A moment of clarification
This blog exists so that I may mouth off without bothering reasonable people.
I do not seek hits. I do not seek international acclaim.
I am in touch with the fact that I am a working-class jackhole. If you think I have something to say send cash; preferably in US currency or Indian Rupees. Account information available on request.
Soul Vegetarian Macaroni and Cheese, revised
Today I broke down and made another batch of this legendary dish. The first batch did not mix as well as it should have, and my trusted partner made additional recommendations.
The recipe, now revised, is as follows.
4 c soy milk Not that crap with the chalk and sugar in it, unadulterated soy milk.
1 Tbsp sea salt
5 cloves or 1½ Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp dry mustard
2 t paprika
2 c nutritional yeast
1½ c soy oil The cheap “vegetable oil” at every store is almost certainly 100% soy. Check the label to be sure.
1 lb whole-wheat macaroni
Whole-wheat spirals were on sale this week. I don’t know why only the spirals which are more difficult to distribute through the sauce. That’s what was actually used.
As to my method of preparation, I added only 2 cups of soy milk to the food processor. I now know the food processor is not water tight. All of the dry ingredients were measured into a bowl in advance and spooned into the soy milk through a funnel while spinning. Then the garlic. Then, quite slowly, the soy oil. The food processor actually started to torque down and walk across the counter so I went ahead and added a third cup of soy milk.
The sauce was spinning for about eight minutes.
The fourth and final cup of soy milk was added directly to an oiled casserole pan. Then pasta. Then sauce. Mix by hand. If you find yourself using spirals instead of macaroni it will take some extra effort to coat with sauce appropriately.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
This is the best Macaroni and Cheese I have ever made. Period. Try it. It may as well have actual cheese.
I wonder about using other kinds of “milk” with this. Almond, hemp, rice?
Hamburger Diaries: Restaurant of the Year 2011
Five Guys is the highest quality. Jack in the Box is the best value. Short Stop is the hometown favorite.
However, despite a sub-par experience in June, the sentimental favorite is Kiki Evans’ Fat Ho Burger. Everything good about Fat Ho Burgers was very, very good. The sub-par elements were understandable. The allegedly unprofessional aspects were all heart. If Fat Ho wasn’t pushing a new kind of Burger, I know not of its source.
Congratulations to Waco’s Fat Ho Burger, the first Hamburger Diaries Restaurant of the Year.
Word came in November of their closure. According to the Waco Herald-Tribune Ms. Evans is turning her enterprise into a lunch truck, although it has yet to be spotted. May I present the fond wishes of the staff and management of the Hamburger Diaries for a quick recovery from this hiatus.
If the California, Kentucky or Indiana franchise rights remain available, please let us know.
Experimenting with vegetarianism
Let’s start with Christmas. Boy, did I blow the diet. I did make something amazing, however. It was the Macaroni and Cheese [sic] from Atlanta’s Soul Vegetarian restaurant. If you Google around you will find the recipe from the ca. 1975 Soul Vegetarian cookbook, but that isn’t what you want. Grab a pencil and click.
That is, and in food-service or pot-luck quantities:
4 c soy milk Not that crap with the chalk and sugar in it, unadulterated soy milk.
1 oz. or 2 Tbsp sea salt I don’t really know if it makes any difference, but we keep sea salt on hand instead of iodized salt.
10 cloves or 3 Tbsp minced garlic Honestly, it seemed a bit much, and you are dealing with a garlic lover.
3 Tbsp prepared mustard or 1 Tbsp dry mustard
2 t paprika
2 c nutritional yeast This is my first venture with nutritional yeast. Think of it as vegan butter.
1½ c soy oil The cheap “vegetable oil” at every store is almost certainly 100% soy. Check the label to be sure.
1 lb whole-wheat macaroni I did not know whole-wheat pasta is absolutely vegan.
and prepare as the video above. This sauce needs major agitation to come out right, so you will have to use something electric. Let me just say if you are going to use a food processor instead of a blender be utterly certain your food processor is water tight. I assure you certain models of low-end machines are not.
When I make this again, I will use about half the garlic and perhaps add a half-cup of chopped onion.
Just slop this together, drop it in a casserole dish and bake at 350° for 45 minutes.
It’s not quite macaroni and cheese, but it’s pretty amazing. It hits that MacNCheese button.
For Christmas dinner I prepared a 9×12 pan of this, and we nibbled on it all weekend.
For a later dinner, Mel prepared some Fantastic™ Vegetarian Chili. It’s a mix available in bulk foods. Dump some canned tomatoes and canned beans and you’re eating hearty. In fact, if you are disinclined toward veggieness, I still recommend the FVC. It’s easy to prepare, hearty and good. But wait until you pour some over last night’s Vegan Mac’N'Cbeese. It taste like seven different kinds of wrong, but it’s really nutritious and all that stuff we DFHs are on about.
Try the Soul Vegetarian M&C and tell me how you get on. I may have to make a batch tomorrow.
Despite myself, I am not writing a story.
The Christmas thing which exists as notes I can’t work on: I’m not writing it now, either.
The cusp of the thing was a dramatic device in which the protagonist, or “Stan” discovers a variety of cookie you cannot buy in the stores. To bake these cookies is his stand against the vacant emotionalism of Christmas. Then the neighbor with whom he chooses to share immediately produces a store-bought variety of the same cookies. I was going to make a prop box of store-bought snickerdoodles.
However, since the Autumn you may now buy snickerdoodles in the stores. Maybe I should just invent a cookie and use that instead, or lie and claim this invented cookie is something Chrismassy from the home country. Bourbon balls?
I can no longer edit video. I don’t have that kind of machine anymore. I was going to write it up as a radio audio play, but I don’t know how to handle, or rather “shorthand”, some of the visual implications. I don’t have a good mic anyway. Instead of a scene where he walks down to the liquor store on Christmas Eve with narration, I would write a five-minute scene condensing some of the points with the proprietor of the liquor store. Instead of a character that acts out in an essentially sexual manner which makes everyone around uncomfortable, the character becomes a hick and is less madcap and less Austiny. If you can change the key of a voice it becomes a different person. Knowing what I know about the radio shows of old, this might involve more deliberate ethnicity than keeps me comfortable.
The protagonist whines about his isolation when he is surrounded by people who are fond of him, and is practically pestered with folks from far away wanting to video chat with him over the internet. I like the idea, but no longer like the “techy” implementation. I don’t even have an appropriate computer for that essential prop (turn down the screen, turn up the lights and shoot it like day-for-night), or even the apartment as my “new” place is much less homey. My real apartment looks like a pathetic attempt at set design.
The conclusion is not satisfying. That is, he loses the girl and nothing really happens by design. I also have a running joke about media, and I am hopeful certain contacts might put me in touch with the voice of this locality’s Grand Pere of media for VO. However, I would have to pay him. Casting is now a problem as three essential civilians have no interest in doing a movie if it will take time out of their schedule. Despite my crude methods, it would take non-trivial amounts of time.
A gag was to have a true hippie type and neighbor, incidentally named Linus, recreate the recitation scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Part of the joke is the rhythm of “Charlie Brown” and “angrystan” are the same. As a radio play I could do the thing with two voices and filters, but my primary female conspirator is an experienced actress who doesn’t do accents. Also, I have no SFX, and do not anticipate finding any.
Yet, I must persevere.
Outline about the musical group Kinghorse and my association.
Someone back home is putting together a memoir of the members, fans, followers, hangers on and so forth for the musical group Kinghorse. I am not certain in which of those categories I qualify, but I fit in there someplace.
A tribute site has been established. No comprehensive analysis of the band as a regional phenomenon, not merely an especially popular musical group, has yet appeared. I suspect this is the object of the memoirs. I am posting a potential outline for what I think I have to say in hopes of getting desperately needed help with editing from the cloud. Perspective with regard to projects in which I was personally connected, and especially those in which I was involved emotionally (leave the appropriateness of that for another day, please) is difficult.
- Personal history, briefly discuss who the hell I am and how a non-musician, non-creative type with massive anxiety issues and no social skills from the hillbilly part of town somehow managed to infiltrate the Falls-City Post-punk scene.
- History of the musical acts which preceded Kinghorse, especially Maurice; the other half of which became Indy deity Slint.
- I don’t really know enough about the curious selection of the name. It is something of a attitude juxtaposition; I never really asked. The only person who ever understood the origin of the name upon its mention, in my experience, was Rodney Bingenheimer.
- My association, including promotion, design with co-conspirators, roadieing, and so forth. I can only recall two anecdotes right now, both of which should have ended with Mark kicking my ass were he not such a gracious individual.
- The inadvertent study of pop music and the culture of “The Industry” thanks in no small part to Joe Donovan the radio personality and crappy overnight jobs. My subsequent disappointment in the Caroline album and disillusionment.
- Kinghorse fandom as part of the phenomenon which, in time, breached mighty sociopolitical barriers in a town where class and social roles were very important.
My disappointment with an “East meets West” show featuring white pop acts, east of 10th St, and black pop acts, west end, never happening. We just didn’t push the idea hard enough.- How in March 1996 I burned my bridges and left town. Anything after that remains mysterious.
- In detail, the crowd response to the distinctive buzz of Mark’s guitar being plugged in moments before the curtain opened at The State in New Albany.
All of this is just what comes off the top of my head.
Thanksgiving revisited.
I have never seen Thanksgiving crowds like the ones I saw this evening. That is, it was a regular-to-slow Saturday at both groceries visited. We were out and about at 2 AM this morning and the city was peculiarly quiet. Austin will never be confused with Manhattan, but the early morning traffic was especially light.
On a related note, four of the five historically 24-hour grocery stores south of Ben White Blvd. now close at 11 PM. You may note this occurred within a month of the busiest food-shopping period of the year. I could not say whether the SuperChain shops opening within the passed two years have anything to do with this. Target, in particular, now offers “an expanded grocery selection” in at least three area stores which are not Super. That means about 2000 sq ft of grocery items, adding a limited selection of fresh meat and produce, in lieu of the 400 or so since I’ve been in town. In Austin, literally anything that prevents another stop will be welcomed with open arms.
I may have to devise another affectionate poke at “Central Markup” as the prices on several similar items, including wine and produce, were exactly that at sister HEB. Yes, we went to both. Some things you just can’t get at CM, and some things you just can’t get at HEB. The premium, recycled, made in North America, disposable aluminum roasting pans were six bucks at the store with all the wood, and one dollar for the crap kind where we usually go. CM had organic macaroni made with Tasmanian-Goose flour and violet dodo eggs or something, but nothing under $3/lb. They had several varieties of cheddar, actually from Cheddar. You can’t make old-school Mac&cheese with premium ingredients. It’s a rule or something.
The menu looks like the following:
- Rosemary and lemon roast turkey
- Yams and apples, with orange and brown sugar
- Horn-and-Hardart-inspired macaroni and cheese
- Margaret Holmes collard greens, because neither of us can do any better than those magical cans
- Pillsbury crescent rolls: go jump in the lake, they rule
- and if I can find fresh cranberries, which were not at either store today, proper cranberry jelly
I think I’m going to wuss on the wine and just get a modest Sauvignon Blanc.
We’ll be serving around three.
Among the problems with the cinema.
You cannot really see or hear the movie. Compared to the experience at home in an age in which almost everyone has a 720i monitor of some kind and stereo, at least, sound, the essential presentation of a motion picture in a theater is sub-optimal. Some of the sixteen audio channels are often simply missing, the screen is lifeless and dark and the opening forty minutes of insulting previews are enough to make you sacrifice your substantial investment in admission.
The actual room has all of the usual quirks. Cell phones, chatting and so on as you have read hundreds of times before. Now, in some houses, you have the staff sheepishly intervening constantly and futilely to enforce the house rules against such behavior. This is not an improvement.
Admission must be made comparable to the price of the DVD in three months. Why pay $25 to go to some invariably drab, uncomfortable place when I can see the picture in a few months in the comfort of my own home, or the home of another film weirdo, actually see and hear the damn thing repeatedly for about $20.
With the potential, relative ease and present quality of streaming, the cinema cannot compete.
The seating is, for the most part, less sticky at home.
The catering at Cinema Angrystan is simply better than that at any existing cinema in the world, bar none. It is entirely oriented to my personal tastes, and often enough those of my guests. It is even better than the four dollars of fast food for fifteen dollars at the diner-N-movie complex. With a specific venue in mind, occasionally a choice of beers are on offer and you can taste the difference between them.
Although guests sometimes complain, I don’t have to wear my trousers or shoes.
Your correspondent is one of those people for whom 3D causes headaches. Although a sucker for the new generation of superhero movies, on the whole, soulless blockbusters are simply frustrating. No need to go to see those.
I am not even tempted to try those thirty-dollar-ticket joints. For one thing they tend to be in a part of town where my car is likely to be pulled over just on principle.
Among the problems with the Fiat 500
The car is good, or so they say. No conspicuous problems in the major logs of car problems. Even some of the dealers are non-evil. It’s pricey, but it is a more-or-less premium item. However you can get a bigger car with better fuel economy for the money. It is not yet cool over here.
Within the universe which is the arbiter of automotive coolness, both the 500 and the Abarth 500 are in the Sub-Zero section of the Cool Wall.
In America the first two television ads are the following:
With which the problem is attempting to generate an emotional appeal based on memories of a car that, effectively, never existed here. The entire scenario is peculiar and this remix of an old Elvis Presley song is grating and only serves to remind the audience how annoying their grandparents were.
If you want to present the car as retrolicous, please do so. However, it is not a product of days gone by, it is new, now with old-school Eurodesign and blah, blah, blah.
The focus of the ad is the action, not the car. Evidently these are clips from a music video during which you can’t really see the car either. Is “J-Lo” still a commodity? This ad has a very strong female appeal.
In America, two types of people don’t want to buy cars marketed to women.
- Women
- Men
This limits your marketing results dramatically. Look at the Mustang and the Jeep CJ and Wrangler. Both sell overwhelmingly, over seventy percent, to women. The marketing never concedes this. It is perfectly fine to actually target women for marketing purposes, but not so blatantly. In contrast the Ford Flex and Honda CR-V, allegedly quintessential Mom-mobiles, sell in similar percentages to men.
I find myself wondering just how many folks were putting on their trousers to go to the Fiat dealer in lieu of watching the crappy football games that Sunday when this ad appeared then they went to the ‘fridge for another beer.
All is not lost. The Abarth 500 is just around the corner. It was announced yesterday. Let’s look at the marketing.
This is an excellent short film. I can feel her implausibly warm breath as she whispers in his ear. Of course, I am presently in mad love with an Italian woman so I might take this differently. The first time I saw the ad, I managed to ignore the car. I would have done the set-up as a stand-alone, with this edit as a follow up.
However. The product is characterized as female. This is death. Especially in the shadow of the previous material.
Now let’s talk about inventory.
I thought the car was more successful than it is because I see at least one every day. I am told a disproportionate portion of these cars have been delivered through the local dealer. Therefore, I am seeing them because the car is very popular in this town. Inventories are building up.
The vast majority of cars sold thus far have been delivered with manual transmissions. This is a stick-uptake rate not seen since automatics were optional. The appeal of the car is a Euro driving experience, and a major part of that is three pedals. Dealers are beginning to push current inventory and that means automatics. People are walking away.
In the present market where people are, on the whole, buying cars only where their present vehicle is in dire straights, Fiat is turning casual buyers away because you must purchase from inventory and inventory must be automatic. Why automatic? People don’t buy cars with manual transmissions, that’s why. The dealer knows best. Not the manufacturer and certainly not the customer.
This is why the Fiat is stalling. I’d get two manual testers on every lot and butch up and Euro up the marketing, but what do I know.
