The Songs of Johnny Go

If you like salmon, I have a great recipe for salmon and fruit salsa that is teh awesomes. It has only a little bit of dead things, and no dairy at all. And omega-3s! And you can add brown sugar to the salmon when you cook it to make it nice and crispy on the outside, which I like.

I don't know that dead things are so bad in your diet... depends on what shape they take when you eat them, mostly. I've got a recipe for red curry chicken that can easily take tofu if you're really serious about the vegetarian diet, but chicken without breading and creamy sauces and skin is pretty okay for you. Frankly, I think tofu is overrated. Soy is great for you and all, but ick. If it's not fried like crazy, I don't like it, and what's the point of a health food if you have to fry it like crazy to make it palatable?

Maybe this is the time to experiment with cuisines that don't really have much bread/dairy/dead things in? Or some combination of these, anyway. I'm pretty sure the Japanese are onto something with their food - they're one of the longest lived populations on the planet.

Your best bet is drinking water like a fish. And you can be a total dork like me (and I'm copying my roommate here) and get a pedometer and try to do 10,000 steps a day.

All-in-all, excellent goal, sirrah!

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I'm pretty sure the Japanese are onto something with their food - they're one of the longest lived populations on the planet.

They eat tofu. :P

Okay, okay, I'm just teasing in line with my comment below - in all seriousness, the Okinawans in particular have a caloric-restricted diet of white rice, a few greens, fish, and yes, tofu, but not JUST tofu. Which can be prepared a multitude of ways besides frying (I had an almost-all-tofu 9-course meal once, and every course did it differently), but you actually have to think about it as a "food that happens to be healthy," not a "health food." Again, thanks American health industry.

On another note, thank you for the tips w/ fish and chicken and stuff. I'm not dieting but I am learning to cook on my own, so random cooking suggestions I can ferret away for next time I experiment are things I look out for.

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The difference between tofu in American terms and tofu in Japanese terms is that the tofu BELONGS in the Japanese cuisine. The thing that bothers me about tofu as the greatest thing ever is that it's too often a substitute for something else. And don't even start with me about seitan. I think it was created as a punishment for enjoying food.

That's why I think it's best to go to whatever the cuisine is with these things... it was meant to have XYZ ingredients; you don't muck it up and expect the same dish. I think that's one of the reasons why I like Indian food so much (apart from the fact that it's SOOOO TASTY) - the vegetarian food is supposed to be vegetarian. There's nothing left out or substituted or whatever, which is what American cuisine does so often. Veggie burgers and fake chicken nuggets and what have you. I mean, that's great and all, but damnit, eat something real that hasn't been processed into somewhat resembling something else. (generally done poorly. not that the strict vegetarians can tell the difference.)

(this is coming from years of keeping kosher and being, for all intents and purposes, a vegetarian who eats fish when eating out.)

As to the tasty fish/chicken recipes.. fruit salsa is the bestest, and from start to finish the whole meal takes maybe half an hour, and most of that is chopping and waiting for the rice to cook. The chicken dish takes even less preparation - the veggies are canned or frozen, and you just throw it all together and let it cook.

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Well, exactly. Tofu is a foodstuff which belongs in its proper cultural context - of course, a smart cook can kidnap it and put it somewhere else, that's where fusion cuisine* comes from, but do that because you appreciate the food for what it is and what it tastes like, please, not to bastardize it into a poor imitation of something else in a futile effort to count calories.

I tend to think the various Asian cuisines have a pretty sane concept of veggie and non-veggie dishes; namely, the vegetarian dishes really are a meal of their own, and come in categories other than salads or pastas. Buuuuut I'm tremendously biased.

I've heard black bean burgers are pretty good, actually, but since I don't like beans have never tried them.

*Mind you, I find the whole concept of fusion cuisine hilarious because my mother, were she a restaurant cook, would be cooking fusion, and by extension so would I. Dude, that's what happens when colonialism gets into the Asian side of the family tree, and now it's trendy!

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black bean burgers are fine, so far as they go, but calling them burgers calls up a certain collection of associations, and most of them don't match up.

I sort of liken it to the soy milk problem. As a product on its own, soy milk is fine and dandy. But the fact that it has "milk" in the name is immediately misleading, because really, soy milk is nothing like cow milk. (or goat milk or sheep milk or whatever.) I sort of feel the same way about black bean burgers and whatnot. They're fine and even tasty, but the burger part is misleading. Let's face it: there are VERY FEW veggie burgers out there that will taste remotely like real burgers to someone accustomed to eating real burgers. Strict vegetarians are no standard for this, as I said before; they have no idea what meat tastes like anymore.

My mom used to joke (and she probably cribbed this from some political wit) that people who speak English tend to be fat.

