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    9. Surviving vegetarianism as a non-vegetarian chef

      ~food Text 715 words
      My SO decided that she'd be a vegetarian after watching the most recent Avatar movie almost a year ago. I am the kind of person that will spend hours perfectly managing a charcoal smoker to make...

      My SO decided that she'd be a vegetarian after watching the most recent Avatar movie almost a year ago. I am the kind of person that will spend hours perfectly managing a charcoal smoker to make the perfect brisket and whose COVID hobby was making the perfect steak. I love chasing technique and incremental improvements. I hate instant pots and think making soups are boring- I want action and creativity rather than strictly following a recipe. I also enjoy cooking for others but cooking food I don't like to eat and don't like to make saps a lot of the joy out of it. This has been a challenging transition but I just wanted to share what's been working for me so people who are in a similar boat can survive, too, and hear what other people are doing to survive the transition as well.

      1. Embrace the wok. Every meal from here on out can be a 1 pot mise-en-place made by action star. There is so much in making the perfect wok meal that it is crazy. Chinese cooking demystified is a great place to start, as is Kenji's book "The Wok." This single-handedly made me realize that I, too, could love cooking vegetarian.
      2. To add meat flavor and texture into your meal without MSG, embrace the mushroom.
      3. Wheat-started ferments are the next level down on the umami flavor chart without a lot of the vinegar of lacto-fermentation. Fermented soy beans are dope as are various fermented chile peppers (both korean and sichuan are delightful in different ways).
      4. To add meat flavor into your meal without MSG, fermented everything is your friend. The Noma Guide to Fermentation is a great place to start and the pao cai pickle jar is the easiest way to have that on hand if you aren't eating pickles every day. Fuschia Dunlop goes into great detail on that in the Food of Sichuan.
      5. "Alternative meats" never work if the meat is not the centerpiece of your meal. For example, impossible or beyond pork does not work ever in a pork fried rice because fake meats don't have the required fat content. Personally, I also really taste the pea protein flavor and have given up on them entirely. Use fresh mushrooms instead. Vegetarian mapo tofu isn't omitting the pork but rather adding wok-fried diced oyster/shitake/enoki/chanterelle mushrooms (removing some moisture is key- mushrooms have a lot of water in them) and increasing the amount of oil used since the mushrooms are so absorbent. Basically, impossible meat is impossibly bad- embrace vegetarian meals and their offer of totally unique flavors and textures.
      6. A Nakiri or Usuba and a thousand little stackable steel mixing bowls makes the prep experience a lot better. Also, those bowls are like, $2-3/bowl at restaurant supply stores- don't buy them at amazon or walmart. Online restaurant supply stores offer similar prices+shipping.
      7. When making dishes, particularly in a wok, your dish can still have fish sauce and other peoples' can have chinese light soy sauce or japanese soy sauce. BTW- another umami bomb- fermented sauces. Thai fish sauce or garum analogues are for you and soy sauce is for your vegetarian buddies.
      8. There do exist good vegetarian broths that can mimic the flavor but not the gelatenous texture of a homemade chicken stock. AFAIK the only way to come close to that homemade broth mouthfeel is to thicken the soup in a finishing step with some type of flour (white wheat, teff, arrowroot, whatever you have on hand!). My greatest broth successes have involved a mirepoix, shitake mushrooms, piles of garlic, and tons and tons of nori, roasting or broiling it in an oven to add char, and then boiling it down with black peppercorns.
      9. Your new burger recipe is Kenji's black bean burger. It's really good.
      10. Most importantly, you can still cook for yourself sometimes. Just because other people don't eat meat doesn't mean you can't on occasion. You can still make The Dish even if you're the only one eating it. Accept that, when you move, you won't become friends with your butcher anymore and get weird cuts on the sly (h/t to Primal Supply of Philadelphia, the best butcher shop in the world).
      45 votes

    13. My dad is dying soon

      ~talk Text 153 words
      Title says it all. I'm only in my late 20s and I've been his primary care taker for most of my adult life. There isn't any other person I've spent more time with in my entire life. I'm trying to...

