No Meat Week: Days 2 and 3

So I managed to last a day and a half without craving some serious shit. Mostly it's because I've been sitting at home in the comfort of my vegeteria, seeing and smelling nothing but lentil chips and blocks of sharp cheddar cheese all day long. (So thankful I didn't take the "vegan" pledge.)

But it all changed Tuesday when I set out for another jog around the lake, wearing my Spam shirt and the fifteen-year-old sweat pants I've been using since my competitive soccer days in junior high. Right about the time I passed that Terrace Room restaurant, a bewitching smell of carne asada and roasted green onions wafted up. (Not sure why. Do they make Mexican food at the Terrace Room?!) With the regular jogging, my sweat pants had been deteriorating rapidly as of late, reaching the point where the upper thigh section had almost completely worn away, making the area above the knee more like a sweat skirt than a sweat pant.

Some serious chaffing was going down. The blisters and raw underlayer of my skin were so irritated that it actually felt better to run than to walk, which almost worked for approximately one and a half blocks. Anyway, I was sweating and panting and crying, just trying as hard as I possibly could to maintain a half-jog-half-walk, with the smell of beef enveloping me and my thighs metaphorically turning into ground pork.

And at that moment I thought, "I am meat."

And from then on, the serious, almost cannibalistic, cravings began. First it was salami - a thin slice of genoa wrapped around my tongue, a firm hunk of soppressata, a crispy crunch of pepperoni - then pulled pork. Then cheeseburgers, then a pastrami reuben and then shrimp like in gambas al ajillo and then shrimp cocktail and onto shrimp fettuccine. Then the wine drenched ossobuco like they did at NoRTH, then roast beef from the deli and lastly, chicken nuggets.

I think it's because I've been writing this blog, honestly. I'm focusing on it too much. Housten, who's also doing this crap, has been taking it much better than I have. But his one admission was out of frustration yesterday when he simply declared, "This sucks."

So far, I haven't quite lived up to my goal of creating wonderful "transformative" meals. Things and events and life keep popping up and we end up eating vegetarian chili cheese fries, bean enchiladas or shitty pizza. I'm actually worried that I'm going to gain weight. Since I'm forbidding myself the pleasure of meat, I've been more inclined to seek comfort in carbs and fat. It's not even a matter of willpower now, but of selection...

Yesterday, after shoving myself over to San Francisco to see the chef Jacques Pepin speak, I found myself at a hot dog stand with an uncomfortable pang of hunger and a delicate choice. Do I pick the vegan tofu dog or the salt covered pretzel. I'd been eating bread all day and I wanted to try the tofu dog, but to my own surprise, I chose the pretzel.

After a sleepless night and listless daylight hours, I've analyzed and re-enacted this decision enough to understand it. I think I can confidently say that I chose the pretzel out of embarrassment. On the one hand, my psyche sensed that the pretzel vender dude somehow knew me and could pinpoint my hypocrisy, citing proclamations and drunken accusations I've made since the age of 13. But on the other hand, I knew this was bogus and was simply embarrassed anyway.

In America today and even in the Bay Area, is there still a stigma against vegetarianism? Or is it all in my head?

Last night while consuming copious amounts of barley (a good source of protein!), my friend Stella told me about her decision to stop eating meat after leaving small-town Montana where she grew up. Away from the culture of small farms, she felt disillusioned by the lack of intimacy and knowledge of her meat, and rejected the disconnection by going veg for a few years. But when she came back to town, not everyone understood the factors influencing her lifestyle. She brought veggie burgers to a barbecue, and somehow pissed people off so badly that they threw pieces of meat at her.

I'd like to think that myself and other Bay Area liberals are civilized and understand the boundaries of "individual choice" enough to let people make their own decisions. But I don't know. How many times have I felt affronted by someone else's choice to order the bean burrito, the mock duck, the frozen veggie burger... To not eat my pork that I've been roasting all day. To reject the soup because it's made with chicken broth. Have I hurled metaphorical meat at them? More importantly: Were they hurling leeks at me in their mind? Or were we all just hurling, because we just ate three-day old Phillipino curry from a trough in East Oakland, because I'd read they had good something or other but couldn't remember what it was.

Random foodie fun:
Here's a picture of Jacques Pepin from the other side of a window, where I was forced to view him because I didn't arrive early enough. I wonder what he would have thought of this whole episode...

No Meat Week: Day 1

It was 11 p.m. on a Sunday night and my refrigerator was lusty, alluring and full of meat. I wanted to violate him, to plunge down into his cavernous shelves and, frankly, to do things to his insides that have never been done before. I wanted to pop my refrigerator's cherry.

