All-In-2016: BBQ Bean Stew (Vegan-ish)

While my mini-rant yesterday over is-honey-vegan is an oft-discussed topic among the vegan community (I assume...we're not Masons so we don't congregate regularly), I feel a bit sheepish to say that today's entry is also Vegan-ish, but definitely much more black-and-white.

That's because Worchestershire Sauce is chock full of fish..

That stuff you're using to marinate your steak or to add some flavor to your meatloaf?  It's basically pickled anchovies.  SORRY!  There are vegan alternatives to Worchestershire, both homemade and in the grocery store, but laziness occasionally gets the best of me, and I'm left with something that would be vegan except for the stuff that's definitely not vegan.  Which is like saying "I don't smoke, except for cigarettes."

Anyway, if you're going vegan, either omit the Worchestershire, substitute (browning sauce is vegan), or replace with a fish-free alternative.

Onwards, to BBQ Bean Stew!

The beans would like to apologize for not being particularly photogenic.

Software:

1 small onion, diced

15-oz can cannelini beans (or kidney beans, or black beans...whatever's in your pantry, really)

14-oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 c barbecue sauce

1 1/2 tsp molasses (do NOT buy blackstrap...if you don't have this use an equal amount of brown sugar)

1 1/2 tsp Worchestershire sauce

1 1/2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chipotle chili powder

Code:

1. In a medium pot, saute onion in a thin layer of broth or water (this is a common process for this chef -- "frying" vegetables in broth -- really reduces the fat from any oils and doesn't take away from the flavor.
2. Once translucent, add beans (undrained), tomatoes, and spices.  Mix thoroughly.
3. Simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes (I did this to thicken things a bit, feel free to cover it if the consistency is to your liking)

Serves two!  Try it poured over a baked potato, or just do like I did and eat it out of an orange fiestaware bowl, hoping to god you don't spill some on your clean shirt.

All-In-2016: Chinese Crunch Salad (Vegan-ish)

I am both slightly chagrined and slightly amused at the public outcry of some vegans over consuming honey.  Yes, an animal creates it, but do you know how bees make honey?  You can find the unabridged process here, but I'll spare you some light reading: they suck nectar into their stomachs and then throw it up into another bee's mouth, over and over, until it turns into honey.  In one final purge, they vomit it into honeycombs for storage.

Disgusting?  Sure.  But bees are just doing what they were designed to do.  I disagree with PETA on this one: by and large, even commercialized beekeeping isn't particularly inhumane, except in the most extreme circumstances.  Still, if you're vegan and you feel differently, substitute agave nectar.  But, as it stands, this dish is technically vegan-ISH, thanks to the bee barf.

The last recipe of the day: Chinese Crunch Salad

Software:

3 oz dry pasta (I used some buckwheat soba I had leftover from an earlier recipe)

1 c shredded cabbage (the same stuff I used for my Pad Thai Pizza...Meal Mentor is really big on not wasting ingredients)

3/4 c chickpeas, drained and rinsed (leftover from the Curried Rice Bowl...see what I mean?)

1/2 c sugar snap peas

1/5 c shelled edamame

1 carrot, shredded

1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced

2 green onions, chopped

4 tsp honey/agave

1 tbsp rice vinegar

1 1/2 tsp soy sauce/tamari

1 1/2 tsp lime juice

1/2 tsp ground ginger

(Note: the last five ingredients are for the dressing.  I don't usually use exact measurements and just go by taste.  Feel free to experiment.  Also, fresh ginger works very well instead of the powdered stuff)

Code:

1. Cook pasta in a small pot.
2. While pasta is cooking, zap the snap peas and edamame in the microwave, just to thaw).
3. Whisk together dressing ingredients (honey/agave, vinegar, soy sauce/tamari, lime juice, ginger) in a small bowl.
4. Toss carrot, cabbage, chickpeas, snap peas, and edamame in a large bowl.
5. When pasta finishes, drain and rinse thoroughly under cold water, then add to the bowl.
6. Toss all the ingredients together (kitchen tongs work best to get everything distributed).  Pour dressing over and toss again.

Serves Two!  This can also be made ahead and stored in the fridge for up to a week.  I had mine for lunch today with half of a pita bread, just to make it as ethnically obscure as possible.

All-In-2016: Pad Thai Pizza (Vegan)

One more since I'm about to spend the next 30 minutes at work just copying huge files from one place to another.

Pad Thai Pizza!

