god damn you, hotcakes Tuesday, Mar 18 2008

Alright well as threatened I prepared pancakes for a third time in a handful of days and this time I just used egg and milk like you’re supposed to. This is what I have to say: the mix I was using really sucked. It was a whole wheat pancake mix. Whole wheat is very hit or miss. And I remember hearing that whole wheat flour isn’t necessarily that much better for you than regular wheat flour. It occurs to me that since whole wheat isn’t hulled, if it has been sprayed with pesticides then they might be doing you a favor by hulling the wheat and throwing that part away. Pesticide probably soaks all the way into plants though. Anyway let me break it down in order of what turned out and tasted the best

1. Making hotcakes the traditional way with milk and egg. The pancakes didn’t really taste better with milk rather than milk substitute, although they did taste better than the oil pancakes, but the consistency was a lot better and of all things they actually got done faster. Unfortunately I thought that they got too easily burnt on the outside, by far. Which was probably the strength of the oil cakes. Nonetheless if you pay more attention than I did when making them you’ll be fine.
2. Making hotcakes with milk substitute (I used vanilla flavored almond milk) and eggs. This was the first way I made them and even though I am consistently unhappy with the denseness of pancakes made this way I seemed to have the easiest time getting them done properly. They also tasted the best but the vanilla flavoring in the almond milk is what accounted for that. If I had actually flavored any of these pancake mix attempts (cinnamon seemed like a good idea) they probably would have tasted better but more on that later.
3. Making hotcakes with almond milk instead of cow milk and canola oil instead of eggs. These ones just sucked. The poor taste was mostly due to the canola oil but it would have been worse if I’d used anything else I had (actually the only other oils I have are safflower and olive so there was almost no choice). I wonder if peanut oil would have been any good? I don’t use peanuts though. This mix ended out extremely runny, I think this could have been mitigated by less liquid but I didn’t think of that at the time, and in the end less liquid means less cake. The advantage of using oil over egg was that because they didn’t have anything in that got done that quickly they came up easier, another advantage was not having to use an egg. In the end though, as much as I hate eggs I hated the way these pancakes turned out even more. They were though vegan as far as I know so that’s something. I wouldn’t say that I can make all my regular dishes without various common allergens or animal byproducts (I don’t have the spirit to make meatless meatballs), but I can make a lot of them that way if pressed. And that seems to come in handy a lot more often than you would think these days. Fortunately as far as I know I don’t have any food allergies so it’s all academic to me.

Well  anyway that was how it went. Other than being instructed to substitute 30 ml of oil for 1 egg, which I’m not sure is an equal volume conversion, I just substitute milk substitutes in equal amounts for milk. If you tweak a bit the results would probably be better. For the record the only other one I’ve used for hot cakes is rice milk but it’s not quite thick enough for anything that you want to have some consistency. I once used it in rice pudding (which if I recall was just cooked rice, milk, rum, and sugar, I used brown sugar and quite a bit more rum as well as coconut milk for thickness) that came out well though. Speaking of coconut milk I wonder if you could use it for pancakes? I’m not that interested in trying, coconut milk has too much fat for regular use in my opinion. I really like it in curry though.

It occurred to me while eating these flavorless pancakes that if you want to flavor your hotcake batter it’s easier to get a flavored liquid than to try and figure out how much of what, like for instance chocolate syrup, to add and try and mix in yourself. In general I’m a fan of vanilla (especially bourbon vanilla) and cinnamon when it comes to spices to use in sweet things because you almost can’t add too much of the former and you’re unlikely to add too much of the latter. You could maybe put some nutmeg or clove or whatever in there as well as sugar. Being reminded of an actual cake I made a while ago, I wonder if you could make a pumpkin hotcake somehow. I’m not that interested in finding the answer to that out for myself though.

In any case here’s the end of this stupid experiment. Good riddance. Let me once again say that I prefer crepes to pancakes hands down. Although I think that if you tried to substitute 30 ml of oil per egg in crepe batter you would just end out with oil drowned flour. That is not a pleasant thought.

