what to do with all those veggies?

First off, I would like to say that I am so excited, because I've fallen in love with a new apartment.  It is consuming all of my waking (and sleeping) thoughts.  Michael and I are going to look at it today, as he hasn't seen it yet...and everyone should cross their fingers for us that we decide to get it and are able to move into it in 2 weeks time.  Because it would be so awesome.  Even though the kitchen is rather small.  I don't know where on earth I would put things like this rad farmers market haul:

beets, tomatoes, potatoes, summer squash, purple peppers, spring onions, and cabbage

more tomatoes, including adorably colored little ones, new potatoes, more purple peppers, green peppers, white cucumbers, and a ginormous zucchini

There is barely enough space in our kitchen for it all.  That's our haul from Saturday...we spent $30.  Which isn't too bad, considering how many tomatoes and peppers we got.  I already started freezing some peppers (this new place, should we choose to get it [hope!], is only 2 blocks from our current apartment, so transporting food and frozen stuff won't be a problem, thankfully) so that we'll have plenty when it's after their season and they get all crazy expensive in the grocery store again.  

Anyway, you might wonder what we do with all these veggies during the weeks, that we have to buy so many every Saturday.  Well, like I said, we freeze some (cabbage, besides the peppers).  And we eat a lot of them (um, tomatoes) on sandwiches.  But sometimes it's nice to do something a bit fancier.

scalloped pofabutatoes

Michael loves potatoes.  And I love noochy cheeze sauces.  Other scalloped potato recipes we've tried have really fallen short of both our expectations, but I found this one at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen.  Anything that Susan stamps with her little girl's approval...yeah, we'll love it.  And this was certainly a hit.  We totally finished that whole pan in one night. 

soup?  in the summer?

Hey, guess what?  Soup is easy.  We ate this summer squash soup, also from fatfreevegan.com, along with the potatoes.  I made mine a little differently...leaving out the celery (didn't have any), adding some zucchini and more broth.  Then I stupidly added a bunch of cayenne to it (I honestly don't know what possessed me) and some garlic powder (which got a little pervasive).  Still, the soup was awesome.  It was so creamy...velvety, almost.  I never thought that summer squash would make a good soup, but there you go.  It does.

cheezy potatoes of awesomeness

You can seriously count on Susan to make a ridiculously fabulous, failproof recipe.  I don't think I've ever tried anything of hers that I didn't like.  The woman should write a cookbook.

But honestly, all I've really wanted to eat since July started is stuff like this:

raw, honest veggies

Michael and I both work a lot of evenings now, which means that one or both of us don't get home until after 9, which in turn means that we are tired.  One night I got off work at 11:30 to fine this lovely raw and fresh plate of awesomeness.  On top are zucchini shreds, something I've fallen in love with recently.  Super thinly sliced (you'll need a mandoline) raw zucchini and summer squash make a lovely little salad with a little olive oil, vinegar, and thinly sliced basil.  Don't get me wrong, those tomatoes were rad, too, but I am a tad bit obsessed with that salad for now.  

You can even see it here, blurred in the foreground:

another very late night dinner

You'll have to pardon the crappiness of this one...it was seriously like 2 in the morning when I took that photo.  But yeah, you see?  If I'd been taking photos of everything we eat recently, you'd be seeing it a lot more (but we've been doing reruns, like ruebens and such).  Anyway, this scramble was super tasty.  It had been awhile since we had one...but the real star of this meal was those potatoes.  Yeah, they're roasted, but we microwaved them first so they only took like 10 minutes to roast in the oven.  Smart, eh?  Anyway, they only have some seasoned salt, pepper, and paprika on them, but they are so, so good.  

Next up is yet another Michael dinner (he's been terribly helpful lately with me working evening shifts).

cabbage rolls!

