One week…seven recipes…boo yeah!  Hopefully the first week of unResolution month has been “full filling” for you and that I am making you as hungry as I am making me.  Speaking of me, today’s recipe is near and dear to my heart … insofar as it tried to clog it up with lots of grease and butter and yummy mayonnaise … because the following meal is what I ate after I the last final of my last semester of college.  It was:

Jumbo Hamburgers with Mayonnaise, Ketchup, Gravy, French Fries, and Grilled Buns with Butter and Beer on the Side

I went to a place called J.B. Stout’s after that final not really looking to eat poorly.  Rather, I was in search of beer.  However, J.B. Stout’s was semi-famous because they sold “Stout burgers” which were these unimaginably huge hamburgers which I had never ordered.  Even though I was not veg at the time, I was not a huge eater of red meat.

And while I had considered trying to consume the awesomeness of the Stout burger, I never could convince myself to order one.  However, on that day so many years ago, I was consumed with a giddy feeling  of possibility and rebellion!  I was done with school and what better way to celebrate than eating a metric ton of grease?!

The best part about all of this, though, is that it just started out as a thick hamburger with heavily buttered buns to which I added a “celebration sized” glob of ketchup.  But I was also drinking beer and I had a buddy there…

So next came the mayonnaise which was put on the bun and the fries.  But that wasn’t good enough.  Then I needed gravy to dip the fries into (thanks Swiss Chalet!) and then I needed more beer to keep my blood thin enough to avoid a severe coronary.  Sometimes I think I ordered onion rings, too, but I can’t be sure.

It was a great day, a memorable meal, and I’m sure it will become a classic in your household (if by classi,c I mean a meal you’ll eat it once and ALWAYS wonder why…)

Oh, and to make things better for my vegan eaters, this recipe is written as all vegan.  The key will be finding a good, greasy vegan gravy to go on top.  Bon appetite!

Jumbo Hamburgers aka Gravy Burgers

So obviously the original burgers weren’t vegan, but you should still give a burger made from Match Foods a try!

Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then something comes along and tells me that vegetarians and vegans still have a long way to go.

Friday night was date night for me and my wife and she REALLY wanted to see Twilight. We compromised for our date night. First, we went to go to Spin (which I like) and then we went to see Twilight (which she liked.)

While I could talk about Twilight for a while, BlogWellDone.com is not a movie review site. Thus, I shall spare you my feelings about the movie as a piece of cinema. However, there was one part I found particularly disheartening. Not irritating and it did not make me mad, just disappointed.

Twilight and Vegetarianism

The main character of the movie, Bella (the lovely damsel), is vegetarian (yay!!) and the vampires who drink only animal blood are called vegetarian (which is, a little perverse since to qualify for vegetarian status they have to eat animals as if humans aren’t animals…) I could let that slide, though. Who am I to lecture a vampire about terminology? They have supernatural strength. And fangs. And a unique sense of style that just doesn’t look good on me.

Anyhow, the part of the movie which actually got my to talk back to the screen (a habit I normally reserve for watching Jayhawk football and basketball games) was when Edward (our handsome hero) told Bella that being a vampire vegetarian was like eating tofu. “Sure”, he said. “You can life on tofu your entire life, but you won’t be satisfied.”

Grrrrrrr!

Twilight Could Have Promoted a Healthy (Vegetarian) Diet

A million things popped into my head about the relative amounts of saturated fat in meat vs. tofu, the differing amounts of unnatural hormones in tofu and meat, etc. It was also obvious that Edward had not read my blog, which was, of course, really disheartening.

Still, it really did bother me that a movie that has grossed as much as Twilight and has attracted as many young teenage girls as it has is going around insulting a vegetarian diet. In an age of teenage obesity and eating disorders, where girls are maturing much faster due to hormones in their food, why take a shot at a vegetarian staple? Why not encourage healthy eating habits?

So, there’s my soapbox. Thanks! Next up, a recipe. I promise!

Image courtesy of StephanieMeyer.com.

PS…to be fair, I have NOT read the book.  The book may be more veg*n friendly.

