wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Week’s end

Log:

Thursday breakfast: dirty chai with espresso, toast

Lunch: Lebanese salad mix

dinner: Beyond Meat burger, poutine

Friday breakfast: coffee, toast

Snack: second coffee

Lunch: simili meat burger

Snack: fries and simili chicken strips

Dinner: poutine

Treat: cookies and milk

Notes:

I had refrained from ordering poutine, due to the use of meat stock in the sauce process. However, looking up the ingredients in powdered gravy revealed that no animals were involved in making them. My experience in professional kitchen, and their low overhead, tells me that they’re not likely to whip up stock just to make gravy, so unless you’re ordering from a new wave chef restaurant, you can pretty safely get the basic poutine, it’s fine.

I finally took the ten minutes needed to clean up the fryer and replace the oil, and real freaking fries are back on the menu. Hopefully, the grocery store will stock up on the good frozen fries (bistro style, with a light batter that makes them extra crispy) soon, so that I can help my sanity enjoy life a bit more.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

No title

Log:

Breakfast: coffee. toasted cheese sandwich with pesto

Snack: second coffee

Lunch: naan pizza

Snack: cookies

Dinner: falafel pita sandwich, potatoes with garlic sauce, baklava

Treat: cookies

Notes:

Not much to say, really. Vegetarian options stay pretty much scarce and uninspiring from takeout places, with many offering none, not even a token salad, or vegie burger, while at others, salad is the vegetarian option. Given that most places have very uninspired salads, this does not help.

So as previously mentioned, having exhausted the standard food joint menus, I ended up falling back unto the good standards, Lebanese, with falafel, and a selection of salads. And garlic sauce, the very important garlic sauce. The pita trio was last night’s dinner, with a salad selection for my lunch today, so that will be nice. Would have been nicer to allow me to decide what my complementary drink from the trio was, and now I’m stuck with a can of Pepsi that I don’t drink.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Slight case of change

Log:

Breakfast: toasted cheese sandwich with pesto, coffee

Snack: second coffee

Lunch: mac&cheese

Snack: cookies

Dinner: butter chickpeas on Basmati rice

Treat: cookies

Notes:

One of the easiest ways to enjoy good vegetarian and vegan food is to look for cuisines that have prepared those dishes for hundreds of years. When you step away from contemporary cooking, and the quest to find a meat replacement, you find that plenty of cultures the world over, never bothered with replacing meat, so much as getting the nutrients you need, bypassing the flesh. Mediterranean, Persian, Chinese, Italian, First Nation, American Indian, and Indian are all cuisines that have thrived with large sections of meatless dishes for millennia.

Indian is the vegan/vegetarian’s best friend, with delicious and varied dishes to cover pretty much all expectations. They go from mild to scalding hot, with plenty of pulses to feed the body and soul. preparing those dishes appear daunting, due to the number of ingredients, until you break it down and realize that most of them are flavor components; once that this is addressed, you can whip them out pretty easily.

I went the lazier route, and bought some prepackaged meals from Patak, a company that deal with nothing but Indian dishes. They clearly mark their offerings as vegan or vegetarian, so that there’s less worry about it being a marketing ploy. The first one I tried was their butter chickpea, which adds carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes, to vary the dish in taste and texture. Going for some Indian was a nice change of pace, which I should indulge in more, and the month closes, but will be repeated past the end of the challenge.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Monday? More like groan day, amiright?

Log:

Breakfast: toasted cheese sandwich, coffee

Snack: second coffee

Lunch: not-chicken strips and fries

Snack: cookies

Dinner: naan burger, beer

Treat: big glass of milk, cookies

Notes:

Toasting the strips and the fries in the toaster over according to the instructions was pretty pointless. I had to add to the timing, because they were still floppy. In the end, it was still less than satisfying, but it filled me up, and reminded me to deal with the deep fryer.

I couldn’t motivate myself to leave the house to get burger buns, or even order in, so I used a naan bread, split in half, to serve instead. Used the avocado mash, and got a decent burger. Not great, but decent, good enough to pretty much wolf it down.

