Was ißt man als Veganer?, Nori Rolls, and Johnny Carson
Food diary:
Breakfast: Cocoa Berries
Lunch: 2 nori rolls, steamed broccoli w/ BBQ and ketchup
Dinner: Arugula salad w/ peach salsa and Homemade Rawmesan, Cocoa Berries
First up today was general blog-reading time, then I walked to Cardio Barre (where Ashlee Simpson was in my class today). I stopped at Whole Foods for some groceries afterward and then walked back. I bought this lovely heirloom tomato.
I had two of these nori rolls for lunch. They included cabbage, broccoli, carrots, red bell pepper, onion, and snow peas, and the paste is miso, garlic, wasabi, and umeboshi plum paste.
And check out this comparison of the storebought Rawmesan with my homemade version.
Storebought:
Homemade:
Don't they look almost exactly the same? And they taste almost exactly the same, too, except that I use more nooch.
One of the blog posts I read this morning was this one:
http://tierfrei-mampfen.blogspot.com/2010/07/was-it-man-als-veganer-teil-1456.html
It's in German, so read it if you can. But if not, I'll summarize it for you. She's responding to the question, "If you don't eat meat, cheese, eggs, etc., what CAN you eat?" And it's very interesting, but the comments she says people make to her are exact translations of the comments we get here in America: "Was? Kein Käse, kein Fleisch, keine Eier, keine Butter?? Was ISST man den da? DAS wäre mir zu langweilig, da darf man ja GAR nix essen! Also nee, dafür bin ich viel zu sehr Genießer. Ich esse und genieße so gerne, ich möchte mich nicht so quälen wie Du!".
Pretty much - "What? No cheese, no meat, no eggs, no butter?? Then what DO you eat? That would be too boring for me, you can't eat anything at all! And I like food too much, I enjoy eating and I wouldn't want to torture myself like you do."
She says the "Denkfehler" - sorry, it's such a good word, it means error in reasoning or "thought mistake" - that people are making is they imagine what THEY eat all day, subtract all the animal products, and are left with almost nothing. You take away the eggs and bacon from breakfast and you have butterless toast or dry cereal. Lunch is a lettuce sandwich with no mayo. Dinner is rice and... broccoli. But that's obviously not how we eat! People don't realize that we completely restructure our eating habits. In the blog she gives an example of a dinner party she went to where the host assured her that she would have food to eat. So when she showed up, everyone else was eating pork with mushroom sauce, au gratin potatoes, and salad with ham and cheese. Her plate had dry potatoes and some lettuce with oil and vinegar. And no surprise, everyone thought that being a vegan must be super miserable. And of course, if that's what being a vegan meant, then it would be rather miserable! What everyone doesn't know is that vegan food is freakin' delicious, there are a billion things we can eat (there are many more types of vegetables than there are types of meat most people eat), and most of us are pretty freakin' happy with our food and our general lifestyle. Now I don't eat the most exciting diet in the world, but there are a few reasons for that - 1) I'm lazy, 2) I'm easy to please, 3) I'm cooking for one, and 4) I'm an actress in Hollywood and thinness is a job requirement.
So anyways, I just loved that post and I wanted to share it with you.
After lunch, I watched the first disc of the Ultimate Carson collection - the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson's greatest hit moments from the 60's-80's. I had never seen a show with Johnny Carson before, but my mom said that her dad watched him every night for pretty much his entire adult life. And watching the clips I started to get an idea of just what made Carson so beloved. He wasn't the funniest guy in the world, but he laughed a lot and obviously thought other people were funny. Mom always wondered why people would want to listen to Bob and Tom when it's just people laughing but Carson was definitely the forerunner of that phenomenon. One of the most common gags involved pairing up Carson with some exotic animal and watching it climb on him and poop on his desk while he laughed. Interestingly enough, I was listening to The Business on KCRW on my iPod while walking today - it's an awesome podcast about the business side of Hollywood - and there was an interview with Joan Rivers. She said she was good friends with Johnny and a frequent guest on his show and when she got her own (soon to be ill-fated) talk show, he was the first person she called. He was furious and never spoke to her again, EVER. So it seems he was probably not the nicest person in real life. But this is America, and this is showbiz, and we never like to humanize our idols. ;)
Breakfast: Cocoa Berries
Lunch: 2 nori rolls, steamed broccoli w/ BBQ and ketchup
Dinner: Arugula salad w/ peach salsa and Homemade Rawmesan, Cocoa Berries
First up today was general blog-reading time, then I walked to Cardio Barre (where Ashlee Simpson was in my class today). I stopped at Whole Foods for some groceries afterward and then walked back. I bought this lovely heirloom tomato.
