The process of initiating a first date can be intimidating.  Does the mere thought of asking a girl out give you sweaty palms and heart palpitations?  Are you struggling with just the right, witty first line to impress her?  Are you reading every body signal and analyzing if her thanks for picking up the pencil she dropped is a sign that she’s ready to have babies with you?  Well STOP IT.  STOP IT RIGHT NOW.

It’s not that complicated.  Trust me.  You aren’t going to find some magical pick up line that makes her love you forever and ever and ever…. Sure there are those amazing stories from romantic comedies that make the story of “how I met your mother” seem legend….  But they aren’t real and they aren’t realistic either.  I promise you that no girl (I can’t speak on behalf of guys but I imagine this hold true with them) will think any less of this opening line:

“Hi, I’m ____.  I’ve seen you around work/the building/wherever and wanted to finally introduce myself.”

Now what?  Now you let her introduce herself.  If she doesn’t walk away, you move on to the second part of the process.

“It’s nice to meet you her name.  I was wondering if you were available at all for coffee or maybe even dinner sometime?”

That’s it.  That’s all it will take if the object of your affection, hereto known as the OoA, is at all interested in going out with you.  You don’t need to offer any sort of compliment—you can but it’s not needed and things like “you have the most beautiful eyes” can sound cheesy depending on the girl or the delivery.  I promise you, you don’t need it.  Save the compliments for the date if it’s received.  That’s when you want to use them.   Trust me you aren’t going to change her mind for a date by telling her she looks pretty; the mere fact that you are asking her out pretty much set the expectation that you find her attractive.  Now there are some girls who will love a huge romantic gesture, this is true, but to others it can scare them off.  If you keep it simple, stupid, you don’t run into any risk of seeming too…well too anything.  Too interested, too apathetic, too boring.  Simple is good.  Save the complexity for the date.

Which brings me to the most crucial part of the asking out: setting the date.  Don’t leave it up in the air.   Be prepared with a date, a place and a time.  Offer these up but be flexible for her schedule or dietary preferences.  “I know a great place for coffee.  How about Tuesday at 6?” and then let her respond and beyond all be flexible if she suggests some-when or somewhere else.  Unless it’s a local skinhead bar.  Then run away.

But Olivia what about if they say no?  How do I handle that kind of rejection?  *Sigh*  Okay I’m going to try to explain this without going past a second page.

“We make time for the things that are important to us.”

There’s so much truth in such a simple little statement like that.  Right now my life priorities are still: Family, Work, Health, Passions and Friends…followed by everything else.  Notice what’s not on there?  Funny business aka romantic interludes.  The fact that I’m not willing to make time is a good indicator of how serious I am about it—and that’s not at all.  So guys and gals, if the object of your affections can’t be tied down to a time and a place…well then this person just isn’t that invested and you shouldn’t waste too much time on it either.  But don’t take it personally and don’t think it means there’s something wrong with you.  Just let it be.  Make a second attempt to connect if she doesn’t respond to your initial text or phone call about the date–she may have accepted tenuously but just has been too busy to follow up.  That being said if she just can’t commit to it on a third try just let it go because as the book title says “He/She’s just not that into you” and it probably has absolutely nothing to do with you.  The worst thing is to send a barrage of messages, to get too personal, to get rambly….  Do NOT send a message about your past relationships or how eager you are.  Just be simple, flexible and reserved.  When you throw too much emotion at someone whose middle name you don’t even know…they’re gonna bolt.  You might ask out 100 people and get 1 positive response back and that’s okay because I’m telling you that of those 99 rejections, 99% of them have nothing to do with you.  One might.  Maybe she saw you picking your nose or getting into a parking lot fight, I don’t know, I’m just playing the odds here.

I mean I’m not dismissing offers for any reason to do with the date-asker-outer.  It has nothing to do with appearances, personality or any aspect of their physical presence.  I just can’t even fathom making the time to emotionally invest in something that intense and I have so many things to juggle…I can’t have the responsibility of handling someone else’s emotions on that level.   Your OoA (Object of Affection) might have too much on their plate for romance.  Or you might a gross slob.  Look in the mirror and get real and we’ll talk about what to do if you ARE in fact kind of a slob on another day.

In the meantime here’s a surefire way to get some dates into your day honey-muffin.  Bwahahaha segue?  CHECK!

Honey Date Muffins

An Olivia Original

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup flour
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 orange, juice of
• 12 Tbsp melted butter
• ¾ cup orange blossom honey
• 1 cup walnut chunks
• 1 cup chopped dates

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep a muffin pan to make 12 large muffins –I had extra tall muffin liners.  In a traditional muffin liner you’ll get closer to 15 muffins.

In a large bowl sift together your flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Mix in the cinnamon and brown sugar.  Set aside.

In another bowl whisk the eggs.  Add in the buttermilk, orange juice and melted butter. Whisk in the honey and almond extract.

Pour the liquids over the dry goods and stir just until the flour is absorbed.  Mix in the walnuts and chopped dates.  Scoop into the muffin tins.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes—the muffins will turn brown and pass the toothpick test.  Remove and immediately place on a cooling rack to avoid overcooking the bottom of your muffins in the tin.

Oh the Fad diet.  Most people have tried at least one.  Fasting, juicing, celery sticks, eating only foods of a certain color or only having sugar on days that end in Y…most Americans have been there.  They almost never ever work and when they do, you end up gaining back all the weight you lost and then some.  That’s because most of the time what you lose is primarily water and muscle.  Yet we continuously cycle back to them as a culture because we want to get skinny and we want it NOW –just like everything else.

One fad diet I distinctly remember from being a kid growing up in the 80s was the cabbage soup diet.  You know, 7 days of a stinky, flatulence inducing bland soup promising to help you drop 10 pounds!  Miracle of miracles.  Except it didn’t work because people go bored, people got gassy and people were basically just filling up on nutritionally empty soups loaded with fiber.  I don’t remember if my mom ever tried this diet because we ate cabbage soup as a Ukrainian/Russian Jewish thing and our cabbage soups were far from boring and bland.

Cabbage itself is actually really quite good for you when eaten raw or steamed.  It has amazing cancer fighting properties—specifically colon, bladder and prostate cancer.  It contains the chemical sinigrin—present in pretty much all the incredibly bitter and offputting vegetables we love to hate as kids.  Brussel sprouts, broccoli and horseradish are all high in the stuff but Savoy Cabbage especially is loaded with it.  Makes you wonder if Russians and Germans have a lower incidence of these really nasty cancers—all that sauerkraut does a colon good?  Red cabbage is also a particularly potent anti-inflammatory agent.

