10 Things Stopping You From Becoming A Vegan

I should stop writing vegan posts and actually update my real blog sometime soon... http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/10-Things-Stopping-You-From-Becoming-A-Vegan

The Accidental Vegan

New Vegan post! I technically can't post this content on another blog if I submit to The Flaming Vegan, so here's a link! http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/The-Accidental-Vegan-Almost

If you make an account and upvote me, I might get paid, or something.

I Caught A Cabbage!

Haha, it's me. http://jimstahrnewyear.blogspot.com/

Liveblog Of A College Alumni Event For A College I Didn't Go To

So, tonight I will be attending an alumni networking event for American University, a college I have never attended. To sum it all up, my coworker mentioned the event, mentioned something about free alcohol and food, so I was immediately in. Stay tuned for updates throughout the night/one massive update when I come home because I don't have a smartphone and can't update this blog on the go.

5:53 PM – Why am I doing this again? I wonder how to disguise myself as an American University student.

6:17 PM – Oh good I’ve just been told I will be a “special guest” representing my company. This coworker is tricky…welp, time to go take a dump all over these kiddies’ dreams.

6:30 PM – The Tenleytown metro stop reminds me of Looney Toons for some reason.

6:48 PM – Oh, she told them I have job offers. THAT’S how come I’ve been invited here. Let’s see if I can act well enough to get through this night. Oppa Tobias style.

7:10 PM – They’ve got crab cakes, steak, fried chicken things, and brie and pear quesadillas. Aaaand I’ve just had 6 plates. Worth it.

7:27 PM – Totally just talked to an MBA and sounded like I knew what I was talking about. Buzzwords are key. Oh, you’re into BI? Well I hear big data is very important. And synergy. Ummmm pick that low hanging fruit?

7:41 PM – So, definitely can’t BS Finance people. Not enough buzzwords as part of my vocabulary. Can only use the words “Bottom Line” so many times.

7:45 PM – Asian Finance Masters students have seen through my ruse. This is awkward. Need more beer.

8:17 PM – People are leaving and there is a ton of food left. I totally have a Tupperware in my backpack…

8:19 PM – I am an adult. This means no American University food for lunch tomorrow. I am not sure I like this adult thing…

8:20 PM – There’s leftover beer too…adults can take that right?

Vegan Blog???

So, I wrote this: http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/Vegetarian-For-A-Year I guess my new pen name is Ugawa Sagara. If you make an account on that website and upvote the post, I will be very happy =).

How (Not) To Cook A Shad

Ask the guy behind the counter what he can tell you about the cheapest fish he sells. Ignore him when he tells you that the shad is incredibly difficult to cook. Marvel at how cheap it is to purchase an entire three-pound fish, complete with the head still attached. Ignore the man who warns you that there are so many bones in a shad that it is known as a “porcupine turned inside-out.” Feel confident that even though you have never deboned a fish, it should be no problem at all. Be terribly wrong.

Bring the fish home and stare at the size of the creature you have just purchased. Feel the weight of the bag, and how the paper surrounding the fish has dampened with fish blood or guts or whatever seeps out of a dead sea creature.

Unwrap the fish and hold it triumphantly in the air. Continue your feeling of confidence as testosterone buzzes through the air.

Watch a YouTube video that oversimplifies the process of removing the bones from the fish and forget it all the moment you pick up your knife.

Start by chopping off the head.

The man in the YouTube video was able to chop through in one swift motion, so attempt to recreate this. Realize that your knife is not nearly as sharp as his, and saw back and forth rapidly for a few minutes as gracefully as you can.

Eventually, cut through the shad and remove the head.

Feel bad about beheading this innocent fish, and decide to give it a little loving to make up for your murderous ways.

Start your first cut at the end of the fish, near the tail. Vaguely recall that this may or may not have been the first cut made in the YouTube video you watched earlier, but proceed with confidence nonetheless.

Realize again that your knife is much duller than the one used in the video, and struggle to stay in line with the spine as you cut down the shad’s back.

Save every small piece of boneless fish that you accidentally cut off, for there will be many, many more pieces you will remove that are littered with bones. Every bit counts.

Continue to cut down the spine until you can open up the fish a little bit.

Remove the top fillet, feeling happy despite the many mistakes you have made up until now.

Again, save every small piece. You will thank me later. Otherwise, you may have nothing to eat after this ordeal.

Repeat and use masterful knife skills to cut the fish into the remaining fillets. Try not to mess up too much. Mess up a ton anyway. This will become more evident later.

Attempt to remove small pieces of meat from the spine. Remember that every little bit counts. Surprisingly, the spine piece will have the smallest amount of bones, so take advantage of this.

After giving up on the spine because you think it has a lot of bones (oh, you will soon be surprised), dump the spine piece as well as the fish head you removed earlier into a large pot of water to make fish stock. Forget to remove all the gross stuff in the fish head so your fish stock comes out extremely bitter and disgusting. Don’t worry, you didn’t need fish stock anyway. Fish stock is only for real cooks.

Attempt to remove the meat from the next smallest fillet. Quickly realize that every inch of fish contains 2398130298 bones and decide to try and boil one piece of fish in water to see how many bones are actually in it. Also, you are getting hungry, so it may be good to get some food cooking soon.

