1. After a long slump, dry spell, hiatus -- after being paralyzed by a long bout with inertia, I took my camera out into the world today.
I don't know if I've ever developed a photographic style.
So many people from around here post so many pictures of autumn colors, waterways, and other sites that I find myself hesitating to do the same myself, especially if my pictures look pretty much like everyone else's.
I decided today to put that concern aside. I decided I would take fewer pictures, not fall back into a former habit of taking numerous pictures, figuring something would turn out.
Are the pictures I took today in any way unique? Is anything about them unexpected? Is there a style evident?
I don't know.
I'll put up a few of them at the end of this post and you can get a glimpse of how I saw things on a section of the Trail of the CdAs between Pine Creek and Enaville.
2. My other reason for heading out on the trail was to put my physical stamina to a test -- not a very demanding test -- but I want to build up more stamina, especially if my trip to Eugene in a month works out. I enjoy walking in Eugene and I'd like to build up my strength to be able to do some strolling there (especially if the weather happens to cooperate).
I felt pretty strong today.
I spent about 35-40 minutes on the trail, a reasonable test, and I definitely still had gas in the tank and could have walked some more. The trail was level. That helped.
3. Tonight I fixed Debbie and me a genuine throwback meal, an entree that goes back about forty years for me and that was a favorite of Adrienne's back in 1997 and the ensuing years when Debbie, Adrienne, Patrick, Molly, and I started our life together under one roof.
I'm going to say it was 1984, but it might have been 1985, when I was a graduate student at the U of O, living on the stipend I earned as a grad student writing instructor. It was definitely in 1984 that I started eating as a vegetarian at home, but was more than happy to eat meat on the road -- at restaurants, if invited to someone's home, at Mom and Dad's house, and so on.
I may not have the details of this story perfectly straight, but I'm pretty sure Christy knew that I was adapting this approach to cooking and eating at home.
I'm not sure if it was a Christmas or a birthday gift, but around 1984 or '85, Christy gave me the cookbook American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldberg, which, along with Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook, and one or two others, became my treasured guide to vegetarian cooking and dining. (In fact, I totally wore out the copy Christy gave me and a few years ago bought a new copy to replace it.)
It was also when what I now call my Tofu Awakening occurred.
As I experimented with tofu, soft and firm, it wasn't long before the Goldbergs' recipe for Tofu Stroganoff became a favorite of mine -- and, later, became such a favorite dish of Adrienne's that on one or two of her birthdays, she requested it as her birthday meal.
On my trip to Trader Joe's on Monday, I bought a block of tofu. Late this afternoon I suddenly had the urge to go back to my early days of tofu cooking, to go back to Adrienne's birthdays (her next birthday, by the way, is coming right up), get out American Wholefoods Cuisine, and whip up a pan of tofu stroganoff.
So I did.
What was different about this dish in 2024 than back about forty years ago when I first started cooking it?
Well, we have an air fryer and so the tofu was crisper than we've ever had it.
It turned out that today we were out of plain yogurt, but had plenty of sour cream, so our dinner didn't combine yogurt and sour cream -- and, I'd say, back in graduate school , I made this dish with yogurt only. Nancy's yogurt.
I didn't have cooking sherry on hand, so I subbed dry vermouth and that worked really well.
Instead of noodles or brown rice, I served this stroganoff over Garofalo pasta -- and that worked really well.
For me, this was a perfect dinner: delicious, warming, comforting and awesomely nostalgic.
My gratitude for my good fortune is immeasurable.
Here are three of the pictures I snapped on the Trail of the CdAs:
No comments:
Post a Comment