In which you are what you eat and I am a mystery

On June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I very nearly ended today’s earlier post with a suggestion that I might take a couple of days off. I deleted it on account of no I fucking won’t, so of course here I am a few hours later with a second post for the day.

We are doing a vegetarian week this week. This is not as big of a deal as it might sound; while I am very much a fan of meat and remaining a vegetarian for my entire life is not really something I’m interested in doing, I’ve been eating veggie burgers for lunch for like two weeks and I enjoy eating damn near everything vegetarians eat. So a week of being a vegetarian is really not a terribly difficult thing to do.

At least, when I’m paying attention.

The boy wanted McDonald’s for lunch today, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to tell him no, so we went. I toned down what I usually get on account of I’m trying to pay more attention to eating better in general (yes, I know McDonald’s is not progress in the “eat better” department, but at least I had less of it) and I swear to you that it took until well after I was finished with my lunch to realize that a McDonald’s Daily Double is made of meat.

Which, you need to understand here, this is a category error on my part, and not me just forgetting that I was a vegetarian this week. There’s been at least one vegetarian week where there was pizza at work and I absent-mindedly had a slice of pepperoni without thinking about it. This isn’t that. This is a McDonald’s Daily Double does not process in my brain as a cheeseburger, and it did not even occur to me to think that those two delicious, peppery patties were meat. What the fuck are they? They’re Daily Double patties, apparently. Made of what? Love and cholesterol. Sure as hell not meat.

I’m a lot of things, but “bright” ain’t one of them.

7:45 PM, Tuesday June 16th: 2,134,973 confirmed cases and 116,854 Americans dead.

In which tofu is delicious

On May 17, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking5 Comments

…okay, none of the small number of vegans I know are like this at all, and at least one of them is an outstanding cook, but I have to admit I was laughing so hard I was crying by about halfway through this video– enough to get it posted to the blog instead of Facebook or Twitter.

In which this is not the meat you’re looking for

On January 30, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking12 Comments

Yes, that’s spaghetti.

But that isn’t ground beef, nor is it sausage.

Longtime readers know that I dabble with vegetarianism occasionally, and that I enjoy me a tasty boca burger from time to time. Meat substitutes intrigue me. Some of them are better than others, and some of them are just good on their own merits. Boca chicken, for example, tastes enough like chicken for me, but Boca burgers don’t taste like meat at all. They’re still good, because lots of things that don’t taste like meat are good.

Some of the Subways in Chicago had a veggie patty that was goddamn delicious, but none of the ones in Indiana seem to have it. It’s very depressing.

Anyway, a couple of months ago I suddenly saw a bunch of articles all in a short period of time about Beyond Meat, a company that was so insistent that their plant-based meat substitutes were indistinguishable from meat that the CEO was insisting that, chemically, they actually were meat. I can’t find any of the articles now, unfortunately, but this page on their website makes a similar claim. Key to their definition: you have to call it “meat” because of what it is, not what it comes from.

Available at Whole Foods, starting in January. Well, OK. There’s a Whole Foods in town, and I’d needed an excuse to go pop in anyway, so I used part of my free day off yesterday to go check the place out. I came home with some Beyond Beef Beefy Crumbles, which were around $5 for about 11-12 ounces.

Preparation was exactly the same as ground beef; I tossed it in a frying pan with a little bit of olive oil and sautéed it. I made the tomato sauce from scratch, and after tasting and seasoning it a bit I tossed it into the tomato sauce and let the meat and sauce live together for a little bit.

So here’s the skinny on Beyond Meat: It looks and cooks basically exactly like meat. I don’t think anyone would look at that picture and not recognize ground beef or sausage. And so long as you season it and put it with something, it tastes fine. But you know how whenever you make a meat sauce with pasta, your last bite is always just the meat, because the pasta is always gone first? Okay. That bite’s gonna be weird. The primary ingredient of Beyond Beef Beefy Crumbles is pea protein, and that last bite’s gonna getcha a little bit. The texture is a little– just a little— off, still, and you can sorta taste the pea even through the tomatoes and the oregano and rosemary and thyme and all the other stuff I had in my tomato sauce. Mixed with some spaghetti, though– basically anything else to chew on— and I would have fooled you.

Not quite perfect yet, in other words. But I’m keeping an eye on this company, and I’m curious about their not-chicken, because for whatever reason chicken seems to be easier to fake than beef.

In which I am ambivalent

On October 23, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, idiocy7 Comments

I had fried for dinner. It doesn’t even matter what the hell was fried; the point is it was fried.

And now, half an hour later, in full accordance with prophecy, I’m contemplating vegetarianism again. I’ve done a veggie week or two at a couple of points, and every so often I catch myself toying with the idea of trying it on a more long-term basis. The problem is that I like meat, and that– and I recognize that the answer to this is “cook at home more”– acquiring lunch near where I work that does not include meat is virtually impossible. But you know what plant-based meals have never done to me? Made me feel horrifying and gross and I’m going to die soon and like it, and my fourteen pounds of fried that I just ate are doing just that.

