The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of Thanking Them For Their Service

Here’s the vibe I’m getting from listening to/reading interviews with nurses, doctors, home health aides, and other health care workers: They do not want acclaim and platitudes, thank you very much. They want you stop voting for sociopathic ignoramuses who don’t want you to have viable public health care systems in the first place.

 

 

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Department Of As If You Needed Another Reason…

… to transition to plant-based nutrition.  Not to go all PETA on y’all,  [1]  but other than the:

* benefits to your personal health   [2];
*  your concerns re the significant contribution of
animal agriculture and meat consumption to global warming;
* the cruel/abusive practices of intensive/industrial animal farming and your desire to *not,* directly or indirectly, support such practices;

…how about preventing a pandemic or two?

6 in 10 Infectious Diseases Come from Animals
The CDC Is Most Worried About These 8
(  Article in Livescience.com 5-17-19 )

MERS, SARS, many influenza viruses, and now COVID-19   [3] – over half of all infectious diseases are zoonotic; that is, they are spread from animals to humans.

If humans stopped animal food production it would break the major link in the disease chain, via what scientists call the “animal-human interface” – read: the keeping and raising of poultry and animals for human food (“animal husbandry”), which allows for and concentrates “…pathogen movement from confined poultry and swine operations resulting in environmental releases and interspecies transmission…”   [4]

If you didn’t know about the health/climate change/animal abuse aspects of meat production and consumption, or kinda-sorta knew but didn’t care to do some research on the issues…. Well, we’ve got plenty of time on our hands now, don’t we?

 

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Department Of Life Is Tough But It’s Even Tougher If You’re Stupid
Chapter 6 In A Series

I don’t UnFriend ® often.  I’ve done the -un thing, hmm, only one or two times that I can recall. One case was after I realized I’d accepted a friend request from someone moiself  didn’t fully recognize but figured was a high school acquaintance…then after some odd postings  [5]  on their part I did some sleuthing (the low-tech variety – I got out my high school yearbooks) and realized that, yep, we’d gone to the same high school, but I’d confused them with someone else, and…yikes.

 

 

Dateline: March 31. I get a FB message, don’t recognize the name, see a posting that consists of what appears to be photograph of a notice with the eye-catching titled:

“IN ISRAEL NO DEATH FROM COVID 19”

Golly gee, that would be good news…if it were true (which, of course, it isn’t).

This notice, in hilariously horrible, Nigerian-scam worthy English, describes the “super news”  of a “simple recipe” – a lemon bicarbonate tea –  which

“immediately kills the virus completely (sic) eliminates it from the body….That is why the People of Israel is (sic) relaxed about this virus. Everyone in Israel drinks a cup of hot water with lemon and a little baking soda at night, as this is proven to kill the virus.”

 

Really.

I looked up the (supposed) sender’s FB profile.  Yep, went to my high school; is friends with several people I know; I can’t recall other FB postings or messages from her.  Poor thing; it’s likely her FB messenger has been hacked (and when she finds out she’ll be sending apology messages to everyone).  But, just to be safe, bye-bye for now.

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Department Of Andrew Yang Was Right…But Sooner,
And For a Reason No One Predicted

“… we wind up automating millions of American livelihoods and then are left trying to figure out what the path forward is for those people, their families, those communities. What the pandemic has done is accelerate those circumstances in an incredibly compressed time frame where it has literally sent tens of millions of Americans home all at once.
I was talking about an evolving automated economy that would affect more and more of us home over time. And it’s become painfully obvious that putting money into our hands is the only commonsense solution to keep our families afloat.”
( “Republicans Adopt Andrew Yang’s Cause. He Isn’t Celebrating.”
Politico 3-17-20 )

 

* Over 15 million Americans work in tourism and hospitality—in hotels, amusement parks, art museums, and restaurants—making it the fifth largest industry in the country;
* Another 16 million Americans work in retail (which, 15 years ago, surpassed manufacturing as the country’s largest industry by employment);
* Over 20% of Americans work in retail/hospitality/entertainment industries, which were among the first to be shut down or drastically curtailed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lawyer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, using statistics and economic models and forecasting, warned that in the coming years AI and automation would bring job losses for one third of American workers. This was a major part of the reasoning behind his proposed “Freedom Dividend,”  [6]  an economic stimulus and security plan widely misunderstood and knocked by people on all sides of the political and economic spectrums. And now….

“White House expresses support for immediate cash payments to Americans
as part of coronavirus stimulus package”
(Washington Post 3-17-20)

Check out Yang’s campaign website (which is still up), in particular his policy stands of The Freedom Dividend and Human-Centered Capitalism.

 

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Department of The Corona Virus Playlist
Girl Groups Edition

Girl Groups was a term applied to the American female pop music singing groups of the late 1950s – early 1960s.  “The Supremes,” “Martha and the Vandellas,” “The Ronettes” and “The Shangrilas” are examples of the GG genre.

Moiself  has listed some of those groups’ song titles which are IMHO, applicable to our social-isolating, transmission–paranoid, COVID-19 times, and which, in small groupings, imply a related story.

