Week 15, Day 7 Veganism: Wrap-up

Could hardly wait until Sunday rolled around and I'd be able to eat this bacon...

Saturday wrapped up my week of veganism, and it went by relatively painlessly. I woke up around 10 and leisurely floated around the house, drinking coffee (with soymilk) and reading the Wall Street Journal outside in the backyard. At noon, I took the upstairs dog with me to McCarren Park and fetched my old furry friend from her own home and walked the two of them around the park before decamping in their demarcated dogzone for some play time.

I stayed at the park for about 90 minutes before good friend M Jaffée came by to say hello and request my involvement in soliciting a pickup basketball game, at which pointed I headed home and wrote this brief blog post about sunshine and dogs and basketball. Basketball was great, and I brought the two dogs with my and chained them to the fence to watch the game, though Weegee spent most of the time booing my poor play.

This is pretty much all I ate on Saturday, coupled with a few beers:

DINNER

- Tao Hu Hor, from Cheer's Thai. Bean curd skin topped with mushroom bambooshoots, basil sauce and spinach. Basically, this was the single gross/terrible thing I ate all week.

- Amazing vegan cupcake from DPC






I wish I could say that I felt like all I wanted to eat is tofu... but I went to bed that night dreaming of the bacon I would eat the next day.

Week 15, Day 6 Veganism: Booze and Zombies

BREAKFAST / LUNCH

Friday was weird and kind of shitty, though it ultimately blossomed into something nice. It began well thanks to some good coffee w/ soymilk and then a gift of two amazingly tasty vegan cupcakes from my friend Dan as a get-through-veganweek gift she picked up for me from Snice. The work day to follow though was largely terrible for a variety reasons; I didn't eat any lunch because I was first upset and then busy, and then the day was capped off with a ridiculous and laughable multi-hour meeting that was destined to be replayed as an episode of The Office.



DINNER


C and an unnecessarily camera shy Dan

Thankfully the mood picked up as soon as I left work, as I proceeded immediately with Dan and her friend C to a ridiculous "bar" near my office on the second floor of an Indian restaurant. We drink colorful, noxious drinks with terrible names like "Aphrodesiak" until happy hour closed and then proceeded on in search of food in the great wasteland swathe of land that is Midtown.

At first we tried to go to this Japanese restaurant, tucked away in a basement on I think 49th St. It looked great but the wait was 45 minutes so we went off in search of a Mexican restaurant nearby called Toloache that had the added bonus of also having a great margaritas.



We had a few margaritas at the restaurant (the combination of post-work adrenaline and too many drinks make the details a little blurry, which is why the photos I took are also terrible) and then scoured the menu in search of something I could possibly eat. I ultimately settled on an "Ensalada de Jicama" (jicama-avocado ravioli, mixed greens, orange, meyer lemon avocado radish, marcona almonds, leaf-oil vinaigrette) and fried plaintains. I also ordered rice and beans but didn't eat them partially because I wasn't hungry and partially because the beans had cheese sprinkled on them.







LATE NIGHT

We had a great time and it was definitely an important and necessary way to unwind after a ridiculous day in the office. After a few more drinks, Dan turned in to get some rest before an early morning rise for a weekend trip and I went on to meet other friends for... an absurd movie called Zombie Strippers, featuring none other than former porn star Jenna Jameson and 80s horror star Rob Englund (aka Freddie Krueger).



This movie was as bad as you'd imagine that it should be, although made far more bizarre by its flabbergastingly heavy-handed insertions of pseudo-philosophy--including Jenna Jameson's character reading Nietzsche between strip sets (!!!), a town setting of Sartre, Nebraska (pron. "Sar-tree"), and direct references/quotes/paraphrases to Descartes, Hume, and a number of others.

Suffice it to say that the film was terrible, but it was admittedly more entertaining than many other terrible films I've seen. See the trailer below for some bits of it, though remarkably enough the actual movie was far less dramatic and far more terrible than what you see here (as well as far more poorly produced).



Check out what Jenna's reading if you can

We then went to a bar in Soho and hung out until finally coming home. I topped the night off with salt and vinegar chips and a sandwich from Hana down the street, of eggplant cutlet, sprouts, avocado and spinach.





All in all, the day turned out great and I had completed my sixth day of veganism--only one to go.

