Ah, that's better.

Now that's the salad I would have loved to make last night. Roasted beets, beet greens, orange slices and plenty of garlic.

I made it for myself in celebration of (I'm pretty sure) doing very well on my Italian placement exam. Now I just have to get through the consent workshops and I can move on to the fun part of my day.

Ma, non voglio.

Already my blissful period before classes start is starting to get stressful. Tomorrow I not only have to take an Italian placement exam (Me augura buona fortuna) but I have to give a presentation to college freshman on consent and sexual assault. I myself was a college freshman just one year ago and I remember that presentation; it did not go well for the facilitators involved. Hopefully my group will be more responsive and less sexist and demeaning, but perhaps that's too much to hope for from 18 year olds.

I'm honestly becoming slightly afraid about how the kitchen and cooking situation is going to work out once there are five people sharing it instead of two. I'm the only vegan in my suite and from what I know of their Costco purchases, the rest of my suitemates seem to regard EasyMac and Bagel Bites as staple foods. I'm pretty well disgusted by the amount of cheese lacto-ovo vegetarians rely on, but perhaps their penchant for microwaveable foods will mean that I'll have easy access to the kitchen for when I want to roast some beets or whip up a nice pot of soup.

Tonight's dinner was out with my roommate while we waited for her tattoo appointment. I was thrilled to go with her to her tattoo appointment and have some unconventional roommate bonding, but I was not thrilled about having to pay $14 for a salad in Herald Square. I would have gladly made us a much better salad back home (and a vegan one at that), but I stuck to my usual strategy of not confronting people. This seemed like a time to just let it go.

But in the future: watch out!

The Christening

As thrilled as I am to be back in New York after three months away, I may be even more excited about the fact that I now have a kitchen to come home to. Not only does it make vegan living a hell of a lot tastier than relying on my university's dining hall, but I find cooking an incredibly relaxing and enjoyable way to end the day.

To celebrate my newfound ability to cook for myself here at school, I went down to the Union Square Greenmarket and picked up some baby beets, red chard, plums, yellow cherry tomatoes, and peppers and eggplants in assorted and unusual colors. Behold, the result of my opening foray into preparing my own food:

A roasted orange pepper stuffed with lentils, quinoa, onions, garlic, and jalapeño and sauteed chard with red wine vinegar.

It wasn't quite as spiced as I might have liked and I turned our small kitchen into a disaster, but overall I was quite pleased. As the year goes on I plan to amass a much greater collection of spices and sauces as well as learn how to take up less space while I'm cooking (an invaluable skill when you're sharing a tiny kitchen with four other people).

Stay tuned as I document my vegan cooking and living adventures, with a little bit of kvetching thrown in just for good measure.