all the umbles baked in a pie

a. steamed broccoli, chilled silken tofu, brown rice, dash of soy sauce.

b. steamed broccoli, chilled silken tofu, chilled wet somen noodles, soy sauce splash.

what you’re starting with: one shared apartment in london occupied by some london people, a swiss vegetarian, a german girl, a basil plant, and a juicer.

Steps:

1. hang out in common space, chill with housemates in common space

2. suggest to the flatmate with the juicer that it’d be really easy to compost the juice pulp leftover crap.

3. when having fun chilling in the common space, mention offhand that you have a friend who is visiting and you’d like to invite them over for dinner. suggest that it might be fun if you all had a potluck together for the entire house.

4. “accidentally” buy too much green tea. let the rest of the house know that you have too much and that they are welcome to have some whenever.

5. oh man, somehow i wound up with all of these jalapenos! i couldn’t just let them go to waste, so i made all this salsa! but it’s too much for me, so i really need you guys to help get through it!

6. start a sill herb garden.

7. start bringing things in from the street. ideal: a stand that is perfect for an empty spot next to a sunny window. expand the sill herb garden.

8. since we seem to go through so many lentils, maybe we should just go ahead and buy a whole thing of lentils in bulk together. i mean, while we’re at it, maybe one of those 20 pound bags of rice too?

9. pickling and/or canning

10. start assembling or disassembling something that’s too big for your room and can’t be done in a day. work on the thing in the common space and start leaving the thing all disassembled or partially assembled. bikes are perfect.

11. keep bringing in things off the street. these are great for expanding the number of things you assemble/disassemble and leave in the common areas of the house.

12.start brewing beer

13. start working on an unreasonable building project.

max level goals:

1. kombucha brewing

2. chickens

3. yurt

after 3 days in rio i have enjoyed an actual meal of protein and other stuff that has made me whistle with happiness!

i did not take a picture - let me use words!

i took a picture book of rio, spread a washcloth on it, and placed the entire thing on the bed in my hotel room. then i arranged my items:

1. half a can of white beans
2. olive bread
3. tomato
4. lettuce
5. tiny mustard pot stolen from someone’s finished room service left in the hallway
6. tiny olive oil and balsam thing from someone’s finished room service left in the hallway
7. sprig of rosemary - left from someone else’s finished room service left in the hallway
8. sheraton swiller that i used as my mustard pot tool

then i got wild with it. two sandwiches of mustard, white beans, lettuce, mustard, oliveoil/balsam, rosemary! dear god it was like heaven! i am so happy!

my love of the food horoscope is fairly well-documented. my interest never waned! at this point, several years into the relationship with the food horoscope, i feel confident enough to perhaps steer the featherweight ship through some murky astral waters myself. perhaps, the stars have foretold a future for me in food horoscope publications?

as part of my pitch to the editors of the horoscope.com food bureau, here are some analyses for scorpios for the month of march:

Mar 21: you will hurt a friend today over dumb bullshit. you will remember that hurting the people close to you is exactly how your father treats people. have a really fresh kosher dill pickle - you share a love of these with your father as well.

Mar 22: you will feel a lot of regret over hurting your friend and will send a very thoughtful and heartfelt apology. good for you! just remember that this is exactly the way you behaved the last million times you hurt someone. maybe try to not be a dick in the first place hm? would it kill you to invite her over for veggie pho too?

Mar 23: try to get out of the filthy house today because god knows you can’t be bothered to clean it. being in nature helps, but remember that wherever you go, you are still there. bring tea sandwiches!

Mar 24: try to not think about the future today. take it easy with a pack of “customizeable” ramen noodles!

Mar 25: anhedonia!

Mar 26: you’re focused on the past today. your past will never leave you and will continue to silently shape your every movement forever. make a leftover hash!

Mar 27: you won’t let someone love you today - wounded self pity this time. temper the loathing with a creamy bowl of soup (go easy on the salt - salt is the number one contributor to heart disease!)

Mar 28: a brief respite today! make sure to enjoy an outdoor brunch and let the rest of the day sink into oblivion as you fail to accomplish any other plan you had for what surely seemed like it would be a productive day.

Mar 29: drive away new coworker friends with the dazzling intensity of your world pessimism. it will never be possible for vegan yogurt to taste like the actual thing.

Mar 30: tick tock - time to halfheartedly clean your house as you remind yourself that you better keep the house clean as you only have another 40-60 years of taking care of yourself ahead of you. maybe it’s a good day to put up some tomatoes?

