Soft Immortal Food & Kale

I feel incomplete, not offering at *least* 2 vegan dishes that I like and think are easy to prepare.

Soft Immortal Food

1/4 cup noodles (peastarch, preferably)
2 cups dried black mushrooms (usually shiitake)
4 bean curd sticks
12 cakes of bean curd
2 tbsp of 'red bean cheese' (this is easily found in any asian grocery; I don't know anywhere else you'd find it, though... I've always wanted to try substituting red bean sauce, and always chickened out at the last minute)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons soy sauce
Water

Soak peastarch noodles and dried mushrooms (separately, please).
Break bean curd sticks into 2-3 inch bits and soak those (separately, please)
Cut each bean curd cake into quarters, and the peastarch noodles into about 3-4 inch lengths. While you're chopping, cut the stems off those dried mushrooms and cut them in half too.
Stick noodles, mushrooms, and dried and fresh bean curd in a saucepan.
Mash up the red bean cheese and add it with enough water to cover everything.
Bring to rolling boil then simmer for 1 hour.
Blend cornstarch, soy sauce, and remaining cold water to a paste. Stir paste in to thicken the dish up.
Serves eight, twelve if it's an appetizer (it's a little slippery).


Kale

(I was out of oyster sauce so this is NOT what I did, but this is what I like to do with kale:)

2 bunches of nice, green kale
Oyster sauce
1 tsp salt
1/4-1/3 tsp sugar (just enough to collect in the wrinkles of a cupped palm)
Ginger root
Water
(red pepper flakes optional)

Wash kale, and chop into 3 inch lengths. If any stems are more than half an inch in length, peel and chop stem in half.
Oil up a wok with veggie oil and toss in three good-sized ginger slices. If you like, add a dash of red pepper flakes or some sesame oil.
Fry kale *briefly*: maybe for 30 seconds, just long enough to coat it all in oil.
Add oyster sauce, salt, sugar and fry kale for another 30-60 seconds
Add 1/3 cup water and cover with a lid so that kale gets steamed as well as fried. Leave to steam for 3 minutes.

Ready to serve. In place of oyster sauce, one can use hoisin for a more lemony effect. (I doubt oyster sauce contains real oysters.)

I hear that you CAN eat the greens on the ends of the stems, but my mother said that was what poor people did, and so we always cut ours off. But in MN in the winter, more and more types of greens are looking really good to me.

Happy Chinese New Year. :)

Haircut today.

After some discussion with my mother, we established the following things:

1.  Shaving doesn't count as your New Year's haircut:  only barbarians shave.  Plus, 'it's a shave, not a haircut' (although if you look at Mike's head, you really can't see what the difference is)

2.  Waxing your chin doesn't count as your New Year's haircut, because Chinese women don't get hair on their chin (this led to an extended discussion on gwai-lo genetics and 'I know exactly where you kid got dis from' and so forth).

3.  Trimming your bangs counts.

4.  Li-tse in the red envelope for under the pillow can be in the form of hard candy for small children, provided you make a substantial contribution to their college fund or other savings account.

(I didn't have the heart to tell her we're out of red envelopes.)

Steps. Sick. Music.

Steps yesterday:  5700
Steps today:  2540

I've caught Roo's head cold.  I think that's all I need to say about that.

Thanks to the wonderful Jaime, I was introduced to Peter Mulvey as an artist.

I found a 2 CD set of his:  brother rabbit speaks/rain for $5 today in the music store next to the hair salon, during my 1.5 hour break from sick-child-wranging today.

I'm only just listening to it now.  ("No, Mommy, I have to hear hear hear DRAGON tales!")