So being the brilliant man that I am, I did not check the calendar, and I just realized that I set a 30 days challenge is a 31 day month. So I’ll extend the challenge by a day, might as well make it neat.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Triptych

Log:

Thursday breakfast: coffee, granola

Snack: second coffee

Lunch: burger

Dinner: poutine

Friday breakfast: coffee, granola

Lunch: warmed over Chinese

Dinner: not chicken strips, fries

Treat: ice cream

Saturday breakfast: toast, coffee, cheese curds

Snack: second coffee

Dinner: double patties Beyond Meat burger, fries, dry cider

Sunday breakfast: coffee, toast

Snack: second coffee

late lunch: Chinese mised soup

Dinner: mac&cheese plus

Notes:

Tried out yet another kind of simili meat patties from President’s Choice, and so far, that’s the one that gives the closest results to meat, at least in appearance. Unlike pretty much all the others, the grilling surface remained flat, so that the “crust” was even.

Being out of lettuce, and having some critical ingredients that were just on the spot, I decided to make not-guacamole. I say not guacamole, because I used lemon juice instead of lime, and it’s a cardinal sin. Also, no fresh cilantro. But it made a nice avocado and tomato mash, which held very nicely in the burger, and brought a lot of flavors, as well as much needed vegetables to the mix.

The poutine was a disaster. With the oil in the fryer being pretty cooked, I went with the oil method, as per the packaged instructions. Never again. Even adding time to the cooking didn’t help, while some were getting burnt, others were still soft, and white. Very bleh.

The sauce was also a waste: having found it a touch bland last time, I figured that switching the soy sauce might do the trick. No, it didn’t. It was salty, very dark, closer in appearance to a mole than gravy. Overall, I ended up mostly eating the cheese curds.

President’s Choice simili chicken strips are quite decent, even if they will never fool you into thinking that you’re eating chicken. Gambling that old oil was better that over waste, I fired up the old fryer, and went at it. For all the claims of deep frying being bad, it cooks significantly faster, and gives a much more satisfying result. So I’ll clean the beast up, and get fresh oil.

Beyond Meat continues to prove why they appeal to the chowing public; the patty is juicy without being soft, and it’s chewy, with a mouthfeel very close to what you’d get with ground beef. And with so little food in my body all day, the double cheese really hit the spot.

Just like with the Friday Night soup, if you put the Chinese leftovers that you’d eat together anyways in a pot, and heat it up with some water, you’ve got soup. No real need to add stock, there’s plenty of flavors to go around already. As for the mac, I tested out the classic “mac&cheese+wieners”, except that I used the vegetarian ones I had left, cubed and fried first, before adding to the mac, along with some pesto and grated parmesan. It’s good, and  stayed creamy, so it’s a win.

Only one week to go, and I’ll be able to get a bit of meat in my diet again, if only to satisfy the occasional craving; those ads are really wearing me down :P

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Double down

Log:

Tuesday breakfast: toasted bagel cheese sandwich with pesto, coffee

Snack: second coffee

Lunch: mac&cheese +

Snack: ice cream

Dinner: Yasmine pizza

Treat: big glass of milk

Wednesday breakfast: coffee, oatmeal, Babybel

Lunch: mushroom Ramen with tofu

Snack: Babybel

Dinner: garlic broccoli, tofu in General Tao sauce, egg fried rice, beer

Treat: oatmeal cookies, big glass of milk

Comments:

Hungry, and wanting shake things up a bit, as well as use the tofu while it was still good, I decided to look into my packaged Ramen selection; I buy them at Korean-Japanese grocery stores (occasionally at a South Asian one too, but mileage may vary) so the flavor selection, as well as the quality is improved. 

I took a package of Ho Fan soup, true, it’s not a Ramen pack, but it’s similar in nature, with flat rice noodles similar to those found in Pho. It’s a strictly vegetarian soup based on mushroom extract and bean paste. I added some ground Shiitake I had on hand (as you do) and cubed tofu. The result is delicious, if a little underwhelming in the vegetables department; I had thought of adding some frozen spinach, but the stuff I had at hand did not work, unless that I wanted to have spinach with some noodles.