Mar 31: you will lie awake in bed realizing that you like no aspect of your current life. you will also understand that you will never do anything about this. don’t think about the future.

(did i get the right tone?)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

k kenji lopez alt is the black like me of veganism! HE IS ONE OF HTE PEOPLE I FUCKING HATE!

this bullshit will apparently NEVER END!

Of course, as I was constructing it, Ed wandered over from the Overlord’s lair (as he is wont to do when there’s cooking going on) and said to me, “what’s cooking?”

“A sandwich for a recipe I’m working on. Sort of like a muffuletta,” I replied.

“Oh, a vegetarian muffuletta,” was Ed’s response. Now don’t get me wrong—contemptful is the last thing that comes to mind when you think of Ed, but in this instance, he couldn’t help hiding his tone of disapproval.

“Just for that, you don’t get to try any,” I told him. (I was lying).

 

The thing that bothered me was the implied notion that vegetarian/vegan food is vegetarian/vegan first, and food afterwards, and once you’ve outed yourself as a vegan, that attitude seems to follow you wherever you go. I myself used to treat vegans in a similar way.

NO. OF COURSE THEY CAN’T. JESUS KENJI ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE

KEEEENNNNJJJIIIII YOU ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DUMB:

Perhaps this tipping point will never occur and vegans will always have to live through these mild prejudices. I know that I certainly will no longer feel that way.

gee i wonder if this part is going to end with him comparing himself to beethoven:

Unlike Mozart and the other great improvisers, as a composer, Beethoven would write, erase, toss out, start over, erase again, and repeat until some of his manuscripts were literally completely worn through with holes from repeatedly writing and scratching sections out.

JESUS JESUS. JEEEESSSSUS.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKK.

alcohol: scotch

movie: parents (1989)

this is the closest i’ve come to eraserhead since that first time. there’s nothing quite like indignant selfpity to stir one to blog.

apparently this young white woman is discovering really cool corners of the internet and compositing them into a really cool new phenomenon - single topic gimmick tumblrs. in fact, her coolest single topic tumblr is on people who take screenshots of themselves doing sl porn. she did this from may 30th to sept 21st 2011. and she appears to be not very tolerant of the wide panoply of human sexuality: “Awful stills from Second Life made for those who cannot get laid in First Life. ”

have we all not gotten high and trolled people’s flickrs who only post pictures of themselves in second life, preferrably the flickrs where it’s just pictures of them over and over, sometimes with their friends having fun, but mostly them? it doesn’t all have to be sexual, it’s enough that they like taking pictures of themselves.

it’s not like it’s been a hobby of mine since 2006.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gabrielleohare/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23788916@N05/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/charllielane

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67587728@N04/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplybea/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/violetbatriani/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmylin/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethereal_warrhol/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/makochin_sl/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/midoon/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gogolita/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmetall/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shootemupstudio/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/supmasecondlifedawg/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29482453@N08/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ponyo-kozlov/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46308408@N07/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/enzochampagne/

but you know, that’s cool. a lot of things have happened since it’s been a while. for example, i found out that i am 1 degree of separation from the genius that runs my favorite food blog: everydayrussian.com. specifically, i was in the same graduating high school class as the everday bang material that he calls his girlfriend. i don’t remember her very well except for one day after school when we were all waiting at the bus shelter and she was like “soo are you like supposed to be alternative?” it was a time, the pathetic 90s. it was definitely a time.

other than that, i’ve really lost the thread of things. i have a lot of saved drafts…one has the title “”this guy looks like the gross lovechild of charles manson and karl marx”” and the text “this post wass all about the night before new year’s eve at berkeley bowl, but since i am watching eyeborg on netflix instant aaaaand ” …not sure what that one was about, but eyeborg was ok. it wasn’t as good as that canadian movie where i think the aliens were made out of plants, or they were turning people into plants, or maybe the greenhouses were actually making alien plants that turned people into aliens.

other than that, heidi’s apparently making miso sesame winter squash and i guess in the 636 serious eats posts i haven’t read kenji j lopez alt has gone vegan? who would’ve thought amirite???? let’s just say that serious eats is the pork-eating self-righteous asshole husband who will tell you his really interesting thoughts about vegetables that he’s learned in the last 11 days as a vegan and thekitchn.com is the “always looking for a great new easily-packaged salad for lunch” wife in the relationship - i certainly assume that everyone else reading this blog has been thinking of that relationship between these two blogs the same way.