Apparently, these were a pain in the ass to make because they have a lot of preparation, but all I had to do was enjoy them, so...  Anyway, they're stuffed with some sort of tempeh/tahini mixture and they were a totally rad use of a giant head of cabbage we had from another market haul.  So yummy!

fake meat - the ultimate in laziness

I ventured to the grocery store last week to pick up fruit and some veggies we can't get at the market, and got some sweet stuff on sale.  Like those fancypants carrots and fresh brussels sprouts, and uh...  some fake chicken breasts.  They have Gardein stuff in our Kroger now, which is highly exciting, but then also bittersweet, because it's madly expensive.  There was a dollar off coupon on this package I got (2 chicken patties in a Tuscan sauce) and I was mega tired, so I splurged the $4 on them.  And they're really good!  The texture is a little too meaty for us (checked and then rechecked the package after cutting into them...but they're vegan for sure), but the flavor was nice and the sauce they came in was seriously delicious.  It reminded me a little of a Lean Cuisine sauce...which for most of you probably sounds totally gross, but I lived off those things for about a year before I met Michael, so it was sort of a fond memory.  I mean...sort of.  Anyway, I also made the mustard sauce from Veganomicon (my favorite sauce, ever) to go with the steamed carrots and veggies.  All of it mixed together was pretty damned phenomenal.

openfaced sammies are sammiches too.

I'm going to finish up with a couple of lunches.  I've been trying to do hearty, but not weigh-me-down lunches recently, as Michael's been working doubles and then I go in to work in the evenings and need to be filled up without feeling like taking a nap afterwards.  I made this openfaced sammich twice this past week.  We had some leftover rye bread from ruebens.  Topped with some red pepper and green olive hummus that I'd made, fresh red tomatoes, and fresh basil, it hits the spot, fills me up, but leaves me ready to go for the rest of the day.  

more lunch options

I made this curried chickpea salad a couple weeks ago, and it was awesome.  I never ate it on bread, just like this, in big clumps, and I was happy as a clam about it.  I honestly don't remember what all is in there...chickpeas, onions, celery, carrots, vegenaise, leftover fake cheese that we'd made, lemon juice...and lots and lots and lots of curry powder.  And some cayenne, for a kick.  Paired with some fresh veggies, like this white cucumber (green on the inside!), it's terribly tasty.  Nom.

So don't forget to eat lunch.  And be creative with your veggies.  And...wish us luck on the apartment again!

it can't rain all the time...

But it certainly will if it's the fourth of July and you have plans for grilling.

cheating nature

Luckily, Michael and I have this lovely little electric grill (bequeathed to me by my parents) that works just fine in a pinch.  Which is good, because we had some major grill plans.

zucchini/summer squash/seitan kabobs

We'd gone to the farmers market that morning (absolutely no sign of rain at that point, mind you), and bought loads of veggies (see end of post for the haul).  I made a quick half batch of seitan and we kabobed (kabobbed?  can I make that a verb, please?) the hell outta some fresh squash and zucchini with it.  Michael is the official grillmaster because I have ladyhands and tend to get burned.  He probably gets burned too, but whines less about it afterwards.

beautiful spring onions

Hey, guess what?  Spring onions are totally rad when you grill them.  The only bad part is that we ate without knives and you can't really bite them at this point, so be ready to have an entire onion in your mouth for a bit.  Unless you care to use a knife, that is.  (wuss.) 

land of forgotten watermelon

We also grilled watermelon, but were too full afterwards to eat it.  FYI: fresh off the grill, it just tasted like hot watermelon.  

combofabulous

That all combined into this monster plate: steamed green beans with dill and lemon, new potato salad, kabobs, corn on the cob (just...corn), grilled onions, and a fresh white cucumber.  Thinking back, here's what's local from the market: beans, potatoes, squash, zucchini, corn, the onions, and the cucumber.  Not bad, eh?  It was all delicious and I just have to say that we do a pretty darned awesome holiday spread, even when it's just the two of us for dinner.

Oh, almost forgot!  Michael whipped up this lovely antipasta style salad for lunch earlier in the day.

my talented boy :)

Red and yellow tomatoes, yellow beets, white cucumber, green chili, artichokes, and basil with a nice balsamic vinaigrette drizzled on top.  All local except for the artichokes.

As for the market, here's what we got:

squash, zucchini, yellow beets, corn, jalepenos, hot green chilis, spring onions, rhubarb, red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green bell peppers, and white cucumbers.

