Vegan Began
It’s not surprising that in a country that is known as much for its love of hamburgers as it is its love of cars, guns, and football, that those who adhere to a diet free of meat and a life devoid of any animal-sourced product might feel a bit on guard about commentary on their lifestyle.
Vegans take a lot of shit. And that sucks. If you see a vegan, please don’t be a jerk.
One of the things I hear a lot locally is that it’s the vegans who are the folks who will incessantly go on and on about veganism. But should you happen to encounter one or two of these people out on your journey, please realize how exhausting it has to be, continually explaining and defending your choices.
I have a lot of respect for vegans. I do. It’s a badass commitment to make, and I’m thrilled that we’ve got more places locally opening up shop to serve this community. Personally I’m not quite ready to go vegan, but sometimes it’s tempting when I’m launching into one of my diets.
The reason I bring this up is because last week there was a little scuffle on the subject.
AskTP – After the Fall
Well, it’s Monday. Big day today. Not gonna talk about it. Instead, I’m going to play this song, over and over again. It goes well with today’s post. Because believe it or not, after today, after months and months of neglect, the queue of unanswered reader questions has been emptied.
Huzzah! Yes, I still have to tackle that sticky issue I stepped in about vegans. But once I get through today, I’ll be prepared.
For those who are just tuning in for the very first time, the blog has a semi-regular feature called Ask the Profussor, in which I make sure any question made to the comments section receives an answer. Provided of course the original poster used proper punctuation.
Each question is preceded with the mystery link of the day. That means all of the links will go to the same place. Mostly, it’s there to help break up these posts visually, just in case anyone wants to skip forward to the next question. But I also try to make the link of the day something relevant and interesting.
Claro? Good. Now, without any further ado, onto the questions.
Wurst Week Ever
This week it feels mighty good to be Jewish. Sure, there may be a rising tide of anti-semitism, but right now it feels like more people are focused on preparing for Christmas. And that’s a good thing.
For what it’s worth, I too think it’s ridiculous when municipalities put up a Christmas tree and decide to call it a “Holiday Tree”. They aren’t fooling anyone. Sure, there’s a Jewish holiday of the trees–it’s called Tu B’shevat–except it’s not until February. Maybe some Druids or Wiccans might be able to make a claim to a December holiday tree, but I just don’t know.
Mostly, I’m glad not to be caught up in the holiday madness. Chanukah isn’t about gifts, so I can avoid the crush of humanity at its apex of consumerism. Sure, kids might get a present every night, but it’s generally something small. A mere token nod to the tenor of the season.
But it was a good week for other reasons too. Have I mentioned that my diet has been almost entirely obliterated? Usually, I go through the week with no liverwurst. But this week was all about liverwurst.
I even have pictures.
AskTP – The Summer of Sixteen
Today I’m bringing you part two of my catch up posts for Ask the Profussor. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels like the tone of some of the comments I’ve been getting has taken a darker turn. Certainly, I’ve been feeling a little darker lately, so maybe that’s just part of the package.
This blog was never meant to be a monologue, it’s a dialogue. It’s an ongoing conversation. That is just one reason why I made the commitment early on to answer every question that was asked in the comments section. It may be a long, drawn out, and poorly managed conversation. However, it seems to be working out reasonably well.
So I welcome disagreement, and I welcome contrary opinions. I’m going to ask the following though. Let’s try to get past name calling and outrage, and attempt to hear each other out. Sometimes disagreements can be all about simple misunderstandings.
I think it may be prudent to have a follow up post entirely dedicated to Trusted Commenter’s response on what was admittedly an overreach on my part. But we’ll get to that later. For right now, let’s answer the pile of questions from the summer of 2016, that are much easier to answer.
Things Break
There were so many nice stories I wanted to share today.
One was about the nature of taverns. That was in advance of the last Third Thursday Tavern Time of the year, which is tomorrow. In 2017, Tavern Time will be changing up a bit.
Of course, I was also tempted to follow up yesterday’s Ask the Profussor with another round of the same, to possibly make a theme week of the effort and potentially finish the backlog by Friday.
Another side of me wanted to address the comment I received yesterday about human beings being born vegan, which I think was made without irony. It’s a topic that might be worthy of further discussion.
But then something interesting happened on Twitter. And then I saw something interesting on Facebook. One has to do with food. The other has to do with water. And they both have something to do with things breaking.
