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Love Story: K and Linus 2 Years later (& Vegan Thanksgiving)

Posted on November 22, 2008 by Linus Posted in Daily life, Gratitude, Life, recipes .

Wow. Hard to believe that two years have passed. K and I first met online just over two years ago. And two years ago on Thanksgiving I asked her out officially. Our first year was hard because of distance and life’s challenges but we survived it. Every day I realize how lucky I am to not only have a job, a roof over my head and a path to where I’m going but also have this beautiful woman beside me. There are times where her beauty makes me want to cry in joy and love. Most people are shocked at our age difference but quite honestly, I’ve never noticed. With K I feel totally alive, younger than I am and whole. We laugh lots. We’re silly at times. We have great “adult fun” and we even just enjoy being with each other. I’m totally thankful that this woman walked into my life when I least expected it. And hope that it lasts the entire rest of my lifetime.

I love you, K!

Tonight I made a tofurky for us as well as mashed vegan sweet potatoes with a mushroom gravy since we won’t be together for Thanksgiving (she’s visiting family back in Los Angeles).

Linus’ Vegan Mashed Sweet Potatoes:

4 regular yams/sweet potatos
2 Idaho potatos
2 small onions, chopped
4-5 shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced and chopped
4-5 garlic cloves, diced
olive oil to coat pan in
soy spread
mushroom broth
ground sage
1-2 tbsp of vanilla soy creamer
salt
pepper
garlic powder/salt
onion salt

Clean and cut the potatos into chunks. Put into a pot of boiling water and let boil until all are soft. In a pan, sautee and brown chopped onions on med-low heat in olive oil. I use a heavy iron skillet and add water when the onions potentially stick (about 4-5 min). Stirring often can lessen sticking problems When the onions are browned, add garlic and sautee until brown (about 2-3 min). Finally, add mushrooms and sprinkle salt, pepper and sage. Mix it thoroughly and turn heat to low and cover.

While the mushrooms/onion mix is cooking, draining the potatos and put back into the pot. Mash with fork or wooden spoon if masher isn’t available. Add soy spread, 1/4 cup at a time. In regular mashed, milk is used to make them creamy. In vegan option, soy spread can be used. Add soy creamer to help. As the mixture becomes more and more creamer, add salt, pepper, galic powder/salt and onion powder to taste.

Once mushroom/onion mix is cooked, mix into potatos. Serve hot.

Linus Mushroom gravy (modified from Tofurky recipe):

4 cups of organic mushroom broth
1/2 cup of unbleached flour (although I used wheat flour)
2 tbsp of olive oil
4-5 shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
sage
salt
pepper
5-6 drops of Louisanna Hot sauce

In a pan, sautee and brown chopped onions on med-low heat in olive oil. I use a heavy iron skillet and add water when the onions potentially stick (about 4-5 min). Stirring often can lessen sticking problems When the onions are browned, add garlic and sautee until brown (about 2-3 min). Finally, add mushrooms and sprinkle salt, pepper and sage. Mix it thoroughly and turn heat to low and cover.

In a pot mix the olive oil and flour, heating at low-med heat. Add broth. Cook thorough, mixing with a whisk to ensure all the lumps are gone. As it heats it will thicken. Once thick, add mushroom/onion mix. Cover and heat on low-med heat, stirring out lumps occassionally. This should take about 10 min. Then add hot sauce and continue to cook on low for another 10 min.

1 Comment .
Tags: cooking, Life, love, recipe, recipes, vegan .

Polls Results: My transition and veganism

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Linus Posted in Daily life .

Thanks to everyone who participated, ya bunch of nosy nellies! LOL.

Seriously, I see that everyone wants to know about my transition and what it’s like. It’s not a bad thing. I’m an educator by nature and trade, and I have no problem showing the world what it’s like to go through this with the experience of half of a life already lived. I’m not like other transgendered/transsexuals who always knew they were born in the wrong body from age 2. I’m more like the country mouse who is in awe of all the things that are different and available to me now that I do know. And I guess that makes it interesting.

The second topic of interest is veganism and vegan recipes. Hey, I have no argument there. I do love to cook and I love to eat (as shown by my expanding waistline — why couldn’t muscles just grow from eating so much!?). Anyways, based on these results I’ll continue to primarily talk about the transition process based on my experience with a few posts on vegan issues and vegan recipes.

That said, given that transition was really big I am looking for some advice. Clean shaven? Beard? Moustache? You decide!

4 Comments .
Tags: cooking, Life, poll, recipe, transgender, transition, vegan .

Vegan Recipes: Quick things for lunch and dinner

Posted on October 17, 2008 by Linus Posted in vegan stuff .

