super deluxe vegan taco bar!

Okay, dear readers: enough of that political ranting crap. Let's get back to the core mission of this blog: FOOD PORN!

Take a look at this super deluxe vegan taco bar, with convenient labels. It look longer to edit the photo this way, but seemed easier than trying to describe them in text in some sort of a lopsided logarithmic spiral.

The grand total cost for this vegan taco bar feast, and a couple days of delicious leftovers? Somewhere around $12-13. How is this possible, you ask? Most of the produce is "Manager Special" from the Super 88 Asian supermarket across the street. The most expensive thing was the package of tempeh.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I almost never shout out to brand name products. But Just Mayo by @hamptoncreek is that rare company who I think deserves it. Their product is hands down the best vegan mayo on the market: it just leaves the competition in the dust. They're basically the only product I'll consistently go to the Big Box Store Who Shall Not Be Named But Which Starts With W (because "W" sells Just Mayo for $0.12/oz, while at the Star Market across the street it's $0.43/oz.) And this kinda is random, but they have a very pretty website chockablock full of vegan food porn.

Hampton Creek really sealed the deal last year when I had a problem opening a couple jars due to the lid being essentially glued to the safety seal. (I'm strong, and have very strong hands. And these were very, very hard to get open.) I contacted them through their website with the product coding and dates on the containers, genuinely intending to only give them a heads up since I really love their product. They responded very quickly, very kindly, and asked for a physical mailing address to send thanks. Let's just say that their thanks was awesome.

Okay, enough corporate lovefesting. Back to delicious leftovers! 

Presidential election 2016

I dunno if any of you have heard, but there is an election for president of the United States in 2016.

Does it sound weird for me, a self-professed radical leftist, to say that I think I might prefer Michael Bloomberg over Hillary Clinton? (This is assuming Bernie won't be on the ticket. Or Nader. Or Feingold.)

There is a part of me that thinks that, at least when I'm listening to Bloomberg, I generally know what the smoke he is blowing up my ass is.

And maybe I'm still burned by actively volunteering for Bill Clinton in 1992, then watching the horror show that we got for eight years of the Clinton presidency (see, e.g., DOMA, PRWORA, IIRIRA, AEDPA, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, NAFTA, maintained the so-called "War On Drugs", pioneered "extraordinary rendition", authorized logging and clearcutting of old growth forest, and on, and on.) I'm not saying Clinton wasn't an extraordinarily gifted politician: he certainly was. He was one of the foremost orators and extemporaneous speakers of the last half of the century. He was also fundamentally conservative, and his positions and policies made Reagan and Nixon look like bleeding heart red diaper babies.

/rant

I almost made the below paragraph another post, but decided to keep the theme of the presidential election all in one post. Hopefully, this might be about the last you hear from me (anytime soon) on this year's presidential election...

I continue to wonder, as some of the pundits and talking heads did in the beginning, if Trump was paid by the Democratz to run. What a gift to Hillary Clinton that jackass is. Surely Sarah Palin was paid off to endorse him: the combination of tragicomic buffoonery with those two is just impossible to imagine without some palms being greased.

In all of these things, we reap what we sow, and honestly we don't have a great history. If we elect a hateful bigoted racist xenophobic classist elitist clown like Trump, it won't be that different than electing a B- grade movie actor who played short man to a chimp.

Move to Canada?

Overheard in a restaurant in Portland, Maine:

"Sarah Palin, yeah, sure, she went to law school. I'm pretty sure. I think. I'm 99% positive."

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

A view to Portland Harbor

When I regularly made photography, a long time ago, I came to accept that there were certain things that our eyes could see, and our senses could be lit up by, that simply couldn't be meaningfully recorded on film.

Yes, it was film, but the same holds for megapixels on my spacephone.

The sun is dancing in a bright glare over the harbor, the wind pushing the water along in a billion tiny diamonds.

I can't be the only person in downtown Portland who has been delighted by this this morning. But it wouldn't surprise me if in the only one who has now spent ten minutes looking at it and appreciating it.

