beyond belief

This morning, I was watching a show on the Food Network about (surprise!) food. Specifically, it was a showcase of Southern restaurants, each offering a signature meat dish. During one restaurant's profile, a chef explained that their meat comes from a local farm where the animals are raised humanely and treated with respect. In reality, of course they are. While those cows and little lammies are alive, they may very well be allowed to scamper through a sun-dabbled meadow. They may be fed the highest quality corn and other vitamin-rich nutrients, but — when it comes down to it — they are still bashed between the eyes with a sledgehammer or have their jugular slit and eventually their flanks will wind up breaded, fired or seared on a plate alongside some house made mac and cheese and some chichi sauce. "Humanely-raised" is a euphemistic term that carnivores uses to make themselves feel better about eating domesticated animals.

That said, I have been a vegetarian for almost twenty years. Before I decided to eliminate meat from my diet, I ate a lot of meat. Especially hamburgers. I loved hamburgers. I ate hamburgers my mom made. I ate hamburgers in diners (gingerly picking off the tomatoes and slipping them on to my mom's plate). I ate hamburgers in fast-food restaurants (always careful to ensure that my burger was tomato-free. Why didn't I exercise the same precautions in diners? I don't know. Perhaps I was intimidated by the stone-faced waitresses that called me "hon."). To be honest, there were some kinds of meat I did not like. I didn't care for steak or roast beef, but boy! did I like hamburgers. In 2006, in a decision formed as a testament to my own integrity, I decided to — once and for all — cut meat out of my diet. (The stupid story about how and, more importantly, why I became a vegetarian can be found HERE.) 

In full disclosure, I am not a vegan. Actually, in the eyes of some vegetarians, I'm not even a true vegetarian. I am a pescatarian, because I will eat fish. But, in keeping with the ultra-contradictory Josh Pincus brand, I don't eat all kinds of fish. I eat tuna and salmon and....that's about it. I like sushi, but only certain kinds of sushi. And I will not eat shellfish. I eat dairy products and eggs, so vegans still look at me with judgmental scorn (but so do a lot of people). As far as I'm concerned, I'm a vegetarian. So there.

Over the years, the folks who process food have been working diligently to create meatless versions of meat. These products are — inexplicably — directed at vegetarians. The food "powers that be" think that vegetarians secretly want to eat meat but, for ethical beliefs, they do not. Do all vegetarians harbor a dirty little secret about their desire to consume meat? Probably not. Do I? Maybe a little. My wife still eats meat and sometimes our dinners consist of two completely different meals. When we decide on "cold cuts" for dinner, Mrs P will purchase a package of turkey or corned beef from the kosher section of our local supermarket, while I opt for a vacuumed-sealed slab of slightly tan soy-based pseudo-turkey slices that don't taste anything remotely like turkey. They are good and I will eat them, but turkey aficionados (if that's a thing) would not be fooled... or amused. 

Fake meat food technology experienced major advancements within the past several years. It seems a special gene or molecule or some other science-y thing has been isolated. This gene — if you will — is the element that makes meat taste like meat. It's been processed and synthesized and if I actually understood the procedure, I'd be a food researcher instead of a mediocre blogger. The result, after countless trial-and-error experimentation, is a plant-based, meatless burger that actually looks, cooks and tastes like meat. When Mrs. P and I were first married, she made dinner for my parents — her new in-laws. She made spaghetti and "meatballs." The "meatballs" were actually a tofu-based concoction so as to allow cheese and butter to be served in our kosher-observant home. (Google the laws of kashrut, for a wild read.) At the conclusion of the meal, my father — a butcher by trade — complemented my wife and pushed his plate away. The five or six "meatballs were neatly lined up around the edge of his sauce-stained, otherwise empty, plate. Today, however, I would defy any meat eater (even my father) to tell the difference between the new crop of "burgers" from Beyond Meat® and Impossible® and the Real McCow... er... McCoy.

The first time I tried Beyond Burgers® was at my brother-in-law's house (not that brother-in-law, the other one). My brother-in-law, a vegetarian for as long as I can remember, invited us for dinner and, when we arrived, he was frying up some very suspicious looking burgers in his kitchen. I asked him if he finally abandoned the vegetarian lifestyle for "the dark side." He laughed and handed me the opened package of Beyond Burgers®. Seeing those thick, juicy patties sizzling in the pan made me very leery. Biting into one on a Kaiser roll and accented with ketchup, mustard, pickles and such... well, I wasn't convinced that this wasn't meat. As a matter of fact, every time my wife makes Beyond Burgers®, I stare at those patties sizzling away and I say: "Those are soooooo meat."

We have purchased and eaten Beyond Burgers®. They are good. They are very good. They have introduced other plant-based, meat-free, meat-mimicking products, including breakfast sausages, meatballs and little cut-up nuggets that my wife has prepared in a version of the renowned Philly cheesesteak. Recently, after seeing this option on a few different cooking shows, I have requested a fried egg to be added as the crowning glory of my Beyond Burger®. I know people have been doing this for years on their hamburgers. It seemed interesting and I have always been an adventurous eater. In my meat-eating days, I have sampled alligator, conch and buffalo. I have eaten eggs in many forms, so why not add one to a burger. Oh my gosh! It was sloppily delicious, adding a new flavor combination to a tried and true favorite. (I have to stop watching the Food Network. I'm beginning to sound like them!) Now, I can't imagine having a burger without a fried egg.

