What I eat, apparently

As I rule, I tend to think of ‘delicious vegan baked goods’ as an oxymoron. But only in the ‘vegan’ attached to ‘delicious baked goods’ sense. I have had food that is both delicious and vegan. I have had more experiences then I could ever count where I’ve had ‘delicious’ plus ‘baked goods’. In any case, vegan baked goods, are far as I am concerned, are generally like eating spruced up cardboard. The vegans who eat them are so strung out on vitamins that they truly believe that their baked goods could actually be called ‘delicious’. Or, when they say they are delicious, they are in fact really saying ‘delicious as compared to cardboard’, but are leaving the last bit out for the benefit of those of us that enjoy the juices from cow bosoms and such.

There is an exception to all of this, however. Emily’s cookies (or some similar female name beginning with a vowel), sold at Ellwood Thompson’s (a local health food store). It’s not necessarily that they’re delicious for cookies, but more that they’re delicious for granola bars. Crammed full of oats and nuts and bits of chocolate (vegan chocolate, apparently, but I couldn’t tell the difference) and tons of delicious.

Then I attempted trying to make them, based on a recipe I found that seemed to share the same ingredients.

The almost-vegan granola bar-ish cookies were a strong showing in mediocrity. I say ‘almost vegan’ as I totally used regular milk instead of soy milk. Just like I totally used semi-sweet chocolate chips, which probably contain dairy. And I totally buttered the pan with butter, rather then oil. Hmm, come to think of it, I buttered the pan with pseudo-butter, some margarine knock-off, so I might still be good there! In any case, the ’strong showing in mediocrity’ has been stated due to the fact that they’re slightly palatable, but only if there’s nothing better around. Too many peanuts (shoulda used walnuts-d’oh!), a little too burnt, and just not nearly enough flavor.

However, I have a better success story (but, err, not involving vegan food). These babies were awesome:

Did you know that you can make cookies from cake mix? Just leave out the water, and use one less egg then usual! Incredible! Oh, and I dumped in chocolate chips. So soft and squishy! I have fantasized so long for easy access to the softest of chocolate chip cookies. Too often have I been plagued by the cruelty, the sheer mediocrity of hard chocolate chip cookies. And now, the secret to the softness has been revealed. And it tastes much like cake.

You will now be presented with the sort of luscious terrain that makes you wish dirt was the fourth point on the food pyramid. Or rather, food stepladder. Or whatever the hell they call that new ‘what you’re technically supposed to be eating instead of the crap you usually eat’ diagram.

This is maple apple crisp, in all of its ‘not being able to see what’s inside it’-ness:

And it was so dang good, I’m even gonna link to the recipe, courtesy of allrecipes.com.

I like taking closeups of stuff like this, as it really does make it look like delicious walking ground. A walking ground as if it were the delicate soil covering an underground marsh of drippy apple and syrup. Like walking on it, you could fall through at any minute to your delicious and moist death. And if you put ice cream on it, you could totally pretend it’s winter! (Ice cream was really good on it, incidentally). Oh, and I dumped in chocolate chips too. So really, it’s more like delicious terrain covered in the best tasting dog poo around.

You could even be more ridiculous and get all Warhammer with this. Make several batches, and gently lay them out on a table. Use gummy bears instead of lizardmen or wights or whatever the so-called ‘cool kids’ use these days. The key to this game will be the side of rum (lets be honest here, sides of rum) you will consume, so at the end, in your victory sweep, when you eat your opponent’s ruination, your buzz will be strong enough to make you utterly oblivious to your ‘not wiped off in several months’ table. A great win like that won’t be something easily repeated, which won’t be a problem considering the difficulty you’ll have convincing your utterly horrified friends to come back. Enjoy!

Let’s be honest here. There are few problems in life that a nicely charred wiener wouldn’t fix. Especially a big fat wiener. And, it being July 5th, it’s about one day after the ideal time for such wieners.

And boy, are they some fat wieners!

I must confess, that as much of a cheap bastard as I am, I have ethical difficulties with being cheap when it comes to hot dogs and similar wieners. Well, ‘cheaper’, as the case may be. Generally, the cheapest you can go is a 10 pack of short little wieners. These will not only inevitably leave an extra 2+ inches at the end of your bun that is bun-only, but you’ll have 2 wieners left over after all the buns are gone. Were I really thrifty, I could hack those last 2 dogs into fourths, and place each piece in that 2 inch space at the end of the other 2 hot dogs on buns. But, that whole ‘effort and foresight’ thing just kind of eludes me sometimes. Also, there’s the fact that purchasing these measly wieners in 10 packs will only encourage the manufacturers to make more. This, the cheapest I go is the ‘bun length’ types in the 8 pack, and if I’m feeling saucy, I’ll straight up go for the bratwursts or Italian sausage.

