Fair Weather Vegan

The Best Food News You'll Hear All Year

Chocolate milk may have similar anti-inflammatory powers to those of red wine. 

FWV Successfully Cuts $100 From Food Budget: Was It Worth It?

One of the long-time tropes of this blog is that spending must be maintained at an artificially high level lest the spirits of the blogger go into a recession.  This month I tested that conjecture, by attempting to cut my monthly food budget from around $300, a number I felt was probably high but justified by the fact that I need things to write about, to around $200.  I accomplished my goal without suffering from malnutrition or indeed feeling too bummed out.  The question remains, however, do I want to continue with that present system, and if so shall I change some aspects?

What I did:

• Cut out coffee shops.  I generally only get their drinks to justify working there anyway.  If I needed caffeine I drank bottled coffee.
• Lots of homemade burritos, both regulation and breakfast.  
• Made an effort to eat food I'd already purchased rather than always deciding to get something else, aka using up that stuff in the pantry. 
• Fewer restaurants/take-out places.  This is really the crux.  I had a sit-down meal out maybe four times, and tried to get lunch on campus only once a week.  I honestly didn't notice as much as I expected, except on those occasions when I really wanted pancakes but made breakfast at home instead. 
• One discovery that kept me from scurvy was also an environmental dilemma: I am more likely to cook and eat vegetables (including the leftovers, oddly, which are made the regular way), if they are 'steam-in-the-package.'  Don't ask me why, and I know it's wrong, but so is not getting enough Vitamin A.  
• Didn't cook as much as I thought I might, but the pesto recipe saw me through several meals and emboldened me to try some new things in November.

So, was it worth it?  Yes and no.  We don't do unequivocal answers here at FWV.  I am really happy to have saved some money, despite splurging a bit in other categories (saw Rent for the first time, for instance). Although I wasn't as affected as I thought by not eating restaurant food as often, I'd like to have a few nicer sit-down meals than I got this month.  My October 'restaurants' ended up being places like Hobees (where I was pissed off that my salmon breakfast burrito cost twice as much as the French toast) or the Tree House.  I miss places with cloth napkins. I think I may be able to work them into the new budget if I also cook more recipes that last for several meals. And as always, I found that sharing food with friends is the most important aspect of it all for me, and that's not dependent on where you are or how much you paid. 

Authentic Belgian Pastry at Civic Center

The Wednesday farmer's market sports quite a few ready-made food stands, and right across the sidewalk from the lard-free tamales is a new one, advertising "Belgian sugar waffles."  These might be galettes at long last in this country, and it would be a crime against my ancestors not to try one, right?  Though normally diffident, when I walked up and saw that the guy inside definitely looked Belgian, we had the following conversation:

Him: One with powdered sugar?
Me: Where are you from?
Him: Belgium [This woman is an idiot! Can't she read the sign?]
Me: Where in Belgium?
Him: Bruxelles
Me: Because I have a large family in the [redacted Walloon city] area
Him: I know [redacted Walloon city].  It's near the border with France.
Him: [in French] Do you speak French?
Me: [in English] Not well.
He turns around to pick up the galette. 
Me: My grandmother makes these.  This is a test.
Him: Don't worry.

And indeed, she shouldn't worry.  It's a bit of an unfair competition, as my grandmother's galette recipe is unmatched and I suspect the ingredients are quite expensive, at least based on the amount of butter than seems to be involved, but on the other hand, this was definitely a galette and not that soft nonsense that gets passed off as a Belgian waffle in this country.  It was dense, chewy, and substantial, and powdered sugar got all over creation.  There was also a pot of jam on display and given that the galette was somewhat dry and lacked the buttery finish, it would probably be the better with a spread.  It cost $3.50 but was fairly filling.  The napkin he handed out had, what else, a web address on it so I looked it up, and what we have here is actually a franchisee of a large Belgian galette-dough company allegedly utilizing a recipe from another city in which a number of my relatives live.  They use the term 'gaufre' and I also know that 'galette' is used for a number of other types of Francophone pastry, so perhaps there is a difference between what my family makes and this, but they look awfully similar. There will certainly be more research to follow.  Also more trips to the farmers' market to try out the tamale stand. 

Who Made Eater (SF) God All Of A Sudden?

Wow, they go national and suddenly the egos run wild.  Someone decided it was an acceptable idea to offer $25 to any food blogger who would shut down.  I don't think of this as a food blog in the classical sense, but anyone should have the right to blog about anything they like, without snotbags arguing it lowers the level of journalism by talking about "mundane" food.  One of the major points of FWV has always been that all food is important food if it makes you feel happy.  Plus, the blogsphere is huge.  There's room for serious journalism and people writing about every burrito they've ever eaten and people who have stupid opinions, and nothing reflects poorly on you except your own attitude, which apparently Eater has a hell of a lot of.