Week 15, Day 5 Veganism: Revisiting Old Favorites

Thursday, in brief:

BREAKFAST

- Coffee, with soymilk (starting to get used to this stuff I think)

LUNCH

- Leftover Asparagus/Red Quinoa from previous night



DINNER

Dad and stepmom were in town for a night on their way home from a trip to D.C. and Gettyburg and we went to get Thai food at Cheer's, the Thai food restaurant next door.



In the 3.5 years that I have lived in Williamsburg, I have almost definitely eaten from Cheer's over 100 times, making my way through most all of the items on the menu. There are still a few though which I've never tried.

My stepmom tried to stay on my vegan train by ordering garlic tofu, and my dad got tom yum soup and a chicken dish. I ordered spring rolls and tofu pad thai, though I later realized halfway through the pad thai that it probably wasn't vegan at all--small pieces of egg in it. I tried to avoid eating all the eggs but I hope that there wasn't anything else "not ok" in this dish and that I didn't push the rules too badly. Feel free and call me out here if you think I fucked up really badly.


Cheer's backyard garden area


Stepmom and Dad


Fried spring rolls, yum.


Tom Yum soup, which I couldn't eat


Stepmom's Garlic Tofu


Dad's chicken dish (can't remember which it was)


My tofu pad thai

POST-DINNER / EVENING



After Dad and stepmom went to sleep, Doorknobs and I went out to catch the inaugural weekly party at Hangar Bar being thrown by friends Evan C and Cameron.


Campsleaze mans the decks

I brought the camera along in hopes of getting some further tips from Ben D, who would be there as well. Since the light inside was so low, he recommended that I use that evening as a chance to begin experimenting with black and white since I'd have to use my flash. He showed me how to set the camera to black and white and manually input some settings adjustments to tailor the results, and then walked me through techniques and methods of getting the best results while minimizing excessive flash glow.

I took many photos, and here's three of them, only two of which I like and are focused properly:


Ben D to Doorknobs: "I even pretty much did everything for him and look, he still isn't getting it right."


If I didn't know these three, I'd be certain something else was taking place than what actually was.


This is the look I get when it's time to go home.

Week 15, Day 4 Veganism: Friends Make It Better

Genuine doghead draft

Here's the first of many overdue updates of the past few days of veganism.

WEDNESDAY: SALAD / BACON (NOT!) / TASTY ASPARAGUS AND QUINOA / FRIENDS


Ms. Sweeetheart Fever, Almond Queen

Wednesday was a great day. I came home after work looking forward to a lovely evening of deluxxx vegan stylings in the company of great friends. Among the many friends joining me for dinner was my favorite Californian, Ms. Sweeetheart Fever, who planned to not only eat but also cook our fantastic meal (check out her own foodblog here and linked to the left). But first, a great story about the day.



The day was in and of itself pretty solid, but it was brought to a level of beautiful ridiculousness around 1 pm, when I received in the mail a box of bacon I had special-ordered from a farm in Tennessee. The hilarity about me getting this bacon is probably obvious, working on a number of levels. It came from Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams in Tennessee, a family-owned business producing some amazing meats through a prep process of pork "slow cured using salt, brown sugar, and sodium nitrite and typically aged 9-10 months." I am without doubt a bacon epicure, and I found out about Benton bacon when at Ben D's house a few weeks ago studying photography. Of course, despite my love for cured pig, I have never in my life ordered or even considered mailordering for it, so the facts that I a) went ahead and ordered it, b) had it sent to my office, and then c) received it smack in the middle of a week celebrating non-animal product foods is really just too much. The meat-loving coworker with whom I share an office already thinks I'm crazy for doing this entire project, and she thought my vegan efforts this week were even more so; but nothing else so far has topped the look on her face as she watched me tear open the cardboard box on my desk and begin pulling out pack after pack of juicy, luscious bacon. I spent the rest of the day in half-anguish over the fact that I wouldn't be able to eat any of it.

LUNCH

Fuck Midtown. My day on Wednesday was pretty busy, with meetings all morning and afternoon, and for lunch I couldn't be bothered to be creative or exciting about my choice, so I went with a rather flavorless salad, again from Global Kitchen. Ingredients: spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, mushrooms, balsamic vinigrette. Boring.