      Title says it all. I'm only in my late 20s and I've been his primary care taker for most of my adult life. There isn't any other person I've spent more time with in my entire life. I'm trying to prepare myself for when the moment he's gone and I know it's going crush me all the same.

      This will be my greatest loss in life so far. I know everyone goes through something like this. What did you do when a moment like this came? What did you do when it felt like you couldn't get up? I have know idea how I'm going to get through this, I just have to believe I will.

      EDIT: Thank you for all your kind words and we'll wishes. My dad passed away September 23, 3:30 PM local time with his boys by his side. I'll love him and miss him every single day.

      62 votes

    19. Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix 2023 - Results

      ~sports.motorsports Ask
      Kinda thought it was boring race. A few entertaining passes, but that was it. On to Qatar in two weeks (Oct. 6-8)! Results -- SPOILER POS NO DRIVER CAR LAPS TIME/RETIRED PTS 1 1 Max Verstappen RED...

      Kinda thought it was boring race. A few entertaining passes, but that was it.

      On to Qatar in two weeks (Oct. 6-8)!

      Results -- SPOILER
      POS NO DRIVER CAR LAPS TIME/RETIRED PTS
      1 1 Max Verstappen RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 53 1:30:58.421 0
      2 4 Lando Norris MCLAREN MERCEDES 53 +19.387s 0
      3 81 Oscar Piastri MCLAREN MERCEDES 53 +36.494s 0
      4 16 Charles Leclerc FERRARI 53 +43.998s 0
      5 44 Lewis Hamilton MERCEDES 53 +49.376s 0
      6 55 Carlos Sainz FERRARI 53 +50.221s 0
      7 63 George Russell MERCEDES 53 +57.659s 0
      8 14 Fernando Alonso ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 53 +74.725s 0
      9 31 Esteban Ocon ALPINE RENAULT 53 +79.678s 0
      10 10 Pierre Gasly ALPINE RENAULT 53 +83.155s 0
      11 40 Liam Lawson ALPHATAURI HONDA RBPT 52 +1 lap 0
      12 22 Yuki Tsunoda ALPHATAURI HONDA RBPT 52 +1 lap 0
      13 24 Zhou Guanyu ALFA ROMEO FERRARI 52 +1 lap 0
      14 27 Nico Hulkenberg HAAS FERRARI 52 +1 lap 0
      15 20 Kevin Magnussen HAAS FERRARI 52 +1 lap 0
      NC 23 Alexander Albon WILLIAMS MERCEDES 26 DNF 0
      NC 2 Logan Sargeant WILLIAMS MERCEDES 22 DNF 0
      NC 18 Lance Stroll ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 20 DNF 0
      NC 11 Sergio Perez RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 15 DNF 0
      NC 77 Valtteri Bottas ALFA ROMEO FERRARI 7 DNF 0

      Source: F1.com

      And Red Bull win the Constructors Championship! 623 points after today's race.

      16 votes

    25. Is there a vegetarian or vegan recipe that you think is better than the meat based version?

      ~food Ask (survey)
      I just made this coronation chickpea sandwich filler and I feel compelled to shout from the rooftops how good it is! I love a good meaty dish but I genuinely feel like this is better than the...

      I just made this coronation chickpea sandwich filler and I feel compelled to shout from the rooftops how good it is! I love a good meaty dish but I genuinely feel like this is better than the traditional coronation chicken version - to the point that I don't see a reason to bother with coronation chicken again. I will always have this instead now. There is a caveat; I did make a few tweaks to this:

      • I replaced the tinned chickpeas with 200g of dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and cooked with a few bay leaves and plenty of salt
      • I replaced half of the mayonnaise with greek yoghurt (I do this for coleslaw and potato salad too and it's great)
      • I toasted whole spices and made my own curry powder

      Even without these changes I'm sure it's still a very tasty end result. Has anyone else had a similar experience? What vegetarian or vegan dishes have you found that are superior to their meat counterparts?

      48 votes

    40. What are some foods you really like, from countries not well known for great cuisine?

      ~food Ask (survey)
      It doesn't need to be from countries known for "bad" cuisine. Just try to avoid obvious countries like Italy, France, Japan or China (as a handful of examples). Having said the above, that is also...

