County Fair, Bookstores, Cookbooks, and Being a Road Hazard

I don't know how these long post-less periods occur. I'm always thinking about my next post. I sign in. I check up on my account. I read other blogs I follow. I think about things I would like to talk about. It just somehow doesn't happen. I think part of it is because the next entry, ideally would be a Fiction Update, but I haven't made any progress, so there's no point to that. Instead, I'll blather on about random stuff.

Went to the Alameda County Fair on the Fourth of July.

I love the fair, even though I hate amusement parks (and one of the biggest draws of the fair for some people is all the carnival rides). I love seeing the diversity of the visitors (well, at least out here), the interesting booths, the warm weather, the live music (county fair karaoke FTW!), it's all just wonderful. Not a huge fan of the farm animal displays, but...

On to today. I have a like-hate relationship with big chain mega bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble. For one, I love privately owned independent bookstores and like to support small business owners like that. You find really interesting things on the shelves of an indie bookstore-- at Borders, all you've got are the big bestsellers. No niche genres, no out-of-print books, no obscure, hard-to-find titles, no local or small-time authors. Mega bookstores are just kind of soulless. If I had more of a choice, I wouldn't shop at Borders for everything. Maybe just periodicals. Unfortunately, the nearest private bookstore had an owner who was just... hrm. Let me explain.

It was a hole in the wall. Dark, cool. A bookstore that could fit in the palm of the main library's hand, so to speak. The labyrinthine rows of shelves reached for the ceiling. The whole place smelled like the public library, but older and dustier-- if that's possible. It was perfect. I visited twice, back in the days when I lived with my sister and walked home from campus. The first time, the bookstore owner, a tall, thin woman brown-haired woman, didn't greet me when I walked in smiling.

She stared. She eyed me as I browsed. She never verbally acknowledged me in any way, not when I walked in, not when I left. Yet she engaged heartily in casual banter with other patrons, at least a few of whom I assumed were regulars. Still, that's no reason for iciness towards a newcomer. I'm not someone who takes bringing race into matters lightly, but I honestly think she had negative perceptions of me because of that. I had two options. 1) Continue frequenting the small store, braving her coldness in order to disprove all her negative assumptions about me, and have a nice bookstore to frequent. 2) Stop attending a store at which I am not welcome. I chose the latter, obviously. Why give her any money?

The second reason the whenever I walk into a bookstore, the nearest Borders in my case, I always... always... walk out with something. I don't understand it. I can't restrain myself. A trip to Borders almost always means spending money I shouldn't necessarily be spending. Take for example my latest find: The Ultimate Book Of Vegan Cooking.

I'm almost positive that this book doesn't contain any information I don't already know. I've been vegan for a little while now, and was veg before that. But how could I resist? Look at that thing. It seduces you with its huge, full-color photos and cheapest-vegan-cookbook-EVAR price of six dollars. Veganomicon is thirty dollars off the shelf-- thus, why I don't own a copy of Veganomicon (yet). The book I bought today isn't as thick, and probably not as useful, but full color photos, for six dollars? Okay!

That's Borders for you. They have a huge "Bargain Books" section filled with relatively cheap stuff. Four bucks, five bucks, six bucks. It's typically full of how-to books, inexpensive coffee-table books, cheap kits (like a sushi kit that comes with a bamboo rolling mat, chopsticks, etc.), and imports like this one. I don't quite get how that works, because usually stuff from other countries is more expensive, but I never claimed to be an economic wonder kid. I assume these books are Borders exclusive, in this country anyway.

This new book, printed by Hermes House publishing, is from London. I will admit, that's part of the draw for me. I love books from the UK for some reason. Something about the clean design, the use of Helvetica or Arial font, the slightly different language (e.g. "sultanas" rather than "golden raisins"), and the different measurement units. My first vegetarian cookbook ever was a tiny spiral-bound thing called Cookshelf Vegetarian, and it served me quite well. I bought it out of pure, desperate need; I was new to cooking for myself regularly in general, and didn't know what recipes other than my mom's to begin with. The recipes were simple but helpful, and the pictures were gorgeous. I'll be honest, I regularly sit down with cookbooks and just look at the pictures.

