The official title of this stunning talk is: “Animal liberation and social justice.” But you should watch it, take notes, change your life and donate some cash to the Vine shelter.
Category Archives: do-it-yourself
Bikers against child abuse video
Filed under do-it-yourself, kindness, representation, sexual assault
Freestyle rhetorical analysis: Top Chef 11 finale
Rhetoric is a lived art — we use it in all of our discussions when we make arguments. When we write stuff down or record our words, they can be analyzed. There is mass critical discontent about the winner of Season 11 of Top Chef. In the scrutiny of a single television episode, quite a few folks have made visible pathways of arguments presented in the TV show. Salute to freestyle pop culture rhetorical analysis!
Consider the breakdown of the faux-humility presented by contestant Nicholas in Entertainment Weekly by Stephen Lee:
Back in the stew room, Nicholas infuriated me by saying to Nina, “Well, it didn’t happen.” Nina: “What?” Nicholas: “I had to be perfect to beat you.” Just in case anyone was mistaking that for humility, it was NOT. That’s Nicholas trying to look like the underdog so that if he lost, he could just shrug sadly, but if he won, he could do that whole dropped-jaw thing and make it look like some dramatic come-from-behind victory.
via ‘Top Chef’ season finale: An unsavory winner | Season 11 Episode 17 | EW.com.
Filed under academics, do-it-yourself, food, representation, rhetoric
Mixtape media: DJ Drama
Thanks to Nah Right for the two part interview with mix tape innovator DJ Drama. Here are my favorite snippets from the interview, starting with some DJ insights:
“And I was an East Coast type of guy with my taste. When you come to school, particularly in a place like Atlanta, you’ve got so many people from so many places. So I had to relearn how to DJ, and it made me much more of a worldly DJ than I might have been [if I stayed] in Philly. You had people from California, and people from D.C. that wanted hear go-go, and people from the islands. You got your people from Atlanta that want to hear A-Town shit. Then there’s people from New York. So you gotta learn how to please a bunch of people.
via Mixtape Memories with DJ Drama (Part 1)Nah Right.
I appreciate him noting that it was the absence of mixtape DJs working with southern artists that created his lane.
“There was a store called Tapemasters, my man Marco used to work in there. And I would try to sell my CDs in there, but I would get blown out, because I was making East Coast CDs trying to compete with Whoo Kid and Kay Slay and Clue, and no one was checking for me because I was getting beat to the punch [by them having the exclusives before me]. So my senior year of college, I realized that I needed to make a South tape. And that shit flew like hot cakes. The first song ever on the pre-Gangsta Grillz DJ Drama South tape was ‘Bling Bling.’ That was like ‘99. And Marco was like, ‘You need to focus on your neo-soul tapes, and your South tapes. That’s where you have niches at.’
via Mixtape Memories with DJ Drama (Part 1)Nah Right.
Part II here.
Filed under capitalism, do-it-yourself, hip hop, media, music
MSG and flavor
Buzzfeed has a nice article on MSG by John Mahoney. Emphasis is on umami taste, DIY MSG, and the moral panic associated with the food additive. It’s worth noting that like many other crucial food flavors, MSG is the product of a bacterial process:
Today, MSG is manufactured commercially by fermentation that is more or less the same as what’s happening in the Momofuku R&D lab. In factories around the world, a bacterium known as Corynebacterium glutamicum (so named for its prized waste products) is fed plant glucose (corn, beets, wheat). As it eats, it releases glutamic acid. The resulting fermented product is filtered and centrifuged to isolate the glutamic acid and remove by-products and impurities, it’s crystallized, and out comes MSG.
via The Notorious MSG’s Unlikely Formula For Success.
Filed under do-it-yourself, food, health, science
Italian seitan links
Seitan take 4.
I’ve documented my seitan adventures in three other posts (sauerkraut and vegetarian barbecue, vegetarian noodle bowl with seitan and seitan refined). I have a short list of what I want out of this refined seitan project:
– more firm texture
– more italian style seasoning infused into the seitan
– sausage “link” shape
– increased salt flavor in the seitan
With these needs in mind, I added a ton of spices to the dry wheat gluten. I also ground the spices up in a mortar and pestle. Oregano, basil, marjoram, salt, pepper, fennel seeds, and chipotle pepper (for smoke and heat) were my spices of choice. Do your own darn thing.
I was hoping that the small pieces of spice would just absorb into the tissue of the seitan. And I remembered that the whole fennel seeds in the last seitan experiment seemed to cut up the gluten strands.
I had seen an Australian youtube video where the cook wrapped the seitan loaf in some cloth to help shape it into a particular form. So I chopped up a couple of old pillow cases (well washed). I pressed the cut chunks of kneaded seitan into logs and then wrapped them tightly and tied off between each link.
I cooked the wrapped sietan links for about 45 minutes in stock that was just short of boiling.
RESULTS:
The addition of ground up spices seems to have flavored up the seitan. Kneading the seitan until quite firm seems to have toughened up the dough and the final project. Within a few seconds I could see that the cloth wrapping was billowing around . . . I think I could have just dumped the links into the broth without bothering to use the cloth. I also had mild chemical fears about halfway through the process . . . afraid that some dye would get into my food.
Next time I’m going to knead even more and increase the salt in the broth.
But it is pretty dang good. And nice to have vegetarian Italian sausage hanging around for meal prep.
Keep eating and experimenting party people!
