#a vegetarian is restricted from meat

[pineyw00dsshesquatch]

I don't get it either, obligatory I am an omnivore, but I'll sometimes be a "fake vegetarian" cuz I love vegetarian options and am picky about meat. I also just love eggs. I'm a big time believer that everyone deserves delicious food, no matter their dietary restrictions, convictions and choices. ESPECIALLY comfort foods.

(i hijack this post for my vegan tamales Texas pasty lady imposter syndrome)

I really love the challenge of making vegan/vegetarian options. My favorite is tamales cuz I think they lend themselves well to meat free/plant based if you know what you're doing. They're also inherently gluten free. People can get weird about vegan tamales, but my cousins and my friend's vegan gf mama love em.

I kinda stall out on fillings tho cuz I feel like I'm missing obvious choices. I don't really like using meat substitute/plant based cheese products cuz they're kinda expensive and hard to find where I live. I would rather go extra steps to make a mushroom chorizo or something like that. But IIII am not vegan and know nothing of the desire for substitutions for dearly missed foods like cheese.

Vegan/Vegetarian tamales I do make are chile sweet potato, bean, and cream cheese jalapeno. The possibilities with tamale fillings are endless, but I keep being timid. Nopalito/cactus is an option that I've never cooked with cuz I'm chicken. Rajas/pepper strips are a common tamale filling also that's meatless. I've heard of people putting carrots in them, too. My internet research has suuuucked on this topic.

If I was in the city, it'd prolly be easier to find ideas from what people are making, emphasis on latiné vegans, but alas. I have a rival/coworker who spent time in vegan kitchens in Austin, but he's one of those people who make it weird that tamales gotta have meat. Even tho neither of us have any literal skin in the authenticity game (we pasty) we just Texan. I'm extra inauthentic, NOT vegan AND pasty. Idk what it's like for actual vegans coming up in Hispanic/Latiné families, but I wanna know what they think makes good vegan tamales.

There's also SO MANY WAYS people make tamales. I'm self conscious about having zero skin in the game, so I always tell people "this is just how IIIII learned" omitting other Central and South American countries, just Mexico is HUGE with tons of regional differences and THEN those all trickle thru the US and what's available and convenient from place to place family to family etc

There's absolutely gotta be big money vegan tamales in California, but my mom in law who taught me the craft calls it "Baja food" so I wanna stick to what's local, but I'm getting desperate at this point as tamale season gets closer.

Part of the reason I try to make good vegetarian food even though I’m not vegetarian is because of the one week my dad was convinced he was gonna go vegan.

You know what he made for dinner that whole week? Steamed vegetables, rice, and canned beans. All unseasoned. Technically a nutritionally complete meal. It tasted awful.

How could a man usually so good at cooking forget literally all of that when faced with the possibility of making vegan food?

I thought there had to be a better way. And it turns out there is. Vegetarian food doesn’t taste bad. Cartoons that depict vegetarians eating a singular leaf for a meal have ruined us. A lot of stuff that meat eaters eat in everyday life is technically vegetarian or easily made vegetarian. Why when faced with one restriction do so many people forget every single egg sandwich or apple pie they’ve ever eaten?

[unknown-art-room1]

I had a thought which lead to a headcannon and now you all have to hear it.

Okay, for starters I recalled a lot of people in this fandom like to make the Stex characters very human like or put them in full on human aus. Then I remembered something about diesel engines, you have to be very careful about the fuel you put in it or it's just a bad time for everyone... Which lead me down this spiral of thoughts.

So, Greaseball is the one who started off this train of thought and who it is mainly centred about. But if diesel engines can have only certain fuels, then as a human that would translate to them having a very strict diet. Probably even food intolerances and allergies, limiting what they can eat. But, since they're dating Dinah she can make them so many safe foods that actually taste good.

Next up, the electrics... Honestly, I can see them eating only "pure" food. Mainly a vegetarian/vegan diet but can and will eat only expensive meat. The entire ideology is it has to be free from any chemicals and no guilt would come from eating the food they have. Electra would probably eat a lot of salads. Though, I can also see them not being able to handle rich foods.

The steamers, no dietary restrictions or anything like that, but I can see them having more of a food culture based on how they prep it. In other words, they like to roast, boil and steam the foods they eat... Hell maybe even BBQ on the occasion. Rusty might have a more mixed diet since he works with the freights a lot? Not sure.

I don't think the trucks, freights or coaches would have any restrictions but would have a similar case to the steamers. It's more based on their jobs?

For example, the freights would have more finger food/packed lunches. They are more represented as the working class, so I can see them eating food that's fast to eat like sandwiches, or left overs. I can definitely see CB just sitting back with the most picnic like packed lunch.

The coaches I believe would have the most variety, but they each have a preference. Dinah and Buffy would have the biggest variety since they can cook, but it's more like diner/cafe food. Ashley and Carrie would be more little snacks and orderves (I have no no idea how you spell that word).

For the trucks... I don't actually know. I don't know much about them so I can't say. But, I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings about this! So please don't be afraid to add to this!

[najia-cooks]

[ID: A group of pastry pinwheels on a blue plate next to a bowl of yoghurt garnished with parsley. End ID]

صفيحة يافاوية / Safiha yafawiyya (Yaffan pinwheels)

The dish

صَفِيحَة يَافَاوِيَّة ("ṣafīḥa yāfāwīyya") is a type of safiha, or flatbread, believed to have originated in the coastal city of يافا (yāfā; "Yaffa," sometimes "Jaffa"). While other versions of safiha consist of a flat piece of dough topped with meat, Yaffan safiha are made by rolling dough out to a transparent thinness, folding it to enclose a filling of meat or spinach, and then whirling it around into a pinwheel shape. More highly valued in Yaffa than flat safiha, Yaffan safiha inspires proprietary feelings amongst residents and emigrants. The technique has, however, spread to other areas in Palestine, as well as to Alexandria, Egypt, where a large number of Yaffan exiles have resettled.

Yaffan safiha may also be called "حواية" ("ḥawāya"), after a kind of towel that is stitched into a spiral and placed on top of the head to cushion it while carrying jugs of water, or trays that are hot from the oven. One Yaffan woman remembers her mother assembling these pastries at home and then bringing them, in a large copper tray, to the baker, so they could be cooked in a shared oven for a small fee. The baker's wife would have to wait to use the oven another day. The usage of communal ovens by those who do not have an oven in their home is still common practice in rural areas of Palestine.

Traditionally, the dough used to make Yaffan safiha includes only flour, salt, oil, and water. Some modern Palestinian recipes leaven the dough with baking powder; or include milk powder as a way to use food aid from NGOs, which seek to alleviate the effects of the Israeli occupation's extreme restriction of transport, travel, and agricultural activities on Palestinians' diets. With a spinach filling and without milk powder, the safa'ih may be described as "صيامي" ("ṣiyāmī): a word derived from "صِيَام" ("ṣiyām"; "fast") but which, due to the abstention from meat mandated during the Lenten fast, is colloquially used to mean "vegetarian."

Golden brown and fragrant with olive oil, these safa'ih combine layers of crisp, flaky dough with a savory, well-spiced filling. Recipes for both a 'meat' and a spinach filling are provided. A side of yoghurt and a garnish of mint round out the flavors of the filling and add tanginess and textural contrast.

[ID: Close-up of two pinwheels cut open to reveal a spinach filling and a 'meat' filling between thin layers of pastry. End ID]

The Bride of Palestine

Yaffa is a port city with an ancient history which, until the 20th century, was the largest Arab city in, and the cultural and economic capital of, Palestine. For this reason it has sometimes been called عروس" "فلسطين ("'arūs filasṭīn"); "The Bride of Palestine." With the 1909 founding of the nearby Tel Aviv, Yaffa began to be considered its "twin" or "sister" ("האחיות") city; it had a distinctly Arab character where Tel Aviv was almost entirely Jewish. Yaffa was thus considered in disctinctly racialized terms: both attraction and threat; a source of authentic rootedness in the land which could be tapped, but also a potentially contagious bastion of Oriental "weak[ness]" ("חליש").

Yaffa had been a popular destination for culinary tourism in Mandate Palestine, with young settlers heading to the seaside to escape from religious studies and religious dietary restrictions—associated with diaspora Judaism and a lack of connection to a homeland—and to eat earthier Arab foods such as hummus, falafel, kebab, and ful.

In 1948, Zionist paramilitary organization Irgun dropped several tons of British bombs on major civilian areas of Yaffa in order to overwhelm resistance and empty the city of its Arab population; they destroyed the much of the Old City in the process. The neighborhood of المنشية (Manshiya) was destroyed shortly thereafter. Beginning in December of 1948, Yaffa was, part by part, annexed to Tel Aviv.

Today, despite the annexation and the Hebraization of the street signs, Yaffa maintains an Arab character in popular discourse. The call to prayer is heard in the streets, and the أبو العافي (Abulafia) bakery and أبو حسن (Abu Hassan) hummus restaurant and remain where they have been since the 1760s and 1970s, respectively. But increasing gentrification, rising rent prices, cafes and restaurants which cater to tourists and settlers, and the construction of Jewish-only residential projects threaten to continue the ethnic cleansing of the ancient city.

Yaffan Cuisine

Israeli occupation has tended to collapse some of the regional distinctions within Palestinian cuisine, as Palestinians are forced into exile or else crowded into Gaza and into smaller and smaller enclaves within the West Bank. Some dishes, however, still have variations that are associated with particular cities. Stuffed red carrots (محشي الجزر الأحمر; "maḥshi al-jazar al-'aḥmar"), cored and filled with rice and spiced meat, are a dish common throughout Palestine but cooked differently everywhere: in a sauce of lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, and red tahina in Gaza; in tamarind paste in Al-Quds and Ramallah; and in orange juice in the orange-rich Yaffa region. Abu Hassan restaurant serves مسبحة (msabbaha), a Yaffan classic in which chickpeas and tahina are mixed with green chili pepper, and lemon juice.

Donate to an evacuation fund

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Ingredients:

For the dough (makes 32):

500g flour (4 cups + 1 Tbsp)

1 tsp table salt

2 Tbsp olive oil

Enough water to form a soft, tacky dough (about 1 3/4 cup / 500mL)

For the meat filling (makes 16):

125g vegetarian ground beef (as a substitute for minced lamb)

1 small yellow onion, minced

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp table salt, or to taste

1/2 Tbsp ground sumac

1/2 Tbsp pomegranate molasses (optional)

For the spinach filling (makes 16):

500g spinach, washed and chopped

1 tsp kosher salt, for removing water

1 small yellow onion, minced

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1/4 tsp table salt, or to taste

Squeeze of lemon juice

1 tsp shatta (hot red pepper paste)

1/2 Tbsp pomegranate molasses (optional)

Some recipes include sumac in the spinach filling, but this is not considered traditional.

Instructions:

For the dough:

1. Measure dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Add oil and mix briefly. Add water, a little at a time, until the dough comes together into a slightly tacky ball. Knead for five minutes, until smooth and elastic.

2. Divide dough into 16 balls of about 50g each. Roll it out into a cylinder and cut it in half repeatedly; or weigh the dough using a kitchen scale and divide by 16.

3. Pour some olive oil in a tray or baking sheet and coat each dough ball. Leave them on the tray, covered, to rest while you prepare the fillings.

For the meat filling:

1. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil on medium-high. Add meat and fry, stirring often, until nearly cooked through.

2. Add onions, salt, and spices and fry until onion is translucent.

3. Remove from heat. Stir in sumac and pomegranate molasses. Taste and adjust. Let cool.

For the spinach filling:

1. Mix spinach with salt and let sit 10-15 minutes. Squeeze to remove excess water.

2. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in medium-high. Fry onion, salt, and pepper for a minute until translucent.

3. Combine all ingredients. Taste and adjust salt.

To assemble:

1. Oil a clean work surface, as well as your hands. Spread a dough ball out into a very thin, translucent circle by repeatedly patting with your fingers while pushing outwards. Be sure to push outwards from the center so that the circle does not become too thin at the edges. A few small holes are okay, since the dough will be folded and rolled in on itself.

2. Cut the circle in half with a sharp knife. Spread 1/16 of either filling in a thin line along the cut edge, leaving a margin of 1 cm (1/2") or so.

