Veal, Broccoli, and Weight Loss

Apparently veal cutlets are a nice, tender meat. Apparently they're easy to cook. Apparently they're hard to fuck up.

And yet.

And yet my veal cutlets were chewy. I am pretty sure that I expended more energy chewing these cutlets than I actually got out of them. In addition to the veal, there was also barely-cooked broccoli which, let's face it, is pretty indigestible. So I'm guessing that I lost a couple of pounds eating my lunch.

Too bad that I made up for the calorie deficit with a ginormous helping of veggie straws. At least it was better than last week's Cheetos fest that I *ahem* forgot to take pictures of.

-546 Weight Watchers Points!

Award My Tuna!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Tuna Fish Sandwich! 

But not just any tuna fish sandwich! It's a tuna fish sandwich that was entered into a contest! Yes, you heard right: this is an award-submitted tuna fish sandwich!

The remains of the andwich-say

Spousal Unit saw an ad for an online sandwich contest sponsored by our favourite makers of crunchy granola, ultra-healthy, super-chewy bread. He decided that he should enter his "recipe" for tuna sandwich. Granted, his tuna sandwich, which is made with avocado instead of mayo (because I hate mayo) is very tasty. But whether or not it's award-winning is another story. Spousal Unit hasn't mentioned it since, so I'm guessing he didn't win squat.

Anyways, after the tuna, I tossed back a variety of crap: veggie straws, Doritos, Peek Freans Digestive Cookies, and these weird flattened pretzel things. Oh, yeah, and an espresso. An espresso made with Silvia. Because Silvia and I have made peace.

Don't think twice, it's alright.

Non-Vegan Beans on Toast

I was made with animal products.

Once upon a time, I did a radio show about books, and I was a vegetarian.  One day this vegan cookbook comes my way.

Now, my show was not a book review show, but an author interview show. I used to read the books, then interview authors about their books. Hence how I met Kirsten Koza. If the author wrote, say, a cookbook, I would have to, you know, make at least a few recipes from that cookbook.

This wasn't the first time I had a cookbook author on the show. On an earlier show I had eviscerated poor Evelyn Raab, author of The Clueless Baker, because my boyfriend at the time (aka Spousal Unit) totally fucked up every recipe he tried from that cookbook. And if my clueless boyfriend couldn't follow a muffin recipe from a book called "The Clueless Baker", then obviously that cookbook wasn't really made for the clueless.

Of course, the recipes rocked otherwise, but I still grilled that poor woman about why she claimed that the recipes were for the clueless when she had, evidently, never tested them on the clueless. It was ... not pretty.

Anyways, I decided that I would be nice to this vegan cookbook author. The problem was that I really hate tofu, I can't stand eating meatless (read: fake) meatballs, and, at the time, had the tiniest kitchen in the universe (that was also somewhat crawling with roaches). So any recipe that used tofu, required loads of kitchen prep, or involved faking meat was out of the question.

In other words, all I could make were the bean dishes.

So I made her black beans on toast. Of course, I made a million substitutions, like using real garlic instead of garlic powder, and using tomatoes and hot peppers instead of bottled salsa. I also added maple syrup, grated (real) cheddar all over it, and topped it off with a fried egg. It was very tasty, if not exactly vegan -- or anything like the original recipe.

It's a meal I enjoy to this day.

PS: The vegan cookbook author was really nice. I interviewed her over lunch at a vegan restaurant. I ate kohlrabi, chickpeas, and chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was made with tofu and its "frosting" was made with avocado and cocoa. It was OK, but I farted a lot.

Patrick Is Happy He Didn't Eat This

Impaled Wildlife For Sale!

You're probably sick of pictures of take out containers at this point, aren't you? OK, maybe you aren't because no one really comes to this blog expecting to see anything but take-out containers and empty plates. Which is probably why the readership is so low.

Anyways, as a special treat, here is a picture of some actual real food. (Would scorpions-on-a-stick be considered food, or impaled wild life?)

The picture is courtesy of Patrick, a friend of mine from my university days who's currently traveling the world on sabbatical.

He recently came back from Beijing where he took pictures of the local street food. He ate some of it, but took a pass on other, more "interesting" things, like the scorpions-on-a-stick and the sea-horses-on-a-stick.

