My next invention shall be the Veggiedaire, a refrigerator designed for veg*ns, structured to accommodate our food habits and preferences. Well, mine, at least; everyone else can accommodate and adapt, or get bent.
Most obviously, the drawer labeled “meat” will have to be banished; I currently use mine for storing tofu, tempeh, and the like, but it’s annoying to have to look at the label every time I use it. There’s really no need to keep proteins together; they can just sit on the shelves. If there really must be a drawer, then it should at least be labeled “FU.” (We could tell people that the leading apostrophe dropped off.)
Instead of one dinky drawer each for fruits and vegetables, there will be multiple humidity-controlled drawers, for easy grouping by size, leafiness, resistance to dehydration, etc. Because you’ll have more space for storage, you’ll be less likely to lose things in the depths of drawers (no more oozing forgotten broccoli!), and delicate items such as peaches and lettuce will be less likely to get squished. Optional moisture sprays and drainage could help extend produce life, as could special absorber cartridges (refillable and recyclable) to control the atmospheric balance. There also should be a special higher-temperature compartment for storing things that are susceptible to chilling injury, such as avocados and tomatoes.
The egg holder will obviously have to go. Stupid thing, anyway. I’d throw mine out, but I’m haunted by the spectres of any future fridge owners coming after me, demanding to know where their egg holder thing is. I suppose the margarine holder can stay, though I’d rather have a collapsible or removable compartment attached to the underside of a shelf, to keep it away from the temperature extremes that the door experiences, and allow the space to be regained if you aren’t in an Earth Balance sort of mood.
Several specially fitted five-pound canisters should be in the freezer, for storing perishable whole grains without wasting space.
A bar code scanner would be fitted to the side. If you found yourself in possession of a packaged product of uncertain provenance, you could scan it into the Veggiedaire, which would then automatically look up the source of all the ingredients (e.g., is that glycerine from animal sources or from plants, or from whichever’s cheaper at the moment?), and even contact the manufacturer for you in case of doubt. This function would be made portable, either through a little detachable hand-held scanner you could take to the grocery store, or a small program you could install on your PDA or mobile phone.
Needless to say, refrigeration would be eco-friendly. And the default power would come from solar (panel and connection kit included with purchase) or wind; you’d have to pay more for the plug if you wanted to run it off the grid.
Another option I think would be cool is Ultimate High-Security Roommate Mode. (”Mode” must, of course, be pronounced with Kryten’s intonation from “Red Dwarf.” Otherwise, it’s just not funny.) All the food would be RFIDed according to who owns it; as you approached the refrigerator, your iris pattern would be scanned, and if you tried to remove anything marked as belonging to anyone else, the Veggiedaire would sound an alert. “Halt! That is not your soymilk, Insert Name Here!” If the soymilk was not returned immediately, the Veggiedaire’s security camera would take a photograph of the thief and e-mail it to the soymilk’s rightful drinker, who could then wreak unholy vengeance.
For those of us with dogs who enjoy half-climbing into the open fridge to see what might be on offer, this feature could be adapted: “Alert, Nigel! My door will be closing in two point five of your Earth seconds. Please stop attempting to steal the leftover bok choy and remove yourself from the door’s path immediately.”
That might be stretching the invention budget, though. Even evil vegan mad scientists have to operate at least loosely within their budget constraints. I think I’ll just go cross out the “meat” label on the top fridge drawer, write “Praise Seitan!” on it instead with my trusty Sharpie, and call it a night.
(Edit: attempted to get the URL working this time. Ack.)
Though I can sympathize with this person’s desire not to buy a gazillion unusual ingredients to make a single cupcake recipe, I find it somewhat pathetic that they’re having to ask how to unveganize the Fauxstess cupcakes recipe. Also amusing — when you spend any length of time trying to figure out how to veganize omni recipes, you get in the habit of automatically substituting in your head as you’re reading the recipe. Milk = soymilk, or almond milk, or oat milk, or whatever your “milk” du jour is. Egg = egg replacer of your choice — flax eggs, or EnerG, or applesauce, or whizzed tofu, according to preference, recipe, and what you’ve got on hand.
I mean, honestly, how hard is it to see “soy milk powder” and think, “Oh, I don’t have that, and I’m not vegan — I’ll just use a non-soy version”? (I shall not extend this rant to include whether you should be using the non-soy version; we’re purely talking baking substitutions here.) Compared to the mental contortions vegans undergo — well, at least I do — when reading omni cookbooks, I completely fail to see why the reverse process is giving this omni fits. If nothing else, why doesn’t he/she just look on a vegan baking tips site and then reverse the recommendations for substitutions? I mean, it’s not freakin’ rocket science. You’re not going to blow up your kitchen if you screw up the recipe. Worst case scenario is that you might have to clean your oven afterward.
Not having a whole lot of sympathy for the omni baker in this instance, as you can probably tell. I’ve gone through the recipe several times, trying to figure out which ingredient(s) are giving trouble. Sure, the black cocoa powder is somewhat exotic, but Isa says right in the introduction that you can use all regular cocoa if you can’t find it. When I made them, I did have to buy caster sugar, soy milk powder, and shortening, because I don’t normally keep those around, but who doesn’t have vanilla in their cupboard, or flour, or cider vinegar, or canola oil?
Okay, I’ve gone through extreme noncooking phases in years past, during which I could not be relied upon to have even dried oregano in my spice cupboard, let alone something as exotic as vanilla. However, if you’re planning to make cupcakes in a proper fashion (i.e., not from a mix*), I feel it’s hardly extreme for an author to expect you to shell out for flour, chocolate, and maple syrup.