and me? not much here. disheartened at the addition of the “dogs allowed?” category on yelp, attempting to replace the alcohol food group with sugar, eating ground oranges from the tree in my building’s yard - apparently it’s broken ground orange season!, feeling bad for “wonkette alum” juli weiner’s posts on vanity fair (definitely not the right venue for her astute food-related observations. i used to hate anyone that had a job at wonkette, but now i kind of like her because she is so clearly ill-suited to that vanityfair.com crowd and because i’m jealous that she got a real photographer to take pictures of her array).

i’m just not really sure how to really describe my disappointment with david byrne and cindy sherman’s turkey art. cindy sherman didn’t even bother to submit anything this year. i guess david byrne tried to make up for it with 2 submissions, both uninspired. i was kind of interested in turkey tartare and in the amount of flat leaf parsley in bbq turkey loaf, but then i noticed that last year some other person had turkey tartare as well. which led to me seeing that last year’s david byrne was turkey pumpkin pie, and then i guess that was just it. it wasn’t even close to my personal favorite (“last year’s leftovers”). although the incomplete, haphazard nature of the whipped cream does raise some (fairly pedestrian) questions about his intentions at all. his 2009 entry was pretty good.

• “dont you touch my salad balls! I want some cheese! I want some cheese! I want some.. “
• “Such a flea…Come into my pants hole ???”
• “DONT YOU TOUCH MY SALAD BOWLLLLLLLL… GIMME CHEEEEEEEEZE I WANT SOME CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ”
• “such a freeeak, such a freeeak!”
• “such a Tree”
• “such a dream”
• “touch a treeee lol …come into my black soul”
• “such a freak”
• “Such a free”
• “chuh chuh tweee chuh chuh tweee”
• “I used to listen to this back in 96 when i was 17 fucking 14 year old hotties and latinas sluts back in cali wifh no rubber”
• “The first time I heard this I was in Cali, I had to pull my car over and just engulf my whole body into this song”
• “you pulled over and engulfed a cock ito ur butt”

• lol what’s that food like down at occupy wall street?
• real things from the anonymous suggest box at my work
• substantial pastries for busy teenagers
• redwood creek winery totally revamped their brand imaging and logo
• trying to not get pepperoncini on my sandwich from the deli
• the problems with having different kinds of teas being too acidic for your system
• what are some good side dishes for thanksgiving?
• just pictures of trash on the street in san francisco, i have one that’s like a menu from some fancyass restaurant. and i shit you not there was a wrapper for little squirrel candy on the street in our neighborhood a week ago.
• polenta stars

• http://www.orchidboard.com/community/beginner-discussion/4712-brassia-potting-watering-question.html
• http://cdn2.iofferphoto.com/img/item/182/130/453/100-handicraft-art-oil-paintings-puppy-kitten-picnic-28120.jpg
• http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxdvw942ih1qz86d0o1_500.jpg
• http://jfk.deeppoliticsforum.com/page3.html
• http://wordswithoutpictures.org/main.html?id=1,8
• http://forum.grasscity.com/great-indoors/821603-man-movies-better-high.html
• http://groups.diigo.com/group/Diigo_HQ/content/my-avatar-became-the-photo-of-a-woman-i-ve-never-seen-2922248
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Darkness_(film)#Production
• http://real-dobby.tumblr.com/page/3
• http://letspartyinthesupermarkets.tumblr.com/page/2
• http://itsokaytobehated.tumblr.com/post/7546081945/i-finally-went-into-the-whole-self-loathing-insecure
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_McDonnell
• http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nerimon
• http://nativegirls.tumblr.com/page/14
• http://logicalfallacies.tumblr.com/post/5365197376/elmar
• http://zodiacccc.tumblr.com/tagged/scorpio
• http://dump.fm/p/timb/1667379

well, it was inevitable. let’s just say that this shitshow got started as a group project where the other person fantastically failed to contribute (I KNOW YOU READ THIS. YOU ARE READING IT RIGHT NOW AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. I STILL HATE YOU. WHEN ARE YOU NEXT COMING TO VISIT?). as a result, it has never been complete with only one contributor that attracts 3 readers. clearly the sole steward’s depression, apathy, ”drinking levels that would be considered normal in europe,” apathy, dull dead eyes that stare vacantly slackward, typing fingers that rest delicately up the butt instead of on the keyboard, and other problems, are keeping this blog from reaching 5 readers.

so in the hopes of DOUBLING the posting schedule to perhaps once a week (or fewer i’m flexible!), if you, a reader, want to contribute in some way with your words or pictures, don’t fucking all stand up right now, but if you do, then you need to let me know.

requirements are:

• nothing

although of course preferred candidates can easily imagine themselves in a meditterranean rural summer, half-rushing with that mediterranean enthusiasm at me barely holding on to a huge basket that’s spilling lulz all over the place and you try your best to keep all the luls in but they keep falling out! and you know, you want to bring the luls as quickly as possible so you’re doing that irregular hurried walk and laughing a little at the whole situation, but the faster you try to walk down that dusty dirt path, the more they just spill hilariously around! and it’s just a funny scene overall!

anyway, just write to me whichever way you prefer, even if you are some mystery 4th reader that i don’t know about, and we can have you making papaya blingees in no time flat.

this quiz is for all californianas and californians at heart. please open a new text doc and give yourself one point for every item below that you can answer “yes, i’ve thought that when traveling outside of california.” at the end please tally the score up.

1. for a gas station salad bar, this is pretty good
2. i just don’t feel like i’m getting a lot of nutrition from this salad bar salad.
3. i really should think of this less as a salad and more as a “plate of raw vegetable crudites”
4. i can’t believe this gas station has no apples or even bananas. at the last gas station, i got a 2 for 1 deal on bananas.
5. i suppose the protein at breakfast is worth the corn syrup in this single container of smooth peanut butter
6. i don’t even remember the last time i had a red delicious apple that was so good! probably should take another one from the continental breakfast basket for the road.
7. fuck why did i mess around getting a normal sized waffle machine when i could have gotten one of these “4 tiny waffles” waffle machines
8. man i wish i could do math so that i could figure out what percentage of the tubs in this salad bar involve canned items
9. you know, i actually prefer baby carrots to those carrot shreds that you get sometimes
10. i don’t feel bad for hating nevada anymore
11. clearly this buffet got the message that mark bittman thinks that iceberg lettuce is back in style
12. i will never feel bad about that salad bar by work again
13. really? canned black olives? not even green?
14. oh, WHOLE black olives, not slices. these are good!
15. upon returning to california, real excitement at seeing chickpeas in the salad bar
16. wow!
17. plan for a salad course followed by a fruit course cuz the last town didn’t have any fruit
18. halfway through the salad course, realize that you didn’t actually get any chickpeas, look abruptly at where the chickpeas were and realize that in a protein deprived insanity, you completely accepted the chickpea reality of what turned out to be croutons.
19. that asshole who just walked in, looked at the salad bar, and left the cafe is clearly coming from the california side and heading to nevada. cuz if he was coming from the nevada side to california, he would have gobbled the fuck out of that salad bar with his eyes before preparing to pay whatever it took to eat that salad fucking bar. because the next town in nevada had no fruit let alone fucking vegetables.
20. if you’ve ever been the only one in polite company who was given canned pineapple as a child and can describe things as “like the juice that you drink at the bottom of the canned pineapple can,” subtract a point

ok, go ahead and tally up your score. here is the scoring system:

• if your score is 1 or more, please rate yourself a fucking asshole.
• if your score is less than 0, you are clearly not a californian and do not aspire to californianess, so fucking fuck you.

it’s a bummer night, watching the road (NOT on instant) and drinking the saddest iced tea and gin “cocktail” on earth. hard to figure out which of those two options is the bigger bummer, rite?

actually, the saddest cocktail on earth that i ever made had a half a can of that thai basil seed drink mixed with some whiskey. i didn’t know that the thai basil seed drink was a little gelatinous and had the little dots in it when i poured it out and let’s just say that the mixing element didn’t quite stay mixt for more than about 10 seconds, so then i just had a nice top layer of whiskey and a nice bottom layer of straight frog egg lookin basil fucking seeds. that was probably a sadder cocktail. sadder than the road.

i mean, is it even technically “drinking and watching netflix instant” if i’m not even watching netflix instant? did you know that it doesn’t even recommend scifi to me anymore cuz i watched all of them?

anyway, this post concerns innovative marketing strategies to increase popularity of the blog. you know, i’ve been reading a lot about great ways to build a community of really supportive fans of my crazymoneymaking blog. but you know how i feel about everyone else out there in the foodternet - i fucking hate them, so i don’t want to be their friend. so i’m not sure if like your standard “lol love the post shit that shit looks good enough to eat mmm. PLIS VISIT UMBLEPIE.TUMBLR.COM” commenting strategy is going to work.

so i wonder if it would be better to work on a different promotion strat, you know, utilize the place where i feel most at home, capitalize on my native element: shine.yahoo.com. unfortunately when i thought of that, it became pretty apparent that some other asshole was already milking that goldenass calf. that asshole’s name is jarret garret nee jaer ereiol.

jarret garret: fuck you

why are you fucking terribly viralizing promoting your shitty cookbook on shine yahoo food blog?