Software:
2 tsp peanut butter
6 tbsp hummus
1 tsp lime juice
1/2 tsp sriracha + extra to drizzle
1 pita
1 cup angel hair cabbage (like the stuff Primanti's uses on their ridiculous sandwiches)
1 shredded carrot (I just used a vegetable peeler)
1 green onion, chopped


Code:

1. In a small bowl, zap the PB in the microwave for 20-30 seconds, until runny (this will make it way easier to whisk)
2. Add hummus, lime juice, and sriracha and whisk until smooth
3. Toast pita slightly on skillet, flip once so it's warm on both sides.
4. Move to  plate, spread hummus mixture on pita and top with cabbage, carrots, onions, and sriracha to taste.
5. Use a pizza cutter to break into four sections (or fold it up and eat it like a sandwich, you neanderthal)

All-In-2016: Curried Rice Bowl (Vegan)

After a moderately thorough Google search copyright laws, I decided that I probably won't go to jail if I post recipes on my blog.  I was concerned because my vegan recipes are almost always courtesy of Happy Herbivore's Meal Mentor: a paid subscription service that doles out a week's worth of recipes at a time for $7.00/week (or you can buy a year subscription at a discount, which is what I did).  But, apparently ingredients and instructions are not subject to copyright law (though I tend to slightly modify both anyway).

SO!  Long explanation aside, here's what I ate for lunch yesterday, The Curried Rice Bowl:

Software:

1/2 cup uncooked wild rice

1 cup vegetable broth

2 tsp curry powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1 tsp chili powder (or less to taste)

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp tumeric (adds the yellow tinge typical to Indian cuisine)

2 tsp tomato sauce (I just swiped some from a jar of spaghetti sauce)

1 c frozen stir-fry vegetables (thawed)

3/4 c canned chickpeas

1/2 bag baby spinach

2 tbsp roasted cashews

Code:

1. Add rice, broth, and all spices to a medium saucepan
2. Cover and boil, reducing heat to low and simmering for 30-40 minutes (or until rice is cooked)
3. While rice is cooking, in a separate pan, pour a thin layer of broth, and add baby spinach, heat to medium and cook as desired (I let mine wilt a lot but not so much that it turned to mush)
4. After rice finishes, add the tomato sauce and stir in the thawed stir-fry veggies and chickpeas
5. Layer the spinach on the bottom of the plate, scoop rice/vegetable mix on top
6. Sprinkle with crushed cashews.

This serves two, but you can make a batch and store it for up to a week in the fridge.

#6: Olé!

Despite Neil deGrasse Tyson's annual reminders that January 1st is a completely arbitrary moment in time (we wouldn't have this sense of endings and beginnings if we had a calendar that ran on continuously, although it would probably be cumbersome to remember the date if it was something like "4,543,588,234 days since the beginning of time"), I've been bred with the tendency to write New Year's resolutions.  Actually, I just like lists.  Notebooks litter my house like some weird nerd frat party, although most of them only have one or two pages filled in.  Knowing that I have anywhere from ten to thirty notebooks/notepads/post-it notes/scrolls/etch-a-sketches in my possession, I still tend to run around the house on a frantic man-hunt for a notebook every time I go grocery shopping.  And pens, which are everywhere, but nowhere.  Pens disappear from this house like socks in the dryer.

I also just turned 36 (hold for applause), so maybe The Case of the Missing Ballpoints is really just the first glimpse of my eventual dementia.

While I'm sure my goal for the next 366 days (leap year holllaaaaa) will bleed into these posts, I typically play things close to the vest, mostly to avoid the inherent shame of declaring that THIS YEAR I'M GOING TO TRAIN MONKEYS TO CREATE A TO-SCALE REPLICA OF MANHATTAN and by the end of the year I've only managed to train one monkey, and his shoddy Rockefeller Center will never stand in even a light breeze.  

I, like most humans who have ever been in a relationship, prefer actions over words.

This is why I feel relatively comfortable in revealing that one of my resolutions is to make my family Sunday dinner every week this year.

Living in a house with a) a daughter that claims she'll eat anything but has been known to deconstruct sandwiches because "I just felt like eating cheese and mayo", b) two parents that are basically paleo but more restrictive...kind of like cavemen who didn't farm but looted the same village over and over again ("shit, MORE sweet potatoes?"), and c) me, who hovers between vegetarian and vegan with the occasional smattering of seafood (smaller carbon footprint, often wild-caught, other hippie excuses) makes it difficult to create a meal that would satisfy everyone's personal preferences.