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I adore Salmon. I lament that East Coast Salmon isn't quite as orgasmic as West, but it'll do. Hit me with the recipie, please! And the red curry chicken too, please.

Speaking of fish and Omega-3's, I discovered that my local co-op has this canned tuna which is 7 bucks a can, but so fucking worth it. It's individually caught, and cooked in its own can, in its own natual juices, no oil or water or anything. It's amazing. I don't drain it and eat it straight from the can.

I find tofu spongey and bland, and no matter how many times my family tells me it can be served in other ways, they KEEP making it spongey and bland! That said, there's this wonderful veggie Chinese place in town that does mock-meat dishes with tofu... oh! Their General Tso's chicken is fantastic! THAT'S good tofu! The texture, along with the sauce, marvelous!

I do drink tons of water, and will try to drink even more. But as a result, I have old man bladder, as you may recall. I pee every hour or something.

Wait'll you see what I'm doing all this for! If it all turns out right, that is...

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email me and I'll send it to you - I don't have them here at work.

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spacechild.livejournal.com

Adding to this..

Dude, there is an awesome sushi place by my house. Some of the best I've ever had. We can go and rock the healthy goodness.

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little-dinosaur.livejournal.com

Eww, Powerbar. No wonder you were going to throw up. Do smoothies (real smoothies, not the Starbucks kind) and multivitamins and whatever, but stay away from that shit. Gross gross gross.

This, by the way, is the furthest I've ever seen anyone go for a Halloween costume, including the time Omar grew his hair out to style it like Michael Jackson in "Thriller" and the time Griff hired a couple of kids to accessorize his Freddy Krueger outfit.

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No, no, it's a Powerbar "Harvest" bar, which has oats and shit. Far superior. And yes, it's still not brilliant, which is why I dip it in Brown Cow nonfat yogurt, which IS! Brilliant, that is. It's so creamy, it's like pudding.

I'm totally on a smoothie kick, so that's good to hear. A local college sammitch place makes great ones, and I like Naked juice smoothies.

Well, in all honestly, I've needed to tone up my upper body for a while. I'm just using this as a real goal, as if I don't have a goal, well shit, I just put it off and put it off until there's no WAY I'll be able to get fit in time.

But yeah. If I can pull all this together, and get the makeup just right, I am going to have a damn good costume. But looking good in a wifebeater is key at this point. If I can actually look sexy with my shirt off, that'll just make the "contrast" all the better, if you know what I mean.

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I'm picturing "On the Waterfront" era Brando...

*thrills*

Have you convinced anybody to go along with this as Typhoid Mary? And will it open-wound-raping?

(ack, just realized that the pose we did for Halloween last year is alarmingly reminiscent of this OT4 icon of yours, leather jacket and all)

Incidentally, I just got a bucket-full of yogurt and have started eating granola with it like a crazy European-type-person. It's delicious.

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That's really the hope, honestly. Now, there's no way I can be that bulked (and at my height, I think bulking wouldn't work too well), but if I can just get *fit* and *sexy*... then yes. Add gray pinstripe pants, suspenders (not sure what color... black, white, or gray), wifebeater, and shoulder holster... let's just say it'll be a hot summer night in Gotham.

As for my Typhoid, well, I was hoping to maybe talk to this eccentric hippie chick with whom I had a "date" (in that, I hope she knew it was a date, but lord knows), but the poor girl is going through a major financial and housing crisis, between balancing two jobs, that I don't know when the hell we'll even see one another again. So her being my Typhoid is looking slim.

However! A good and sexy ladyfriend of mine (unfortunately married) has offered up her services. As far as back-up plans go, this is certainly one of the more excellent.

Yipes, you're right! Closer than the Alex Ross Joker/Harley in your icon! Subconscious, perhaps?

If you're a yogurt fan, have you had Brown Cow? Mom discovered this nonfat yogurt, and holy GOD, girl, it's like pudding! I can eat it on its own! Throw granola in that, or put that in a smoothie... I forsee only awesomeness.

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I've always liked yogurt... my mom, when I was four or something, sneaked scrambled eggs into my yogurt because she thought I wasn't getting enough protein or something. Sounds delightfully delicious.

Generally, I won't spend money on brand name foods unless I'm very particular about the flavor. Yogurt is almost always good for me, when I'm in the mood, so I don't spend money on it. I save the money for salsa and salmon and produce. Oh, and full-fat ranch dressing, because anything less is bloody awful. Probably I'm missing out on some very tasty stuff.

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Try Brown Cow if you see it. I'm a convert. I now very much wanna make a smoothie with it.

By the way, that minor epiphany I called you about? I was just reading up on Peter Lawford and the Kennedy family... when I realized that perhaps I should read more about Robert F. Kennedy. Do you know much about him? In many respects, just in terms of his attitude toward organized crime, he sounded very much like a real-life Harvey Dent, and that perhaps I could benefit from reading about his exploits. I might be able to lend further credence to my novel's revisions.

