Every Day is a Dog Day

I just sat down after a good long day of work and dog walking. Every Wednesday I walk the dogs at the Fargo-Moorhead Humane Society, and those dogs never fail to make me happy. They end up there because of bad luck or neglect or plain old rotten circumstances, but they usually end up in good home pretty quickly. It's nice to know there are so many individuals and families here who give these dogs a second chance. There was another puppy mill bust in Minnesota today - though it's not clear yet whether this operation will actually be shut down, or if the owner will just pay the fines and keep on exploiting these animals for a quick buck. It's so frustrating. This place had over a thousand dogs, and the usual littany of terrible conditions and abuses. Whenever something like this goes down, Otter and Maya get extra hugs when I get home.
On to food - I have a few random photos of foodness from the last week. It has been so nice here lately - we're in that perfect stretch of summer when the winds die down and the sunsets come a little earlier each evening, reminding us to savor this while it lasts. For that reason, I don't get to the computer until the late hours of the day. Anyway, here we go:

Scrambled tofu on English muffins, with your standard issue vegan cheese sauce - some nutritional yeast here, a little tahini there. Honestly, I botched the sauce because I was in a hurry for no good reason. Still edible, but I'll be back someday with the badass vegan Trucker's Skillet recipe that will claim breakfast for vegans forever. Next...
General Tso's Tofu! I won't be modest - this rocked. The spinach is there because everything I eat these days includes spinach from the garden, except maybe the odd peanut butter sandwich...but that might work too. And furthermore...

Here's my first cucumber, peeled and chopped and mingling with a tomato that was so ripe it felt like a water balloon in my hand. Toss with olive oil and a smidge of salt, and with four ingredients you have the best salad/side you'll find. According to me. Que mas?

Last night's soup, with lentils and zucchini and a mess of collard greens. I'm up to my neck in collards, and not complaining. And the parting shot...

How did people go on and on about their gardens, to the amusement of none, before the internet? My garden is getting all chaotic and unruly. Example: this cucumber, which has taken up residence on one of my eggplants. I planted one little cucumber plant, which I thought wouldn't make it because it was so wet here in May and June. Undeterred, it proceeded to take over it's corner of the garden, and climb up the nearby evergreen tree and onto the surrounding plants. My eggplants are just getting ready to pop, so I hope to be back rocking the eggplant parm and garlic eggplant stirfry and grilled eggplant and all types of eggplant madness. Until then, I'm going back outside.