paste
1 tsp curry powder
1 or 2 small cans of coconut milk (the heavy creamy kind, not coconut water)
S/P
Sugar or agave
In a 2 qt saucepan, put a few turns of olive oil over med-hi flame and add mirepoix. Cook until the veg is translucent. Lower heat if it starts to brown, you want sweated, not sautéed. Add garlic, flour, curry paste and curry powder. Stir thoroughly. Crush in the SM tomatoes by hand. Stir. Add in one or two cans of coconut milk depending on how creamy you want it. I like it more creamy, so I use two small cans or one soup size can. At this point, cut the heat and use a stick blender to purée the veg. Or you can use a blender. Once the soup is as smooth as you want it, check S/P, add sweetener if it’s too acidic and then turn back on the heat. Bring to gentle boil for a couple of minutes, then simmer for another couple of minutes. Serve with crusty bread!
As I mentioned, I like the soup fine in this form, but if you’re not vegan and want a more creamy taste, add 1/2 cup of heavy cream. The spice of the curry still shines through, but the cream gives a lovely mouthfeel. Mmm!
This recipe yields about 6 cups or so.
So my pressed penny collection is pretty old. I’ve been collecting for decades. My first one is from the 50s I think, it was my mother’s. It is dead center and has the Serenity Prayer on it [I've always thought it was the Lord's Prayer! JUST NOW realised it's the Serenity Prayer. Oops!] – and it’s upside down!
 75 Pressed Pennies in my collection so far!
Going clockwise from the top stack of 5: 5 from FL, 1 Carousel something, 1 Torchlake ferry, 1 Am Museum of Nat History, 2 NC Museum of Nat History, big pile from GA [Zoo, Aquarium, Savannah], 2 Vegas, big pile from TN [Zoo, Atomic Museum, Chattanooga], 1 Riverlink ferry, 1 USS New Jersey, 9 San Francisco [Chinatown, etc], 4 Charleston SC [Patriots Point ships], 1 Titanic, 3 Ozark region, 3 Route 66, 2 San Diego, 5 AZ [Air Force museum, Hoover Dam], 6 Detroit.
I have 75 in the collection. THANKS to Sonya for enabling my addiction. :)
I am CRAZY for pressed pennies! If anyone is somewhere and sees a penny machine, please feel free to get me one! I LOVE getting pennies in the mail!
See Updates at bottom of post!
I got the idea that I should stop taking the antidepressants for a while. So I did, about a month ago. All was well. Until Sunday. I had a complete system failure that sent me to bed for almost 24 hours. WTFF?? I’ve never been laid low like that by crushing anxiety. It sucked donkey balls.
I think that taking Celexa has ruined my brain. I think I have to take it now or have these horrible anxiety attacks that I NEVER had before I started taking this shit. Thanks, Nick. Now I take it out of fear of another attack if I stop. AWESOME. I hate taking Rx shit in the first place and now I’m pretty much addicted and can’t stop. I don’t like it, but it appears that’s the way it is.
Meh. Of course another side effect is MEH. When I’m on it, I really don’t give a fuck about much. And I don’t like it. But I guess it’s better than being in bed 24/7. FML
Eh, fuck it. IN OTHER NEWS! Nick had his first phone interview yesterday and it went swimmingly! He liked them and they liked him and he’s going to round two. SWEET! It’d be funny as SHIT if one of the first places he contacted (via my Google search for prepress) turns out to be the one. HA! But the upshot is that now he’s done the first interview and didn’t die as he expected, so he’s good to go for more interviewing and finding the job that will get us the FUCK out of GA. Woohoo!!
I’m going to start packing. I’ve killed the land line (no more as of March 31, so use the cell!), killed the ADT monitoring and we’re not paying the mortgage any longer. Wells Fargo can suck it. We have more than enough cash to get us out there and established. It’s time to start putting all our crap into boxes so the van lines people can give me a decent estimate of the cost. Now that I’ve learned the magic that is stretch wrap, I’m SO READY to wrap up everything! Watch out kitties!! :)
Despite Larry (our Drama Llama) causing some issues and his buddies apparently wreaking havoc all over the place, we are still on track to GTFO of here. If taking half a pink pill every day will keep me sane enough to make this happen, I think it’s worth it to be an addict. For now. But maybe I’ll have to stay on it? Depression does get worse as you age, so it’s probably my fate. When I see the deep depression that runs in my family, I shouldn’t be surprised. But at least I do something about it. Which is more than I can say for them.