One of his students tried the scorpions and said they tasted "salty". My guess is that it was incredibly awkward to eat, somewhat revolting to think about, and the student wanted to get out of eating the rest as gracefully as possible. "These are delicious, really, but I find them a bit salty for my taste. Would you like the rest?"

I mean granted, yes, we will all need to learn to eat scorpions and crickets and cockroaches once the End Times come and there isn't anything else left to eat.  But until then, I'll stick to not eating scorpions-on-a-stick, and so will Patrick.

You have to admit that display looks really pretty, though.  It looks even more impressive when you see it move!

I'll Wait For My Quinoa To Be Fully Grown Next Time

The vegetarian kick continues.

Spousal Unit decided to be creative and buy kaniwa -- which is marketed as "baby quinoa" -- instead of the regular quinoa. According to The Internets, kaniwa is The Next Great Thing in ancient grain superfoods. Because we need more superfoods to combat the supervillains that are overrunning Gotham City.

I like regular quinoa. It's a bitch to clean and cook, but it makes for a nice summer salad. Kaniwa, on the other hand, is just kinda revolting. It's tiny, mealy and bleuch.

Mush

This kaniwa salad was made with chick peas, which is everyone's favourite legume to shove into a quinoa salad. In case you aren't savvy to the whole vegetarian thing, you need to find your protein somewhere, and quinoa and chick peas are "excellent sources" of protein. Plus the softness and mellowness of the chickpeas is a nice contrast to the nuttiness, and slight crunchiness, of the quinoa.

Adding chick peas to kaniwa, however? Ugh. Because kaniwa is so small and mealy, the whole dish becomes a grainy, mushy mess. Plus kaniwa doesn't taste of anything. So eating this salad was like eating tasteless, sandy mush.

I'm lobbying to have the remaining package of kaniwa thrown away. Or, alternately, I can send it to you so you can try it out for yourself. If you exist.

Eggs: In Greasiness and In Health

My new trainer -- the 24yo ultra-buff rugby player -- practically begged me to switch from fried eggs to soft-boiled eggs for breakfast. I told him I'd try it. And I did.

It tasted less like cardboard than I expected.

It wasn't as awful as I thought it would be, but contrary to what he claimed, I still needed to sprinkle a generous amount of salt all over the eggs to make them tasty.

I had them atop honey whole wheat bread to make the breakfast super-duper ultra healthy. And that whole wheat bread? It wasn't the supermarket variety with glucose-fructose -- it was the all-natural variety from the hippy bakery. It was somewhat cardboardish, but not as much as I expected.

If you fry whole wheat bread in olive oil, it's totally healthy.

But then I slipped back into my old ways. I really wanted a tasty breakfast, so I decided to make myself Italian Hash the Way My Mom Made It. I made it with the whole wheat bread, though, so it was somewhat healthy. And the oil was olive oil, so it was heart-healthy, too! It's the, um, Mediterranean Diet.

Grocery Store Calzone

It's been a while, hasn't it?  I blame the stupid Whatever S.  It's been synching stupid lately.  Like it unpublished the Pork Dumpling post for reasons unbeknownst to me, but beknownst to it.

Anyways.  Here we are, ages later.  I've been on a vegetarian kick ever since I had that burger.   Something inside me snapped and I was like, "Fuck, I've been eating a lot of grease and animal fat of late.  This can't be healthy."

I also started training with a new trainer.   He's a 24yo ultra-buff rugby player who "indulges" by having a soft-boiled egg in the morning, yolk and all.   At the end of each training session, he asks me how my diet has been. When I said, "I had a burger for lunch yesterday" he was all, "That's OK once in a while.  As long as you don't make a habit of it."  

So I had to atone.  I mean he didn't say, "Atone for your sins, you revolting slug!" but he might as well have.  I mean, the guy's all muscle and no fat.

I am so much more than the sum of my parts

This, here, was a vegetarian calzone. I contend that it was healthy, but my dining companion said that it wasn't. She said that while each component of the calzone was, on its own, healthy, the whole was not. Feta cheese? Healthy. Tomato sauce? Healthy.  Red bell peppers? Healthy. Whole wheat crust? Healthy. Vegetarian feta cheese calzone in a whole wheat crust? Not so healthy.  Especially when washed down with a lemonade. Though, in my defense, I only drank a few sips of the lemonade.