UGH THIS ASSHOLE IS DOING IT ALL THE TIME LIKE ON EVERY POST. he even does it on posts outside of shine food blog…for example, this one was on a yahoo relationships post:

and according to the internet, there should be a jarret garret post on a massively commented upon michelle obama post:

AND AFTER CLICKING THROUGH 5 MILLION FUCKING PAGES OF COMMENTSS ABOUT MICHELLE OBAMA’S DRESS I COULD NOT FUCKING FIND IT.

FUCK i clicked thru all those comment pages. google lied to me. there is no jarrett garret comment on this michelle obama dress yahoo fashion blog post. do not try to click through all of these yourself. cuz you’ll be just as disappointed as i was. very disappinted…

anyway, my own simmering resentment at clicking through 300 pages of comments and the resulting resigned “fail at life” feeling was clearly not felt by my community of fellow shine food blog readers. with typical gusto, they brought their shivs and brass knuckles:

what IS that cookbook he spams? what happens if i do go ahead and google “get in the kitchen cookbook”???

oh, that’s cool, i get the following book sold on amazon.com: get in the kitchen, bit@ces and its sequel get BACK in the kitchen, bit@ces.

is it…is it a lolfoodcookbook? are they promoting lolfood? they definitely have a website…looks very lulzy :\

it’s got great amazon reviews. mostly from people who have reviewed nothing else ever on amazon they have been so moved by “get in the kitchen, bitches,” in a way that they have never been moved by any other product that they have bought on amazon out of all the many products that they have reviewed that they now thought “never before today did i want to review an amazon product. no, i was never stirred either by satisfaction nor disgust to go ahead and review a product i had bought off amazon. all these years i have felt merely neutral toward every product bought with the fever dream of having that creative spark lit like the first flame that neanderthal man created with his bare half animal, half human hands.  i have longed, i have so longed, to feel that primal roar within, that feeling of electric shiver that stirs the fingers to amazon review. never before, that is, until the get in the kitchen, bitches cookbook. now, after so many years of aching, empty longing, THIS is an amazon product worth reviewing.”

some reviewers were moved by other products:

i guess it must have been a particularly special tower case, i understand the feeling.

but is this one of those selfpublished piles of bullshit, or is this a legit lolfood publication? who published this book anyway? oh, whipped and beaten culinary works? looks like they are very active on the internet. they want to spread lolfood. wonder if they will publish my tumblr bookdeal? ( why do i get so selfish so fast lol. just want a bookdeal :(((((()

anyway, there are layers upon layers of desire loaded onto “get in the kitchen, bi@hes.” do they promote on other blogs besides shine food blog? why do they promote a “man-oriented” cookbook on shine food blog for women? is it a gag-gift marketing strat? how can i get in on this action? how did they decide to start spamming shine food blog? do they know that everyone hates them on shine food blog? is the teaser of “it’s not quite pc” some kind of neg for liberals? are they courting the actively racist cookbook demographic or the lulz-seeking masses of middle aged american women browsing shine food blog for non-spicy and healthy enchilada recipes while dreaming of great gifts for their husbands that JUST MIGHT GET THEM TO COOK FOR A CHANGE HA? will i ever reach the end of the internet where all “guerilla markteting on shine food blog” answers are answered, or will it forever be a patchwork quilt of mystery wrapped in a shitcake of amateur comedy food writing…?

guys i don’t think it’s that hard. it’s an internet space history culture time continuum.

here is the map with my concentric circles of culture, internet, space, history, and time:

as you can clearly see, there are 3 loci of fast internet that are at the peak of the history/geography winners circle. i have identified the borders of the time/internet space with easy to understand rectangle borders (pink). the arrows indicate the direction that history, culture, and evolution go. the slower the internet, the more your children learn about being poor and oppressed.

(*****you might have to take a bus on a dirt road with chickens to get to the places with the appropriate level of oppression for your children to really fucking learn.)

please note tho that at the very tips, outside the pink rectangles, you might run into places with no internet at all. these places are actually in the past if you line up where they fall on the culture/history/matrix. please avoid these places because your children need slow internet to learn, not no internet. also you don’t want to actually go in to the past. as the 5 second rule woman says in comments - “NEVER LEAVE YOUR LATTE BEHIND.” so be careful. i hope my map is useful for you.

i started reading this really coo lblog that’s like way right from our area- PALO ALTO. i only went there (palo alto) one time and it looked pretty suburban, pretty like car-dependent, but you know, maybe they got some really in-touch bloggers there. you know, california.

and this recent post that she posted really touched me:

ffffuuuuuu i can totally relate to that.

it really reminded me of this really awesome book i read this one time

hahahahahahaha DONKEYS!!!!

that’s gonna be 5 second rule lady. she’s gonna be havin such a great experience riding a donkey.

she’s gonna be in that grocery store bein all “LF zaatar + slow ass internet” and after reading her post i got really really inspired and i made all these blingees.