All for $20 on the dot.  I felt a bit nervous about our abundance of tomatoes and peppers and such yesterday (plus was being a lazy bum on the sofa most of the day and didn't feel like cooking anything too involved)...so I asked my good friends of the PPK for suggestions on just what to do with all that veg.  The perfect reply came for...gazpacho!  Honestly, I've never really liked gazpacho (salsa soup, anyone?), but Michael loves it and I needed to use up stuff, so I made it. 

yellow gazpacho

And you know what?  It was awesome!  As a confirmed gazpacho hater, I must say that my gazpacho kicked ass.  So easy too...here's what I did:

Yellow Gazpacho That Is Better Than All Other Gazpachos

3 medium yellow tomatoes

1 medium red tomato

1/4 of a large white onion

1/2 green bell pepper

3 green chilis

1 small cucumber (mine was white)

3 cloves garlic

1/2 -1 tsp cumin (to taste, really)

about 1/2 cup water

2 tsp olive oil

3 or more Tbsp red wine vinegar

juice of 3 limes

salt to taste

Roughly chop your veggies (seed the peppers), put them in the blender with everything else, and blend it.  Yeah, that's it.  Refrigerate it if you want it cold (I did and it ruled).  For a nice chunky garnish (chunks are good, friends), dice up some more tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, cucumber, and a jalepeno, drizzle with lime juice, and add it to your soup.  Mine was mega spicy, but that's the way we do shit around here.

As for the rest of those chilis?  What to do, what to do....

this'll work for now.

totally rad and surprisingly easy dinner

And sort of healthy.  

seitan parmesan

Ok, super easy components:

1. Basic seitan recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance with the following modifications: Instead of 1/2 cup soy sauce, use 1/2 cup of water; add a tsp of onion powder and a crapload of poultry seasoning and one golden seasoning packet; steam 40 minutes (made into cutlets and wrapped in foil) instead of simmer.

2. Bread those using breadcrumbs and rosemary mixed together (some old bread + rosemary whirred around in the food processor).  For the wet part, we did soymilk with about a Tbsp of ground flax mixed in.

3. Spray a baking sheet, put them on, bake at 350F for about 25 minutes.  Then your seitan is all done.

4. Make teeny skinny strips of zucchini and summer squash and boil them for like 2 minutes, then drain.  That's your pasta. 

5. Pile up veggie-noodles, add your favorite pasta sauce, top with seitan and some fake cheese.  We made the buffalo mosterella cheese from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook (which was also totally easy and delicious and cheap).

Also, we reconstituted some dried morel mushrooms and cooked them up in some Earth Balance.  They were rad on the side.  Anyway, it's a healthier alternative what with baking the seitan and using veggies as the noodles.  Not too heavy for your tired and hot summer belly.  And fun to make!  And easy!  You are doing yourself a serious disservice if you don't try this.  I mean it.

eat good food all year long

Time for more summertime awesomeness easy peasy lazy hot and sweaty meals!  First up is a radioactive picture of some lovely zucchini provencal that I made with my friend Becca.  We also baked some tofu with bbq sauce and she sauteed red cabbage in raspberry vinegar with apples (amazing).

lovely layers

This was kind of like a lasagna without noodles.  And it ruled.  You can find the initial recipe here, but we used 3 zucchini, 3 tomatoes, and added tons of minced garlic to each layer.  Even better that way.  Anyway, it's something to do with the mountains of zucchini that I'm sure you'll have this summer.  It's always good to have a nice zucchini recipe.

who needs color when you can have tots and corn and breaded things?

Ha.  Seriously though, these were the tofu fish sticks from Vegan Dad's blog, and they were fabulous.  A bit messy to prepare, but worth it.  Nice and crunchy with a soft interior.  I had no idea you could get things this crunchy by just baking them.  We made the tartar sauce as well, but I hated it because I am, as you might remember, currently hating vegan mayo.  Blegh.  Anywho, we channelled our inner children and had them with tots and corn on the cob.  That's how we roll.

we eat healthy crap too, ok?

This kick-ass salad was assembled by me.  I made this salad specifically to go with this wonderful lime thyme dressing from VegWeb.  You know, I always used to think my mom was nuts for putting strawberries in salads.  Not so, friends.  Paired with a nicely salty salad dressings, strawberries in salads are the bomb.  Anyway, after I made the dressing, I marinated some tempeh in about 1/4 of it, and then pan fried it to get it nice and browned.  Genius, let me tell you.

how could anything this green be bad?