Heatwave
I Gotta Let You Go
Nowhere To Run
In My Lonely Room

Reach Out And Touch
Stop In The Name Of Love
The Beginning Of The End
Where Did Our Love Go?

A Breath-Taking Guy
It’s All Your Fault
You’ll Be Sorry
My World Is Empty Without You
Someday We’ll Be Together

A Change Is Gonna Come
Comin’ Out
Come See About Me
Back In My Arms Again

 

 

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Epicurean Expedition Evolution

The Epicurean Expedition was a recurring feature of this blog (from a year ago until last week), wherein I decided that moiself  would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook at least one recipe from one book for dinner.  It was fun and challenging, the latter via trying to adapt recipes from books I’ve had for decades and which were acquired before moiself became a picky plant-based eater.  Some recipes – in several cases, entire cookbooks – proved almost impossible to adapt while still being true to the spirit of the original (read: almost anything by Julia Child.  All that “buttah” – lawdy, Julia went well-lubricated to her grave).

 

 

In the spirit of been there/done that, aided by the COVID-19 virus-induced, Take On A Project ® mindset and social/physical isolation, I’ve started a new culinary adventure: differing dinner themes.

I’ve done dinner themes before, but never a different one for each day.  When son K and daughter Belle were younger, Friday was the theme day. For a few years it was Make Your Own Za Night, then Friday Fondue, each theme accompanied by what we called “Friday Bread.” (a homemade braided sweet bread with raisins – essentially, a raisin challah).  After our offspring fledged, Friday became just another day for MH and I.

The themes are listed below; I’ll start reporting on them next week, with a completely new, as-of-yet-unchosen rating system (I will miss the Hamster thumbs-up).

I’m giving moiself a lot of leeway in this new EE. Which day will I report on?  Depends on what recipe worked best or failed most epic-ly (let’s face it, epic fails are the most fun to write about).  The power to choose is all mine, mine, MINE, I TELL YOU.   [7]

 

 

Steelhead Sunday
Steelhead, the trout that thinks it’s a salmon, is my go-to fish (and plant-eater moiself still has fish once a week).
This day will be reserved for anything pescatarian .

Mushroom Miso Mustard Monday
Three alliterative ingredients, at least one of which will be featured.

Tofu/Tempeh Tuesday
Fairly straightforward.

• Wednesday Wraps
  Crepes; tamales; pancakes; tortillas; tacos; spring rolls, dosas….

Thirsty Thursday
Soups gets a starring role on this day.

WTF Friday
Anything goes…including out to dinner (when we’re allowed to do that again)

Sushi / Spaghetti Saturday

Sushi: I hadn’t made it in years.  A couple of weeks ago, inspired by the isolate-at-home mandate (translation: moiself  had a captive audience, as MH and I would not be going out to eat) I decided to do some maki rolls, and had a lot of fun.
I’m going to offend sushi purists try different classes of fillings (all plant-based, save for the steelhead/salmon in the PNW varieties) inspired by different culinary tastes, from Pacific NW to Mexican to Chinese to Indian to Eastern European to ___?  The short grain, vinegar-ed rice (which is what makes it sushi ) will remain, although it will be brown rice and the type of vinegar will vary with the fillings.

Spaghetti: as in, pasta.  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, moiself and a coworker with a Good Ole Midwestern Boy ®  background were talking about food during our lunchbreak. GOMB asked me what I would be making for dinner that night. I replied that I hadn’t exactly decided, probably pasta with a lemon basil…

“Spaghetti – you’re making spaghetti!
Why can’t you just say you’re making spaghetti?!
All pasta is spaghetti!”

The snideness of GOMB’s interruption indicated he thought moiself  was being pretentious when I was merely being accurate.  I knew I was going to make a pasta dish but didn’t know what kind of pasta it would be. As it turned out, I didn’t have any *spaghetti* in the house.  How do you say, “So, there!” in Italian? )

 

 

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Department Of Yet Another New Feature:

Pun For the Day

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club,
but I’d never met herbivore.

 

 

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May you try not to “contribute” to the next (or current) pandemic;
May you remember that all spaghetti is pasta
but not all pasta is spaghetti;
May you offend culinary purists whenever possible;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] I have mixed feelings about the organization – alternately admiring some of their work and viewpoints while deploring some of their rhetoric/tactics.

[2] “Healthy eating may be best achieved with a plant-based diet,” is the opinion of a bajillion studies and scientific/medical journals, including The Permanante Journal,

[3] Like SARS and MERS, COVID-19 was spread from animals to humans. Public health experts think COVID-19 originated at a “wet market” in China, where vendors sell both live and dead animals for human consumption.

[4] “The Animal-Human Interface and Infectious Disease in Industrial Food Animal Production,” Public Health Reports, National Institute of Medicine.

[5] Read: batshit crazy political and religious comments/rants.

[6] A $1,000/month stipend for every American adult over the age of 18.

[7] I used to have more footnotes in this blog.