As such you really are better off eating cabbage for health either raw or steamed…but sometimes we just want a really tasty, low calorie, warm and filling recipe for those freak cold nights before summer.  At least I know I do.  The cabbage soup recipe that comes from centuries of Jewish cooking also manages to round out some of the lacking nutrition through the addition of tons of vegetables and tomatoes.  Thus it’s got a nice dosing of vitamin C so I don’t feel like I’m just filling up on fiber and water.   Plus we spice it up with some caraway seeds—which are also great chemical powerhouses of cancer fighting agents.  So even though this recipe is more diet fadly than diet friendly…it’s something that you can eat once a week to reduce your over-all caloric load and still feel like you’re doing the body some good.

Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup

Just like Nana used to make…with a few Olivia Modifications

• 1 head of green savoy cabbage, sliced
• 1 Tbsp grapeseed oil
• 1 sweet onion, diced
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 6-7 cups fat-free Beef stock (or Beefed up Vegan Stock)
• 2 cups tomato juice
• 1 can diced, roasted tomatoes
• ¼ cup dark brown sugar
• ½ cup maple syrup
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup golden raisins or prunes
• 2 ½ tsp caraway seeds
• 2 tsp dill, chopped
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Slice the cabbage into 1/2 inch thick, and 1 inch long or so slices.  Pile up and set aside for about 10 minutes.  The slicing triggers the transformation of the phytochemicals into a form digestible by your body for cancer fighting power.

In a stock pot heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and sweat for about 8-10 minutes. Add the cabbage, stirring occasionally, and cook for 5 minutes.

Add the beef stock, tomato juice, canned tomatoes and turn up the heat to high.  Mix in the sugar, maple syrup and lemon juice.  Once boiling reduce the heat to a simmer and toss in the  raisins or chopped prunes and caraway seeds.  Continue to simmer for about an hour.

After an hour taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper—add in the fresh dill. Cook for another 20 minutes or so, remove from the heat and serve warm.

Nutritional Information: (10 servings) 140 calories | 30g carbohydrates (22g sugar) | 4g protein | 2g fat (0g saturated)

Despite the fact that the only thing I know I can plan is for life to upset my plans, I still have all these guidelines for the love and marriage thing.  The underlying strategy to these guidelines follows that old idiom “only fools rush in.”  Marriage would follow years of dating—children should be held off until the marriage is at least two years tested.  A home should only be bought in a neighborhood that’s been thoroughly vetted for these theoretical children’s future education from K through 12.  Definitely can’t have a kid until I’m ready to simultaneously start saving for their college fund!  All these well intentioned plans that are meant to keep me safe and secure and probably will ensure I never do any of the above.

At what point does this need for security become an excuse to not do any of it?   Is the truth really that I’m just bloody effing terrified of these very permanent life changes?  Will I ever be as brave as my mother was at my age?

I mean I say I’m focusing on my career.  It’s true but if I really wanted to, if I really wanted to I could set aside the money and raise a kid.  I could do it.  I’m physically at the right stage.  I’ve got a real job with real future prospects.  I’m just too damn selfish, too damn scared and well I would ideally like to have a life partner to raise a child with so I’m not really equipped but still…I could do it on my own.  Is there an opposite phrase for “Only Fools Rush In” something like “and even bigger fools need to be pulled in kicking and screaming?”  I know plenty of people who do…well the opposite of what I think should be done and they do it quite well.

Am I just making excuses hidden under the guise of wisdom?  What do you think?  Do you have similar “rules” for planning your future?  Oddly enough this all popped into my head because sometimes when I go for a run at work I find reruns of Roseanne on and I’ll watch them.  As far as sitcoms go this show really was something special.  It was actually clever, had continuity and managed to be thought provoking at times.  It wasn’t just some crass weekly potato about blue collar, white trash in Middle America.  The opening is always the family seated around a dinner table, interacting and loving each other.  I do have a craving for that in my life.

But until I’m ready to give up these selfish ways of my single youth, I can only supply the family meal and not the family.  That’s where this dish comes in—nothing screams Sunday night family dinner more than a classic from my cultural heritage: Beef Stroganoff.  The Jewish side of my family comes from the Ukraine/Russia Ashkenazi tribe and despite having never been to the “mother country” I seem to have retained some sort of cultural tastebuds.  My passion for fermented vegetable juices, cabbage soups, beets…not exactly American.  This main course will appeal to non-Russian Jews though as it’s really just a big pot of pasta, meat and creamy mushroom sauce.  In fact it should appeal to everyone BUT jews since as we all know mixing dairy and meat is decidedly not-kosher.  Oops.  Well like I said…I’m Jewish.   I don’t keep Kosher year round…and I’m fairly certain Nana would approve of this meal.  “If it’s clean, it’s Kosher”

The flavor is OFF THE CHARTS out of this world amazing.  I know it’s far from the healthy food I eat most of the time, but this is exactly the sort of thing I crave when I really want to indulge once in a while.  It’s warm and filling in your stomach.  A more “Russian” approach might be to spike the sauce with vodka instead of red wine, but I guess the one thing I didn’t inherit in my cultural genetics was a love for that fermented potato juice.  It’s just…gross.  I think the red wine adds more body to the sauce–some cognac would be nice too.  Play with it if you like but just remember this: it’s not stroganoff without the mushrooms. Yes mushrooms.  It’s just not stroganoff without them.

“Rush-in” Beef Stroganoff

An Olivia Original – to serve 4

• 16 oz beef tenderloin, well trimmed, meat cut into 2x1x1/2 inch strips
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 2 shallots, sliced thin
• 8 oz sliced baby bella mushrooms
• 4  sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard
• 1 Tbsp prepared horseradish
• ¾ cup Madeira wine
• 1 ½ cups beef stock
• 2 -3 Tbsp Crème Fraiche or Sour Cream
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Fresh parsley, for serving
• Buttered noodles for serving

In a sauté pan over medium-high heat, add 1 tbsp of butter and sweat your shallots for about 5-8 minutes.  Add in the sliced beef tenderloin and cook for 2-3 minutes on one side, flip and cook for another 2-3 minutes.  Remove and set aside.

Heat another tablespoon of butter and sauté the mushrooms just so that they are lightly browned—about 5-6 minutes—but not mushy.  While cooking sprinkle lightly with salt, pepper and leaves from one sprig of thyme. Set aside with the beef and shallots.

Return the pan and deglaze over high heat ½ cup of the beef stock.  Deglaze means you dump in the wine, some of it sizzles and you whisk to scrape up all the good bits that come loose from earlier cooking.  Add in the beef stock and whisk in the horseradish and mustard—followed by the red wine.  Whisk, bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.  Add in the thyme and let this mixture for about 10 to 15 minutes or so.  It should reduce down by about half.  Remove from the heat and whisk in the crème fraiche.  Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

Plate by serving the meat and mushrooms on top of noodles and pour the cream sauce on top.  Garnish with some fresh parsley and enjoy!

