Digital Alterity

I only talk about my veganism if questioned directly. I have no desire to inadvertently offend others by my very personal choice. Many people assume that I’m secretly judging them as they sit and eat their hamburger in front of me, and that assumption is only magnified when I talk about why I’ve become vegan.

Nonetheless, as situations arise, people do sometimes confront me directly. Most people are understanding, and they immediately gather from my tone and word choice that I have no intentions of hating them for eating something that my internal sense of ethics causes me to avoid. There are always those, however, who feel a need to defend eating meat even though I’ve made no motions to attack. After a few failed attempts to bait me into an emotional response that only results in me laughing at myself and the absurdity of the situation, they inevitably break out the perceived conversation winner.

“You eat vegetables, so you’re still consuming living things. You kill millions of bacteria just by living.”

The clear implication here is that I might as well just eat a steak if I’m going to slaughter all those plants and microorganisms. This position always entertains me a great deal because suddenly I’ve got some who eats meat taking a position in favor of not just plant but also bacterial rights. It makes me smile, and I always take moment to relish the moment.

For me, one of the key differences between plants and animals is that animals are aware when you’re trying to kill them, and they instinctively use whatever natural defenses are at their disposal to avoid their demise. When you cut the throat of a cow, it screams in pain and goes absolutely bonkers in its last moments trying to avoid what has become an unavoidable fate. Even a fish struggles to get free of an angler and flops around wildly trying to breathe in our gaseous atmosphere. When you spear a shrimp on a hook, it flinches. When I pick an apple, the tree doesn’t do anything. I’m taking that plants seeds and spreading them farther than the plant ever could. Plants don’t have pain receptors, you see. It wouldn’t make solid sense for them to have them since they’re rooted to one spot. An animal feels pain in order to avoid or escape dangerous situations. A plant needs no such awareness because there’s no escape response for the plant.

I have absolutely no problem with someone else’s support of plant and/or bacterial rights, though. I’m a pretty easygoing guy who doesn’t try to convince others to change their dietary choices based on my beliefs.

Technorati Tags: Humor, Vegetarian, Vegan

I love barbecue sauce in a fashion most unholy. When I visit Sonny’s, I want to just screw a rubber nipple on top of the sweet barbecue sauce and suckle until it’s all gone. Since becoming a vegan, I’ve been striving to formulate a proper conduit for barbecue sauce, and with this recipe, I finally hit the jackpot.

Ingredients

• Sonny’s Sweet BBQ sauce (or other vegan BBQ sauce of your choice)
• 227g (8 oz) tempeh
• 30-45 ml of canola oil

Procedure

1. Cut tempeh into about eight roughly equal strips.
2. Add oil a heavy sautee pan over medium-high heat. Cast iron works beautifully.
3. Pan fry tempeh strips for 3-4 minutes. If you see smoke, the pan is too hot. Burning will ensue.
4. Flip tempeh strips and sautee the opposite side for an additional 3-4 minutes.
5. Remove tempeh strips from the hot oil and allow them to rest on a paper towel or paper shopping bag for 1-2 minutes. After this brief rest, the strips should have a nice brown and crispy exterior. Your kitchen will smell sexy.
6. Place tempeh strips in a small pot or sauce pan and completely cover them with barbecue sauce.
7. Cover and heat barbecue and tempeh mixture over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes.
8. Remove from heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Thoughts on Sides

I would serve this up with either oven-baked fries, rice, or couscous. I bet some vegan macaroni and “cheese” would kick ass too.

Before becoming vegan, I used to make tuna salad, chicken salad, and egg salad fairly frequently. It was always a popular but absurdly simple dish here in the Haskell abode, and I finally got around to making a decent replacement. I chose tempeh rather than any mock meat because I like how it doesn’t really taste like meat while still tasting delicious.

