Fourth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

btw feel free to suggest/nominate post titles

Post about fandom! Or whatever! Whether it's a rave about some obscure series, or an essay dissecting every last reason why some internet-famous author should rethink their career, someone will probably read it at some point! We also just chat about life.

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: Food

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

In my case it would be for ethical reasons (environment mostly), though I do also need to lose a bit of weight. It'd be helpful to be someone who just loved veg and non-meat protein sources, especially because it seems like it'd be much harder to *over*eat that way, but I usually don't like the taste much, AND I never seem to get any energy from them. I find that when I have a meal with a meat substitute (eg: veggie sausage rolls), I may as well have not had a meal and I'm super tired until I get some meat again. Very convenient, given my tastes. Means I'm always a bit like 'how much of this is me making excuses because I like the taste of meat and how much is this really an issue?' I've noticed that friends who seem to cope better on a veggie diet seem to like the taste of those foods much more than I do, which makes me wonder if some people just suit it better; for my own part I have no idea what people are talking about when they say 'meat sweats'-- but bit of a leap! xD maybe it's just bc I eat pretty small portions in general and I don't change them when I switch to other things, so if I'm just about hitting reasonable nutrition with nutrient+calorie-rich food, I fail to get that when I switch to less rich food. I dunno, but I think things like the veggie sausage rolls must still be pretty high in fat but there's a huge difference between veggie ones and meat ones for me.

Re: Food

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, meat substitutes are usually fairly calorie-rich so I'm a bit surprised you're still getting no energy from them. I'm not really an expert on them, though, because I don't like them. They feel like a poor imitation of real meat and since I'm not a vegetarian I just wonder why I'm not eating real meat to begin with.

I do like most popular protein sources, though - it's just best for me if I don't think of them as 'substitutes' and enjoy them as they are. I guess it helps that I love tofu, but there's a huge variety of vegetarian dishes out there so I'd recommend just trying out some until you find some you like. If you have Asian grocery stores near by, a few things I'd probably recommend are:

1. Five-spice dried bean curd (豆腐干), which is a very firm, flavorful tofu that work well in stir-fries. I like to match it with what I'm cooking, so I cut it into strips and serve with bean sprouts and thin-sliced celery and carrots, or into cubes with squash and potatoes.
2. Tofu skin (豆腐皮 or 腐竹), which are thin sheets of tofu that you can chop up for stir-fries, salads, or soup. They show up a lot in Buddhist vegetarian recipes like Buddha's Delight (罗汉菜) or vegetarian goose. I also use these as wrappers for bean skin rolls (百叶包), but the filling for those are meat so they're probably not a good vegetarian recommendation.
3. Fried tofu pouch (油揚げ abura-age), which I am still learning to cook with but which is a nice addition to noodles or soups.

I think I will pan-fry some tofu tonight. I just like tofu a lot.