I ordered in from my reliable Chinese/Thai restaurant a delicious selection of vegetarian dishes. The amount usually allows me to cover three meals, which comes in at about $10 a meal, a good deal for the selection and quality. While other places would have offered battered and fried tofu General Tao, I guess that they decided to cut on the carbs, and just fried some tofu, and sauced it. The texture is different, but as a protein source, it’s delicious.

Having ordered a selection of micro brews, it made total sense to pick up yet different stuff when I did my grocery run, and tried out Katana, from Broadway Microbrasserie.

It’s a double hops using a newer hops called Sabro, with flavors that invoke citrus, coconut, and fruity aromas, and in which they added ginger. I don’t know enough about the brewing process, but they note that it contains lactose; it comes in a 7% alcohol content, which in some brews could have been heavy, but Katana does not suffer the sometimes overwhelming hit of hops that were very popular a few years back.

Overall, very satisfying, and a pretty great accompaniment to the meal.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Half game

Log for Monday:

Breakfast: coffee, toasted bagel, Babybel

Snack; second coffee

Lunch: pizza

Treat: homemade ice tea

Dinner: poutine, rye and Coke

Treat: big glass of milk.

Comment: I’ll take homemade ice tea over store bought any day. And making it is too easy and cheap to buy it premade anyways. I resisted ordering in, because it’s so hard to find offering that are acceptable to the challenge, especially when all the meat options are being shoved in your face, in about 90% of pictures advertising on delivery apps. I broke down, because I found out that on some services, you can request substitutions if the options are available; it’s just that they don’t really want to have too cluttered a menu, and so they offer omnivore OR vegan, with nothing in between. However, you can order a regular poutine because cheese is fine, but switch the sauce for the vegan one.

So that’s a thing.

Note: I’ve passed the halfway point, and some observations are in order. For one thing, without any change in my activities, my lower abdomen is feeling tighter, so the challenge is having an impact that wasn’t planned, but is a nice bonus. I still need to balance out my nutrient/vitamin intake, so that I don’t end up with unexpected deficiencies.

So to that end, I’ve determined that I need to vary my food sources, and allow the experiment’s impact to continue past the 30 days end point. Enter the 10% diet.

I’m not telling anyone what to do, it’s completely a thing for me. What I’m going to do is limit my animal flesh intake to 10% of my meals. Now, at 21 meals a week, that makes it two meals per week with meat, with some spare for flexibility. Going straight from a meat heavy omnivore diet to a meat-less diet for a limited time has it’s challenges, like the availability of non-meat options, and the cravings. Having some room to maneuver allows the cravings to be managed, and it feels less like failing if you end up having burger juice running down your chin because you just couldn’t handle it anymore.

I am very good at handling meat in nearly all methods (just don’t ask me to grill stuff, that’s my blind spot) but it’s become something of a crutch, and easy fallback for when I can’t think of what to eat, and it’s really easy to just have meat and sides (especially just starches like fries) which is good for the protein intake, but less so for the overall vitamin spectrum.

How long can I maintain the 10% diet? I don’t know, I haven’t started it yet, but keeping a log of what I eat helps me, because it keeps me accountable, even if no one reads it, it’s out there, it’s public, it’s accountability.

At least I drink more water. So stay hydrated, kids!

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Well, that was a weekend

Log

Saturday breakfast: coffee, Babybell

Lunch: veggie dogs

Dinner: Yasmine pizza, beer

treat: big glass of milk

Sunday breakfast: coffee, cold pizza

Lunch: veggie dogs

Snack: blackberry beer

Dinner: improved mac and cheese

Treat: big glass of milk

Notes:

I tried out Yves veggie wieners, because I have had enough burgers for a bit, and I might as well try vegetarian hot dogs, right? Overall, not much to say about them, they have the texture and bite of standard wieners, but sadly, none of the flavor. And I don’t mean having the same flavor, I mean some flavor, as I find them flavorless. And I’m the guy that usually buys halal chicken wieners too.

I ordered in for dinner, and got a delicious and flavorful pizza from Pizza & Taouk Pinoli. To stick to the plan, I ordered a Yasmine pizza ( Tomato Sauce, Feta Cheese, Mushrooms, Black and Green Olives, Fresh Tomatoes, Sundried Tomatoes and Cheese), which I ordered with extra goat cheese. delivered in 30 minutes, their offerings blow big chains pies out of the water. I especially appreciate that they cook it properly, with little scorch marks on the cheese, not the minimalist “well, it’s melted” pies that are far more common. I could easily have added cured olives for a hit of salt, but it’d have been like raising it to 11.