I’ve created some on-the-fly recipes for those moments I don’t want to spend lots of time in the kitchen to make things. The following three are quick lunch/dinner recipes but do require some prep beforehand.

1. Quick “creamy” spaghetti

For this recipe, prepare your spaghetti as usual. We prepare a whole box in advance and save it in the fridge. We then take what we want in regards to the pasta, put it in a bowl, pour our favourite vegan tomato sauce over it (we’ve found a few brands that don’t list any animal products in them) and then add some pats of vegan soy spread (Earth Balance). Microwave for about a min, take out, mix and then add spices to flavouring. Enjoy. It actually reminds me of those cans of spaghetti I used to have as a child. K adds Nutritional Yeast to hers to give it a nutty flavour.

2. Seitan, Hummus and Tomato Toasted Sandwich.

We actually don’t have a toaster so we toast our bread in a pan. I then take about 3-6 minutes to sautee some seitan stripes. The seitan can either be store bought or you can make your own (see recipes here). Once the bread is toasted, I put hummus on each side and slice the tomato thinly, layering it on each piece of bread. The seitan is flavoured with various spices (I tend to go basic and use salt and pepper or use the spicy seitan recipe). Once the seitan is cooked to my liking, I layer the thin slices onto the bread, close the top, add a side pickle.

3. Quick salad.

As much as I liked my hot meals and prepared food, sometimes I need something simple. I’ve been trying to introduce less processed and more natural (raw?) diet. Take a head of romaine, chop it into small bite sizes. Put into bowl. Dice a tomato and a red pepper. Mix. Add vegan dressing of choice (I’ve been using a balsmatic shitake mushroom one of late) and then enjoy. I also often enjoy this without dressing and sometimes add a handful of chopped baby spinach.

All-in-all each recipe takes about 10 minutes to finally prepare. And that’s really handy when the days start at 6am and don’t finish until 7pm.

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Tags: recipe, recipes, seitan, vegan .

Simple Vegan Recipe and living off the grid

Posted on September 21, 2008 by admin Posted in Life, transgender, Traveling/Work, vegan stuff .

As K and I start getting into far busier schedules, I decided to see what other things I could do with seitan — particularly something that could go for a few days and allow us some flexibility when it came to microwaving it. I was thinking about a stew and then I remembered I have a slow cooker/steamer/fryer contraption. Perfect! Stews are amongst the easiest to make — essentially you do the following:

– cut up veggies into bite sized chunks

– add broth

– slow cook for 6-8 hours

And that’s exactly what I did. Here’s what I created:

In the slow cooker I added:

1 package of sliced mushrooms
2 parsnips, diced
1 bag of frozen carrots, sliced
3 potatoes diced
3 celery stalks, sliced
1 onion sliced in large chunks (it’ll break up as it cooks)
1/3 of the seitan recipe, diced and sauteed in seitan broth
2 cups of seitan broth
4 cups of vegetable broth
1/4 of fresh parsley, loosely chopped
3 tablespoons of minced garlic
basil, sage, rosemary, salt and pepper to taste

Set the slower cooker to low and let bubble and cook for 6-8 hours. A slice of bread plain or with vegan butter adds to this. It’s incredibly tasty.

To me this just shows that you don’t need to order out to get quick meals. With this we now have meals for the week and we could easily freeze half for later. The best part of slow cooker cooking is that it’s relatively simple: prepare the ingredients, toss into the cooker and come back later in the day to it.  I’m not the greatest cook and certainly can be the laziest but I also believe in being creative. Later today I may make some Pecan Chocolate Chip cookies. If I could find some vegan caramel, I’d add that to it and make the cookies I loved from Tim Horton’s when I used to cycle a lot. This is why I like it better when I’m in the NYC area to teach — I can relax more and enjoy life more.

I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t know if I could do this for 10 years. Then again, I’m hoping to transition to course development with a bit of either online teaching or on-the-road teaching on the side. Then I could limit my travel to maybe 20-30% and spend more time at home. This will be more critical as I get closer to the end of my visa. Year 1 is almost over and I only have 2 more years to go (unless I can get an extension for another 2 years after that). I worry a lot about whether my transitioning while on a visa will affect my ability to get that extension or get a green card. I listened to K’s DVD Off the Grid and I know I’d very much like to do that.

I have more thoughts on that but need to take off to see a movie with K. Back later! 🙂

2 Comments .
Tags: off the grid, recipe, transgender, vegan, visa, work .

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