Hey y'all, just in the posting mood today! I was writing another post and thought about my love for good vegan alternatives. I am not personally vegan, but as someone who takes great pride and pleasure as a cook serving other people food, I want to serve my vegan comrades as best as I can, so I try to taste test a lot of vegan stuff. I'm not a carnist who believes that the vegan option can never taste as good, I just have a lot of allergies so I have to be cautious about eating things that aren't meat. However I've tasted and heard from vegans, certain things like cheese simply aren't as good as the non-vegan counter part. I feel like we hear about this stuff way too much though, as there are so many interesting flavors vegans use that carnists don't.

My personal pick for this topic is coconut aminos. Soy sauce is a great way to add umami flavor into almost anything you're making, so I was disheartened at first when I heard that soy sauce wasn't vegan. But one of my vegan friends got me a bottle of coconut aminos to try, and it blew my mind. The extra sweetness in it makes so many things you'd use soy sauce for way better. Teriyaki sauce should always be made with coconut aminos, fried rice gets a slight sweetness that really lends well to the veggies in it, it's so fucking good.

Oh boy, hopefully people are reasonable about this and it doesn't start a full struggle session like frying in olive oil. As someone whose been cooking professionally for 6 years, I'm very familiar with both "real" and "fake" truffle oil. I've cooked with it in many restaurants with many different uses. It's a very popular ingredient in modern American restaurants, and I've heard about it picking up in other western countries as well.

To fill in non-foodie people who may be reading this, truffle oil at restaurants is very rarely made from real truffles, instead being a chemical approximation of over 300 different truffle compounds. It's a very unique scent that you're only getting from the fake truffle oil though. Real truffle oil has very little scent or flavor, being far more subtle of an ingredient than the fake stuff. For reference in the difference, people allergic to mushrooms have no problem consuming the fake truffle oil.

To give my thoughts so that this isn't one sided, this might be a hot take but I love fake truffle oil. It smells kinda funky at first, but it goes so well as a finisher on so many dishes, just giving a slight mushroom funk without making it overwhelming. I also like it for allergy reasons, I don't personally have an allergy to mushrooms, but as someone who LOVES serving food, I want everybody to be able to get good tasting food.

Potatoes are a strong contender against beanis, highly recommended!

• Total death to Israel.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3796123

What do your weekly meals look like for you and your fam? I generally enjoy cooking, what I don't enjoy is the negotiations that come with cooking, and with kids, it's even worse. I'm also the kind of person that could eat the same 5 dishes for a year without much fuss or question. That's the ADHD lodged in my brain for you.

The negotiation, or even the anticipation of negotiations, makes me agitated. If I could, I'd be a food dictator, but that's not how living with people works. It's annoying enough to me that I often push it to the back of my mind and just "figure it out" on the fly. That's not conducive to making good choices, though, only convenient choices.

If I'm going to do most of the cooking, I'll want a schedule of meals, so I can both plan, anticipate, and head-off any objections. I struggle with being assertive on this point, and I'm told often, "We don't need to do that much planning." Which, as someone with ADHD into my late 30s, I know is not true, and I do need that much planning if not more. Structure is something I need, and the kids at this age obviously thrive off structure as well.

So anyway, how do you tackle this? I need to get this sorted out for myself, but also for my kiddos. Kiddo 1 just had an annual checkup and is low on iron, and is growing increasingly picky about food. Kiddo 2 is still in that "I'll try anything in front of me." phase, and getting this sorted out now hopefully means I can avoid the pickiness down the line.

I'm going to cross post this in !neurodiverse@hexbear.net & !food@hexbear.net as I think it has some clear overlap.

I noticed I simply cannot eat cereal anymore due to the reactive hypoglycemia it causes. Googled around today and found out that what it was, which had me confused because the stuff has sugar in it so you'd think it'd be a no-brainer, right?

So it looks like I got to get more fruit in my diet and eat small meals throughout the day.

Anything that works well for you?

My usual is babby yed with chip some mushy pae and gravy with just a bit of salt and no vinegar

Three days ago I said that I tried soy milk for the first time. I finished the entire carton pretty quickly, and decided that at the next opportunity I would buy more plant milk, to try different brands and types, and to figure out where I could find plant milk at different stores.

