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I can wholeheartedly recommend Bolthouse Farms’s 100% Clementine Juice.  Available only once a year, this tangerine juice is even better than Tangerine Scream.  And God, Bob Mike, and I know how much I love Tangerine Scream!

I discussed Tabasco brand Smoked Chipotle Sauce previously.

Before I first tried it, reader and longtime friend Bob Mike was over for a “special” tea party and horror movie night (he’s a great friend, taking public transportation for about 100km to keep me company during the divorce).  He saw the bottle on the counter, which I had picked up out of curiosity, and exclaimed something to the effect of “Isn’t that stuff great?!”  I didn’t know, I had never had it before.

I’ve had it now.

It is amazing.  It’s not a hot sauce, really, just a flavoring sauce.  It’s no hotter than A1 Bold & Spicy.  You can pour it over anything and everything savory: rice, beans, tortillas, soup, hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, whatever.  They hit this one out of the park.  It’s a major keeper.

The Coupon Clippers have a coupon right now for $0.75 off any flavor Tabasco, which you can probably get doubled.  Do it quickly.  I’m not posting a direct link because the current coupon expires on 2 March 2008, but there may be one coming to replace it.  The Coupon Clippers is a great site that charges a small processing fee to clip and mail you manufacturers’ coupons.  For this coupon, the fee is $0.10.  I’ve become a devotée of the site, and I think you will, too: go try it out through this affiliate link.

Not poorly.  It was delicious.  But poor.

I have very little income right now, being disabled, out of work, with no disability checks coming in.  I invited my mom over for dinner tonight.  The menu: Sloppy Joes and wine. 

Not an American?  Sloppy Joes are comfort food, frequently (at least when I was growing up) served as school lunch.  Wikipedia: “There is probably no Joe after whom it is named — but … “Joe” is a name that suggests, to an American, a person of proletarian character and unassailable genuineness.”  Can’t beat that with a stick.  Er, switch.  Er, Louisville Slugger.

Ingredients sourced at the 99¢ Only store and low-cost Valu Mart grocery store.  So I worked it out: she had half a hamburger bun, lean beef, sloppy joe sauce, Tabasco Chipotle sauce (yum!), and half a glass of wine (she’s watching her diet.)  $0.72.  Very low in fat, high in protein, and not too bad in the way of sodium.

I feel like Thoreau, detailing cent-by-cent analyses of what it’s like to live simply.  I’m not about to start leaving my front door open or anything, but it’s awfully rewarding to do something like that.

Sneaky way to get lots of good stuff into a four-year-old:  Juice together

* 4 carrots
* 1 orange, peeled
* 1 grapefruit, peeled
* 1 Fuji apple
* 1 orange bell pepper

Very sweet, very yummy, very orange, and gets the nutrients of a ripe bell pepper into his system, which otherwise would be very difficult.

Ah, torrential autumnal storms and Pizza Hut Quikorder.  A match made in Valhalla.  A $5 tip will just about assuage my guilt, I think.

Niall is getting very close to declaring his personal vegetarianism.  I’ve been wondering if he would, and kind of expecting that he would, but trying not to push him.  He is a very sensitive soul, and the recent business with the cats has exposed him to death for really the first time, and he can generalize pain now, so the layout is pretty straightforward from here.

He has told me before that he eats fish, but not real fish.  Then he told me that he doesn’t eat fish with faces (this is, I swear, completely unprompted.)  Last night I ordered dinner for him.  He was asking me what I had eaten before.  He asked me if I had eaten a ‘gator.

N:  A real ‘gator?!?

J:  Yes.

N:  A whole ‘gator?!?

J:  No.

N:  And have you eaten fish?

J:  Yes.  So have you.

N:  (Big pause.)  Real fish?

J:  Yes.  When you eat fish, you’re eating real fish.  Usually.

N:  Have you eaten really big fish?

J:  Sometimes.  But I try not to eat many big fish.

N:  Why?

J:  Because there aren’t very many of them, and if we eat them all, they’ll be gone.

N:  Gone?

J:  Yes.  If we eat them up.  But Mommy doesn’t eat any fish.

N:  Why?

J:  I think because she doesn’t want to hurt the fish.

N:  It hurts the fish?