With the slightest glimmer of consent, I thrust my hands inside and grabbed the leftover Mexican chorizo log, the 50-percent-off deli ham and the box of crunchy pork roast from Oakland Chinatown. And one by one, I threw them all away.

And how did I feel afterwards, standing in the lonely glow of his fluorescent light bulb? I felt shame, unadulterated shame.

I'm not really sure if the decision to take on Oakland Veg Week was even about meat in the first place, or rather a misguided attempt to test my willpower. After a Saturday jog around the lake, I strutted past their information table and knew without even stopping that I'd take the pledge. As if it was my last lap or something.

But like most meat enthusiasts - especially those without the pocketbooks to shop at Whole Foods - I nurse a complex about being omnivorous. My conscience beats when I bite, so I compensate by making rules that justify my actions. My number one rule about eating meat: Never waste it.

I don't want to dwell on it because the discussion's already been hashed, but there's something presumptuous about vegetarianism in America. We shun meat out of privilege, because we have the resources and the social/educational network that allows us to do so. In China, they eat meat only like once a week, and they eat the whole damn animal because they need to make the most of it. Is this practice desirable or reprehensible? Should they be eating more seitan instead? Should we be eating rooster comb?

I know I can't send my crispy pork to China, but as a Jew and someone who really fucking loves crispy pork roast with the crackling skin that pops on your tongue, it still hurts to throw it away. Hopefully though, that will be the last time this week. From Monday to Sunday (I started a day late because my friend invited us to dinner at his house), Housten and I will refrain from any and all contact with Porky Pig. Yeah, Housten said he'd do this thing with me. And I can't call him "Mansten" anymore because he doesn't like it.

Well, the first night didn't go so hot because RaeLynne and I royally fucked up the dumplings we were making in substitute of animal flesh. We didn't plan too well and used whole wheat flour instead of regular flour, turning our dough balls into glutinous tumors of margarine and misery. On the exterior, mush runs rampant, and in the center lies a single jewel of uncooked wheat flour, where flavor goes to die. But on the upside, the kale with cranberries and almonds was tasty.

For the rest of the week, I'm going to try my best not to simply vegetarianize the meat, potatoes, and vegetables dynamic. I want to create food that transcends the limitations of the American plate, draws from the wisdom of other cultures, and fulfills us at the same time. So no Morningstar, and no macro meals whatever the hell that is.

I wrote down some ideas, but we'll see if I stick to them. Who knows, by the time I reach the last curve of the last lap, I may stumble and feel out of breath just ready for a hamburger or something. But maybe, who knows, I may pass the finish line and just keep on runnin...


Tentative list:

-Leeks vinaigrette with egg noodles (France)

-vegetarian lasagne, with some mushrooms and shit! (Italy)

-bean and sour cream enchiladas. Housten wants to make this one. (Mexico/Tucson/Safford/Justyn's house)

-Ratatouille (France)

-Fried tofu with Chinese cabbage from one of my cookbooks (Japan)

-some kind of Asian noodles like jap jae, chow fun, lo mein, etc. (Asia)

-Thomas Keller's grits cakes, although this looks really fucking hard. (California) And maybe some collard greens on the side. (Georgia?)

-Vegetarian tapas, like garlic mushrooms in olive oil and patatas bravas? I don't know. (Spain)

-I don't know, some Indian food? (India)


What do you think???

Gourmet foil dinners

I have this fantasy of owning a yuppy foil dinner restaurant where people sit by a man-made fire and order bundles of leek and turnip hash, foil foie gras or pickled herring and kohlrabi date salad, wrapped in foil. I think I'd call it The Tin House, or for a Shakespearean twist, Foil. (Or if it was close to Berkeley, it could be called FOIL'ed)

I've never been much for camping, but there's just something about a hot cowboy coffee and a slop of fire roasted food that makes me want to appreciate nature. (Almost!)

These are my vegetables, courtesy of the Grand Lake Farmers Market: where hippies, yuppies and hipsters combine to form a triad of social consciousness.

I put in all kinds of turnips, little yellow carrots, kale, spinach, shallots and romanesco (an Italian cauliflower), with generous amounts of salt and pepper and some leftover mint I had laying around. If you're not using meat, a healthy dose of olive oil is pivotal to keeping the vegetables moist. Mansten didn't use any in his dinner, and it came out dry as a driad.



