The Stuff That's Not Sushi

I love this meal because it solves a small problem with vegan food- the lack of a William Tell option. Leftovers from various meals tend to molder in the fridge: It's a rare person who grabs some kale salad as a snack, and the typical chili/hash/frittata path is not an option.

So- this is my adaptation of a traditional Japanese dinner. We had some brown rice, some miso soup, some quick pickles from the cucumbers hanging around the fridge, some of the ever-present greens that I put in a steam basket over the rice (with toasted sesame seeds), and I believe the tail end of some take-out Chinese eggplant. It's a great way to use all the odds and ends around the house.

I do feel bad about treating Chinese take out as Japanese food. And for taking a cuisine known for an obsession with fresh ingredients and using it to dispose of leftovers.

Mirin Pickles

Wash two pickling cucumbers or one English cucumber or one Japanese cucumber. If the cucumber has been waxed, consider peeling it or scoring the skin with a zester. Slice into rounds.

Mix two tbs rice vinegar with one tbs mirin and a healthy pinch of salt. Pour over the cucumber slices. If at this point you think "aha, Jane, you have underestimated the amount of liquid required to cover these slices", add more of both in the appropriate ratio. Let sit for at least an hour- although they'll remain happy in their pickling liquid for at least three days.

Californicated Miso Soup- Traditional Style

It's not quite the same without the shaved dried fish.

Although I've had only one kind of miso soup ever, there's apparently a theory of appropriate ingredients. You should have one ingredient that floats and one that sinks, one with a strong flavor and one with a mild flavor. I've been happily thinking of combinations ever since.

Serves one.

Heat 12 oz water in a small pan. Add two chopped scallions, about 2 oz. sliced silken tofu and 1 tsp dried wakame broken into tiny little pieces. (The things that make this recipe Californicated are leaving out the large fish flakes because of overfishing and feeling guilty when one realizes one has purchased California grown wakame- one of the top 100 invasive species in the world in your own precious ecosystem.) Simmer for five odd minutes, until the wakame is unfurled and edible. Take two tbs. fresh red miso. (Most packages have serving sizes neatly delineated. Trust them in case I'm wrong.) In a separate bowl, blend miso with some of the pathetic excuse for broth you made. Remove the rest of the broth from the heat, and gradually blend in the miso mixture. Never ever let the soup boil after you've added the miso- it'll make everything gross. Put into a bowl and consume.

If you have personal objections to wakame, or cannot procure it, cilantro is a reasonable and tasty alternative.

The Cure for "Eating Locally Fridge"

Yeah, I don't know why all my pictures look like poop lately.

About a week after most people commit to eating more local food, their fridge is full of more greens than they can reasonably eat. Boiled greens, stir fried greens, sauteed greens, raw greens... a person gets tired. Thus, here's my recipe for "I SAY IT'S PESTO"- which is probably very much like the original form of pesto.

Peel six cloves of garlic. Chop coarsely in food processor with 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/2 tsp salt. (Or puree, I don't care.) Destem one bunch cilantro or parsley (which you might conveniently have left from your idiocy with chimp food). Add to food processor. Also destem an unreasonable amount of kale, spinach, arugula, mint, or more cilantro or parsley Put it all in the food processor. Puree, adding olive oil as needed to maintain goopiness. Add the juice of 1/2 lemon.

This is good on pasta, I will grant you. It's divine on green beans. It's also pretty good on greens that might not be so good in a pesto; blanched chard, turnip greens, or kale, chopped cabbage, maybe thinned with a little more lemon juice and use as a dressing for lettuce...

If you add 1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes, 1/4 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp thyme, and use 2 tbs of wine vinegar instead of lemon juice and just parsley and cilantro, you have chimichuri. Which you should try on potatoes, fish, grilled meat, or vegetables. (Worst vegan ever.)

If you don't like cilantro but want to start, this is a good recipe. The anethole vaporizes, so the delightful soapy taste is absent. If you really want to trick your brain, eat this in circumstances that make you unusually happy. Then do it again. Soon, your brain will think that you like cilantro.

Bad Idea Fridays: Bonobo Diet

I was raised by former hippies, so when I have a bad idea, I don't stifle it like a normal person. I do science to it, and C comes home to find a terrible mess and a wife with a slightly perplexed expression. How do you know that it's a bad idea until you try it? Common sense is just an excuse for laziness.

But since I'm getting older and wiser, I will recognize that some of these ideas are likely to be... unwise. Then, I will do them anyways. I will write a post about them. Who doesn't read blogs for the schadenfreude?

Onward.

In recent years, there's been a rash of dietary nostalgia. Michael Pollan- who I am somewhat ambivalent about, despite naming my blog after one of his ideas- says you shouldn't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't eat. My family already had that policy, but that's because she possibly poisoned her first husband. Before that, there was the What Would Jesus Eat diet- basically a Mediterranean thing, looting the moldering WWJD corpse for one more dollar. And now, now there's the Caveman diet. It's based on a very 1960s version of Paleolithic life, interestingly enough. I would have expected more quail and rabbit and partially mature eggs- possibly the odd lizard- and an absurd emphasis on radical shifts in food based on the season. They seem to eat a lot of ground beef. But the principle- that your body evolved eating certain things, so possibly you should eat like that now- that seems interesting.

