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Lentil “Bolognese”

October 19, 2015
how to make lentil bolognese

I now grow my own basil and make meatless sauces. Oh California, what have you done to me?

A couple of weeks ago a vegetarian friend of mine came to stay with us for a few days, and I was at a total loss for what to cook. So often, it seems like vegetarians just kind of get handed a side dish "that's totally hearty enough to double as an entree!" and I felt...I don't know, like I wanted our guest to feel a little more special. Except over the past couple of months I've grown so reliant on my go-to system of throwing some meat on the grill, tossing a salad and calling it a day that I couldn't for the life of me think of anything to make her. (I ended up not actually doing that badly; I made cool pizzas and a really delicious grain-vegetable-egg combo and such, but still: we're talking about a limited repertoire.)

This would have been a really good solution. Because it's not only vegetarian, it's also really healthy (full of vegetables and protein) and REALLY good. Like, as good as "real" (meaning meat-containing) bolognese. Maybe even better. No joke. It's not going to trick your tastebuds - it tastes like it's own thing, not like traditional bolognese - but it's super flavorful and hearty without being heavy. I like it so much that I prepared each serving with way more sauce than pasta, because it's so good that it's not even as much of a dressing for pasta as it is a really delicious stew.

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Decor

Our Front Yard: Before And After (A Xeriscaped Makeover)

October 16, 2015
yard with dead trees

Check out that lush, vibrant landscape.

Oooooh was our front yard ever not good. My favorite part was the enormous potted (and dead) tree tethered to the roof to prevent it from dropping straight to the ground. In second place was the red mulch surrounding the enormous (also dead) bush next to my garage.

Enter: a xeriscaper I found on Thumbtack. What is xeriscaping, you ask? Excellent question; I didn't know, either. Basically, it means taking out plants that need bunches of water and replacing them with ones that are drought-resistant, thereby lowering or eliminating entirely the amount of supplemental watering that your yard requires. It's also (in my opinion) very pretty.

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Decor

The Sad, Sad Garage

October 5, 2015

This may be the most beautiful photo I have ever posted on RG.

When we were looking for a house, we made a wishlist of sorts - the kinds of elements that we were hoping to find, but could theoretically live without if the house checked off our Big Stuff (good school district, a playroom/office area, within reasonable commuting distance to Kendrick's office, etc).

Our wishlist included things like exposed beams, an open floor plan, a nice outdoor space, and some kind of bonus area where Kendrick would be able to set up his recording equipment (which is big and involves lots of wires, hence the problem with setting it up in, say, a corner of the living room). The latter is a tricky one, because we were really spoiled at our last house: the previous owners had turned our garage into a sort of studio space, so he just got that whole area to do whatever he wanted with. Here, not so much: every room in our place is small, and there's just nowhere for all that equipment to go.

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Eat

Bad New Yorker

September 30, 2015
tomato mozzarella basil calzone

Erin and I were making pizzas for dinner the other day and she said, "Oh, we should use the extra dough to make calzones for lunch tomorrow." And when I replied, all offhand-like, "Sure, that sounds good. I've never had one before," there was this long silence, and I looked over to see Erin staring at me like I had just burst out into a rousing rendition of "Don't Rain On My Parade."

So apparently never having eaten a calzone is kind of strange. And apparently it's extremely strange for someone who spent the bulk of her life living in various New York City apartments, all of which were located approximately ten feet away from a pizza place (or three).

(If we're being totally honest here, I'm not even sure I could have told you what a calzone looks like. I had a vague impression of it being lumpy and bready with...something or another inside, but I think that's also a decent description of a gyro, a.k.a. another thing that I couldn't have described very well even upon pain of death until five minutes ago, when I googled it. And since we're tangentially on the topic of gyros, I also feel that it's important to let you know that up until the age of twelve I confused the word "gyro" with the word "orgy," which means that I had an extremely skewed interpretation of that photo of a woman eating a meat-filled sandwichy-thing that's posted on the door of every Italian to-go place in New York.)

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