Ingredients

• 227 g (8 oz) tempeh
• 1 block of firm water-packed tofu
• 100 g (about 7 tablespoons) Vegenaise
• 30 g (about 2 tablespoons) Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard
• 5 g (about a teaspoon) Tony Chachere’s Cajun Seasoning
• Black pepper, to taste

Procedure

1. Drain and press water out of tofu (optional).
2. Cut tempeh into roughly evenly sized pieces.
3. Steam tempeh on the stove for about 5-7 minutes (until soft enough to crumble).
4. Crumble steamed tempeh into a large mixing bowl.
5. Grab hand-sized chunks of tofu and squeeze between your fingers to get a texture not unlike crumbled hardboiled eggs or ricotta cheese. Add tofu mash to mixing bowl.
6. Add Vegenaise, mustard, pepper, and cajun seasoning to mixing bowl.
7. Mix ingredients with a spoon until the mixture is more or less uniform.
8. Taste and add any extra salt or seasoning that you desire. Now is the time to tweak.
9. Serve on bread or pitas.

I believe that the highly variable personalities of human being accounts quite nicely for the diversity of opinions about what constitutes a great pet. We are drawn to companion animals that best mesh with our own psyche.

My mother-in-law had a wonderful Australian shepherd named Belle who exhibited all of her own best qualities—loyalty, obedience, and concern for the well being of others. Tux is frighteningly enough one of the best cats I’ve ever had because he is an avatar of the virtues I venerate—independence, randomness, chaos, and passion. While both of us can respect the other’s choice of companion animal, neither of us would be as comfortable or as happy if we had been forced to switch pets.

The beauty of this situation is that animals that others might find difficult—and I assure you that any sane person would probably have given Tux a lethal injection by now—instead find a safe and happy home with an environment in which they thrive and are appreciated for their unique qualities.

Technorati Tags: Felines, Canines, Cats, Pets, Animals

The sight of raw meat never bothered me before. It was just a fixture of trips to the grocery store. I admittedly always hated even the idea of touching raw meat, but I loved cooking enough to suffer through the icky wet texture. I would never have dreamed of buying a whole chicken to disassemble though because that was just a bit too much like a real chicken whose refrigerated body tissues I was hacking up.

Since becoming vegan, I’ve become a lot more sensitive to the presence of raw meat. At first it was just the sight or thought of raw chicken that bothered me. Just this week I realized the depths of sensitivity to which I have sunk (or ascended to, if you’re one of those elitist or evangelical vegans). You see, the June issue of Real Simple has a whole article on grilling that involves two full spreads of various raw meats with instructions for how to prepare them. I actually started to retch looking at it, and I had to turn the page quickly. It just felt like I was looking at a morgue.

The moral of the story? Becoming a vegan makes you a total wuss. It’s all true.

Technorati Tags: Vegetarian, Vegan

Isa from the Post Punk Kitchen never seems to let me down. Every recipe or even basic idea for a recipe that I have taken from her and shamelessly used and/or abused has been nothing short of extraordinary. Quite frankly her book, Vegan with a Vengeance, is the first book I look to when I need ideas of what to cook when I’m not feeling particularly creative.

What makes her book different? Isa writes for people who are already vegan. I admit that when I first became vegan I found all the general advice and descriptions of veganism inevitably in the introduction for a vegan cookbook to be helpful and informative. After reading the same information a dozen times, however, I’ve found that it’s much less helpful the more often I hear it. I already know how to substitute eggs. I’ve already bookmarked sites with that information on the Internet, and I already have a handful of books on my shelf explaining my options. There’s officially no need for this in new cookbooks.

Isa strikes just the right balance between being informative and being entertaining. Any cookbook can just list recipes. Make me care about your book by making it unique. Isa allows her voice to come through in the interstitial blurbs and recipe introductions. It made me read the book in the first place, and it encouraged me to actually try the recipes (something I almost never do verbatim).

If you’re a vegan, you need this book. If you know a vegan and you want to cook something that he’ll love, you can’t go wrong with any recipe in the book. I can’t fathom a reason why this book isn’t on everyone’s shelf.

Technorati Tags: Food, Cooking, Vegetarian, Vegan, Post Punk Kitchen

Every restaurant should have vegan spicy sauce (Vegenaise and Sriracha chili sauce mixed together) as a base condiment. Any savory dish in the world is improved by it. It makes an excellent sandwich garnish. It, of course, tops veggie sushi beautifully. Tonight, I dipped day-old cheeseless pizza in it to make an exciting dinner that took no real work to prepare.

I have been known to take Tupperware containers of vegan spicy sauce with me to Subway to garnish my veggie delight subs. This stuff will change your life.