I noted last time that the plant milk was hidden in a random out-of-the-way corner of the store — in the store I went to this time, the plant milk was in a section called frifor (also spelled fri for, fri-for), a play on fri for which means "completely without (dairy, gluten, etc)". I'm assuming the plant milk in the other store I went to was also in this section and I just didn't notice the sign. I just expected to find plant milk in the same place you'd find dairy milk, rather than in its own little section of the store for people with dietary restrictions.

Anyways, I bought chocolate oat milk this time. The brand is called Oatly. The soy milk I bought last time was Alpro brand. The oat milk was a few kroner cheaper than the soy milk, but I forgot to compare prices with dairy milk.

What I'll say right now is... Oatly brand chocolate oat milk is kinda how I expected plant milk to be like before I tried the soy milk from the previous post. By no means "chemical-y," like a lot of bozos seem to think, just... "bouba"...? I don't know how to put it, exactly, but it's a taste that's distinctly "I'd rather not"

So, Oatly is drinkable, in small amounts, but it's not nearly as good as the Alpro soy milk; I poured a glass of Oatly for myself and actually spat out the last bit because I "needed a break". I also noticed that while Alpro didn't smell at all, Oatly has a distinct scent to it, mild but I still don't favor it; on the other hand Oatly resembles dairy milk slightly more in appearance (not a major concern for me), and it doesn't stain the cup nearly as much (which is a positive).

Oatly brand chocolate oat milk is serviceable enough that I'll drink the whole carton eventually, but I think the next time I'm shopping for plant milk I'm not gonna go for Oatly again. I'd rather pay just a little more for better-tasting moloko. I'm not sure if I'll go for rice milk or almond milk next time, but I do think I'll have the milk be plain rather than flavored in any way.

One last thing I'd like to address is just the packaging.

I haven't actually thrown away the Alpro carton yet, so I have that to compare as well.

So on the Alpro the only words of Norwegian/Scandinavian are the contact information for customer service on the proper right bottom third of the carton, and the product information / ingredients / nutritional information on the reverse. There is also text in Finnish and Romanian in these same places, and some other Romanian fine print on the obverse and proper right. But as a whole the entire carton is covered in big, bold, flashy English, and I do not like this.

Because if the reverse assumes that anyone buying the milk necessarily speaks Scandinavian, Finnish, or Romanian, then why should the package assume that everyone buying also speaks English? Conversely, wouldn't the vast majority of the packaging being entirely in English lead one to believe that one should also be able to find the ingredients and nutritional information on the back in English?

The obverse has plenty of room to in fact entirely replace the English text with translations into Scandinavian, Finnish, and Romanian; the sides, too, could cut out the marketing flourishes and convey the same information in all three languages as well. There is no reason for English to be there at all other than I guess to be trendy and to save the negligible amount of money it would take to localize the packaging beyond the literal bare minimum required by law.

I do have to wonder why Romanian, though. There are many far more widely spoken immigrant languages in Norway, Romanian is not a super widely spoken language on the global scale, and Norway and Romania are not particularly close to one another, so it seems a bit of a random choice, doesn't it? But whatever, it is a pretty language, so I can't object to seeing more of it.

Now Oatly on the other hand, there is a nice and clear "HAVREDRIKK SJOKOLADE" written on the front. In that regard, it's way better than the Alpro carton.

However... Again, most of the carton save for what the carton itself labels as "the boring (but very important) side" is written in English. Basically none of it is anything actually important, but it's just this really aggravating "corporate silly", you know the kind, the kind of writing that feels like it's a variant of that same vile disease that also brought us "wholesome adulting" and grown-ass characters swearing like 5th graders in Hollywood blockbusters.

Like I know I probably seem really petty by focusing so much on the packaging, but I don't want to feel cringe when buying abuse-free milk. Like I know there isn't really any other way to do it, but I don't want to be reminded that I'm buying from some corporation that's cashing in on people's desire to not support animal abuse and trying to turn veganism from a radical movement for animal rights to a qwirkee #aesthetic under their own Brand Image of corporate silly wholesome chungus English for the globally-minded youth. Just give me the fucking plant milk, in the local language, without marketing frills. No different from the store brand apple juice and instant ramen. No different from the dairy milk.

Is that really so much to ask?

Sorry I'm posting a listicle, and I didn't CW for FOOD because it's c/food

I just went down a rabbit hole reading about Uzbek food and saw this

Uzbek-style plov is found in the post-Soviet countries and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. In Xinjiang, where the dish is known as polu, it is often served with pickled vegetables, including carrots, onion and tomato.