I had two of these nori rolls for lunch. They included cabbage, broccoli, carrots, red bell pepper, onion, and snow peas, and the paste is miso, garlic, wasabi, and umeboshi plum paste.
And check out this comparison of the storebought Rawmesan with my homemade version.
Storebought:
Homemade:
Don't they look almost exactly the same? And they taste almost exactly the same, too, except that I use more nooch.
One of the blog posts I read this morning was this one:
http://tierfrei-mampfen.blogspot.com/2010/07/was-it-man-als-veganer-teil-1456.html
It's in German, so read it if you can. But if not, I'll summarize it for you. She's responding to the question, "If you don't eat meat, cheese, eggs, etc., what CAN you eat?" And it's very interesting, but the comments she says people make to her are exact translations of the comments we get here in America: "Was? Kein Käse, kein Fleisch, keine Eier, keine Butter?? Was ISST man den da? DAS wäre mir zu langweilig, da darf man ja GAR nix essen! Also nee, dafür bin ich viel zu sehr Genießer. Ich esse und genieße so gerne, ich möchte mich nicht so quälen wie Du!".
Pretty much - "What? No cheese, no meat, no eggs, no butter?? Then what DO you eat? That would be too boring for me, you can't eat anything at all! And I like food too much, I enjoy eating and I wouldn't want to torture myself like you do."
She says the "Denkfehler" - sorry, it's such a good word, it means error in reasoning or "thought mistake" - that people are making is they imagine what THEY eat all day, subtract all the animal products, and are left with almost nothing. You take away the eggs and bacon from breakfast and you have butterless toast or dry cereal. Lunch is a lettuce sandwich with no mayo. Dinner is rice and... broccoli. But that's obviously not how we eat! People don't realize that we completely restructure our eating habits. In the blog she gives an example of a dinner party she went to where the host assured her that she would have food to eat. So when she showed up, everyone else was eating pork with mushroom sauce, au gratin potatoes, and salad with ham and cheese. Her plate had dry potatoes and some lettuce with oil and vinegar. And no surprise, everyone thought that being a vegan must be super miserable. And of course, if that's what being a vegan meant, then it would be rather miserable! What everyone doesn't know is that vegan food is freakin' delicious, there are a billion things we can eat (there are many more types of vegetables than there are types of meat most people eat), and most of us are pretty freakin' happy with our food and our general lifestyle. Now I don't eat the most exciting diet in the world, but there are a few reasons for that - 1) I'm lazy, 2) I'm easy to please, 3) I'm cooking for one, and 4) I'm an actress in Hollywood and thinness is a job requirement.
So anyways, I just loved that post and I wanted to share it with you.
After lunch, I watched the first disc of the Ultimate Carson collection - the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson's greatest hit moments from the 60's-80's. I had never seen a show with Johnny Carson before, but my mom said that her dad watched him every night for pretty much his entire adult life. And watching the clips I started to get an idea of just what made Carson so beloved. He wasn't the funniest guy in the world, but he laughed a lot and obviously thought other people were funny. Mom always wondered why people would want to listen to Bob and Tom when it's just people laughing but Carson was definitely the forerunner of that phenomenon. One of the most common gags involved pairing up Carson with some exotic animal and watching it climb on him and poop on his desk while he laughed. Interestingly enough, I was listening to The Business on KCRW on my iPod while walking today - it's an awesome podcast about the business side of Hollywood - and there was an interview with Joan Rivers. She said she was good friends with Johnny and a frequent guest on his show and when she got her own (soon to be ill-fated) talk show, he was the first person she called. He was furious and never spoke to her again, EVER. So it seems he was probably not the nicest person in real life. But this is America, and this is showbiz, and we never like to humanize our idols. ;)