3. Roll the edge of the dough (the cut edge) over to encase the filling. Continue rolling, trying as much as possible to exclude air, until you have a long rope of dough.

4. Roll the rope around in a tight spiral. Tuck the very end of the dough underneath and press to seal. Place on a preparing baking sheet.

5. Repeat until the filling and dough are used up. Meanwhile, preheat an oven to 375 °F (190 °C). Bake the safiha in the top third of the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until golden in color. 

Serve warm with yoghurt.

[foldingfittedsheets]

Really disappointed in your story about Daisy. Bullying content is not fun or funny. Putting something in some else’s food without consent is not only gross and mean but also incredibly irresponsible. People may have all manner of food restrictions and messing with that can be very dangerous for the person being targeted. Y’all worked in food service, y’all should have known better than to mess with someone’s food.

Let’s look at words I use to describe Daisy: Sweet, cheerful, chirpy

Hm. Let’s look at the words I used to describe my behavior: malicious, malevolent, horrible.

Seems pretty clear here who I set out to be the hero of the piece and who I considered to be in the wrong. I’m not perfect. I share stories from my life, this one harks from when I had just turned 21. It happened. I wouldn’t do it now, but I did it then. Through self reflection and growth I can decide to tell the story of this girl so even keeled she was immune to hazing.

To set everyone’s mind at ease: we knew Daisy well enough to know she wasn’t allergic to anything and didn’t have a restricted diet. It was basically impossible to eat at our pizza place with allergies. We didn’t feed her meat when she was vegetarian, even then I wouldn’t have crossed that line. But we were definitely shitty and I think I made that pretty clear.

[reasonsforhope]

"A global shift to a mostly plant-based “flexitarian” diet could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help restrict global heating to 1.5C, a new study shows.

Previous research has warned how emissions from food alone at current rates will propel the world past this key international target.

But the new research, published in the Science Advances journal, shows how that could be prevented by widespread adoption of a flexitarian diet based around reducing meat consumption and adding more plant-based food.

“A shift toward healthy diets would not only benefit the people, the land and food systems,” said Florian Humpenöder, a study author and senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “but also would have an impact on the total economy in terms of how fast emissions need to be reduced.” ...

The researchers found that adopting a flexitarian diet could lower methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture and lower the impacts of food production on water, nitrogen and biodiversity. This in turn could reduce the economic costs related to human health and ecosystem degradation and cut GHG emissions pricing, or what it costs to mitigate carbon, by 43% in 2050.

The dietary shift models also show limiting peak warming to about 1.5C can be achieved by 2045 with less carbon dioxide removal, compared with if we maintain our current diets.

“It’s important to stress that flexitarian is not vegetarian and not vegan,” Humpenöder says. “It’s less livestock products, especially in high-income regions, and the diet is based on what would be the best diet for human health.”

In the US, agriculture accounts for more than 10% of total GHG emissions. Most of it comes from livestock. Reducing meat consumption can free up agricultural land used for livestock production, which in turn can lower methane emissions. A potent greenhouse gas, methane is mainly expelled from cows and other animals raised for livestock. Animal production is the primary contributor to air quality-related health impacts from US food systems.

“This paper further confirms what other studies have shown, which is that if we change our diets to a more flexitarian type, we can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jason Hill, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s department of bioproducts and biosystems engineering.

According to the study authors, one way to achieve a shift toward healthier diets is through price-based incentives, such as putting taxes on the highest-emitting animal products, including beef and lamb. Another option is informing consumers about environmental consequences of high meat consumption."

-via The Guardian, March 27, 2024

[youngbounty]

I think we can all agree that Damian has always canonly been a vegetarian. However, there seems to be this misconception that it automatically means he’s vegan. Before getting into the reason why this isn’t the case, let me explain the difference between a vegetarian and vegan.

Veganism is a type of vegetarian diet where you abstain yourself from consuming any or from animals. Vegetarian is a broad kind of diet where you avoid meat in general, but can make exceptions to dairy, eggs, fish or insects. There are different types of vegetarians with the most familiar type being Lacto-ovo-Vegetarian.

I could be mean and point out the foods he’s seen eating that could be a vegan or veggie variety. However, I will use evidence that confirms that the products he’s eating or drinking are NOT the vegan variety.

When Branden offers milk to the Kent’s, notice how he says, “I have my own cow.” He’s not saying he doesn’t drink milk. He clarifies he only gets milk from his own cow, Bat Cow.

Considering Bat Cow willingly gives her milk to strangers, this makes sense. Why wouldn’t Bat Cow give Damian her milk?

The next is this. Look what Damian specifically asks for: a glutton free veggie pizza. I decided to look up the ingredients to this kind of pizza and these are the ingredients. Keep in mind these are the ingredients to the pizza Damian specifically ASKS for that cater to his vegetarian diet. So, any ingredients that would NOT apply to the vegan diet do apply.

The only vegan part of the pizza that’s called for is the crust. Most of the ingredients calls for diary such as cream cheese and sour cream. Others call for yogurt, ranch and cheddar cheese. This is why pizzas with vegan friendly ingredients are called Vegan Pizzas and not just Veggie Pizza. Why Damian asked for the pizza to be glutton free could be due to possibly being self-conscious about his weight or not wanting his siblings to eat his entire pizza since he’s more restricted than him. Either way, Damian is certainly not ordering a vegan pizza.

Why is this important to Damian’s character to be a vegetarian and not a vegan? It all comes down to Bat Cow. His mortal obligation to became a vegetarian is much more personal than others that become vegans or some form of vegetarian. To understand this, we need to go back to the story that led to Damian’s change in diet.

The illegal slaughterhouse Damian ransacked with his father was an illegal one ran by the Leviathans. The Leviathans placed a target on Damian, being a bounty was set on him at the time. This is what led to the slaughterhouse. This same man, who targeted and almost killed Damian, was about to run off with Bat Cow when Batman and Robin stop him. From then, Damian decided to keep the cow, change his diet and call her Bat Cow.

Both Damian and Bat Cow were both being targeted to be killed when they first met. This is how Damian is able to reach out to Bat Cow. Damian is making this choice with the understanding that Bat Cow will see any human that consumes meat no differently than those that slaughtered her family. By changing his diet, Damian is becoming someone Bat Cow can trust won’t hurt her like in the slaughterhouse.

Understanding this, we can then understand why consuming milk, eggs or dairy doesn’t apply here. This picture is what Damian does not want to be seen as in Bat Cow’s eyes. Nowhere do we see milk, diary or eggs being eaten here. Therefore, eating diary and eggs do not apply to Damian’s diet. So long as those things are freely given and no lives are taken, Damian will not restrict himself from consuming milk, eggs or any eatable products from the animal itself.

Now, I don’t mind Damian being any type of vegetarian that eats/drinks diary from Bat Cow only and eats eggs from Jerry (if female) or Wiggles only. I only have a pet peeve over claiming Damian’s Vegan or a type of Vegetarian that restricts himself from anything his pets willingly give him. The reason is because by restricting Damian as Vegan, it restricts his relationship with Bat Cow, who willingly gives her milk to those who need it. By providing milk for Damian, she’s helping and providing for the one who saved her and gave her a better life.

Most Vegans live in the city where they depend on food from the grocery store. Veganism started around the 20th century when factories and grocery stores began growing and monopolizing their products. However, Vegetarianism has been around for thousands of years. At the time, everyone raised their own livestock. If anyone became a Vegetarian for religious or moral obligations, there was no point in abstaining diary or eggs, being they milked their own milk and gathered their own eggs or else their neighbor’s. There was no concern over how the cows, goats, chickens, quail or turkeys were treated because the Vegetarian was caring and were responsible for their own animals.

If Damian is raising Bat Cow, he has no reason to avoid milk. Same with getting eggs. If Damian gets his eggs from Jerry or the Kent farm, those eggs are not provided through inhuman ways. He might be paranoid enough to only eat foods with dairy ingredients he provides from Bat Cow, but I can’t see Damian completely restricting himself from anything that could be provided to him more humanely. If we truly believe Damian restricts himself to Veganism, aren’t we claiming he can’t get his own milk, cheese, yogurt, etc. from his own cow or eggs from his turkey more humanely? I think Damian would be insulted by us and say…

[phoenixyfriend]

Watching an AITA compilation, and in one example, here people got upset because they ate food that had tofu in it and then found out that it also had pork.

Important: The person who made it was not claiming it was vegetarian.

They just made Food that had both tofu and pork. The vegetarians Assumed it was vegetarian and didn't ask. The only person who actually asked was a Muslim who wanted to know if it was halal, and when the chef answered them with no hesitation, that's when everyone else started freaking out, because they had already eaten some under that assumption.

If a Chinese dish is brought by a person who says it's a dish from their childhood (so they themselves are probably Chinese, but it wasn't mentioned in the post iirc) to a potluck, with tofu in it... I think it's safe to day there's a GOOD CHANCE (not a sure thing, but a good chance) that the tofu is there as a Standard Ingredient and not a meat substitute

People can like tofu without being veg. I'm just baffled that a person would, at an unlabeled potluck buffet, not ask about dietary restrictions for dishes that aren't really obviously one thing or another (e.g. you can probably assume a fruit salad or hummus-and-veggies plate is vegetarian).

I bring it up here, because I've shared my own tofu dishes online a few times and always get asked if I'm vegan/vegetarian… and there's usually also ground pork or bacon in it.

And it's just. No. I like tofu. Tofu does not exist solely as a meat substitute!

[prying-pandora666]

The Gaang’s Favorite Foods

Aang is an ovo-lacto vegetarian. He still consumes milk and eggs, just nothing that requires killing an animal. Being more used to getting nutrients from a variety of plant foods including nuts and seeds, supported by nutrient rich bison milk and whatever eggs they eat in this world, Aang’s diet is surprisingly diverse and not as restrictive as it first seems. People have and still do eat this way. He loves egg tarts!

Sokka is a growing teen boy, used to a high-fat diet of primarily fish, mollusks, large ruminants, marine mammals (and their blubber), full fat milk, eggs, blood, etc, and only minorly supported by additional foods like seaweed, berries, tubers, perhaps the occasional imported flour or rice. He is going to need a LOT of animal meat and fat. Especially organs. The cookbook says he loves dried salmon collars.

Katara is also a growing teen girl, and considering what starts for girls around her age, she probably also has higher iron requirements. Heme-iron (from meat) is the most easily absorbed, and if it’s what her body is accustomed to, I imagine there’s going to be a lot of cravings there too. It’s possible she slowly converted to a vegetarian diet eventually, but there isn’t actually anything in canon to say that Katara and Aang didn’t just maintain different diets. The comics and cookbook say she likes soups and stews including sea prunes which are actually a type of mollusk.

Toph comes from a wealthy family. Although most of the Earth Kingdom relies primarily on staple grains (rice mainly, but also others), she likely had a decently diverse diet compared to others. Including plenty of meat (beef, chicken, duck, pork), a variety of vegetables, and even luxury items like refined sugar. According to the cookbook, she doesn’t like to eat her vegetables, which implies she had open access to meat for most of her life. She is fond of tea eggs.

Zuko comes from the wealthiest nation which is also in a tropical climate. He’d have access to a plethora of fruits the others had never even heard of! Tropical fruits, berries, coconut, and all the different dishes you can make with them. The nutrient-rich volcanic soil would also lend itself to farming, giving this country plenty of fresh vegetables and staple grains. However, culturally they seem to be a meat and seafood loving people, and spiciness is critical! Being a prince, Zuko would have even more access to all of the above than the common person. According to the cookbook, his favorite snack is sizzle-crisps which is basically fried and seasoned pork belly. He also sneaks Komodo-chicken to his uncle in prison.

BONUS:

Azula, like Zuko, is royalty in a nation blessed with great diversity of fruits, meat, seafood, and fresh veggies. We know she attended a harsh military academy which puts its students through rigorous survival training. Azula knows how to live off the land and likely can survive off of whatever petty things she can forage or catch. But being royalty, she is more accustomed to having whatever she desires prepared for her. She seems to have a bit of a sweet tooth, which can happen when you give a teen unfettered access to luxury goods like sugar. With her nation’s relatively advanced stage of industrialization, certain more processed foods and desserts are available to her. She is fond of cherries and in the comics she is a fiend for mochi!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for bringing dahl to a compagny potluck ?🍩🍜🍝🍱🍛

Everyone had to bring "their speciality" at work for lunch. I didn't really paid attention to the wording and brought a Dahl.