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The eggless hotcake Saturday, Mar 15 2008

So as promised I attempted to make pancakes without eggs since the mix I received said you could use oil instead. It didn’t specify which oil to use so I used canola. Unfortunately the canola I had really didn’t taste so great, and the hotcakes ended out tasting mostly of it. But they did turn out.

Now on this package it had me using 30ml (two tablespoons if you’re familiar) of oil instead of 1 egg. I have no idea whether or not that would work out for a typical pancake recipe. I had previously heard of people adding grease to the mixture in addition or in the absence of greasing the pan, but never had I heard of using it instead of egg. The overall consistency to me seemed both runnier and thicker if that’s possible. I had some difficulty in cooking them as I pretty much had to let the bottom burn (2 minutes a side as opposed to 1-1:30 a side the last time I made them) in order for enough of each cake to cook to be able to flip it over without the whole thing falling apart. This probably could have been solved by doling or spreading the mixture thinner on the pan but I was having other issues so that’s not how it went for me. Speaking of which, the cakes really collapsed once I flipped them over and they ended out so dense it was hard to tell when they were done. I again made this batch with almond milk instead of cow milk by the way, that again might have made a difference.

I previously mentioned a certain difficulty with the pancakes splashing around on me when I flipped them. The thinness of the mix only added to that problem however I found that by flipping them away from myself (my inclination is apparently to flip them inwards) this was somehow dampened. Also I pressed the cakes flat with my spatula so that they matched up with the splash. Frankly even though I suggested trying to get the cakes to land flat I didn’t make a great effort in doing so. I was holding the spatula extremely low, my hand was nearly touching either the burner or the cakes, while flipping hotcakes, part of that was the spatula I was using which has a parallel blade and handle and part of that was a stiff serving (unless it was supposed to be three) of mead. For the most part the faster I flipped the less fluid deviation there was and the neater the cakes turned out. But whatever. I was baking them in batches of 4 and ended out with 12 which is a pretty typical amount for that kind of thing, I think, so that gives you however many chances to try doing things whatever ways you want.

All said and done, going back to being a bigger crepe fan, even though I dislike eggs as a general matter of principal I prefer the way that pancakes turn out if you use eggs compared to not using them. Same thing with cow milk, probably (I will next try eggs and cow milk with the last of the dry mix I have). However for those of you who are vegan or simply have an egg or milk allergy or whatever there is a glimmer of hope as all kinds of pancake recipes are out there and for the most part they all end out about the same: almost flavorless. So don’t worry too much about what’s in your cakes and instead worry more about whether you’ve got enough of them (those 12 cakes went pretty quickly) and what you’re going to put on them.

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Like bad synth music Thursday, Feb 28 2008

Being in the right mood I whipped up a batch of crepes. Remember; when flipping a crepe the important thing is to marshal your courage and flip swiftly. Loosen all the edges first while the center is cooking up too, that helps I think. Anyway I happened to have some (pizza) white cheese blend and pepperoni so when I was eating the crepes leftover I decided to make some crepe pizzas by just putting some of that stuff on and heating the lot up in the microwave. This was not my greatest experiment. I think that having cheese on a crepe isn’t bad, but the whole thing ended out sort of funky and greasy in the bad way.

Other than this someone gave me some Darbo syrup and it was not to my tastes. I am critical of everything but there wasn’t a single thing I liked about it.

In an interesting plot twist, new evidence has come to light that the reason everyone thinks I look jewish, whatever that means (I think they’re just ridiculing me, but I know they’re mocking jews with those remarks), might be because I’m descended from Romani. Which might more commonly be known in english as “gypsy” and not to be confused with roman. I don’t really know a lot about that matter, but at the least going back to the nazis there has been lumping together of the romani with the jews. Which ended out being much to their lasting detriment, hard enough to recover from genocide as it is only to end out having your identity ignored. Who knows how many roma children were mistakenly thought to be jewish and misplaced? I don’t think the opposite would be as much the case but I guess I don’t really know.