J:  Well, yes.  But I don’t think fish hurt too much.  (Alan Rickman intones in the background, “The benefits of a Nirvana education.”)

N:  (Hard drive grinding, grinding, grinding away.  He’s far away.  Then the light comes back on.)  I don’t want to hurt ammamulls.

J:  Not cows?

N:  No.

J:  Not pigs?

N:  No.

J:  Not birds?

N:  No.

J:  Not fish?

N:  No!

J:  OK, then that’s being called a vegetarian.  You can tell people that, or just tell them that you don’t eat animals.

N:  (Trying it out.)  I don’t eat ammamulls.

J:  OK.

N:  (With determination.)  But I do eat things made from ammamulls.

J:  The animal has to die for you to make food from it.

N:  You have to die the animals?

J:  Yes.

N:  You have to die the animals?

J:  Yes.

N:  How do they die the animals?

J:  (OK, really didn’t want it to come to this.  So forgive me for this one, Jenn.)  Well, usually they shoot them in the head.

N:  They shoot them in the head?

J:  Yes.  Cows, anyway.

N:  I don’t want to hurt cows.

J:  OK.

N:  I don’t eat ammamulls.

J:  OK.

N:  (With determination.)  But I do eat things made from ammamulls.

J:  OK.

Trader Joe’s Organic Creamy Tomato Soup (in the carton) is quite tasty, especially with fresh garlic and a wee drop of Dave’s Ultimate Insanity Sauce (Sweat ‘n’ Spice is wrong, I’m sure the sauce is more than 90,000 Scoville, so be very careful.)

Chad Donella is really a fine actor of my generation.  He, unfortunately, has not gotten a chance to really shine in a perfect role yet, but the performances I have witnessed have all been fantastic.

He was in the X-Files episode “Hungry”, playing a brain-eating mutant.  Just try to pull off that role in a heartwarming way, but he did it.  And then there’s Taco Bell.  Several years ago Taco Bell filmed a commercial with him overjoyed to be stuffing his face with a taco.  We’ll likely be deluged with the commercial again when the X Games start showing in a few weeks.

Thing is, he filmed the taco commercial after the X-Files episode, as far as I know.  And the X-Files episode has a scene where he compulsively and with great gusto sucks human brain matter off his fingers.  Fictionally, of course.  I hope.  Same expression of glee as in the Taco spot.

So what, did some ad executive see his brain-sucking and think, “That’s the guy for us!  Let’s have him dig into our tacos!”  Did they have an open call for the commercial, or did someone call his agent and say, “Hey, send the brain-sucker over to chomp our tacos!”  Would be interesting to find out.  Probably.

For when you’re really hungry:

“Its translucent color so alluring and taste and aroma so gentle and mellow offer admiring feelings of a graceful lady.  Enjoy soft and juicy Kasugai Muscat Gummy.”

For the culinarily adventurous, may I recommend you still stay away from durian smoothies.

Calpis concentrate.  Grey Goose.  Water.  Ice.  Combine at will.  Drink.  Yum.

Safeway Select’s “Enlighten” brand fat free soups seem to be copying the more expensive Health Valley soups that I have previously discussed.  Thing is, they forgot to add something.  Flavor.  To make the split pea soup even barely palatable, I have to add three packets of pepper, a packet of salt, and a teaspoon of garlic flakes.  Caveat emptor.

Gernot Katzer’s Spice Dictionary is an amazing repository of information on more than 100 herbs and spices.  Should be bookmarked by every culinary enthusiast.

The National Audobon Society has a Guide to Seafood to educate consumers about the impact of various fishing operations.  Fish are conveniently rated into “red”, “yellow”, and “green” categories, and information is further broken down by population status, management status, and bycatch and habitat concerns.  Not surprisingly, shark, swordfish, and orange roughy top the list.  As I mentioned on my veganism blog, orange roughy can reach 150 years and do not reach sexual maturity until age 30, leading to a rapid depletion of the species.  Shark and swordfish populations are also being severely depleted.  Shrimp, surprisingly to me, entail the highest bycatch (incidental catch of non-target species) of any seafood.  On average, for every pound of shrimp retrieved, seven pounds of other sea animals were accidentally killed and were then shoveled overboard.  Groupers are subject to the same low growth rates as orange roughy, and even if measures are in place to “toss back” juveniles caught, they frequently die anyway due to pressure changes when they are pulled up from their deep water habitat.  Anyone following the saga of British cod fisheries knows that Atlantic groundfishes (including cod, haddock, and monkfish) are in critical danger.  Chilean seabass have almost disappeared and suffer from rampant illegal fishing.

