Cornute needs a cooking icon.

[corrvin]

I've recommended the highly amusing and educational Cooking for Engineers before, but this week's drool-over-pictures amusement is 101 Cookbooks.

The author is a vegetarian, but frequently adapts recipes by substituting other ingredients (chickpeas for chicken, in one noodle dish). I'm considering trying a few ideas, notably the spice-paste for a noodle soup, but it also leads me to think about my own cooking philosophy.

My philosophy is this: I don't eat not-food. I don't want fake-fat or sorta-sugar or meat-substitute. If my body wants fat and sweet and meaty, then there's two possible reasons. Either I really need those things, and not actually getting them is starving myself, or I don't need them but just want the rush of eating them-- in which case I should be learning to eat and enjoy good things, not faking my brain out with stuff my body can't even digest.

I mean, think about it. Those little silver garnishes you put on cakes? It says not to eat them. Why? They're not digestible (and you could break a tooth). You tell kids not to swallow too much chewing gum, because other than the flavoring, it's not digestible either. Why have we grown up into a generation that now thinks it's okay to put stuff in your mouth and swallow it when it's just faked-up food?

A while back when I was still reading the Straight Dope, someone complained about sugar-free candies. The guy was diabetic and prior to his diagnosis had eaten a fair amount of candy (no pointing fingers, we've almost all done it). Now that he was diabetic, he was upset that instead of $1.50 a bag of 30-40 candies, he had to spend $4-5 to get the same amount of candy every day. Then, someone had to comment, "You're not supposed to eat 30 pieces of candy at a sitting."

And there you have the primal concept. "You aren't supposed to eat that much damn candy." Even if it's no-fat no-sugar no-calorie tasty stuff, the time you spend eating it is time you're training your taste buds to beg for better living through chemistry, not to crave what's actually good for your body.

This is one reason I've had trouble taking the vegan folks terribly seriously. I understand that there's a moral or ethical choice to not eating cute little puppies animals or animal products, but it's hard for me to take it seriously when most of the recipes I see talk about meat-substitutes and milk-substitutes and egg-substitutes. If you have to make your food taste like something else to be acceptable, doesn't that make you wonder if you shouldn't be eating the things you make it taste like? (Or, as above, if maybe you shouldn't-- but you're just feeding the craving, like a former heroin addict who's just switched to methadone.)

Anyways, tomorrow's cooking project will start with a shopping trip:

Disposable soup containers for the freezer
Price new microwaves (ours arced and sparked itself out)
Day-old bread rack, rye or pumpernickel.
Olive oil (we're about out).
A bag of chickpeas or other beans for soup
Possibly some split peas
Pre-cubed ham (I am so lazy, but I love this stuff)
Vegetable stock, condensed
Golden mushroom soup if I can find it
Fresh garlic and jalapenos
Broccoli and cucumber and zucchini
Little baby new potatoes
A sweet potato
Egg noodles and various other sorts of noodles

I think what I want to do is have a day of making and freezing soup. The bread and oil will be for cutting thin strips and making a sort of long dippable crouton thing, along with regular croutons.

I really loathe green peas by themselves, but I'm wondering if maybe split pea soup would taste okay with other stuff in it, like avocado and garlic and ham.

Golden mushroom soup and chicken bits and celery sounds divine. If not, I'll broth up some chicken and add a bit of milk to it.

I might make three or four different things tomorrow; we'll see.

I should post pictures. Too bad I can't share with most of you.