Dahl is easy to make for a lot of people and very accommodating for people with food restrictions (I am vegetarian with various allergies and used to only rely on the food I bring myself in shared meal events). Emma, a colleague, was mad at me because she interpreted "speciality" as "cultural food" (no one was bringing specific traditional food, just the usual potluck food). She thinks I am committing cultural appropriation.

Emma is a Black American woman, while I am white. We both live in a white European country, however my patents were immigrants in this country, and European "racism" can see 1000 flavors of "white" and are quite xenophobic (if not plainly racist), so I have been victim of racism/xenophobia here.

Emma is well versed in a lot of woke stuff, anti racism, feminist and stuff and I usually look up to her on those subjects but here… I don't think there is cultural appropriation ? Maybe it's an American/European difference?

From what I understand, cultural appropriation is when a dominant culture (usually white) benefits from doing cultural stuff of someone else, while the minority who the stuff comes from is oppressed and forbidden of doing the stuff.

But I am not saying Dahl is a dish I invented. Everyone is well aware it's Indian. I didn't published "my" receive or anything. I have no social media influence and don't posted about the food I cook anyway. People at work were unphased by the dish.

In my country, Indian people don't face discrimination (that I know of) for cooking their traditional food. There is a ton of Indian restaurants in my city and they are managed by Indian people. I go to those Indian restaurant quite often. So I don't think there is a financial or systemic problem.

I have cooked Dahl for myself for decades as it works really well with my vegetarian diet (as lentils are great plant based protein source) and MY cultural dishes are way too meat based. A lot of foreigner friends taught me their cultural vegetarian dish, as I taught then mine. I have seen a lot of white an POC (but non Indian) people cook Dahl. It's really a go to dish in the vegetarian circle I frequent.

My Indian friends think Emma is dumb but they are biased. The only Indian person at work didn't care and is usually pretty racist himself so I wouldn't trust his judgment if he told me something was "safe to do".

Was I culturally insensitive or was her anger misguided ?

[waddingham]

oH Ted as the 'someone coming every week to cook and stock her fridge with meals'!! your brain does so much good work and I am so thankful we get to reap the benefits <33

yeah!!!!!! and i couldn't think straight until I got rid of it!!! here take this it's killing me!!

×

She begs Phillip to keep her on. She begs him, tries to double his fee even, to keep him from total retirement, but he's steadfast in his decision. 

The thought of hunting down another chef is horrific. But he gives her no choice. 

She blows through them like tissues for three months, suffering over-complicated meals, over-powering flavors, chefs clearly trying to impress as if she wants a Michelin star meal every night. She doesn't – if that was what she wanted she knows exactly where to get it. 

When she's at home she just wants good food, that's easy to reheat and easy to eat. Which is how she ends up finally succumbing to Leslie's repeated insistence that she give his man a chance.

“He comes over once a month,” he tells her, more than once. “Puts together some things we can freeze and just pop in the oven. Simple enough for the boys to do it, so Julie and I can have at least a couple evenings where they can feed themselves.”

He brightens when she gives and asks for his info, and when she gives him a call, she's struck dumb hearing his American accent.

She's running out of options, so she takes a chance on him.

×

She taps her fingers on the counter, waiting for the doorbell, checking her watch when she finally hears it. He's perfectly on time, but she feels like she's already searching for a reason to be disappointed with him.

He has a pleasant smile for her, though, and a friendly demeanor and a firm handshake and a handsome face – none of which she can immediately find fault in as they introduce themselves.

“I'm sure you're busy,” he says as she leads him to the kitchen. “So I appreciate you taking the time to let me peek at the kitchen and ask you a couple questions.”

“Of course,” she says, used to the procedure by now. Most of them have some kind of sheet they have her fill out, usually via email, but she doesn't mind taking a moment to meet the person who's going to be cooking her food.

“Oh, this is nice,” he compliments, looking around the kitchen, as he sets down the backpack hooked on his shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says, gesturing for him to claim a stool. “Though you can probably infer from your presence that it gets little use.”

“That's okay, I'll go easy on it,” he chuckles, pulling a binder from his bag and opening it up on the counter. “First, though, I wanna make sure I know what I'm cooking.”

He doesn't have a questionnaire or the like, it seems. The lined paper in front of him is blank before he scrawls her name at the top.

“How many people am I cooking for, first of all?” he says without looking up.

She licks her lips, her gaze shifting. 

“Just me.” She keeps her tone matter-of-fact. She hopes.

The way he glances up makes her doubt whether she managed it.

“Makin’ it easy on me already,” he says with a soft smile, adding a 1 to the corner of his sheet. “You have any allergies or dietary restrictions?” 

“No,” she says, then adds, “Though, I do have the tendency to drop meat for a while every so often.”

“A part-time vegetarian?”

She cracks half a smile. “Sure.”

“Okay,” he chuckles. “What kinda meals are you after? Breakfast, lunch, dinner?”

“Dinner, mostly, though I won't say no to the occasional breakfast. Mostly out of curiosity.”

She doesn't think any of the chefs she's hired have offered to make breakfasts.

“I make a mean frittata,” he grins. “What do you like, then? What are some of your favorites, so I can get a feel for what you want?”

“When I eat at home, I want quick and easy,” she says. “The less steps for me, the better. I don't want extravagant, elaborate meals. Shepherd's pie, any kind of pasta, soups, salads. Fish, chicken, red meat on occasion, not every week preferably. Anything veg heavy will probably be a hit with me.”

He nods, taking rapid notes in what must be a very familiar format to him. He fires off a few more questions for her, elaborating a bit further on what she likes before switching gears.

“Anything you absolutely don't want?”

“Not especially,” she says. “I don't like to limit a new chef too soon. I'd rather you make me your best and I'll let you know.”

“Uh oh,” he smiles.

He does that a lot.

“Am I on trial?”

She opens her hands up, giving him a small smile and he chuckles.

“I've had six chefs in ten weeks,” she tells him. “So yes, maybe a little bit.”

“Why didn't they fit the bill?” he asks curiously. “So I can avoid a similar fate.”

“I don't think they quite believed me when I told them how simple I wanted things,” she says. “Too many sauces and sides and heat this up separately and put this on this. If I want a five course meal, I know where to get one. When I get home from work, I want to throw something in the oven or dump it on a plate and microwave it, not anything glamorous.”

He looks pleased to hear it – he seems to actually relax slightly, as if he'd been uncertain he could deliver on what she wanted.

“Well, I can guarantee you that going too fancy will not be a problem with me,” he says, writing a few more things down. “I'm used to basic.”

“Good.”

“I've got Tuesday afternoons free, if we're doing every week.”

She nods.

“Between noon and four, if that works for you.”

“I'll be at work, so you'll have free reign,” she says, opening a drawer on the island and pulling a house key from it. “Make yourself at home.”

“Alrighty,” he says, taking it from her. She watches him pull a roll of masking tape and a ring of maybe half a dozen keys from his bag. He rips off a piece of tape and labels it with an RW before adding it to the keyring. 

“If you ever have any requests, that number you have is my cell. Shoot me a text before Tuesday if you want it that week, or you can leave me a note.”

“Okay.”

“And let me know if you think of anything else you want me to know,” he says, starting to pack everything away again. “If you hate olives or can't stand Bleu cheese.”

“I love olives,” she says emphatically. “And there's no kind of cheese I will refuse.”

“Cheese is the best, right?” he remarks. “They're all good. Yellow, white, hard, soft. Even stinky, moldy…still good.”

She snorts a bit, but fully agrees.

“I'm pretty much always stocked with fresh mozzarella to nibble on so feel free to help yourself.”

“Oh, don't tell me that,” he says, shaking his head. “I'll clean you out every week.”

She chuckles as he throws his backpack over his shoulder. 

She sees him out, intrigued now to see what he cooks up for her.

×

When she gets home on Tuesday, there's a delicate cacophony of smells hanging in the air and she remembers for the first time today – after a long, trying weekend – that Ted was meant to come.

And apparently did.

The kitchen is spotless (thank God – chef number two had a tendency to slack on the cleaning up bit) and she eagerly makes her way to the fridge.

Each covered pan has a strip or two of tape on top – 35 minutes @ 175° the small square one requests. Thank God. One singular step.

If it tastes like shit, she's going to cry.

It reveals itself to be a lasagna and she flips the oven on, lets it get hot while she peeks at the rest of what he's made, then pops it in the oven while she goes upstairs and gets comfortable.

She notices the extra pan by the kettle when she comes back down, this one without a lid, left on a trivet. 

Three neat rows of shortbread lie within it, a note flat on the counter in front of it.

A little extra treat – maybe a bribe so I don't end up being Disappointing Chef Number 7 – and a thanks for giving me a shot. I'm told these are a winner with a cup of tea. 

He's signed it with a mustached smiley face that makes her chuckle.

They smell divine. She can't resist prying one up and taking a bite.

“Oh, fuck me,” she mutters to herself, looking at the biscuit with a bit of wonder as it melts on her tongue, perfectly sweet and salty.

Oh, wow. She glances at the oven, then the pan in front of her.

She might have struck gold.

×

Everything is delicious. He's clearly not a professional five star chef, but every bite has her in disbelief.

It's just so good. She was skeptical, but he even nails a shepherd's pie for her, dumping cheese on top without her even requesting it. Nothing is unpleasant or poorly made, nothing has her thinking to text him and tell him she didn't love it. His portions are more than enough for her and she frequently takes what's left to the office with her. She has never taken lunch with her to work. Ever.

His cooking tastes like dining at a friend's house, like family made it, like he loves cooking for people and puts it in every bite.

And the biscuits. She finished the pan before the week was even out, unable to help herself.

She's a little bit devastated when there are none on the following Tuesday. 

She leaves a note the next time she expects him.

Any chance for biscuits again? 

She's ecstatic to find a fresh pan when she gets home.

She's nursing her last three by the weekend, determined to make them last long enough to request more.

×

I hope no notes is a good thing?

She's been meaning to text him, tell him how pleased she is with everything he's made, but it continued to slip her mind.

How am I doing?

No notes is a very good thing, she sends back. Everything has been absolutely delicious.

Oh good :)

I love to hear it

The biscuits have become a problem though

No biscuits next week then?

God no

I'm hooked on them

Don't do that to me

You got it boss

×

She almost laughs at herself when she gets home.

She's turning down dinner dates and good-looking men in favor of a date with the container labeled prosciutto stuffed chicken breast in her fridge that she's been thinking about all day.

He'd probably get a kick out of the fact that his food is so good it's ruining her dating prospects, but that's most definitely not something she'll be telling him.

She gets herself a little bit of this week's salad while she waits on the oven – romaine with candied walnuts, dried cranberries, gorgonzola, sliced green apple with a deliciously sharp vinaigrette. She peruses the fridge in her typical Wednesday fashion – on Tuesday evenings she's made a habit of grabbing the first thing she sees and letting him surprise her – looking for the small container of sauce that the lid of the chicken makes mention of.

She chuckles when she sees it. Some of his notes on things have gotten more elaborate, sometimes teasing, sometimes with a wine pairing suggestion, sometimes just with a little smiley face. The lid for the sauce only says creamy pesto, but there's masking tape wrapped in a spiral over its sides, covered with writing.

I know, I'm gonna get in trouble for making a separate sauce for something but all you gotta do is dump it on when it's done! It's worth the extra step I promise! 

She snickers around her salad, setting it on the counter. 

It's well, well worth the extra step.

×

When she gets home on Tuesday, she's unexpectedly greeted by a strong, delicious smell and noise from the kitchen. She leaves her heels and her coat before turning into the kitchen.

Ted's at the stove, looking almost mortified as he immediately starts apologizing.

“I'm sorry, Rebecca, I'm so behind today, but this is my last one and then I'll clean up and get out of here–” he rambles, but she's taking him in more than listening. Namely, she's taking in his tired bloodshot eyes and his disheveled hair and the way his hands shake as he gestures to the mess of the kitchen. 

