With practice, you can do both steps in one fluid motion!

For the longest time, I avoided vegetarian dishes and ingredients like tofu. Was introduced to Indian food - the meat options were delicious, but then I tried the paneer version, and holy fuck. The revelation that meat is infact entirely unnecessary to make a dish taste absolutely amazing was a game changer. Like owning a manual car and just assuming 1st and reverse were the only two gears - then suddenly discovering 2nd+, despite them having literally just been right infront of me in plain sight the whole time.

Morale of the story is that I (finally) learned to appreciate vegetarian cooking on its own culinary merit… there are a lot of idealogical and ecological reasons to go vegetarian or vegan or w/e, but those usually take the spotlight (I mean… because they’re actually important), but another less-touted angle is that it’s just fucking delicious.

So, vegetarian cooking tips are nothing to scoff at!

Anyway, chickpea pasta… I didn’t know that was a thing - I’ll keep an out for it. I’m wondering if I might have actually had it though and not actually known what it was. A coworker brought some pasta in for a potluck, and it had an unusually gummy texture, and just a little bit of grit they same way hummus has. I never did ask what it was, but it was good stuff. It was more dense and chewy than regular pasta, which I’ve always found to be a satisfying combo in food.

That pic reminds me of a post I made a while back hoping to brainstorm ways to nudge modern healthcare toward the solarpunk mentality. What we have now, especially in the big-hospital setting like where I work, seems so hopelessly incompatible with solarpunk, which still kinda drives me nuts.

Revisiting that thread, it looks like it got more attention than I realized, but still not much I can act on or forward along to others with some actual authority (of which, I don’t really have squat).

Anywho, relinking it here just incase someone more creative than me stumbles across it - always looking for new improvements!

Donald Trump is an enemy of the US and its constitution. He isn’t ‘failing’ in his role as president because you can’t fail at something you never tried to achieve in the first place - being a good president isn’t and was never his goal. He is succeeding at destroying our country. The damage he’s done isn’t a chain of hundreds of unfortunate, unintentional blunders: he’s doing this shit on purpose.

How do they not have a backup plan or six for things like this.

Lethal injection administered and didn’t work, but she’s still asleep? Maybe start a new IV in a different vein? Apply pressure to her carotid arteries? Put an O2 mask on her and connect it to literally anything other than O2? Throw her out of the fucking window?

Killing each other is something we’re supposed to be good at…

Decade or so ago, logging into a work computer and suddenly the screen is just tiled with the word “virus”, but a bit janky looking like it was a screenshot of the word that was enlarged and tiled with no thought to whether the right side of the image lined up with the left and such - it was a very 90s cheesy movie like depiction of what happens to your comp when you get a virus, like you’d expect the next scene to be some shady hacker on the other end exclaiming “I’m in!”

Then again, I don’t know jack fuck about viruses, and the machine is behaving super weird, so I unplugged the internet cable from the back, and called my manager over. He had a similar “…is this for fuckin real?” reaction that I did. Mind you, this is a hospital, so if one of our computers is fucked, this is a big deal for potentially leaking patient info, so even though it had that kind of slapstick appearance, no one was fucking around with it: so, manager pushed it up the chain, and after a few mins a fucking SWAT team of IT guys comes in and starts doing their own assessment.

After some deliberation, they start troubleshooting - keystrokes and whatnot don’t seem to be responsive. One of them eventually reaches back behind the monitor and ‘poof’ the screen pops back to the normal login screen.

So, that facility had a fancy custom login screen, which was some generic desktop background type scenery and a wall of text that none of us ever put any thought into. One of the snipits on that wall of text was instructions on what to do if you suspect your machine has virus (which was basically what I did - leave it running, unplug it from the internet, and call IT… hooray, I’m not completely stupid!). What ended up being the cause of the “virus” tiling was the fucking VGA cable slowing worming its way out of the back of the monitor - when I got to it, that thing was hanging on by a thread, and touching the desk it was on was just enough of a bump to make it cross that line between having enough of a connection to do its job vs not. That micrometer of pull of on that cable wasn’t enough to completely cut its signal, but it wasn’t enough to produce a normal display either: it just picked a random spot on the screen, and filled the monitor with that repeating image. The spot it just happened to do this to was the word “virus” in the custom login text explaining what to do if you think you have a virus, lol.

TLDR, got my management chain from my dept to the top dogs running the hospital, and the entire fucking IT department to swarm to my unit over a potential data breach that ended up being a wiggly VGA cable.