Tried the veggie dogs again, but pan fried instead of boiled this time, and following my experiment with the mushroom patty, I added a bit of soy sauce at the end, to try and raise the flavor a bit. It helped, but did not do all that much. Still wolfed it down, I was hungry.

The blackberry beer one is a new thing (at least for me) and is much fruitier than most fruit flavored brews. Most beers with fruits tend to keep the strong body of beer, but add the flavor of the fruit; this one is more akin to a carbonated and alcoholized juice, which I’ve decided to call my dad juice, compared to my mom juice, an alcoholized blackberry lemonade. At least I’m consistent in my flavor profile.

Resisting ordering in two nights in a row, yet not feeling too enthused about what I was first thinking of eating (let’s avoid burgers for a bit, yes?) I decided to branch out into pasta, and my ever reliable backup, mac and cheese. However, I am not one for the big K boxes, my champion is the President’s Choice white mac and cheese. At less than half the price of the K, it’s an easy choice to make, and oh, so delicious.

I have played with the basics in the past (at the very least add some grated cheese to the powder mix) but I felt like doing a bit more. So I crumbled and fried my final vegan smoked spice sausage, used plenty of margarine, heavy cream, and the leftover pesto (about a tablespoon), and topped it with black pepper and grated parmigianno reggiano.

I think that if anything, the visual appeal is there. And so is the taste. Because the oil from the pesto stays distinct from the cream, it keeps the sauce creamy without congealing as much. This is my vegetarian, adult, indulgent version of the childhood classic, hot dog mac & cheese. And arguably better.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Friday, sadlad day

Log:

Breakfast: toasted bagel cheese sandwich with pesto, coffee.

Snack: second coffee.

Lunch: fattoush part II

Snack: ice cream

Dinner: mushroom burger, fries, beer

Treat: big glass of mooh-cow

Comments:

The fattoush I made the day before was huge, so lunch was handled. Unfortunately, because is was already mixed, dressing and all, the tortilla croutons had become somewhat soggy. So while the salad was quite fine, it was less than great. So making salad is a lot like making pasta: getting the proportions right is tricky, and most likely, you’ll have leftovers.

After my initial mushroom burger, and the latest experiments with poutine sauce, I looked at ways to boost the patty’s flavor. Given the limitation on animal products, I couldn’t use Worcestershire, which would be the default option. So I decided on a touch of soy sauce, given that the whole purpose of soy sauce is to add flavor.

Tho a touch in this case turned out to be oops, too much. I need to get a spout bottle to better control that delivery. But I patted it down with a paper towel, and hoped for the best, while dreading the worst. Which didn’t happen. The sauce helped to both darken the patty, while adding a boost of flavor. Remember kids, dark soy sauce is not the same as aged soy sauce.

I’m getting close to the halfway point of the challenge, and it’s time to shake thing up. Using commercially available products is all well and good, but I had to up the game, and make stuff myself. So far I have not touched seitan, nor have I dealt with pulses. So, change is coming!

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Salad days

Log:

Breakfast: taosted bagel, coffee

Snack: second coffee

Lunch: fattoush

dinner: poutine

treat: big glass of mooh cow

Comments:

The last few days have been weird, sleeping more, but also needing that second cup. And starting to feel tired by 8 PM, which is unlikely. Is it the diet, or the need for vacation (which is coming in a few weeks) that’s being felt more? No Idea.

After getting the delivery fattoush, which was one one hand interesting, but on the other, a little underwhelming, I decided to make my own, before the lettuce all wilted and ended up in the guinea pigs’ stomachs (not that they’d complain.)

The first thing that was missing from the original, and which I tried to correct, is the mix of greens. So I combined green curly, iceberg, and romaine, for the crunch and nutrient variety. Add to that some garden cucumber and tomato to round up the vegetables. For toppings, I crumbled some Bulgarian brined cheese (like feta, minus the salt), almond slivers, and broken pieces of green olives, and did a quick lemon juice-olive oil dressing., with a sprinkle of garlic and onion powder. For the bread, not having pita bread at hand, I chopped and fried a wheat tortilla in olive oil.

