Vegan chocolate cake

But not even a recipe for you look at! Soy una blogstress mala. Sorry!

Listening to

Bangs: Sweet Revenge
The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Black 47: Fire of Freedom
The Dismemberment Plan: Is Terrified

Sweet potato fries; vegetable contest; prized baking sheets

The North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission is probably a little biased, but sweet potatoes really might be the healthiest, vitaminiest vegetable, as the NCSPC purports. Another org (not the sweet potato people) rated 58 vegetables by calculating the percentages of USRDA for Vitamins A and C, iron, calcium, folate, copper, and fiber. Sweet potatoes got the highest score out of the 58 veggies... 582 points. Raw carrots rolled in at a distant second at 434.

Sweet potatoes are almost fat-free, until you fry* them in oil! That's what we did last weekend, because I love oven fries with my veggie burger.

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*Actually, we bake our fries, because deep-frying is a slippery slope, my friends. We just give them a light coat of a nice, fruity olive oil, sprinkle on a little sea salt, then bake them at 400 degrees on an inexpensive cookie sheet. (Ben and I have one cheapy cookie sheet from the grocery store that is allowed to get greasy and messed up and thrown in the garbage after 6 or 8 months. Our nice ones are sacred, though.)

Knitted beet!

I almost forgot! Here's some documentation of the knitted beet I made for Beet Fest 2008! The thing was warmly received, passed around, and wondered at. Several women were simultaneously awed and disappointed that No Pattern Existed. (Amateurs! Just start knitting, that's how we do it in art skool.) The beet is made of chenille and the leaves are a wool/silk mix. When it comes to art materials, I am a total freegan.

Below: cute beet-curl; lace leaves.

All hail the Beet Queen!

Ben and I had a lot of fun at the eleventh annual Beet Fest! We wandered Barry and Tami's astoundingly beautiful acreage, ate like animals, admired the vegetable gardens, played foozball, and much more, I assure you. All I can say is, at one point I was shaking a maraca so energetically that I felt sure my right hand would fall off. I wasn't chosen Beet Queen 2008 (neither was Ben, for that matter, although the competition* isn't gender-specific), but I'm genuinely happy for the fellow who will be reigning Beet Queen for the next twelve months (see above). Before the selection process began, I heard the soon-to-be-Beet-Queen tell his pals, "I'm going for it. I'm totally going for it."

*It's more of a mystical, beet-oriented lottery.

Below: Tami (first Beet Queen, eleven years ago) with another former Beet Queen and Beet Queen 2008; Tami being adorable; Beet Parade; royal beet court; beet-headed monster; newly-crowned Beet Queen; Barry driving the beet float; Beet Parade.











































































































And, finally, below, my husband. You can't see the beet juice on his forehead, due to my identity-protecting Adobe Illustrator doodle, but we were all anointed with beet juice at the welcoming ceremony. Ben is so very not the hippie parade type, but since he is a classically trained percussionist the man knows his way around a tambourine: