That was a smashing success. Don’t know if I will ever be able to eat any other kind of pesto.
And for those of you who have not made the switch to whole wheat pasta, you really are missing the boat. The texture is better and it has so much more flavor. I also find that it holds the sauce a lot better, too.
*** Update ***
BTW- since I never give the dogs people food except for on very rare occasions, one of the things I have been doing is making sure the dogs understand that they eat after me. When I am done eating and the dishes are in the sink, then I make their dinner.
This has produced an amusing nightly ritual. After they finish eating, they come in one at a time and jump up on my lap to thank me and promptly burp in my face. First Rosie (piggy!), who wolfs down her meal, and then about five minutes later, Lily comes in, hops on my lap, goes to give me a kiss, and then burps in my face. Ahh, love.
Southern Beale
I have had great difficulty accepting whole wheat pasta, try as I might. The texture is too … chewy. Too dense. Something’s just not right about it.
I have better sucess with whole wheat rigatoni, the spaghetti just doesn’t work for me. Glad you like it though.
Wiesman
You used the words “so much” so much in that post.
andrew
Whole wheat pasta is kind of gross. If you like the rougher texture and sauce holding ability, try an artisan made pasta that uses a bronze cast. That is the best dry pasta you will ever eat.
John Cole
@Wiesman: Food coma.
cossacksare
Whole wheat pasta is not ideal if you’re making spaghetti carbonara, for example, which is what I always make. It doesn’t hold the sauce, it absorbs it, so the texture is gross and dry.
My girlfriend bought it for me though, and I’m cheap, so I’m working my way through the boxes.
Crusty Dem
I’m a huge fan of whole wheat pasta, my wife can’t stand it (I also love cookies/cakes w/whole wheat, the cookies taste nutty and awesome, cakes can be a little dense, but taste better to me), so I don’t get as much as I like.. Homemade pesto is awesome, pine nuts or walnuts, parmesan or asiago (a really tasty switch), always good.
abo gato
mmmmmmm, fresh basil and pesto……truly food for gods. What did you end up doing with the tomato?
I just took a pan of cranberry lime cookie bars out of the oven and will take them to the office tomorrow…..(after we had a couple for dessert tonight)…..it’s a lovely little flavor combo.
Svensker
What kind of ww pasta do you use? Some I really like, others blech.
beltane
I have an update on our bear visitor. My neighbor down the road tells me the bear is a mother with cubs who is being continually harassed by some assholes with a pack of beagles. They don’t shoot at her (afraid of the game warden), but they make her life miserable and the poor thing came onto our property looking for a reprieve.
Hunting bears with dogs is not like normal hunting; it is a “sport” reserved for the creme de la creme of rednecks. Aside from being cruel to the bear, it is cruel to the dogs as they spend their lives chained up to tiny kennels outside and are often abandoned when no longer useful. If this keeps up we’re all going to have to post our property since the bear baiters don’t have enough land of their own to carry out this activity.
donnah
I’m so hungry; all this food talk is driving me crazy.
I gave up sugar almost two months ago. I haven’t had chocolate, candy, cake, cookies, etc since the end of April. I have been eating a lot of fresh fruit and veggies and whole grain foods, so I do feel LOTS better health-wise. But no chocolate makes me sad.
cmorenc
I’m growing my own herb garden this summer, including three different kinds of basil (sweet basil, Thai basil, cinnamon basil), and just two nights ago whipped up my own homemade pesto to top some pasta. Try adding just a dash of diced fresh jalapeño pepper to the pesto – not enough to make the pesto “hot” rather than predominately sweet and herbal, but just enough to add a better, subtle “sing” than just ground black pepper alone does.
I’m also growing a few tomato plants, and discovered a few days ago that some kind of varmit had denuded a few of the stems of one of the plants right down to the bare stalk. The next afternoon, I just happened to look at the right angle to catch the pest in the act – A HUGE tomato hornworm the size of a small cigar, his green color and shape camouflaging him surprisingly well against the stem of the plant for such a big caterpillar. He was not all that easy to subdue and pull/knock off the plant either, and he’d munched at least a third of the maturing plant’s total leaves in just a couple of days before I caught him and…took care of him with “extreme prejudice”.
alhutch
This is not related to anything important, but I just noticed that the RSS feed post times are 4 hours ahead (site says 6:36pm, RSS feed version says 10:36pm). Thought JC was posting from the future…
Litlebritdifrnt
@beltane:
Do it, post your property. My DH is from Oregon, he thinks that hunting with dogs is “the pussy way of doing it” if you and a gun can’t get the job done then you are a wimp. These people are tormenting mama bear for the sake of it. Give her a refuge she deserves it.
Olive Oyl
This Pasta, Pesto, and Peas recipe from the Barefoot Contessa is absolutely delicious.
jeffreyw
Saw some rosemary “trees” for sale in the grocery store the other day, smelled really fine. Kinda wanted to get one but I knew I wasn’t going to have room in the cart. (I go grocery shopping maybe every three weeks.) Mentioned it to Mrs J just now and she was off like a rocket to get one. I’ll put up a pic if she comes back with one. (Hey, they are the ones that called it a tree, it’s been trimmed in the shape of a little xmas tree.)
beltane
@cmorenc: Tomato hornworms bite and have to be the nastiest looking garden pest there are. Some people swear by pulverizing a few of them, mixing the mess with water, and then spraying it on the plants as a deterrent. Hand picking (with gloves) and execution also works well.
Litlebritdifrnt
@cmorenc:
To keep Tobacco Hornworms off your maters allow some Horse Nettles to thrive on your property, in an out of the way location where they will not bother you or others. They are part of the Deadly Nightshade family (as are tomatoes and potatoes) and the caterpillars (or their moth mommas) prefer them as a food source, if your yard has any Horse Nettles the moth will lay her eggs on them rather than on your maters, and if you do happen to find a Hornworm on your maters you can pick him off and set him on the Horsenettle. Win win.
Max
Finally some sun in the PNW! I’m grilling tonight.
Heading to the Washington Coast (Long Beach) tomorrow for a 3-day weekend. First time at the Pacific since I left NorCal.
I like that the beaches up here are dog-friendly, bonfire friendly and you can drive your car right onto the beach.
Washington (Oregon) rocks!
Wag
I’ll take home made pasta made with bleached flour any day. Whole wheat pasta doesn’t do it for me. To help sauce stick to your pasta you need to break the (American) habit of rinsing the pasta with water after draining. the starch that you rinse off helps the sauce to stick, and can actually help slightly thicken the sauce
Lisa K.
The only kind of whole wheat pasta I like-and I really, really like this kind-is actually a store brand, from Hannaford’s Inspirations line. Not as dense and chewy as some of the others, which a much milder, slightly nutty taste. Yum!
Lisa K.
@Olive Oyl:
The Contessa is my heroine. So much better than Paula Deen or even Rachel. I could die for her kitchen.
Litlebritdifrnt
DH has been on whole wheat pasta (and bread) since the heart attack. Today we got the results of his recent blood tests, thanks to my new regime his cholesterol is lower than average (down from upwards of 200) his triglyserides (or however the hell you spell it) are down, his weight is down from 228 (heart attack weight) to 174, and every other test came back positive. His doctors actually gave him permission to celebrate with a plate of cheese fries (so long as it doesn’t become a habit). I am proud of myself, and am as we speak patting myself on the back, he is doing the cardio rehab but I am preparing the food. I think we make a great team.
MattR
But Tunch eats first, right?
Litlebritdifrnt
@Wag:
Yup. This. Drain the pasta. Let it sit in the hot pan for a few minutes while you stir it up and let the steam disperse (steam = water this ain’t rocket science) let the pasta get good and sticky, add sauce.
Lisa K.
@beltane:
I’m sorry, maybe I’m being a pompous, elitist jerk, but IMO there is nothing about any kind of hunting-be it with dogs, guns, or bows-that does not SCREAM “ignorant redneck asshole” from the top of it’s lungs. Grown men use it as an excuse to go out in the middle of the woods, get drunk, and cause things to bleed to death. Yippee!!! What fun!!!
Josie
@donnah: You need to discover stevia. It goes well with both fruit and dark chocolate, you can cook with it since it can take heat and it is completely safe to eat. It is natural – made from an herb – and a boon to low sugar dieters. It has changed my outlook on food.
JoyceH
Has anyone tried Smart Taste pasta? It has the texture and look of regular pasta, but the fiber of whole wheat. I really liked it, back when I was eating gluten.
geg6
Whole wheat pasta is awful, just the worst. Ickickick.
Use fresh pasta and, for FSM’s sake, never ever rinse it or put oil in the water. If you use dry pasta, use rigati style with ridges to catch the sauce.
Geeno
Whole wheat pasta IS good. It took me a bit to get used to, but regular pasta seems flavorless to me now.
Art
Being 40 and fighting the good fight against cholesterol and triglycerides, I recently made the switch to whole-wheat pasta for the fiber. the first couple of tries I was a bit “meh,” but I stuck with it and now love it.
I love pesto, and actually got burned out on basil pesto a couple of years ago. I reluctantly tried a recipe for spaghetti squash with cilantro pesto, and my love for pesto was revived.
I spaghetti squash
3/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts.
Roast the squash (after cutting in half and seasoning with some salt, pepper and drizzle of olive oil)) in a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes or until tender. Using two forks scrape the squash strands from the sides, and toss in a bowl with the cilantro pesto.
Enjoy!
Cat Lady
My lavender is coming up gangbusters and oh, the fragrance. After I dry it I’m going to make sweet cream lavender ice cream with just a little drizzle of orange honey on top. I will then be able to die happy in a sugar coma.
Geeno
@Art: That actually sounds good, and I’m not a big fan spaghetti squash.
CynDee
@abo gato: Recipe? Pretty Please?
HumboldtBlue
Our local transplanted new York-bred pizza shop owner makes an awesome, seriously awesome whole wheat pizza crust that he slathers with pesto, asiago, mozz, fresh artie hearts and tomatoes.
Whole wheat pasta is blecch.
Annie
One of the best posts ever….burp!
stuckinred
Trader Joe’s whole wheat pasta is pretty good.
Wag
Lavender pesto???? Experiment and report back, please!
jl
@MattR:
Cole seems a little sensitive about discussing the various elaborate protocols that Tunch requires in daily life.
I would imagine Tunch eating first would be the simplest part of the rituals involved.
I hope we find out some day how His Tunchness dines (using the term ‘is fed’ would be uncouth and disrespectful in this case).
AhabTRuler
@Litlebritdifrnt: That is really, really awesome. Sounds like you guys do make a great team, may you have many years to enjoy it!
Matt Mangels
Hi ho the glamorous life
AhabTRuler
@Lisa K.: As long as you eat what you kill and leave the area like you found it, I got no prob with hunting. Meat is meat, and a good hunter doesn’t let his or her prey suffer.
Also, good hunters tend to be dedicated conservationists.
Mnemosyne
G refuses to eat whole wheat pasta. He gave it the old college try, but now he kicks whenever I try to make it and, frankly, I was never all that fond of it myself, so I just buy the high-fiber stuff instead. I do like whole wheat orzo, for some reason — the regular kind is just too slippery (and sometimes almost mucus-y if it’s overcooked).
I tried cutting sugar out of my diet once and I swear to dog that I actually got clinically depressed. (I’ve been on medication before, so I know how it feels.) And it persisted over the entire month that I tried cutting out sugar. Apparently my brain is much happier when I give it some simple carbs.
(When I was really depressed and unmedicated, I was a sugar fiend — I would get a Cafe Mocha from Starbucks and put three sugars in it. I’m not nearly that bad anymore, but I do still need my sugar.)
AhabTRuler
@jl: Lolwut?!
BombIranForChrist
Here is an interesting article on cooking pasta. Breaks a lot of the rules I learned:
Click here for Pasta Cooking Awesomeness.
Mnemosyne
@AhabTRuler:
I’m with you. Trophy hunters disgust me, but if you’re going to actually use the meat and not just leave the headless carcass rotting in the woods, I have no problem with hunting. Getting meat that way is more humane than getting it from a factory farm.
Litlebritdifrnt
Whoot! DH just handed me his latest test results
all of the results are “normal” and the bottom line is
NEGATIVE RISK FACTOR FOR CHD
I am so good
adolphus
John, I’m no expert, but it sounds like you have stumbled upon their natural pack dominance ritual. By making them eat second and being the source of food you have established yourself as the Alpha Dog.
I think you’ll find this will work for you in getting them to behave in other areas as well. If only BJ commenters were as well trained.
inkadu
@AhabTRuler: What you think about hunting depends a little bit on where you come from. If you don’t know any hunters, it’s easy to stereotype them as drunken bloodthirsty yahoos. I used to feel the same way until I went out with a girl whose family was from Missouri. Met her family — really nice folks — and they hunted and they simply adored the outdoors (though they wouldn’t use the word “adore,” of course).
Now I know a few hunters in my own neck of the woods, and, other than having to turn down their gross venison jerky, they are fine company.
Comrade Mary
Now I’m curious about the results when you’ve cooked for the women in your life.
Betsy
@Lisa K.:
As a vegetarian, I have many fewer objections to hunting than I do to factory farming. The animals suffer a whole lot less, and the end product causes far less environmental damage.
That doesn’t mean I have to like the hunters; I do find the impulse to go hurt and kill things to be unsettling. It’s hard for me to imagine I could ever pick a hunter for a SO. But I kind of think that if you eat meat, that’s the most honest way to do it.
abo gato
@CynDee
Here’s the link for the cranberry lime bars……I was just googling around looking for a recipe and found it…….really like it a lot. The base is very, very crumby and does not hold together when you mix it up (and I always use a food processor to mix things like this up). But just press it in your pan and bake it and it all works out.
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/cranberry-lime-squares-recipe.htm
Anne
I figure dogs burping in your face after you’ve eaten beats dogs burping in your face while you’re eating.
Darkrose
We’ve used whole wheat pasta–usually TJ’s–for years, the last lingering trace of my South Beach Diet phase. I really never liked it, because it always seemed to soak up the sauce in a way that made it really dry and unpleasantly chewy, especially on the second and third days when I had it for lunch.
This week when we had sgetti, my wife used the non-whole wheat TJ’s pasta. It was just as good on Wednesday as it was on Sunday night.
AhabTRuler
@Betsy:
There are many hunters to whom it is a point of pride to cause as little pain and suffering as possible.
Kristine
@jeffreyw: I bought one of those a couple of years ago. I should have transplanted it into a larger pot–it slowly croaked in the cramped pot it came in, in that gradual browning needle-falling way that evergreens do. But I harvested and dried the needles, and had very nice pungent dried rosemary all winter.
I bought small plants this year, and put them in BIG pots. They’ve already tripled in size, at least, and I’ve no clue what I will do with all this rosemary.
Not enough basil yet to make a decent amount of pesto. Working on it. And about half my tomatoes have flowers even though they’re only a little over a foot high.
jeffreyw
Rosemary “Tree”. Wish we had smell-o-vision.
inkadu
I see nobody eats pasta with butter, salt, and parmesan cheese; because in that case, whole wheat pasta is clearly a superior choice. I save the tomato sauce for pizza and calzones; never really liked it for pasta.
And I feel like I’ve just admitted to the culinary equivalent of eating directly out of a can.
Litlebritdifrnt
@AhabTRuler:
Yeah I am pretty well impressed with myself right now. I have always been a skinny bitch, never had a problem with my weight, always been battling the DHs though. After the heart attack when we finally got together as a team (as opposed to him fighting me seven nights a week “what do you mean I can’t have cheese fries”) he has realized that cheese fries seven nights a week DO have consequences, and you know they are pretty dire! I have just turned every recipe for his favorite meal into a fat free/low fat version of it. It is obviously working. Happy dance.
Kristine
@Lisa K.:
Count me as another Ina Garten fan. Her kitchen is to die for, but I would love her whole house. Two of her cookie recipes, Ultimate Ginger and Oatmeal-Raisin-Pecan, are two of my favorites.
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne:
(When I was really depressed and unmedicated, I was a sugar fiend—I would get a Cafe Mocha from Starbucks and put three sugars in it. I’m not nearly that bad anymore, but I do still need my sugar.)
Wait…is that a lot? I usually dump at least 4 packets of Splenda into coffee or iced coffee I get from Starbucks, because even with the chocolate added, there’s still an underlying bitter taste to their coffee.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Betsy:
Ditto, I have no problems with hunters eating what they kill, I have a huge problem with people who kill for fun and never eat what they kill (both mammal hunters and fishermen)
Speaking of which, how stupid do you have to be to go to a million dollar tournament and not have your fishing license?
http://www.jdnews.com/news/news-79639-fishing-alexandria.html
Tom Hilton
@jeffreyw: Nice. Looks kind of like our rosemary Christmas tree last year. (We cut a bunch of branches off the monster rosemary bushes in the backyard. These bushes developed territorial ambitions a while back and crowded out all the other herbs, but I forgive them every time it’s a warm day and they’re in the sun and the aroma wafts in my direction…)
Betsy
@AhabTRuler:
I’m sure this is true. It’s a failure of my own imagination, probably, that I find it hard to understand (on a gut level) why someone would make killing his or her hobby. I can understand it intellectually; even admire it, if the motivation is that one prefers to be integrated into the food chain in a more responsible way. I just have a hard time getting past my own instinctive reaction to it. Which is why I’m a vegetarian and not a hunter. Or organic, sustainable rancher. :)
John Cole
@Comrade Mary: I used to cook for Tammy all the time and she married another man.
Ash Can
LOLZ! The husband has Kudlow’s circus on the TV and he just had Lou Dobbs and Rick Santelli on extolling the virtues of the Tea Party movement and how the tea partiers are going to help the GOP take over Congress in November. YES! Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease…
Bhall35
Only an expert can deal with the problem.
Tom Hilton
One of my favorite backpacking dishes is pasta with Puttanesca Pesto:
Sun-dried tomatoes (the kind packed in olive oil)
Roasted garlic
Oil-cured olives
Capers
Anchovies
Red pepper flakes
Olive oil
Put everything in a food processor until it’s more or less pesto consistency. I don’t measure anything; just taste as you go along and you’ll get the balance right. Works for backpacking because the flavor/weight ratio is so high; 3 ounces or so works for as much as half a pound of pasta.
Ruckus
@Lisa K.:
How about hunting with a camera? Nothing to clean up, you have to get closer, you have to learn to sit extremely still and quite, no one dies (unless hunting bear and you screw up and then it’s not the bear that dies). Haven’t done this in decades but it seems pretty harmless overall and if you’re any good with a camera, you can get some gorgeous pics.
Mnemosyne
@Darkrose:
I don’t like artificial sweeteners. Any of them. Blech yuck. Not even Stevia. So, yes, putting (real) sugar on top of the sweetened whipped cream and chocolate syrup in a cafe mocha makes it really, really sweet.
In fact, I’m becoming a serious sweetener snob. I’ve gotten to the point where the harsh aftertaste of HFCS annoys me, so I usually only drink sugar-sweetened sodas. It’s not any better for me than the HFCS kind — sugar is sugar once it gets to your digestive system — but real sugar sure tastes better.
jeffreyw
@Ruckus:
Does hunting hummers count? Got my limit that day.
Lisa K.
@inkadu:
Oh, barf. I grew up surrounded by hunters, and they are pretty much all drunken blood thirsty yahoos IMO, not matter how friendly they may be when not taking aim at prey. Yes, it may be better than eating meat from a factory farm, buit why do either?
And for whoever said a true hunter doesn’t let prey suffer, *you* try getting shot or struck with a bow and let me know how much *you* don’t suffer from it.
Lisa K.
@Ruckus:
Sounds cool. Knock yourself out.
Ruckus
@jeffreyw:
I’d say any animal. But I was thinking of the kinds that people would normally hunt for food. Your pics are fantastic btw, I just had something a little different in mind.
jeffreyw
@Ruckus:
Like this?
Midnight Marauder
I just had a few Bud Light Limes. You know, to see if they were as horrible as one would imagine.
Wow. That shit is fucking gross, son. Like, I feel like I just drank lime Juicy Juice that was mixed in a septic tank, with a little bit of chlorine thrown in.
+2
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
Well, if you get shot in the back of the head, you probably won’t suffer, because you’ll die instantly. If you get shot in the gut and drag yourself away to die slowly over a series of hours, you’ll suffer a lot.
Personally, I do think there’s a moral difference between killing something as quickly and painlessly as possible and dragging it out, but YMMV.
Josie
@Lisa K.: That’s a pretty broad brush you’re painting with there. There are many different kinds of hunters, some of which you may not be acquainted with.
TaMara (BHF)
@abo gato:
Can I haz recipe plz? Those sound amazing (and yes, I’m going to stalk you through threads tonight if I have to).
EDIT: See you’ve provided a link, thanks!
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
Name me one weekend hunting warrior who is skilled enough to do that. You think the deer or bear just stands there and lets the guy shoot him in the back of the head? No, they are usually moving targets, making that level of precision impossible unless you’re a sharpshooter for a SWAT team. Nogt to mention a bunch of these guys are so anxious to shoot something they will blast away at anything they think is moving, often shooting each other in the process.
AhabTRuler
@John Cole: OMFG! Tammy is a MAN?!?
ETA: And your food makes people gay?!?
Kered (formerly Derek)
@Darkrose:
Their coffee is disgusting, burned shit, that’s why. Worst coffee I’ve ever had.
FlipYrWhig
@Midnight Marauder:
Reminiscent of the Futurama episode where they tour the Slurm factory…
Kered (formerly Derek)
@Midnight Marauder:
Yes, it is truly an awful “beer.”
Lisa K.
@Josie:
If it involves taking abject pleasure in hunting something down and shooting it (or trapping it, or luring it to you with donuts, even worse) I really don’t need to know anything else. I don’t respect the process and don’t make any apologies for it.
TaMara (BHF)
@Josie: This.
And I’m going to be kind and not say much more, except without natural predators, many animals such as deer and elk, suffer horrible diseases because of overpopulation. I suppose you’d rather see them starve to death than be hunted?
I don’t hunt. But I come from a family of responsible hunters and none of them are drunks or rednecks. Some of them are even Obots. TYVM.
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
Ah, see, now you’re moving the goalposts. You’re right that a guy who only hunts once or twice a year and doesn’t bother with target practice in the off-season is probably going to be a crappy shot, and he’s probably not even going to know that a good hunter doesn’t let a wounded animal wander off. However, I’m not sure that the specific kind of hunter you’re talking about is the majority of hunters out there. They may be the ones that you’ve run into but people like, say, my dad and his hunting friends are not.
Ruckus
@Lisa K.:
I get the veg thing, have done it at various times, my sister did for years. But as not everyone agrees with being a herbivore. So the question is, killing a cow at a factory farm or some other animal one at a time in nature to eat the meat, which is better? You seem to be saying neither is any good, but not everyone comes up with that answer. Being killed with one shot to the head or heart in the wild or being stunned with a stun gun or electric shock, I’m not sure I’d say one is better either. And full disclosure, decades ago I used to hunt ducks and geese. But we ate what we shot.
But killing for sport? I don’t get that either. IMO you have to be a pretty sick fuck to get your jollies killing things. For example, darth chaney.
FlipYrWhig
@Josie:
I tried stevia in coffee at the Trader Joe’s sample-testing station. I almost had to spit it out! It was like I had put in a packet of dishwashing powder. But I’m glad someone likes it.
WereBear
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’m so happy for both of you. It is not an easy task for anyone to change their eating habits.
Actually, there’s some evidence the HFCs are treated differently by the body; kind of a “so, you’ve just eaten three bushels of corn” reaction.
AhabTRuler
@Lisa K.: Are all of your firm beliefs so lacking in reason, judgment, and thought?
Midnight Marauder
@Kered (formerly Derek):
I’m pretty sure I’m going to swallow some everclear now to wash out the taste of Bud Light Lime.
And then chase it with a shot of black tar heroin.
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t mean to be difficult and I am aware that I am not making any friends here with this position, but whether or not you take target practice every week does not mean you have not missed and shot something in the leg and watched it run off and not die, or shot something in a place where death does not come quickly. I’m sorry, but he idea that there is anything pleasurable in going out and killing (or maiming) something when it isn’t necessay for your on survival is simply not something I can get on board with. If it’s just about the shooting and not the killing, then go hit some clay birds.
FlipYrWhig
@Midnight Marauder: Got any Zima left over from the 1990s?
Lisa K.
@AhabTRuler:
I’m not interested in trading insults with you. Hunting in any form is anathema to me, and if you think that makes me a lunatic, so be it.
asiangrrlMN
Aw, Cole. Love the ritual. I’m assuming that Tunchie gets fed first as is his due. By the way, do I detect a certain wistfulness in your statement about cooking for Tammy before she married another man?
@Midnight Marauder: You did it to yourself, so no sympathy. It’s not as if someone handed you a beer, said it was a…whatever a good beer is…and then it turned out to be a BudLight Lime!
@Litlebritdifrnt: You rock and you roll. I remember when he had to be rushed to the hospital. I’m glad he’s doing so much better.
P.S. I am wheat-intolerant as well as lactose-intolerant, so no any kind of wheat pasta for me (not that I always let that stop me). However, when I did eat wheat, I always chose whole wheat over white.
Josie
@FlipYrWhig: There is a huge difference between the stuff that is sold in packets and a product called pure stevia extract, which is super sweet and only takes a pinch to sweeten your coffee or whatever. The packets have something else (filler, I guess) mixed with the stevia. I didn’t like it either. When I ordered the pure extract and learned the proper amounts to use for cooking, it worked nicely. But, then, my taste buds don’t need things to be terribly sweet. I’ve always preferred dark chocolate.
Lisa K.
@Ruckus:
Again, there is no need to hunt for survival in this day & age, so the only real reason anyone hunts is for sport. No one needs to hunt to feed their family anymore.
I do agree there is no pleasant way to kill something to eat it, but there are ways, aside from being a vegetarian, to try and ensure that whoever slaughtered what you are putting in your mouth at least tried to ensure it died a human death. It may take a little work and cost a little more, but it is out there.
Gina
@BombIranForChrist: Validation! I am mildly allergic to wheat (yes, real, no, not yuppified hypochondriac induced), so I hit the local asian markets for noodles of a different grain. Most of the instructions say to not boil the noodles, or to start the water hot, then add the noodles and let them sit.
I’ve found I really like the sorghum and millet vermicelli, nice texture. Beats getting hives and sinus trouble by eating wheat pasta, and beats the hell out of expensive health food store rice pastas.
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
If it’s not something you can understand, that’s fine, but that’s no reason to insult everyone who hunts and insist that they’re all drunken bad shots who just want to gutshoot animals and watch them die slowly because they’re sadistic assholes. Those may be the hunters that you know personally, but that’s not the majority of hunters.
If you think killing animals is always wrong, even if you kill them for food, then obviously your opinion isn’t going to change, but gratuitously insulting people who don’t have the same opinion about eating animals isn’t going to get you very far, either.
asiangrrlMN
@Gina: Rice noodles are the bomb. Now I want noodles…damn it!
FlipYrWhig
@Josie: Interesting… I didn’t realize there were two different products. I was super turned off by what I tried. Good to know it’s not the only form out there.
donnah
I don’t add sugar to my food or drinks. I drink coffee black and I drink a lot of water without anything in it but ice. ;-) We have Stevia and Truvia where I work, but I just don’t use it.
I’ve got a friend who planted a stevia plant and has a recipe for how to prepare it by boiling it and using the juice as a natural sweetener. I asked her to write down the procedure and the results for me to look at.
Three years ago I weighed 185 pounds; I’m a 5’8″ woman. Over eight months time I lost 45 pounds. I swore I wouldn’t gain it back and for two years I didn’t. But Mother Nature threw menopause at me and I found it very difficult to maintain my weight. I gained about ten pounds back. Not good. So now I’ve lost seven of those again and am trying to avoid sweets. Those were always my biggest downfall.
Kered (formerly Derek)
@Lisa K.:
Does this include fishing?
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
I see you live among middle-class people in an urban or suburban area. Trust me, even in this otherwise rich country of ours, there are still people eating squirrel meat because they can shoot it themselves and not have to spend their scarce cash in a store. You really think that people in Appalachia can just toddle down to the Piggly Wiggly any time they like?
And, yes, some people just like venison or duck or rabbit, and they prefer to hunt it themselves instead of buying it in a store. Again, it may not be something you understand, but that doesn’t mean they’re all drunken sadists. My dad’s friend kills one deer in the fall, butchers it, and eats venison all winter. But I guess that’s more wasteful than him buying a factory-farmed chicken every week at the grocery store.
Midnight Marauder
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeppers. It’s on the shelf right next to the Crystal Pepsi.
@asiangrrlMN:
For the record, someone did hand me the beer. And I drank them because that is probably as close as I will ever get to a Rolling Stone interview.
What happens to a dream deferred…by Bud Light Lime?
+4
Mnemosyne
@donnah:
Two words: weight training. The reason people start to gain weight around menopause is that you naturally start to lose muscle mass, which slows your metabolism and can cause weight gain. Even just something like yoga can help.
AhabTRuler
@Lisa K.: No, I asked you a serious question.
You have professed an absolute belief, and yet you trade in the grossest generalizations and assumptions. You have demonstrated neither sympathy or understanding of the opposite position, and you seem incurious about alternate viewpoints. It leads me to believe that you are either narrow-minded and arrogant, or that you just haven’t put much thought into it.
CaseyL
@asiangrrlMN:
I’ve also had to eliminate wheat from my diet altogether, and figured that was it for ever having pasta again. But no: you can get very good pasta made from brown rice, and you don’t even have to go to an exotic supermarket for it.
I’m not sure what the spaghetti is like, since I’m not much of a spaghetti eater. Elbow and shell macaroni are my things, and brown rice pasta does just fine in those configurations.
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
If it’s hunt or starve, that’s a whole different story. One can’t eat rocks, after all. And carnivores do it in the wild all the time because they have no choice.
And no-I don’t understand the impulse that makes one enjoy shooting a deer, even if it is only once a year. Good for your dad’s friend who does that, if that’s what turns him on. But I simply can’t respect his choice of recreational activities, no matter how great a guy he may be otherwise. And we’ll just have to leave it at that, I suppose.
Anne Laurie
@Kristine:
Sachets? Cut some squares of pretty fabric, dump a couple spoonfuls of needles on them, and tie them up into little packets with narrow ribbon or embroidery twist. Assuming, of course, that your Spousal Unit doesn’t complain that “eeew, your underwear smells like Vicks Vap-o-rub!”…
I’ve also heard of people mixing rosemary into plain, unscented hand lotion and/or liquid soap. But, alas, I’m not very good at keeping rosemary plants alive long enough to gather material, and besides, the Spousal Unit does.not.want.
Lisa K.
@AhabTRuler:
No, you *didn’t* ask me a serious question. You were presumptuous and arrogant, and I responded as one would expect, given the circumstances.
My position on hunting is this: the simple fact that a person enjoys an activity that involves guns, shooting and killing tells me something about them. Not everything, of course, and perhaps I was too hasty with my comments on that score. But no matter what they may be like otherwise-friendly, an Obot, whatever-the fact that they enjoy (usually people are not doing this to eat squirrel meat and if they are they are excluded) the act of killing and maiming something alive is revolting to me, and they are not people whose company I seek out. If that’s an evil way of being, then so be it.
Ruckus
@Lisa K.:
Don’t know where you live but I know people who live in the states who do hunt and eat what they hunt for survival. We are not that far removed from our hunter/gather past that we all can walk to the store after work and just get what we need. Not everyone can shop at the local farmers market. Not everyone can afford to eat veg. Meat is cheaper protein, even if it is not as good for you. Not everyone has the time, talent or money to have a proper veg diet. I’m not trying to be condescending here, just pointing out that the world is not one dimensional in the food gathering and preparing area. And it is much easier than when I did hunt decades ago. It just hasn’t changed to the ideal that you seem to aspire to. And it won’t for a very long time. Maybe it should. But it won’t.
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
I actually have no issue with killing an animal for food. What I *have* an issue with is making recreational sport out of it.
shortstop
All these whole-wheat pasta haters! You probably don’t like root vegetables, either! Hold me, John. I’m frightened.
Violet
@Lisa K.:
Just out of curiosity, do you kill mosquitoes or ants or cockroaches or flies? Do you drive a motor vehicle and does a bug occasionally hit the windshield and linger there until it finally dies? Or perhaps roll over a living creature in the road? All those things involve either killing or maiming something alive. It’s very hard to go through life an not kill or maim something alive, ever. Buddhist monks strive to do it, but even they sometimes accidentally kill insects and the like.
There’s a difference between accidentally doing it, like hitting a bug when you drive, and doing it on purpose, like if you swat at a mosquito. But the end result is the same.
Lisa K.
@Ruckus:
As I have stated, if you *have* to hunt to survive, then you do what you have to do.
If you don’t, and you do it anyway, to me at least that’s another story.
AhabTRuler
@Lisa K.: Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.
You wanna hate hunting, be my guest. You wanna hate hunters, then you are a bigot.
ETA: And let’s be clear, I have never been hunting, nor do I have any interest in hunting.
Anne Laurie
@Lisa K.:
Especially for your viewing pleasure:
Yeah, there are plenty of crappy “hunters” out there, most of them fortunately too unskilled to shoot anything but each other. But just as the Blue Dog Dems give the rest of us a majority, there wouldn’t be a National Parks System if it weren’t for guys with guns. Never hunted myself, but I can’t dismiss everyone who does as just some filthy ignorant barbarian… especially since there are still plenty of Americans who depend on hunting for protein.
Lisa K.
@Violet:
People seem to be missing my point here. Accidents happen. Hitting a bug or a deer with a truck is not the same as taking pleasure in killing one. At the risk of soundng overly dramatic and being misunderstood, that’s like saying someone who accidentally kills someone else in a car accident is the same thing as someone who hires a hit man to do the deed. Yes, the end result is the same, bt the circumstances are far different.
Bella Q
@Mnemosyne:
This is a really important point to make to the self righteous who are so assured that
there is no need to hunt for survival in this day & age, so the only real reason anyone hunts is for sport. No one needs to hunt to feed their family anymore.
If you don’t know any people who aren’t comfortably middle class, perhaps it’s easy to believe that everyone can buy all their food. Doesn’t make it true. I suspect many of us all too often forget that.
Anne Laurie
@FlipYrWhig:
I actually bought a stevia plant for my garden some years ago, and I noticed a faint ‘soapy’ taste when I tried the leaves in tea as well. As a backup experiment, I tried some of the processed stuff when it became available, but it had… unfortunate gastrointestinal aftereffects. I suspect we share some minor genetic quirk, like the one that makes some individuals super-tasters.
Lisa K.
@AhabTRuler:
Glad we got that settled.
Lisa K.
@Anne Laurie:
Be that as it may, I will reiterate my point and stand my ground on this one. If you need to hunt to stay alive, that is one thing.
If you *want* to hunt simply because you get your rocks off killing an animal, that is something else entirely, and I can’t respect it.
Which is my last word on the subject. Fire away!
Violet
@Lisa K.:
The hunters I know don’t have blood lust and they don’t necessarily “take pleasure in killing.” I know a lot of hunters who go “hunting” and rarely kill anything. They just like being out there. But for the hunters of my acquaintance, it’s more about a challenge and a sense of achieving a goal than it is blood lust in killing an animal. And they eat everything they kill.
Many traditional societies had elaborate rituals surrounding hunting. Those included competitions (who brought home the biggest elk or whatever), rites of passage (go kill a lion to prove you are a man), and spiritual elements (thanking the animal for his sacrifice and promising the deity of choice to use all parts of the animal). Hunting today still incorporates some of the elements of those rituals. Competitions, rites of passage, and spiritual elements are not missing among modern hunters.
AhabTRuler
@Lisa K.: Yeah, boy howdy, you sure settled my hash. You have deftly rebutted my charge that you engage in gross generalizations and make broad assumptions in formulating your argument.
Lisa K.
@AhabTRuler:
Lucky for me I couldn’t care less what you think about me, and thus feel no need to refute your obvious baiting. If you want to think I’m all about gross generalizations, that’s ok with me. Defending my viewpoints to you isn’t worth my time.
But I *am* mildly curious as to why my opposition to hunting as sport bothers you so much?
AhabTRuler
@Lisa K.:
So explain to me again your nuanced and well-reasoned position.
shortstop
A previous dog of ours was a grazer. (So is the current one, which freaks me out. What are the chances of having two dogs in your lifetime who are largely indifferent to food?) Anyway, Previous Dog used to wait until we’d gone to bed to eat his supper, perhaps thinking that one of these nights the unthinkable would happen and we’d make him a coq au vin or grill him a nice ribeye instead of serving him dry dog food if he just held out.
That never happened. So we’d go to bed, snuggle up together, and Norm would head out to the kitchen, eat, come back into our pitch-dark bedroom, stand still for about 30 seconds, then let out a tearing belch. We got to where we could not go to sleep until we had the soothing closure of that burp.
Lisa K.
@AhabTRuler:
When you stop being a jerk, I might. Or I might not. It’s up to you. I have admitted I was inartful.
Again, you’ve yet to say why this bothers you so much.
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
So, again, you find it more admirable for someone to go down to the store and buy a factory-bred chicken that’s been pumped full of hormones and butchered for their convenience than for someone to go out and get their own meat.
If we were defending trophy hunters here, I could see your point, but it seems very strange to insist that it’s actually more admirable to be as removed as possible from the death that meat-eating requires so you can pretend it doesn’t happen while you enjoy your KFC.
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
I’m pretty sure I said nothing like that, and even if I did, it’s not like most hunters don’t go buy hormone-filled chicken, too. Most-at least, a lot of the time, it’s not either-or.
And for the record, I’ve never been to KFC.
Bella Q
@Lisa K.:
This was Mnemosyne’s point to which I intended to say: This
If you don’t know any people who aren’t comfortably middle class, perhaps it’s easy to believe that everyone can buy all their food. Doesn’t make it true. I suspect many of us all too often forget that.
I don’t have much of a reaction to your opposition to hunting for sport. It’s your insistence that sport is the only reason anyone hunts that gets me all wound up.
Lisa K.
@Bella Q:
If you read all the posts, you would see I qualified that, although I stand by my assertion that much-the majority-of hunting in this country is done for sport.
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
You did, actually:
So, again, your contention is that it’s morally better to eat meat that someone else has conveniently killed and packaged for you than to hunt and kill your own. My contention is that eating commercial meat — even “humanely killed” meat — allows you to pretend that eating meat has no cost. Hunters are at least more aware that a living creature had to die to feed them since they had to kill it themselves instead of having someone else do it on their behalf out of their sight.
donnah
@Mnemosyne:
I work out at Curves and I do a good workout with resistance training and also walk five miles every Saturday and Sunday. I think I’ll switch up some of my food choices again.
Yoga does sound good, too. ;-)
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
If you mean that most of the hunting is not done by people who would otherwise starve to death, you’re probably right.
If you mean that most of the hunting in this country is done by people who shoot animals dead and leave the carcasses in the woods like your lazy-ass drunken relatives do, then you’re wrong. Most hunters do eat what they kill or donate it to food banks for others to eat, and most of them have the same contempt for your relatives that you do.
AhabTRuler
@Lisa K.:
No, I think you said exactly what you meant to say.
Mnemosyne
@BombIranForChrist:
Holy shit! That actually worked! I used too much water but, just as claimed, the pasta came out perfectly al dente.
Lisa K.
@AhabTRuler:
LOL!!!!
Ok, then. Like I said, I really am not interested in what you think of me, so I guess we’re done here.
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
This is my opinion on the subject: if you are not hunting because you are starving, then there is no reason to hunt, no matter what you do with the carcasses. It’s not as if hunting is going to keep you from frequenting McDonald’s or buying Tyson chicken. Killing something you don’t have to because you enjoy it and eating it as a side effect doesn’t negate that.
I’m sorry if that opinion angers you, and leads you to make some ugly personal remarks, as if obviously does. But it is my opinion and I am entitled to it. If you don’t like it, well, there isn’t much I can do about that. I’m not going to change it because it pisses you off.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Ahem. G would like everyone to know that he didn’t “kick” when I gave him whole-wheat pasta. He protested and made his case that it tastes like crap, so I agreed to stop making him eat it.
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
You seem to be of the opinion that hunting is some kind of sacred ritual these days. I don’t think that’s really true.
Kosher butchering, on the other hand, really IS a sacred ritual…
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
Sorry, which person was it who has said multiple times in this thread that all hunters are blood-soaked drunks who glory in sadistically killing animals? It couldn’t have been you, because those would be “ugly personal remarks” and clearly you’re the innocent victim of senseless attacks here.
Lisa K.
@Mnemosyne:
I believe I modified that to say that only people who kill for fun are blood-soaked drunks. Perhaps they’re not all drunks, but they are certainly bloodsoaked. It’s hard to shoot something and not get blood all over you.
Lisa K.
Well, like I said an hour ago, that’s my last word on the subject. ‘Night all, I’m sure you’re feel the need to disparage my opinion (think about that the next time you’re up in arms about “teabaggers”, LOL) but I doubt I’ll be back in here…
Mnemosyne
@Lisa K.:
Considering that you then claimed that anyone isn’t actually on the verge of starvation is automatically killing for fun if they hunt for food, it didn’t really mitigate things as much as you seem to think.
PanAmerican
I never liked chili mac until I tried it with whole wheat elbow. Much more complimentary in flavor and texture.
Kristine
@Anne Laurie: This is an idea for closets and whatnot. I like the smell of rosemary.
Taylor
@Betsy:
Doubt they’d be picking you either, hon.
I’m not a hunter, but I wouldn’t want to date a vegetarian…too much of a pain in the ass.
asiangrrlMN
@Midnight Marauder: Oh, you were trying for the limelight by proxy, eh? Understood.
@CaseyL: I will give it a whirl. I actually like spelt bread and tapioca bagels and some soy ice cream products, but main, I looooove whole wheat and real cheese.
Steeplejack
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Congratulations! It sounds like you are doing great work. And for your S.O. to drop 50+ pounds after a heart attack–and do it the healthy way–is a big deal. Kudos to you both.
debbie
FWIW, Barilla multigrain pasta (in yellow boxes) is even better than whole wheat. Better tasting and has better stuff in it.
bemused
@abo gato:
Yum, those bars sound great. I’m making them as soon as I pick up some [email protected]Darkrose:
Starbucks coffee definitely tastes burnt to me.
Years ago I used to put a little sugar in my coffee but those days are long, long gone. Seriously, wean yourself off the sugar in your coffee. You won’t regret it. The only downside for me is that now I am so damn picky & judgmental about having coffee outside home.
Although, reducing the amount of sugar that you use (a little coffee with your sugar?) could take months if not years. You can always get your sugar fix with eating a couple pieces of dark chocolate along with some good dark bean coffee.