Don’t worry, Part 2 of How to Make Tofu That Doesn’t Suck is coming, but I didn’t realize I had never posted my Omnivore’s 100:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

That’s 65 out of 100.  And frankly, were I not vegan I’d probably finish out the rest.  If I could find dog somewhere.   (And for the record, I have four at home, so it’s not that I am a dog lover.)  Now snakes, like Indiana Jones, I don’t much care for them.

So I’m vegan.  I don’t really talk about it too much on Blog Well Done because I am afraid I might scare off some of my hypothetical readers.

I wasn’t always vegan.  In fact, when I was still doing blogspot.wordpress.com, I was a carnivore, though given that my wife was vegetarian, I was at least veg-friendly.

In this post, I could recount my path towards going vegan or I can drone on endlessly about my vegan manifesto, but suffice it to say, I am not one of those vegans.  If you eat meat, more power to you.  I choose not to and I have good reasons for it which I will gladly share.  If you ask.

That being said, I find something awe-inspiringly frustrating about being vegan and life I guess.  When I ate meat, vegetarians called me a murderer (seriously.)  When I became a lazy vegetarian (for me this meant the kind that eats fish), true vegetarians and vegans told me it wasn’t enough.  When I became a true vegetarian, vegans told me I was stupid to eat dairy.  When I became vegan, the raw foodists told me I was stupid because I cooked things that were killing me from the inside. 

(Of course, many of them eat sushi so I could have chosen to turn my nose up at them.  I instead asked them how they justified use of a dehydrator.  I highly suggest asking this if you ever want to see a gaggle of raw foodists go on the defensive.  I swear it was an honest question.)

Oh, and now, of course, as a vegan, meat eaters make me a target for their scorn as well.  I have relatives apologizing that I have to eat disgusting things like portobello mushrooms and veggie burgers.  I have friends who worry about going out to restaurants with me.

I do not believe I realized how political this decision was when I made it.  I fully expected some backlash, especially from others who had had military veg*ns call them murderers.  What I did not expect was the food-circle-of-finger-pointing.  I naively believed that non-meat eaters were basically a unified front.  Silly me.  In fact, at one point, it was a bunch of veg*n animal rights activists that nearly drove me to eat meat again, just because I wanted to disassociate myself from their behaviors.

I guess what I am doing here, besides ranting, is reaffirming my personal creedo.  What you eat is nobody’s business but your own since you doubtlessly are going to upset someone.  (This doesn’t apply to cannabals.  I would kindly ask them to consider changing their diet.)  If you eat veal wrapped foie gras, great!  If you eat nothing but what falls from the trees, great!  If you are a vegan, great!

Ultimately, I have made my dietary choice and I believe it was the right one.  If you disagree, I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong.  I’m going to feed you vegan food.  And you’re going to love it.  Then we’ll talk about the benefits of a vegan diet.

Muwahahahahaha.

Chinese cooking has long been an topic at which I have turned up my nose. For many years, I was awash in a sea of Panda Expresses, crab rangoon filled with Philadelphia cream cheese, and MSG-laden Chinese buffets.

A lot of that had to do with college. During those four years, I looked at Chinese cooking as a cheap alternative to dorm food. I could get a complete meal for $5 or I could drive to the buffet and stuff myself silly for $6.

Frankly, when that is all the Chinese cooking one eats, well, one can get a distorted view of the treasures Chinese cooking has to offer.

My re-engagment into Chinese cooking is actually due in a large part to a restaurant here in Kansas City called Andy’s Wok. Andy’s Wok has no buffet and is anything but cheap. Instead, it reminded me that there is a skill and an artistry to good Chinese cooking and it made me want to learn it on my own. But, if Andy’s Wok got me started, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop fanned the flames. Her travel memoir of time spent in Sichuan province learning the food, leaning Chinese cooking at one of their gourmet academies, and learning the culinary history of the nation really got me excited to tackle Sichuan and Chinese cooking.