But on to the fun Q: “Is Togashi Yoshihiro dead” A: Togashi Yoshihiro is the author of the mysteriously popular manga series “Hunter X Hunter” which was on hiatus for close to 2 years if I recall correctly, only to go on hiatus again within a couple months of resuming. [update: apparently the moment I said this a new chapter of HxH came out but whether this means that serialization has actually resumed at the old rate which included frequent breaks for months at a time or just a fluke is not known] Well officially he is not dead. I had previously speculated that there was no way to tell who was drawing the last chapters before the hiatus because they were little more than glorified scribbles. But in the recent batch of new chapters before this second indefinite hiatus the art was clearly his, and of fair quality at that. It remains a matter of speculation exactly what his problems (serious illness is presumed but that could be anything) are that have interrupted serialization, some skeptics don’t believe that there’s anything wrong him, but nothing has been forthcoming. Frankly while it is not anyone’s business aside from his beleaguered employers exactly what is going on, to followers of his work it would be nice to know whether his problems are terminal or not. I think that Shueisha, his publisher, is entirely aware of what is going on, but is intentionally covering things up in order to maintain interest in the work. Frankly if I didn’t think the series was going to end before Togashi I would give up on it and I don’t think I’m the sole holder of that sentiment.

Q: “I want to be a vegetarian but I have absolutely no idea how to go about it” A: If you’re really serious about being a vegetarian, I recommend seeing a dietitian and making a gradual transition. Just as people typically fail at giving up drugs all at once, so do people fail at giving up meat all at once. You might start by only eating meat once a day, and then graduating from there to only eating byproducts once a day before eliminating those. Decide where your morals and aesthetics lie on the matter between being a fake vegetarian, one who still eats poultry and fish; a real vegetarian, one who doesn’t eat meat but still eats eggs and dairy and such; and fake vegan, a person who does their best not to eat anything with animal products in it but who ultimately fails because of feasibly inescapable cross-contamination. A note on that last part, if you order a tempeh burger and your friend orders a cheeseburger… Or failing that, even if you’re at a vegan restaurant how much meaning in it is there if the guy preparing your food snacks on prosciutto?

Well the other day someone asked me to refute vegetarianism so I might as well jump all the way into this one. For a person who desires to be vegetarian you will inevitably fail if you try to eat vegetarian versions of the same foods you usually do. Vegan sausage for instance. While there are a few substitute products that are quite good, veggie burgers and margarines have come a long way for example, most fall flat. Instead the best thing to do is totally revamp your diet with all new vegetarian dishes. There are a lot of great vegetarian oriental dishes, chinese and indian in particular, which I enjoy and won’t leave you wanting as the veggie steak will.

Which brings me to the second key to vegetarian success: you have to be both able and willing to prepare almost all of your own meals. This probably breaks people even more than changing their diet. Most people really can’t cook great in the first place, but in our bottom line driven world even people who want to become better at cooking simply don’t have the time or energy to dedicate towards cooking. I would really recommend finding the reserves somehow to prepare your own food as much as possible though, taste and/or budget issues aside it really is a lot better for you to eat things as minimally processed as possible. So let me say that if you and/or your household aren’t cooking a lot now and don’t think that you can change that, don’t even bother trying to become a vegetarian. You just won’t keep it up.

The third key to success as a vegetarian is to do it with others. If it’s just you converting and not your spouse and/or children or other dependents (perhaps you take care of your ailed parents, I don’t know) and you’re the only one cooking, it simply isn’t going to work. Well you could try telling these others to fend for themselves but that’s a bit cold if we’re talking about children. It’s bad enough preparing one set of meals, but to have to prepare two? You’re not in a better position in any kind of unit even if it’s not you preparing the food. It’s a bit selfish to say “you guys eat this and by the way I need you prepare this for me” don’t you think? Probably the equation is just too difficult with children in the picture in any case though. Now even if you have no romantic partner or dependents it is still easier to convert to any kind of diet (this actually would apply to the last one as well) if someone else is going along on it with you. For moral support if nothing else. People are pretty pathetic, can’t really do anything on their own, so you need the moral support to succeed.