And, to counterbalance the wiener situation, an often appropriate accompaniment is said to be the raw veggie tray:

(Ooh, it’s an action shot! It’s like you can feel that green thing getting dipped!)

I actually struggle with the concept of veggie tray as ‘appropriate accompaniment’. Mind you, it beats potato salad any day, but nonetheless, the majority of vegetables on such things are unacceptable. Raw broccoli? Raw carrots? Raw cauliflower?! I’ll happily down all the cherry tomatoes, mind you, and also nibble a bit on the celery and whatever peppers might be found. But there’s some things that are just not meant to be consumed raw. Or at all. I mean, cauliflower? Really.

And of course, an excellent counterpart to the veggie tray (and, by extension, an artery-clogging partner in crime with the hot dogs) is the massive pile of brownies. At the point of this photograph, they had diminished to the minor pile, which is why I defaulted to Über Closeup Time to achieve the proper effect.

These were mildly experimental, in that, while in the process of making said brownies, I was overtaken by a fit of hysterics and immediately threw in 10 caramel pieces. It worked out quite well, I think, assuming we define ‘quite well’ as ‘there were several times when one would bite into a brownie and find their jaws stuck together, but in a good way’. But then again, if there are brownies involved, is the concept of ‘bad way’ even possible?

The only thing better then chocolate is chocolate with chocolate. The only thing better then chocolate with chocolate is chocolate with chocolate and chocolate. The only thing better then chocolate with chocolate and chocolate is — Wait. This has the grand potential of becoming mindnumbing and repetitive. Or, as I prefer to say, repetetetitititive. It’s a word much more expressive of it’s real meaning. Kind of like how monotony should be pronounced with the same emphasis on each syllable.

So, if we assume that, instead of logic and numbers, the world was actually comprised of stomachs and chocolate, then this would totally be functional:

$chocolate = chocolate; //This is totally a number. The chocolate number!
$moarchocolate = $chocolate;

for ($i = 1; $i <= stomachBloat(); $i++){
	$moarchocolate++;
	print 'The only thing better then ' . $chocolate . ' is '
. $moarchocolate . '.';
	$chocolate++;
}

This is the sort of bad php that most people have a hard time stomaching, but I find it quite appetizing! And to those whose brains have yet to fall out, I give thee this:

This is about 4 iterations or so into that aforementioned chocolate loop. Chocolate pie crust, plus chocolate pudding, plus chocolate whipped cream, plus chocolate ice cream (containing chocolate brownie chunks), topped with chocolate sauce. Thank Drew for this baby. Quite delightful, indeed!

Ever had daifuku? It’s magical. Little balls of dough gently cradling delightful globs of sweet bean paste. So I was inspired about a year or so and purchased a bag of red azuki beans (sweet beans of the Japanese dessertey variety), with stern intentions of making daifuku for myself.

A year later, I finally get around to doing something that was vaguely similar to my plan.

So, as I mentioned a little while back, I have a large bag of sweet rice. This, as also mentioned a little while back, is because the rice sitting right beside the actual sushi rice at the store would be good enough for sushi, since the sushi rice surely must have a good influence on it, right? I mean, why get sushi rice for sushi, that wouldn’t make any sense at all! Point being, I have a gigantic bag of sweet rice that I have been attempting to find uses for.

Thus, comes the Ogahi. It’s like a piece of daifuku flipped itself inside out, and then get all lumpy in the rice part (err, since daifuku uses rice flour rather then straight up rice).

So I dumped this bag of azuki beans in a pot with some water, and let them sit there for approximately 7836172 hours. Then boiled them for a little less then that, dumped some sugar in, squashed it up with a cup as for some godawful reason I am completely lacking in a potato masher, and the end product was this delightful pile of squish:

Then came the rice. Then came the getting my fingers all covered in gooey substances for the sake of deliciousness. Look, they’re facing off for a mighty battle!

Soon enough, all the rice balls had converted over to the Dark side:

By the way, these should in theory have been completely inappropriate! You know why? Ohagi is traditionally made for the spring and fall equinox. I’m about 3 months off here. Ah well, I got close to an equinox, right?

Anyhow, their ultimate destination was to be served at a baby shower where probably at least 1/2 of the people there thought they were either chocolate or meatballs. Definitely a big surprise to bite into one of them thinking that! Anyhow, they went over well enough with those who appreciate such Japanese tasties, and I got to take home the rest, which is also a bonus.

A final peaceful scene of restful Ogahi:

Hobbits and flowers and bean paste, oh my!