After Cookshelf, I bought another cookbook from the bargain section at Stonestown Borders, purely on a whim. It's called Vegetarian Cooking and Vegetable Classics.

Interestingly, it was published by Hermes House as well. Unfortunately, it's not exactly as stellar an example of vegetarian cookbooks; it has a chapter called "Virtually Vegetarian", which includes recipes with fish and other seafood.

I kid you not.

...What?

The intro below says, "For all those demi-vegetarians who just cannot resist fish and seafood, here is a selection of starter and main-course dishes that combine unusual vegetables and herbs with fish in nutritious and flavoursome ways."

Seriously? "Cannot resist"? Really? And yeah, that's a fish filet in the photo behind the box.

Whose idea was it to publish a vegetarian cookbook with an entire chapter on fish and seafood? I understand that they're trying to appeal to pescatarians. That's fine, but that's not vegetarianism. It has no place in a vegetarian cookbook, especially considering the fact that many if not most vegetarians are so for ethical reasons, and so the idea of not "resisting" is out of the question. If pescatarians want to learn recipes with fish in them, there are countless omni-centric cookbooks for them to choose from. Why pick a vegetarian cookbook for such an outlet? It defeats the purpose of the book. One picks up a vegetarian cookbook to get away from flesh. By that logic, I guess the vegan book I picked up has a chapter on eggs and dairy called "Pseudo Vegan"-- because some vegans "cannot resist" omelettes and cheese. Makes no sense. Nice work there Hermes House, -1 for you. Now I've learned to look through a book thoroughly before purchasing.

Something scary happened to me on my way back home. I was at a red light, and I was turning right. I paused, and prepared to make a right turn on red, which is legal after a stop, right? Right. So I look to my right. Three lanes, all clear. Left? Three lanes, all clear. I also assumed that the light would change soon, and that the people heading straight (in the direction I was coming from) would soon have a green light, thus making my turn completely clear and care-free.

Then I made an error in judgment. There were no cars coming from the direction that had the right of way, so I assumed I'd have enough time to cross all three lanes of traffic during my right turn, and wind up in the far left lane.

Wrong!

All of a sudden I see a Honda Accord off behind me and to my left in my peripheral vision, just clearing the intersection. It was careening towards me, and technically, it had the right of way.

Oh crap. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, I thought midway through my turn, still in the middle of the three lane road. I gunned it and accelerated so fast I thought I'd hit the concrete road divider I was heading toward.

I've gotten too lax behind the wheel, and I think part of it is because breaking rules is part of what I deem "aggressive/defensive driving". I know there's no logic behind that, but it's true. In person, I'm not a confrontational person. I don't speak loudly, (though that's partly a physical thing-- I just have a soft voice) and I always try to maintain a certain degree of calm courtesy with others. So I think people don't always take people like me seriously when they first meet me, or actively try to take advantage of people like me. I feel like behind the wheel, I can't afford to be the person who's not driving defensively and/or aggressively.

But I'm beginning to see advantage to the paranoid driver I was when I first started. Being constantly on-edge means I'm less likely to put myself in a situation where I could get knocked around by some other car, like I did today. That is all. No more shortcut-driving, or whatever I'll call my current state. Just plain, simple careful driving.


That's all, I guess, for this massive beast of a post. Good day all.


P.S. Yeah, I know about the bad Paint job on those pics, esp. the first one. I'm working on a PC today, so *shrug*.

Ode to Pancakes

I like pancakes.

No really, I do. I really enjoy pancakes. Breakfast ‘o’ champions, in my book.

Now that I make my own pancakes from scratch, I love pancakes. Strong, healthy, hearty pancakes are warm and filling to begin with. Krusteaz and Bisquick ain’t got nothin’ on good old fashioned whole grain flour (whether the grain you’re using is wheat or anything else). Add to that the triumphant feeling one obtains from mixing her/his own flour and baking powder and other pancakey whatnots into a giant metal bowl and you’ve got a breakfast to be proud of.

I like waffles too. We even have a waffle maker floating around somewhere in the garage. There was a point in time, maybe eight to ten years ago, when my family would make pancakes at least every weekend, because dad gone it, we had a waffle maker, and we could. That waffle maker taught me an interesting thing about the vital differences between waffles and pancakes.