But come on, the stuff they're referring to is 100,000 years old, tops. You might grab a couple of extra enzymes to break down gluten and lactose, but you still have the intestines- and general biochemistry- of a chimp. Thus, the bonobo diet.

My goal- to spend one day eating a reasonable approximation of a chimp- or bonobo's- natural diet. This is probably a bad idea.

First things first- I am bad at finding termites. Even when I'm getting paid to look under rocks, I don't find many. And I'm pretty sure that I'm not willing to eat them without someone telling me that they are cuisine. Dried shrimp though- they're in the same... Phylum. I don't think I can do any better on short notice. I will also not hunt bush babies. Dialium is closely related to Phaseolus- so, I'll eat some dry turtle beans. (Don't worry about my teeth- the preferred method is to let them sit in the cheek until they disintegrate.) Ficus is easy- I bought some figs. I'll bet that will be the tastiest part of this experiment. Chimps apparently extract moisture from a whole range of herbs in families I don't know- but there's a fleshy Brassicaceae in there, and an honest to goodness wild parsley. No drinking water. As for the other fruits that are the backbone of the chimpanzee diet- Lost Crops of Africa calls Pancovia laurentii "so delicious in its native state that there was no reason to domesticate it." All the other fruits are apparently not eaten by humans. I've found some polite treatises on not buying these rain forest woods- but that's all. Double figs, then.

--------------------

I didn't make it past lunch.

I started off well enough. I ate a couple of figs, (it's kinda past the best part of fig season) a couple of dried shrimp (Not bad, and made me popular with the cats. Odoriferous though.) I finished with a couple of kale stems (very chewy) and a large handful of parsley (good for shrimp breath). Apparently chimps hold a wad of vegetation in one cheek, masticate it slowly, and suck out the resulting moisture. This is as disgusting as it sounds. I tried it at work- after one minute, I realized that I couldn't continue to do this once my coworkers arrived- green drool is not professional. After three, I spat out my cud and made myself some tea. My jaw muscles ached.

Fine, yes, chimps have significantly larger and stronger jaw muscles. I knew that. And the huge cheeks are apparent from pictures. I didn't know there was a reason. All my reading about primates covers how they are just like us. Freaking deceptive evolutionary biologists.

So I figured I'd try sucking on two or three beans with my tiny cheeks. Let me tell you- raw beans taste gross. And there's a point where you can crunch them with your teeth or swallow them whole- my saliva enzymes never get them soft enough to chew safely. Or not after 45 minutes.

I ate some more figs. They're kinda tasteless in November. Also they make my tongue swell. I don't know if that's a me thing. Eventually- in a point familiar to anyone who's ever been on a "Eat all the X you like and lose weight"- I was desperately hungry and completely unwilling to eat a fig.

I went home for lunch. I ate a couple of dried shrimp. Then the cat explained- through interpretive dance- that he could eat those shrimp, and I could eat something else. So I did. I had a grilled cheese sandwich on wheat bread with a glass of Coke. Haha, evolutionary biology.

This diet was definitely a bad idea. I may have the intestines of a chimp, but I have a puny human jaw and weak human teeth and itty-bitty human cheeks. Also, I grew up in a world with ample calories. Eating no calorie dense foods makes me very very cross. I can't think of one good aspect of this idea.

Oh, apparently I now have the perfect cat treat.

Planthead's Chocolate Pudding

This is not exactly as tasty as non-vegan pudding. It is vastly better for you, and it is really easy to make. It helps if you don't try to paste pudding flavor onto it- think of it as a delightful dessert that superficially resembles pudding. And it's good, it's good, I swear.

Take 1/2 container silken tofu (7 oz.). Puree in a food processor with 1/4-1/3 cup cocoa and 2-4 tablespoons honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, or, you know, sugar. Add a dash of vanilla extract or rum or orange liqueur. (I'm just guessing about those measurements- add stuff until it tastes good. It's a very forgiving recipe.)

For added richness, melt some chocolate in the microwave (in 15-30 second bursts), temper by stirring in a little pureed tofu, and then add the whole thing back to the food processor and blitz.

Roasted things.

It's just after the election- regardless of your political alignment, you're almost certainly unhappy. What you need is my mother's "I will take a sick day and spend all daylight hours reading political blogs also here is some dinner go do your homework." roast vegetables.

Take one head cauliflower and two pounds sweet potatoes. Cut the sweet potatoes into wedges. Put in a plastic bag. Add salt and ample olive oil, shake like it's a non-voter from Wisconsin's 7th district. Put on a cookie sheet in a 400 degree oven and roast for twenty minutes.

Cut the cauliflower into slices. Put into a plastic bag, add salt and what appears to be half the bottle of olive oil, shake like your favorite governor ever is back in office and you're pretty sure it's a dream. Put the cauliflower on a cookie sheet. When the timer for the sweet potatoes goes off, add the cauliflower to the oven. Bake both vegetables for an additional 25 minutes, then gesture vaguely towards the oven whenever someone asks you a non-election related question.