Do you burn potatoes in the microwave?  Do you know the difference between a rolling boil and a simmer?  Does even the act of cracking and separating an egg mystify you?  Is your idea of making breakfast putting the cereal box next to the milk?  Don’t worry.  It’s not your fault.  When women left the kitchen and entered the workforce we got fat, lazy and lost generations of cultural kitchen knowledge.

No I’m not currently the victim of an alien abduction.  I don’t actually mean to blame this epidemic of culinary ignorance on moms; certainly not with mother’s day approaching.  I once had a professor who blamed our overweight, convenience food culture on women’s lib.  This wasn’t a soapbox about forcing women back into the role of housewife mind you.  He was just trying to grab our attention and demonstrate how a shift in family structure created the opportunity for the fast food market, also known as the fat food market, to gain a stronghold.  Prior to the 40’s, women stayed at home and family meals were a daily job.  Food was made from scratch, at home, and generally was more nutritious as a result.  It wasn’t a matter of grabbing a box of processed junk from the drive thru window while juggling teleconference calls.    Don’t go rushing off thinking your shrink is right and that all your problems are rooted with dear old mom.  There’s no reason Dad can’t stay at home instead and make those meals for the kidlets.  Sadly in today’s world having either parent out of the workforce just isn’t really a possibility even when/if a parent wants to.

As a result we’ve got a whole generation to whom seeing Mom or Dad in the kitchen is an anomaly—and as a result we’ve got kids who aren’t learning how to cook at all.  Heck even stay-at-home moms are so busy with their kids overloaded schedules that cooking is still likely to fall by the wayside when we have so many convenient options for pre-made meals.  It’s all about prioritizing and if someone else can do it then delegate, delegate, delegate…right?

Never let it be said that I don’t try to accommodate even the busiest of lifestyles.  I have stretched myself even thinner than usual so I definitely understand the need for something easy to make that takes little time, little effort and little cleanup.  One party dessert popular amongst soccer moms for this reason is an American Classic: the Rice Krispy Treat.  You can make these with almost no kitchen training whatsoever.  The hardest part is melting the marshmallows and this can be done in a microwave—no stove needed!  They are also traditionally pretty low in calories and thus folks like them as a more diet friendly dessert.  The only problem?

Diet food that’s low on calories is usually low on nutrition too.  That’s because foods high in nutrition usually package those vitamins to be absorbed by our bodies—meaning fats or sugars.  My theory is that dieting isn’t really worth it when the calories you’re consuming are totally empty.  Since Rice Krispies are really just fat, sugar and empty carbohydrates I wondered: could I make these slightly healthier at all to justify them as a diet dessert?

The first step was to eliminate the “Crispy Rice” of a certain name brand cereal well all grew up snapping along with.  Instead of using fried bits of white rice, high in fat and low in nutrition, I went for air puffed brown rice instead.  You can buy for cheap at Whole Foods.  This substitution reduced the fat content of each square by 60% and introduced some fiber.  The benefit of airpuffing also means that the brown rice retains most of the vitamins and minerals; one cup has 1/3 of your daily B vitamins. I actually made these during my vegan week so in addition to being low calorie, gluten free they are also totally vegan…and yet still manage to taste like what they are.  Thus instead of using butter I used a flax based butter substitute which cut the calories from fat AND reduced the saturated fats.  As for the marshmallows…well you can’t replace that sugar but if this were 100% healthy I don’t think I could call it a proper dessert right?  Mine do have a little more sugar probably because of the brand of marshmallow but since they also have more B vitamins, zinc, potassium, fiber and less fat and fewer calories…I think I will let that slide.

One last tip: if you aren’t worried about gluten free try using puffed whole wheat, puffed kamut grains or puffed barley instead.  You’ll get even more vitamins and fiber from those!

Vegan Rice Krispeasies

An Olivia Original

• 6 cups puffed brown rice cereal
• 1 bag of vegan marshmallows (I used Dandies)
• 3 Tbsp Smartbalance with Flax (this product does contain some soy)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or any flavored extract you like

Prep a 13×9 inch cake pan with lining or a small rubdown with buttery spread.

In a microwave safe bowl heat your marshmallows and butter substitute on high.  Watch these carefully and stop periodically to stir and continue heating.  Once entirely smooth remove from the microwave.  Stir in the extract if you want to add a little oomph of flavor to these treats.

Mix the puffed brown rice cereal into the melted marshmallows. Spread into your prepped pan and let cool for at least 1 hour before slicing and serving.

Vegan Rice Krispeasies: (1 serving – 12 total) 128 calories | 1g Fat (<0.5g Saturated) | 28 carbohydrates (17g sugar) | 1g protein

TraditionalL1 serving – 12 total) 140 calories | 4g Fat (2.5g Saturated) | 28g carbohydrates (14 sugar) | 1g protein

I know many of us grew up with the phrase “You don’t discuss money, religion or politics” thrown about in reference to topics of polite conversation.  I tend to follow this rule as best as I can since it has some validity—especially in the workplace or a dinner party.  I find it’s usually good not to engage in a conversation on these topics with that dirty man wearing the tinfoil hat on my street corner.  Doesn’t he know it’s rude to shout at strangers about government?  Where are your societal standards of dignity man!

On the internet though…man have we ever abandoned this axiom of polite conversation.  As we should—after all these things DO need to be discussed…somewhere.  You don’t get political action if everyone is too polite to talk about it.  The internet, outlets like facebook especially, provides us with a chance to discuss these things but also turn it off and walk away.  You can close a forum with a particularly nasty character in it.  You can’t move offices everytime you get into it with a coworker.  Yet the internet, facebook especially, is littered with misinformation.  I get frustrated when memes proliferate on newsfeeds that are invalid—misattributed quotes, ignorant assumptions or loud proclamations based upon faulty information.

Sometimes I really wonder if this magical interwebs is making us better voters or just louder whiners.  No one on either side of the aisle denies that our political system currently is a mess.  We’ve got a gaggle of elected officials who don’t seem to be worth a damn and they are running us into the ground.  You might disagree about which side they are on but republicans and democrats all in general seem to be pretty dissatisfied with something.  United we stand…in our disgust.  But why? I mean we elect these officials—the power is theoretically in our hands.  Why is this happening?

On my more cynical nights, of which there are many, I come circling back to one thought: People don’t actually know a damn thing about their government anymore.  Healthcare, Guns, Taxes, Marriage…we all have our emotional responses to these issues and most of the posts I see on facebook are precisely that: emotion based declarations.  No one actually examines the issue through the scope of how our government works.  Take the very powerfully, emotionally charged issue of gun control—most reactions and demands for legislation are based entirely off the result of tragedies or regional upbringing.