Everyone:  make this dressing.  I didn't think it tasted overly thyme-y, but maybe I didn't add enough.  At any rate, I only added 2 Tbsp of the sugar, which was way too much for me, so I reccommend only adding 1 Tbsp and working up from there.  I also added way more salt and lime and a little red wine vinegar to make it more tart.  We ate the leftovers of this dressing for days on salads.  Fabulous.

smoked tofu is awesome.

Ok, I'd never had smoked tofu.  We were in Indiana this past weekend to see Michael's family, and I saw this in a health food store and just had to get it.  Amazing.  It's...creamy.  Like cheese.  It tastes more like cheese than any vegan cheese I've ever had.  Weird, but very cool.  It's rich though...I probably didn't need to eat all that, but what the hell.  Served up cold (straight out of the package) with some roasted asparagus and curried couscous (recipe from the idiot cookbook).  I cut my tofu up into little bits and mixed it with the couscous and it ruled.  I so wish we could get this stuff around here...but it's like 5 bucks a package, so it's definitely a luxury item for us.

i made muffins!

Another VegWeb recipe.  I kind of forgot that I had a bajillion recipes saved on there and revisited them this past week a bunch, obviously.  These gems are orange poppyseed muffins.  And they were glorious.  Though not really orange-y.  I even added the zest of a big orange along with the orange juice (fresh squeezed).  Next time, I will add twice that much zest.  Also, here's a perk: the only fat they have in them is from the flax seeds.  They're not even gross or dense because of it.  Fluffy.  Moist.  Almost cupcake-like.  Oh, another bonus: they are super cute on top!  I don't know how that happened, but I definitely am a fan. 

israeli couscous is not for everyone

By 'everyone', I definitely do not include myself.  Because I loved it.  Michael, not so much.  But that's ok.  I ate the crap out of this.  For it, I roasted 2 tomatoes that I diced beforehand with some sliced green olives, then added that to the prepared couscous.  We found this for $1.50 a bag at Big Lots, which makes me happy.  It was a nice lunch, anyway.  For me.

everything in the kitchen pasta, plus portobellos

This weekend at Michael's parents' house, we cooked dinner the first night.  Basically, anything I found in the kitchen, I put in the pasta.  That includes asparagus, green olives, spinach, onions, scallions, roasted red peppers, and artichokes.  It was very vegetable-y and yummy.  Michael grilled the mushrooms, and even though I claim to hate portobellos, these were delicious.  I was also kind of drunk though, so I might blame that.

summertime classic

Because of my embargo on vegan mayo, I have to be creative when it comes to pasta salad now.  As some of you might remember, I am enthusiastically obsessed with the flavor combination of mint and dill.  This pasta salad was the perfect vehicle for it.  Those two herbs, plus peas, scallions, and red cabbage, then a generous dousing of olive oil and red wine vinegar.  It was heavenly.

the best dips are the accidental ones

Right?  Well, maybe.  Anyway, I was starving and wanted hummus, but didn't have any chickpeas.  Or lemons.  Thus, curried white bean dip was born.  I made it in about 2 minutes and it was absolutely addictive.  I even have a recipe.

Curried Bean Dip

1 15 oz can butter beans, drained (or other white bean.  or any bean, really.)

2 large cloves of garlic

1/4-1/2 15 oz can coconut milk

1 Tbsp chili garlic sauce

1 Tbsp red curry powder

2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp dried dill

1 tsp coriander

1/4 tsp salt

Throw the beans and garlic in a food processor and process until smooth(ish).  Add spices (except salt) and 1/4 can of coconut milk, and continue to process, adding more coconut milk until it gets to the consistency you like.  Add the salt, to taste.  It's spicy, so if you're a wimp, leave out the chili garlic sauce or use yellow curry powder.  Wuss.

recently, we've been stealing herbs

Yeah, we found this apartment building down the block that has rosemary, mint, oregano, and lemon verbena growing in the yard.  No one's ever around.  What?  Anyway, it's fun to add fresh, free herbs to food.  For example, here we added mint and dried dill to those beans.  And roasted the potatoes with rosemary.

the basil is ours

Yeah, too bad there's nowhere with free basil, huh?  Oh well, we have some growing in our kitchen (and two other plants maturing on the porch).  Basil and tomatoes are a classic summertime combination, but add some avocado to that mix and...  Oh my.  It's pretty, too.

