heeeeey margarita!

Cinco de Mayo has come and gone, but a good margarita recipe lives forever. I've been struggling over the years to come up with the perfect, or near-perfect, go-to recipe for a  classic margarita - the kind I can just pull out of my cocktail book, mix up, and not worry about.

Although I've come up with interesting variations, like a pineapple-guava margarita, the classic eluded me. So I tried looking online for an alternative to the book I had so far been using, and came across a simple recipe that used tequila, cointreau, and lime juice in a 3:1:2 ratio.

It didn't work.

So with my wife's far superior palate as final arbiter, I heavily modified the above recipe to come up with a margarita that has all the flavour I expect: Sweet, but not cloying, with ever-so-slightly dominant citrus notes, and a finishing jab wearing padded gloves.

The right tasty result:

 

I call it the Social Margarita, because the quantities are intended to yield two servings for sharing.

You will need:

• two margarita glasses
• cocktail shaker
• ice
• salt (optional)
• lime wedges or slice

In the shaker, mix the ice with the following:

• 3.75 oz of tequila
• 1.5 oz of grand marnier
• 1 oz of BOLS triple sec
• 2 oz of fresh lime juice (or juice that is not from concentrate)

Wet the rims of the glasses with the lime slices, than salt as desired. Pour in the mix with the ice, and garnish with a wedge or slice of lime. Finally, enjoy.

Give it a try and let me know how it turns for you. Just remember: margarita recipes are very personal indeed. If this one doesn't do the trick for you, experiment and share your results with me!

Salud!

how we eat is critical to both healthcare and the environment

An interesting interview over at Democracy Now! with the author of In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan.

The gist of it is:

Goodman: [Y]ou wrote a long letter to President Obama, to the “Farmer-in-Chief,” as you put it. What’s the most salient point in it?

Pollan: The most salient point is simply, you are not going to be able to tackle either the healthcare crisis or climate change unless you look at our food system. In the case of climate change, food is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gases, the way we’re growing food, the way we’re processing it and the way we’re eating. And the healthcare crisis, as I’ve talked about. So we need to address it. It’s really the shadow issue over these other two issues.

Pollan is correct, in my opinion, to point out how the way in which we feed ourselves is a critical underlying issue of both healthcare and environmental sustainability. It’s a bit like chaos theory, in which small changes in apparently simple systems can yield incredible complexity. But there is, perhaps, a more fundamental issue than food and that is economics – the way in which products and services are exchanged along with the mediums of that exchange. True, if we were to eat local, only food, mostly plants, there would be a cascading effect in terms of our food supply and nutrition. However, we have to deal with a capitalist economy in which the goal is to make money – and to persuade people to spend their money. (How many edible food-like products does Big Food create an appetite for through marketing? All to make money, not to provide us with the nutrition we need.) This means, of course, that companies don’t necessarily have a vested interest in giving people what they need, but in manufacturing want to perpetuate a cycle of spending. Add to this the fact that we price things based on value and not cost, and we’ve added another variable that adds to the overall complexity.

The point is that as long as the economy allows profit to be the defining factor of success, it will be extremely difficult to get the corporation to change their ways of doing business. It would, in fact, take a massive boycotting effort on the part of consumer – an effort that is certainly desirable. The key make profit dependent on other factors, such as environmental sustainability. Perhaps it’s the familiar question of redefining what profit means – the holistic view of economy that defines wealth and success beyond the material terms of money. Perhaps it’s a question of developing a new kind of economic system, an idea I personally favour (two words: Josiah Warren).

Regardless, it’s good to hear a back-to-basics analysis like Pollan’s. It’s certainly in line what people like Dr. McDougall have been saying; change our nutrition and we create a healthier population. Create a healthier population, drive healthcare costs down. Boom goes the dynamite.

TFPO column: veganism isn't just a luxury

Since re-reading a past post on my concept of baseline veganism, I've been thinking about whether or not honey fits into the vegan jurisdiction or not. I've heard the bees are killed in the process of getting to the honey. I've also come across arguments that say, in effect, that bees are animals enslaved for the purposes of manufacturing honey. Since vegans are opposed to animal exploitation, it logically follows that we must consider a verboten animal product.

But while that particular debate goes on, this week's TFPO column takes on the broader issue of veganism and what I call survival logic.

Veganism Isn't Just a Column

And don't forget to check out the new fashion blog I'm writing with Aqua Catlin, The Fashionoclast.

new column: baseline vegans in napa

Happy New Year, folks. May 2009 be a good one.

I get back in the saddle with a report on what I did during the holiday vacation: wine sampling in Napa valley. Or, to be accurate, trying to find something to eat that didn't involve meat.

It’s easy to be vegan at home, when you have total control over ingredients, recipes, and cooking methods. Hard, as my wife and I expected on our recent trip to Napa, is venturing out into the world where eating is left to restaurants who are very much geared towards the fat-laden, meat-heavy, dairy-heavy, “Western” diet. Fortunately, we are what I’ve come to term “baseline” vegans, or bVegans, which means that while we use the vegan diet (no animal products) as a daily standard for what we eat, we have the ideological flexibility that allows for pragmatism – ethical, nutritional, and so on. Typically, this means that we normally eat vegan, but we’ll go to vegetarian, or sometimes further (only to fish, however, and only rarely), depending on the occasion.