There’s another phrase that I think of on the topic of politics.  Lesser known and often misattributed (thanks facebook) to President Lincoln: “Every country has the government it deserves.”  Lincoln didn’t say that—in fact it came from a French lawyer by the name of Joseph de Maistre—who supported monarchy over democracy by the way.  Still the quote often times seems valid.  Ultimately we seem to be getting what we ask for.  How many of our politicians have actually read the constitution?  Great question.  Here’s another one: how many voters have actually read the constitution?

I am not trying to belittle anyone when I ask that.  I just think it’s a valid question.  We want our politicians to be smarter, to be more responsible and to actually act in line with how our government is supposed to work.  I ask you how do we get better politicians?  By becoming better voters.  We won’t get the government we want if we don’t inform ourselves.  I know some highly opinionated people who engage in political discourse quite frequently who never seem to know their 4^th amendment from their 5^th; who don’t know that the issue of a federal bank was largely debated from the founding of the government; who don’t know the origins of the income tax.  Understanding the basis of our government, why it operates the way it does, dramatically alters the scope of how we should legislate.  If we want our politicians to know what they are talking about, we need to know what they are talking about not take them on their word.

It seems that most Americans born in this country would fail the civics test that foreigners have to pass to be naturalized, voting citizens.  I don’t think that being born in this country makes you inherently wiser about its political system.  Let me ask you these five questions–can you honestly answer them?  Answers can be found if highlight the hidden text except for the 1st question as that’s state specific….

1. Name your State US Representative
2. How many amendments are there currently to the US Constitution?  Answer: 27
3. How many justices are on the US Supreme Court? Answer: 9
4. When was the US Constitution written? Answer: 1787 –
5. How long do we elect a US Senator for? Answer: 6 years

Why do these kinds of questions matter?  Well take number 4 as an example.  The revolution was fought and won between 1774-1776.  Knowing when the constitution was written and/or ratified (hint: not immediately after) would raise other questions that make you an informed voter.  How did we govern ourselves between those years?  What prompted the content of our constitution–what was the intent of the framers?  Knowing this helps to guide us in drafting new legislation and understanding how it should be written in order to work within the specific architecture of our political system.

The only way to make our politicians begin to legislate with more wisdom and less rhetoric is if we as voters become more demanding and more educated.  So sometimes on my more cynical days I wonder what would happen if the first 10 boxes you had to check on a ballot were actually a mini-civics test.  Fail the test and your vote doesn’t count.  Interestingly enough there isn’t anything in the constitution that says we can’t do this…I’m not saying we should and I’m aware how problematic this would be.  We would wind up creating a class structure since lower classes are more likely to be less educated yadda yadda yadda.  I’m only positing this as a thought born out of frustration.  And now I can never run for office because the media will take this musing thought experiment and turn it into a headline reading “Congressional candidate thinks only the rich should vote.”  I should probably make political discussion entirely taboo on this blog and not drive you all away with these kinds of radical thoughts.

How about something radical in the kitchen instead?  I wanted to reinvent the blueberry muffin recently and man oh man did this recipe turn out amazing.  The muffins are a deep, mahogany color thanks to my inspiration to use date syrup as a sweetener.  I also wanted to find a new, unusual but complimentary flavor for the blueberries.  I was running a mental run-through of all the spices I know and one screamed out at me: anise.  The vaguely licorice flavor is really nice with blueberries and can stand up to the stronger flavor of the date syrup.  I was quite pleased.  Finally the use of sour cream in the batter makes these really moist, springy and tender to eat.  I might not be able to get a better brand of politician but I definitely got a better blueberry muffin.

Anise Blueberry Muffins

An Olivia Original – makes 18 muffins

• 8 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup date syrup
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground anise
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 ½ pints blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep two muffin tins.  These will rise a LOT so you’re going to want to only fill about ¾ of the way to the top.

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and anise.  Set aside.

In another bowl whisk together the eggs, butter and sour cream.  Pour in the date syrup and vanilla extract and combine well.

Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and whisk just until they come together.  Very gently add in the blueberries and mix by hand.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 20-30 minutes or until the muffins start to look just a little brown and crisp on the edges and pass the toothpick test.  Remove from the heat and tile the muffins in their pan on an angle to release steam as they cool.  This prevents the formation of soggy bottoms.

Forget the sailors, I curse with the vigor and frequency of a godless pirate.  I try to minimize it as much as possible and have incorporated many useful stand-ins to my language thanks to the cleverness of scifi shows I love.  Frak, Frick, Frell…all those satisfying F’s and hard k sounds that are just so satisfying to an angry tongue.  I’ve been known to use sexual organs as expletive remarks as well—usually modified to make them grotesque rather than anatomical.  Fuck Cock Balls was a refrain I used pretty heavily at one point, much to my mother’s dismay.  I’m far from angelic when it comes to how I choose to express my frustration.

Even so I always refrained from using racial slurs or references to homosexuality as part of my salty repertoire.  For my generation avoiding some of the more notorious and long-standing racial slurs has been taught from birth.  We know better than to use Huck Finn language, the terms our grandparents will still use to our horror, but I was always frustrated by the acceptance of terms like “Gay” and “Fag” as a young child.  I would lecture my peers, practically handing out S.P.E.W. badges in my more righteous moments, and even refused to associate with kids who didn’t understand why it was wrong.

This is why, when I finally had a moment where it clicked, I was both elevated and horrified by my understanding that the word retard needs to be evicted from my vocabulary.

This issue is hardly new and trendy—I’m late to the party.  When I first became aware of the seeming embargo on the word “retard” I will admit I thought it was ridiculous.  After all the literal meaning of the term is “Delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment.”  After all a delay in say an insurance certificate could be said to retard the progression of your study start up.  That’s a valid use of the dictionary definition of the term.  The problem is that we don’t use this word in that manner 99% of the time.  Most of the time we use the word retard to describe people who are developmentally disabled.  Again at the inception of the use, it was a simple medical term.  You can’t go around not-defining people purely because the medical condition you are defining is debilitating can you?  No so I dismissed the concept of being insulted by this word as oversensitive poppycock.

Then one day I went to describe someone as a retard and I stopped myself.  I realized that what I was about to do was equate someone born with a genuine mental disability to someone who was getting on my nerves for being willfully ignorant.  A much better descriptor by the way and one that I find myself using a lot now.  Willfully ignorant.  But that got me to thinking…the reason I objected so strongly in my youth to the term “gay” was that it had been commandeered by our culture to be a word that meant inferior, stupid and unworthy.  Hadn’t we done the same thing to retard?  True or false: we primarily use this term, which describes a medical minority, to also mean lame, stupid, ineffective, uncool and not worth our time?  So I was okay making the same kind of analogy that I so strongly objected to with regards to homosexuals for another group who similar to my gay friends, were just born different than me?   When I used “retard” as an insult, I was in effect attempting to insult a person/thing by comparing it to mentally disabled people and in the process also insulting all of them as well.  I was implying that being mentally disabled was wrong and using that to attack others.  I was belittling people via association and insulting all parties in the process.  I am disgusted with myself for taking so long to realize it. Call it an opening of the third eye if you will.  Call it divine intervention.  Call it inception.  I don’t know what it was but I suddenly realized that my insistence upon using this word, after knowing it offended some people, was wrong.