Whoops.

saag paneer or tikka masala

Can’t go wrong with those! Indian food is some of the best on the planet. I think paneer tikka masala was the first time I had paneer - didn’t have a clue what it was, just know I really liked the chicken version and there was an unfamiliar word next to one of my favorite dishes. Ordered it just out of curiosity. First thought was “oh, it’s tofu” and was a bit disappointed cuz I didn’t care for that squishy texture (it’s grown on me since though… noms…). Took a bite – second thought was “this is the best fucking tofu I’ve ever had!”. Did some digging online and quickly discovered I was wrong on both counts: it’s cheese! …that doesn’t melt… hmmm…

I’ve since experimented a good bit with it and different rubs and marinades on the smoker. Garlic herb and pepper rub is probably my favorite so far. Today’s batch was “Kewpie Deep Roasted Sesame” mixed with some balsamic, and I’d say ranks #2. Terryaki + soy sauce came out decent. BBQ was meh. Pesto was (surprisingly) meh. …and by ‘meh’ I mean “still delicious, but nowhere near its potential, so not gonna bother with that one again”.

I fuckin love paneer! I literally have some on the smoker as we speak (bite sized blocks of paneer + pretty much any sauce you’re in the mood for + lowish temp smoke for 90 minutes or so = insanely delicious).

Today’s sauce is a sesame based marinade I found in our local Asian market - was a really good dipper for meats and veggies, so I have high hopes for this batch of paneer!

Edit - snacking on it now. Errmagerd this batch turned out good!

as are nuts (can’t have those myself unfortunately)

Unsolicited story time!

I made a few batches of baklava for my coworkers a while back, with various fillings. Most recipes call for dates or some kind of nut, so I was just like ‘fuck it, we’re trying them all’.

One of those coworkers had a nut allergy, so I make a batch that used sunflower seeds instead (no recipe for that, just sub the nuts 1-1) and honestly is was one of the best of the 10 or so different types I made. Baklava is something a lot of people with nut allergies have never tried cuz it’s always got some kind of nut in it. - if you’re one of those, definitely give it a whirl some times (and do NOT use one of the recipes that go through making your own filo dough… that stuff is… involved. You can get premade rolls in most grocery stores - look near things like those refrigerated tubes of cookie dough, or in the frozen section).

I’m sure sunflower seeds as a nut substitute is nothing new, but baklava specifically might be something that wasn’t previously on your radar. (if that’s the case, and you do go for, shoot me a message to let me know how it went ^_^)

That coworker was fucking stoked - when people bring in food for the group they don’t usually put much thought into things like allergies or religious accommodations, but hooking those folks up with some noms when they’re expecting to be left out is a great way to make their day.

Is there some kind of food that’s basically tofu but made from beans other than soy? I’ve had em whole and mashed up into a paste, but iirc soy beans are the only one’s I’ve had as their own cohesive block,

The texture of tofu is a turn off for a lot of people, but what if you make tofu from like kidney beans or something? A product that’s firmer and chewier (and probably not called ___ tofu, cuz people are idiots) could potentially be a hit.

Edit - loving the replies this is getting! Looks like I’ve got some homework to do!

…yeah looking at some of the new nurses and doctors who are using AI to limp their way through school, AI has already begun to “free us from the tyranny of facts” by giving us a new generation of idiots who have outsourced the act of thinking to the spellchecker-on-meth running on their phone.

…

The future of healthcare isn’t looking great.

Put a piece of toilet paper over the sensor before sitting down. Those fucking things are always too sensitive - you lean forward a few inches, the light sensor detects a change and assumes you got up; public toilet water start gurgling droplets at your exposed asshole.

Fuck everything about that. Cover the sensor, shit, wipe, stand, pants up, knock the sensor block off with your foot, leave the stall as it starts to flush.

…

Unrelated, but it’s wild how often I see people fuck up the next step, so I’m rant about handwashing anyway. So that sink handle you use to turn the water on? It’s covered with strangers’ feces. The lever to dispense the paper towel? It’s covered with strangers’ feces. The door handle to exit the bathroom? It’s covered with strangers’ feces. I don’t care thoroughly you wash your hands: if you use your sparkling clean hands to touch any surface in a public restroom, your hands are now covered in strangers’ feces.

Dispense paper towel - don’t touch it, just let it hang. Turn sink on. Wash. DON’T TURN THE SINK OFF. Grab the paper tower and pad off your hands: use that same paper towel as a barrier between your hands and the sink handle to turn the water off. Use it for the same purpose on the lever to dispense more paper towels if needed. And use it again for that same purpose to manipulate the door handle without actually coming into contact with it. Open door, throw paper towel into trash. Leave with still-sparkling-clean-hands.