Still, there's plenty of rewards and very little risk.  Having an interesting meal every Sunday creates some anticipation to get me through a week's worth of less-inspired fare.  It's easier to eat Salad #10 on Saturday if I know Sunday is going to be something more flavorful.  And, when I cook, my daughter always gets involved.  Sometimes she's helpful: measuring out spices, stirring every few minutes, etc.  Sometimes she'll pretend she owns a restaurant and create a menu, and table setting, and light some candles.  I'm not saying this isn't helpful, too...but one time she did "fire" me after I forgot to make dessert.

And, more than anything, I like to cook.  It's cathartic.  It's fun.  I feel slightly more accomplished when I eat a meal that I've also prepared.  And it's always, always, always, always cheaper than something you'd order in a restaurant, that may or may not have been pre-cooked and flash-frozen (I'm about 75% sure Chili's kitchen is just one huge microwave).  

This week I figured the drop in temperature demanded something warm and spicy, and after typing "warm and spicy" into Google and avoiding all the porn sites, I discovered Caldo de Camarón: a Mexican soup with shrimp.  To turn it into a meal I'm adding my take on elote (corn on the cob done all "Mexican street food" style...except mine's without the cob), recipe co-opted from here, and some refried beans.  

One quick note on the recipe: what in the hell is a chayote?  Wikipedia says that it's basically a Costa Rican squash.  According to the produce clerks at Market District, it's a "we don't sell...what did you call them?  Chay-oties? Yeah, no."  I decided that a squash is a squash and substituted zucchini, since it's also green with a fairly exotic (albeit more familiar) name.

I'll spare yinz the making-of photos, since you've already had to endure several hundred lines of rambling, but here's the input/output.

Here's the before (minus the corn ingredients):

And the after.  The entire house smells like ancho peppers...or what I'm now calling Mexican potpourri:

One down, 51 to go!

#5: In the End, We'll All Become Stories.

The sour truth is that I shouldn't have known about David.  Hell, I didn't even remember his name until it showed up in an e-mail from the event organizer, asking all of us if we remember being assigned to him during the Project Bundle-Up event a few weeks ago.  This was my second year at the event, and while the third-person view of selfishly I enjoyed watching a bunch of little kids just ooze exuberance over getting brand new coats and hats...items that I would easily take for granted.

*I* wasn't even assigned to him.  The full extent of my experience with David involved a group photo and mindless conversation on the school bus, meant mostly to keep the kids docile until more responsible people showed up to take them away.  He was...boisterous.  Loud, but in a friendly way.  He was built like me at that age, except more extroverted.

The first e-mail was asking who had worked with David.  The second was the group photo with a description of the boy.

The third was a forwarded e-mail from The Salvation Army, explaining that he had died.

Allegheny County police said they believe someone knocked at the family’s door Sunday night, and when it was opened, shots were fired inside the home.

David lived in Mt. Oliver, a neighborhood that City-Data.com concluded is well above average in all crime activity, with a crime index of 754.2 against the national average of 289.6.  In terms of population density, Mt. Oliver is at least two times as dangerous as New York City.  David and his brother weren't actively contributing to the crime problem that night.  They were in their living room, playing video games, when someone knocked at the door.  David's brother answered, and moments later both boys were shot...David was pronounced dead on arrival by the examiner.

She was one of more than a dozen shocked neighbors and friends who aimlessly milled up and down the street, greeted each other with hugs and tears and created a memorial of balloons, a Pittsburgh Penguins teddy bear and a prayer candle on the family’s front porch.

Everyone knew David.

Nobody knows the full story.  Maybe the older brother got mixed up with the wrong crowd, although those interviewed implied that it wasn't likely.  Maybe it was an accident.  Maybe it was just senseless violence and, in the eyes of the shooter, the victim was irrelevant.

What *I* believe regarding the truth is equally irrelevant.  In my mind...in everyone's mind, I would imagine, there's an infinitesimally small number of truths that would lead to the conclusion that an eleven year old boy deserved to die.  Zero.  I'm going to go ahead and say there are zero reasons that this is fell within line of the natural order of life and death.

 The liberal in me wants to point to this and rant about the need for more stringent gun control...that this situation was even plausible because some person that (in all likelihood) didn't have any business owning a gun managed to get his hands on one anyway.  The socialist in me wants to berate the abnormal distribution of wealth and use Mt. Oliver as a paradigm of the effects of the current social strata.  The father in me wants to beat the piss out of whoever shot these two boys.

The mother is not able to go back to the home as she is very frightened and the scene from the shootings has not been cleaned up yet.