Since reading her book, I have invested in a number of new items:

• Fuchsia’s Chinese Cooking book on Hunan-style cuisine
• Sichuan Peppercorns
• Sichuan chili bean paste (sadly it’s not as hot as I had hoped)
• And a hotpot in a box kit in anticipation of throwing a hot pot party

A lot of my culinary explorations in Blog Well Done will focus on Chinese cooking over the next several months. There is a whole country I need to cook.

To get things rolling, this is a recipe for a sauce I used tonight. Use it for your next stir fry.

• 4 tablespoons broth
• 4 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine
• 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoon of garlic*
• 1 teaspoon of ginger*
• 1 tablespoon of corn starch
• 1 tablespoon of Sichuan chili bean paste

1. Mix ingredients well in a bowl.
2. Stir fry meats and vegetables.
3. Add noodles (if desired)
4. Stir the sauce to make sure none of the sugar, garlic or ginger has settled to the bottom
5. Add the sauce to the wok. Stir until the sauce thickens.

* Yes, I know I should use fresh, but my son was hungry and I had to think fast.

Enjoy!

Tonight we went to my favorite sushi place…Shogun in Overland Park, KS.

(Yes, Kansas seems an odd place for the mecca of sushi, but I’ve eaten sushi in every town I visit.  Shogun is best, though Maki in Irvine, CA isn’t too shabby.)

So there’s only one problem…I’m vegan. 

I do have an ace up my sleeve.  Given that when I was eating fish, I routinely droped $80-$100 a meal there, I’ve celebrated my last 7 birth days there and my son’s birthdays (including the night he was born) there, the chef was nice enough to make me a roll with the following ingredients:

• Tofu
• Tempura Asparagus
• Carrot
• Japanese Pickles

I highly recommend everyone trying it.

This brings up a question, though.  Would you, my loyal readers, be interested in a short set of posts on making sushi at home?  It’s easier than it sounds, I promise…

I don’t get it.  I really don’t understand.

At a time when I should be loading my body with fresh fruits and vegetables and all the vitamins and minerals that entails, all I want to do is eat two things: hot and sour soup and friend wontons.  This has been the meal of choice for me no matter how often I am sick or what ails me.  (Yes, I love fried food when I have the stomach flu…)

There’s only one problem… beef (well…when you’re vegan anyway.)

So here’s my solution:

In place of hot and sour soup, I get a big bowl of vegan miso soup and rice noodles.  I’ve tried vegan hot and sour soup and quite frankly, it sucks.

Then for all that yummy vegan fried food goodness:

Vegan Egg Rolls

• 1 head of cabbage (the smaller the better unless you are feeding a vegan army.)
• 2 large carrots, peeled
• 1 tablespoon of black pepper
• 1 tablespoon of mustard powder
• 1 teaspoon of ginger powder
• 1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder
• 1 healthy pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup of low sodium soy sauce (if the cabbage if sufficiently large, more would not hurt.)
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons of water
• 1 sheet of store bought egg roll wrappers
• Oil for frying

1. Remove dry outer leaves of the cabbage.  Rinse what is left.
2. Because we’re sick, we’re doing this the easy way.  Use the veggie shredder of your food processor to turn the cabbage and carrots in to small shreds.
3. At this point, depending on crunchy you like your vegetables, you can put the shreds into a skillet with the salt, soy and two tablespoons of olive oil.  Saute for about 3-5 minutes until the cabbage has started to wilt and the carrots soften.  This is optional.
4. Add the spices (and the soy if you have not done so) with the veggie mixture.
5. Mix egg and water in a small bowl to form an egg wash for holding the wrapper together.
6. Place two tablespoons of veggies to an egg roll wrapper.  Straighten the mixture into a line and roll the egg roll like a burrito.
7. Fry in hot oil (I like non virgin olive oil) until golden brown.

If you are really stuffy…serve with a sauce made of 1 part low sodium soy to 1.5 parts of sriracha hot sauce (which isn’t technically vegan) or better yet sambal olek.  Bring some kleenex.

So that’s what I eat when I am sick, what’s your go-to comfort food when you are sick?

