I can cook a lot of things very well, but I sure do suck at making pancakes.

These were made from a package of Bob’s Red Mill 10 grain pancake mix, and for the record, they were delicious despite their rather bedraggled appearance.

This is inevitably what happens every time I try to make pancakes: First batch, put too much batter in and everything melds together…

Second try: teensy blini-sized cakes that fit in the pan and come out quite nice…

Third: We have enough pancakes ready to be eaten but there’s still batter leftover and I don’t want to wait around flipping pancakes when I could be eating….so I just make one giant one with what’s left…

Some day, I will remember to use two pans and make smaller cakes from the start. Until then, ragged cakes for Jeff and teeny blinis for me! (It’s fun to say teeny blini over and over, try it!)

We’re headed out in a few minutes to go get sushi with some friends, see ya later!

Wanna know a secret???  Jeff is younger than me! 😀  We’re about 9 months apart, so in the winter we get just under 3 months of being the same age. I honestly never even think about it until this time of year rolls around.

For his birthday, we decided to just hit up somewhere really nice for dinner and grab cocktails somewhere after. Here’s how it all went down…

Abattoir (French for slaughterhouse) is a restaurant we’ve been meaning to visit for a long time and have just been waiting for the right occasion. Jeff and I are both interested in offal, the innards and other animal parts that are normally wasted in pursuit of the more standard cuts, and Abattoir happens to specialize in just that.

The dining room had a real rustic farmhouse type feel and was very casual and welcoming.

Jeff was super-excited to try everything on the menu!

Of course we started the evening by ordering a few adult beverages.  Jeff had a vieux carre cocktail and I opted to try a gluten-free beer called Estrella Duara, just out of curiosity.

I was really impressed that when we were brought a loaf of bread for the table, the woman bringing it (who I believe was a manager) asked us if we were able to have bread since she noticed I ordered the gluten-free beer. I thought that was really helpful and attentive to the dietary needs of customers, very nice.

We decided to try to order tapas style since there were so many dishes we wanted to try. We were particularly intrigued by the “food in a jar” section of the menu.

We settled on the duck rillettes, which is essentially a duck pate in a jar that is sealed with fat to preserve it. We spread it on crispy pieces of toast and it was sooooo good.

Next were the barbequed sweetbreads with a brussels sprout slaw.  Holy crap these were insane!

Jeff has tried sweetbreads once before on a business trip where he got to go to a famous molecular gastronomy restaurant. It was my first time trying them though so I didn’t know what to expect. I thought they would be kind of squeaky and fatty, but they were just soft and pleasant and the salty and tangy sauce was perfect on them.

After that we ordered an apple salad and a steak tartare. The salad was easily one of the best I’ve ever had with both roasted and dried apples and an acidic vinaigrette.

The steak tartare was so soft and so oniony!  You know how much I love onions, so this was just too perfect for me.

Jeff was losing his mind over it, he talked about this tartare for days afterward!

We wanted one more item so we got the pork fritters with pepper relish served over collards.

These were heavy but still delicious. We were both stuffed but had to order dessert. We got the maple panna cotta with caramelized bacon cookies.

Oh WOW.  One of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten! I was so full but just couldn’t keep my spoon out of it.

We had to give up with the finish line in sight, too full!

The sight of these little gems that came with the check was still welcome even after failing to finish our dessert.

Somehow we found room for them.  

Abattoir was super-awesome, it’s not every day we go to a restaurant where every single item we order is so astoundingly good. The staff is really friendly and helpful and the atmosphere is very relaxed for such fine dining.  We’ll be back!

We left from there and drove back to Decatur to meet some friends for drinks at Leon’s. John and Emily were waiting for us, it took them over an hour to get a table! Poor guys.

See! I took pictures of people this time! My friends do exist!

Sorry I snapped it when your eyes were closed, Em!

I love Leon’s. They always have the coolest seasonal cocktails to choose from. I started with Death & Company and switched to a Witch Hunt afterwards because John recommended it. Both were really good.

We hung around for about 2 hours and laughed and drank too much. It was a great time and Jeff said he had a wonderful birthday.

I love a good excuse to laugh it up and stay out too late, don’t you?

So, the month of November is over and with that, Vegan MoFo as well.