As a first attempt with substitutes, it wasn’t bad; improvements could be made regarding the choice of green and the dressing for flavor, but overall it’s a good salad.

The poutine sauce was revisited, since that Worcestershire was verboten (damn you, delicious anchovies!) so I had to improvise a substitute from what I had. Some research suggested miso paste (which I had) and it got me thinking that one important component that makes miso stand out over tofu is the fermentation process; it’s also part of the process for making Worcestershire, so I had part of the answer there.

The soy sauce I has used in the building of the sauce originally was basic grocery store stuff, but I opened my bottle of dark soy sauce, added a few drips, along with a tea spoonful of bean pasta, and a few drops of balsamic vinegar. The flavor was certainly upped, but I would advise to use only the soy sauce, or the balsamic, or even to use an aged balsamic instead, to get more oomph, and less vinegar. It was good, if a touch overwhelming, but that didn’t stop me wolfing it down. Still no curds, because the depanneur (convenience store for non Quebecers) didn’t carry it, and I was sticking close to home.

Note: It’s a little tricky to determine the right amount of oil to fry your flat beard, but err on the less, and use a bigger pan than you think you’ll need, possibly even a wok, to have plenty of surface to toss them around and prevent burning.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Breakthrough

Log:

Breakfast: toasted bagel, coffee

Lunch: burger

Dinner: poutine

Treat: ice cream

Comments:

I’ve reached the point where I’ve got a good handle on the commercial vegetarian burger patties, and their little idiosyncrasies. I still have at least one type that I have yet to touch in the freezer, but so far, most of them are quite good, if none of them reach the satiety of meat on the system. It’s not a nutrition, or bias factor here, but a pure biological reaction that meat triggers in most people (and certainly in predators.)  There are compounds present in cooked meat that trigger an effect close to dopamine, that soothes and satisfies, in a way that it’s ethically superior substitute don’t.

Now, where I’ve made a breakthrough is in the poutine. I had bought a large amount of fries (the thick greasy sticks from a dinner) and decided to experiment with what I had on hand to bring it up a notch.

First, I crumbled half of a vegan sausage, which I fried in some olive oil, before adding some of the leftover sauce to heat up. Given it’s consistency, I added some of the mushroom broth, then sprinkled a bit of salt, black pepper, and a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, until it had heated sufficiently to be usable.

The end result was a sauce that was far tastier than the first time, which the added on flavors really boosted the profile. Now, the anchovies in the sauce kinda breaks the no-flesh challenge, but the idea is there for the improvement of the flavor profile, not just of the sauce itself, but for a variety of meat replacement items. Because vegetarian replacements do exist, but are perhaps trickier to find (and price might be a factor), I’ll also look at various recipes to make my own, as a quick search answers the query in a half-and-half way.

Note:

The vegan sausage is much better as part of a more complex dish than on it’s own. It’s great for me to know so that I’m not stuck with a product that I wasn’t too impressed with on it’s own, and I won’t eat it reluctantly.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Double entendre

Log:

Monday breakfast: toasted bagel, coffee

Lunch: hearty soup

Snack: ice cream

dinner: mushroom burger

Tuesday breakfast: toasted bagel cheese sandwich with pesto, coffee

Lunch: simili meat burger

Snack: ice cream

Dinner: vegan hot dogs

Comments:

The mushroom burger was a new product by President’s Choice, build from a base of mushrooms (white button and Cremini), with some Swiss cheese added in. As such, it is not vegan, but comfortably vegetarian. The cooking method is standard at this point, and to help it reach the final temperature while preventing burning, I finish it by adding a small amount of water to the hot pan and cover it with a lid for about a minute, concentrating the heat, and letting the steam heat it through.

The flavor profile is quite nice, tho the cheese barely makes it through; you would not be remiss to add cheese on top if you wanted an actual cheeseburger. In appearance, the base patty is a sort of pale beige/grey, very close to button mushroom in color. Once properly pan cooked, it takes on some shades of brown that brings it closer to what a meat patty would look like, if you make them out of pork instead of beef. They’re a pleasant experience, but a little mild flavored to my taste; mushrooms can bring a very meaty flavored, if used properly, and in sufficient quantity, and this was not it.