“I'm sorry–”

“No, Ted, it's alright,” she insists. “It's not a problem.”

“I'm almost done.”

“Are you okay?” she asks gently.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I just need to finish this…”

She frowns and rounds the island, unconvinced and unsettled – he's almost frantic with energy.

“Come here.” 

He frowns as she pulls him away from the stove.

“No, it'll burn–”

“In which case I'll survive with one less meal,” she says firmly, pushing him to the dining table. “Sit.”

He does – reluctantly – and she gets him a glass of water.

“Take a deep breath. Relax,” she insists before stepping to the stove. The pan there has a sauce in the making, a plate of meatballs next to it, as well as a pot of water getting hot.

“What needs done here?” she asks.

“I can–”

“Stop,” she commands, lifting a brow at him before he can rise. “Sit. Just tell me.”

“The, the cream needs to go in,” he says. “Give it a second, then the other two little bowls there, the Dijon and the Worcestershire and then the spices.”

“Okay,” she says, keeping her voice steady, hoping it'll relax him, show him she's far from upset that he's still here.

She follows his instructions, pouring the measuring cup of cream in and mixing it with the little whisk that's already there. She lets it get hot, then adds the rest, stirring it in.

“What am I making?” she asks with a small smile.

“Swedish meatballs,” he supplies, sounding distracted. “One of my favorites.”

“Swedish, hmm?”

“Well, I can't speak to them being authentic,” he says. “Recipe was my mom's. And she's definitely not Swedish.”

It smells delicious – whatever spices she just added were warm and aromatic and it makes her mouth water.

“What next?”

“Uh, turn the heat down and let it simmer,” he says. “Needs to thicken.” 

She dutifully turns the stove down and then joins him, taking a seat next to him. 

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” he deflects, “I'm fine. Just…didn't sleep so good and then this morning was…I'm fine.”

She doesn't push, seeing how much effort he's putting into forcing a smile and changes course.

“Do you have anywhere else to be today?” she asks.

“No, no, you're my last client on Tuesdays.”

“Then stay,” she insists, gesturing to the stove. “Looks like enough for two.”

“I shouldn't,” he tries, shaking his head. “I should get out of your hair.”

“You're not in my hair,” she asserts. “I would enjoy the company and I'm most certainly not complaining about getting a meal fresh off the stove.”

He looks her over for a moment, presumably looking for any hint of falsehood before he nods a bit haltingly.

She smiles.

“Should, uh, should put the meatballs back in to finish ‘em,” he murmurs. “And get the noodles on.”

“Yes, chef,” she says, giving him a wink when he finally smiles. 

“I'll do it,” he says, and she lets him this time for how much calmer he seems. She occupies herself by offering him a drink and pouring herself a glass of wine. He accepts a couple fingers of a scotch he's apparently had his eye on for the last few weeks and she watches with interest as he takes a sip.

“Oh, that's nice,” he mutters. 

“The only one I buy anymore.”

“You have excellent taste, I have to say,” he remarks. “Thank you.”

She helps him get the rest of the dinner together and is glad to see him relax more and more, until he's smiling easy as they both sit at the island with bowls of noodles and meatballs.

“Well, it smells fantastic,” she says, eagerly stabbing a forkful of noodles and half a meatball.

It's delicious. Creamy and warm and truly everything about it screams comfort food. 

“Oh, Christ,” she mumbles around it. 

“Yeah? That one a winner?” 

She nods emphatically, eyeing him as she chews.

“Nothing you make is bad,” she mumbles, watching him take his own bite.

“That's ‘cause I only make what I know I can make good for you,” he chuckles. 

“Why's that?” she asks. He can take a chance on her – he's built up plenty of faith in him already. One bad meal isn't going to have her canning him.

“Oh, to impress of course,” he says with a crooked smile that she returns. 

“You've already done so,” she says. “I haven't had a single thing I didn't like.”

“I'm very happy to hear it,” he says, sounding very genuine about it.

They eat slowly because conversation comes very easily. Whether it's the drink or the distraction of her company, he's light-years away from the frazzled ball of anxiety she was met with.

“Safe to assume you don't enjoy cooking much, huh?” he asks her as they both scrape their bowls. 

“I don't think I would mind it if I had ever learned,” she muses. “But I've had a cook for most of my life and learning how now just to feed myself seems more trouble than it's worth.”

“You've had a cook most of your life?” 

“My parents kept one when I was a kid, and then when I was married, my ex-husband insisted on a cook,” she says, half rolling her eyes. “Thank you, by the way, for not inundating me with pork pies and sausage rolls and roasts and dousing everything in gravy.”

“I enjoy a good gravy, but, oof, that's heavy eatin’ right there.”

“Too heavy,” she agrees. “Though my tastes were rarely taken into account.”

He hums as he wipes his mouth and she finds understanding in his eyes.

“How long were you married?” he inquires.

“Twelve years,” she says slowly.

“That's a lot of gravy,” he says more seriously than the words might call for. She hears his meaning plain enough.

“Yes. It was.”

“Well,” his tone brightens a bit, “now you got me to make whatever you please.”

“Too right,” she chuckles, sipping her wine. “And it's always spectacular. I don't know how you do it, what you're lacing everything with…”

“Oh, I just make sure I put a little love in everything, that's all,” he grins.

She takes in the sight of him, smiling and content, his creased eyes warm, and she likes this. She's enjoying this. She likes him. 

It's so hard to know though, even as his eyes move over her face, the quiet stretching long, if she likes him or if she's simply missed enjoying a comfortable meal at home without having to do it alone.

Her eyes drop, aware of how intensely she’s looking at him. She's not sure when it happened but they're both turned completely towards each other on their stools, leaning on the counter, and his fingertips are right there at the edge of hers – the mere straightening of her fingers would bring them into contact.

“I appreciate you letting me stay and have some of your dinner,” he says softly.

“You made it,” she offers with a grin.

“You paid for it,” he returns.

“It's not a problem at all,” she says, meaning it wholeheartedly. “It's nice to have some company.”

“I'm gonna be honest with you, Rebecca, you don't seem like a woman who would have any problem finding company.”

Her brows lift alongside the corners of her mouth, a little internally delighted by his boldness.

“I think I'll take that as a compliment,” she grins.

“As it was meant,” he assures.

“In which case…I'll amend to say it's nice to have such comfortable and easy company.”

His cheeks round, his gaze dropping in something akin to bashfulness and she thinks it really might just be him that's growing on her.

“I’m glad you stayed,” she says, her smile slanting crookedly. “Even if I pretty much made you.”

“I didn't wanna impose. You were very kind to give me a second to…calm down.”

She's not sure if it's embarrassment, exactly, or shame that has him toying with his glass instead of looking at her.

“Felt like I was trying to catch up to myself all day,” he admits.

“I know the feeling,” she sympathizes.

He's quiet for a moment before he responds. 

“My ex-wife was supposed to come out with our son in the next couple weeks here, but she called and they pushed it back until the summer.”

His frown is back and his gaze is faraway, but she doesn't speak.

“Been here for almost a year now and they still seem to be getting on just fine without me.” He sounds like he wishes he could say it with detachment, but it comes out rather devastated. 

“They're in the States?” she asks gently, pulling him back to here and now as he shakes himself a bit. 

“Yes.”

“Why don't you go see them?” she tries, though she's very aware she's got the bare minimum of facts.

“‘Cause I'm still stinging from her snapping that she just needs some goddamn space,” he says, giving her a twisted, wry little grin. 

She frowns but he shrugs, lifting his drink to his lips. 

“S’pose it's about time to just get over it,” he mumbles.

“That's not easy to get over,” she says kindly. “Especially from someone you love.”

“No, it's not,” he agrees. “Ain't much love to lose these days, though. You're probably right, should just take matters into my own hands, hop over the pond.”

“Don't go too long,” she says, only half teasing. “I shouldn't be left to feed myself for a prolonged period of time.”

He smiles again and the sight has warm satisfaction melting in her.

“Oh, if I go anywhere I'll set you up, don't you worry,” he assures her.

“Thank goodness.”

It's odd how difficult she finds it when she rises and steps away. A part of her wants her to stay put, keep the space between them minimal, but she writes it off as a result of just how long it's been since she had sex.

“Now, I don't see any biscuits,” she says. “But I suppose I'll give you a pass this week.”

He rises with a soft chuckle, following her with his own dish to the sink. 

“No, no, I'll do it,” he says as he starts to clean up from dinner. “Unless you need your kitchen back.”

She starts gathering dishes – he must clean as he goes, because it's not nearly the mess she'd imagine would come from cooking four whole dinners. 

“Oh, for what? You think I have a chef on the side coming over tonight?”

He turns, expression scandalized, a hand landing on his chest as if he's been shot.

“Tell me you'd never.”

She chuckles, joining him at the sink, hands full.

They clean up together and then she pours them both another drink before she claims a stool, content to watch as he puts together a batch of biscuits. She watches him move comfortably around the kitchen, chatting easily with her, and it's making an impression, one she's blatantly ignoring.

She half expects him to try to leave her once they're in the oven and has her excuses for him to stay at the ready, but he sits again, waiting the half hour they need to bake at the island with her. He asks her about her job, how she came to own the club, and conversation wanders to and fro.

“I'm intrigued to see what you've cooked up for me this week, chef,” she remarks at one point.

“You know I ain't really a professional chef, right?” he chuckles. “I dropped out of culinary school actually.”

“Really? Why?” 

He lifts a shoulder. “I wasn't having fun. I love cooking, I love making food and feeding people, but I didn't wanna do it the way they train you to, you know, cooking in a restaurant or joining the race to be the next big something. I like doing it this way. Getting to know people and cooking what they like. Feels like I'm paying the bills by cooking for friends and that's…” He clicks his tongue with a nod. “That's just perfect for me.”

“Well,” she says, smiling at how clearly he loves what he does. “You're still a chef. Definitely to me at least.”

He rises when the oven chimes, giving her a smile. 

“That's enough for me.”

The biscuits have filled the kitchen with the warm scent of vanilla – the same scent that's usually still barely lingering when she gets home.

He stays long enough to let them cool slightly and cut them and she watches as he arranges them on the trivet by the kettle, just as he always does. He packs his things up then and she sees him out, exchanging smiles and goodbyes.

She's still smiling when she finally goes upstairs to change for the evening and it takes her a while to identify the feeling.

She feels like she just got home from a really, really good date.

×

It wasn't a date, so she doesn't know why she's disappointed when she doesn't hear from him again over the week. She doesn't contact him either, trying to recategorize the evening in her mind. 

She's very pleasantly surprised, in that case, when she comes home the following Tuesday and he's still there. She knows by the smell of something sweet and nutty filling the air before she even gets to the kitchen. 

It's spotless this time. He's not all anxious energy this time either – he smiles when she peeks in, looking rather uncertain about his welcome, but it still makes something deep in her chest ache.

It's rather nice. To come home to a smile from someone.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello.” She lets her smile ease his uncertainty and her tone ask her questions for her.

“I, uh, wanted to say thank you,” he explains. “For last week, when I was…when I wasn't feeling so great, for being so kind, letting me hang out for a while.”

She starts to wave it off again, but he continues.

“I made a little something special for ya. Something I can't really leave for you to reheat later,” he says, gesturing to the ovens. “If you want a little snack?”

She nods eagerly, kicking her heels off toward the stairs before she joins him.

He pulls a dish from the oven and sets it on the counter. He fiddles with something there, but she doesn't see what until her turns, sliding a round plate to the center of the island between them.

Whatever it is is perfectly golden brown, looks delicious and smells heavenly.

“Honey baked brie,” he informs her. “With some walnuts and some fig jam, tiny bit of rosemary.”

“Oh my god,” she almost moans. “And it's what, wrapped in pastry?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he smiles. “Thought it might be something you like.”

“I can tell you already you're correct,” she says, rounding the island to find them some forks. “I can't wait to taste it.”

“Let me know how you like it.” She frowns, but he's got a small smile when she looks up. “I'll let you…”

“You think I'm going to eat that entire thing myself?” she asks, lifting her brows as she pulls two forks from the drawer.

“Well, I know how much you like cheese,” he chuckles.

“I'll share,” she says, handing him a fork. “With you.”