Ugh. I’ve ben fatter and I’ve been thinner at various points in my life, especially over the last eight years or so where I’ve gone through at least two complete cycles of it, but right now I’m at the fatter end of the scale. Time to start slimming down again one way or another because I am sick of this shit right now and the older I get the harder it’s going to be to reverse this on even a temporary couple-of-years level.

But goddammit, meat tastes good. Fried tastes good.

Until the part where it makes you want to throw up.

Ecch.

In other news, I appear to have survived two days of Running the Building, and tomorrow is a teacher record day and there will be no kids around. I’m only expecting to be at work for a half day but it’s possible that my boss will disabuse me of that notion later this evening. I rather hope that he sensibly declares that he doesn’t care so long as Shit Gets Done, which is his usual MO, because I sort of have people coming over tomorrow to put in a new garage door opener. I probably ought to actually be in the house for that.

Yesterday was startlingly easy, if tiring. We paid for it today. It’s not quite worth two-hours-of-ranting-and-six-thousand-words paying for it, but it was bad enough. I’m tired as hell right now. Time to watch TV and kill orcs.

Here is Another Thing you Need to Know About

On September 26, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking6 Comments

Recipe post!

On January 24, 2014January 24, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking8 Comments

1546085_10152121413308926_871113375_n It’s Vegetarian Week 2, and apparently I can’t get through a vegetarian week without quinoa raising its unpronounceable grainy face somewhere. Plus since I was the only one who didn’t have to go to work today, dinner was obviously going to be on me.

“Peruvian” Quinoa Stew

“Peruvian” is in quotation marks because I somewhat doubt the provenance of the recipe. First, acquire and chop up all of the following:

About two cups’ worth of onions; I used four little ones
Two cloves of garlic
Two small zucchini or one really big one
Tomatoes (I used a can of diced; you can chop the hell out of a fresh one or a couple of fresh ones if you like; it won’t matter)
A bell pepper
A stalk or two of celery
A carrot or two

I generally do a mise en place setup; in other words, get all my shit chopped up and in little bowls before I start actually cooking anything. Put the onions and garlic together, the carrots and celery together, and the zucchini and bell pepper together.

Before you start sautéing anything, get the quinoa going: boil about a cup of water in a small pot, and once it’s boiling put in half a cup of rinsed (RINSED!!! TRUST ME!!!) quinoa. Cover it and leave it alone for ten to twelve minutes; basically pretend it’s rice. You can start cooking everything else once the quinoa is in the water; the timing will work out nicely.

Get a big flat-bottomed wok or Dutch oven and put a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in it. Sauté the onions and the garlic together for about five minutes on medium-high heat, stirring frequently, then toss in the celery and carrots and put a lid on the Dutch oven. The celery and carrots should cook for about five more minutes; take the lid off and stir a couple of times while that’s happening. Check the quinoa at this point and see if it’s absorbed all the water. If it has, keep it covered, fluff it like it’s rice, and pull it off the heat; if not, add everything in the next part and then pull the quinoa after you’ve got the pot covered:

Add the following to your vegetables:

Your tomatoes;
A cup of vegetable stock;
two teaspoons of ground cumin;
a teaspoon of ground coriander;
half a teaspoon of chili powder;
a teaspoon of dried oregano;
a few shakes of cayenne pepper

Stir it up, cover the pot, turn down the heat a bit, and let it simmer for another ten or twelve minutes. If the veggies are soft by then, toss the quinoa into the wok and stir everything up. You’re done.

Add a bit of cheddar cheese and maybe some sour cream once it’s in a bowl. Delish.

In praise of maligned foods

On January 23, 2014January 23, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking26 Comments

Here’s my policy on trying new foods: If you can adequately demonstrate to me that any given food is eaten by any community of actual humans, anywhere in the world, on purpose, I’ll try it. I’m specifying “on purpose” so that I can avoid eating foods that are clearly only considered “food” by necessity. If something is only eaten because the people who eat it can’t afford to eat anything better or because they live in some sun- or ice-blasted hellhole and there is literally no other food anywhere, I reserve the right to refuse to try it. But if you take those people and move them somewhere with a McDonald’s and a subscription to the Pie of the Month club and a generation later they’re still eating Grandma’s famous recipe for fried boar nuts, then I’m gonna try me some fried boar nuts if you put ’em in front of me.

There are really not a whole lot of foods that I’ve tried and won’t eat. I don’t like raw onions under most circumstances (guacamole being a rare exception); cook them at all and I’m all good. I’m not fond of peas if they’re mushy; peas that are cooked so that they sorta “pop” when you bite into them are fine. Green beans, baked beans. And I’ve reaffirmed this week that parsnips aren’t food.