The Sandy Hook shooting is almost three years old, but the emotions culled out by the tragedy seem to be stuck on repeat.  The Qabak village suicide bombing at a primary school.  The Franklin Regional High School stabbing.  The freedoms I had at childhood seem like negligent parenting when viewed through today's grayed-out and dismal lens.  I walked to school almost every day until I was old enough to drive.  In junior high, my walk included a mile-long stroll along the railroad tracks.  Our high school conducted exactly one locker search a year for weapons or drugs.  

Now, when my daughter asks if she can walk home from school -- a distance easily half of what I managed at her age -- I reply with "maybe when you're older" and hope she doesn't realize that I'm being purposefully vague.  Now, I'm not allowed to volunteer at her school until I am completely vetted out by the state and they have my fingerprints on file.  Now, if my daughter wants to ride her bike, she has to do it with my vigilant eyes watching...not for her to mess up, but for someone else to interfere.

“That boy knew what love was. Not only did he know what it was, he knew how to give it back tenfold,” Beth Krut, 47, of Mount Oliver said of her daughter’s friend. “You only get that from one place. You get it from your parents.”

David's face would've faded in my mind over time.  Granted, maybe it would've taken longer than usual.  The kids at Project Bundle Up ranged in behavior and demeanor, but he certainly struck out as the one that seemed the most excited to be there.  But now he's an imprint.  An example.  A cautionary tale.  A physical manifestation of the fears we all endure sporadically, but with increasing frequency as time goes by.

I want to hug my daughter, to protect her, to hide her from a world that's more unstable than ever, and tell her that I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that she's inherited this world.

#4: It's Loud Enough Inside My Head

INFJs indeed share a very unique combination of traits: though soft-spoken, they have very strong opinions and will fight tirelessly for an idea they believe in.

Until last month or so, my most recent "ah-a" moment (the sudden smack of clarity surrounding a situation, not the urge to listen to 80s one-hit wonders) was when I had taken the Mensa Admissions Test.  There were about 30 people in the classroom -- which was really the basement of a Unitarian church somewhere east of the city -- a proctor and a timer.  We were all uncomfortably milling around the room, engaging in small talk that usually focused on "are you nervous?" and "I'm nervous."  When the proctor finally settled us in he explained some of the camaraderie that goes along with being a Mensan, and for a lot of people it was extremely cathartic.  "All of these folks, who have varying degrees of education, political leanings, musical preferences, favorite sci-fi show, whatever, really...but still you get a very strong feeling when you're with them, best summed up as these are my people.

It was eye-opening in the sense that I've never really felt like I was nestled on the fringes in any social gatherings, at least not for that reason (that reason being "a higher IQ", and even typing that makes me sweat...it feels arrogant...it probably is arrogant), but even in the testing stages of Mensa admission I felt like I was in a room full of people like me, however you choose to define those similarities.  None of them looked like ex-jocks, and I'd wager there were more than a few grossly conservative folk in the mix, but I still got that sense of unity.

I've been a Mensa member for about a year now, and while I haven't experienced any significant benefits (I did get a vanity e-mail address, so now I receive more sophisticated spam at my member.mensa.org domain), I did attend a gathering last month that may qualify as the only party I didn't try to sneak out of unnoticed.

INFJs find it easy to make connections with others, and have a talent for warm, sensitive language, speaking in human terms, rather than with pure logic and fact.

In September I leveraged my tendencies to procrastinate via Facebook quizzes into validating my Myers-Briggs Personality Type.  It's an assessment I took about a decade ago through some team-building exercise at work.  I was not surprised to be one of the few introverts in the sales department, but I was surprised to be the only INFJ in the meeting.  

It's the "I" in INFJ that tends to surprise people (and you can read the parts I didn't plagiarize about INFJs here).  The introverted stereotype is that we're the loners, the folks that prefer the company of nobody, engage in zero conversation, and coast through life with all of their thoughts bottled up tightly so it will never get out, with little credence given to others.

Like most stereotypes, some of that is true.

INFJs tend to present themselves as the culmination of an idea. 

Nothing has ever been so poignant.  That is exactly how I see myself, or rather how I project myself, which often comes off as closeted, or unnervingly stoic.  My brain is just the end result of 35 years of inner thoughts mashed up against outside stimuli, so my default setting is to take the cowardly route and either make some frustrating generalization about my demeanor (i.e. "I feel fine") or say words that may imply my emotions without ever really getting down to it.  