Read the rest of Baseline Vegans in Napa: A Culinary Adventure Outside the Home Kitchen

Future blog posts will deal with more results from that goth and politics survey I did for Morbid Outlook (promise!) and the usual potpourri of this and that taken from the headlines and whatever whims I happen to be afflicted by.

what is baseline veganism? part 2

However, a few qualifications are in order. First is that humans are, indeed, omnivores. Our body has evolved to eat a variety of food. However, just because we CAN eat a variety of food types doesn’t mean that we SHOULD. Based on what I’ve read, I’ve come to see nutrition like this: as with sweets and alcohol, we can eat meat in small quantities, but for long term-health it’s best to follow a vegan diet. This brings me to a second point, namely, that in terms of ethics an absolute injunction against eating meat doesn’t really make sense. For one thing, all life is predicated on the consumption of other life, whether we like it or not. Carnivores eat meat, and unless we’re prepared to slaughter lions and wolves and the like because they are fundamentally immoral, then we have to admit that survival is a mitigating factor. Carnivores kill other animals because that’s how they evolved, and meat is what they need to survive. In human, omnivorous terms, this translates to: if the choice comes down to killing and eating an animal or starving to death, I certainly wouldn’t choose to starve to death. Veganism doesn’t work as an absolute.

There are more aesthetic reasons not to be so absolutist: not everything animal-related is harmful to animals. Milk, for example. Even though it’s not especially healthy in large quantities, it doesn’t hurt the cow to drink it. Same thing with eggs, or honey. The point isn’t to argue for vegetarianism, but to say that flexibility in a vegan diet means that we can be sure that the occasional treat of milk and eggs can from well-treated, free-range, organic animals that have not been made to suffer. Even eating meat, on occasion, may be acceptable if we take Michael Pollan’s point that there’s more to food than nutrition. Food is intrinsically tied to culture, to socializing, to enjoying the good life. I happen to enjoy sushi – forget beef and chicken – and like indulging in a good Japanese meal on special occasions. I don't necessarily see a problem when this is the exception and not the rule, although this does play fast and loose with the actual rule.

So this brings me to the rationale behind “baseline” veganism. Baseline, because the vegan diet serves as the, well, baseline for eating on a day to day basis (as opposed to vegetarianism, which allows animal-derived food as part of the diet). But a baseline is just that; a starting point. A guideline from which it is okay to deviate on occasion. A baseline vegan, or bVegan, is someone who adheres to veganism while allowing for limited compromises and deviations.

Or, a bVegan is a vegan who isn’t propped upright by a stick up the ass.

what is baseline veganism? part 1

When it comes to food, whether eating out with friends or partaking in the product lunch presentation at work, the fact that I am vegan inevitably creates a bit of a problem. Not so much in a logistical sense, although of course there’s an issue there, but more in terms of labels. While I consider myself essentially vegan, I don’t think the word “vegan” as commonly understood is an accurate label. Reason the first; too many vegans have an insufferable self-righteous attitude, and I’m insufferably self-righteous as it is that I don’t need any more encouragement. I’m talking about folks who refer to people who eat meat as corpse-eaters, for example. I’m talking about PETA, who are otherwise commendable in their efforts for securing humane treatment for animals. Reason the second: the word “vegan” does connote an absolute stance – absolutely no meat, no animal products, never-ever – and I don’t think this is either philosophically justified or realistic in terms of living life.

I’ve resorted to using pragmatic vegan or non-absolute vegan as alternatives, but these are just weasel words, as Wikipedia might put it. After working the ol’ neurons for a long time, I’ve settled on the term “baseline vegan” to label my nutritional stance. Before explaining it, though, I’d like to get on the soapbox and answer the question, “why vegan?” The short answer is predicated on the principle of avoiding or minimizing death and suffering:

1. It’s healthier for us.
2. It’s good for animals.
3. It’s good for the planet.
   

Nutritionally, it’s Dr. McDougall’s books that persuaded me of the science behind nutrition, along with stuff I’ve read by Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food) and others. Basically, to be healthy and reduce incidence of diseases like cancer, diabetes, what have you, it’s best to avoid processed food and “edible food-like products” and just eat food. Good ol’ natural food, straight from the planet – veggies, fruits, and grains – chock-full of vitamins and nutrients. But it’s also that excess meat and dairy, with high fat, underlies many diseases associated with the Western diet.

Beyond nutrition, the huge planetary population entails a large-scale meat industry, which comes with barbaric practices like debeaking, close confinement, electrocution deaths, and other abuses. I once rationalized these industrial processes as necessary for feeding a large population, but I can’t accept that anymore. Animals are sentient - to varying degrees, of course, but sentient nonetheless. They may not be “human,” but they feel pain; there’s more to animals than we think. To be consistent with acting with compassion, it’s necessary to treat animals humanely, with empathy - not just humans. Not eating meat means not treating animals with cruelty.

Then there’s the planet. The meat industry is one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gas that contribute to global warming. Yes, you can say cow farts – the methane of livestock is a greenhouse gas. Between that and the fertilizers, land use, transportation, and so on, the meat industry as it is now is bad for the environment. Other points of contention is how much grain goes to feed cattle (seven pounds of corn to one pound of beef, for example) when it could instead to feeling people directly. The excess consumption of meat, fast-food and otherwise, impacts not only the environment, but the quality of our human civilization.

To be continued...