Make sure you rub some butter on the inside of the foil so it doesn't stick. Put it in the oven at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour...



And presto! A beautiful plate of steamed vegetables, probably nothing like the ones grampa Bubkis used to fire up with his marshmallows, but wonderful nevertheless. It was probably the healthiest thing I've eaten in recent memory. (But I won't quibble if you add some beef.) I felt so good after eating it, I almost considered taking a walk outside!

Huevos: Three Ways

It's easy to be gourmet with egg! Cheap, diverse, fast, multicultural, easily paired... This is what I done.




Leftover pasta inspired me to improvise off a Jessica Seinfeld recipe, leaving out the obligatory vegetable puree. (I can't imagine Jerry eating that stuff. He's so picky.) I just fried up the pasta in olive oil until it was crunchy and then made some holes to drop the yolks in. It turned out well, but extremely filling. Don't make this one before you go climbing the peaks of Puchin and Damblesdorph.




I made this one for breakfast today. Just some scrambled eggs with arugula. I accidentally poured too much milk in the mixture before I put it on the stove, but it worked out. The eggs were super fluffy.

Just make sure you sprinkle some olive oil and salt and pepper on the top. Dress those greens!





In a chicken embryo collection, this would be my prime specimen. It's a frittata with thinly-sliced radishes and parmesan cheese, mixed in with some basil. (I had all these ingredients in the fridge beforehand. Never go out and buy shit just to make eggs, for godssakes.) A made it up just like an omelet, but put it under the broiler for a minute instead of folding it over. I put some basil in the egg itself, and then sprinkled the radish and basil mixture on top next to the cheese.

This one's definitely a winner: The flavors contrast and play against each other so well. The freshness of the radishes and basil, earthiness from the egg and a pungent strike of the cheese. It tastes even better when you fry the egg in olive oil instead of butter. Tastes I-Talian!

What I made tonight...

My boyfriend Mansten hasn't received his Spring 2012 loan check yet, so that leaves us with chicken thighs, leftover vegetables and some prunes I bought at a farmer's stand outside a Shell gas station. No matter!

Building off of Thomas Keller's bling recipe for braised thicken thighs, I feigned my way into a ?healthy? winter dish that looks pretty profesh: crispy chicken thighs with winter greens, prunes and cherry tomatoes.

The key to this dish is a three part cooking process: searing the chicken for a couple minutes in hot oil, roasting in the oven for 20 minutes, and then a couple minutes in the broiler to crisp up the skin. It's the cheapest, most flavorful, perfect cut of meat I can think of.

For the side, I just sauteed some left-over shallots, onions, kale and spinach I had, then threw in some cherry tomatoes I bought from the store. Oh, and the prunes added a sweetness and made it way more filling.

The only problem with this dish is that the left-over chicken broth and oil in the pan combine to make a potent and all-too-tempting brew. It tasted like chicken soup, and I couldn't resist pouring it into a bowl and drinking it straight. I felt real crappy afterwards...

Thomas Keller's chicken recipe, courtesy of TasteSpotting. (Thanks guyz!)
Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs

The Wonderful World of Mint!!!!

Confession: I absolutely HATE supermarket herbs, the pathetic packages of tasteless overpriced mildew waiting to happen. But during a recent trip to Lee Lee Oriental Supermart, 1990 W Orange Grove Rd, I spotted a giant bunch of glistening fresh mint for less than 70 cents. (According to my scientific calculations, about a tenth of the price you'd pay for the packaged crap.) It's been in my fridge for about two weeks now and still hasn't rotted!

But what do you do with mint? It's actually surprisingly versatile, and can be supplemented for basil in savory dinners. It's great in Thai food, but as I found below, adds some pep to Italian as well.

*above: I took two chicken breasts, which were also extremely cheap at Lee Lee's, and coated them with A Taste of Thai spicy peanut bake (can be found in most supermarkets) and topped with mint. The herbs really brought out the freshness of the chicken, and helped me forget I was eating from already-made packaged marinade. I also threw some mint into my curried green beans, sauteed in coconut milk, soy sauce and shallots. It was really simple, and delish!



I also threw some mint into this orecchiette pasta to brighten the flavors, since my sauce was basically olive oil. I took some cheap prosciutto and fried it up (can't tell the difference that way) with pine nuts, garlic and broccolini. It was very simple and flavorful.

Good luck!

To begin...

Hello! Welcome to My Dinner With Andi, a philosophical take on the stuff we put in our mouths. Look for recipes, reviews, insights and experiments with ethnic products like sambal.