As long as Beyond Burgers® exist and fried eggs are plentiful, I don't see myself lapsing back into the ranks of carnivores any time soon.

Please... don't make me turn off commenting.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

i am the eggman

A little over a year ago, Mrs. Pincus and I decided that it was time to stop eating like ten-year-olds at a birthday party and start eating like adults. We eliminated all sweets and desserts and began a self-imposed diet regimen centering around a large salad for dinner. 

This is a stock photo.

Each evening, we stand side-by-side at our kitchen counter and prepare our leafy evening meals together. We each have our specific jobs in the preparation. I extract the various components from the different storage areas of our refrigerator and place them on our kitchen counter. Our fridge is regular stocked with fresh salad ingredients like lettuce, red cabbage and scallions (or green onions — the jury is out on which of those we actually use). I pile the items on the counter and Mrs. P chops them or slices them or slides them into a blade on a mini-mandoline slicer — whichever utensil or portioning method is appropriate for the particular element. While my wife adds things to her salad that I would never eat in a million years — like cucumbers and tomatoes — I begin my own customization process. I add jalapeno peppers, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers and bread & butter pickles (that's right, I like pickles on my salad! You wanna make something of it?). It is also my unofficial job to open a can of salmon for each of us. We have gotten used to including salmon on our salads and the salads seem incomplete without it. Sometimes, Mrs. P  makes fresh salmon and, believe me, it is much better than the canned stuff. Once topped with our personal choice of dressing (low-fat thousand island for Mrs. P and whatever is in the refrigerator for me), we accompany our salads with a baked potato and another fresh vegetable (usually broccoli or my new-found favorite cauliflower) and we're all set. We have been eating the nearly-identical dinner every night since February 2019 and we haven't tired of it yet. As a matter of fact, almost every night, one of us will remark how good the salad is and marvel at how it can be so delicious night after night.

Just for the sake of variety, we switch things up every so often. Instead of a baked potato, we will have a bowl of pasta made from shirataki, a Japanese vegetable. Or sometimes, we have a bowl of soup and Mrs. P will sauté a bunch of peppers, onions and mushrooms in garlic and oil for something she likes to call "Peppers, Mushrooms and Onions in Garlic." (Although it plays an integral part in the recipe, the oil is unjustly left out of the name of the dish.) We also look for other things to add to the salad. We have tried sun-dried tomatoes and French-fried onions. More recently, sliced hard-boiled eggs have become a regular part of our salads and I have become quite the hard-boiled egg aficionado. (Yes, it has been added to my resume just under my skills with PowerPoint.)

This is a stock photo.

Once a week, I dutifully fill an enamel pot (my wife showed me where we keep it) with water from the tap, just enough to cover a single level of eggs that will be placed at the bottom. I place the pot on the stove and turn on the flame, just like Mrs. P showed me. (I am not exactly Mr. Kitchen, so I appreciate the guidance.) Then I carefully add the eggs to the pot of water. I inspect each one for cracks before placing it in the water, sometimes turning them over several times and even holding them up to the light. Then, I wait until the water boils. When it does, I kill the heat, put a lid on the pot and I'm done.... until my favorite part.

Peeling off the shells.

This is also a stock photo.

I don't know exactly what it is, but I find peeling the shells from hard-boiled eggs very therapeutic. At first, it was sort of a challenge. I found myself pulling small chunks of the hardened albumen away with the tiny fragments of shell. I realized that there was a thin, almost invisible membrane that is between the shell and the egg white. I had to remove that membrane as well as the shell in order to keep the white in tact. After a while, I discovered different techniques with which to successfully remove the shell and be left with a perfectly smooth hard-boiled egg. I even watched a few YouTube videos showing several vastly different methods to attain the ultimate goal of the unblemished egg white. Some prescribed adding the eggs to already boiling water. This, as the video claimed, would prevent the membrane from creating a strong bond to the solidifying egg. Another suggested peeling the egg under running water or — better yet — submerged in water. I read an article on the internet about the subject (this is what my life has come to), including one that insisted on chipping away a quarter-sized opening in the shell on the wide end of the egg, then forcing a metal teaspoon into the opening and rotating it around the circumference of the egg. The promise being that  this action would force the membrane to separate and the hard-boiled innards would just pop out with no resistance. This has yet to be tried by me. There are other procedures that include adding vinegar or salt to the boiling water, but I think I will pass on those.

This is why I use stock photos.

I have found a technique that works well, using a little bit of several of the techniques I learned. I peel the eggs over the sink with a constant, fairly forceful stream of cold water running from the tap. I crack the egg fully on the edge of the sink and roll it around until the entire outer surface is covered with a spiderweb pattern of fractures. Then, it seems, that the shell is easily removed and the egg is left glistening, its exterior uncompromised.

So, what have we learned? Well, we learned that I have an awful lot of free time on my hands and that, given the opportunity, I can write four full paragraphs about hard-boiled eggs.

www.jopshpincusiscrying.com