Tuesday 8 July 2008

very exciting jacket potatoes



I've been traveling in England for work, which means that I've been eating a lot of jacket potatoes and beans. It kinda got me into a baked potato mood. Baked sweet potato stuffed with broccoli. Broccoli: Cumin, ground white poppyseeds, onion, tomato, chilli, ginger, methi leaves broccoli, graram masala, okara, salt, lemon juice. Oh yeah. Pop the cumin in a tiny bit of hot oil, then add the onions, garam masala and poppyseeds. When the onions brown add the tomato, chili, ginger and methi leaves and let that reduce to a mush. Then add the broccoli and cook that. Stir in the okara, salt and lemon juice at the end. Eat and make little happy noises. These two things go so well together. I also had a glass of Peckham's Sauvignon Blanc, which is vegan, even though it's not on the Peckham's vegan wine list. The nice wine dude there checked for me. Wooohoooo!

And a little tiny rant to all you "vegans" out there who eat fish. Fish is not a vegetable. Please consult your 1st grade biology curriculum if you need to review the differences between animals and plants. Sheesh. Just call yourself omnivores if you are one, okay? Because it confuses people, and then when I go out into the world, people offer me fish and then I have to turn it down, and they inevitably tell me about some vegan they met who ate fish (or chicken, or ...and this is my favorite...pepperoni). For crying out loud, if you want to take the moral high ground of being vegan, be vegan, because clearly you understand you should be vegan if you're bothering to lie about it. If you're just a picky eater, than own up to it. If you're on a diet, then ... well...own up to that. Just stop pretending like you don't know the difference between an animal and a plant, because if you *really* don't get that, I'm going to have to staple a dunce cap to your head.

Bonus feature: photo of my favorite stop sign in the world. It makes me smile every day on the way to work. Every. Single. Day.

Ranty ranty broccoli music: joan jett. fake friends.

6 comments:

Tuimeltje said...

There are fish-eating "vegans"? I've come across the "vegetarians" and met people who thought vegans were those kinds of vegetarians who didn't eat fish either, but actual fish-eating "vegans"? That's a new one to me...

sinead said...

In my experience, there are a lot of fake vegans out there. Part of me is glad that people are at least vaguely concious about consuming animal products, and part of me wants to slap them upside the head for making my life difficult/not getting it. Since slapping people upside the head is probably Not Vegan, I resort to ranting on a blog that nonvegans probably don't read anyways. The one that got me was the pepperoni-eating "vegan" that I met. Also, the 98% vegans. What? Like, you live by your ethics 98% of the time? ....okay. must. calm. down.

Anonymous said...

Ok, I have a friend with whom I must spend a good five minutes every time I see him arguing to prove that fish are animals. "No, fish are something else," he says, "So you can eat fish, right?" I think he does it just to watch me make faces, though.

I also knew a fish-eating "vegan" poser. She just wanted to fit in with a certain crowd and image. I once respected her as a compassionate being, but upon learning the truth about her "veganism," she not only lost the respect the title had gained her, she had also dug herself into the negative for lying.

sinead said...

Yeah. Being vegan is easy. Dealing with nonvegans is hard. Dealing with fake vegans is .... well.... a test of my belief that violence is not a good solution.

Jake said...

What I find hilarious is the people who say that, while fish are animals, they're not *meat*. So vegetarians can eat them. I've never seen anyone claim to be vegan and eat fish though.

sinead said...

Fish not being meat is a result of some sort of random church rule, and anyone who bases their taxonomy on church rules has *big* problems.

Fake vegans are sneaky. They usually say something like: "I'm vegan, except for I eat fish." I think the strategy is to lie as blatantly as possible and hope that no one calls you on it, because everyone will assume they misheard.