Hope you're all still enjoying your summer!  Except for those of you who are now having winter.  Disregard.  Remember, even though it's a million degrees out and you're hot and sweaty and tired, that's no excuse to not eat decent food.  Though, admittedly, I do use that excuse from time to time.  Nobody's perfect.

quick and easy

No, I'm not talking about that girl or guy you met at the bar last night.  I'm talking food here.  Summertime food.  Food that says, 'Hey, it's hot outside and you're hungry, but tired and sweaty...  come eat me.'  Because, if you're like me (but not, necessarily, like Michael, who remains relatively ambitious in the food department year-round), you get a little lazy when the temperature goes up and there are things to be done outside and the kitchen just loses its draw on you...a bit.

Hence, you shall now be submitted to some of our solutions to this problem.  Creative and tasty solutions, methinks.

First up is the ever popular summer salad.

not just your gramma's iceburg

This, my friends, is the Greek salad from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Cooking (henceforth so named the idiot cookbook, because this is another one I hate typing out).  It's chock full of radtastic veggies to fill you up, but not weigh you down when you're ready to go out for a nice bike ride after dinner.  As a former Greek salad addict, I fully approve of this rendition, right down to the dressing.  Add some tofu feta from the same book, and you've got a winner:

my first tofu feta attempt

Here I will admit: feta cheese was the last thing I gave up when I made the transition from vegetarian to vegan.  I snubbed my nose at all tofu feta recipes this past year (because, in fact, this past week was my veganversary!).  However, when Michael brought up the idea this time around, I thought, 'What the hell, lets give it a go'.  Ok, so it didn't taste like feta.  But it was tasty!  I have a feeling that if we'd cut it into smaller cubes and let it marinate for a day rather than half an hour, it would be even better.  In fact, I used some of the leftovers to make a weird breakfast one morning, and it was pretty awesome.

This next meal was made forever ago, but it's also a nice quick staple, and a bit heartier (but not too much) than a salad.

easy peasy baked tofu

Originally, I got this idea from The Accidental Vegan cookbook, but their recipe was so salty it made me gag.  Still, I liked the simplicity of the recipe, and decided to adapt it to better suit my needs.  Basically, just cut some extra firm tofu really thin, mix together tahini with whatever else is around (my usuals: nutritional yeast, a little soy sauce, hot sauce, garlic powder, etc), dip tofu in, put on a baking sheet, and bake it at 350F for about 30 minutes.  It gets this nice brown crust on it, and it's nice and chewy.  Plus, you don't have to press and marinate your tofu.  Plus, it's really versatile to whatever spices you have on hand or want to incorporate to a side dish you have a craving for that night.  

Oooooh, I'm excited about this one: 

fabulously easy tempeh and roasted veggies

Ok, so roasting veggies may not be something you feel like doing when it's hot out and your kitchen gets to be about 5 million degrees...  But you have to admit it's easy.  And you don't have to be in the kitchen the whole time they're roasting.  Go out and drink some lemonade on your porch or water your plants or play with your cat.  Then, just hop on into the kitchen when the buzzer goes off, fill your plate, and get the hell outta there.  See?  Not so bad.  So the roasted veggies here were super good, especially with that gravy Michael mixed up.  But what I'm really excited about is the tempeh.  Michael's mom brought us some wild rice tempeh the last time she came in from Evansville, and we've been trying to figure out how to use it so that the flavors shine through, but still doesn't taste like plain old tempeh.  The solution came, oddly enough (ha) with the recipe on the package.  That I didn't use, but did base my own recipe from it.  It's so excitingly yummy and easy, I'm even going to share it in its entirety with you.

Dill Macadamia Crusted Tempeh

1 package of tempeh (prefferably wild rice, but any will do)

1.5 ounces macadamia nuts (about an 1/8 cup, chopped)

1 heaping tsp dried dill

1 scallion, white and green parts, minced

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbs water

spray oil for the baking sheet

First up, cut and simmer your tempeh.  We cut ours so that we get 14 pieces out of it...  So 7 pieces (that's six cuts you'll make) widthwise, and then cut each of those in half, lengthwise, so they're pretty darned thin.  Toss it in some boiling water, reduce heat, and cover for 12 minutes, then drain.  While all that's going on, preheat your oven to 350F and make the macadamia crust.  For that, place the nuts in your food processor or good blender and process until they are super fine crumbs.  They'll look oily and kinda clumpy, that's good.  Place them in a small bowl and add the rest of the ingredients (except for the spray oil, obviously).  Mix it all up...it should be like a paste.  Spray a baking sheet with the oil and arrange your tempeh in one layer.  Spoon an equal amount of the paste onto each slice and spread it out so that it's completely covering the top.  Put in the oven for 15 minutes, and it's done!  