I’m not about to stop cursing anytime soon.  I find it too cathartic.  Maybe I’ll have an epiphany about that sometime in the future.  I can’t make any promises.  I also am not going to stop thinking that shallow, lazy and willfully ignorant people are annoying.  I simply cannot abide useless people. I will stop using the word retard in a manner that implies someone born with an intellectual disability is useless.  There are those born disadvantaged and those who simply choose not to use the healthy brains they were given.  When so many in the handicapped community work to overcome the obstacles they were given, not only was I being insulting but I was being inaccurate in using “retard” to describe someone who chooses to be lazy.  The only thing I hate more than being an insensitive jerk is being a wrong, insensitive jerk.  I was wrong to lower those with born mental disadvantages to be on the same level as creeps and lazy assholes.  When I saw it from that perspective, I was appalled at myself.

I am genuinely and sincerely sorry it took me so long.  I am also sorry for any slip-ups I may have in the future.  I think part of the reason people resist this kind of change is because removing a word from our language is hard but not everything worth doing is ever easy, is it?   With that in mind, how about an easy recipe to help with the hard journey to sweeten that salty tongue?  Maybe a Salted Caramel Swirl Cheesecake would help?

It totally would.

Salty Sailor Caramel Cheesecake

An Olivia Original

Crust:

• 1 ½ cups ground chocolate wafer cookies (I like using girl scout cookies for this—the caramel chocolate coconut delicious and totally awful for you and against everything I stand for cookies.  Thankfully there is a whole foods, non-corn syrup product using version!)
• 5 Tbsp melted butter
• 2 Tbsp sugar

Filling:

• 28 ounces cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¾ cup heavy cream
• ¼ cup sour cream
• 1 cup dulce de leche
• 1 tsp sea salt

Additional items: 1 springform pan (8 or 9”) and a larger pan that this can sit inside of.  I usually use a broiling pan.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep your 8” springform pan.

Make the crust: Mix together the butter, sugar and cookie crumbs.  Press into the bottom of the pan and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.  Remove and let cool.

In a small bowl mix the dulce de leche with the sea salt.

In a stand mixer beat the cream cheese on medium-high until smooth and creamy.  Scrape down the sides and add in the sugar beating for another 2-3 minutes.  Reduce the speed to low and add in the eggs and egg yolks—one at a time.  Follow with the heavy cream, vanilla extract and sour cream.

Pour the batter into the prepared spring form pan.  Now drizzle over your salted caramel sauce and swirl through the cheesecake with a knife.

Place the cheesecake into the larger broiling pan and set in the oven.  Pour enough water to come up about a half an inch of the sides of the cheesecake.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes to an hour or until the cheesecake has set on the outside but still jiggles slightly on the inside.  Remove and let cool before cutting.

Commercial beef has on average 8.5 grams of fat per 3 oz serving, commercial chicken has 2.5g when you average the white and dark meat.  How many grams of fat, on average, do you think grass feed beef has per 3 oz serving:

1. 8.5 grams
2. 5 grams
3. 4 grams
4. 2.5 grams

If you answered D you would be correct.  Grass fed beef, according to a 2002 study by the Journal of Animal Science, has as much fat as a commercially farmed chicken.  White meat will be a little less, dark meat actually much more, but on the whole that chicken has as much fat as your grass fed cow.  Okay great but what does this mean really in your diet?  Pardon me while we do some quick and dirty math to explain what these fat grams really mean.

A single hamburger patty from your typical McDonalds – according to their website – is 3.5 ounces and contains 9g of fat.  Okay my math says that should really round up to 10g but let’s go with 9.  At a ratio of approximately 3:1 that same burger, if made with grass fed beef, would contain only 3 grams of fat.  Sweet!  But…what does that really mean?

A single gram of fat is 9 calories.  That means you are getting 81 calories from fat in that McDonalds patty.  If you replaced that beef with grass fed, you would be getting only 27 calories from fat.  That’s a difference of 54 calories in the one burger.  Assuming you eat a single hamburger patty once a week…that’s 2800 calories in a year.  A single pound of fat is 3500 calories.  With the assumption that you eat only a single hamburger fast food patty a week, that’s almost a pound you could lose in year from simply switching from corn fed to grass fed beef.  And that’s a low estimate.

The reality?

On average ¼ of Americans consume at least one fast food/meal out in a week.  Various reports show that of those meals the average fast food consumer will eat 4 hamburgers in a week.  Doing that math it breaks down to 3.5 pounds you could lose in a year without changing the content of your diet—just by changing the quality of the beef you are eating and again that’s assuming your burger is a simple ¼lb patty.  Are you eating half pound burger?  Now that’s 7 pounds in a year.  That’s ignoring any other beef products you may be consuming.

This shit adds up.

And those fats you do get?  A 1998 study in the Journal of Animal Feed Science and Technology showed that the “good fats” needed in our diets versus saturated, make you big fats, are much higher in pastured animals than feedlot animals.  How much?  Try as many as 10 times more omega-3s in pastured, true free-range hen eggs versus factory farm, crammed in cages hens.  10 times more.  This applies to beef too.  In fact grass fed beef contains the ideal ratio of the heart-healthy omega fatty acids.  It’s perfectly balanced for our bodies.

But wait…there’s more!  Grass-fed beef is higher in cancer fighting fatty acids, in vitamins B and E as well as various minerals including calcium.  The milk from grass-fed beef can be as much as 4 times richer in vitamin E and this is because the grass that they eat, versus the corn, is that much more nutritious for the animals and therefore, for us.

So to sum up by switching to grass fed beef you could do all the of following without changing a single thing you actually eat:

• Lose 3 to 7 pounds in a year (on average, for many this number would go up)
• Increase your omega fatty acids – good for your heart
• Increase additional healthy fats shown to reduce cancer risk
• Increase your intake of calcium
• Increase your intake of vitamin e

Now I know, I know.  Grass fed beef is expensive right?  Fine.  Here’s a recipe using grass fed flat-iron steak.  I was able to buy 8 ounces (2 servings) at whole foods for under 8 dollars.  Flat Iron is a really great cut of meat for a simple steak salad.  It’s no Filet Mignon or New York strip but when you slice it and pan sear it with the right seasonings it’s just as delicious.  It’s superior to ribeye that’s for sure.  Pair it with some greens and a perfect steak horseradish dressing?  You never knew getting skinny tasted soooooooo good.