The vegan hot dogs are from Gusta, and was a wheat based )gluten) product. The flavor I picked was Montrealaise smoked spice. Because they’re not weiner type sausages, I picked those to make something closer to a Eurodog, in a nice brioche bun. While they are precooked, I decided to pan fry them, as I would a good sausage.

You will never fool anyone that these are meat sausage. The first clue if you will, is that they’re push meat-like in texture, without the chewiness of a weiner, and without the coarseness of a standard sausage. Second, possibly in a bit to lower the packaging, they do not have casings, they are pushed into a plastic tube, twisted and tied like sausages, but you have to take the casing off before eating (and in the case of pan frying, cooking) them. The end result is that it’s missing that envelope that gives sausages that distinctive finish and tooth feel. They feel dry, which is something of a common tread for a lot of vegan/vegetarian products. I’d have to try boiling to see if it turns out better, but these are not a top winner, in my opinion.

Note:

One of my recurring comment is to look at the price point for these products. The mushroom patties cost $8.99 for four, or about $2.25 each. As a price comparison, we’re looking at $1.58/100 gr, versus beef at $1.33/100 gr. That’s for frozen products, preshaped patties; fresh ground beef will run from as low as $0.66/100 gr for half lean, and $0.99 for lean. You pay extra for the convenience.

 For the sausages, Gusta is a 4-pack for $6.37; it’s a touch more difficult to do a side-by-side, because no commercial package of meat comes in a 4-pack, but a weight comparison gives us $1.82/100 gr, versus $1.40/100 gr for President’s choice fresh pork sausage, $1.33/100 gr for La Fernandiere apple cheddar fresh pork sausages, or $0.90/100 gr for President’s Choice Smokies. A similar vegan/vegetarian product, Yves spicy Italian vegetarian sausages come out at $1.50/100 gr.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Lazy Sunday

Log:

Breakfast: toasted bagel sandwich with pesto, large coffee

Snack: strawberry rhubarb pie

Late lunch: simili meat cheese burger with sauted mushrooms

Late dinner: poutine

Comments:

Returning to the first patties, I decided to try out the pan frying using the Sol Cuisine recommended method, and cooked it on medium, using a thermometer to check internal temperature (recommended 160 f.) I added sliced shiitake from my stock sifting (see below) and the garlic from the same, cooked in the pan, along with the patty.

The result is fine, medium is a much safer and controllable cooking temperature for these, I will stick to that from now on.

I had a burger first, because I was hungry, but I really needed a poutine. The first step was to make a meatless stock, which involved some dried mushrooms (shiitake mostly) and some vegetables. Simmered over several hours, I got the base I needed. Following the rest of the recipe I found online, I did end up with a very nice sauce, in a quantity that would allow me to make seconds at another time.

Unfortunately, the fries were less than satisfying, the heating time I gave them insufficient, and I grated some cheese, because that’s what I had on hand (ahhhhh, when executive dysfunction and the quarantine work hand in hand.) It did the job, and the sauce will be a repeat that can satisfy omnivores, I believe. I’ll improve on it later, with a stronger stock base, I may have been a little sparse of the mushrooms.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Double order

Log:

Friday breakfast: toasted bagel cheese sandwich with pesto, coffee

Snack: coffee

Lunch: naan pizza

Dinner: vegan burger, beer

treat: strawberry rhubarb pie, milk

Saturday breakfast: coffee, rhubarb pie

Dinner: veggie burger, some fries, beer

Treat: rhubarb pie, milk

Comments:

Naan pizza is a spin-off from an old standard, pita pizza. Same concept, just better. Get a big bag, keep it in the freezer, toast a few minutes, table spoon of sauce, some cheese and toppings (in this case, some bits of green olives), broil, and enjoy. It’m my go-to “I’m hungry but can’t be bothered” dish, and it always hits the spot.