Technorati Tags: Food, Vegetarian, Vegan, Vegenaise, Sriracha

I’m sad to report that I just intentionally took the life of another living creature. A large (5 cm) wasp managed to get into my living room through a tiny crack in my window, and this presented a terrible, frightening dilemma.

As many of you know, I have a phobia of bees and wasps. A lot of people say that they have a phobia of something as some sort of hyperbole, but I assure you that mine is not such a case. When confronted with a wasp, I will historically either freeze up in terror or run away screaming. In recent months (since the start of spring really), I have had some measure of success living with my phobia by reading as much as I can about wasps and how to avoid being stung by them and then practicing my Zen breathing meditation whenever I see one. I’ve managed to avoid numerous screaming fits and panic attacks in this fashion, and I felt a measure of success in dealing with my phobia.

As soon as I heard the buzzing sound in the window, I was out of my chair. I was tense, rigid, and focussed on the wasp in my window. My breath and heart rate were out of control. Instinct told me to run away and run away fast.

I persevered and managed to actually make myself mindful of the moment again. I was calm enough to think rationally. I didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger since the wasp obviously just wanted to get out but couldn’t understand the window. I thought the matter over deeply. How could I get this creature out of my house without getting stung and without panicking myself beyond my ability to calm? If I attempted to open the window, I would get stung as soon as I messed with the mini blind since it was over by the controls. If I just waited it out, the wasp would eventually either leave that area and panic me until Allyson would eventually have to kill it or it would just stay in that window until it died. It was never going to go back out the crack in the state it was in. No matter what the scenario, the wasp was going to die.

I knew that the wasp spray was under the kitchen sink. I knew how to use it from watching Allyson. I knew what I had to do. For a minute—a literal minute—I stood there fighting against fate. I didn’t want to do this, and I tried to force the decision away from me. Leaving the wasp to die in my house of starvation seemed even more cruel. There were no pretty solutions. Life was death, and whether through action or inaction, I was its agent of the moment. I was God’s hand in the world, and I begged silently for this cup to pass from me.

When I pulled the trigger, I felt like some Zen archer. The target was never the wasp; the target was myself. I hit the creature immediately, and it fell to the sill. The chemicals coated my window and my blinds in that instant, telling me that I held the trigger for longer than perhaps I should. I watched as the wasp landed beside the crack in the window that she never would have found on her own, and I watched as she crawled halfway through it. Unable to watch her struggles anymore, I pushed the window to close the crack. I heard the crunch, and I knew that I had defeated my winged childhood demon. And the sinking feeling in my heart told me quietly that I was still a good person, that sometimes even God has to let old men and dogs die.

Shortly after I became vegetarian but before I went vegan, I found myself in a barbecue restaurant with my entire family. While most folks were quietly accepting of my new and strange dietary habits, my brother upon hearing that I wasn’t eating meat anymore simply declared with neither lead-in nor subsequent explanation, “I believe in beef.”

I have decided to formulate his system of belief into The Cattleman’s Creed so that others may unite under one catholic, universal, and ruminant faith.

Full Text of the Creed

I believe in beef, seared cattle meat
from every grill on heaven and earth.

I believe in steak, beef’s purest form, Lord of meats.
It was marbled through feeding of rich grain
and cut to ensure even doneness.
It aged within the fridge,
was dried, salted, and was crusted.

It descended into the grill.
With an internal temperature of 145, it rose again;
It ascended to the dinner plate.
It is seated at the right hand of the baked potato,
and it will be served without steak sauce.

I believe in prime rib,
the economical hamburger grind,
the stewing of chuck,
the braising of shoulder steaks,
the roasting of top round,
and flavor outstanding. Amen.

Technorati Tags: Humor, Beef

I’ve been up to an awful lot in the past few weeks, and I’ve been posting about precious little of it as I scramble to stay on top of everything. In the interest of clearing the decks, to get on with writing about the present rather than past, I offer this ChangeLog entry.

Apartment News

On the day that we got the keys to our current apartment, we were notified that the complex had been bought by a real estate company based in Orlando. A few months after that, we were told that the complex was being converted into condos. We knew we were going to have to move when our annual lease was up. Given the fact that our lease is up on June 30, we went ahead and made our final decision over the weekend.

