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Red Beans and Rice – vegan

Written by — Tuesday, November 8, 2011

This meal is simply red beans and rice. There’s no freaking vegetables – outside of an onion – mixed in with the red beans and rice. It is simple, stick to your ribs, spiced perfectly, cooked all damn day food. It is extraordinary, and at the same time it is terribly ordinary. There is nothing simple about it but it is so simply good. We had planned to boil some collards and put them with this, but by the time we sat down and ate a plate of beans and rice, it wasn’t necessary. Nothing was. Time stopped.

I’m not a woman inclined to hyperbole when it comes to food – so believe me – this meal is awesome. But I should probably state, for the record, that beans + rice is probably one of my favorite meals in the world. Lentils and rice, adzuki beans and rice, black beans and rice, pintos and rice … I love them all. There is nothing more simple, more humble and more excellent than beans and rice. They’re also ridiculously cheap.

Red Beans and Rice

Time: Forever and a day. We used dry beans (highly recommended).
Ease: Pretty easy
Cost: Extremely Cheap ($3.50 for six large servings, more if you use organic ingredients)

Recipe (from Michael):

3 cups or so of brown or white rice, cooked
1 lb dry red kidney beans
1/4 cup soybean or canola oil
1 large red onion
4 cloves garlic
2 packets Goya “Jamón” fake ham flavor
1 tbsp paprika
4 or 5 generous shakes Tabasco sauce
2 tsp salt, maybe more
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Put the dry beans in a big pot and cover with hot tap water to 2 inches above the beans. Place on the stove over high heat and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes, then turn heat off, cover pot, and remove from heat. Let beans soak for 1 hour.

An hour later: Bring beans to a boil and add the salt and seasonings. Reduce heat to a simmer and cover the pot loosely with a lid. In a separate pan, sauté the onion in the oil over medium-high heat until it just begins to brown. Add the garlic and cook until the onion is nicely caramelized. Dump the mixture into the pot with the beans. Cook the whole mess until the beans begin to fall apart, about 2 more hours, adding water as necessary to keep things from getting too sticky or burning to the bottom of the pot. At this point you can continue to cook the beans until they fall completely apart on their own, but I just cheated and mashed the beans against the side of the pot with a big spoon, leaving some beans whole. Either way is OK.

Scoop out the beans over rice and enjoy.

Details: This recipe made a huge pile of leftovers which I can’t wait to eat (except I can because I’m still STUFFED from this meal!). We used basmati rice, which we cooked in the rice cooker. The rice cooker is simple and fast, so if you don’t have a rice cooker that could add some complexity. I do recommend putting some kind of vegetable on the side for health reasons, but you could always do like me and eat a salad before or after.

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Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes

Written by — Sunday, November 6, 2011

This is a recipe from the 21-day vegan kick start program, put out by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. I’m not going to push that program or PCRM, because I don’t agree with everything they say and do and quite a few of the recipes we tried from the kick start program were appalling. As in, they were made in appalling ways and tasted appallingly bad. As a side note: if you’re interested in the vegan kick start program, I’d be happy to let you know which recipes we hated — the ones we enjoyed will probably all make their way onto this blog eventually). But this recipe is good and filling.

Buckwheat Pancakes

A hearty, vegan breakfast

Time: 30-45 minutes
Ease:  Easy – Moderate, depending on your cooking experience. Buckwheat flour will likely require a trip to a specialty store.
Cost: $7.50 for four servings, but nearly $5 was the cost of fresh, off-season blueberries

Recipe: The recipe is available here. Instead of using maple syrup as the sweetener in the batter, we used Agave nectar. Michael cooked the pancakes as directed, in a non-stick skillet which was sprayed with vegetable oil. The pancakes were served with maple syrup.

Details: We used organic, free-trade blueberries for this recipe. These were ridiculously expensive but also damn tasty for off-season blueberries. Frozen blueberries (especially wild blueberries!) also work perfectly in this recipe. We added Light Life brand sausage (not included in the cost calculation) to round out the meal — about half a package, which we cooked in a non-stick skillet sprayed with oil, as well.

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On Food and Future Blogging

Written by — Saturday, November 5, 2011

Is good food hard? Time-consuming? Expensive?
Sometimes. Sometimes not.

I invite you all to join me periodically for a digression into what we’re cooking and eating. I’m considering hosting a separate blog for the subject, but for now, it will be here, categorized as “Recipes”.