Yeah I shouldnt be surpised, you can walk from Xingjang and Uzbekistan, and I did know this, I'm just excited about plov! Years ago my housemate and I made an amazing vegan rendition of Plov with apples and cashews, I wish I could remember what else we used...

It doesnt feel possible for me, but I like to imagine one day visiting Xinjiang

anyway, #plovposting is a much healthier late night activity that peeling through imperialist rags

Scrambs Recipe

Very easy to make, cheap, and good for protein!

By cold cut I just mean something savory and better eaten cold, full in texture. I would prefer tofu recipes over seitan because I want to put these in bread and seitan in bread feels like too much wheat.

I always make a lazy butter chicken with just three ingredients;

• Cashew Yoghurt (I make it in bulk and freeze it in pucks to use later)
• Soy Curls
• Curry Powder

This is even lazier than usual because I didn't even chop an onion or anything. I have legitimately put 10x effort into butter chicken before and it wasn't as good as this. How was I supposed to know my grocery store curry powder was holding me back so much?

Specifically it was chocolate-flavored soy milk. I figured that would be "safer".

The experience of drinking the soy milk went roughly like so:

[pours the milk]

"Hmm. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, but it looks ever so slightly opaque compared to dairy milk..."

[gives it a good sniff]

"...It smells like basically nothing. Just as I like it!"

[tastes it]

...

...

...

"...Yeah??? OK! I can fuck with that!"

[puts glass down]

"Well, it feels somewhat watered down, yet also a bit saccharine; and the chocolate flavor is clearly different from what I'm used to; but on the whole it's not bad, it's just different, and 'different' is exactly what I was expecting. Really, as a whole this milk is largely indistinguishable from a different brand of dairy chocolate milk I've had previously."

[gulps down the rest of the glass]

"I mean, you know, it's not like the flavor on its own is preferable to what I'm already used to — God knows this costs a bit more as well — but I would gladly only drink chocolate milk that tastes slightly 'off' if it means less animal abuse. This hardly counts as any sort of sacrifice."

[drinks two more glasses]

"Honestly, I take back what I said, this is just good. Why on Earth isn't this just the standard milk already‽ Why was this stuff just hidden away in some random corner of the grocery store, where I nearly missed it completely‽ I mean I know the answer already, I'm just saying it's messed up..."

It tastes just as good as chicken. I'm a believer in the soy curds now

I never had this but I'm thinking of trying it - minus the eyeballs. Marshmallows in my drink isn't my thing. Instead I'll pretend eyes are there.

If you’re looking for a spine-tingling Halloween cocktail, look no further! This ghost cocktail is every bit spooky and satisfying. Featuring ingredients like simple syrup, heavy cream, vodka, club soda and pure vanilla extract, this Halloween vodka cocktail is sure to get the party started. This creamy cocktail is even more fun to enjoy thanks to the sparkly black sugar rim and creepy marshmallow eyeballs that look up at you with every sip.

One of our most popular Halloween alcoholic drinks, this spooky sipper is ready to serve in just 10 minutes and will definitely have everyone drinking in spooky style.

INGREDIENTS

Rimming Sugar

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 10 drops black food color

Marshmallow Eyeballs

• 1 large marshmallow
• 2 drops black food color

Cocktail

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons simple syrup
• 1 ounce vodka
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup cold club soda

INSTRUCTIONS

1. For the Rimming Sugar, mix sugar and vanilla on a small plate. Add food color; mix until sugar is evenly tinted. Wet rim of beverage glass with water. Dip rim of glass into black sugar to lightly coat.

2. For the Marshmallow Eyeballs, cut marshmallow crosswise in half. Place 1 drop food color in center of cut-side of each marshmallow half.

3. Fill cocktail shaker two-thirds full with ice. Add cream, simple syrup, vodka and vanilla; shake until well mixed and chilled. Strain into rimmed beverage glass. Top with club soda. Garnish with Marshmallow Eyeballs. Serve immediately.

The link is at the McCormick website. I stripped out the adverting - "McCormick® All Natural Pure Vanilla Extract" etc.

https://www.mccormick.com/recipes/beverages-cocktails/ghost-busted-cocktail

I'm getting out of control in c/food today. That's three posts today and it's only the early afternoon. Don't worry. It's probably a one day thing. Probably.

Arnold Palmer (drink)

The Arnold Palmer is a non-alcoholic beverage that combines iced tea and lemonade. The name refers to the professional American golfer Arnold Palmer, who was known to often request and drink this beverage combination; some attribute the invention of the beverage to the golfer.