We’re going to be moving back to the southwest side of Gainesville at In the Pines. We’ll be getting about the same usable space as our current apartment for about the same price. We’ll be just a hair farther from campus, but not enough of a difference to matter.

We’re currently looking at moving on the weekend of June 23, and I need to examine our budget/finances to investigate the possibility of hiring movers. The actual process of moving will be much easier this time since we pared down so much crap when we moved last year. Also our level of organization is much higher.

Food Processing

After wanting one for my whole life, I finally got around to getting a food processor courtesy of some birthday money and some cash I had saved up. Amazon had the food processor I wanted, a machine with a retail sticker price of $300 or so, discounted down to $179. 700 Watt motor. 12-cup capacity. Ability to cater to my fantasies of a being a TV chef with a cooking show.

Expect much hummus.

GTD in IT

My department is putting on a mini-conference here at UF, and I’m currently slated to give a presentation tentatively titled “Getting Work Done in IT”. In my presentation, I’m outlining an approach to IT management that integrates a lot of the GTD work of David Allen and the activity around lifehacks originally popularized by Danny O’Brien into a loosely organized swarm approach to IT work. My presentation focusses on the department and enterprise rather than the individual, and you can of course expect an article or two on Bactroid.net once the presentation is given. Initial screenings of preliminary material have been well received within my office.

Vegan Sushi

I made spicy tempeh sushi from the PPK tonight, and it was effing amazing. I used Sriracha chili sauce in lieu of chili oil because I wanted actual vegan spicy sauce much like you would get on tuna at a sushi restaurant. The whole gestalt even tasted fishy without the need to kill any animals.

I declare the vegan sushi to be an overwhelming success. Even my resident flexitarian agrees.

Recently Completed Projects

• Turn in forms for In the Pines lease
• Determine when we can switch cell providers
• Pay DP water bill
• Pay Cathy for dinner
• Make vegan sushi
• Teach ARM-CONTBR to only pull in records where RUID is null
• Find a new apartment in Gainesville
• Review June NP
• Clean camera lens
• Read ghost stories online
• Move top PAPA notes to bottom field
• Update PAPA with outstanding ARMS issues
• Vacuum living room with Roomba
• Vacuum hall and kitchen with Roomba
• Create report of HTML links for Jay
• Create strategic planning mailing list
• Organize iCal by contexts
• Season wok
• Notify Allyson of Verizon contract end date
• Hang quantity and quality affirmation in work cube
• Create EAGLE Wikipedia entry
• Print pictures of Allyson’s birthday presents
• Share notes from Vicki’s team with Strategic Planning committee
• Make chili for Cinco de Mayo
• Buy VeganLife multivitamin
• Enter time into myUFL
• Put new parking decal in car
• Put new tag registration on/in car
• Read May Shoot
• Post about Freddy Adu
• Send Allyson possible birthday ideas
• Get new tag registration
• Make Knorr spinach dip in a vegan fashion
• Make polenta
• Phase out WebDAV shares
• Backup hard drive
• Archive LVV video
• Post Wolves season analysis
• Post CL about Johnny Cash illustration
• Buy Allyson birthday presents
• Change Favorites pages on DA Wiki
• Delete extra LVV video
• Buy whole wheat pastry flour
• Make correction to strategic process for Vicki’s team
• Get more deodorant
• Pick up Allyson’s pills
• Send Johnny Cash illustration to Raue Center for publication
• Shop for weekend food
• Order Wolves clearance shirt
• Post instructions for when backups fail
• Balance Quicken
• Enter Best Buy World Cup sweepstakes
• Tell Dave about Choices billboard
• Reconnect video adapter to Betsy’s student computer
• Create jump keys for/access to ARMS pages
• Set up kudos Gmail label to forward praise/thanks to
• Post ChangeLog about getting involved
• Present video at LVV
• Create a Joga account
• Pay bills
• Pay Verizon bill
• Shred MBNA documents
• Put dose of Advantage on Tux
• Enroll Mac Mini in Applecare
• Pick up FedEx package
• Get more Advantage for Tux

Technorati Tags: Productivity, GTD, Lists, Cooking, Vegetarian, Vegan, Moving, Sushi