Skinny Steak Salad with Horseradish Dressing

an Olivia Original

Dressing

• 2 Tbsp fresh horseradish chopped
• 2 Tbsp sour cream from grass fed cows
• ¼ cup buttermilk, fat free
• 1 tsp honey
• Salt and pepper to taste

Salad

• 1 head chopped romaine lettuce
• ¼ cup pickled red radishes
• 1 ½ cups grape tomatoes, sliced in half
• ½ cup sliced sunchokes
• ½ cup diced cucumber
• 2 Tbsp chopped shallts
• 8 oz flat iron grass fed steak, sliced into 1/4 inch strips against the grain
• 1 tsp fresh rosemary, minced
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp black pepper
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp fresh chives

To make the dressing: run the horseradish through a food processer until finely pureed.  Whisk into the sour cream, buttermilk and honey.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Set aside.

To prepare the steaks: mix together the rosemary, salt and pepper.  Season both sides of the steak and let stand for approximately 5-10 minutes at room temperature.   Meanwhile heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet over high heat.  Add the strips of steak and cook for 3-4 minutes on one side.  Flip and cook another two minutes.  Remove the steaks from the pan and let drain.  Add the sunchokes to the pan and cook until crispy and browned.  Remove and drain with the steak slices.

Toss together the romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and shallots.  Sprinkle on top the pickled radishes, strips of steak and sunchokes.  Drizzle dressing over top and sprinkle with freshly chopped chives.

Estimated Nutrition information: 377 calories | 28g carbs (10.5 g sugar) | 15g fat | 3og protein

I just got back from a work trip to exotic Fresno where I was harassed so severely by two men at my hotel that I actually complained and got them kicked out of their rooms.  Their behavior, which included asking to take my picture and following me in a parking lot, was beyond the level of good taste.  While what happened was unquestionably inappropriate, got me to thinking about times where this kind of behavior is tempered and the disconnect between what men think is okay and what women do not want to experience.  So menfolk we need to have a little chat.

This doesn’t pertain to all of you, or even most of you, directly but I think you all need to be made aware of this so you can understand women and stop this behavior when you see it.  Now I will make small talk when I’m in a good mood with my cashier or the cab driver.  I know that it breaks up the monotony of the day in the service industry to have someone friendly engage you for even a few minutes.  I’ve been there.  I had my high school stint as a worker bee at Mervyn’s.  But if there is a woman you are ringing up, or helping, or in a car with who is clearly having a bad day–leave her the frak alone.  Seriously.  Don’t make it your job to cheer her up because if she’s anything like me she really, really doesn’t want you to.  In fact having a strange male approach me when I’m in that mood doesn’t help me feel better–it puts me on edge.

Often I will be walking down the street after having a bad day, and I wear my heart on my sleeve I admit it, and a man will tell me to smile.  “Smile!  You’ll be so much prettier if you smile.”  – “Would you smile for me?” — “Cheer up!  Smile!”  This does not make me feel good.  This does not make me feel safe.  What’s more you don’t have any right to demand that I be “prettier” or happy all the time.  I do not know of a single woman who has ever done this to a complete strange man as he passes her by on the street.  You know why?  It’s not our place to tell you how to feel or express those feelings.  It is also not my job or duty to be pretty for you.

You have no right to demand that the women all around you in the world always be happy and smiling.  Even if your intention is to cheer us up, a great intention I’ll admit, you have no right.  I get to be upset or tired or sad or angry if I want to.  I’m human damn it and I have a right to the range of emotions that don’t make me some shiny, plastic flower in your garden.  So let me be.  Especially if you are someone I don’t know stopping me on the street.  If I’m having a bad day and I’m feeling out of sorts, I’m going to engage in a fight or flight panic when you do this.  I’m going to immediately have to question your intentions and get ready to protect myself.  So even if you aren’t in any way threatening, you are eliciting the exact opposite response from me that you intend to.  Because sometimes I do have to get ready to protect myself like last night.

I pulled into the hotel and it was late.  I was tired.  I don’t particularly enjoy driving for more than an hour at a time.  I get antsy.  I like to move.  I don’t like being cramped in a car having to worry about drivers cutting across 4 lines sending me swerving to avoid both them and the wall–yes this happened too.  It was dark and I was in a strange place.  I just wanted to get into bed and sleep.  Two men on a golf cart start in on me.  “Aww honey smile!”  I ignore them and continue to get my bags out of the car.  They stop.  “Hey can you do us a favor?”  Exasperated I say “No.”  The men turn to each other and roll their eyes.  “Come on you’ll be so much prettier if you smile.  Smile.  Let me take your picture, it’ll cheer you up.  Don’t worry it will be tasteful.”  I am inflamed.  This is beyond just “cheering” me up.  Maybe they were drunk.  Maybe they were professional photographers for Vogue.  It doesn’t matter.  It was uncalled for.  I shuffled away, satisfied they weren’t following me and went directly to my room, to my phone and called the front desk.  I was called back 15 minutes later and told these guests had been removed from the property and that I didn’t need to worry about the duration of my stay.

Even ignoring this situation guys, please try to remember that women are not under an obligation to be pretty or happy for you.  No one demands that men always be happy, smiling and walking around with muscles and perfect hair.  You do not have the right to demand this of me or to try to impose it upon me.  When you try it does not make me feel special or happy.  It makes me angrier and makes my day worse.  Not all women are sure to feel this way.  I can’t speak for all of womankind but I’d wager that there are more of us than not.  It just comes across as seedy.

And speaking of seeds how about some gluten free sesame seed muffins?  I’ve broken out of my vegan week–huzzah!  It was an interesting experiment but definitely not the way I think I’ll be living my life 24/7.  Worthwhile to make the effort though and so you might see some “Meatless Mondays” breaking up the muffin monotony.  Not today though.  Today I have this recipe which I was inspired to make during my vegan stint.  It seems that gluten free baking became much easier for me to fathom when I was cutting out eggs and buttermilk as well.  These muffins are very strange at first but I was inspired to make them after craving some chocolate covered sunflower seeds.  Savory and sweet.  These seem to improve the next day if you keep them airtight. I might cut back on the mini-chocolate chips though.  I think a third of a cup would suffice.

Gluten Free Sunflower Seed Muffins

an Olivia Original

• 1 1/2 cups garbanzo flour
• 1/2 cup sunflower meal
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup sunflower seed
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep a muffin pan with liners or lightly oil.

Sift together the garbanzo flour, the ground sunflower, sugar,, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

In another bowl whisk together the applesauce, the egg and the buttermilk.

Pour the liquid over the dry goods and whisk until just blended.  Stir in the sesame seeds and chocolate chips by hand.  Scoop the batter into your prepared muffin tins up to the top.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes and then remove from the heat.  Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then remove to a rack.  Let cool completely before eating.