So I looked up book of RFK on amazon.com. Here's the editorial description of one:

In the nation's varied memory, Robert Kennedy is a contradictory figure, a hard-bullying McCarthyite obsessed with Hoffa and Castro but also a gentle, poetry-reading herald of a new age bent on stopping the Vietnam War and lifting up the poor. As Evan Thomas (The Wise Men and Man to See) writes, both liberals and conservatives have their own spin on his legacy, with predictably different visions of what he would have done if he had lived to be our 37th president. As it turns out, none of the Good Bobby/Bad Bobby projections are right, and none are completely wrong either. In sorting through the myths and the truths, Thomas provides a detailed portrait of a man centrally engaged in most of the important issues of the postwar era, and concludes that the best way to understand him is "fear":

"He was brave because he was afraid. His monsters were too large and close at hand to simply flee. He had to turn and fight them.... He became a one-man underground, honeycombed with hidden passages, speaking in code, trusting no one completely, ready to face the firing squad--but also knowing when to slip away to fight again another day. Although he affected simplicity and directness, he became an extraordinarily complicated and subtle man. His shaking hands and reedy voice, his groping for words as well as meaning, his occasional resort to subterfuge, do not diminish his daring. Precisely because he was fearful and self-doubting, his story is an epic of courage."

RFK was born after the chosen siblings had been established in the Kennedy clan. He originally had low standing in the family hierarchy. Thomas describes how the "runt" of the family, the one not born and raised for power and whose only ambition was to please the father who ignored him, turned into the essential son, the defender of the family and mediator between Joe Sr. and JFK. He fleshes out Bobby's role in JFK's campaigns, his testy relations with Martin Luther King, his middle-ground stance on integration, his performance during the Cuban missile crisis, and his genuine concern for the poor. He reveals the truth behind such events as the vice-presidential appointment of Lyndon Johnson as well as the famous calls from the Kennedy brothers, which got Martin Luther King out of jail. He also tries to untangle the webs obscuring the Kennedys' involvement in Castro assassination plots, their relations with Marilyn Monroe, and RFK's guilt over his brother's death. And finally, he, too, speculates on what kind of president one of history's great what-ifs might have made. The picture he paints--of a sensitive, courageous, and determined man on the verge of achieving greatness--is more complex and human than any we've had before, and reminds us again of the tragedy of RFK's death. --Lesley Reed

Now, while obviously there are a number of differences between RFK and Harvey (Harvey's movie-star good looks and charisma, RFK's womanizing, just to name a few simply from this description)... none the less, wow, there could be more parallels than I could have expected. I'm absolutely gonna need to read this book.

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treyhawk.livejournal.com

Stay away from the PowerBars and their ilk. They really don't do anything for you unless you're really trying to bulk up in a hurry and you can spend 16 hours a day at the gym. Otherwise, they are not well metabolised by the body, and you will lose most of the nutrients before the body can make use of them. Smoothies (using fresh fruit) and multivitamins are a much better idea.

I am a pasta hog in my bachelor life diet, so I won't be much help for the veggie meals. Veggie burgers can add protein without much fat, whether in a bun or smothered in a light tomato sauce (which I joking call "veggie loaf"). Red beans and rice works well. There are a number of products among the frozen vegetarian section that can work, but you have to look at the nutrition labels. "Organic" does not necessarily mean "low in fat".

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"Organic" does not necessarily mean "low in fat".

No kidding. Two words: vegan cookies.

And really, much as I want to do everything I can to tone up in the next 1 & 3/4 months, in the long run, I know me, and I'm gonna eat what I'm gonna wanna eat. Diet be damned! I love meat, I love red meat (but don't eat it often, as I actually get dizzy from grease), I love bread, and pasta, and cheese.

But I would like to get a sensible balance of all these things. Even the occasional Oreo cookie (the gooey ones made WITH crushed Oreos, oh god, wow).

So yeah, don't worry too much about veggie help. Just sensible food that tastes good, that's all I ask! Also, stuff that can be made quickly is a plus, as I'm often busy, lazy, and hungry.

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civilbloodshed.livejournal.com

Dude, I went to a veagn restaurant and they made meatloaf out of seitan and taco seasoning. Your idea is FAR better.

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This is where I resent the American diet industry for taking away the option of suggesting tofu. It is a worthwhile and tasty foodstuff! (Coming from a carnivorous omnivore, just to establish my non-veg cred here.)

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I said it to Bloo, and I'll say it here, tofu is just too often spongey and rubbery and bland. The only place that makes it with appropriate firmness is a local vegetarian Chinese place that does mock-meat dishes. Absolutely delicious.

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