(I’m doing the vegetarian thing again this week, in case you haven’t figured this out yet. I accidentally ate a piece of sausage and pepperoni pizza yesterday, so I’m doing a bad job. But dinners have been consistent.)

Let’s talk about Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts, quite possibly the least popular vegetable known to American culture.

I’ve had Brussels sprouts once. My wife made them. She is also not fond of Brussels sprouts, so we were both experimenting. They were boiled. (EDIT: My wife claims my mom made them. This is odd; my mother never made Brussels sprouts when I was a kid.)

I spit the damn thing out. I don’t do that with food, guys. I don’t care how bad I think something is, I’m gonna finish at least a bite of it before I punch you and refuse to have any more. My mouth sent me an immediate and unambiguous “this is not food WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING” message and I spit it out as authoritatively as if some miscreant had placed a live bee into my mouth. I’m not sure it was even in my mouth long enough to register the taste. Nope. Not food. Gone.

Here’s the thing, though: I can’t always trust myself. I spent the first year of our marriage saying things like “I don’t usually like shrimp, but…” every month or so until my wife pointed out that maybe I actually did like shrimp. So when she found a recipe for roasted Brussels sprouts and wanted to incorporate them into Vegetarian Week 2, I decided to roll with it.

They smelled good while they were roasting. Good sign, I thought.

“They’re not bad,” she told me as I was sitting down at the table. “Maybe a little bitter.” She doesn’t like these things either, remember, so I inspected her face carefully for signs of deception. She was quite entertained when I’d spit the previous attempt out, so this could have all been a ruse.

I speared one with a fork. Did my best Joe Bastianich impression as I lifted it to my nose, stared at it disdainfully, and smelled it.

And tasted it.

PEOPLE OF AMERICA! HELL, PEOPLE OF EARTH!

Why the fuck is boiling Brussels sprouts even a thing Jesus they’re goddamn delicious roasted WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

I know the picture above doesn’t look like much. Here’s the recipe: Brussels sprouts, apples, pears, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, a little olive oil, cinnamon, sea salt. Mix and roast. Serve over brown rice.

By the end of the meal I was literally using my hands to pack more food onto my fork. I could eat this forever. Same vegetable I spit out when it was served to me boiled. Delicious, delicious, delicious, go eat some right now. There’s a teeny bit of bitterness if you eat one solo but they’ve got this awesome nutty flavor to them and combining them with fruit and a bit of cinnamon is bananas good. Apparently there were supposed to be some (unroasted) cranberries scattered over the top as a last step; I can only imagine that making things better.

Seriously go eat some Brussels sprouts right now. Just don’t boil them. Why the hell would you boil them? You clearly already have heat and that’s the only thing you need to roast stuff.

Somebody bring me some lutefisk; I’m on a roll.

In which I wish that was my family

On January 21, 2014January 20, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized7 Comments

A few random things:

I am, hopefully, at work right now preparing my students for their math test tomorrow. I can imagine a couple of reasons why I might not be; there is another polar vortex heading our way and if it’s colder than we’re expecting or if the massive storm that’s supposed to hit a county over shifts to the east, it’s not inconceivable that school is going to be cancelled again. Plus, the boy’s been a bit poorly all day today (Monday) and while I suspect he’ll be okay by tomorrow morning, you never know.
I know there are a bunch of writers of varying levels of professional status who read this blog; how many of you guys use Scrivener? I know Taylor Grace has mentioned it; anybody else? I’m doing most of my writing in Pages these days because iCloud lets me pick up whatever device is handy and work on the newest version without thinking about it, but Scrivener seems like it would be useful as a way to put together a sort of series bible for the Benevolence Archives– I’m already jumping between five documents whenever I write anything trying to keep stuff consistent, and I’d like some way to formalize that process. Long story short, I have questions if you’re willing to provide answers.
I am offended that I have to have an opinion about sports; I’ve usually done my best to make sure to have no idea who is in the Super Bowl by now, but nonetheless: lay the hell off Richard Sherman, Internet. Newsflash: athletes are sometimes loud and sometimes they are not entirely polite, especially when they are requested to be interviewed six seconds after a career-changing play. Get the hell off your damn high horses.
Probably starting another vegetarian week tomorrow at dinnertime. Why dinnertime? There’s still chili left and I plan to finish it for lunch. It’s time to go back into weight-losing mode for a bit, I think.
Spent a few minutes staring intently at the last wall I have to put cement board on a bit ago. It does not make me happy. I’m going to have to add some blocking to put the cement board up at the very least and I think I may very well have to redo some of the existing structure– which I didn’t have to do for either of the walls today, as big of a pain as they were.

Wheeeee!