Here:







DINNER


Sooooz came directly from work and brought along the "Worm Condo" she'd picked up during work to begin her summer composting.

Carrying the box of bacon on the train home was almost too much, and by the time I got there my brain was overrunning with craziness. Luckily, my friends began arriving soon after and I relaxed a little and got excited again about vegan pleasures.

When discussing food choices for the night with Ms. Sweeetheart, she stressed an important point which I'd largely ignored during my previous Hyperliving week of cooking in February: "We should just make some easy one-pot sort of stuff, because the more time we spending eating / talking / laughing about stuff the better. A twenty minute meal should be plenty." My therapist had me pegged when she told me that I should constantly remind myself that I should always expect that things will take about three times longer than what ever amount of time I think they should take, and Hyperliving Cooking Week was the best example of that, where, with the exception of one night, every meal began late and took ridiculous amounts of time to complete. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when you're having friends over to share the evening, it's definitely better if you aren't tied up in the kitchen the entire time.

Here is the meal Ms. Sweeetheart chose, from the 101 Cookbooks blog (which she highly recommends that any foodies should check out).

"Tasty Asparagus with Red Quinoa"
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 or 2 14-ounce cans of chickpeas, drained
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1-inch segments
3 cups pre-cooked brown rice >> 3 cups red quinoa
1 cup almond slivers, toasted
fine grain sea salt

Ms. Sweeetheart decided to make a few substitutions to the recipe. One change, as you see above, was substituting the brown rice for red quinoa, which was a nice choice given that I'd never had quinoa before and it was a food staple recommended to me by many vegans in preparation for this week. The other change was more accidental: the recipe calls for seasoning the asparagus with a tahini sauce, which would have been great, but unfortunately, even after a city-wide search tahini sauce was nowhere to be found. Seriously! Sweetheart and Doorknobs canvassed grocerias in Manhattan and the 'Burg but no one seemed to be carrying our sauce backbone, so Sweeetheart and E-bad put their heads together to improvise an alternative based on the meager seasoning possibilities available in my apartment. Ultimately they settled on a mix of lemon juice, nutmeg, ginger, 3 cloves of garlic sauteed in soy "butter", and two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and it turned out great.

Also joining us for dinner were Becca and my great friend Sooooz, who brought dessert and did much of the sous chef preparation.

Here's some photos of the process:


Red quinoa cooking on an open fire--went on first as it takes about 15 min to cook


Soooz at work on garlic


Asparagus, chopped by Soooooz


Onions, also chopped by Soooooz


A little lonely garlic clove


Pre-sliced almonds, preparing to be toasted


Almonds, post-toasting


Chickpeas, beginning to cook


Fully-cooked red quinoa (weird right? Looked to me like wooly-mammoth fur)



Nearly completion: asparagus and onions mixed in with the chickpeas


And finally, the dish (served best with canned Budweiser, of course)


Chatting post game on the question of meat or not meat


Doorknobs definitely prefers meat

DESSERT

Dessert, as I mentioned, was prepared by Sooooz, and it was fucking GREAT. She made vegan cupcakes and, honestly, they were incredible. I was shocked at how moist and delicious they were and all 12 of them disappeared almost immediately. Yay to Sooooz for giving the perfect ending to a special meal.


The last cupcake standing

Week 15, Veganism: Updates coming

It's a BEAUTIFUL fucking Saturday afternoon right now and I'm not about to spend the day inside blogging, but I do owe a few entries about the past few days. Lots of photos and stories about Wed, Thurs and Fri of this week--i'll try to get 'em up tonight.

I am pleased to report though that it's been a week of great success and I'm very pleased. Outside of a total failure to understand how vegans manage to get by on what feels like a nearly joyless understanding of the experience of food-eating, it's actually been kind of fun being so careful about what I eat--a nice reminder that even food is something we can enjoy thoughtlessly and that it usually pays in psychological coinage to invest a little thought process in the food decisions we make.

Now time for basketball and dogs outside with M Jaffe!





... LATER:

Some photos of basketball with M Jaffe. By this point I was already too exhausted and was sitting along the fence tending to whining dogs. I haven't smoked many cigarettes this week following up the no smoking of last week, but today was definitely a reminder that I should be smoking even less than that.


M Jaffe shoots


And he also defends