She doesn't even have the patience to sit down – she slices her fork through the pastry and creamy brie begins to ooze out. She scoops it up with some pastry, catching a nut and a bit of fig and shoves it in her mouth. 

“Careful, it's hot–”

“Fuck me,” she mutters without thought.

It's delicious. Creamy and sweet and savory, the pastry flaky and buttery. It's rich and indulgent but not sickeningly so and she’s in love.

She's bringing another bite to her mouth when she realizes he's just smiling at her, pleased as punch.

“Please eat some,” she begs around her bite. “Because I can not eat all of this and I will if you leave me alone with it.”

“Alright, alright,” he chuckles, cutting off a bite for himself. 

He hums, pleased with his handiwork. “Mm. Not to toot my own horn, but that's good.”

“Mm!” she hums, getting an idea. She steps away to the wine cooler, squatting down to look for one of her less frequent whites. She comes back with a pair of glasses and an off-dry Riesling.

“This was a bit too bright and citrus-y for me, but it might be gorgeous with this.”

“Okay. You’re the sommelier here, not me,” he says as she pours, then slides a glass to him.

“Oh, please, your pairings are always spot on.”

It does go nicely, complimenting every bite.

“God, this is lovely,” she tells him. 

“I'm glad you like it,” he mumbles around his own bite. 

“Did you make the pastry?”

He shakes his head. “No. Normally I would, but I didn't decide on this until I was shopping today and that takes some time.”

“How long did this take?”

She listens with interest as he explains how he made it, amazed at how straightforward it sounds.

“Christ, it sounds like I could make it.”

“Uh oh,” he says, eyes widening. “Am I talking myself out of a job?”

“Oh, hardly. Even if I figured out how to make everything you cook for me, I'd still keep you around,” she admits. “You’re good company.”

“Well, that's nice to know,” he smiles, eyes soft.

“Also, knowing how to definitely doesn't mean I actually have any desire to cook any of it myself,” she chuckles. “So you still have plenty of use.”

She winks with her teasing as his warm laugh has him tucking his chin, his crows feet deepening. 

“I see how it is.”

She can't help but take him in, delighted by how carefree he is today. God help her, she really does like him – she wants to know him better. He's so genuine, so unselfish and generous, and she wants to keep him smiling.

“Thank you,” she says when she finally really can't eat any more, maybe a quarter of the round of brie left on the plate. “That was very kind of you.”

“No, thank you,” he echoes. “It was nice last week, to sit and eat with someone and I needed it.”

She nods get agreement, leaning her hip against the counter.

“I won't, uh, make a habit of just hanging out here, though,” he says, presumably to reassure her.

Her brows tip, eyes on his as she lets out a disappointed, “No?”

His lips part, but he doesn't manage to form a response. It hardly matters – they're communicating plenty in their gazes, trading glances at each other's lips. The moment stretches, and stretches, her breath changing to suit the surplus beats of her heart at the intensity in his warm eyes.

He leans closer, tipping his head, and something jolts through the center of her when he kisses her. She returns the gentle pressure, daring to part her lips to close them against his. Her fingers curl into her hand at her hip with restraint, fighting the urge to sink into his hair or pull him closer.

It's too delicate, this lovely feeling, and draws a tenderness up through her she hasn't been able to find for months.

He eases back slowly and she catches the breath he stole. Her eyes open, finding his still closed and she watches his parted lips begin to tighten as he fights a smile. The sight inspires one of her own, pulling at her cheeks as he opens his eyes, the smile winning and straightening his mustache out.

“I, um…”

She rolls her lips into her mouth, not even trying for words. She has none.

He can't find any either.

She drives forward again, prepared this time with a little extra breath in her lungs, a little more confidence. He kisses her back with a little more something too and she can't restrain her hands anymore from rising to hold his face. She tries to imbue the motion of her lips with plenty of invitation, but it's not until she pulls back and he follows, wavering toward her, that he steadies himself with a hand on her hip. Her attention goes straight to the heat of it through her dress as it slides to a more respectable height on her waist.

“You are very welcome to linger here as much as you like actually,” she exhales.

“Oh, I feel welcome,” he says, voice low.

She grins, pulling him in again. “Do you?”

“I sure do.” 

He barely gets the words out before they're kissing again. She opens to him, tastes the brie and honey and the dry sweetness of the wine and finds it appropriate that he should be so indulgent. His hands finally make their way around her, narrowing the space between them even more. She's not sure when her arms found their way around his neck but they tighten there in response.

He doesn't let her go far when they part again, dropping a kiss on the corner of her mouth, her cheek. Her eyes close with the sensation, the scratch of his mustache and his warm lips. 

“I really like cooking for you,” he murmurs.

The way he says it makes it sound like a deep confession and she feels silly for how fluttery it makes her to hear. She smiles against his lips and discovers this isn't new information to her. It's in every bite.

“I know you do,” she says low in his ear. “I can taste it.”

“Can you?” He sounds surprised and pleased.

“Yes.” She guides him back to her lips. “I can.”

[alienaiver]

Hello Love, I would love to request a reader with IBS with Bakugo crushing on them

hi my love !!! i hope you'll enjoy this, thank you for sending in a request! <3

warnings: none, fluff + sfw wordcount: 1.3k notes: kept the specific IBS triggers as vague as possible. we all know bakugous a big fan of organizing and planning. impressing you is no less meticulous than his entire career plan. timeskip, semi-early prohero bakugou under best jeanist's agency!

Bakugou prides himself in his cooking, always has. So when Best Jeanist gave him his own department in the agency with various heroes, sidekicks and support under him, he decided he’d build up trust in various ways.

One of them was to cook for his colleagues weekly, gathering them for lunch in the open office at the center of his department floor, only asking them all to provide their own drinks.

It’s popular immediately, everyone gushing over the homemade food by a rising hero like Dynamight. He takes the praise in stride and it motivates him to surpass his own dishes every week. There’s only one issue.

You don’t eat any of it.

It’s not like you choose to be anti-social when this particular lunch break rolls around. You just always bring your own bento box, even if he keeps insisting it’s all free and that he always makes more than needed so that no one needs to hold back.

He makes a variety of dishes; Asian, European, even American styled foods, and whenever he goes directly to your seat to personally present the dishes, you just give him this wide smile that turns his knees into jelly before you say, “that’s so kind of you, Bakugou! Thank you.” before you stab your chopsticks into your own lunch.

It ticks him off, but mostly, it makes him deflate. Of course Bakugou’s not cooking for eight people once a week only to impress you, but it had been part of his 12-step plan to make you fall in love with him. Though he won’t ever admit that he has specific steps set in motion.

First was to get noticed by you in the agency as a whole. Then, to be promoted by Best Jeanist from newly hired sidekick to established hero, and third's to get his own secretary – which you became, because you got along so well by the water cooler. After that was to get this department. A minor step in the right direction was also to get you a new desk that had more space for your trinkets.

His current step, the food, seems to be his Achilles heel. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that you’d have the audacity to be uninterested. You’ve gotten along so well for years now, it’s strange that you don’t even want to taste. He can’t find it in himself to see it as rude, because as earlier established, you dutifully show up and socialize.

He’s in his office, boots on the desk as he contemplates his next move. His food was supposed to have given him an in into your life outside of work, inviting you home to teach you a few cooking tricks, have a nice wine and fluid conversations that’d make you laugh and weak in the knees.

And yet, here he is, dateless.

For a few weeks now he’s been taken peeks at your lunches whenever he passes your desk, but it’s not like anything specific glares at him, like a heavy gluten allergy or lactose intolerance. There’s dairy some days, he’s seen peanuts in your bento, too – and meat. Your diet really doesn’t exude vegetarianism or like you have any other food restrictions. Before weekends, he’s seen you taste the cakes that Himiko, the support secretary, brings with her. But you declined the baked goods he was given once from a rescue mission on a Tuesday. They were both the same type of cake.

Are you just incredibly picky?

He shakes his head and hides his pout in the collar of his suit; he needs to go on patrol soon. He doesn’t have time to think about this all day.

//

A few more grueling weeks of grumbling and groaning over how to make you eat his food, he notices a pattern in your lunches that’s taken him a while to put together. Certain items are never in the bento, like eggs or pineapples.

The other night he ate out with his parents, and his mother loudly talked about her colleague’s stomach issues, not caring that everyone in the restaurant was turning their heads to the conversation; Masaru kept trying to douse her noise level. Not only was the topic sort of awkward when everyone around you is eating (though husband and son were no strangers to such subjects during dinner at the Bakugou household), it’d be a bother if a patron recognized Bakugou.

Of course, Mitsuki paid no heed to anyone else but her family at their table, and explained about the condition she’d just learned about. About certain food triggering reactions even if no official allergy was involved; luckily, the healthcare provided by Mitsuki and Masaru’s company covered some very expensive allergy tests, and she’d then told Mitsuki that she had been diagnosed with IBS.

After being dropped off at his own apartment, he’d sat by his computer and googled IBS, which he learned stands for irritable bowel syndrome. He sucked up all knowledge available on the internet, scientific papers and healthcare provider’s talk about certain diets, testimonials from affected people and watched tons of videos from influencers creating awareness on TikTok. If the bags under his eyes were visible at work the day after, no one commented on it.

//

Now his heartbeat’s through the roof as he puts out the food like usual on the center table, everyone gathering and complimenting him on the smell. His hands are sweaty; more so than normal. He keeps wiping them off on his pants, swallowing excess saliva. In the thermal bag, at the bottom, is a dish specifically made with you in mind. He wonders if you’ll hate it.

You walk in next to Himiko, laughing about a joke she made. You part when you go directly for a seat and Himiko comes up to the make-shift buffet, patting his back in praise.

While everyone is busy filling their plates, Bakugou grabs the last bento box and goes straight to you. He puts it on top of the bento you’re just about to open, “here.”

You freeze for a second, eyes locked on the box. Then you smile up at Bakugou, “that’s so sweet Bakugou, but I brought my own food.”

He almost rolls his eyes before he squats down to lean his arms and head on the table and look up at your eyes. Gently, he says, “it should be safe.”

He hopes his voice doesn't sound as raw as it feels.

The comment takes you back as your eyes are locked onto his. He searches them, drowning in the richness of the color. It’s like he’s at the deep-end of the pool, entranced by a spell, only able to keep himself floating. You raise your brow, “safe?”

He turns away from you with a pout, “I often put pineapple in my curry. And eggs in my bibimbap. This is curry without all the things I’ve noticed you avoid.”

Your eyes travel between the lunch and him, comically back and forth like a cartoon character. “That you’ve noticed I avoid?”

Bakugou blushes; shit. He’d really hoped you wouldn’t catch on to that part. He hides his face in the arms that’s resting on the table edge. “Yeah,” he mutters out, muffled by his hidden face. The silence stretches out, and he’s holding his breath.

After what feels like entirely too long, you let out a small laugh and he hears the lid clicking open. You inhale deeply, and let out a satisfied sigh, “this looks delicious, Bakugou. Did you make it all for me?”

He lifts his head, his eyes still locked to the side. His ears are burning, “mhm,” he nods. You almost coo at him, as you pick up your chopsticks, “this is very kind of you.”

Neither of you notices your colleagues standing around you, various expressions of awe and admiration. You’ve both been the office gossip for some months now.

Bakugou looks at you as soon as you’ve taken the first bite, determined to see your reaction through his embarrassment. Through your chewing you can’t help but smile, stars emerging glittering and shimmering in your eyes as you reach a hand to your cheek, “Bakugou, this is amazing!” you say, taking another mouthful as fast as possible. He loves the way his name sounds when it comes out from your lips; you use it so often it makes him dizzy.

“Can you teach me how to make this? Please?”

Step six completed.

He smirks, “sure. It’s a date.”

check out if my requests are open here ✨

[the-jumblr-cookbook]

Welcome to the jumblr cookbook!

The point of this blog is to collect and share recipes from jumblr users. This blog is ran by @moran-with-a-g, you may DM me if you want to join in and help! Our other mod is @emotionalsupportgolem

Rules:

1) The recipes don't have to be of inherently Jewish foods! They need to be recipes you (someone who's part of jumblr) tried before - that you either made or ate. That's it! They can also be non-kosher.