I had some fun aiming to create interesting vegan recipes (even when I failed) and reading through the enormous RSS feed of all the MoFo bloggers. There are a few new blogs I’ve added to my Reader and a few new recipes I found to test out sometime.

Here’s what didn’t happen: I didn’t decide to become a full-time vegan myself, which is kinda what I was testing out. I thought that I would see that it was so easy to be vegan that I could finally just make the jump and stick with it. Obviously that didn’t work out, seeing as I’ve reintroduced yogurt into my life in an effort to calm some digestive issues (which still seems to be working, BTW.)

I’ve been sick a lot this past month, with the digestive problems and with some sort of cold, which is one reason why it was hard to stick with and why I just really wanted it to be over so I could stop testing recipes and just lay around on the couch all day.

So here’s what I did learn this past month, and I didn’t learn it because of Vegan MoFo but I have waited til the end of the month to share it out of respect for Vegan MoFo: I realize that, not only am I not interested in being vegan, but that it’s also not fair for me to continue calling myself a vegetarian. In fact, it’s total BS for me to call myself a vegetarian. I really thought that I could stay true to that title but I’ve realized that that isn’t even what I want.

Jeff and I went to an amazing restaurant back on the 20th for his birthday and had a great time and tons of delicious food and I didn’t blog about it because I was embarrassed by it. I went thinking that I was going to order a salad and the vegetable risotto and be content with that. Instead, we had like 6 or 7 dishes together that were completely meat-centric and I loved every one of them.

The thing is, I didn’t feel guilty about eating the meat, I felt guilty that I didn’t feel guilty about eating the meat. I don’t know if that makes sense.

I realized that I’m way more afraid of the judgements I might receive for choosing to eat meat than I am affected by the actual act of meat-eating. I care about these issues, and I’m glad I’ve been asking myself all the questions about what I can feel good about putting in my body, but I just don’t think that this is my battle.

I know what goes on in factory farms. I’ve seen the cruelty and abuse, I really do get it. But when I see those images they don’t stir within me that feeling of abject horror that I feel like it should. Instead, I feel horrified by the gruesome process itself and the people who can enact it and live with themselves, not with the practice of meat-eating in general.

Put simply: I am not horrified by meat, I am horrified by cruel people.

I’m sure that there are some who would say that I am cruel if I can eat an animal and not feel guilt. I kind of think that I should feel that way, but I just can’t make myself feel something that I don’t. I know that for many vegetarians the idea of “humane slaughter” is an oxymoron, but for me it’s not, and I still want to do my best to find meats that I feel have been obtained humanely and ethically.

I am way more impassioned by issues around the labeling of GMO or cloned foods. It enrages me to think that someone can grow a meat-like substance in a lab and sell it as meat without having to label it as lab-made. That terrifies me. I don’t want to eat apples whose cells have been invaded by a virus that allows it to accept genes from another organism, like a sheep or tomatoes or coral, to make it express some new and advantageous trait. And the fact that I don’t know if the apple I’m buying is one of those mutant apples or just an ordinary apple, that scares the hell out of me.

I am horrified by Monsanto. Even mentioning that name makes my blood run cold. I’m waiting for the day that I get slapped with a million dollar lawsuit for growing a pot of basil on my back porch that has been contaminated by Monsantos’ patented seeds that naturally blew from another place and just happened to land in my pot. That kind of stuff is what really gets me upset. That is the kind of thing that inspires activism in me. That is more likely to become my crusade than vegetarianism.

So here’s the deal: I naturally gravitate toward a low-meat diet anyway, so it’s not like I’m trying to warn you that I plan on cooking steaks every night or anything. I really just don’t want to spend any more time apologizing on this blog when I eat meat. I’m no longer willing to put labels on myself or my eating habits because I’m just going to end up pissing people off when I don’t live up to them all the time. I have no problem telling you that a dish I made is vegan or vegetarian or gluten-free or whatever, but I’m just going to stop putting those labels on myself as well.

To all you vegans and vegetarians out there fighting for the rights of animals and for what you believe to be right, keep fighting! I’m on your side even if I’m not on your team.

And tomorrow, I’m going to blog about Jeff’s birthday dinner because the food was awesome, we had a great time, and I no longer feel guilty about it. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but I can’t keep lying to myself about how I want to eat and thereby lie to you as well.