Sue tagged me.  And since hers is my favoritist blog ever, I decided I should respond in kind.  No matter how long it took me.

Rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.

2. Share 5 facts about yourself

3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).

4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

So without further ado, 5 facts about me:

1. I was an entrant into the past two Next Food Network Stars. At one point, my video had an 89% approval rating and that was before I voted for myself.

2.  I am a vegetarian, but I still cook meat.  A chef must know how to cook all things, so I still practice meat cookery.  To taste, I put a bite in my mouth and then spit it out.  My wife is used to it.  The people at the Kansas City Culinary Institute are still getting used to it. 

3.  The greatest thing I ever cooked was a ginger filet.  It was a nice organic grain fed filet with grated ginger and a powdered ginger, salt and pepper served with a red wine gravy.  Unfortunately, by then I was a vegetarian and had to spit out my taste bite.

4.  I am writing a game.  This should establish me geekcred.

5.  My favorite color is purple.  This is a huge problem because I graduated from the University of Kansas and our school’s second most hated rival (Kansas State) is purple and white.  Fortunately, I bleed crimson and blue, but I do buy purple pens.

Okay, I am tagging:

Logtar
Bea
Game Dame
Gooby’s Mom
http://seansquawks.com/

This idea has really started to resonate with me.  After a Christmas party that carried a nearly $20/head charge, the Super Bowl, and my birthday coming up, entertaining has just been on my mind.  I try to stay away from entertaining as a topic here because there are many excellent blogs that cover it.  However, I did want to make this post.

So from personal experience I can say that parties are expensive.  Buying food, wine, beer, and cocktails can cost hundreds of dollars before party favors or plastic china (you know, the good stuff).  These tips will help control the costs and make the party fun.

1. Do Not Be Afraid to Have a Liquor Potluck 

Unless the cook has a reputation as a wine collector or beer expert, she should not be afraid to ask others to bring the booze.  This eases the financial burden on the cook and scratches off at least one store from her errand list.  More importantly, it lets others take a role in the party.  Guests that enjoy wine or have a favorite beer or mix a great cocktail are more than happy to share their passion.  Also, having others share their liquor will broaden everyone’s alcohol horizons.

2.  Make the Expensive Items

While it okay to buy from the store, sometimes this is not always the best strategy.  If a home cook can prepare a dish more cheaply than it can be purchased (barbecued items are a good example) the cook should strongly consider making it rather than buying it.

3.  Leave Healthy at the Store

A party is a time to eat junk food, fried foods, and desserts; all of those things that most people eschew during the normal work week.  This means that the party host does not need to worry about buying the best organic produce, reduced fat cheeses, or leaner cuts of meat.  All of these things cost money though their absence will scarcely be missed by partygoers.

4.  Buy in Bulk

In larger cities, most cooks know someone who has a wholesale club membership or have one themselves.  Because the cook is preparing food for a large number of people, this is the ideal to use those memberships.  If such a store is not available, the cook should still try to buy things is as large of cans as possible to lower the per unit cost.  Lastly, depending on the store, the cook may be able to negotiate a lower price on a larger order.

5.  It is Okay to Limit the Wow

While it is generally good to have one or two signature dishes at a party, not everything needs to be made with filet, lobster, and shrimp.  Sometimes the best dishes are the cheapest.

My son Ethan helped me make eggs this morning and this is his recipe:

• 6 eggs
• A good 2 second pour of salt
• 2 teaspoons of pepper
• 3 teaspoons garlic powder

1. Heat a skillet over medium heat.  When the skillet is hot, coat the skillet with a small layer of non-stick cooking spray.
2. Add 6 eggs to a bowl and stir to break the yokes
3. Dump in salt to help Daddy cook
4. Stand over sink and desperately flick salt from eggs into sink
5. Add garlic powder and pepper.  Stir vigorously.
6. Pour into skillet and cook until the bottom layer is mostly cooked and scramble
7. Continue cooking until the eggs are no longer runny
8. Serve in a bowl, not a plate with lots of orange juice

Mmmm… Salty…