Okay Olivia so far for this “vegan” thing you shared a muffin, a cake and some vegetable broth–not exactly convincing that you are getting substantive fare on a vegan diet.  What about an actual meal?  Alright first of all I’m not necessarily advocating a full vegan lifestyle—remember the word I discovered is “flexitarian” but in being a flexitarian I do need a good vegan main course menu item or two.  Going Vegan for a main course doesn’t mean you have to rely on those expensive and often bland tasting “meat substitutes” they sell at your local grocery store.  Actually I kind of love the veggie dogs but that does not a meal make.  Organic, local vegetables can get expensive too—a meal at Wendy’s is much cheaper than a salad at Whole Foods.  So how do you work with this to make a budget friendly, vegetable heavy and still tasty vegan dish?

Let’s start by eliminating the idea that your only option for protein replacement is going to be tofu.  I love tofu.  It’s delicious when prepared correctly but it’s also soy based and just like corn, we have way too much soy in our diets.  Where corn fills the gap for producing cheap sugars, soy stands in many of your pre-packaged products because it is the cheapest form of complete protein to grow.  It’s cheaper even than the “beef” produced by the corn chomping factory farmed cows Ronald McDonald loves to use.  If you breakdown what goes into the modern American diet…it’s 50% corn and soy.  That’s nuts!  Again from an economic and agriculture standpoint, the high level of soyfarming we do is horrible.  It’s bad for the environment.  One place that loves to factory farm soy is Brazil—in land that used to be rainforest.  There’s also the not so awesome fact that most soy is GMO.  I don’t have a problem with GMO foods themselves; so far there hasn’t been anything to indicate that GM soy is inherently dangerous.  Remember I’ve got a biotech degree.  That being said, the way it’s been manipulated is so that the soy can withstand large quantities of herbicide to kill of weeds.  This means your factory farm can spray much higher levels of chemicals on your food—run off in the water and the seeping of those chemicals into the soy?  Not so good.  All the corn is GM too but depending on the modification we’re discussing I have less of a problem with it.  That’s a post for another day.  Back to the main point: more chemicals sprayed on my food is not something I’m eager to embrace.

There are also the health concerns.  Over-exposure to anything is going to be bad for you and soy is no exception.  Soyeans are high in phytoestrogens which are perfectly fine for you in small doses.  A wide array of our produce contains these chemicals which are plant based—legumes, cereal grains, fruits, vegetables and flax seeds all have phytoestrogens.  Too many?  Well…higher incidence of breast cancer, thyroid cancer and a lowering of testosterone levels which can be bad in men.  Soy also contains phytic acid which inhibits uptake of minerals that we need and some protease inhibitors which actually make it harder for us to digest protein.  Oh and overexposure?  That’s thought to be the cause of the seemingly increased number of allergy sufferers now.

Don’t lose your head and go running to the doctor just yet. Don’t think you have to stop eating soy completely.  Vitamin C can make you sick if you eat enough.  We just need to stop mono-dieting and make sure that our bodies are fed as wide a variety of foods as possible.  Since soy isolates are in over 70% of what’s on a typical supermarket shelf, I’m going to share a main course recipe that doesn’t have any soy products but is still high in protein.

Really my main point is this: if you want to get healthy, get away from processed foods.  When you do eat them, read the labels and know what’s in them.  I minimize my intake of what comes out of a box so I don’t worry about it as much if I want to have delicious tofu in wasabi cream sauce once a week or two.

I know most vegan food people think looks like dog food.  I guess this one kind of does too but don’t go running away.  I know it looks like health food but one bite of this casserole and you will be transported to Italy.  It’s the sun-dried tomatoes that do it.  Those little nuggets of tomato goodness can make anything taste amazing.  In fact I haven’t made my sundried tomato basil bread in ages.  I need to do that soon.  The original recipe came from Vegan with a Vengeance but it was very simple and un-seasoned.  Since I largely know people who wouldn’t eat broccoli if it were pureed and hidden in a chocolate bar, I decided I needed to jazz the recipe up a bit.  I was craving pizza and this is what came out.  It’s delicious and trust me one bite…your head will roll.  Plus garbanzo beans contain all of the essential amino acids needed to make it a complete protein for an adult.  Bear in mind that histidine, which is the 9th “essential” amino acid to create a whole protein, is typically produced by an adult body in sufficient quantities so long as the other essentials are present.  In children however this is not the case so if you have a little one to feed be sure to add some whole grains to this meal OR mix it up and use some cauliflower or mushrooms in the recipe.  These veggies contain histidine too.

Broccoli Tomato Garbanzo Casserole

Adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance

• 2 heads of broccoli
• 2 cans garbanzo beans
• ¼ cup chopped sundried tomatoes
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 large carrots, sliced into ribbons
• 1 cup vegan stock
• 1 Tbsp fresh chopped rosemary
• 1 tsp fresh chopped oregano
• 3-4 sticks of thyme, leaves removed
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• ½ cup whole wheat bread crumbs
• 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast (this gives the casserole a cheesy flavor mmmmm)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Puree the garbanzo beans with the olive oil—put in a large bowl and mix in the broth.

Chop the heads of broccoli and then add all the vegetables (broccoli, carrots and tomatoes) to your bowl containing the puree.  Add to your mixing bowl.  Mix in the fresh herbs and spices.  In a small bowl blend together the bread crumbs and nutritional yeast.  Toss with the vegetables.

Look ma!  Very little cleanup!

Pour this into a casserole dish and cover with aluminum foil.  Bake for 30 minutes at 350, uncover and then cook another 15 to 20 minutes until the top starts to get a little crusty.

This works as a main dish or as a smaller side dish.  If you really wanted to stretch it out to a big meal try mixing in some whole grain pasta and baking.

We’re going totally topsy turvy this week!  Vegan food!  Gluten Free!  Oh and Fantasy Friday being hosted on a Thursday but it’s for an important reason.  Today is Tolkien Reading Day!  Set on March 25th each year to commemorate the fall of Sauron, fans of the Middle Earth are encourage to read or rather re-read this epic saga.  Since I’m on a journey of my own with this vegan challenge, it seems appropriate to call upon the fellowship.  What did they travel with but the elven Lembas bread–a recipe I had yet to tackle.    I’ve seen a few recipes on the net for Lembas bread but one thing has always bothered me: they were essential just short bread cookies or butter cakes.  Hardly the sort of thing you take on a long journey.  The bread needs to be sweet and delicious but also full of protein, vitamins and fiber.  Challenge accepted!  I totally would imagine Tolkien’s’ elves as vegans…wouldn’t you?  I mean I think the Mirkwood elves in The Hobbit may be depicted as eating meat at their feast scene.  I don’t remember those details and I should try to look it up I suppose.  I’m sure I will later but for now I’m going to stick with my mental image of the elves as vegans.  I could buy that .  Except for one thing: pretty sure the elves eat honey.  Did you know honey isn’t universally considered vegan?  When I first found out, I though okay, it made a modicum of sense—honey is after all an animal product of sorts.  It’s produced by insects which aren’t really classified as animals but I can see the logic path that would leave vegans to opposing honey.