So saying those things, the main reason to forget about vegetarianism is because it goes against human nature. Not that eating meat is a part of human nature so much as being opportunistic is. I think that moral reasons for vegetarianism are mere sophistry if not in fact hypocrisy. I could give examples or elaborate but you can probably use your own imagination other than reiterating that just because you don’t think you’re eating or using an animal’s byproduct doesn’t mean that you aren’t. As to economic reasons for vegetarianism, they’re questionable. I think it was Gandhi who brought up the point that it doesn’t make sense to feed something else just so that you can eat it instead of just eating what you were going to feed it in the first place. However realistically a lot of domesticated animals eat things that people won’t or in some cases even can’t eat. And the opposite is also true to some extent. But I do think that we could make better utilization of animals we feed on at this point and that there’s a lot of waste resultant from the process. This is also a form of sophistry, if you’re going to eat the fish you might as well eat its eyes too instead of just its fillet.

Recently environmental concerns have been raised about livestock processing and some people give this as a reason for becoming a vegetarian. I do not think that the pollution resultant from the livestock industry (mostly transportation emissions, but deforestation is also an issue) is the worlds biggest concern but it could be a part of it. Similarly some people cite a poor diet as reasons for giving up meat. I don’t think it’s the steak’s fault that it tastes so much better than a piece of lettuce that you would rather eat a big steak than a salad. Most recently a trend I’ve seen is people switching to vegetarianism because of health concerns. This is probably pretty stupid. Anyone can see sense in cutting back if you eat a diet especially high in fatty cow byproducts, but for the most part people stop eating meat because they’re afraid of some sort of animal disease. I thought it was divine comedy when there was a big E. Coli (I think) outbreak in the US in spinach or something like that last year. God was laughing about that one all year let me tell you. So that one is somewhat bunk as long as you’re sure of your government’s control on meat. If you’re not maybe it isn’t such a bad idea though who can say. Other general health benefits are questionable.

Long time readers (do I have any?) might recall that I was on a vegetarian diet for a period of months last year. Initially I was doing everything right, following my outlined suggestions (other than how I was doing it all on my own), and I did feel physically better at first. But eventually I was back to feeling like crap as usual. In my case I think there was a psychological element to it. For me it’s pretty demoralizing to eat a meal without meat for various reasons. One other remark I could make about my improvement and subsequent decline is that when I started out on the diet I was preparing almost all my own food, but by the end I was subsisting almost entirely on prepared foods. Granola, cereal bars, frozen meals/burritos, stuff like that. Having recently gone through a cooking resurgence (everything I’ve eaten in the last week was made in my home) I have similarly been feeling better. I think that this is something experienced by other people so the fact that the food doesn’t have meat in it might be incidental with the real positive simply being preparing it yourself. In other words your diet does affect your health, and your mood, but that has less to do with whether there is meat in your diet and more to do with the freshness and quality of your food in the first place.

Another thing, a lot of vegetarians start taking vitamins when they make the switch. In reality if you’re eating more fruits and vegetables then you’re already getting more vitamins. So you might actually be overdosing on supplements which typically results in an initial wellness peak before being followed by a steep drop-off. Or if no such thing is going on, your improved wellness might be resultant from your supplements instead of your diet. Ugh what the hell was I writing about again? I got distracted by some other shit. Oh well.

Just remember that everything in the world exists for your amusement. So if it amuses you to eat a bloody slab of some animal’s corpse then go right ahead. And if you like mapo tofu (I love mapo tofu) but hate eggs (I hate eggs) then roll with that too.

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