Friday’s burger was a different patty from before, one vegan, gluten-free offering from Sol Cuisine. It’s based on beets, with sunflower seeds, the seeds being kept whole. First things first, it’s red, and stays red, so a touch closer to what a meat patty would look like. Following the instructions, I pan fried it at medium, flipping it a few times, for get a decent skin, and to have a good surface for the cheese. One interesting characteristic of those patties is that they ‘bleed” as they cook, similar to beef patties. 

The taste test was fine, they have a good flavor, you don’t get the potentially dreaded beets flavor, just a good one, and the color is pleasing, even if it won’t fool anyone. I wonder if it’s done on purpose, just like it was done for margarine; for the longest time, they couldn’t manufacture it with a yellow-golden flavor, as the butter producers had essentially put a copyright on the color, on the basis that people could “get confused, and think that they were buying butter when they weren’t.”

Two things against it:

They keep the sesame seeds whole, some you have these firmer bit in the patty as you bit. I’m not sure if it’s for texture, or to demonstrate to their customers that yes, there really are sunflower seeds in there. I could do without myself.

The price point of these is so far the highest, sold in a pack of two for $5.99, coming at $3.00 a pop. A bit of a hard sell, or one that the marketing department figured targeted the right clients.

Saturday was a bit of a wash, didn’t really eat much, and ordered in. the vegeburger was okay, it seems that either the product has improved over the years, or my apprehension over them was unfounded. It was a bit of a cheat, because I needed an excuse to get fries, because what I really wanted was a poutine, but while I can easily get a basic meatless poutine, getting the sauce that’s not meat based is a lot harder, so I’ll have to make it myself, tomorrow.

Notes:

I have not started the process to lose weight, but to shake up my diet a bit. I have not weighted myself, but I feel the middle getting a little tighter. Two possible sources: less fats and oils, and keeping the log has me paying attention to what I’m eating, so I fall less for boredom eating.

Also, it seems that I keep writing rhubarb as rhubard. For reasons.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Tonight’s oil greatest hits

Log:

Breakfast: toasted bagel cheese sandwich, coffee

Second coffee

Late lunch: Grand Marnier banana ice cream

Dinner: cheese, leftover soup with tofu

Treat: strawberry rhubarb pie, milk

Comments:

One of the main reason that I avoid having a second coffee in the morning most of the time, is that at the speed that I drink it, it has time to cool down significantly, and by lunchtime, I’m not hungry. So not being hungry for lunch, I’m likely to have a snack later in the afternoon, hence the ice cream, because I’m an adult, damnit.

Not good luck finding Grand Marnier banana ice cream, because I made it myself. I had stumbled upon a jar of this deliciousness in a specialty grocery store (Vieille Europe for the locals) and I just added an eyeballed amount in the custard mix when the machine was spinning. It’s amazing, because it’s flavorful, without being overly sweet, or overwhelming in flavor. A surprisingly good balance, I must proudly say. Having no idea if I can find that jar again, I will most likely have to make my own mix, which also works for me.

The soup is the result of that blue collar tradition, using whatever leftovers are in the fridge, tossing them in a pot, and add water: boom, you’ve got soup. I suspect however that such food as meat pies or lasagna were either not consumed, consumed fast enough to not have leftovers, or wisely skipped over when gathering the spoils of thrift.

In my case, I had plenty of cooked rice, a good amount of the vegetable stew (which I incorrectly called a couscous), some frozen spinach, tofu, and bouillon cubes of Middle Eastern persuasion, harira (meatless of course.) 

A reminder: steel pot heat much faster than cast iron, a mistake that cost me some welting burns when the hot oil splashed back. But after quickly frying up some cubed tofu, adding the rest, as well as a squirt of harissa, and some water, leave to simmer for 20-30 minutes, et voila, dinner is served, with leftovers.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

House of the rising sun god

The log

Breakfast: toasted bagel sandwich with cheese and pesto, coffee

Lunch: warmed up stir-fry leftovers

Dinner: fattoush, garlic potatoes

Treat: wedge of strawberry rhubarb, milk 

Comments:

Nothing to say about breakfast and lunch, they did their job.

Dinner however brought me to the first real craving for juicy meat in day. Feeling too lazy to clean the kitchen and make food, I decided to order in, and to avoid the usual fare; also, I needed vegetables, damnit! So browsing through the various offerings on Skip, most of which were standard fast food and sushi joints, I decided to get something from the Levant, and ordered a fattoush, a Levant staple salad.

