Diana.nu

I was putting away some lentils I cooked today when I started craving some lentils. Convenient, huh?

I decided to eat the lentils with a tortilla. After I gobbled that up, I sat down, opened my Twitter client, and began a maybe… three-part, let’s say, tweet about how much I love buying name brand tortillas. My reasons being that 1.) They don’t stick to each other. 2.) They’re soft. 3.) They don’t rip when you fold them.

There I was, typing away about what I consider tortillas of quality when it occurred to me that yeah, 98% of your followers will not relate to this.

I never sent the tweet(s). It got me thinking. How often do I not send a tweet because I think no one will care? What does that make me? Some kind of personality instead of a person?

Usually, I try to change something that bothers me, but this curiously does not bother me. See, right now, I feel like I should apologize for blogging about something so ambivalent. As if I owe anyone an apology!

I normally use my blog for talking about me, and I visit other blogs for reading about others, but I am wondering something I should directly ask. Are there any things you tweet/blog (or don’t tweet/blog) because you feel it’s what people expect (or don’t expect) of you?

Most of the times I find myself in an argument with a meat-eater, it’s not really one conversation between two people. It’s more like two parallel conversations in that one will never cross or even touch upon the other. I think the reason for that is most of the meat-eaters I know ironically care more about food than I do.

Yes, I’m angry about animal cruelty, but if I found out a food item I liked was causing harm in some way, I’d just stop eating it. Meanwhile, some of the meat-eaters I know keep telling me they just wish they could go vegetarian (not even shooting for all-out vegan), but they just can’t.

On top of that, I see food, in the end, as a neutral part of my life. Sometimes people ask me if what I eat even gets me full, and I’m baffled. Who eats to get full? I’ll admit that I sometimes eat more than necessary, but I thought we all normally ate when we were hungry and stopped when we were satisfied. I mean, it’s food. You put it in your mouth, chew it, swallow it, and you’re fine for another 2-3 hours. There’s no step in that process in which an animal is required to die.

So, the conversations being parallel would make sense. We are on different planes of thought. (Two sentences, two geometry terms!) Most of the meat-eaters I know are pissed off that vegans like me don’t respect their choice to eat meat, and vegans like me are pissed off that some meat-eaters are indignant over something as simple as food. Interesting.

I made sour cream out of tofu yesterday! I had nothing to eat with it besides tortillas, so today, I made chili. I had an adventure.

First, I looked for some black beans in the fridge. They weren’t there. I looked in the freezer. Oh, hi! I microwaved them for 10 minutes to get them almost unfrozen.

Then, I chopped up onions and bell peppers, and used the tiniest grater to shred garlic. There’s probably a name for that procedure. Oh well! I looked for diced tomatoes, but we only had whole tomatoes, so I thought I’d be a smartypants and dice those. I don’t know what dicing is. I chopped them up, is what I did. I opened a can of tomato sauce and put oregano/paprika/pepper/cumin in it.

Important part! I boiled half a California chili thing and two of some other kind of chili to a boil with some water and then let it simmer for 15 minutes. California chilis are works of the devil, just so you know.

I should say that at this point, the kitchen was a mess for some reason and it looked like I was cooking enough for a city meeting.

I put a little bit of canola oil in a pan and threw in the onion until it turned brown. Then I threw in the garlic and pepper for a little bit. Then I threw in the tomatoes, tomato sauce with seasoning stuff, and beans.

15 minutes passed eventually, so I took the pot of water and chili so I could blend it. I had the pot of boiling water in one hand when I realized I hadn’t taken the blender out. So I did that with one hand, because I’m silly. I grabbed the blender’s container thing and poured in the still boiling water and peppers.

Oh no! Leakage! I didn’t screw on the bottom with the blades in properly! I managed to take the blender container thing and transfer what was left (about 95%) back into the pot. Then I went back to the blades and screwed them in properly, which was difficult because they were burning hot.

I blended the chili for 15 seconds (one for each minute!!) while listening to the beans mixture boil. I made a horrible mistake. I uncovered the blender and smelled the chili pulp stuff, expecting deliciousness. DON’T DO THIS. YOU WILL DIE. I coughed like crazy, my eyes were twitching, and I had to sit down for a little bit. When I recovered, I used a “thing” (I don’t know what it’s called) to sift the pulp from the juice.

I poured the still burning chili juice into the bean mixture, made sure it covered everything evenly, and tasted it.

It was delicious.

But the kitchen was a huge mess, so I let it cook for 20 minutes while I cleaned up.

When I was done, I served myself some chili with “sour cream” on top and ate a little, before I figured out I didn’t like sour cream and chili. So I served myself some chili by itself, ate it, and it was good.

The chili is all gone now. I felt like I was making it in super bulk, but I only made about 4 servings.

I had a nice time making chili.