Take the boiled piece of fish out of the water and try to eat some of it. Discover the millions of tiny bones embedded in each piece of fish, and decide that you are going to have to remove the meat from the bones as planned. Or get impaled by fish bones.

Taste the fish stock you are making and realize you did not take out all the weird stuff in the fish head and that it consequently tastes horrible. Throw it all out and put all of the fish pieces with bones and now-cooked meat onto a plate. Remember there are a billion bones on this plate, so do not eat any of it.

Get incredibly aggressive with your knife and remove as much fish as you can from the remaining raw pieces.

Look at your haul and become terribly depressed at the small amount of usable meat you have recovered. Realize why this was the cheapest fish at the market.

Take all of the cooked pieces with bones attached to them (recovered from the death fish stock) and realize that it is incredibly easy to remove fish meat from bones once the meat is cooked. Proceed to manually take all of the cooked meat off of the bones.

Decide you now can make three iterations of fish. Proceed with iteration one. Take pieces of cooked fish still on the bones and put it in a pot with salt, pepper, herbs, and a bunch of other tasty things to make a stew. Try it and remember why you decided to remove the bones. Your mouth is now full of sharp and pointy things.

Proceed to iteration two. Use the cooked meat you removed from bones and put it in a pan with some chicken stock and a bunch of other tasty herbs and stuff.

Spoon this mixture into small bowls. It tastes so much better than iteration one, and you only get one or two bones per bite! You did a pretty good at manually removing bones from cooked fish, but still not good enough.

Time to bring out the wine. Iteration two wasn’t bad, but you are determined to make something good out of these three hours of work. Drinking some alcohol always makes everything better, so bust it out!

Use the meat with no bones that you had previously put into a Tupperware and add it to a pan with onions. Inhale fumes of deliciousness and hope that iteration three turns out okay.

Add herbs and stuff, but taste the mixture and realize that it doesn’t really taste like much. Scour your kitchen for anything else you can add, and start to get depressed that you don’t have much else to add.

Remember that you recently purchased Louisiana hot sauce, which is completely delicious!

Add a bunch of that as well as an Asian basil/chili pepper mix to give it a bunch of flavor.

Congratulations! You are kind of a chef.

This Is Not A Love Story

The cool mountain air invaded his lungs, clinging to his insides and refreshing his soul. The hike to the top made for a considerable adrenaline rush, and he was running on borrowed energy. He opened his canteen and inhaled half of its contents in one swift gulp. He paused and looked out as far as he could see, peering past the rocks to take in the tops of trees from the forests below. Turning to his right, he mouthed a single word to the woman standing beside him: “Wow.” It was a simple word for the amount of beauty that befell the two of them from the top of the mountain, but the woman knew exactly what he meant.

He lay down on a giant slab of rock, resting his back on a soft bed of moss. She sat down next to him, taking in the mountain air.

“We made it,” he breathed towards the sky above. He inhaled triumph and exhaled another item from their collective bucket-list.

The woman smiled to herself. “It took us forty years to get up here together, but we finally did it,” she whispered. She stared off into the distance with the man, reflecting on what the past forty years had amounted to.

The man smiled a goofy smile, proudly showing the crooked teeth of their childhood. “Do you remember when I asked you up here on a date in high school, only to find out you had a boyfriend?” he laughed.

The woman laughed back, “And when I asked you up here the next year and then found out you had a girlfriend?”

They smiled, sitting in silence, letting the years wash over them like a warm blanket.

“You know,” the man said, “after I graduated from college and was living back here in our hometown, I used to come up here by myself and think of you. You were always on my mind back then.”

“When you went to college and I stayed in this godforsaken town,” the woman confessed, “I came up here and thought about you a lot too. I guess we never really got the timing right…” she trailed off.

“We had so many chances, but we were never on the same page at the same time it seems,” he said. “This place sure brings back some old memories. I’m kind of glad we never got together though.”

“Who knows what something like that could have done to us? Do you think we would have made it?” she asked. Silence answered.

They looked out at the trees below and the cloudless sky above, thinking about everything that had brought them to this moment. They had each longed for this hike for so many years, but under different circumstances. But this particular day, this particular circumstance, and this particular friendship was perfect the way it was. Maybe in the past they would have held hands or hugged or kissed in the very spot they sat today, but instead they just smiled knowingly at each other and appreciated the view. “We finally made it up here together,” they repeated in unison, and stared off into the horizon.

Their silence was broken by two voices emerging from the forest, addressing the two old friends. “The next time you two lovebirds want to go do some intense physical activity like this, leave your spouses at home,” the voices joked, gasping for air.

The man’s husband and the woman’s wife exited the woods and onto the worn path to the mountain’s peak, exhausted. The man ran down to assist his stumbling husband, and the woman followed suit. They walked their respective spouses over to the rock and lay down beside them.

“We didn’t mean to tire you out, but we wanted to take you guys up to this spot. There’s a lot of history here, and we wanted to bring us all out here together,” the woman smiled.

The two couples lay on the top of the mountain, wrapped in each other’s embrace. They looked out towards the horizon, happy with the way everything managed to fall into place.