Meatless Monday* - North Central High Salad

Summer ... when the living is easy. Unless you live in Houston, in which case summer is a string of 95 degree days with high humidity. I've learned to live with the particulars of summer living here -- blackout curtains, A/C cranked to the max, and finishing all strenuous activities by ten a.m. Cooking can be a real challenge. I try to keep cooking to the stovetop, because the oven will heat up the apartment and make the A/C nearly useless.

Whole grain and pasta salads are a perfect summer staple for just that reason. The only cooking needed is to boil water. In the past, I've included recipes for Greek Orzo Salad and Bulgur Wheat Summer Salad, two picnic and pot-luck favorites. Today, I'm going to add a third summer salad - North Central High Salad, a quinoa salad that's high in protein and deliciousness.

I've named this salad after my alma mater, North Central High School in Spokane, WA. Our colors were red and black, and this salad, because it uses black quinoa and tomatoes, echoes that color scheme.

This is black quinoa in the pot. The grains are smaller and nuttier-tasting than regular quinoa.

North Central High School Salad

Ingredients**

(This will make one, lunch-size serving)

1 cup black quinoa (you can use regular quinoa if black is not available). If you buy quinoa that is unwashed or from the bulk aisle, you should rinse it well with cold water to remove the bitter saponins, or outer coating of the seeds.

2 cups water

1 heirloom tomato

1/2 cucumber

3-4 sprigs lemon basil (if lemon basil is not available, you can use regular basil and add a squeeze of lemon juice to the dressing)

1 tsp. olive oil

2 tsp. rice wine vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Step 1: Boil the water and add the quinoa. Turn heat to low and simmer until the water is evaporated, about 15 minutes. Fluff with a fork and set aside. You'll use about a 1/2 cup for the salad. The rest you can save in the fridge and use in place of rice or as a protein addition to other salads (it's difficult to cook less than a cup at a time, so I recommend cooking more than you need for a single serving and then you've got a delicious treat for later!)

Step 2: Chop the veggies and basil. Mix with a 1/2 cup of quinoa.

Step 3: Make the dressing. Using a fork, mix the vinegar and oil. Sprinkle in salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the quinoa mixture and toss with a fork.

You could increase the recipe to make a big batch of this, or eat it for lunch yourself. All in all, this is a cool and refreshing way to eat this summer.

* Meatless Monday is a movement to increase awareness ofsustainable, meat-free eating, by eating meatless meals on Mondays. So alliterative!

** Of course, your meal will be more sustainable the more organic and local choices you make in your ingredients

Kisses!

So, in January, I made a New Year's resolution that I would start using beauty products that are healthier for me and the environment. As each product ran out, I vowed I would replace it with one that scored a hazard rating 5 or lower (out of 10) on the Skin Deep Cosmetics Safety Database. (Except for hair color. I'm not crazy. You shouldn't try to color your hair with anything less than industrial-grade chemicals).

How's that resolution going? you might ask. Catfish, you haven't written about it for quite awhile.

That's because I've settled into a routine with most of my beauty products. I've been using Burt's Bees shampoo and conditioner, and as far as I can tell my mineral foundation is fine (Skin Deep doesn't list the exact color I use, but most of the others in the line are a 3 ... except for one worrisome 7). I use Ivory soap on my face at night, and a Burt's Bees scrub in the morning.

I've given up hairspray with very little difference in my hair style.

But this past week, a tragedy occurred. I ran out of lipstick.

Now, a girl's lipstick is a very personal item. Vividly, I remember standing around while my mom tried sample lipsticks on her hand. I was taught that one doesn't leave the house without lipstick, even if everything else is a mess. I've simplified by relying on a single lipstick -- L'Oreal Colour Riche in the "colour" Milla's Plum. I originally chose it because it is named after the model and butt-kicking Resident Evil babe Milla Jovovich, who I've liked ever since she graced the pages of Sassy magazine.

Sassy Magazine. Best friend of every girl who grew up in the grunge era. RIP, Sassy.

Knowing I would have to buy a new lipstick, I turned with trepidation to Skin Deep. What I feared did occur -- Milla's Plum was a 7.

Damn.

I began searching for lipsticks with hazard ratings of 5 or lower, and found, to my happy surprise, that many common brands rated between a 3 or 5. Armed with a list, I headed off to Target -- I wanted something that I could find in any drug store in America, rather than a specialty brand that might not be available in a lipstick emergency.