Portland vegan breakfast

It's almost like they knew I love bikes at Local Sprouts Collective here in Portland. I mean, I don't think the cashier saw my bicycle spoke bracelet, or bicycle keychain.

Unfortunately the vegan tofu scramble was kinda underwhelming. But the place is delightful.

Deluxe vegan grilled cheese!

With fresh basil, tofurky, and bread baked around the corner in Brookline at Clear Flour. Yum!

Storage unit moving vehicle!

Also showing off my fancy new reflective tape.

Vegan fetruccine alfredo pasta bar!

Not a heck of a lot more to say on this snowy wet slippery Boston night.

Leftovers fried rice

Yep, just about what it sounds like. Brown rice, curried carrots with ginger, tempeh, banana peppers, onions, and (not leftover) spinach.

Even with my choking like mad for a few minutes when I added the banana peppers, it is thoroughly delicious. 

Ummm... Zucchini?

Res ipsa loquitor.

Pending lasagna.v

Vegan lasagna!

Pretty much just what it sounds like, with lots of caramelized ONIONS!

2015: a year in books

As I have for a number of years, I'm posting some numbers of the books I read in 2015.

The basics: in 2015 I completed 29 books, for a total of 8,583 pages. This put me significantly ahead of 2014, when moving five or six times left me only with time to read 19 books, for 6,406 pages, and closer to 2013, when I completed 30 books for 8,903 pages.  None of these figures include books I didn't finish, since I'm happy to put a shitty book down if I have any better options.

As for 2015 highs and lows: some of the best books I read included a couple shorts ones by a favorite author, Cormac McCarthy: Child of God, and The Gardener's Son.

Cliche though it may sound, Room by Emma Donoghue was excellent, if dark as fuck. (I have no real interest in seeing the movie.)

I also really enjoyed Paper Towns by John Green, as cute, moving, incisive, if somewhat improbable coming of age fiction. I mean, it's hard to not enjoy a book that has teens doing fairly realistic urban exploration of abandoned buildings.

I also finished some really shitty books, notwithstanding my note above. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris was one of the worst books I've ever finished in my life. It's stupid, contrived, forced, and feels like little more than a throw-away to meet a contract with a publisher that people only bought because they like This American Life. I really should have put it down, but it was kind of like rubbernecking a really bad pileup on the interstate: you know you shouldn't look, but you kind of can't help it.

Going Home by "A. American" was just plain fucking bad. I genuinely really like dystopian and post-apocalyptic books (and movies), and I'm willing to put up with some prepper silliness to read the genre. The basic storyline was cliche and trite and predictable, but not in itself terrible. The tinfoil hat conspiracy theory nonsense was... just that. But the most irritating part was the constant, relentless name brand product placement that did zero to advance the story. I swear there are single sentences that contain three or four name brand product placements, like, "I crawled out of my Brand A sleeping bag, pulled my Brand B boots on, grateful for clean Brand C socks, and located my Brand D backpack while chambering a round in my Brand E .45 semi-automatic with Brand F hollowpoints..." And this nonsense went on on nearly every one of the 388 pages. It was awful.

If you wonder if I'm overstating it, you can read Chapter 1 on the book's Amazon page. Here's one example:

"Lying beside the driver’s seat by the door was my ESEE 5; I laid it on the pile. I put the Devildog on the pile as well. As my EDC, it had a number of things in it that I would need. There were two spare mags for the XD, an Otis tactical cleaning kit, a Sylva compass, a Wilderness Outfi tters SOS survival kit, Swedish FireSteel, and other assorted items that I thought essential."

Here is another:

"I walked around and grabbed a couple of bags of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky; all I could think about was the Sasquatch commercials. Chuckling to myself, I went to the aisle with the little packs of meds and grabbed a few Excedrin packs, some Rolaids, and two packs of Imodium pills."

I actually made a point to finish two more books in the last few days of 2015 so that this piece of crap wouldn't be the last thing I finished in the year.

So, that's the report. Dear readers: what did you read in 2015 that you loved? 

Who knew?

It turns out that it's an absolutely real possibility to set a cookie on fire in a microwave.