It's so good.  The dill adds a nice summery flavor and it's just salty enough.  I suppose if you wanted to coat the whole pieces of tempeh, just double the recipe.  But there's enough flavor in just the top coating, that it's really not necessary.

Lastly today, is this lovely chickpea stew from some Turkish cookbook that I got at Borders about a million years ago: 

simple, nutritious, and delicious

Ok, well, it turned into a chickpea and white bean stew because we only had one can of chickpeas on hand, but it was still super fabulous.  It's mainly 2 red onions sauteed in oil and margarine with cumin and coriander and fennel seeds and paprika (except we didn't have enough red onion, so we added a bunch of scallions in a later step), add a can of drained diced tomatoes and a teeny bit of sugar, add the chickpeas (and scallions, if you're us) and some cashews (not in the recipe, but a nice addition), and a whole bunch (the literal sense here) of chopped parsley.  Garnish with lemon wedges and salt to taste.  The lemon makes this meal.  You really need that burst of acid to bring out the flavors in the spices.  You could serve this over rice, but we were lazy and just ate bowls of it, as is.  It all came together in about 20 minutes.  I know that's not really a recipe, but I don't remember exact measurements.  Just add spices to taste and whatnot, if you'd like to try it out.  Oh, it also called for whole spices, but we didn't have cumin or coriander seeds, so we just used the ground versions of both, and it turned out fine!

I have more to catch up on (like commenting on all your lovely blogs, I know, I know!), but it's noon and I'm getting hungry now...  Time for a quick and easy meal! 

you call that a bar-be-cue?

i do.

Indeed.  After we grilled out on Friday (our first really nice day here...followed by almost a straight week of rain/cold/wind/lame), I mentioned to Michael that, though we BBQ'd, nothing we actually ate was...BBQ flavor.  He informed me that BBQ is also a verb, so we're good.

Anyway, our friend Jared, who is a culinary student here in town and is straight up awesome about eating food we make and making food we can eat, asked Michael and I over to grill out in honor of the beautiful spring day.  How could we refuse?  At first, he was going to grill some meat for himself, but once we got to the grocery store, he decided that he just wanted to make a bunch of stuff we all could eat, and I couldn't have been happier!  

Here's a crappy flash shot of some stuff on the grill.

yeah, we grilled bread.  wanna make something of it?

Man, that grilled bread was good.  It was a rosemary focaccia to begin with, then we brushed it with olive oil and a balsamic reduction.  It made a perfect vehicle for this amazing stuff:

avocado relishhhhh

This was Jared's doing.  He makes this avocado relish that's crazy delicious (avocado, red onion, habenero and jalepeno peppers, roma tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice...).  Well, the avocado we got at the store was beyond hard.  They all were.  I had the brilliant idea to throw them (peeled) on the grill for a few, to see if they softened up.  I mean, it's not like we had anything to lose.  But everything to gain!  Because grilled avocado is freaking fabulous!  It got all black on the outside because I wasn't paying attention, but that just added some great smokey flavor.  

We also grilled up loads of veggies, some marinated tofu, and some veggie italian sausages.

feast your eyes on that

It all came together beautifully to become this:

best. bbq. ever.

So all in all we had: skewers of green and yellow bell peppers, yellow squash, zuchinni, and marinated tofu; sliced portobellas, veggie sausages, corn (on the cob), grilled bread, and that knock your socks off relish.  Jared said he didn't miss there being meat at all, that the tofu was awesome, and that even his culinary professor wouldn't be able to tell the sausages weren't real meat (which is awesome, but also kind of gross, if you think about it).  We were all stuffed to the max, but there was just enough room for this little fella:

amuse bouche!

In classic Top Chef style, Jared created the perfect bite.  I was so jealous.

Oh, I got a request to show a pic of my new haircut...  I don't really have any of the full on haircut because I've taken them all myself, but here's one, sort of (it used to be down to my chin, with no bangs):