      It doesn't need to be from countries known for "bad" cuisine. Just try to avoid obvious countries like Italy, France, Japan or China (as a handful of examples).

      Having said the above, that is also coming from a western (European) perspective. If those countries are not well known for their cuisine in your area, then feel free to choose them!

      53 votes

    42. Brainless jellyfish demonstrate learning ability

      ~science Text 792 words
      Veronique Greenwood In the dappled sunlit waters of Caribbean mangrove forests, tiny box jellyfish bob in and out of the shade. Box jellies are distinguished from true jellyfish in part by their...

      Veronique Greenwood

      In the dappled sunlit waters of Caribbean mangrove forests, tiny box jellyfish bob in and out of the shade. Box jellies are distinguished from true jellyfish in part by their complex visual system — the grape-size predators have 24 eyes. But like other jellyfish, they are brainless, controlling their cube-shaped bodies with a distributed network of neurons.


      tap/click to know more...

      That network, it turns out, is more sophisticated than you might assume. On Friday, researchers published a report in the journal Current Biology indicating that the box jellyfish species Tripedalia cystophora have the ability to learn. Because box jellyfish diverged from our part of the animal kingdom long ago, understanding their cognitive abilities could help scientists trace the evolution of learning.

      The tricky part about studying learning in box jellies was finding an everyday behavior that scientists could train the creatures to perform in the lab.

      • Roots of mangroves

      Anders Garm, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen and an author of the new paper, said his team decided to focus on a swift about-face that box jellies execute when they are about to hit a mangrove root. These roots rise through the water like black towers, while the water around them appears pale by comparison. But the contrast between the two can change from day to day, as silt clouds the water and makes it more difficult to tell how far away a root is. How do box jellies tell when they are getting too close?

      “The hypothesis was, they need to learn this,” Garm said. “When they come back to these habitats, they have to learn, how is today’s water quality? How is the contrast changing today?”

      • Setup

      In the lab, researchers produced images of alternating dark and light stripes, representing the mangrove roots and water, and used them to line the insides of buckets about six inches wide. When the stripes were a stark black and white, representing optimum water clarity, box jellies never got close to the bucket walls. With less contrast between the stripes, however, box jellies immediately began to run into them. This was the scientists’ chance to see if they would learn.

      After a handful of collisions, the box jellies changed their behavior. Less than eight minutes after arriving in the bucket, they were swimming 50% farther from the pattern on the walls, and they had nearly quadrupled the number of times they performed their about-face maneuver. They seemed to have made a connection between the stripes ahead of them and the sensation of collision.

      • “It’s amazing to see how fast they learn,”

      Going further, researchers removed visual neurons from the box jellyfish and studied them in a dish. The cells were shown striped images while receiving a small electrical pulse to represent collision. Within about five minutes, the cells started sending the signal that would cause a whole box jellyfish to turn around.

      “It’s amazing to see how fast they learn,” said Jan Bielecki, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Physiology at Kiel University in Germany, also an author of the paper.

      Researchers who were not involved in the study called the results a significant step forward in understanding the origins of learning. “This is only the third time that associative learning has been convincingly demonstrated in cnidarians,” a group that includes sea anemones, hydras and jellyfish, said Ken Cheng, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who studies the animals. “And this is the coolest demonstration, replete with physiological data.”

      The results also suggest that box jellyfish possess some level of short-term memory, because they can change their behavior based on past experience, said Michael Abrams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the neuroscience of jellyfish sleep. He wonders how long the box jellies remember what they’ve learned. If they are taken out of the tank for an hour and then returned to it, do they have to learn what to do all over again?

      Future work

      In future work, researchers hope to identify which specific cells control the box jellyfish’s ability to learn from experience. Garm and his colleagues are curious about the molecular changes that happen in these cells as the animals incorporate new information into their behavior.

      They wonder, too, whether the capacity to learn is universal among nerve cells, regardless of whether they are part of a brain. It might explain their peculiar persistence in the tree of life.

      “There are organ systems popping up and going away all the time,” Garm said. “But nervous systems — once they are there, they very rarely go away again.”

      Perhaps the ability to learn is one reason they are still here.

      Seattle Times - Link to the article

      9 votes