Merry Christmas everyone. Sharon (my favorite Jew, after Jesus) has cooked me an amazing meal of braised short ribs (at least I assume it's amazing, it's not quite ready yet), I talked to some of my family already and will talk to more after dinner, and I'm enjoying the Tecate that was left over from Sharon's birthday - festive red beer cans. For those of you following along at home, the short ribs recipe is here!

Update: Wow Yum! that was really really amazing! Short ribs in a red wine sauce is pretty much my favorite meal anyway, but Sharon did a super amazing job. She says she followed the recipe pretty closely but added extra horseradish to the cream - I think that improved it!

( Update 2: Photos )

Yes, dearanxiety is jealous.

And yes, I'm kind of cooking obsessed these days. I think I could become a vegetarian if I only ate Indian food. I love lentils and chick peas!

Tonight I made dinner. My experience last week motivated me to try some very simple French recipes.

 

( Potage Parmentier (Potato and Onion Soup) )
( Sauce Mornay with steamed vegetables )
( Suprêmes de volaille à; brun (Chicken breasts sautéed in butter) )

I like to eat animals. They taste good. I'm comfortable with my position in the food chain.

I've never had to kill animals that I've eaten but growing up on a farm I've raised them, cared for them like pets and then eaten them. I like to think that I would be able to kill an animal I've known for food if required.

I don't like animals suffering more than they need to. I don't understand the outrage at Michael Vick's dogfights from people who eat battery chickens and feedlot cattle. Perhaps it's that I'm not a dog person but I've known and liked a few cows.

Being bad to animals isn't just bad for animals of course. Particularly in the US the use of antibiotics in factory farm breeds new strains of nasty bugs for humans, the focus on bringing mass of meat to market quickly produces meat that fattens us rather than nourishes us. And it just doesn't taste as good. Happy animals are yummy animals.

And then there's the environmental impact of it all. Animals are a far less efficient way of transforming solar energy into energy in our bellies than plants. Factory farming pollutes the earth and the air, overgrazing destroys the land.

But I like to eat animals.

I've got this idea that I might try only eating meat that I know was raised in a fairly humane, fairly sustainable way. It might be an interesting way to try to reduce my impact on the environment and the general badness of the world.

This will probably mean giving up on the amazing carnitas tacos down the block from me. It might mean giving up on sushi - I have no idea how to determine that sushi fish was fished from a sustainable fishery. I won't be able to get a tasty bbq pork wonton soup from Lee's Deli like I did for lunch today.

I'm also not sure that I'll be making any kind of difference at all. I don't want to be like the dieter who orders a Diet Coke with his two Big Macs.

Has anyone tried this? Am I crazy?

Mister Aaron Jacks is the finest chef I know. He is perhaps the finest chef I'll ever know, perhaps the finest living chef, perhaps the finest chef of all time! But perhaps not. He did however create what I believe to be the richest dish I'll ever eat - and I've eaten deep-fried pig tails.

I've had it a couple of times with _aaronj but every time I've gotten fairly drunk in the process and so his attempts to teach me had failed. All I really remembered was that drinking was an important part of cooking brown steak. When dearanxiety and I were vegetarianing Aaron posted the recipe for Sharon. To save you a mouse click I've reposted it here:
( Click for steaky goodness )

This morning Sharon and I went down to City Hall and got our marriage license. This means we have 90 days to get married. They gave us a little booklet that explains the risks of marriage including domestic violence, AIDS and horrible deformities if you marry your cousin.

My brother Colin came along as a witness, except there wasn't anything formal for him to witness. He's been visiting us this weekend since he's leaving the continent soon. It's been a lot of fun to have him around. On Friday we made Aaron's Brown Steak. It's the richest meal known to man and possibly the best. I can't wait for my arteries to clear so I can make it again.

Today I made a sandwich at work out of these things:

• Crack(ed) wheat bread


• Butter


• Tuna Salad


• Sierra Nevada Porter Mustard


• Pepperoncini


• Tomato


• Lettuce

It looked like this:

It was really tasty.

Careful reading of this ingredients list will indicate that in fact I'm eating animals again. Tasty, tasty animals.

Sharon had ribs on Sunday and she felt way better and last night we were out with our friend Anne at NOPA and decided to cut March short. I feel way better today than I have the past week or two. No more constant nibbling on potato salad and potato chips. No more inability to concentrate (though I should really concentrate on work rather than blogging right now).

Tonight I'm going to go to Incanto for Quinto Quarto, their offal tasting menu.

It's been going pretty well so far. I've mostly eaten at home. Mostly fairly dull stuff - rasin bran for breakfast, instant Indian food for dinner for example.

Yesterday I went to Chow with archfear. I normally at Chow I get the pot roasted short ribs. Acually I always get the pot roasted short ribs. It might by my favorite form of meat in the whole city. Instead I got minestrone and a really tasty vegetarian pasta with mushrooms. It was really good - not as good as the short ribs - but really good, and the first example of something that this experiment has given rather than taken away. When this month is up I think I'll go back to the short ribs, but I might occasionally try something else too.

Last night I cooked a stir fry. Normally I fry up some chicken and tofu with a ton of veggies in some sauces. I replaced the chicken with more tofu and it was one of my tastiest stir fries ever. I think it was mostly that I put more teriyaki sauce than normal and I used fresh carrots.

This morning after the gym dearanxiety and I went over to Valencia Whole Foods (confusingly not part of the Whole Foods chain) and picked up a bunch of veggie compliant stuff. (Oh, we went to Trader Joe's on Friday but I was pretty drunk so I don't remember it so well - I apparently bought Quinoa and it seems I put instant potato au gratin in the freezer instead of the cupboard). For breakfast (aka lunch since it was well into the afternoon) I made a vegetarian scramble that I'd first made on my kayak trip last summer. It was onions, garlic and mushrooms fried up with gluten based fake chorizo kind of thing, then scrambled with eggs and served with salsa on a tortilla. It was really good. Mixing highly processed ingredients with fresh vegetables, garlic and olive oil is basically my recipe for tasty quick food.

On the suggestion of extemporaneous and gethen we got some Quron product. Specifically the Gruyère Cutlet. They're breaded fakechickenmeat with gruyère and Sharon baked them. They were pretty good. While they weren't as tasty as a really nice, well-fed, well-treated chicken's breast, they were certainly as tasty as the chicken you'd get from Safeway, and way better than what you'll find in pre-packaged foods. We had them with some perogies and and little quiche things but I think we'd have been better off with a nice salad. It was all really tasty but everything was kind of yellow and starchy. Anyway, a good start. I enjoyed molded mold more than I expected.

This month, for "fun" dearanxiety and I are vegetarians. I'm not sure if this includes fish. It probably doesn't for Sharon since she doesn't eat seafood anyway, but it might for me. There is a strong possibility that I will have a day off my vegenation for a trip to Incanto for their Quinto Quarto offal tasting menu.

So, twenty one and a half hours in... It wasn't too hard till I got to dinner. I started with a normal cereal breakfast, made myself a really tasty sandwich for lunch (nice bread and cheese, toasted with gourmet picked beetroot, then lettuce and tomato) and snacked on a few tortilla chips during the afternoon. I came home for dinner and the only thing I could find that I could make easily was Annie Macaroni and Cheese. Hippie edition. It's organic, its got a tie-dye pattern on the box and the macaronis are in little peace symbol shapes. Godamned hippies.

So I feel fed, but not satisfied. I think tomorrow I'll need to have some protein.