Yah, upon reflection, I guess half a small pink pill really isn’t so bad. I should just do it and stop yapping about it already. :)
UPDATE!! Thank the gods for Twitter! One of my twitter buddies (@dennislee) mentioned niacin for depression, which I’d never heard of, so I looked into it. Lo and behold! There’s a ton of info on this!! There’s a video (and book) called Food Matters by Dr Abram Hoffer and Andrew Saul all about the benefits of niacin that go beyond cholesterol reduction. Here is all you need to know in one post.
Being a pale Irish girl, I have problems with taking niacin – the flush is horribly painful for me. But I’m going to start with a low dose and start taking it for the depression benefits right away. Niacinamide and “no flush” (inositol hexanicotinate) niacins do NOT have the same benefits, so I’m going to work on getting a tolerance for the real thing. As Mr Saul says: take it until you get the full flush, then you know you’re at your limit.
I hope this helps others out there who suffer with depression and the Rx drugs that have their own symptoms. Hell, I hope it helps me for that matter. More on this when the experiment starts.
UPDATE 2: I tried niacin twice. First time was ok, the second, NOT SO MUCH. I got a horrible flush from a small dose of 100mg. Here is what happened (NOT Photoshopped!). Niacin is not for me, but Nick is having pretty good luck with it. He’s of an Eastern European descent and can tolerate the flush. Experiment over.
Those who follow me on FB have already heard about the goings on up in Nutsville of late. A brief recap, then my thoughts on the crazy.
A little over a week ago (Fri Mar 8th), I got a call at 10pm from my brother informing me that my niece’s mother had been murdered. It was mildly shocking, but not horribly so since she was a pill dealer and [probable] police informant. So, naturally, we dropped everything to run up there for my niece, who requested our presence. We’ll do pretty much anything for that girl.
We arrived around 4pm Saturday and of course my brother and niece were nowhere to be found. Naturally, since we’d been summoned, none of them could be bothered to MEET US when we came. RUDE. Anyway, traffic had sucked on the drive out of town and we were too tired to deal with their bullshit, so we said our hellos then trundled to the hotel. Of course, being Saturday, the hotel had stupid ass football people in it and they kept us up all night slamming doors. We were exhausted on Sunday, but after I gave the Hampton a tongue lashing and refused to pay for that night, we hauled ourselves to the homestead to show our support for the niece. Not only were we kept up all night, but it was the fucking time change, too. Awesome. We went to an early dinner with my brother and niece and it was actually pleasant. Not sure how that happened. Nick also took this opportunity to set up my niece’s shiny new MacBook Air. Continue reading Latest Family Drama: March 2013 edition
Amanda’s TED talk hit VERY close to home for me. She, as usual, discusses a topic that I and many others have issues with: asking for help. If you’ve not seen her TED talk yet, you need to take 15 minutes and watch that before you go any further into my post:
I have no trouble sitting at a convention table hawking our wares. I have no trouble posting links to my Etsy shop. I do it all the time. But I have trouble with simply asking for money with no product in exchange. I also have trouble giving money to people for random reasons if there’s nothing in it for me. I hate admitting this, but it’s true. When people ask for money for a camera or something that’s not “essential” for their existence, I get irritated. Especially if the asker is employed. I think “Why should I give YOU money? You’ve got a job!” But why shouldn’t they ask? It’s MY bias, not their asking that is the issue.
I think this is the Southern in me. I was raised by entrepreneurs who did for themselves. They’d DIE before asking for help. I’m not quite that bad, but almost. Nick is the same way. We sure could use a few thousand more dollars to get our moving fund fattened up, but we won’t do a Kickstarter or Fundly for it. We are just scrimping and saving. We are too proud to put out the ole tip jar and put our friends on the spot for cash. Why? Because it makes US uncomfortable and we feel it’s inappropriate. Clearly this attitude is not held by the hipster generation! “Crowd sourcing” is the new way to get what you want. And, well, I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a completely voluntary transaction. I don’t know why it squicks me out as much as it does.
Asking for money (or any help, really) takes a certain kind of bravery. A kind I lack, apparently.
It’s a conundrum for me. I like to help others and I do Kickstarters and other things quite often. But when it comes to me just flat out asking for money, I can’t do it. I’ll ask you to buy my stuff, but that’s as far as I’ll go.
Amanda brings up a really good point about our resistance to face to face asking/receiving. I hope I can change my attitude about this and become more open to asking. It’s definitely a point to ponder. We absolutely need help making the move to Phoenix. Maybe we should do a Kickstarter for ourselves? Or a Fundly. What do you think, hivemind?
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