2) One recipe at a time, separate different recipes to different submissions (which you can send either via ask or via submission).

2) Your suggestion must include:

What the recipe is

ingredients (with amounts/ratios)

utensils needed

instructions (preferably step-by-step)

suggested template will be under the cut

3) The suggestion needs to be in either English or Hebrew. If you can include both, that's preferable. If not, We will add a translation to the language that's missing.

4) We do not allow anonymous submissions, to make sure the person suggesting is actually part of jumblr. If you want to remain anonymous you can DM the recipe to @moran-with-a-g.

5) If your recipe was taken from another jumblr post, and you didn't alter it majorly, we prefer you tag us in a reblog of it (and add any alterations you make if you do) instead of submitting it, unless the op gave you permission.

6) Images of the results are encouraged, just please don't add too many, as we plan to include image ids for everything and too many images could be overwhelming for us.

7) Optional:

If you can, include IDs to your images.

If you first saw the recipe online, add a link to the original blog.

Try including the origin of the dish - look at the tagging system below to see what I mean.

Try to include the estimated time it takes to make the dish.

Recipes that can be made multiple ways (for example, that can be made both kosher and non-kosher, or both have both vegetarian and vegan options) will include all relevant tags even if it's not exclusive. So you may notice a recipe that mixes dairy and meat in the kosher tag if it includes alternatives in it.

The the main tags for navigation in this blog are as followed:

Kashrut related: Meat | Dairy | Fish | Parve | Kosher | Kosher-for-pesach (kitniyot) | Kosher-for-pesach (non kitniyot) | Non-Kosher

Dietary restrictions: Vegetarian | Vegan | Gluten-free

Type: meal | appetizer | condiment | snack | dessert

Origin: Ashkenazi | Mizrachi | Sephardi | not inherently jewish | Italian | Yemeni | Moroccan | German | Polish | Nigerian | tbc...

Other: not a recipe | עברית

These will improve it over time, and you may suggest more if you think they'll be useful!

Other Jumblr blogs for your enjoyment:

@jewish-culture-is, @hate-free-jumblr, @jewish-vents, @jumblr-described

Formatting templates under the cut:

English:

Suggested Template:

Recipe Name

Type: meal/appetizer/condiment/snack/dessert

Estimated cooking time:

Ingredients:

list & quantity

+ suggested alternatives for vegan/gluten free/kosher

Utensiles + Tools:

stuff like pans, pots

oven, stove, blender

Instructions:

Preferabbly step by step

If you need to pre-heat the oven put that first!

<optional image of the results here>

Hebrew:

המלצת נוסח:

שם המתכון

סוג: ארוחה/תוספת/ממרח/חטיף/קינוח

זמן הכנה משוער:

רכיבים:

רשימה וכמות

המלצות לתחליפים לגרסאות פרווה/טבעוני/ללא גלוטן/כשר וכו

כלים נדרשים:

סירים או מחבתות וכו'

תנור, כיריים, בלנדר וכו'

הוראות הכנה:

עדיפות להוראות לפי שלבים

אם צריך לחמם מראש תנור אז לכתוב מראש!

<מומלץ לצרף תמונה של התוצאה>

[thefandomenchantress]

tw:: e/d

I'm starting to think Ace's eating disorder isn't anorexia, but ARFID. Bulimia is an option, too, but hear me out.

Anorexia is when people who hate their bodies and want to make it better. It's the most common eating disorder, but again, has a different meaning than what people believe it to be.

I'll elaborate: When people think 'eating disorder', their mind automatically goes to anorexia or bulimia. But when the e/d doesn't involve throwing up they think-- 'oh, you don't eat? It's anorexia.' Again, anorexia develops when you don't eat because you have self-image issues relating to the body.

It's not confirmed if Ace thinks this way, but based on evidence, ARFID suits him better.

ARFID stands for Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. It means you avoid food, or you are restricted from food.

Ace fits both categories.

He's a jockey, which means he has a diet and isn't allowed to eat certain foods. I could add the 'he hates meat' thing, but people can be vegan/vegetarian without gaining an e/d, but what I can highlight is why he hates it. He hates it for texture, if I'm understanding correctly, so that fits under the Avoidant category. So, he fits under both.

But here's something interesting: people with ARFID involve other things like ADHD, anxiety, and autism.

I think it's safe to say Ace has autism.

People with ARFID don't eat certain foods because of the taste, or texture, and-- get this-- the fear of choking, dying, vomiting, or pain.

I rest my case.

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/arfid.html#:~:text=What%20Is%20ARFID%3F,poor%20growth%20and%20poor%20nutrition.

Hmm, I've never had an eating disorder myself, and I don't think I'm informed enough to make any big judgements on this, but your reasoning seems to be pretty sound.

I think the argument for it being anorexia was that Ace restricts out of a need for control. He's always goes on about how there are so many things in life he can't control, but he can control his weight. And since being the weight he is directly connects to his success as a jockey, he also does it as a way to assure himself he's not a failure. Which sounded right to me, though again, I'm by no means an expert.

And honestly, I always figured him hating meat probably had something to do with seeing a horse getting put down when he was a kid and never being able to look at it the same way again. Y'know, because of his whole fear of death thing, and meat is made of dead animals (animals being something Ace is often compared to). And once he thought about it, he couldn't unthink about how the meat he consumed used to be alive.

Still, your explanation also makes sense! Especially the fear of dying part. I never would've considered it being ARFID, despite doing research into it in the past for other reasons. And now I'm a little surprised no one's brought this up before, to my knowledge. Thanks for sharing with me!

[sapphicseasapphire]

I’m wondering if any of the chain members have any dietary restrictions and if so how do they deal with food while travelling I’d imagine some wouldn’t exactly need to eat ( wars, wild and time) but also most of the other might need to have different diets then the typical hylian. ( honestly only twilight and maybe four might be the only with a more typical diet)

This is a great question, and one that I’ve thought about at length. Sorry I took so long to respond, I’m so incredibly busy with my classes! I hope this answer is sufficient haha! (Under the cut because long)

Wild: Surprisingly, he does need to eat! Just, not for the reasons that you or I do. Wild does not feel hungry. His body does not consume energy (it’s not… physical, really). But his magic is based in the natural world, so if he’s hurt, he must strengthen bonds to nature. The easiest way to do this is to ingest things that come from nature. So like… any food ever. He gets hurt a lot (the little chaos gremlin) so he tends to eat a lot! And he may be a silly little guy, but he has standards. He’s an excellent cook, surprisingly.

Wars: Doesn’t eat. Can’t eat. Is a sword.

Time: Time doesn’t need to eat, but after spending his life as a mortal, it’s a pretty tough habit to break! He’s nostalgic about food, almost. While he doesn’t feel hungry, he doesn’t typically feel full, either. So eating won’t make him sick or anything. If he smells something tasty, he’d ask for a serving! Other than that, he doesn’t have any dietary restrictions.

Hyrule: Vegetarían! And he LOVES sweet things. He fills up on berries and then will go days without eating again- it doesn’t take much to sustain his little body. (Like Wild, he’s not exactly physical, either. Most of his body mass is just magic). Sugar water? His favorite. Jelly? He loves. He’s such a little guy, I love him.

Sky: Pescatarian! As Link, he was vegetarian, but Aepon really liked fish. To this day, Sky’s favorite meal is pumpkin and fish soup, which is a weird combination. But Pipit made it for him once and it’s been his favorite ever since! (A combination of Link and Aepon’s favorites). He’s not against eating meat but his body isn’t really equipped to handle it. Same with dairy- but no one knew that until they gave him a bunch of milk after hearing that he has fragile bones. He is morally against eating eggs.

Legend: He has to absolutely douse all of his meals with a bunch of salt or he’ll die, but he’s vibing. He prefers seafood, but he’s been living on land (and has traveled enough) to be able to stomach the plants that grow above water. He has even developed a preference for certain meats. He’ll take whatever he’s given, usually, and add his own salt haha.

Ravio: Literally the exact same as Legend. (Except he’s been neglecting the salt thing for pretty much his whole life. Someone help him, he’s not doing well).

Wind: Literally the exact same as Legend and Ravio, except he doesn’t need all the salt supplementation… at least not nearly to the same extent.

Four: Eats a typical diet! Nothing really to say here. Typical three meals a day, meat and vegetables and dairy and all that. Four will mix their food before eating, which the others might find odd. They prefer to have everything in every bite. Soups are good haha!

Twilight: Typical diet. He eats meat and vegetables and dairy and all that jazz. Lots of protein. He eats… more than you’d expect, and that’s because he has different forms to maintain. It doesn’t cost him anything to shift- it takes no energy- but if he only eats enough for a Hylian, he won’t be able to last long as a wolf or another large animal.

This post might offer some more insight!

[battleangel]

Pigs Eyes & Crying Elephants: Sentient Beings Manifesto

A commercial with a crying elephant & the eyes of a pig.

I saw the elephant commercial for an animal welfare group last Tuesday during NXT.

That is what started all of this.

I was vegetarian for two years from 2013 to 2015 meaning I didn't eat any meat or seafood but I did eat eggs & consume dairy.

Then I started eating meat again in 2015.

Then about a year ago, I decided I would eat vegetarian during the week (Monday through Friday) and then eat meat & dairy on the weekends -- so my diet was 75% vegetarian for the past year.

But I was still eating all the chocolate, cheese & all of the dairy tingz.

Then I saw a commercial last week during NXT with a crying elephant. It really got to me.

I started during research on elephants & emotion. Turns out elephants pass the "mirror test" and are self-aware.

So are dolphins.

That led me down a rabbit hole where I started researching the emotional self-awareness of other animals and was surprised to find similar findings for pigs, chickens and cows.

And monkeys -- rhesus macaques are endlessly tortured for human medication. They are extremely self-aware and emotional.

I questioned myself on why my 75% vegetarianism diet shouldn't be 75% plant-based (vegan).

And I realized that I didn't want to give up exactly two things: cheese & chocolate.

And hell no, I didn't want the vegan alternatives.

But I started researching the dairy industry which then led me to researching CAFOs (commercial agricultural feeding operations) aka factory farms aka hell on earth aka infinity mirrors of animals being tortured endlessly.

10 billion land animals are slaughtered every year in the United States. Millions a day.

Is that really necessary?

Then I realized that the dairy industry was the plot to a dystopian sci-fi novel:

Women are forcibly impregnated, their babies taken from them immediately after being born — the baby boys are killed within 1 to 4 days, the girls are imprisoned to be forcibly impregnated just like their mothers.

The impregnation cycle is relentless and there are absolutely no breaks between artificial insemination - impregnation - birth repeat.

The woman are also given artificial growth hormones to force them to grow bigger & more quickly — the easier & quicker to impregnate them.

The women are kept in stalls that are so small & overcrowded they cant even move or turn around.

The women never see natural sunlight.

They are only allowed out of their stalls to give birth.

They are forced to endlessly lactate and pumped by machines so mercilessly that they bleed.

I still didn't feel that I could give up cheese 75% of the time.

Then I questioned myself on why not.

I have done very restrictive very low calorie diets in the past. I used to work out 2 hours a day, 6 days a week. I used to have a six pack. 

I broke my 13 year addiction to the NFL & won't even be watching the Super Bowl once a year as of this year.

Why then is not eating cheese 75% of the time a seeming impossibility?

That was honestly how I felt.

So, I googled and found this:

Cheese contains casein. This is what causes such intense cravings. It also contains casein fragments called casomorphins, a casein-derived morphine-like compound. Dairy protein has opiate molecules built in. When consumed, these fragments attach to the same brain receptors that heroin and other narcotics attach to. Casomorphins cross the blood brain barrier and attach to dopamine receptors.

Cheese is literally 10% as addicting as morphine.

Yet they (do ask yourself who they is) have the motherfucking audacity to say it is "no more addictive than anything else that could be addictive, like Pringles or fast food."

First of all -- they are simply proving the point as those foods -- OPFs or overly processed foods & fast food -- also are highly addicting by deisgn, they are literally made to be. Study after study has confirmed that the most addictive foods are foods that are highly processed, high in fat, high in sodium and/or sugar.

Checks out, right? 

What foods do you consider the most addicting? 