I ended up settling on Revlon ColorStay Liquid Lipstick, in another plum color. It's a bit different than I'm used to -- as the name implies, it's a liquid that you smear on like lip gloss. It has a rather sticky consistency, but doesn't taste or smell weird (some of the more natural brands have menthol which makes your lips tingle and tastes minty). While the color isn't as deeply plummy as Milla's Plum, it has a nice pinky glow. All in all, not bad.

Muah! Thanks, Revlon! They are also known as one of the first major cosmetics companies to swear off animal testing.

And there's still a tiny bit of Milla's Plum left for special occasions.

Get Right

Lucinda Williams has a song I love called Get Right With God. In it, she describes all of the things she would do (handle snakes, sleep on nails) to get back in God's good graces. Well, after five weeks of traveling almost constantly, I feel like it's time to get right with my regular life. I've been eating hotel conference food -- which means a lot more poultry, salt, preservatives, and refined flour and sugar than I would normally eat -- , throwing away things I could recycle, and buying things that are unnecessary, but nice to have on airplanes (like cheesy magazines). All in all, I'm not feeling quite myself.

I started the process of getting right by hitting the Urban Harvest Farmer's Market this morning. Right away, I started feeling peppier as I saw all the people who were out on a day that promised to be swelteringly hot by ten a.m. Urban Harvest is a local organization that encourages city dwellers to grow food within the confines of the urban environment. While most of the vendors at their farmer's market are actual farmers, they also have a "Gardener's Corner" where people who've had a bumper crop in their own gardens can sell their wares.

Tomatoes, basil, melons, and blueberries were featured prominently today at the market.

I was even more excited to see the young people from the Emile Street Community Garden selling their produce. Emile Street is located in Houston's Fifth Ward, an inner city neighborhood bordering industrial lots, train tracks, and freeways. I bought some lemon basil from the two kids working there - one chatty young lady and a silent dude who was playing with a caterpillar. The young lady told me that the community garden is the only place in the neighborhood where you can find caterpillars and other creatures -- the rest of the neighborhood is too polluted (check out this month's Sierra Club magazine if you're interested in how pollution impacts low-income communities, featuring Houston activist Juan Parras).

My purchases - heirloom tomatoes, lemon basil, and blueberries

As I toted my purchases back home, dreaming of the salad I will have for lunch, I was feeling much more "right" with the world. Looking around the house -- piles of laundry, half-unpacked suitcase, semi-sorted mail -- I still have a lot to do, but I feel like I'm off on the right foot.

Happy Fourth of July!

Lately, the news has made it hard to focus on the good things about America, but truly, we're unbelievably lucky to live in this country. That doesn't mean I think we're flawless (far from it) but that we have a lot to be thankful for. Some online friends reminded me of that, so here's what I'm thankful for on our national day of celebration:

• The Constitution, and how it protects me - and especially for the amazingly brave women who fought to enfranchise my gender. Go 19th Amendment!
• The beauty of this amazing land. I'm lucky enough to travel frequently for work, and every time I fly into a new city, looking out at a new horizon -- I just think an inarticulate - wow!
• A country where a Russian immigrant (my great-grandmother) could marry a man from Guatemala (my great-grandfather), and where their daughter would meet and marry a man whose family had been here since the 1630's. Living in a country of immigrants may be one of my favorite things about America, and I'm so, so blessed that because of my father's work, I've also had the opportunity to experience the culture of this country's native people firsthand. One of my hopes for this country is that we can repair the damage we've done to so many people of so many races and ethnicities, and I'm inspired every day by the amazing people I work with, who are working tirelessly for social justice and who give me that hope.
• That we are free to say what we want. We can criticize, cajole, exclaim, philosophize, preach - on street corners, online, on the phone, on TV. For the most part, this freedom is protected, and we are allowed to set up an outcry when we feel it is being infringed upon.
• The Wire. And yes, I do think it's the great American novel. It just happened to be on TV.
• Hip-hop.
• Huckleberries.
• The possibilities of a system where every child has the right to a free education that could take her to college. I know we're not there yet, but we're working on it.

Watch what happens when big corporate and city government work together ...

I love this video, from Seattle's King 5 station, about how a big corporation (Starbucks) worked together with the city's recycling providers to figure out how their drink cups could be recycled.

And the incredibly attractive young mom you see in the video? It's my high school friend, Annie.