Fair Weather Vegan

Padma Gave A Shout-Out To My Boy!

Technically he's more my BF's boy, since they were friends in college while we were acquaintances, but still I feel some pride here.  He's now working as a waiter in some ritzy East Coast restaurant that was recently visited by Padma Lakshmi, and she took a picture of her dessert and mentioned Luke T. by name on her Twitter feed, calling him "cute."  He was actually kind of my hero in college for two reasons.  First, he was one of the few guys active in sexual assault prevention.  Second...and let me preface this by saying that I strongly dislike adolescent-style humor and have no idea why this was so hilarious, second....  The only sport that was popular at my hippie Div III school was our coed club hockey team.  We're talking three rows deep popular among all these children of privilege who had never seen a hockey game in their lives.  I remember well the daughter of a Bangladeshi government official banging on the glass and screaming at our team to f-someone up.*  One day for reasons best known to himself, Luke decided to build a giant, semi-anatomically-correct papier mache penis and throw it on the ice.  He just tossed it over the glass sometime during the first period.  If that wasn't funny enough, all of the players pretended like it wasn't there, so in the end a ref had to get rid of it, and he just skated it off the rink, dragging it behind him.  We were falling over.  So clearly this was a guy destined for greatness.  

*Despite its amazing potential for inspiring school unity that did not involve protesting the administration about something, the rink stopped being funded by the town and the college declined to take over the lease.  Just one of the many short-sighted decisions taken by the school. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

I had originally planned on taking the chickpea flour masala brussel sprouts to my festive gathering, but instead am going with Isa's vegan take on the Midwestern green-bean casserole.  I had quite the amusing interchange with an Australian friend last week, in which she advocated moving Thanksgiving to the spring because then we could eat spring foods, strawberries instead of cranberries, etc.  The two Americans vigorously protested that we like the traditional foods and it wouldn't be the same.  Adding an extra poignancy, most of the foods served on Thanksgiving are native to North America.  I hope wherever you are, you are celebrating with good food, family, and friends, and have something in your heart to be thankful for. 

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.