Sophia's Rock Beat: January 2012 part I

The return of Sophia's Rock Beat (FB)! First! What is SRB? Sophia goes to local shows. Sophia video-records these shows. Then Sophia posts them on the internet. It's a thing. Seriously, you want me at your show, let me know- and make it worth my while! sophia@donotforsake.com.

January is going to be a bit concise, since I saw a lot and I've been too busy to write anything up.
We started off the year at Great Scott on 1/7 to see Full Body Anchor and Naked on Roller Skates (we sadly missed Tijuana Sweetheart who were also on the bill - we had bad parking karma).
Full Body Anchor (FBA video 2, FBA video 3)



Naked on Roller Skates (NORS video 2, NORS video 3)




Next up was the 1/14 Release Party for Darling Pet Munkee's Glows in the Dark at Radio (I don't usually pimp my own bands in this column - but I'm going to do what I want!) Here is: Darling Pet Munkee- Monster S-I-Z-E Monsters and here we are doing Brand New Cadillac. The Invisible Rays opened the evening with their psychedelic instrumental "prog-art rock" -  (TIR video 2, TIR video 3, TIR video 4) with crazed projections:



 Next, were the garage-amazingness of The Downbeat 5 (tDB5 video 2)

 

 and Gozu took us home with the metal (Gozu Video 2, Gozu Video 3)



 1/27 we made it to Radio and just caught the very end of 28 Degrees Taurus (so no video of them) but we did catch Muy Cansado and The Sterns. Muy Cansado, as always, brought a good time (MC video 2, MC Video 3)



 The Sterns are back! (TS video 2, TS video 3)

What These Vegans Eat: January 2012

	WHY WHAT THESE VEGANS EAT? I'm tired of people asking me what Mike and I eat. Would an omnivore have an easy time answering this question? Mostly, we eat vegetables/grains/legumes/fruit. I cook everything I can in my trusty cast-iron pan. I tend to lean towards stick-to-your-ribs one pot meals that come together in about a half an hour. We're trying to be good and eat more salad. Once a week, I'm going to post about all of the dinners I made the week previous-hopefully it will clear up any lingering questions. I haven't been keeping up as well as I would have liked, BUT here's a smattering of January!
	Chickpea and swiss chard sandwich! and a side of mujaddara (lentils and brown rice cooked together)
	the picture is terrible because I forgot to put it on the plate and photo it BUT buffalo tofu! all I did was open the package, cut it up, then breaded it straight (just with breadcrumbs) from the package using it's own wetness. then I cooked it for about 1/2 hour by itself, then flipped them and poured hot sauce all of them and baked for about five more minutes. easy and delicious. I made them again soon after with panko and they were extra crunchy.
	I bought a cast iron crepe pan so I made the savory chickpea crepes from the Candle Cafe cookbook again. the filling was a tofu scramble with fresh lentils and collard greens.
	veggie chili (sweet potato, black beans, corn, etc) with skillet corn bread!
	Quinoa with a curry of black eyed peas, sweet potatoes, tofu, chard!
	Vegan Yum Yum donuts! These cook up quick in the convection oven, and it makes six, so there's a tiny bit of built in portion control.
	PIZZA! with roasted kale, tofu scramble, red onions, avacado
	Meatball sub: iggys bread, fake meatballs from Trader Joes, pizza sauce, and daiya mozzarella, cooked up in the toaster oven.
	Broccoli polenta (from Veganomicon) and mashed potatoes with a pinto bean gravy!
	Scalloped potatoes (also from Veganomicon) - so yummy.
	Cashew sauces have been all the rage in the vegan community and while I've been able to enjoy them MJE cannot due to his nut allergy - so I was excited when the PPK posted this recipe for a sunflower cheesy pasta sauce. My food processor didn't smooth the seeds out as much as I would have liked but the sauce was still delicious (despite the kind of gross photo!) Recipe.
	Mustache Mug! with waffles! these were banana from Veganomicon (I guess I've been cooking from that a lot recently!)
	These are banana split brownies - they are my favorite brownie recipe (from Vegan with a Vengeance) - and they are a delicious way to use up 4-5 bananas if they are starting to go bad on your counter!

A Tree Falls in Somerville (on our house...well almost) - videos of the aftermath

We woke up to a crazy sound today! We had thought that maybe a car drove into our front porch area. Instead, a tree had been partially knocked over by the wind. It hit our porch overhang causing minor damage, smashed a car parked out in front of our house, ripped our neighbor's power line/bar off their house, and dented our wrought-iron gating. Luckily, no one was injured and there was no major damage to any houses.

Amazingly, the city had the whole thing cleared in about 2 hours. Pretty impressive, particularly for a Sunday. I can't imagine all those people that had trees go through their roofs during the recent hurricane and tornadoes. We are thankful not to have any serious damage or injuries on hand here.



Some video showing the initial ordeal:


Tree Removal:
 

DNFMOMD: Sleepover Shows video session!

Sleepover Shows (one of our favorite video sessions blogs) found us in our natural habitat, hanging out with Rover, and caught a couple of acoustic numbers from us, including the worldwide debut of our new song "Episode 15: The Girl Who Was Death." We were joined by the incredible Susannah Plaster (who is in The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library) on viola on "Episode 1: Arrival" and "Episode 12: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling." Sleepover Shows just celebrated their 100th show (see our blog post here with past collaborations) - we are thrilled to be their 101! Flesh and bone by the telephone, here are the videos (and be sure to check Sleepover Shows' site for the write-up!)

"Episode 1: Arrival" featuring Susannah Plaster on viola:



"Episode 12: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" featuring Susannah Plaster on viola



"Episode 15: The Girl Who Was Death" (from SoSs: "This song is so new that the band had just finished writing and rehearsing it when we arrived")

HUGE Congrats to Sleepover Shows on their 100th Show!

We just wanted to pass along a huge congratulations to our friends at Sleepover Shows for hitting their 100th show today with the awesome Deer Tick!


In addition to this fine 100th session, they've put out a ton of awesome sets including (and there are so many more great ones!):  OK Go, Wye Oak, Pearl and the Beard, The Seedy Seeds, Cloud Cult, Frightened Rabbit, David Wax Museum, Walter Sickert and the ARmy of BRoken TOys, Kingsley Flood, and The Low Anthem.

We've had the amazing pleasure of working with them a few times as well:

http://sleepovershows.com/occupy-boston-music-and-protest




http://sleepovershows.com/michaeljepsteinmemoriallibrary



http://sleepovershows.com/holidays2011



...and coming soon, a session with Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling!

UPDATE 2-9-12: The full DNFMOMD Session has arrived