Then I thought about it some more and realized that if you consider insects “people too” you basically have to desist from eating anything manufactured.  In fact even growing a backyard garden and employing some organic tricks for pest control would mean impacting and killing the insect population should be disallowed.  At what point do you draw the line?  In a normal day any plant processing your vegan agave nectar is going to kill a thousand insects simply as a side effect of running the plant.  Bugs get in the gears; bugs get in the food; bugs get everywhere and they get filtered out.  So I can’t really get on board with the anti-honey vegans.  The issue of animal-cruelty hypocrisy has been pretty prescient lately when PETA was exposed for “putting down” up to 96% of the animals they “rescued”.  Having worked with dog rescues for years I’ve known this for a long time and wasn’t surprised.  It’s why I never, ever have supported PETA.  Bunch of money grabbing phonies.

One of the driving motivations behind vegetarianism, and veganism, is the issue of animal cruelty.  Factory farming practices for animal welfare are abysmal.  I don’t think I’m going to surprise anyone by saying that.  Most of us are happy to plug our ears, close our eyes and try not to imagine the animal that used to be alive outside that Styrofoam and plastic wrapped non-animal looking pound of protein.  Nevermind that cows are kept crammed together in their own feces and fed diets that make them ill.  Nevermind that hens are kept so close to one another they peck each other out of anxiety.  Nevermind that pigs experience such anxiety in their close captivity that they bit each other’s tails—causing horrible infections.  To combat this farms frequently cut off their tails which actually puts the pigs in more pain because nerve endings are exposed but eliminates the pesky, costly infections.   And yes pigs DO experience emotions like anxiety.  They are highly evolved, intelligent creatures despite the dirty connotations we’ve given them over time.  That being said I don’t have a problem normally with eating them because wild pigs are also really fucking MEAN.  The tiny, human bred teacup kind people keep for pets might be Wilbur-esque but the sort you find on a farm, the natural version?  They’ll eat your kneecaps before you can yell uncle.

I accept that in the natural order of things some animals eat other animals—and that I am one of those predators.  That doesn’t limit my desire to see these animals raised humanely and slaughtered as painlessly as possible.  I think of this way: torture is often seen as something worse than death.  Keeping someone in a state of constant pain and agony until they desire to no longer exist is horrible and overall we tend to object to torture more vehemently than even death itself.  I accept this because, as with the honey issue, finding a way to eliminate any negative effect of our human need to eat on other living creatures is impossible.  I’m not convinced that honey farming, especially the small scale local level, is particularly harmful to the mental state of the insects.  I do buy locally sourced honey and not just because I try to be a locavore, but because eating local honey has been demonstrated to help with allergies—local pollens and all that.

That’s my biggest problem with veganism, and to a lesser extent vegetarianism, if you examine it closely enough you will always find something that is inconsistent with this mindset.  Vegetarians who eat eggs, as an example, if they get eggs from factory farms are still supporting the slaughter of chickens.  In order to raise hens for egg laying farms will have to hatch thousands of eggs and male chickens, aka roosters, get tossed in a grinder upon hatching.  So ovo-vegetarians you ARE supporting this industry unless you buy eggs from small farms that raise their own hens and don’t slaughter baby boys.

In fact…the egg laying hen industry essentially Craster’s Keep of the food world.  Anyway that’s why I’m happy to align myself as this new fangled term “flexitarian”.   I realize that there will always be some impact from my existing and eating–but I can work to minimize that as much as possible.  For that I do applaud those who make the vegan and vegetarian lifestyle choices.  At least they are doing something…minimizing the cost.  Just don’t get too militant about it and recognize that in the end something, whether its a cow or a blade of grass, dies for us to eat.  Let’s give it the respect it deserves and avoid the nasty factory farming practices that really are just unnecessarily cruel and unusual.

Which brings me back to our geeky subject of the day!  So what do you think?  Would the elves of Tolkien’s world be vegans?  I imagine that since they are magical there are ways for the children of the wood to avoid killing even a single bug in the making of their food.  If hobbits are the hippies of middle earth, the elves are definitely the vegan no-soy latte hipsters.  Sorry Legolas.    I’ve made two LOTR/Hobbit recipes already: Beorn’s Twice Baked Honey Cakes and Sam Gamgee’s Potato Dumplin’s… but I still hadn’t tackled the most iconic of all the foods in this world: Lembas Bread.

‘So it is,’ they answered, ‘But we call it lembas or way bread, and it is more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts.’

‘Indeed it is’ said Gimli. ‘Why, it is better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings, and that is great praise, for the Beornings are the best bakers that I know of”

And so without further ado I provide a recipe that is Gluten Free, Soy Free AND Vegan* It’s loaded with protein and fiber to keep you full on your journey.  My genuine original recipe and I’m incredibly proud of it because it’s INSANELY. FRAKKING. DELICIOUS.  One waybread slice is supposed to be enough to feed any man but I definitely went hobbit on these and devoured 4 or 5 though in my defense I cut them smaller than they are shown in the films.  Thanks to the high protein of the garbanzo, amaranth and almonds, this bread is not only going to taste good but it will keep you sustained both with carbs for your glycogen reserves and as a complete source of protein.

*I used honey in my version but if you are a non-honey eating vegan feel free to substitute agave nectar instead.

Lembas Bread

An Olivia Original

• 1 ¼ cup Garbanzo bean flour
• 1 ¼ cup Amaranth flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 Tbsp Flax meal mixed with+ 3 Tbsp water
• ¼ cup ground natural almond butter
• 6 Tbsp soy-free vegan butter
• ¼ cup light brown sugar
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ¼ cup honey (or agave nectar for “true” vegans)
• 2 tsp orange blossom water
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and line 9×13 inch pan with parchment paper.

Sift together the garbanzo flour, amaranth flour, baking soda and baking powder.  Mix in the cinnamon and salt and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl beat the vegan butter on high.  Add in the sugars and honey/nectar and beat for an additional 2-3 minutes.  Add almond butter and flax mixture—beat another minute and then add in the vanilla and orange blossom water extracts.  Reduce the speed to low.

Gently add in the flour mixture being careful not to add it all at once.  Beat just until your batter comes together and remove.

Spread the mixture into your prepared pan (providing you can avoid eating it with a spoon) and bake for approximately 30 minutes.  It will get light and puffy and then condense down a bit as it cools.

Cut into bars, wrap in leaves and enjoy.