Random Recipe: Williams Two-Can Chili

Speaking of that chili recipe from the Random Rant, here's the recipe, in case you were wanting to know what it's like to lick the lord's fingers after he's eaten it.

Williams Two-Can Chili:

• 1 packet Williams Chili Seasoning
• 2 cans organic black beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 cans organic red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 cand Rotel
• 2 cans Mexican Style stewed tomatoes
• 2 cans tomato sauce, plus one canfull of each of water.
• pepper and garlic salt to taste
• optional; 1 pound ground veggie crumbles
• optional; 1 onion or Cavender's Greek Seasoning

Directions:

1. If you are adding the veggie crumbles, cook them first according to directions and set aside.
2. Put the rest of the ingredients in a large pot or slow cooker; add some of the sauce into the veggie crumbles to keep them moist and flavorful.
3. Once the the stove top mixture has warmed up some, add the crumbles and cook all day on low, or on high for a few hours. Serve when hot.

Extra: this recipe tastes even better after refrigeration of at least a week, because then the sauce thickens.

Enjoy, Veggies!

Random Rants: Eating Food at Work

I'm starting a new section in my blog called Random Rants. Since the word "kat" is in the title, this may develop into a feline-related title, like "Litter Box." Anyhoo...

On to the ranting!

I live in Arkansas, which for the most part consists of a mindset recycled from the Civil War. Pretty much anything that happens in the real world takes about 5-10 years to process in The Natural State. It baffles me that even in the college town where I live, go to school, and work, that this kind of narrow-minded mentality still exists. So anyone with the naivete to announce to anyone that they are Vegetarian or Vegan will probably be shot on sight, then quickly dressed and served at a Boys Scout Chili Banquet. I am not kidding.

I'm at work, eating my vegetarian/vegan garb, minding my own business, when one of the managers of over ten years comes into the box office (I sell movie tickets by the way, more random rants on that gem of a career); he asks me what I'm eating, and as soon as the words "veggie burger" pass my lips, he starts wailing on me about fake food, how meat gives you protein, vegetarians are pussies, ad nauseum.

First of all, if I could tell him everything on my mind, I would be swiftly fired, so in my mind I was saying: Excuse me, but did I ask your fucking opinion on the matter? You asked me what I'm eating and I told you: end of story. If you don't like it, leave! And you're eating something with meat, I don't care, it's your obese body you're damaging! What AM I, on trial for eating something healthy? Leave my presence!

However, my other manager has just recently been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes--the kind that arises from lifestyle, and can be prevented by a healthy lifestyle. On a side rant, that kind of Diabetes used to be called Adult Onset Diabetes, but with the rise of so many fat kids the term was changed to Type II (Type I is the genetic kind). Anyway, he told me my food smelled delicious, and that he liked that brand of frozen organic meals I was eating. While I'm glad he's not bashing about the fact it's vegan, I can't help but think of all the times he used to make fun of my vegetarian chili, and joke about how delicious "charred mammal flesh" really is. Not kidding, that's what he calls it. But his opinions on vegetarian eating has changed because now he has to watch his blood sugar and he's noticed that a vegetarian/vegan diet does not cause crazy spikes in his sugar levels. In fact, he asked for my famous Two-Can Chili recipe at work one afternoon. So I guess it's a sometimes-win, sometimes-lose situation in Arkansas.

I did laugh though when he told me he thought of me when he saw a T-shirt at an outdoors/hunting store that said something to the point of "Don't eat frozen meat" : i.e., I only eat fresh meat because I hunt, in a pseudo-organic perspective that doesn't make a hunter look like a tree-molesting hippie.

That's all for today, now go eat some carrots you pussies!

Peanut Butter: The Vegan Meat

Today I ate a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. Nothing complicated about that. Just a slice of bread with some seedless raspberry spread and a generous dollop of crunchy peanut butter. It occurred to me that, when in doubt, I turn to peanut butter often to satisfy that protein, rounded, dare I say, meaty, texture and full feeling during a hectic school day.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine, who really got me started on my vegetarian journey (she has been veg for over two years, and tried veganism for a few months). She told me that when she was vegan, she craved peanut butter all the time. Her mouth watered when she thought about that delicious spread: "I ate peanut butter so much when I was vegan. Mmmm, num num." Her lips lapped the plain air in hopes that maybe it would taste like her words. Or she was hung over. Or just plain hungry for our lunch break.

For whatever reason she waxed poetic on the subject of it, I noticed that I too craved peanut butter once I gave up meat as a stable food source. Peanut butter for breakfast, for lunch (the crunchy kind makes it seem more like a meal than a snack), sometimes for a poor-ass dinner; peanut butter with pretzels, with crackers, in your ramen, and on and on. Peta College Vegan Guide has an entire chapter devoted to George Washington Carver's love child, and there are whole books covering all modes of daily eating with a brown, sometimes crunchy spread of deliciousness.

In conclusion to my own waxing poetic on the subject, I think that like other "meaty" substitutes like mushrooms, peanut butter is one of the top foods that satisfy the veg/vegan mouth. And unlike meat, it tastes good with any flavor of jelly.

Trend Alert 2011: Vegetables

Trend Alert 2011: Vegetables: "Vegetables are \"

In the beginning, there was a vegetarian...

...or am I? How 'bout a pesca-tarian, lacto-ovo vegetarian, or the moderate, I'll-try-anything-once 'flexitarian'?

I have only recently flirted with the idea that I could consider myself a vegetarian, but my over-active imagination and infinite possibilities of exceptional circumstances prevents me from settling to a label. And it could be a result of my stubborness to label myself as anything. Student? Sure, I go to school, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Person interested in food issues? Yeah, I'll take that one. Vegetarian? Well, I did eat that hot dog on Friday...but I felt bad about it later!

Thing is, no matter the label one has, that doesn't make that person's life easier. Especially if you decide to abstain from eating meat. If you live in a southern state, telling your parents you're a vegetarian is like telling them you're atheist. The standard reaction from parents and other adults I've been around who know I don't eat meat is that they brush it off as a phase in youth. I'm not sure how a young atheist feels about being told that his developing philosophy is a 'phase' and therefore not worthy of consideration, but from what I've experienced, it's kind of a let down from the grown-ups. Because you have decided to go through a change, your lifestyle is different from the 'norm' and could cause some unnecessary tension at the dinner table as grandma passes you a piece of Thanksgiving turkey. And what are you supposed to say to poor ol' grandma? "Sorry Grannie, but that turkey was probably molested by an unskilled worker before it bled to death and was boiled alive"?

If Grannie can hear at all (which she can't, as she refuses to get hearing aids--damn the pride of her surname), it would break her heart that you're not eating her turkey, which, by the way, she slaved for hours over since 4 a.m. to make it for the whole family to eat, yourself included. What do you say to that? Unfortunately, it often results in a concession for the new vegetarian.

The purpose of this blog (other than to force myself to write--what's a Creative Writing student without something to write?) is to show others how I'm coping with a change in lifestyle. And maybe if someone out there in the Internet galaxy learns something, it would be that it's never easy to change your life, but the attempt is worth all the trouble. Even if it's 'only a phase.'