April 2007 Archives

The base for this recipe comes from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking. We loved the basic concept but decided it needed a little something. So we've played around with it a few times and finally a couple nights ago came up with the definitive version.

I pound extra-firm tofu
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 chopped onion
1 teaspoon curry powder
10oz fresh spinach
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 can diced tomatoes with green peppers partially drained

- Drain and press tofu, crumble into small pieces. We typically put the tofu in the fridge to press the night before we plan to make this dish
- Heat oil in skillet over medium heat, add garlic and onion. Cook for a few minutes until onion is soft and the garlic smell starts permeating the kitchen
- Add curry powder, stir well, add tofu
- Cover and cook for 3 minutes until tofu is mostly heated through
- Add spinach, stir to combine it well with the other ingredients
- When spinach has wilted add salt, pepper and tomatoes
- Stir well and cook 2-3 minutes

Notes:
- Add as much or as little liquid from tomatoes depending on how thick or thin you want this dish to be. I don't put very much liquid because I don't want it to be soupy
- You can add more or less curry powder based on your preferences. I find 1 teaspoon to be ample for both flavor and heat because of the peppers added with the tomatoes

Makes 4-6 servings

Serve with a big salad

Nutritional information varies depending on the specific tofu you use but a rough estimate is 4-6 Weight Watchers points per serving. We use a light tofu that is really wonderful but I can't remember the brand name right now. I'll add it to this recipe later. Update: The tofu we use is Nasoya brand.

We tried to buy a house on Thursday. It was put on the market early Thursday morning. By 4:00pm we were there looking at it, by 7:00pm we had submitted an offer. We offered full asking price and very few concessions from the seller so the assumption is we were simply outbid. Asking price was the very top of our price range so we couldn't go any higher. It was a very lovely house; I'd describe it as 85% perfect for us. We are disappointed.

I was quite sick on Thursday, the drive down to Louisville about did me in, so I'm not sure if it was the illness or plain nervousness that made me so nauseous while we were writing the offer. As we sat filling out pages and pages of paperwork I grew very nervous and fearful of the whole buying process, but now I'm just disappointed. Part of that disappointment is simple anxiety over our apartment lease ending in about 6 weeks and us not having anywhere to live after that. Part of it is that we've been looking for weeks and this was the first house that we'd even considered actually purchasing. I keep reading that now is such a great time to be in the market to buy a house but it's not turning out to be our experience at all. Part of the problem is that Louisville is such a great town that comparatively speaking there are very few houses on the market and they maintain resale value very well.

This was originally posted on January 3, 2003. It's long since been offline but like all the On a path archives it still lives on my hard drive. Ellen and I were talking about this list this morning so I thought I'd resurrect it.

"Music to Slash Your Wrist To" is being put together by my aunt Ellen and myself via email today. We only have the first two tracks thus far so I'll come back and add others as we get them.

Music to Slash Your Wrist To
1. Chicago by Ryan Adams, Ellen
2. Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones, Michelle
3. Romeo and Juliet by the Indigo Girls (live Mountain Stage version), Ellen
4. Two Star by Everything But The Girl, Michelle
5. Black by Pearl Jam, Ellen
6. Brick by Ben Folds Five, M
7. Brag by the Cutting Crew, E
8. New Favorite by Alison Krauss and Union Station, M
9. February by Dar Williams, E
10. Grace by Jeff Buckley, M
11. Wasted Time by The Eagles *With the orchestral "Wasted Time Reprise" that preceeds it, E
12. Half a World Away by REM, M
13. Sane by Nate Borofsky, E
14. Do What You Have To Do by Sarah McLachlan, M
15. Walk Away by the Indigo Girls, E
16. Colorblind Counting Crows, M
17. November Rain by Guns and Roses (full 8 minute version), E
18. In the Gloaming by The Story, M
19. I Will Never Be the Same by Melissa Etheridge
20. Silver Dagger by Dolly Parton, M

I've added a lot of music to my collection in the past four years so I can definitely think of some additions and changes.

I watched a fantastic program on PBS Wednesday night called Novel Reflections on the American Dream. The program's website describes it thusly

Novel Reflections on the American Dream considers 20th-century authors and the novels that illuminate society's inequities, limitations, and heartbreaks.

Basically it looks at versions of the classic American Dream as it's depicted in great 20th century novels with considerable amounts of backstory thrown in including the novelists' own defining experiences as related to writing their great works. It should be on everyone's viewing list. Check your local PBS station for show times.

House Hunting is a lot more fun on television when Suzanne Whang is narrating than it is in real life. In real life there are many pages to mortgage applications that must be filled out. There are check stubs to find, employment history to document, financial records to verify and several more layers of hoops to be jumped through. Turns out though that may be the easy part.

Finding a house in our price range, that suits our needs, in the neighborhood we want to live in is even more difficult than I expected it to be, and I didn't expect it to be easy. Our lease ends in less than 2 months and we've currently no place to live after that.

I use Firefox and Gmail to basically manage my life. I also use the Gmail notifier. What I don't use is Internet Explorer. However last week someone other than me needed to use my computer to check their Gmail. Because they're weird they used Internet Explorer to do it. After their login activity my Gmail notifier starting telling me when the other person received new mail, even though my login information was stored by the notifier. I couldn't figure it out. A little research led to a terribly annoying bug with the Gmail notifier. The person hadn't logged out of Gmail and instead had just closed the Internet Explorer browser window. For some strange, annoying and potentially dangerous reason the Gmail notifier remembers whoever was last logged into Gmail through Internet Explorer, even if that login is different from the login put into the Gmail notifier itself. So the problem was easily enough fixed by longing onto my own Gmail account through Internet Explorer but it was rather annoying. I only point this out because I didn't find this information that easily when I started looking for an explanation and most of the examples of this occuring happened to people using Macs and the Camino browser. This was an all PC all Internet Explorer incident so I thought it might be helpful to share.