While the convenience of having a machine do the cooking for you is, honestly, incredible, that doesn’t mean that your waffles will turn out perfectly. Waffles are a finicky bunch with unpredictable personalities. You have to measure your batter perfectly or you’ll end up with thin, brittle, waffle-like biscuits that will make your breakfast plate cry tears of condensation. God forbid those crispy misfits actually have holes in them. It’s one thing to have a waffle that fails to be crisp on the outside while soft on the inside—the waffle ideal, for sure. It adds insult to injury when your waffle is cardboard and won’t even hold your syrup in its admittedly clever square-shaped basins. Oh, the pain of watching perfectly good syrup dribble straight through your food, pooling beneath your waffle’s steamy underbelly.

No, it’s in those ways that waffles fall short of their syrup-coated cousin, the pancake. True, waffles have an ingenious syrup-reserving design. The late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said it perfectly: “I like waffles better than pancakes. Because waffles are like pancakes with syrup traps. They say to syrup, ‘You ain't going anywhere, don't even be trying to creep down the sides. Just rest in these squares, if one square is full, move on. When you hit butter, split up.’"

Syrup traps. Touché.

But how can one resist the subtle, seductive curves of a perfectly round, perfectly brown pancake? How does one refrain from salivating at the sight of an amber-colored drizzle sliding gently… gently down its smooth exterior?

This isn’t to say I always make the perfect pancake. I’d say I have a 40/60 percent chance of burning one of my pancakes, usually the second one since the pan’s already so hot at that point. Since I only make two, I pour them thick, and since it’s hard to check if a huge pancake is done on one side, I tend to overcook that side. It’s a bad habit, I know. If I worked in the kitchen at an IHOP my behind would be on the curb by now.

These days I like my pancakes best with agave nectar, Earth Balance, and a tofu scramble on top. Oh wow. Yeah, that’s a treat. That’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner right there. I only recently learned how to make a tofu scramble worth the effort. It’s not the seasoning that makes the tofu, like in other tofu dishes. It’s not even the tofu that makes the tofu scramble suitably scrambley. It’s the other stuff inside the pan. I used to think that well seasoned tofu was enough. Lightly seasoned eggs were enough, back when I ate eggs. Simple seasoning might fine be for other tofu dishes, but no. No, no, that is where I was misled. Tofu scrambles need glorious heaps of vegetables in order to be worthwhile. They make for a good opportunity to clean out the crisper. A sausage substitute or pan-fried soyrizo goodness will also serve you well. Add that, plus good seasoning, plus a carefully planned approach to what goes in the pan and when, and then tofu scramble sings.

I mention all this breakfast stuff because I bought agave nectar for the first time a few months ago. And wow. Wow. That stuff is delicious. It pours better than honey and maple syrup, works as a sweetener in lots of different ways, and it tastes milder (and in my opinion better) than honey. The only drawback is that it’s kind of controversial—some say that because it’s supposedly insanely high in fructose, it shouldn’t be consumed at all and to call it a healthy substitute for anything is completely wrong. Hm. Disturbing. There doesn’t seem to be a perfect sweetener out there. Until I manage to buy some brown rice syrup or some other alternative, it’ll still be better than so-called “maple syrup”, which is mostly high fructose corn syrup anyway unless you’re buying the super-pricey fancy-schmancy stuff that I really can’t afford right now. The happy medium, of course, was comparably inexpensive agave nectar, which you can now find in two-packs at Costco!

The bottom line was that I really needed something to put on my pancakes. The last time I made pancakes, I failed to realize that I’d run. Out. Of. Syrup.

Tragic.

That’s one of the drawbacks of both pancakes and waffles, at least your typical breakfast ones. They must be eaten with something. Trying to eat a couple of pancakes alone. It’s like the whole “seven saltines in a minute” scenario. After a while you just can’t stuff any more into your mouth. There gets to be a point of Peak Pancake. This is why I only make two moderately big pancakes at once, rather than a stack of them. I never have to feed that many people anyway. There’s another Mitch Hedberg joke about pancakes that I must admit is completely true: “As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and end the show strong. …You can’t be like pancakes. You’re all happy at first, but by the end, you’re sick of ‘em.”