I've never been able to grasp people's abilities to so easily sum up what they're feeling in a word or phrase.  Shouldn't percentages be involved or something?  Right now I'm 60% concerned that I'm feigning expertise of introverts, or at least INFJs, based on some silly web site and my own life, 25% of me is stressed over fucking up some work last week and is trying to both multitask to catch some of it up (my new motto: I Just Need a Win) while trying to quell the stress by writing about it, apparently, and the rest of me is wondering if these two crickets on either side of my street are ever going to hook up...I assume that's why they make those noises...aren't all nature sounds really thinly-disguised mating calls?

INFJs have strong beliefs and take the actions that they do not because they are trying to advance themselves, but because they are trying to advance an idea that they truly believe will make the world a better place.

Altruism has plenty of drawbacks.  While I am more centered on the lamentation that what I do isn't really benefiting anyone in the cosmic sense, I do have a penchant for putting just about everyone else I know ahead of myself on the food chain.  That's not to say I'm selfless.  I'm not giving Mother Theresa a run for her money.  There's some inertia involved, sure.  I was definitely raised by people that gave their time or their effort or their money towards the greater good.  I've always believed that, whatever I have, it's more than what someone else might have, and the only way to feel even remotely connected to the rest of the world is to try to even things out.  Sorry if that got steamrolled by grandiosity.  I'm not combating famine in Africa or anything, as much as I'd like to.

When it comes to romantic relationships, INFJs take the process of finding a partner seriously. Not ones for casual encounters, people with the INFJ personality type instead look for depth and meaning in their relationships.

This part was "ah-a" to me only because I thought that's what everyone was looking for.  Casual dating is such a fucking mystery to me.  I'm more of a "casually wearing the same jeans all week" kind of guy, I don't want my informality bleeding into a relationship.  My jeans aren't important.  

Granted, I haven't had a lot of relationships, and as each day passes I'm extended my personal record of "Number of Days Single", but I have had enough dates that were frank enough to say that they were a little confused by how I was "all in" on the first encounter. 

It's a fair assessment from them, but not something I tend to take as a criticism.  I don't do leaps of faith very well.  Every relationship had a long gestation period of getting to know each other.  I thought that's just how I viewed relationships in general: as friendships that evolved.  But, apparently, that's just my personality type, I'll take the time necessary to find someone they truly connect with.  Sorry/not sorry if that's frustrating.

Despite this, INFJs will also push their children to think independently, make their own choices and establish their own beliefs.

The last time I used "because I said so" as a rationale for any order handed down to my daughter, she was six.  I think it's a perfectly valid reason to kids that age or younger, who may be curious to hear the reasoning behind why they shouldn't smear their hands with glue and pet the cat or why I'm not even turning this car on until they put their seatbelt on.  But, along with being highly impressionable, they are severely absent-minded, and there's plenty of days where I'd rather throw out the "I'm your dad so you do what I say" card than launch into the pros and cons of eating pie for breakfast.

But she called me on my bullshit three years ago, when I told her to brush her hair before bed (because I said so).  She retorted with "well you don't brush your hair before bed."

Shit.  That's true.  That's so true.

"Well, my hair's different than yours.  It's shorter, and I take showers in the morning so I don't have to worry about brushing it before bed."

"What if I try not brushing it before bed and see what it's like in the morning?"

I guess that was the night the hair elves showed up and tied her hair in knots, because she woke up totally ready to jam out at Burning Man, but probably not ready for school.  Leave it to my daughter to turn hair-brushing into an experiment.

We don't see eye to eye on a lot of issues already, particularly my vegetarianism vs. her "MEAT IS GOOD, EAT MEAT YOU WEIRDO" stance, and it's hard to toe the line between foisting beliefs upon her to match my own and letting her sort out her own battles.  I want her to be her own person, but within the confines of what her mom and I deem to be a "good" person, which sounds counterintuitive.  Because it is.  This is pretty much parenting in a nutshell.  Be unique, except like me.

INFJs are likely to prioritize harmony and cooperation over ruthless efficiency, encouraging a good, hardworking atmosphere and helping others when needed. While this is usually a strength, there is a risk that others will take advantage of INFJs’ commitment to their responsibilities by simply shifting their burdens onto their more dedicated INFJ colleagues’ desks.

Oh yeah.  I've been there.

It's disillusioning, in a sense, to both a) gain such a sense of relatability from a freaking Facebook quiz and b) come to the conclusion that I am largely in the minority (making up less than one percent of the population), but that feeling is more than offset by the notion that someone gets me.

Of course that "someone" is a web site.  Which probably surprises no one.  I mean, I've typed more words over the last hour than I've probably spoken all day.