Some species are in slightly less dire straits but are still poorly managed, in decreasing supply, or entail significant habitat disruption: salmon, tuna, red snapper, Pacific red snapper, and lobsters fall into this category.  Species that are generally safe to eat are halibuts, mahi mahi, mackerels, squid (calamari), farmed tilapia (also known as Nile perch), crabs (other than Alaska king crabs) and striped bass.

The society provides a whole website dealing with this topic, including “seafood cards” that can be printed and kept in one’s wallet or purse to help one remember which are safe species, and a FAQ list that will help you with advocacy in your local restaurants and grocery stores.

If you eat seafood, please take a moment to commit this information to memory or download one of the memory aids.  As the Audubon society says, “Your choices can help make our oceans healthy again.”

Last week I stopped at the Whole Foods Market in Canoga Park on my way to work.  In the store were company reps from the Guayakí company giving samples of a beverage called Yerba Maté.  I had never heard of this before.  It turns out that it is the leaf of a rainforest tree native to South America.  Everything about maté and Guayakí is fascinating.  Maté is psychoactive as hell.  It is high in methylxanthines caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline, all of which are diuretic bronchodilatory stimulants.  But there must be all sorts of other active compounds as well: it is calming, focusing, and slightly euphoric, but probably not enough to have it made illegal.  It is an appetite suppressant and allegedly a minor analgesic.

Of course, once you find something new you start seeing it everywhere.  I found a discussion on Metafilter from February that I must have read at the time.  And it showed up in the book I am currently reading, Becoming Vegan, as being associated with esophageal cancer.  This is obviously not desirable.  I did some more searching online, and it turns out that the carcinogenic property might be due to its traditionally being drunk very, very hot.  Apparently you see the same results with tea and coffee.  And apparently consumption of vegetables, fresh fruits, black pepper, and turmeric are shown to have some protective effects against this type of cancer (also cheese, for the non-vegans.)

After a few hours, at least for me, the calming and euphoric effects wear off and you are left with a major case of the jitters.  That’s not desirable either.  I can’t get my leg to stop shaking right now, for instance, and my breathing is stuttered and broken.  The jitters might cause one to take more maté in order to get the calming effects back, but this sounds like a feedback loop to me.  I’ve read multiple pages that claim that maté is non-addictive, but this strikes me as absurd, as caffeine can form dependencies and maté is loaded with caffeine.  I mean, no one is going to knock over a liquor store to support a caffeine habit, but there are certainly withdrawal and tolerance effects.  Additionally, as Marion Howard writes, “caffeine perpetuates its own use by curing its own side effects, much like alcohol.”  Maté may be doubly self-perpetuating, if ingesting more maté causes the jitters to subside (I’m not going to experiment with this today.)

But it’s delicious (some say it tastes like “wet hay”, which I think is unfair), and great with soy milk and sucanat as a vegan “maté latté”.  And Guayakí have a great website; they also drip with every progressive cause you could possibly imagine: sustainability, fair trade, recycling, reforestation.  They are so cause-obsessed that they almost seem a self-parody.  But check them out: you might find the trip interesting.

I’ve started a new side blog dealing with my switch to veganism.

I just completed my month-long experiment with veganism that I have discussed in this log.  I am not keeping it up past the month, at least not for now.  My eating habits are back to “no red meat” with a preference for vegetarian fare.

This certainly does make dining out easier.

My hemp dress shoes arrived today, and they are beautiful.  This is one more step towards my ethical ideal.

The fsck program is extremely helpful and very informative.  Kudos to the developers (alas, they are coated in milk chocolate so I cannot partake [the Kudos, that is, not the developers {probably}]).

This is the article on nutritional toxicology that I mentioned earlier.  The key passage: “Toxicology today possesses the means to incriminate any substance to which it cares to devote sufficient testing. This science can indict any substance if it has the inclination.”

I am quite fond of nutmeg, and I use it regularly in my cooking.  With this being the Christmas season, I’m drinking eggnog; probably more than I should, judging by its nutritional profile.  To this, of course, I add nutmeg.

Perhaps too much nutmeg.  Tonight I decided to have a cup full and began grating a nutmeg into it.  Soon the cup contained half a grated nutmeg.  I stirred it, added a small splash of brandy, and began sipping it.  Halfway through the cup it occurred to me that this could be a very dumb idea: I knew nutmeg could be hallucinogenic or toxic in relatively small quantities (neither of which effects I wanted), but I had no idea what “small” meant.  A gram?  10 grams?  50 grams?  I put down the eggnog and performed a Google search for “ld50 nutmeg”.  LD50 is a term that denotes the fatal level of consumption for fifty percent of the population (that is, if you have a group of one hundred people and give each of them the LD50 of a substance, around fifty of them will die.)  A very cool article debunking nutritional toxicology scares (showing that “natural” ingredients could be far more hazardous than “artificial” ingredients) that I read four years ago got me convinced that the LD50s of many common substances are well within reach.

So, to begin with, how much had I injested?  I had three nutmegs left, and weighed them on the finest-precision scale available to me, my postal scale.  The three nutmegs came in at a third of an ounce (or around 10 grams) total.  That meant that each nutmeg was a little over 3 grams, half a nutmeg was between 1.5 and 2 grams, and half a cup of eggnog containing half a nutmeg delivered under a gram of nutmeg, total.  I found a webpage that read “Even though there have been cases of narcosis and collapse with just one whole nutmeg, people universally use nutmeg as food seasoning.”  This was not particularly good news.  The next source was also not very positive (intriguingly, this is from a book entitled Legal Highs: A Concise Encyclopedia of Legal Herbs and Chemicals with Psychoactive Properties by one Adam Gottlieb, self-proclaimed 20th Century Alchemist.  This is an interesting counterpoint to my position: I’m trying to make sure that I didn’t do something very stupid and injest dangerous amounts of a substance while using it for flavoring, while there are apparently people who want to know if they can use it as a psychotropic drug without injesting dangerous amounts.)

“Possible nausea during first hour; may cause vomiting or diarrhea in isolated cases. Takes anywhere from one to five hours for effects to set in. Then expect severe  cottonmouth, flushing of skin, severely bloodshot eyes, dilated pupils. […] “Intense sedation”. Impaired speech and motor functions. Hallucinations uncommon in average (5-10 gm) doses. Generally followed by long, deep, almost coma-like sleep (expect 16 hours of sleep afterward) and feelings of lethargy after sleep. […] Safrole is carcinogenic and toxic to the liver.”

So, bad things can happen, and I was unsure how exactly to interpret this paragraph.  “Hallucinations are uncommon in average […] doses”, but what about the other effects?  Common?  Do they set in at a lower threshold than the hallucination?  The final source I found said this:

“The perceptible dose is 5 to 15 grams (1 to 3 ground nutmeg seeds). It is a carminative in a dose of 0.03 mL. It is used as a hallucinogen in doses of 2-4 teaspoonfuls or greater than 2 whole nutmeg or 18 grams of fresh ground nutmeg. Effects begin in 3 to 6 hours but may be delayed 8 hours after ingestion and the duration is up to 60 hours. Effects are similar to LSD. Toxicity produces dry mouth, GI upset, abdominal pain, agitation, tremors, feeling of impending doom, delirium, psychosis, and coma. It is reported to produce miosis or mydriasis, hypothermia, hypotension. Cardiovascular effects including chest pain, palpitations and mild hypertension have been reported. One fatality reported in an 8 year old boy who ingested 14 grams was reported in 1908. Severe reactions with shock, hypotension, cyanosis and hypothermia may occur with very large amounts .”  I had to look up carminative, miosis, and mydriasis, by the way.

OK, we finally have a definition of the perceptible dose, which is a factor of 4 to 12 above what I injested.  So it looks like I’m in the clear, although this safety margin is significantly lower than I would like.

Do we need a moral here?  Don’t be an idiot like me: many herbs and spices contain dangerous chemicals in significant amounts.  Significant increases in their culinary usage should probably be investigated before ingestion, not after.