♫ aarrraaab grooocccerrrr ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ 

just lookin for zaatar and slow internet. just need some slow internet and szzatar - just don’t want any FAST internet. and if you don’t have any internet in your country, i don’t really want to visit you. cuz i am looking for 2 things:

1. slow internet

2. zaatar

cuz i don’t want my children to like actually live in deprivation without internet, i want them to learn something from this experience.

so i just want them to not like have full internet deprivation, but just like, learn to appreciate their really good internet connections. cuz I REMEMBER, let’s just say, that I REMEMBER, what it was like when internet was 56.6kbps and i know that my kids have been fortunate enough, here in palo alto, to not ever have had to experience that kind of world. so maybe going to this place where we can buy zaatar might help them learn about the value of their own fast internet connection THROUGH EXPERIENCING THE SLOW INTERNET CONNECTION. does that make sense?

i really also feel like despite the slow internet, they have ladies over there who could totally blog about all the great stuff they’re making over there. like we could really make a connection. i mean, look at this:

these ladies are hte original food bloggers, showing their technique via the best photography that they had available on their slr’s back in their time.

additionally. i feel like we can really bond over the most important meal of hte day: BREAKFAST. (yum!!!)

here are the slow internet ladies enjoying breakfast:

lol here’s palo alto breakfast:

and breakfast:

and breakfast:

and breakfast:

and breakfast:

i just feel like we have a lot of connections. we can really do something together. somethng with zaatar. despite their slow internet.

when i did that test a little while back about what writer your writing is like i put in my words that i work so hard on and the first thing i got was raymond chandler - and i was like who is that? it’s like a pulpy, noir guy. i was pretty happy with that, that’s pretty legit as far as a popular medium is concerned. i should’ve just stopped there but i didn’t. so i got the following in the following order on the next chunks of text: cory doctorow, margaret atwood, cory doctorow, cory doctorow.

at that point, i was like WHO IS THIS CORY DOCTOROW GUY? so i learned all about boingboing and how he’s a very well regarded young scifi author and thought leader.

you know how i have problems updating the blog a lot lol so i thought this whole internet productivity advice would be really helpful for me. so i read this guy’s interview on cory doctorow’s boingboing :

Avi: Do you have any tips for being comfortable with failure and bouncing back?

Seth: I think the people who have read my work, it doesn’t feel right to them, but over time you get used to it, which is failure is the point. That if you’re going to say “failure is not an option” then you’ve just ruled out success as well. Because the only way you get to success is by learning what doesn’t work.

So my goal for 20 years has been to fail more than anyone before me. And I’m succeeding that almost nobody in my industry has failed as many times as I have. If you can fail more than anyone else, then you win. Because if you fail really monstrously large, you don’t get to play again.

So there’s no way you’re going to be able to fail more than anyone else. The goal is to fail new, to fail in an interesting way, to fail in a way that you learn from that you don’t repeat, and to fail not so badly so that you get to do it again.

LOL DOING PRETTY GOOD AT THAT.

Avi: Once you take the initiative, the other thing you can do is you build a tribe around that initiative. It takes a lot of work. What can guide you through the initial lonely stage?

Seth: Well of course building a tribe takes a lot of work. If it didn’t, everyone would do it. This idea of scarcity comes back again and again.

We don’t hesitate, some of us, to go get a job in a coal mine or a factory or working for an insurance company even though we’ve just signed up for 10,000 hours of mind‑numbing, finger‑grinding hard work with no for real upside.

And yet, we look at this prospect of building a tribe of 5,000 or 10,000 or 500,000 people who want to hear what we have to say, who want to go where we are going, who are looking for a leader, and we hesitate.

Actually, you’re not hesitating because you fear the work. You’re hesitating because the resistance fears failure. Getting a job, shredding tires at the factory, we don’t feel that same fear because we know we’re not going to fail.

My argument is that we’re walking into this new culture, this new era, where tribes are so valuable and they’re going to get harder and harder to build. So if you care, and it only works for people who care, then you really have no choice but to go start building your tribe.

