… to ‘Buffet City’ we went.
Ms. S. came home from rehearsals, all tired and worn out, and came into the office, where she said she felt like going out for dinner. Where? That was yet to be decided. “I’m buying,” she offered. How could I turn that down?
I. What’s Cookin’?
I’m currently interested in ‘alternative proteins,’ those vegetarian or even vegan sources that are relatively complete (or easily completed), flexible in preparation, etc.
I eat meat, albeit rarely these days. It’s hard to find good meat in this town, and when found it’s expensive, so I tend to leave it mainly for special occasions or eating out. Cheap industrial flesh is common enough, of course. Cooking for one can be a nuisance. I do consume my share of eggs, however, as well as fish on a frequent basis.
When it comes to soy I find tofu quite flexible and I’m more fond of it than I was when I first had it during my college years. It goes with almost anything and can take on any number of other flavors. I saute or otherwise fry it on occasion, though what Ms. S. likes best is when I give it the lightest coating of cornmeal and seasoning and bake it until crisp on the outside and a bit chewy on the inside. If done a bit thicker with both the tofu and the coating, it makes a nice surrogate chicken nugget, especially when served with mustard.
Our “revelation” this year was tempeh, which we both now love. Even though there was an Indonesian restaurant in Madison at which I ate, I never had tempeh until here. Isa Chandra Moskowitz has a nice ‘fake maple bacon’ recipe in her book Vegan With a Vengeance that I like. Lightly sauted as half-dice-sized bricks it’s great in salads, and so on.
I haven’t had seitan since getting it at departmental functions in Madison when it was served as ‘Jamaican Jerk’ seitan skewers, but I’m tempted to make some with the box of wheat gluten I keep in the cupbard. I’ve never had Quorn.
Sometimes I do not want meat or a meat substitute; sometimes the best alternative protein source is just a vegetable or similar, such as eating a ton of spinach or similar dark, leafy green … the type of thing that calorie-for-calorie has about the highest protein content out there (even if it’s incomplete). Or mushrooms.
I hated mushrooms as a kid. Plain white mushrooms in salads, flavorless and sponge-like, almost squeaky. Or thinly sliced, limp, and brown on pizzas, also tasteless but potentially slimy. And I had my fear of toadstools … this fear that any mushroom I came across was in reality a deadly toxin in Super Mario form. But more recently I decided to reevaluate my disgust; I’d done so with brussels sprouts to great suggess, and as it was a stuff-pepper recipe I wanted to follow precicely required them. And since then I’ve been using them in ever greater numbers. Now I buy a package every week or two. Sometiems I just fry them, others I give them a quick soak in something tasty before roasting them in the oven until they shrivel, shrink to half their size, and become chewy flavor bombs.
And so this evening we were going to have tempeh, and I put some mushrooms in the oven for myself.
Then Ms. S. walked through the door.
II. We don’t eat out much.
For a while we had Wednesday lunches with Ms. S.’s father. We also had a schedule for trying all the nice or interesting restaurants in town, one a week. But ‘life’ intervened in terms of work schedules and budgets, and that project has been put on hold.
The buffet is a guilty pleasure. The food is so-so at best, you always eat too much, and afterward your full, aching stomach tells you that it was not a good idea. But there is some pleasure in it, and it’s a bit like shopping at the mall or similar with all the variety, all the choices. This one has a so-so sushi selection, and the seafood offerings increase for dinner, with trays of crawfish, clams, and crab legs to go with the fish and several types of shrimp.
As I ate my first few bites and Ms. S. mentioned that eating there now after all these months the food tasted a bit … ‘strange’ … I realized that of all the ‘menu’ items there that I could or would prepare at home, I’d always do it better. But there were things there that I just don’t prepare.
In any case, perhaps it was enough of a ‘treat’ to last nearly another year …
III. To Atlantis We Went …
On the way back from ‘Buffet City’ (not to be confused with ‘City Buffet,’ which is in Northport and not as good, from what I’ve heard) Ms. S. mentioned that she had the feeling the last time we were there — November, 2011? — we went home and watched Twin Peaks.
That’s how far we’ve come.
We’re on to season 10 of SG-1, which means the journey is almost over. But to defeat the Ori SG-1 needs Merlin’s anti-Ancient / anti-Ascended-Being Device, and for that they’ll be heading to Atlantis in the next episode, “The Pegasus Project.” After that only two more before the delightful “200,” but I’m getting ahead of myself.
In any case, in order to watch “The Pegasus Project” I figured I should first give Ms. S. a bit of an introduction to Stargate Atlantis, and so tonight we watched the 90-minute “pilot”. For Ms. S. there were pros and cons. The pros were O’Neill (two Ls) and Jackson showing up, along, briefly, with the Wraith en-sem-bles … The cons were, for her, numerous, but summarized by John Sheppard, whom she dubbed Cam Mitchell 2.0 … though, of course, Sheppard predates Mitchell.
She does, however, have a point. Both Mitchell and Sheppard are audience surrogates of sorts for changing and new series, and both are replacements for O’Neill. Both are a bit country and folksy, though Mitchell is the Southern Boy. Both are over-achieving military types who are smarter than they let on (like O’Neill), and both are prone to attempts at pithy one-liners and pop culture references.
That having been said, the really interesting point for me was a new realization: if you close your eyes and just listen, you think you’re hearing a long-lost Wilson brother, perhaps ‘Cam Mitchell’ crossed with Owen Wilson.
So I don’t suppose we’ll be jumping in to Atlantis once our run on SG-1 is finished. We have lots of other TV — good and bad (mostly bad!) — to watch instead (hello, Relic Hunter!).
