The train ride at the zoo, with its psychedelic mushroom people peeking out of the ashe juniper trees, the satellite dish UFO and aliens, never fails to crack me up, no matter how many times I’ve been on it before.

Roasted Chickpeas

• 2 15-oz cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1/4 C olive oil
• 5-6 cloves garlic, minced (about 2 Tbs)
• salt and pepper to taste
• space

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  After draining and rinsing, pat chickpeas dry with a paper or clean kitchen towel.  Toss chickpeas, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper in a large bowl until chickpeas are coated in oil.  Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Roast 40 minutes, or until chickpeas are crunchy, stirring occasionally while roasting.  Cool 5 minutes, then serve immediately.

Fair warning: If left out on the table, these chickpeas may attract small, somewhat feral-looking children:

Red Lentil Hummus

Serve this dip with fresh bread or raw veggies, or serve as a sandwich spread with fresh tomato, spinach, carrot and thinly sliced red onion.  Adapted from a recipe in La Dolce Vegan:

• 1 C red lentils
• 1 1/2 C water
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 3 Tbs flax oil
• juice of 1 small lemon (about 1/4 C)
• 1-2 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp salt
• space

In a medium pot bring lentils and water to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes.  Remove from heat, cover and let stand for 15 minutes.  In a food processor blend the cooked lentils, oils, lemon juice, garlic, cumin and salt until smooth.  Makes around 2 cups.

This embarrassingly easy soup is vegan and gluten-free, but it somehow manages to taste like chicken.  Ben ate it, and that’s no easy seal of approval for a legume soup to earn.  Without further ado, the ingredients:

• 2 small onions (or 1 large onion), chopped
• 4 medium carrots, chopped
• 4 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 6 C veggie broth
• 1 C long grain or basmati brown rice
• 1 C yellow split peas
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp salt
• space

In a medium soup pot on medium heat, saute onions, carrot and celery in olive oil until the onions are translucent.  Add broth, rice, split peas and basil and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes, or until the rice and peas are cooked.  Add salt toward the end of cooking time.

Remove from heat and use an immersion blender to blend the chowder until smooth, or until you get the texture you want.  I left some pieces of carrot, rice and peas in ours tonight. It was delicious with a garden salad on the side. I’m guessing this recipe could very easily be adapted for a slow cooker.

Prickly pear

Some kind of sotol? or yucca?

Deer track in our campsite

Great Blue Heron, on the lake near Devil’s Waterhole

Camp kitchen

Cooking pouches of camp fire apples on New Year’s Eve!

Playing “sink or float?” in small pools of water in the gneiss rock

After dinner

Pencil cactus

White-tailed deer

Playing in our campsite while Nathan and I broke camp New Year’s Day

Happy New Year, friends and family.  Here’s to continuing the adventure in 2012.

Here’s Ben’s finished creation:

And here are some of his friends’ gingerbread people.

I don’t remember who made this one:

Or this one:

But here’s Beck with his decorated gingerbread:

Here’s Margot with hers:

And here’s Kate’s:

What?  Ahem.

It was a great party; we were happy to attend and to celebrate the whimsy and imagination of the winter holidays with our preschool friends.  Hope you’re all enjoying holiday parties that warm and inspire you, too.

Adapted from La Dolce Vegan

Hot and Sour Soup

• 4 C veggie broth
• 2 C water
• 3 Tbs tamari
• 2-in piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1-2 tsp garlic Asian chili sauce
• 2 small-med carrots, grated
• 3 oz oyster mushrooms, chopped
• 1/4 C rice vinegar
• 8 oz. package extra firm tofu, pressed and cubed
• 2/3 C frozen sweet peas
• space

In a medium soup pot, bring broth and water to a boil. Reduce heat and add tamari, ginger, garlic, sugar, chili sauce, carrots and mushrooms. Simmer for 8-10 minutes. Remove from heat and add vinegar, tofu and peas. Cover and let sit 5 minutes before serving.  Serves 4-6. We ate our soup with brown rice and veggie pot stickers on the side.

I *loved* this soup. It was even delicious leftover. Nathan said he liked the soup and would be interested in having it occasionally.  Other Sunrise Ruby family members ate only the tofu out of the soup. *Shrugs* Can’t please everyone all the time.

We decorated our Christmas tree this afternoon, just the four of us.  Then we went out for dinner at a new Indian restaurant near our house.  Then we drove around looking at Christmas lights, while the children enjoyed the dum dums that the owner of the Indian restaurant kindly gave them when we left.

If I could bottle today and save it forever, I would.