And in many ways, it belongs here. Michael and me are pretty obsessed about eating. I’m not sure if that’s normal, but I think it’s normal for fat people. We love to eat. And Michael and I love to debate about the ideal human diet. And about how we can lose some damn weight.

But it’s more than that. When Michael and I were dating, a grocery store was an ideal place to waste an hour. We spent a lot of time together in the kitchen. We made bread, cheese, cupcakes, chili, soup… together. Food was important. It’s still how we re-connect after time apart. We feed ourselves, but we also feed our relationship.

Last Sunday, Michael came home after a long trip. He ate junk all week, because it was available and fast. So, we talked about how we wanted to eat at home and we came up with the following guidelines:

1. Eliminate most animal products – with a few concessions.

  • Both eat one serving of fish 1-2 times a week
  • Kara gets steak once a month
  • Dairy can be used as condiment – a sprinkle of parmesan, a nob of butter

2. Eliminate added sugar. Splenda, stevia, agave nectar, maple syrup are acceptable sweeteners. Sugar may be eaten in small quantities (a teaspoon in coffee), if desired.

3. Eliminate wheat bread (regardless of fiber content) , white rice (except basmati), non-whole wheat pasta (still allowed in small amounts in soup, for example, minestrone)

The pasta, rice and bread guidelines were created mostly because I have a tendency to overeat bread, pasta, etc. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, just a general guideline for how I feel best eating.

I will be posting entries about meals we have when we eat something new or different, and I’ll have a scale to grade each meal based on time, labor and cost. I’ll also mention if any ingredients are particularly difficult to find (as in, requiring a trip to a specialty store). I will try to post (or link to) recipes and also share pictures. I’m not a particularly good photographer and I don’t plate things in cute ways, so photos will simply be of my plate before I stuff my face. My aim is to post about food honestly and directly — this will be about the food we eat every day, our core recipes and not some fancy pants schmaltz.

That being said, Michael is a damn fine cook who sometimes spends hours in the kitchen doing something incredible. I’ll post about that stuff, too. The scale will make it easy to sort through which recipes are fast-as-hell workday dinners and which ones are chained-to-the-oven weekend meals.

Screw Flanders! I mean, Bon Appétit!

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Warning Signs

Written by — Sunday, October 16, 2011

I had a rough week. Actually, I’ve had a rough month. Some stuff came to a head this week, and I said to myself, “time to start looking for a counselor.” Mistake number one.

At first, I was irritated because I was only finding counselors who identified as ‘Christian counselors.’ I find this offensive mostly because I don’t give a crap what religious beliefs my counselor ascribes to. Michael pointed out that in middle-American English, Christian roughly translates to “good person with similar values.”  And I figured  my refusal to see someone based on that identification was as goofy as the people who would only see someone with that identification. I was wrong, at least, in this case.

I tried to stay positive. The building the office was in was really neat… built in the 60′s and labyrinthine. Hallways that dead-end and stuff. Great place to shoot a horror movie. So I was excited about the building. The waiting room was pretty spare. I filled out my paperwork, noting with a chuckle that the counselor in question treats for sex/pornography addiction (which, I don’t believe exists). And so, after maybe ten minutes, my appointment began.

The room was not disturbing, at first. It looked out onto a pretty lake, and the sun was out. There were pretty normal books laying around (The Feel Good Handbook, kids books about divorce, that sort of junk). So I talked for 20 minutes and then she said the magic, horrifying words, “I have a treatment I’d like to try with you.” And my bullshit flag activated.

So she gave me a lecture about EMDR. For twenty minutes. She uses bilateral sound and bilateral sensation. And she put the headphones on my ear and I was like, this reminds me of binaural tones. Which Michael used to make me to listen to so I could sleep at night.

Then she said, I’d make you go more in depth about the traumas you’ve undergone. And I looked her in the eye, and said, “Honestly, I was a child for most of this stuff and couldn’t give you any more details than I have.”

As I wrote her a check (since she couldn’t give me a receipt for cash… seriously?) , I noticed she had *three* separate certificates for hypnotism. As in, regressive hypnotism. As in, hypnotize trauma patients and implant shit in their heads.