But the restroom only has one of those horrible air dryers and not single use paper towels. There’s no good solution here: you’re in damage control mode. Turn the water off by nudging it with a knuckle or key or gum wrapper or whatever random bullshit you happen to have on your person. Don’t get anywhere near that disgusting air dryer - shake you hands off, wipe them on your pants, whatever, it’ll dry on its own. Bathroom door handle, your back to improvising with a piece of garbage or something, or prodding it with the tip of your pinky or w/e to minimize contact as much as possible. Once you make your escape, leave a shitty review. Literally.

Short version: after the soap and water bit, you should only be touching a wad of paper product, and only the portion of that product that hasn’t touched any of the other nasty surfaces in there.

Side-eye other people’s handwashing habits, and you’ll understand real quick why things like hepatitis and e.coli infections are as prevalent as they are.

We fuckin nasty.

It’s weird that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but honestly whatever: if fewer people are supporting that horrible chain, I’ll consider it a win regardless of their motivation.

Oh, 100% this is unhealthy as fuck. I gained a ton of weight when I was piss broke cuz all I could afford was rice - exceptions were a treat. When you’re that tight on cash though, you start to prioritize it over pretty much everything else, including your own body.

Spending any more on food would have required cutting into something critical like rent - I never did have to deal with homelessness, but boy did I toe that line.

In any case, this is desperation diet - hopefully for a very short term leading up to having the means to live a healthier lifestyle.

Happy to say I’m past the piss-broke stage of life, but I’ll never forget how much is sucks. One of the really shitty things about it is all the products marketed toward selling us a ‘cheap’ meal, and we buy it because you don’t question it: it’s poverty food, right? Must be among the cheapest options in the store, right?

Then you start pricing stuff out by things like cost-per-gram and realize you’re getting ripped off. To answer OPs question, I’d call that dish: predatory, bc it’s an up-charged box of ingredients that you can buy separately in probably that same aisle for much cheaper.

For anyone reading this who is stuck in that hell, first off: /hug. Second, the real poverty food MVP is rice. I don’t recall the price off the top of my head, and even if I did I’m sure it’s inflated since I was a frequent buyer, but look for “fortified short grain” which is usually the least expensive and is ‘fortified’ with some extra nutrients to get something other than carbs. Buy it in bulk - you can get it in 50lb bags at places like Costco (if you don’t have a membership, mooch a ride there off someone who does, they can get you through the door/checkout) or Asian/Middle Eastern grocery stores. Price it out to what you’re paying for the amount used in a single meal, and it’s like a literal nickel.

Rice makes for a boring meal by itself, but it’ll fill you up. Your second best friend is the clearance shelf. Pretty much any meat or veggie can go with rice. You’d be surprised how well other shit work with rice too… I recall having a single slice of shitty supreme pizza in the fridge; not enough for a satisfying meal, but, fuck it, whipped up a serving of rice, chopped up the slice of pizza crust and all, and threw it in when the rice was just about soft enough to eat and kinda stir fried it in. The oils from the cheese and sausage all got soaked up by the rice… end result wasn’t amazing by any stretch, but it was away more satisfying than a single slice of pizza or bowl of plain rice, tasted decent, costed pennies.

Pro tip: buy some snack-sized ziplock bags, measure out what you need for a serving, portion it into a ton of individual bags, and keep those in a sealed 5-gallon buckets. There’s a type of beetle that lays its eggs in rice, and it may not hatch until after you’ve bought it. Then they propagate, and there are tiny beetles all over the batch… and losing the better part of a 50lb bag to those fuckers is pretty heart breaking. If you portion it out first, and then it hatches, you lose a single-portion ziplock full. No biggie. Also keep the empty ziplocks and reuse them for the next big bag of rice.

Also get a cheap rice cooker as soon as you can afford it - a pot works fine, but a rice cooker will get you much more consistent results for much less effort.

Actual sex ed is, as usual, the answer to these kinds of situations. I’d guess way more critically so for the Civic boy than Pony’s daughter, since Pony seems open to actually discussing some shit with her daughter, especially if Civic boy actually gives a fuck about virginity.

…oh, and guillotine construction. Definitely don’t forget the guillotine construction.

Public Toilet

Public shooting range.

Pulled up the original for my daily hit of nostalgia.

That video was posted 15 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn6AOtkZxy4

Idr the name of the effect -when you notice something and now it’s on your radar so it stands out and it’s more glaring when you notice it again, until you start seeing it all over the place…

Unwarranted hate on Frankenstein’s monster. I feel compelled to defend the duder every time I see it pop up, and lately I keep seeing it pop up.

Obligatory plug: if anyone reading this hasn’t read Mary Shelley’s original story, consider giving it a whirl. It’s old-ish English, but not like Shakespearean or anything - it stops looking/feeling ‘old’ after the first chapter or so. It still holds up to modern standards, and is the original sci-fi horror. The monster in particular is an actual character with its own personality and arcs - not just the mindless zombie portrayed in media since.