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*When I was in preschool, they once told us that we would be making cookies the next day. I came home absolutely livid afterward, because the grownups had helped us slice up commercial refrigerated cookie dough and called that “making cookies.” To this day, I still feel slightly cheated. That’s heating up a commercial product; making cookies requires mixing bowls and measuring cups and actual ingredients you can pronounce and stuff. I’ll grant that I have, in years distant, heated up the odd batch of commercial cookie dough, and do still occasionally rely on commercial frozen curries and (in moments of desperation) prefab seitan. On rare occasions, I even will buy individual vegan cookies or brownies from WF or Sevananda. Still, I’d never present slicing prefab cookie dough and putting it on sheets as a fun “togetherness” activity for a bunch of preschoolers.
It’s been about 10 years since I rode a bike with any regularity. Back in college, it was my main means of transport, especially when I couldn’t be bothered with waiting for the bus. I’ve gotten to where I really miss it, and thus when my parents were going to sell their old bikes at a yard sale, I asked them to save my mom’s for me.
However — and this is an important however — skills tend to atrophy after a decade of disuse, as I found this evening on my inaugural ride. Not that I forgot how to ride, at least the basics (I didn’t fall off, or come close to falling off). I’m rather out of shape and practice and was hardly expecting to ride for an hour or so, but I blame the fact that my ride only lasted fifteen minutes and that I was somewhat red in the face for quite a while afterwards on the fact that my gear-shifting skills are, apparently, withered away into nothing. Trying to use unfamiliar gear mechanisms without a diagram or instructions didn’t help, either.
It was quite embarrassing. Going up a hill, I only managed to make it harder and harder to pedal, and finally had to give up and walk the damned thing to the peak of the hill. On the flat, though, when I tried to get more resistance to build up speed, the stiffer gears disappeared and suddenly my pedals were flying around at 700 rpm, while my speed dwindled to that of an asthmatic pug.
I’ve tried Googling for the manufacturer of the gears (seven-speed Shimano, circa 1988) and for the bike manufacturer (Trek Antelope). Not a whole lot of help to be found. Lots of really bike-geeky stuff that I, quite honestly, don’t give a shit about; lots of “which bike is best for me?” walkthroughs; but no “here’s how to change gears on an older secondhand bike because you haven’t ridden a bike much at all since your dog was born and you’ve forgotten” assistance. You’d think I’d be able to pick it up through use, and maybe that’ll work, after much mortification and getting out of breath in front of the entire neighborhood. I just need to find somewhere to ride while I’m relearning, where no one who knows me will see me. o.O
Oh yeah, and I remembered the reason I stopped wearing bell-bottomed jeans in college, besides the fact that it was the first half of the 1990s and they were horribly out of fashion anyway: it’s scary when your trouser leg nearly gets caught in the gears. (No way I’m wearing those little spandexy tights, though. Neither the neighbors nor I need that sort of horror.)
Addendum: According to How Stuff Works, the top lever is supposed to move the chain to a bigger sprocket, and the lower lever is supposed to move it down. Hmm. I swear that I was trying every lever I could get my thumbs on, on each side, but maybe I was just afflicted with horribly bad luck and always shifted in the direction opposite of what I needed, and just got irrevocably screwed up. More practice needed, I suppose. Meh.
(Via Food Fight who were understandably pleased that Portland, OR, came in at #2.)
SustainLane has ranked 25 cities across the U.S. according to their sustainability, using 12 criteria. Atlanta, at #20, is quite a bit down the page here.
Honestly, I’m kind of surprised that we did so well. It’s obvious that our air quality sucks, urban sprawl is rampant, and though there are quite a few bicyclists in my part of town* most of the suburbs seem actually hostile toward pedestrians and are largely sidewalkless. It also was reassuring, in a depressing sort of way, to find that we scored so low on locally grown food; I’ve been trying to buy more locally grown stuff, even when it isn’t organic, but haven’t been very successful. (It’s times like this I really wish I had a garden, but I don’t even have a balcony where I could grow tomatoes and peppers or anything. I don’t think I get enough light to keep herbs alive — Percy the Parsley turned yellow and died a couple weeks back.)
On the other hand, we’re ranked #5 in LEED-certified and -registered buildings. If the refurbishment plans at work go through, that ranking might slightly improve.
One thing the survey didn’t appear to take into account, as far as I can tell, is greenspace. Granted, deepest Midtown and many of the outlying suburbs are not exactly lush with vegetation, and there is certainly a lot of room for improvement (per Trees Atlanta, the goal for sustainability should be 40% tree cover, and we’re at 27%), but one of the joys of living in town is, for me, the number of trees, even outside the parks. (Ponce de Leon between the Highlands and Decatur is one of my favorite stretches.) Maybe it’s just the fact that I moved back here from Illinois, which is known more for extremely flat and naked horizons than for trees, but my subjective and highly unscientific impression is that we’ve got a good start on greenspace — and, with any luck at all, the Beltline project will increase the greenspace, as well as provide a better in-town mass transit option than our current unwieldy, clunky MARTA. That, of course, assumes that the Beltline is implemented well; how likely that is, of course, remains open to question.
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*I shall soon be among them. Now that I’ve retrieved my bicycle from my parents’ house, I plan to get back into practice, with the aim of trying to commute to work via bike as soon as the weather cools to the point where I won’t either be drenched with sweat when I arrive (wouldn’t bother me too much, but might offend the coworkers) or die of heat stroke going up a hill. My goal is to be biking to work at least half the time before the end of September.