These things mostly amused me. But the most disturbing thing to me is this: I cried, and she sat and watched me. Didn’t hand me a tissue, didn’t reach out at all. This woman, this cold and awkward woman, is making people relive traumas. You can’t break people down emotionally and not be there to hold them. Hell, Donnie Darko’s counselor held him. I have never known a counselor who didn’t at least move closer when you cry. My last counselor actually would hug people – in sessions, leaving sessions. She told me once it was her job to make sure everyone left feeling loved and accepted. I miss that woman.

There’s a lot more ridiculous counselors than I thought. For my part, I’ve mostly soured on finding someone locally whose not crazy. Guess I’ll just take my ass down to Mel Bond, our local faith healer. For my part — a hypnotist counselor and a faith healer are both ripping off the poor, desperate and stupid. In much the same way.

But, the appointment cost me $12, I got a laugh. And, it reminded me I could be worse off. I’m not perfect, but I’m not a crazy counselor and I’m not her patient. Winning.

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Chicks with… Guitars, duh!

Written by — Thursday, October 13, 2011

In my teens, I played guitar for a pretty substansial period of time. Mostly classical style. I don’t think I was very good, but I could sight-read reasonably well and I think I did okay for how stubby my fingers are. I had friends who were all writing their own music — metal or punk mostly. I don’t think I’ve written a lick in my life, and I never understood why not.

Fast forward many guitar-free years and Michael buys me an electric guitar. At this point, I can’t play a damn thing because it’s been so long. And I have to learn how to use a pick and I have to change the whole way I’d approached the puzzle of the guitar.

I think the hardest thing for me, in terms of being motivated to write, was this idea that I didn’t see too many women with electric guitars doing things I found sonically interesting. Please feel free to enlighten me, I’m sure I’ve missed loads of ladies. I liked the riot-grrl punk stuff, I liked Liz Phair, I liked the folk-y women like Ani DiFranco. But while I had the sense that those women were making compelling music, it wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to play.

So, when I heard St. Vincent (Annie Clark) a couple months ago on Sirius, I was pumped. A woman who can sing and play guitar was making music I found sonically and thematically interesting.

So I dragged Michael to see her locally, mostly to evaluate her talents in a live setting. I was not expecting very much. And, she can actually sing and play guitar quite well.

Combine that experience with my relatively recent discoveries of My Bloody Valentine and Failure (I know, I’m so far behind the the times that it’s ridiculous), and I’m eyeing my electric guitar anew. Most likely, nothing will come of it. But it’s nice to see a puzzle differently.

Oh, and I can recommend St. Vincent albums freely, as there’s no RIAA related junk associated. I’m very much enjoying both Strange Mercy and Actor.

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Men Today

Written by — Friday, October 7, 2011

There’s been this surge lately to talk about the current generation of young men in this country, and how they lack purpose. For all the insights social scientists and everyone are stirring into the pot, I think they mis-characterize men.

I spend most of my day browsing the internet, which, as I made to understand, is populated entirely by men. I think you have to be a pretty cynical person to not see the values that a young man today has.

  1. He values freedom, most especially freedom of thought.  Maybe I hang out with intelletuals, but most men I know are interested in pushing the boundaries of their own thought, and the social thoughts of the day. He values transparency and access to information as a means of preserving his freedom of thought, and as the only way to really seek the truth in a given situation, bringing us to…
  2. He values the search for truth. I have to deliberate on this point a bit. I think that the idea that women are emotional and men are logical is a misunderstanding of men’s search for truth. Men seek what is right. Women are capable of seeing how a situation looks from a ridiculous quantity of perspectives. BOTH skills are important in the ultimate search for truth and righteousness. But I think most women misconstrue their own role in that search.
  3. He values humor. When a man says he wants a laid-back partner, he mostly means one that will laugh at his farts with him. I apologize if you’re a woman or an uptight man and you don’t think farts are  funny. They are, though. Especially as the crux to elaborate anecdotes where someone ends up vomiting from the smell.
  4. He values self-sufficiency. Most men I know want to be considered Renaissance Men. They’re intelligent – they can play an instrument and write a sonnet. But they can also fix their car or their computer, brew beer, build some really cool shit, shave with a straight razor, what have you. It means a lot to a man to be on his own.

I see, at the heart of this, a discussion about how men can form a culture, a direction. Most men I know have expressed confusion about how they can form a culture that tiptoes around every other culture. They’ve expressed outrage about the common thought that simply because they are men, the culture they form would be oppressive (for some reason…). They’ve responded by sinking slowly into the roles that have been approved for them.