Soap That I Love

You can't eat this product, but waive that point for the moment.  I've never been much of a cosmetics person, and if the cosmetics are makeup I'm never going to be, but I have discovered an affinity for nice bath products and the like.  Enticed into L'Occitane recently, I picked up a bar of their shea butter extra gentle lavender soap, and have enjoyed shower time that much more since.  The shea butter, allegedly produced by a women's collective in Africa, makes it exceptionally smooth and the fragrance is gentle and lovely.  It doesn't overdry the skin like other soaps I've tried.  Bar soap is also more environmentally friendly than body wash because it comes without the plastic bottle.  This particular soap isn't cheap, and I actually received it as a gift (was in the mall with my family), but it would make a nice stocking stuffer for a loved one, even if that loved one is yourself ;) 

More Recipes, Fewer Restaurants

Several times over the course of this blog's life, I have mentioned being on an economy kick.  Generally that hasn't stuck, because going to restaurants is one of the major ways I enjoy myself.  I'm not giving that up, but now I'm in true need of reining in my spending, so I'm trying to orient myself more toward creating the things I like to eat in my own kitchen.  Haven't cooked seriously that much since I moved to SF two years ago, so that will be an interesting experiment.  Another thing that really disappoints me is that for awhile I'll have fewer restaurant trips to write about here.  I hope to continue testing new products, as there's nothing like a nice bar of chocolate to cheer one up, but perhaps I'll go on an expensive cheese hiatus.  I welcome suggestions for recipes to try at home or good bargains. 

What Food-Related Tweeters Float Your Boat?

The 'food' column on my version of Tweet Deck is much shorter than my other categories.  I follow some local faves like BiRite Market and Shuna Fish Lydon, some well-known food bloggers like Ganda, and of course awesome activists like Fat Nutritionist.  What should I add to my list? 

Why Is There Half A Bowl of Milk Left, Cheerios?

Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles explores the physics of a question that has long bugged us all.  Namely, why, when you eat Raisin Bran, is there always less milk remaining at the end than when you eat Cheerios?  With this post Chad also becomes the only blogger (I think) to be cited both here and on WSB. 

I have also been paying little attention to my emails from Foodbuzz, so unfortunately I will not be attending the festival.  But I was pretty surprised to see some of the phrasing in excerpts from the letter they sent out about individual sponsorship (which apparently raised a lot of comment; I'm glad other bloggers found the subject comprehensible because I surely didn't).  I recognize that America has become unable to correctly choose prepositions, but there must be someone in the offices who can read the clause "and not the community on a whole" and say to herself 'no' and reach for the backspace key.  

To All My Foodbuzz Friends

Thanks to everyone who has sent me messages or comments on Foodbuzz.  I am sorry that I haven't had time to treat the site like an actual social networking opportunity yet.  So rest assured I'm not being mean to you personally; I'm just ignoring everyone equally right now.  I hope one day soon I will be able to read through the recipes and tips that have been sent (although whoever sent a post titled "Why Fried Foods Are Bad For You" has probably not read this blog in detail ;)  I am truly inspired by all the other foodies out there and hope to learn more about you soon. 

-FL

A Secret That Should Remain That Way

Cross-posted at WSB. 

Oh, Raygan Swan, what a quintessential Hoosier you are, from your name to the slightly stilted literalism of your prose.  You battle the stereotypically male atmosphere of Nascar.com with stereotypically female concerns like the drivers' partners, children, and off-track interests.  I enjoy those pieces.  But please don't take any more turns into that less attractive Hoosier trait, deep parochialism.  Just the other day you published a video piece entitled something like "Indiana's Best Kept Secret: Pizza King." 

Now, I am not sure from which native town Ms. Swan hales, but in my corner of the state there was an era in which getting a Burger King was the height of our culinary expectations.  We have never had more than one nice sit-down restaurant at a time and between the closing of one and the opening of another it was fast food or nothing.  We generally chose to eat at home or in the cities forty to sixty minutes away, and my parents still regale with me with tales of the time when there weren't even good restaurants there.  For awhile in my childhood, there were only two pizza options in downtown East Jesus: the unambitious and slightly weird Little Cesars and Pizza King.  My New Yorker progenitors never set food inside Pizza King.  The site is now a bar, but I remember it as a pizza place being dark and almost subterranean, with an aura of mystery and unfulfilled promise.  Perhaps this is because it was the site of many children's birthday parties to which I didn't go.  I seem to recall there was some reason kids liked it; perhaps they had special games or a pinball machine.  But it was a destination restaurant only for people under ten. 

There are a number of things I would call Indiana's best food secrets, most of them treif and none of them thin, greasy pizza slices.  For instance it's a mystery to me why the breaded pork tenderloin hasn't caught on elsewhere.  Everyone outside the immediate Midwest confuses the coney dog with the chili dog (I'm looking at you, Sonic).  For the record, the coney dog has nothing to do with Coney Island, is served in Indiana and Michigan, and features a sweet meat sauce.  A chili dog has savory chili on it, and is much inferior.   We even have our own special brand of barbecue, for which people line up every year when the Norvell truck comes around. 

My home town now contains three Mexican restaurants, including one specializing in Veracruz cuisine, so don't tell me the current wave of immigration is a negative force in American life (you wouldn't have told me that anyway, because I'd have punched you).  It never did get decent pizza, though.  Hoosiers are best at foods they know well, particularly the kind of things they raise themselves.  That's provided those things are the hogs and not the soybeans, which are only exported.  They are especially bad at Italian food even now.  Pizza King eventually became the bar, and a Pizza Hut was the most popular game in town for many years.  My parents favor a place called Johnny Provolone's (no, really), primarily because the slices are so small that my grandmother, who has the appetite of an anorexic bird, will eat more than one.  I developed a shameful affinity for Papa John's, so much so that I still miss it even in this land of superior pizza at every turn.  Raygan Swan is probably nostalgic in the same way for the pizza she grew up with.  But she's generally such a good influence on the Nascar readers, I wish she'd recommend something that did a little more credit to our state.