AskTP – I May Be In Trouble
Egads! I’ve let this feature go to seed. It’s time to do some trimming. This might take a while. And while I’m not prepared to officially decree this to be Ask The Profussor Catch-Up Week, it may take several posts in order to get through the pages of questions that have gone without answer for months on end.
The commitment I made many years ago was to answer any question that was posted to the comments section of this blog. My only stipulation was that questions needed to include proper punctuation.
Well, there are questions that need answers. And many are dying on the vine. Before we get to them, please don’t forget, that the links embedded before every question all go to the same place. I like to call it the link of the day. If you find this frustrating, please don’t click on them. Getting back to the original post should be just a quick Google search away.
Now without any further ado, onto the questions.
Schenectady Strada
What a weekend. Remember that potluck I was supposed to go to on Friday? Well, it turned out I had a sick kid. So that meant my giant baking pan of polenta and I had to stay home.
The problem is that the kids hate polenta, which is why I make it for potlucks. So after cooking one dinner, I had to go out and get ingredients for the other. Actually, that part wasn’t so bad. It was a Friday night dinner, and our Friday night meal has been pretty much identical for years. Roast chicken, sauteed stringbeans, challah, and butter.
I could put that meal together in my sleep. Although I do lean heavily on the store’s rotisserie chicken. Still, I do doctor it up a bit by crisping the skin under the broiler. Man, that makes the skin so good. What can I tell you, I’m a skin lover. And actually, this past Friday, I went back to my old pre-diet ways and made myself a chicken skin sandwich on challah.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a habit of it.
The story I want to tell today isn’t about convenience cooking. Rather, it’s about cooking as a way to turn potentially wasted scraps into a delicious dinner. It’s also all about Schenectady.
Potluck Popular
When Jewish people come together, there is food. Even on Yom Kippur, one of the annual fasts, there’s food. Because after a day of fasting, we’ll celebrate with bagels, herring, and kugel. That may sound like an odd mix of foods, but man, I do love me some bagels, herring, and kugel. Although, I might even be happier to swap out the kugel for blintz casserole
Speaking of odd mixes of food, once a month my congregation holds a potluck dinner. And I have to say that I do enjoy these events. The building is equipped with a commercial kitchen, which cranks out enough baked chicken, potatoes, and a vegetable for all attending. Most attendees bring supplementary side dishes.
Choosing what to bring for a potluck dinner can be tricky for a variety of reasons. One of the hardest parts for me is that my shul is about a thirty minute drive from home. Then, once we get there, after getting seated and reciting the blessings, it could be another fifteen minutes until we eat. All of which means that it can be hard to keep hot dishes hot.
In the past I’ve used the slow cooker to not just help retain the heat of dishes, but to also reheat them a bit once they’ve arrived on site. Recently, I realized another way to solve the problem, with a dish that was pretty popular.
Noggin Uglies
It’s eggnog season. And that should be a cause for celebration. Eggnog is delicious.
The only problem is that store bought eggnog isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps in the coming years, in the quest to Make America Great Again, we’ll find a way to make eggnog great again too. Because in all honesty, what’s been happening to our food supply has absolutely been diminishing America’s greatness.
Hopefully when we roll back the clock to get better eggnog, we won’t also be rolling back the hard fought civil rights grains for people who were marginalized during eggnog’s halcyon years.
While I’ve written about the state of eggnog in the past, thanks to a good and thorough friend, I’m happy to share an update with details of the choices available to us in the Capital Region. Those who live elsewhere can take some of these findings and apply them to their own communities. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about tradeoffs.
Contrasts
I’m not like my father. Well fine, I look like my father. We have similarly loud laughs and sloppy penmanship. But I’ve made very different decisions.
I’m not much like my mother either. Sure, I credit her as being the source of my creative mind and my appreciation for the arts. However, we’ve been disagreeing on matters of substance for as long as I can remember.
And I think this is fine.
There seem to be two schools of thought on this. People can grow up to be just like their parents, or they can create their own lives in contrast to those their parents have led. I suppose there is room for a middle ground too, but indulge me for a moment, because in a moment I’m going to turn this around into a story about food.
Contrasts don’t have to be divisive. Contrasts can be delicious. And in fact, culinary contrasts are some of my favorite things. I was just reminded of this yesterday on an unexpected birthday stop for a late lunch in Troy.
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