NOT BUILDING A TRIBE - HOW TO DO? (WORRIED ABOUT THE WORD “TRIBE” - IS IT RACIST?)

Avi: Do you have any tips for being comfortable with failure and bouncing back?

Seth: I think the people who have read my work, it doesn’t feel right to them, but over time you get used to it, which is failure is the point. That if you’re going to say “failure is not an option” then you’ve just ruled out success as well. Because the only way you get to success is by learning what doesn’t work.

So my goal for 20 years has been to fail more than anyone before me. And I’m succeeding that almost nobody in my industry has failed as many times as I have. If you can fail more than anyone else, then you win. Because if you fail really monstrously large, you don’t get to play again.

So there’s no way you’re going to be able to fail more than anyone else. The goal is to fail new, to fail in an interesting way, to fail in a way that you learn from that you don’t repeat, and to fail not so badly so that you get to do it again

I AM DEFINITELY NOT FAILING IN AN INTERESTING WAY. I AM JUST FAILING IN THE NORMAL WAY. SETH - HOW THE FUCK DO I FAIL IN AN INTERESTING WAY? NEED ADVICE ON THAT SPECIFICALLY.

Avi: What advice would you give your smart kid who’s in high school right now?

Seth: That’s easy. Go start something. Right. There’s no locks on the door. The world marketplace is right there. Go on Craigslist, go on eBay, build a blog, build a website, build a following on Twitter, start a tribe, organize things.

You will learn as you go. No one needs to know you’re in high school. But the benefits that you will get from leading in that way and connecting in that way are very very hard to overstate. Don’t wait for permission. Just start.

THE WORST ADVICE IN TEH WHOLE THING. YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT EVERYONE DOING ART AND IT BEING WROTHWHILE.

i don’t think seth godin helped me. i am really having trouble with failing in an interesting way.

basically i think this all goes back to motivation, inspiration, life changes, creativity, and actualization. so you know i started like exploring beyond food blogs for inspiration cuz like, the truly uninspired vegan meze spread i made for a houseguest this weekend was a way new low. altho i did get a really nice book about miso and tofu and i’ve just really been enjoying these like beautiful upscale really really fresh mezcal cocktails with innovative flavors and all of those great california flavors. with one of those, you really only need one, you know? so it’s not that conducive to bllog post production…

and in a quest for inspiration i’ve just been learning a lot about “digital art” (apparently it’s what i’ve been doing with my blingees hahahaha) and reading this really cool publication called rhizome.org. now please bear with me cuz i know it’s a little different from my usual turf, but i really think that if you stick with me for just a minute you’ll think it’s really cool too. 

(questions about die hard: why does the LAPD have a tank? and why does snape look more like 1st commander riker than like nin? :( die hard is truly of its time, yet transcends it as well.)

so now that i know about digital art and that it’s really interesting to repurpose some super marios so that only the clouds show and how there’s a lot that’s really fresh about tryin to make some art with blingees, and how it’s all right to call yourself an artist born in 1986 (“considered an authority on animated gif art”), i figured there must be an angle i can work here in terms of making money or getting a book deal or at the very fucking least living up to my description as an average writer and content strategist specializing in new media, design, food and sustainability. no one says i can’t add “and is considered an authority on really cool digitalart” to the end of that.

so i tried to explore some themes you know? these are a little “out of hte way” from my usual food-related inspiration, but then again, if you are expanding your boundaries and failing in interesting ways, you can’t very well fucking do that with pictures of corn shopped onto kirsten dunst’s hair can you?

maybe will expand to food soon…we’ll see

i haven’t given you a new vegetarian cookbook and since i’m otherwise out of content, here is the veggie burger cookbook by the morningstar corporation. it is a full, lush text with photos that intimate the same. yet there is a palpable missing element, a lacuna filled with menace and pregnant with meaning: where is the MorningStar Farms® Meal Starters™ Grillers® Recipe Crumbles™ in these books? what does its exclusion mean for us and for society?

here’s the cover - BEAUTIFUL!

this is helpful, a personal touch for a book whose author is a corporation:

what will be inside? just different toppings for veggie burgers? i mean, not much variety you can have just with toppings and stuff cuz the burger itself is actually frozen and you can’t like modify it itself aside from like method of reheating…like microwaving, or grilling, or frying.

anyway, since i don’t abide by internet standards of acceptable behavior, i will spoiler you: there are quite a few recipes that deal with just toppings on veggie burgers -

so i was eager to move beyond the veggie burger toppings arena and into the more creative uses front.