Men today can’t be proud of their past and their history without a healthy helping of guilt, yet many men have supported groups of all kinds in their respective fights for civil rights. Many men still do.

So, if we’re disappointed in the current generation of young men, who should we blame? Their values are values that men have shared for ages. The only reason a person would act differently if their values were the same is because of social pressures.

And when will someone write a paper about how women suck today? Probably no one, because there’s more women than men in college and graduate and post-graduate environment these days. I have a rant brewing, that I will likely never share, about what I see as the deficiences in my female peers today. It is shocking to me how many women want what they want,  equal or not. And just don’t get it.

I don’t think men are a secondary class. But I think we may be, as a society, pushing them there. And blaming them for it the whole time.

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Vegetarians Are Still Judgmental Assholes

Written by — Thursday, September 29, 2011

So… I came across this “comic” posted on facebook by an acquaintance.

Where Do You Get Your Protein?

 I always assumed vegetarians got their protein at the same store where they got their self-congratulatory, moralistic, righteousness.

I love you assholes. But you’re still just making emotional appeals for a lifestyle that has never actually happened naturally at any point in human history.

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In which, Kara Talks about her Crazy…

Written by — Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Rapidly changing your habits can feel like a godsend at first. It makes you feel powerful and in-control and that’s all wonderful. When you change quickly, the people around you notice. You can ride that high for months.

I’m not strictly speaking about my diet, although that’s certainly an aspect of me that has changed in a dramatic way in what amounts to being overnight. I put on 70 pounds over the course of five years, and I’m more than halfway down in the course of half a year. And dieting is relevant to what’s going on mentally, of course. At some point, regardless of the relentless compliments or positive feedback, you have to do battle with the fat-titude (fat-causing-attitude) demons again.

Or maybe, the self-loathing demons? That’s where my fat-titude begins, almost certainly.

I hope that certain times of the year will not always be colored by my hospital stays. I don’t think they will be. I can wake up on January 16 now and know my dad died that day without reliving the moments and giving myself panic attacks. I guess my hospitalizations were traumatic experiences, but probably only because I couldn’t believe how far I had let myself fall.

Then, I was too busy mourning how much I sucked to pick myself up and find something worthwhile to work towards.

I’m not going to talk about, specifically, what’s on my mind. I don’t need to talk about the details that knocked the breath out of my chest today, at work. I’m not sure it’s healthy to fixate on those details. It’s okay for me to write them down as they occur to me and let them pass into the mists of my mind, again.

But what I want to say is this – I’m battling those demons on a different field now. If it’s not level, it’s tilted in my direction. When my fat-titude jumps up now, I’m already forty pounds lighter. I eat less even when I pig out. I do yoga almost every morning. It’s a lot harder to gain weight, now.

I want to tell you that it’s easier to love myself, but sometimes, it’s not. I still feel guilty and stupid for what I’ve done in the past; for who I’ve been. I think I will feel that way for some time. But then I think of what I’ve done — in a year’s time, in six month’s time, in 3 month’s time. I think things have mostly gotten consistently more awesome – internally and externally. I’ve worked for that. I work for it every day.

I want to explain to myself why I get up in the morning. I feel like I just do it. Sometimes the cat wakes me, sometimes the sun wakes me, sometimes my alarm wakes me. But on 99% of mornings, I wake up straight away and get down to business.

I don’t know why, yet. Maybe that’s why I get up every morning. Searching for the answer feels better than giving up.

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Lessons

Written by — Sunday, September 11, 2011

When the twin towers went down, I was in class. I was sixteen years old. My AP world history teacher peeked his head in the door and told the teacher of that class (English, maybe?) to turn the tv on. We watched the second tower go down live.

By the time we heard about the Pentagon, people were freaking out. I grew up outside of Washington, DC – students had parents at the pentagon, staff had family members. They released us right after lunch. My younger sister and I walked home together. There was this sense of impending doom. We were so close to DC that we thought for sure something else would happen, something could put us at risk. Even in my fear, I was most terrified about what our response would be as a country. Would we retaliate? Would this begin some nuclear holocaust?

When we got home – my dad and my brother were home from work. The tv was off. I think the radio or a record was on – but no news. My dad wanted to talk. I don’t think anyone else really did, so it ended as more of a lecture. It was not an atypical lecture from my father. Every horrible thing that happened ever was responded to in much the same way – “we need to love each other more deeply.”

