2 Little Rosebuds

I’ve always been a fan of Target. I even tried to work there back in the day. Three separate times. I never did get hired though, mainly because I was too punk rock to take out my lip/nose/eyebrow rings. Ah, youth.

Anywhooooo… It was only natural that when I found out I was pregnant, I opted to open a Baby Registry at Target.

My baby showers came & went, and we received a lot of the things I had registered for. Awesome. All we had to do was order a few more things that we hadn’t gotten. My mom offered to buy the changing table and Mike’s dad said he’d get the second crib. Again, awesome.

So we order the items & wait for them to arrive. First, we get the changing table/dresser. Mike puts it together the same day. About 2 hours into building it, he realizes that there’s a huge gouge in the top of the dresser — right in front, on the biggest piece. Ugh. Since it was pretty much all assembled, we decided to just live with it. Luckily the paint is still intact, but the gouge is definitely noticeable. Later, we noticed that the box was damaged too. Figures. That’s what you get for $30 shipping charges?

Then there’s the crib. All of the other packages were shipped via UPS, but for whatever reason the crib came in a big Enterprise truck. When I got up yesterday morning, I heard the truck & looked out my bedroom window. I watched the guy put it on a dolly & start wheeling it towards the house. I expected him to walk up the driveway to put it on the back porch, as all of the delivery dudes do. Oh, but not this guy… He wheeled it to my FRONT porch, carried it up the stairs and leaned it against the house for all the world to see. Nice.

So the huge box sat on the porch from 9am until 5pm when Mike got home from work. He brought it inside to open it up and shortly thereafter, I hear some very salty language. Turns out, the box looked like it had been attacked (and bitten) by a grizzly bear and the crib inside was damaged. The whole back/headboard thingy was cracked in half. Wonderful. Again, $30 in shipping well spent.

Today, after reading through the Target return policy online, I called customer service. I nicely explained the situation to a brain-dead rep who didn’t want to be bothered. He told me to return it to the store and they would replace it. I explained that it was an online-only item and he seemed confused. I then told him it was out of stock now, and there was a long pause… And then the call ended. Um… awesome customer service there, Target!

So now my father-in-law is stuck having to help Mike take the cumbersome crib back to Target, and we’ll have to order a replacement elsewhere. I just hope we can find the same one (and receive it intact) soon, since we already have one & it would be super lame to have mismatched cribs. Eff that!

Needless to say, I just sent Target a nice little complaint email. I think my frustration and inconvenience deserves a free gift card, no? 😉

Edit: WTF? Now it looks like shipping is free on orders over $75?? I hate you, Target.

I have a confession to make:

I’m a lazy cook.

Like, super lazy.

Sure, like any card-carrying herbivore, I have a nice little collection of vegan cookbooks propped up on a shelf above my stove. I even have a binder full of recipes that I’ve clipped out of magazines over the years. And copies of vegweb recipes scattered here and there.

Yes, I’m fully armed with the resources & inspiration to create a plethora of yummy, cooked-from-scratch vegan delicacies.

The problem? Recipes scare me. More specifically, crazy long lists of ingredients: A cup of this, a teaspoon of that, a dash of some random spice I’ve never heard of, a tablespoon of the juice of an exotic fruit that you can only buy in Chinatown during a lunar eclipse…

So it goes without saying that the first thing I do when I consider trying out a new recipe is jump down to the ingredient list. If there’s more than, say, 10 or so components, it’s a no-go.

With that said, I bring you one of my favorite, super easy go-to “recipes” for Yummy Vegan Pasta Salad. I used quotes because it’s really not much of a recipe, per say… More of a common sense list of ingredients that can be easily swapped for other things — perfect for the lazy cook!

I make this for summer gatherings & my (non-veg) family seems to dig it. I whipped up a batch for Memorial Day & I’ve been enjoying the leftovers all week. So good!

Wendy’s Super-Easy Vegan Pasta Salad

• 1 box of your favorite pasta (I used some kind of spinach/zucchini blend)
• 1 lb of carrots (7-8 medium sized), sliced
• 1 small can of garbanzo beans
• 1 red pepper, diced
• a few fork-fulls (real technical here, guys) of sliced green olives
• your preferred dressing of choice (I used Wegmans brand sub oil – sooo good!)

Boil the pasta, chop the veggies, run cold water over the pasta to cool it down before draining it & mixing all the veggies in. Add as much dressing as you like. Mix. Let it chill in the fridge for a bit, and enjoy! Bam! So easy!

Obviously you can throw in any other ingredients you’d like, and omit anything you don’t — except the pasta — that’s kind of important. 😉