The Levant is the region of the western Mediterranean that includes Iraq, Lebanon, Jordania, Syria, Palestine, and Israel; AKA the most politically rock-and-roll area of what we think of the Middle East. If nothing else, it’s the birthplace of the abrahamic religions and their various spin-offs, so it’s a place of very... dynamic discussions, let’s say.

But, as anyone who has had experience with the cultures of the regions, they are also welcoming to guests, and much of a food culture, without as much snobbism and insularity that can be found in other regions (like Italy, or the Balkans.)  With different variations on food restrictions through religious edicts, it’s not exactly putting them out to eat without eating meat, there’s plenty of cheese, fish, and pulses to go around.

Fattoush, sometimes known as a “bread salad” starts with leftover (stale) pita or flat bread, fried in some olive oil as a base, tossed with some mixed greens and various vegetables, like cucumber, bell pepper, radish, and tomato. It’s heartier than tabbouleh, with everything chopped in big chunks.

The one I got from one of our local Lebanese food chain was chunky and crunchy, which was nice, and minimal on dressing, which I found could have been pumped up a bit. A bit of lemon juice would have brightened up the dish, but otherwise, the vegetables flavor got to push through. And as far as I could tell, the whole “mixed greens” consisted entirely of Iceberg lettuce, which is the restaurant staple, is easy to handle, and definitely crunchy, but has the lowest nutritional value of the lettuce family, so, that could be changed a bit.

But besides these criticisms, it was good, and I’m looking forward to making it myself, as a fan of reusing leftovers. And while their shish-taouk is my least favorite of the three chains, they are they ones who offers the biggest meatless assortment, so it’s no wonder it’s a favorite of those more health-conscious eaters.

[wrath-of-the-thunder-chicken]

Replay on a theme.

Day 4 log:

Breakfast: toasted bagel cheese sandwich with pesto, coffee

Lunch: simili meat patty, broccoli and garlic bok choi

Snack: afternoon coffee (maple bacon)

Dinner: couscous fried rice with tofu

Notes:

By now standard breakfast, with a change from grocery store whole wheat bagel, to proper Montreal bagel; alwasy get the good stuff.

Second go at the simili meat patty, this time, I decided to precook it with the vegetables, heating it under tin foil for 15 minutes at 400, then finishing it in the pan. The result is fine, a hell of a lot less smoky, and having it by itself, highlights it’s characteristics with no interference from condiments or other flavor agents. 

One thing is to take into consideration with vegetarian and vegan meat replacement products is that you’re not going to fool people into thinking that it’s meat, and it’s disingenuous, and well as malicious, to think that you could (or should.) The patty does not taste like meat, the texture is finely processed to something more akin to baloney, or that kind of push meat. It’s not a bad thing. It tastes good, but it tastes different. Texture-wise, the surface tension that would be a crust on meat, tightens the patty, and helps give it a bite. It works well for burgers, but I’m not sure how it would perform as a hamburger steak, lacking that chunky crumble of ground meat.

Uncharacteristic second coffee of the day, but it was the kind of day that called for it, and I had just received my order of Bones Coffee, some maple bacon it is. It’s cheating in name only.

Tofu is a product that I used to loathe for a long time (probably because it was misused, overused, and incompetently used) but grew to appreciate, thanks to Chinese cuisine. A recent quick tutorial on Youtube also showed me one crucial step that I didn’t know about, with is to pre-fry the tofu in a pan, before adding it to a dish; it helps give it a bit of flavor, and allows it to keep it’s shape. It’s not applicable to all recipes, but if you want to have it keep it’s shape and have some toothfeel, pan fry.

So I warmed up some couscous, cubes and fried the tofu, added some of the leftover rice to the pan to warm up and fry, and just before stirring in the couscous, I squeezed some harrisa (the original sriracha) into the pan, to oomph the flavor.

And oomph it did. It did not bring on the heat, but it raised the flavor profile, which was nice, and the fried, crumbled tofu added an extra layer of texture, as well as protein content, to the dish, so it’s a win.