Vegan—who, me?

Over the past year or so I have found myself gradually eating more and more food that might be styled “vegan.”

I wasn’t looking to be vegan—in fact, I wasn’t consciously doing anything to change my eating habits. I was just going with my gut. The first thing my gut told me was, “Ew, I don’t like cooking chicken any more, and I’m feeling kinda squeamish about eating it.” OK, out with the chicken. Then it was the fish. Fish had always seemed fine to me, but it started to seem just a tad nasty. Why? If I knew, I’d tell you. It was just a feeling I had, and I went with it.

Finally, it was the dairy products. I bought some Brie cheese and it grossed me out so bad I had to throw it away. What was happening to me? What would my friends think—that I was losing my marbles? So out went the dairy, too—the milk, the eggs (nasty), the cheese, the mayo, etc., etc.

I had already dumped red meat over thirty years ago, and had also been macrobiotic for seven years in the 60s and early 70s, as well as eating vegetarian food off and on over the years, so it was no chore for me to start eating vegan-type food. I say “vegan-type,” because I’m not really a pure, 100% card-carrying vegan. Although I’m appalled at the way animals are treated in the factory farms, I can’t say that I’m really convinced that eating meat in and of itself is wrong, and I’m not an animal rights activist—a sympathizer perhaps, but not an activist. I’m not any kind of activist, that’s just not me. The vision of the “lion lying down with the lamb” is a very appealing one, but I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon, at least not on this planet.

Anyway, I started getting into eating vegan, investigated some different kinds of soy and rice milk (not a whole lot of vegan “specialty” foods here in Brazil), and joined a couple of vegan groups on Facebook—one Brazilian, one American. The Brazilian group is really fun and the people are friendly and pretty easygoing. See, I’ve heard that vegans can sometimes be kind of militant and uptight, and I’m sensitive to that. So you can imagine my horror when the person who runs the American group posted this less than a week after the terrible attacks at the school in my hometown, Newtown, CT: “In his press conference the other day, our president said that we must oppose ‘a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.’ — At a dinner function that evening he ate a steak dinner, the dead cow on his plate violently bolt-gunned from existence.”

Hello?!? I immediately dropped off the group. OK, says I to myself, I’m going to eat this food, but I absolutely refuse to be a fanatic. Who’s to say that I won’t eat a piece of chicken or fish ever again? I just can’t get on other people’s cases about what they eat. It’s none of my damned business. When you get down to it, self-righteousness is worse than eating meat.

So I’m enjoying eating my beans and grains and veggies and fruit and chocolate (oh yeah, chocolate!), but if someone has me over for dinner, I’m going to eat what’s set in front of me and be grateful. I know that the judgmental vegans can’t help themselves—I used to be that way about macrobiotics when I was much younger, so I can’t get all up in their faces, either. I’m just gonna mind my own business and see if I can pick up a few good recipes along the way.

The Popinator

Have you seen the Popinator? Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=b1cz8IasV4w

A few days ago my friend Mary posted this on Facebook. I was, well, kind of underwhelmed about this exciting new invention. Our conversation about it follows:

Me: ONE piece at a time? No way! I have to stuff a whole handful in! The guys who invented this have waaaay too much time on their hands!

Mary: Yeah, but if you’re typing, you won’t get your fingers all greasy. Save the handful for the movie theater.

Me: I could never catch them…they’d probably end up in my ear or up my nose!

Mary: Hahaha! That’s what I was thinking, too! It’d be nice to have at the desk, but that’s the only place.

Me: I couldn’t possibly type and concentrate if I had to be yelling “pop” every two seconds!

Mary: Sure you could! And, wait a min…earlier today you posted something about cooking lunch and something else…you are indeed a multi-tasker. “Pop!”

Me: True, but I still can’t see myself typing, yelling “pop” and trying to pick popcorn kernels out of my nose and ears all at the same time!

Mary: LOL!LOL! No…b/c you’ll be catching those popping kernels with your teeth!

Me: I think that would take a certain amount of practice…like YEARS!

Mary: It looked pretty effortless in the video.

Me: Amy Duncan Yes, I noticed that! Ha! I’ve tried catching peanuts in my mouth before, and I never caught even one!

Mary: Practice makes perfect!

Me: Yes, and I really think I should set aside all my work and unimportant stuff like that so I can learn how to grab popcorn kernels in the air with my teeth! Sounds like a plan to me!

 

So….will you be ordering your very own Popinator soon?

OK, enough silliness for today… 

Rubber chicken

No, I’m not talking about the ones you buy at the joke shop.

I’m talking about chicken cooked by me. The only way I can get a chicken to come out unrubbery is to roast a whole one in the oven. Any other chicken recipe, be it baked or fried or even boiled, comes out rubbery.

Over the years I’ve asked myself: Is it the chicken? Should I have bought an organic one? Maybe it’s breasts vs. thighs? Or maybe I cooked it too fast? Or too slow?

I’ve tried everything, and my chicken still comes out rubbery.