Filed under do-it-yourself, food, vegetarian
Seitan: refined
Swiss chard, mashed potatoes, fried seitan and vegetarian gravy. Everything is Humboldt locally grown except the flour.
The life of refinement is about making things better. It takes practice for most of us to get good at the things we want to do. It requires that we try and try again in order to achieve our goals.
So I’m back in the flour aisle of the health food store looking for vital wheat gluten to make seitan. There are thousands of flours that have the gluten removed, but only one brand of wheat gluten. Casual evidence that the anti-gluten side is winning in the gluten vs. non-gluten wars.
For the second time around I pick up up some Bob’s Red Mill vital wheat gluten. I don’t usually promote any brands on this website, but I think Bob’s is a fairly positive corporation, and the dude gave his flour factory to the workers. Not to mention if you are out in the boonies and don’t have access to a local health food store to buy vital wheat gluten, Bob’s will mail you a bag.
STOCK
The basis of my stock is usually a browned fond — onions, oil and flour. Cook the three on a lowish heat with regular stirring to ensure that it doesn’t burn.
As I added vegetables for the stock, I cooked it down with a little white wine each time, reducing and then browning each time.
Thinly sliced carrots, cooked down until the pan was browning and then douse with white wine. Then I added a couple local potatoes (chopped with skins!), browned and then added more wine. Repeat with chard stalks, and then I added oregano, thyme, salt, pepper, chili powder (personal preference), and some chili flakes.
What you get is a thick goo — a seasoned foundation for a vegetable stock.
I added water to almost an inch of the pot. Dropped a giant frozen nub of ginger into the soup, and added some soy sauce and a spoon of miso to taste. I let it sit for a while, just simmering while I made the seitan.
SEITAN
Last time I felt like the dough came together too quickly and not all the flour got moist at the same time. The seitan was tough, and I knew I wanted a more loose dough. I wasn’t sure if the broth I added to the seitan was too hot or if didn’t add enough broth at one time.
So this time I put the flour in a wide bowl, added recommended herbs from the package and stirred the whole thing gently with a whisk. Concerned that the stock might have been too hot last time (potentially cooking the dough strands into seitan before kneading), I chilled two cups of stock.
This time when I added the cool broth, the seitan was a joyous mass of juicy chewy-ness within seconds. I made sure everything was moist and stirred together and let it rest for ten minutes.
I’ll acknowledge my chief conspirator in this experiment, my sweetie who happens to be an artisan bread baker. With decades of dough experience, I asked her to knead the seitan.
I strained the stock and after a quick rest (another ten minutes), I chopped up the dough into slices and slipped it into the simmering broth.
I let it cook for an hour or so, and then shut it off.
The result was pretty tasty. The seitan is tasty by itself, rich with the broth and a little taste of flour. This seitan is wonderful to fry, staying moist inside while getting a crispy exterior. Next experiment is to try to bread and deep fry seitan — make a nugget so good that I don’t want to share it with other people.
Filed under do-it-yourself, food, learning, vegetarian
Bad Brains: this band is obviously better than any other band
Totally grooving on the un-embeddable Bad Brains documentary: A Band in D.C. Click the link. Watch the video. Learn and get inspired.
Thanks to Gwarizm for the link.
Filed under do-it-yourself, documentary, funk & soul, music, punk, race, representation
Vegetarian noodle bowl with home made seitan
Vegetarian noodle bowl OR the seitan chronicles part II.
BROTH: I wanted a beef-like vegetarian broth. So I started with oil, salt, pepper, and flour in a roux. I added scorched onions chopped fine and let the whole thing start to brown in the bottom of the pan. Basically I’m making fond and letting it almost burn, then scraping it up with some more liquid. Then cook down and repeat.
Along the way I constituted some veggie broth out of some miso and bouillon. I added soy sauce and hot chili peppers. Sauté the onions and fond down and then add fluid, then reducing until goo appears. Repeat to your comfort. I cooked down the base of the broth three or four times.
By the way, when I say scorched onions, I mean it. Onions and ginger were burned on the stove burner.
I took the ginger and peeled it then diced it up. Flame roasted ginger loses a lot of the gingery burn and mellows to a sweet hot flavor. It’s nice.
I added the ginger and some other veggies (carrots and zuccini) to the broth, lots of fluid, soy and veggie broth into the pot. I made a spice sack out of the corner of an old pillow case. (Cinnamon, cardamon seeds, hot chili, a nob of burned ginger, and a little coffee went into the spice sack — basically everything that I worry will overpower the broth). Test the flavor and remember that when you add noodles it will become 25% less salty and hot, so err on the side of spicy!
Start a pot of water boiling for noodles. Once it’s going, I blanched some broccoli. Set aside (broccoli in most soups becomes over-powering. I just want a little bit as a topping for our noodle bowl).
TOPPINGS: I chopped up some raw cabbage, raw bean sprouts, and diced up cilantro (from the garden none-the-less). Stir fried some thinly sliced seitan to be set into the broth. Also I bought a pack of corporate vegetarian egg rolls, baked them in the oven, chopped them into quarters and then tossed on top of the noodle bowl. Don’t forget peanuts, garlic chives and loads of lime to finish.
Once everything is set, cook noodles, strain and then plop into the bottom of the bowl. Ladle on some broth and top with veggies, egg rolls and seasoning.
Enjoy!
Filed under do-it-yourself, food, vegetarian
Life of refinement 