here is the first creative use: a bueatiful veggie burger caprese salad:

i always felt like caprese salads were missing something and that something was a glistening, shuddering veggie burger.

here is the recipe. there are some really helpful instructions for dealing with rotting baby spinach leaves in prewashed salad mix:

although the whole premise behind the next recipe is flawed to the core, this is the first recipe where veggie crumbles would have clearly been better:

ugh a disgusting veggie burger stew. i really don’t understand why this book doesn’t feature hte Morningstar Farms® Meal Starters(TM) Grillers® Recipe Crumbles(TM) product. the book is from 2009, which is many years after i first began using the product as evidenced by my classic recipe for family taco night which, tho only documented in 2009, had been being refined for at least several years before then. for example, did you know that altho the 2009 recipe calls for 1 small fresh tomato, i had previously used 1 large tomato, or for example, only ro*tel and NO fresh tomato. the point is that considering the timing of the publication of the morningstar veggie burger cookbook, the Morningstar Farms® Meal Starters(TM) Grillers® Recipe Crumbles(TM) product was already widely available in krogers and safeways across america - why the omission? why?

another disgusting recipe made more disgusting with the addition of veggie burger yet also baffling due to use of veggie burger and not veggie crumble:

as the description says, the evocation of italy is so strong with this veggie burger frittata that i did just get a mouth boner d’italia when i looked at the picture. there’s something about it that evokes italy to me - but it’s a close call between which one is more evocative of italy between this one and the veggie burger salad caprese.

have your VOICE HEARD:

here is a veggie burger recipe that comes to us straight from the funny mountains of china:

here’s finished product:

sorry i tried to save the blingee for working on it later but i couldn’t edit it again. i guess it came out ok anyway :\ i feel like the main thematic element came through though, so that’s ok.

my favorite recipe in the book though jumps through 5 hoops of necessity before arriving to rest on a bed of a microwave-safe fiesta bowl:

black bean dip doesn’t normally have meat, but this one has veggie burger that you’ve torn up into little pieces. black bean dip doesn’t normally have cream cheese, but this one does. black bean dip might have spices, but the main spicy element referred to in the title here comes from prepackaged medium-spicy thick-and-chunky jarred salsa - please don’t use spicy jarred salsa :(. this also involves the use of a slowcooker and 3 hours. if i was rich, i would make this to find out how it was because i was invested in you and in blog gimmicks. but unfortunately i am poor and i don’t have a pressure cooker so.. sol :( .

but what i do have is imagination. and here is what i imagined that the veggie burger black bean dip would look like in my mind:

one day, when my kickstarter fund for a pressure cooker for veggie-burger-related-uses-only tops up, maybe on that day i will make some veggie burger black bean dip.

UUUUUUGH the $3 sandwich rule was invented for a reason. we do not buy sandwiches that cost less than $3 for a very good reason (it’s private). and when we break the rule, we have to eat the whole sandwich even tho it’s unclear what the “meat” part of hte veggie banh mi is made of (usually you can tell like tofu, or shredded yuba, or seitan, you know) and there’s so much more bread than filling. just so much more bread. this is rapidly turning into THE banh mi debacle of the mid-2011s. i don’t want to have to start a fight on this, but really this is a nightmare.

UGH guess i’ll just have to drink the entirety of this alcohol to deal with the pain. and it’s getting so bad that i’m not even watching netflix, i’m just watching commercials on youtube.

you know, the chicagoland electronics chain fretter disappeared from tv in the mid-90s when i knew them by the tagline “it’s always better to buy at fretter”:

but apparently a major source of their decline was the inability to settle on a slogan. i can barely even find a commercial that has the “it’s always better to buy at fretter” slogan. these other ones have “if you want fretter prices you’ve got to shop at fretter,” and some other ones. sorry i lost steam after i saw that first one. the FUCKING POINT is that who are these people watching these fretter commercials with me?

1,453 assholes watched this with me. 1 of them liked it and 2 of them hated it. that means that there’s a lot more red on that bar than green. i watch a lot of youtube music videos and the typical like/dislike ratio of green to red looks like it does for hall and oates:

a bar of green with a sliver of red. because i only listen to awesome music i guess.

anyway, seeing that bar of red on the fretter video was just kind of a shock. i’ll have to keep drinking a little bit to emotionally absorb the shock. alcohol: nature’s shockpads i guess.

see, look at this dance hit from the circa 2008 era - 0 fucking dislikes:

oh fretter, there’s no room for you in a changing world.