Probably Oreos, potato chips, pizza, french fries, mozzarella sticks, fast food, donuts, cookies, brownies, pretzels, burgers like anyone else.

Right?

They are designed that way on purpose.

They create addicts on purpose for profit.

Cancer, diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, artherosclerosis, blood clots, immune system disorders, heart disease, stroke, heart attacks are all caused by diet & lifestyle.

It is a very lucrative business for them.

A million people are already on Wegovy babes?

It's a set up.

They make the food that makes people sick and they make the medicine that people buy after they buy the food that makes them sick. The above diseases did not exist at the current rate even 100 years ago. It's due to OPFs (overly processed food), PFAs (forever chemicals), toxins, sugar substitutes, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (transfat), high fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, monosodium glutamate, dextrose, sucralose, lecithin, emulsifiers, aspartame, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), bioengineered ingredients, pesticides, artificial flavors & colors, preservatives, synthetic lab-made chemicals.

Capitalism is nothing but a death cult.

Wake up.

They are literally made that way on purpose & designed to be addictive.

But the way that casein is addictive is truly unique because it is binding itself to receptors in our brains the way that morphine & heroine does.

So, I decided I want to do something that is sustainable in the long-term 15 & 20+ years from now. I am 43.

I don't play an all or nothing zero sum game of zealotry where it's something that is impractical.

I look forward to the weekly meals with my husband.

We have been together for 17 years and have been married for over a decade.

I've looked at thousands of recipes over the years and have curated a Top 100 list of our absolute favorite receipes plus ones that I want us to try.

We always make a meal on the weekend & post the pictures on his Facebook.

While we eat our weekly meal, we talk, hang out, watch stuff on Youtube, baseball, basketball & wrestling.

It's one of the things we look forward to doing together as a couple the most.

He is the quintessential "meat & potatoes guy" but when I started eating vegetarian 75% of the time last year, he agreed to eat vegetarian 3 to 5 days a week.

He does eat meat & dairy the other days of the week.

I have decided that maintaining our weekly meals ritual as a couple is important to me.

So, for this to be sustainable it has to allow for our weekly meals to have meat and/or dairy -- and also, during the holidays, I want to be able to eat meat and/or dairy.

Other than that, Monday through Friday, my plan for the rest of my life is to eat a vegan (plant-based) diet 75% of the time -- no meat, seafood, dairy or animal-based or derived ingredients or by-products.

I immediately went through my apartment this morning once I had decided on this & was disappointed at how many of my snacks weren't vegan -- Annie's Organic granola bars, Nature's Bakery Bars & literally all of my remaining Halloween candy (Take 5, Reese's Cups, Crunch, & candy corn).

I gave it all to my husband in a bag this morning for him to take to work.

Since they are snacks that I ate on a daily basis, it is better to remove them from the apartment as my goal is to now eat vegan (plant-based) diet 75% of the time, Monday through Friday.

Staring at a bag of my absolute favorite non-vegan candy corn isn't exactly going to help me achieve that.

Vox When asked in an interview on the Climavores podcast why farms aren’t regulated to reduce pollution, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said there are simply too many farms to regulate, and that conservation efforts should be voluntary

According to Civil Eats, a nonprofit publication covering the US food system, nearly all animal agriculture operations are exempt from federal protections under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the agency doesn’t respond to 85 percent of worker fatalities on animal farms.

Most states exempt livestock from anti-cruelty laws, and many states have passed “ag-gag laws,” which criminalize activists and journalists for simply recording what goes on at farms. 

All 50 states have so-called “right to farm” laws, which prevent citizens from suing farms for nuisances like pollution and odor that degrade their quality of life. 

A recent analysis from Stanford University researchers found that from 2014 to 2020, the US livestock sector received about 800 times more public funding than the meat, egg, and dairy alternatives sector.

Farmers are heavily overrepresented in government, with 25 current members of the US House of Representatives, or their family members, having collected millions of dollars in agricultural subsidies. That’s almost 6 percent of the chamber, even though just about 1 percent of Americans live on farms. The dynamic is the same at the state level.

Corn and soybean production, most of which is dedicated to ethanol and livestock feed, accounts for half of all crop cash receipts.

Don't you think some of the children literally starving to death right now in North Gaza in Palestine could have used some of that corn & soybean? No? The livestock that we don't need to eat because we don't need meat to survive needed it more than the children literally dying from starvation right now in North Gaza?

Vox Raising livestock requires far more land and water than growing plant-based foods — and produces far more pollution.

Over the past decade, the animal-agriculture industry has been behind the introduction of "ag-gag" bills in more than half of all state legislatures across the country. These dangerous bills are designed to silence whistleblowers revealing animal abuses on industrial farms. Ag-gag laws currently exist in six states, penalizing whistleblowers who investigate the day-to-day activities of industrial farms, including the recording, possession or distribution of photos, video and/or audio at a farm. 

The USDA never conducts surprise audits, or any audits at all, to verify the company is telling the truth. It is, in essence, an honor system. The USDA also has an incredibly low, and often nonsensical, bar for what passes as humane treatment.

Over the course of more than a dozen shifts at multiple Foster Farms facilities, the investigator — who requested anonymity due to the covert nature of undercover investigations — documented workers slamming birds into crates, kicking and hitting chickens, and numerous instances of forklift drivers running over birds.

The investigator recalled making eye contact with a bird shortly after they were run over by a forklift. “They were being crushed and everything was being pushed forward, and they had their beak open, and they had this look on their face like they knew that they were dying,” the investigator told me. “And then I watched them flap and struggle for a moment before passing.”

The investigator chalked up most of the cruelty to the chaotic, fast-paced work environment imposed by supervisors during long, grueling shifts.

But you wouldn’t know that from its marketing or its “American Humane” certification. 

Chickens raised for meat in America -- 98% of land animals that get slaughtered each year in factory farms -- are five times bigger today than they were in the 1950s! In 1957, chickens on farms raised for meat were 907 grams. In 1978, chickens on farms raised for meat were 1,808 grams. In 2005, they are 4,202 grams! WHERE IS OUR HUMANITY???????????

Vox American Humane allows for the standard chicken slaughter process: shackling chickens upside down, dunking them in a bath of electrified water to stun them unconscious, slitting their throats, and then placing them in a scalding vat to loosen their feathers.

Despite all that, the resulting meat can still be advertised as humane, sustainable, and produced from healthy birds.

Currently, chickens and other poultry birds have zero federal legal protections while on the farm or in the slaughterhouse.

During their short stint on behalf of the Washington, DC-based animal rights group Animal Outlook, the investigator documented hours upon hours of the typical horrors found on chicken factory farms: tens of thousands of birds stuffed into dark warehouse-sized barns, many of them severely injured with gruesome lesions, injuries, and deformities. At more than one point, birds are deprived of feed or water, and there was also a rat infestation and footage of bugs crawling in the chickens’ feed.

The conditions are visibly at odds with Tyson’s advertising claims that it treats animals humanely and raises “happy” and “healthy” chickens.

“It’s just a living nightmare,” the investigator, who requested anonymity due to the covert nature of undercover investigations, told Vox. “A video just does not do it any justice.”

Despite the horrific findings, they’re not all that different from the conditions documented at other farms that raise chickens for Tyson and Tyson’s competitors. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says chicken producers using the label “free-range” must provide birds “continuous, free access to the outside” for over 51 percent of their 6.5-week lives.

Is 6.5 weeks a life?????????????????????

In another portion of Animal Outlook’s footage, when the investigator asked the farm manager why so many chickens couldn’t move, he was blunt:

“They’re just fucked up.” 

According to a 2021 ProPublica investigation, humane-labeled chicken is often processed in the same slaughterhouses, owned by companies like Tyson, as conventional meat.

 “You almost couldn’t design a more torturous setting,” she said, adding that the video shows dying and dead chickens in “advanced states of decomposition” with the potential to “spread infectious disease to the other birds, human workers, and unsuspecting Tyson customers.”

WHERE IS OUR HUMANITY???????????????

Animal Outlook’s investigator also documented bugs crawling in the chickens’ feed, and rat infestations — problems echoed by the Tyson technician in the undercover video.

“The little baby chicks are gonna peck at those bugs, eat them, and then they’re gonna die,” Tyson’s technician told the farm manager in a conversation recorded by the investigator. 

“You got rats in there, you got fresh rat activity in all your houses.” Despite these known issues, Animal Outlook alleges Tyson delivered fresh chicks to the farm.

As journalist Eyal Press, author of Dirty Work, a book on jobs in morally troubling industries like poultry, put it in a Vox podcast interview: “On the rare occasions when the curtain is pulled back and we see this dirty work going on, the blame goes to the lowest-ranking people at the bottom, and that’s very convenient for society.”

Ofcourse it is -- society still wants their Wendys Spicy Nuggs.

Vox However, holding meat companies legally accountable for how they treat animals is exceedingly difficult because there are no federal laws that protect animals while on the farm, and birds are exempt from federal slaughter and transport law. 

Chickens raised for slaughter are bred in "high stocking densities", meaning they are unable to "move freely to flap their wings" or show "natural behaviors".

"They [Frankenchickens] have been bred to eat at an extraordinary rate so they put on this completely inappropriate weight gain just to get to market as quickly as possible."

If you are a starseed, understand our mission is to break up & dismantle Big Meat & Big Ag (& ofcourse Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc...): LPE Project

Today four massive companies – JBS, Tyson Foods, National Beef, and Cargill – control over 80 percent of America’s beef. Three companies – JBS, Tyson, and Smithfield Foods – control 63 percent of America’s pork. Two of those – JBS and Tyson – also control 38 percent of poultry. The grain, seed, farm equipment, agrochemical, livestock genetics, and animal pharmaceutical industries have likewise become highly consolidated.

These companies possess dominant market power as both sellers of meat and buyers of livestock, which they used to raise prices for consumers and lower prices paid to farmers.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Earl Butz – who at the time served on multiple agribusiness boards – to lead the USDA, opening a revolving door between the industry and the agency that has swung non-stop ever since.

Under Butz, subsidies for fossil-fuel-intensive monocultures led to a glut of cheap grain, which in turn led to factory farmed animals. “Since factory farms could buy grain for less than it cost farmers to grow it, they could now fatten animals more cheaply than farmers could,” wrote Michael Pollan.

In the last year, top companies in every major American meat sector – beef, pork, chicken, and turkey – have been subject to civil suits and/or federal investigations for conspiring to keep prices high. One lawsuit estimates that chicken industry price-fixing alone costs the average American family of four $330 per year.

The primary reason multinational meat conglomerates have flourished, and meat prices have remained artificially low, is that our government massively subsidizes them at everyone else’s expense.

Our government subsidizes Big Meat directly by allocating the bulk of federal crop subsidies to large farms growing animal feeds, by financing animal factory infrastructure, by buying billions of dollars of their products, and much more. In exchange for this support, taxpayers get hijacked federal agencies, policies shaped by pro-industry academic research, a less responsive democracy, and forceful industry lobbying to keep it that way.

It does this by failing to regulate the environmental impacts of factory farming, including the industry’s role in contaminating air, poisoning drinking water, and driving the climate crisis; by failing to require safe conditions for slaughterhouse workers; by denying most farmworkers the rights to form unions and earn minimum wage and overtime pay; by exempting “common farming practices,” no matter how cruel, from most state animal anti-cruelty statutes; and by failing to restrict the industry’s use of antibiotics (used to speed growth and keep overcrowded animals alive) despite the resulting increase in drug-resistant infections.

Farmer suicide rates are now 3.5 times that of the general population.

It is now commonplace for pigs (and their diseases) to be trucked hundreds of miles across the country without food, water, bedding, protection from extreme temperatures, or adequate space.

BedlamFarm.com One of these happenings was the discovery by scientists in New York in the 1950’sthat by adding tiny traces of antibiotics to animal feed they could increase the growth rates of animals.

With these new tools, farmers could concentrate animals in confined areas on a scale never before possible.

This was soon to be called “factory farming” by the few voices raised in alarm. The term has never been complimentary..

At the same time as the geneticists made their discoveries, Earl Butz, Dwight Eisenhower’s Agriculture Secretary, defined the new future.

It isn’t clear if Butz, a crude by visionary agriculture economist, saw the coming future or created it.

