Skipped meals

It's been inordinately insane here at VV headquarters. You've missed a few of my meals. Allow me to fill you in.

Canadian winters are awesome for some things, namely cooling things off quickly. Put it outside and it'll be cool in no time! 
 

This pie was stupidly good. I'm not a food photographer and this photo looks particularly gross, but trust me-- vegetables in pie format are an experience unmatched. I can't believe I actually bothered to make this pie, as I've been thinking about it for months. My good pal Kevin made this pie a few months ago and gave me a slice. His was a ten (at least), and my first attempt here was a 7.5-- but still stupidly great. The recipe can be found here.
 

Oh yeah, I had a party for Lunar New Year. I forgot to take photos, so I staged these ones after the fact. 
 

One of my lovely guests, Laura, suggested it would be fun to put flowering tea in the Crystal Head vodka bottle. She was right. After the guests left, Bruce begged me to make cookies, so we made these peanut butter pillows. Also stupidly good and highly recommended. 
 

I wish a few things about this soup. I wish a) that I copied down the recipe that I made up, b) that I took the time to make this next-day soup like I did the day before, c) that I put enoki mushrooms in this soup. Basically, the soup I made for the Lunar New Year party was perhaps the best soup I've ever made and I have no idea how to recreate it.  DAMN, though! Some day I'm just kickin' it, I will make this happen again. The main culprits: shitake mushroom/kombu dashi/broth, shitakes, kombu, turnip, cabbage, yam noodles (they have 0 calories and are awesome), carrots cut in rolling wedges a la Cooking with Dog, and fried tofu balls. I think I threw in some sake and some soy sauce too. The first soup (complete with enoki mushrooms) simmered for hours. This was obviously part of the awesomeness.  

I was teaching at the nutrition school this week, and I got the students to track where their food came from for a few days. I was so stressed out I hardly made a decent meal for myself all week, rather opting for mass amounts of sauerkraut and homemade garlic mayo delivered on various carby vehicles. A couple days ago, I grabbed a stir fry pack from the health food store which contained a lot of peppers. I don't generally buy peppers during the winter because they come from far away, but since the stir fry mix is cuttings from vegetables that would otherwise be thrown out, I feel it's okay. Anyway, this looks pretty hilarious-- like a plate of Chinese food with red sauce-- but really it's just a simple stir fry with beet-stained tofu. 

Tonight's awesome meal contained onions (I had one tiny one in the crisper) and sesame oil since Bruce is at work. Here we have balsamic-maple brushed baked tofu, maple-nutmeg mashed turnip, arame and carrots with onion, cabbage and black and white sesame. Oh yeah, and pickled beets, 'cuz they're the bomb.