I finally stopped eating chicken for quite a long time, which was probably a good thing because I’m practically a vegetarian anyway. I stopped eating beef so long ago I can’t remember, and to be perfectly honest, eating animals kind of grosses me out. I can still eat a couple of kinds of fish, or tuna from a can, but I’m even a little squeamish about that.

The thing is, chicken and fish and even red meat still smell good to me when they’re cooking, especially if they’re fried or roasted. It’s a very seductive smell, and I think I’d have to say that I actually like the smell better than the taste, so I guess it’s that smell that makes it hard to quit cold, er, turkey.

Recently I tried cooking some chicken breasts, after my long hiatus of not eating chicken. They came out rubbery. Then it came to me: I cook chicken too long, and the reason I do it is because I basically think it’s gross and it just seems less gross overcooked. I remember being in Paris once and ordering chicken in a restaurant and it was undercooked. When I cut it, pink (read: bloody) juice came oozing out. That was such a turnoff that I knew I would never eat chicken again unless it was really, really WELL-COOKED.

I can’t be 100% sure if that’s why my chicken is rubbery, but it seems logical. I’m also pretty sure that my squeamishness about, as the vegetarians would say, eating “anything that has a face” will eventually lead me to eschew ingesting critters altogether.

And here’s a special offering from Roger Aldridge today!

You eat WHAT?

My stepfather George, after my mother died, developed interesting eating habits. He’d eat only sandwiches, and when we’d ask him what about vegetables George, he’d point to the two green olives next to his sandwich.

My father, when he lived alone, aside from consuming scary amounts of chocolate, lived mostly on bananas and peanut butter. He ate the peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon and drank Hershey’s syrup out of the can with a straw.

My mother-in-law, who lived to be 100 years old, had a steady diet of fried chicken and boxes of chocolates. She also chain smoked.

My Uncle Chuckie at a lot of deviled ham (which we called “potted meant”) sandwiches. When I was a kid I used to eat them, too, not because I liked them, but because I had a crush on Uncle Chuckie.

My daughter Hilary, when she was really, really little, used to carefully separate her Lucky Charms and just eat the marshmallow bits.

I used to eat everything I could get my hands on that was growing in the yard or the woods…it’s amazing I didn’t poison myself!

When my sister and I were kids, our Ma would make us peanut butter sandwiches, sometimes with olives, or onions, or green pepper…forget the Marshmallow Fluff!

Do you have any strange eating habits, or know someone who does? 

Bom apetite!

Even though I’m madly in love with Rio de Janeiro and want to stay here forever, I have to get down on my gringo knees and admit there are still some things I miss about the USA. Or maybe “thing.” OK, I admit it, there are certain kinds of food that I really miss.

Peanut butter used to be one, and I had to beg friends visiting from the USA to bring me a JUMBO jar, but now we have yummy p.b. in the supermarket, so I can freely indulge in my p.b and j. and fried p.b. sandwiches. Yup, you heard it right: FRIED peanut butter sandwiches.

I used to miss grapefruit, too, but lo and behold, we now have scrumptious, big ruby red grapefruits at the super. I’m really surprised, because I don’t know anyone here who likes them. One of my Brazilian friends refers to a grapefruit as “an orange gone wrong.”

More and more international foods are arriving here, but there are still some of my favorites that I haven’t been able to find: Ethiopian food, especially injera bread, GOOD Chinese food and GOOD Mexican food (trust me, they’re both really BAD here). The Chinese food here is beyond awful: picture a plate of yakisoba (which I thought was Japanese…isn’t it?) made with overcooked noodles, undercooked unidentified veggies and a couple of rubbery chunks of chicken. Maybe it’s because the cooks in Chinese restaurants here have names like João and Gustavo instead of Zhang or Wei, I don’t know. I’ve noticed an influx of Chinese into Rio in the past few years, though, so maybe there’s hope. Don’t make me talk about the Mexican food. I’ve had Mexican food in Mexico and it pains me to talk about the sad stuff that passes for enchiladas and chiles rellenos here.

But I have to confess that what I really miss the most are Mallomars, Pop Tarts, York Peppermint Patties, Mounds bars, Triscuits, bagels, pickled herring, cocoa with marshmallows in little envelopes, sour cream, and sweet corn. That’s right, no sweet corn. The corn here is the field variety, usually used for cattle feed in the USA. It’s flavorful, but tough and chewy and nothing like those sweet, juicy summer ears of corn I used to love when I was a kid. Let’s see, what else? Oh yeah, the bread. The bread here just isn’t very good. There are a kazillion varieties of whole-grain sliced bread that all taste alike and have hard little seeds in them that break your teeth. And lots of plain boring white sliced bread. Brazilians like big white rolls that they call “French bread” for breakfast with their coffee, but what I miss is my New York light deli rye with caraway seeds. Oh how it miss it.

But don’t get me wrong — Brazilian food is very good, and often wonderful. I love beans and rice and all the rest of it. There are some wonderful fish dishes here, and of course the fruit is to die for. We have some great gourmet ice cream, too, so most of the time I don’t sit around pining over the things I can’t get any more…I pull up a chair and enjoy myself. Bom apetite, as we say down here!