Farms, he said,  and farmers had to consolidate, corporatized, embrace economies of scale, just what most family farmers would never do.  The economists picked up this cry, and the family farmers never had a chance.

Butz was serious, perhaps prescient. He meant that in order to survive, farmers must pursue a new corporate model for farms – maximize profits, minimize loss. 

Corporations jumped into farming big-time, buying giant tractors, hiring biologists and geneticists to redesign animals and turn them into unhealthy freaks with short live spans and no resistance to illness, parasites, or viruses, setting up distributions systems that could even sell milk and meat overseas.

On the corporate farms, when a cow gets sick, it is instantly put to death, veterinary care cut into profits, the cow just goes to slaughter.

The average live span of a milk cow, says the Agriculture Department, plunged from 12-15 years to two years by the 1990s. Cows on corporate farms never set foot outside, some never left their stalls, get no exercise, and are bored almost senseless.

Where is our humanity?????????????????

There is no stimulation in their lives, no change of scenery no hed for these herd animals, no walk, grazing, or hanging out with other cows, a cow’s favorite activity.

They live as long as they can produce more and more milk, and when they can’t, they die.

For animals, life became an Orwellian horror show, their very bodies,  and spirits taken from them as they were genetically engineered to be profit centers, not animals with human caretakers and individual personalities and traits.

So have the chickens and pigs, many of whom live their lives without ever standing up in factory farms, mostly in the mid-central United  States. 

Most Americans will never see what is happening to these animals or even hear about them.

The people who increasingly have taken over the care of the animals we eat are sometimes the cruelest and most immoral people who have ever come within a hundred miles of a farm.

Comment to the above article: A quick google search reveals legislation proposed to add oversight to use of antibiotics in animals in 2018, 2017, 2013, 2002- all fought by Big Pharma. Often with the same ferocity and tactics used by Big Oil to fight against regulations to slow climate change.

ForksOverKnives: The USDA is tasked with setting the nation's nutrition guidelines. Yet this is in direct conflict with its primary interest: ensuring the profitability of producers of foods such as dairy and meat. These foods are known to increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Is it any wonder that programs administered by the USDA and funded by the Farm Bill preferentially feed school children and the poor unhealthy foods that cause chronic disease?

The farming practices that underpin our healthcare crisis also degrade our environment. To grow vast swaths of these monoculture crops, enormous amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are required. Many of these agricultural chemicals are suspected endocrine disruptors and carcinogens that are thought to alter human DNA down through the generations.

During my lifetime alone, annual worldwide pesticide production has increased from 200,000 tons to more than 5 million tons, according to estimates from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It has gotten to the point that many of these chemicals now rain down upon us. These pesticides wipe out beneficial and native wildlife such as honey bees, monarch butterflies, and songbirds.

A Happy Meal? If, by eliminating Farm Bill subsidies, the cost of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese were to rise from, say $4 to $15, eating habits would likely shift toward eating healthier foods, especially if at the same time, a program were put in effect to incentivize the consumption of whole plant foods. In fact, a large nationwide program in South Africa has already demonstrated that the public will consume more fruits and vegetables when these healthy foods are subsidized. 

Making Us Sick Makes Them Money The 17 percent of GDP (about $3.2 trillion) the nation now spends on health care will rise to 20 percent of GDP by 2025, according to The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The CDC estimates that 86 percent of this money is not actually spent on making people healthy; it is spent on treating and sustaining chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and dementia. The medical evidence shows that most of this chronic disease is the result of the food we eat and can be prevented and even reversed by eating a plant-based diet. 

Fish have it worse in one way -- they have ZERO legal protections.

AnimalEquality Commercial fishing is cruelty to animals on a colossal scale, killing nearly a trillion animals worldwide every year. Ships the size of football fields use techniques such as longlining and gill nets.

Gill nets, which range from 300 feet to seven miles in length, create large walls of nets that fish are unable to see. They inadvertently swim into them and many will suffocate or bleed to death.

In the United States, fish are not covered by the Humane Slaughter Act. This results in a wide variety of cruel slaughter methods dependent on industry, company, and species.

Fish are usually removed from the water and left to suffocate and die. They desperately attempt to escape as their gills collapse preventing them from being able to breathe. Larger animals, such as tuna and swordfish, are usually clubbed to death. This often leads to an animal being injured but regaining consciousness and the process having to be repeated several times.

There are 1.3 billion farm raised fish in the United States.

Vox It’s unsurprising that fish have been ignored. They live underwater, so we rarely interact with them. They can’t vocalize or make facial expressions, so it’s much harder to understand them than mammals and birds. And research has shown that the further animals are from us on the evolutionary chain, the less likely we are to try to protect them.

In commercial ocean fishing, the welfare concerns are mostly relegated to the final minutes or hours of a fish’s life — they’re typically left to suffocate to death on deck, which can take under an hour or up to several hours. 

Other welfare issues include rough handling and the inability to express natural behaviors, like migration and nesting.

One of the bigger findings of the past two decades has been that fish have nociceptors, sensory neurons that detect and respond to damaging or threatening stimuli — a strong indicator they experience pain. 

But just like with other species, researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that fish behave differently in adverse conditions (for example, they limit eating and activity) and stop these behaviors when pain relief is given. 

They don't WANT to believe fish feel pain because it will lower their profits -- read the above again & honestly tell me that those fish don't sound like they were in pain & then relieved from pain -- so should they be left alone on ship decks to suffocate to death for HOURS???????????

Wild-captured fish experience agonizing final moments no animal should have to endure, as pressure weighs on their bodies when they’re quickly pulled up out of the ocean’s depths in nets, and they begin to suffocate. 

Death, too, is cruel on fish farms, where many fish are killed slowly by suffocation or in ice water.

Existing in these cramped environments is a far cry from the lives fish would experience in their natural habitats. For one example, salmon may swim spans of hundreds of miles to reach the ocean from the streams in which they hatched, and much farther as they reach feeding grounds, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Sometimes, salmon will spend years at sea before returning to their original stream to spawn.

Extraction of groundwater for aquaculture has been found in one study to accelerate sea level rise by causing land to sink.

Pigs on factory farms are often cannibalized, forced to eat meat from fellow pigs. 

WHERE IS OUR HUMANITY???????????

Where is humanity?

They are sentient beings: capable of feeling pain, and experiencing a range of emotions. Scientific evidence has revealed that fish are far more intelligent than people assume. They have long-term memories, complex social structures, problem solving abilities, and some have been seen using tools.

Fish are even crushed to death & literally cut in half while alive!

Where is humanity?

Porkopolis It is near impossible in the industry to encounter a conceptual or ethical limit proposed for sows biological reproductive capacity.

AnimalsAustralia Farrowing crates are cold, hard metal cages with steel or concrete floors. In factory farms around the world, it’s standard practice to transfer mother pigs to a farrowing crate 7-14 days before she gives birth to her new piglets. After birthing (in a process known as ‘farrowing’), she remains confined in these metal ‘maternity’ crates for 3-4 weeks until her piglets are weaned.

Farrowing crates are so small a mother pig can barely move – she can only sit, stand or lay down slowly, and with difficulty. Pigs are naturally very clean animals, and when given the choice, never toilet where they eat, sleep or play. Instead, they will often travel far away to relieve themselves.  But trapped in a farrowing crate, she can only take one step forward or back and is forced to urinate and defecate right where she stands. For mother pigs, this unhygienic behaviour causes her extreme stress, discomfort and heightens her risk of disease.

Despite having the intelligence of a 3-year old child, who can solve puzzles and even play video games, have amazing memories, can sense the passing of time, foster lifelong friendships with other pigs and expresses empathy for humans and pigs alike, these loving animals continue to be industrialised and treated like 'products', rather than individuals who feel - and express - an enormous range of emotions. She is someone, not something. 

Eggs are Not Eggscellent Cages are extremely cruel, and sadly they are just one of many cruelties chickens are forced to endure in the egg industry. In all commercial egg systems – cage, barn-raised, free-range or organic – male chicks are considered ‘worthless’ and are killed on their first day of life.

Female chicks are raised to replace hens who are sent to slaughter at just 18-30 months old — a fraction of their natural lifespan. As newborns, the tips of their beaks can be cut off without pain reliefto reduce aggressive pecking fueled by frustration when they cannot move freely, forage, or establish a natural social structure.

Because the males bred into the industry won’t grow up to produce eggs they are ‘disposed of’ by gassing or maceration -- literally being shredded to death while alive.

And later that year, at Sparboe Farms in Iowa, undercover investigators documented hens with gaping, untreated wounds laying eggs in cramped conditions among decaying corpses.

Leo Tolstoy - 1891 Essay A village pig is dragged outside for slaughter. The animals “human-looking pink body” screamed in a “dreadful voice, resembling the shriek of a man”. 

After the screams subsided and the animal was killed, even the gruff carriage driver accompanying Tolstoy lets out a heavy sigh.

“Do people really not have to answer for such things?”

Almost 200 years later, do they answer for such things?

My question to anyone reading this (unless you are already a strict vegan) is:

What can you do to reduce the overall suffering & harm done to sentient beings (all animals including fish & cetaceans) that is realistic & repeatable over the long term?

Me, personally I do not see the point in being some total zealot that never eats anyhing with bone char again if it isn't sustainable over the long term.

Vegans call it doing what is "practical & possible". 

I believe it is also very important that it be sustainable over the long term or else what was the point?

Now, I will end this by asking you the same question I asked myself:

What can you do to reduce the suffering & harm to sentient beings (all animals including fish & cetaceans) that fits the following two criteria:

Realistic

Repeatable over the long term

I also want to say this if you are a starseed reading this -- we need to work with everyone.

This isn't some kind of ideological purity test or a flex as I see a lot of that within the movement for animal rights & activism. This is about sentient, self-aware beings that are emotional, social & cognitively functional getting the living shit tortured out of them.

This is about the fact that 90% of the world's population as of today eats meat.

This is about 10 billion farm animals being slaughtered in the US every year for food.

This is about 99% of farm animals in the US being killed in factory farms.

This is about 90% of the 10 billion farm animals being slaughtered in the US being chickens.

This is about fedral subsidies that make a cheeseburger $4 when it should really be at least $15.

This is about big meat & big ag spending tens of millions every year to bankroll politicians for favorable policies.

This is about landmark legislation from the EPA & Congress not applying to the agricultural industry that causes the majority of land, air & water pollution & waste.

This is about the fact that there is no Big Broccoli to counter the meat & agricultural cartels.

This is about Trump winning.

It's not about fighting over bone char, cholecalciferol & cross contamination.

It's not about a competition on who can utilize the least animal byproducts (like the paint on the walls in your home & the tires in your car).

It's not a who's the best vegan dick measuring contest.

We need to work with everyone given what we are about against.

The 10 billion number has not dropped. And actually, people are consuming more meat.

Although there have been legislative wins and imitation meat like Impossible & Beyond Meat are promising.

They have the lobbying machine, political apparatus, laws, subsidies & constant commercials & ads on their side. When's the last time you saw a commercial for vegetables?

Now, when's the last time you saw a commercial for Sonics, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Pringles, Lays, Reeses Cup, Snickers, Twix, Applebees, Chilis, McDonalds.

We need to work with omnis, flexitarians, pescatarians, people that don't eat pork, people that don't eat chicken, people that don't eat beef, people that don't consume dairy.

That's not watering down or diluting a message.

It's decentering zealotry so we can actually get somewhere in our fight for animals to be recognized as sentient beings with their own inalienable rights.

That is maybe 100 to 250+ years off.

We won't get anywhere if we stay on reddit debating about whether brown sugar is okay if it is processed with bone char. 

Keep that in mind. The animals are counting on us. ✨✨✨

[markrosewater]

The buffet allegory is I think a good one but I think it supports the proposition that WotC should be printing UW versions of cards for people like the cube builder. I'm a vegetarian which means the selection of things I can eat at a buffet is routinely restricted. But some buffets separate meats out of dishes to make them more modular, which allows me to eat the maximum variety without touching meat. And those are the buffets that best include me, the ones at which I feel welcome.

We do make some Universe Within cards, and I'm sure we'll make more, but it's simply not feasible, from both a business standpoint and a logistical standpoint, to make Universe Within cards for every Universe Beyond card.