I hated that advice, as a kid. I hated it because it was a solution, but it didn’t explain anything. And maybe you can’t explain anything. Not really.
Nowadays, I take his solution in hand with the nonsensical nature of the universe and say – don’t panic. and love people. It’s actually pretty solid advice, on the whole.

My father, after the attacks, didn’t just mean love Americans more deeply or love Christians more deeply. He meant – love everyone, and more deeply. Try to forgive people who, in their conception of the world, feel they have no options.

When the US went to war, I got involved with anti-war protests at school. My mom, whose father had come home from Vietnam only to be harassed by his fellow Americans, advised me to love and understand the soldiers who went, while disagreeing with the actions taken by government. I have friends who went to war. I have friends who still have anti-war protests, along with protests to take the best damn care of soldiers we can when they come home injured (physically and mentally).

We live in a complex world. To oversimplify any person or any idea is too easy. I still don’t know why those assholes flew planes into buildings and a field. I mean – I understand part of the logic. But it’s that leap from logic to this impenetrable action… I don’t understand. I don’t think I ever will.

And maybe I don’t have to understand it, to know what to do. Smarter people than me have seen more horrible things, and done more horrible things. We’re all thrown into this world, naked, horrified and screaming. To be honest, the people I’ve always liked the least are those who think they’ve figured it all out. Terrorists, televangelists. They’re all assholes. They create a world in their head that makes sense by ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

This world doesn’t make sense. But some things do. My father makes more sense to me now than he did at sixteen. People are people – they’re flawed. Sometimes they’re downright insane. But they’re still human. They’re still more like me than I’m comfortable seeing some days. I love myself, so I try to love people, too. We’re all in the same damn boat.

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Four?

Written by — Thursday, September 1, 2011

I’m not a sappy person. In spite of whatever this blog says or shows, 95% of the time, I am a person focused largely on what is rational, reasonable, logical, sensible. In the past, this was often to the detriment of my own emotional health.

But that’s not what I came to say.

About four years ago, Michael and I made a move that was in many ways practical but largely totally illogical.

We woke up at 8:30 or so, in our hotel bed. We made our way to a county office. We sat in two chairs and spoke to a nice woman who typed all our information onto a form on a computer screen. While we waited for the form to print, we gazed out the window, towards the Flat Irons. It was a beautiful day, blue skies spotted with fluffy clouds, the Rocky Mountains far in the distance. Form in hand, we found a small, deserted “park.” I may have forced a gate open a little for us to squeeze through. We admired the rocky earth, the huge wildflowers, the cacti and the lazy bees. We, with the exception of a stupid joke on my behalf, wordlessly exchanged simple, identical rings and kissed. Back at the hotel, we signed the form, parties to our own marriage.  It went back to the county office and within half an hour, we were officially married.

And then we moved through the rest of the day much the same as we would any other day we spent together.

There have been times, in the intervening days and weeks and months, that I have regretted our decision. I imagine he has felt the same way.

Ask people why they stay together, and I’m not sure what normal people would say. Michael is my dearest friend, but he would be dear to me even if we weren’t married. He fits me better than anyone I know, but he did as a friend, too. Michael and I grew up together, in some important ways, but we’re also our own people now more than ever. We can stand separately; we choose to be together. 

Why did we choose? Why do we continue to choose? I can give you practical reasons about households and vehicles and health/life insurance. That’s fine, that’s satisfactory. That explains the morning we obtained our marriage certificate – perfunctory.

But two days before the day we married, we were up and on the road by 4:30 am. We drove into Estes Park at 5:30. It was so dark, that looking down at Estes Park and the enormous lake reflecting all the stars there, I thought I was in space. It took me a minute to remember to breathe. Michael was beside me, in the driver’s seat. Neither of us said anything.

By the time we got to Rocky Mountain National Park, the sun was rising. We watched the sunrise on the mountain – it turned the stones pink. We chased some elk for a picture at the top. We did some hiking.

Nothing was special, but everything felt special. We were two people, living and breathing and feeling pretty cold at 12,000 feet above sea level. I think the only special thing was this – I’ve met, in my days, a good number of people. Thousands, is probably a fair guess. I still haven’t met anyone I’d rather climb a mountain with than Michael. I’m happy to invite other people along on our voyage. And I can climb on my own, too. But damn, I’d rather have him there.

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