If you’re here because of my ad on Skyrates, I am Stephanie, administrator of this website, and you’ll know me better as Thespian. So Welcome!

Also, a plug now; I learned about Skyrates from a webzine called Suburban Conspiracy, a bi-weekly thing with a great forum to go with. I have a column in this month’s Geek Kitchen series, on my Moroccan Peanut Stew. Anyone who is interested in casual geeking should check the site out.

Just keeps getting cooler and cooler.

So a Jewish vegetarian walks into a bacon party, and this guy says, “Can’t they revoke your Jew card just for walking into this place?” *rimshot*

But seriously, why would I go to Stephanie and Ny’s bacon party when I haven’t eaten meat for 17 years? Because I am perverse that way, that’s why. Why couldn’t there be faux bacon at the party? There was a need to be filled, and clearly I was the only person who was going to fill it. I’m noble that way, too. Also, my husband really wanted to go and eat lots of bacon.

Figuring that there were probably already some interesting recipes out there, I found two that I ended up making. First I made baconless bits from TVP. Sure, I could always buy some Bac-Os, which are already vegetarian, but I was intrigued by the idea of making my own. The recipe is simple, and the bits tasted just like the stuff you’d buy in the store for more money. Even Santiago liked them. Now I have a containerful to use on salads, or to put in my grilled cheese sandwiches like I did when I was a kid.

Then I made the Smoky Maple Hickory Fake Bacon from tofu. It helps to squeeze as much water out of the tofu as possible before marination so that it soaks up more of the marinade. The tofu smells fairly bacony as it cooks because of the maple syrup and the liquid smoke. Texturewise, you’ll want to slice the tofu as thinly as possible without having it fall apart, so as to maximize the crispiness. As for the flavor, well, no one would mistake it for real bacon, but I thought it was pretty tasty all on its own. Santiago wouldn’t choose it over real bacon if it were available, but thought it okay anyway.

I brought some commercially-available fake bacon products, too. There was LightLife Smart Bacon, LightLife Fakin’ Bacon smoked tempeh, and Yves Canadian Veggie Bacon. Of these, I thought the tastiest was the Fakin’ Bacon, then the Smart Bacon, and then the Canadian Veggie Bacon. The Fakin’ Bacon had a nice, smoky flavor and a crispy, chewy texture after pan-frying. It helps that I am already fond of tempeh, too. The Smart Bacon was all right, but was very easily burned on the difficult-to-regulate gas cooktop. The Canadian Veggie Bacon is packaged in cold cut style, leading me to wonder if it was good straight out of the package, but it was pretty bland and really wanted pan-frying; it might be okay on an egg sandwich, but isn’t especially exciting on its own.

Stephanie and Ny had made bacon-wrapped bacon, something that amused me greatly, so I had to counter by making faux-bacon-wrapped faux bacon, topped with baconless bits. Mwahahaha! I think I broke Ny when I showed it to her.

Apologies for the crappy photos. All I had on me was my camera phone, which is pretty good in a pinch, but didn’t really cope so well with the dark colors of the food.

I’ll be updating this post all this week, as Salon is running ‘Pork Week’. Their words: The Discovery Channel has Shark Week. Here at Salon, we bring you Pork Week. This is a weeklong series of stories about that most polarizing of meats.

Bacon mania - “Why are Americans so batty for bacon? It’s delicious, it’s decadent — and it’s also a fashion statement.”

Belly of the Beast - making bacon

My family does not have adventurous tastes; my father is British, and was raised in a pub in the 50s (his parents owned it), so his food preferences are for bland, and boiled, and anything beyond salt and pepper is a little fancy for him. My mother…well, it’s a good thing that Dad only likes salt and pepper, because I think she’d be at a loss if she needed to ’season well’. When I was growing up, Wednesday was taco night (Old El Paso) because Dad didn’t like spices, and it was OEP because Mom can’t be trusted with them.

So a lot of my tastes needed to wait until I was out of the house to develop, and I am an adventurous eater simply as part of my general rebellious nature. I’ve often thought that part of why I spent 4 years in my teens as a vegetarian was because it gave me an excuse to eat things the rest of the family didn’t want in the house.

So I was 35 before I had matzoh balls, and they were a revelation to me. I had never much cared for dumplings, so I’d never really sought them out, but a number of my local friends here are Jewish, and 2 years ago I went to my first Passover, where some were served. I really had no idea that they could be that tasty, though oddly, they would likely be to my father’s taste, since they are slightly bland, and boiled.

I had bought a reduced for quick sale rotisserie chicken on Thursday, and eaten chicken for pretty much every meal since then, and was down to the carcass and all the meat that I couldn’t easily get at. So I made chicken stock, cooled it, shredded every last bit of chicken off the bones, and made matzoh balls for it. It was really good, and I have two more bowls to go through (after making that chicken into about 4 sandwiches, one regular type chicken and veggies meal, 2 bowls of potatoes and chicken, as well; it was a well used bird).

Current free thing that people will send you: a sample of True Lemon, Lime and Orange if you go to http://www.truelemon.com/sample.html. I have not yet tried True Orange, since I haven’t seen it, but I’ve used True Lemon in my water and been favourably impressed, and True lime, mixed with a little pepper, is actually really good if you’re wanting something fast in a fajita (chop up chicken and veggies, throw into a frying pan until they start releasing a little liquid, then sprinkle the pepper and lime over them and finish cooking them. Then pile them in with salsa and sour cream into said fajita wrap).

Killjoy cooking with the Dungeons and Dragons crowd

I have read the new Better Joy Cookbook and I am devastated to my very core. Their macaroni and cheese recipe, the very macaroni and cheese I’ve been making since I was in college, has been ravaged and disfigured and left bleeding on the page. Where once it contained only cheddar cheese, now the recipe calls for a mix of cheddar and Colby. It may contain macaroni, and it may contain cheese, but it is not macaroni and cheese. This is a slap in the face and a knife in the gut. You have lost me, Better Joy Cookbook. I would bid you goodbye, but I wish you nothing but the pain and rage you have delivered unto me.

1. Diet Coke has an expiration date for freshness or something.

2. It’s usually about a year after it was packaged.

3. Within about a month before the expiration date hits, I can in fact taste the change. It’s not bad, just different.

4. About a month after the expiration date hits, it’s noticeable enough that I can’t actually drink it anymore.

5. I am not a supertaster or anything. I just know Diet Coke really well (ok, I can also often identify the flower a honey is made from, but that was culturing the palate, like with wine, and anyone else who wanted to do it could learn).

Aside from a couple of Jonathan Coulton shirts (a Code Monkey one and a Welcome to Beautiful Skull Crusher Mountain one), I have no shirts that declare any of my fandoms. I never wear the Code Monkey shirt, and the Skullcrusher one is actually just so hip it doesn’t look fannish.

That said, I need this shirt. Seriously. Until I have it, this’ll be all I want for Christmas.

It’s nearly time for one of my favorite annual events, one which involves camping and the making of ice cream using liquid nitrogen. I have a few stock annual flavors of ice cream and sorbet, but I also like to make one or two experimental flavors per year.

Past experimental ice creams and sorbets at this event have included Old Bay Spice, ceviche, liver, and gorgonzola-prosciutto-balsamic fig. As for me, well, I prefer my ice cream less…challenging. Still, I do like unusual flavors, and some of my past such efforts have included avocado-rum and Chinese 5-spice ice creams and roasted orange pepper and basil-mint-ginger sorbets.

Tonight I am in the middle of freezing my experimental batch of butternut squash and amaretti cookie ice cream, and so far I have to say that I think it is successful. I found a recipe for butternut-rum ice cream online, left out the rum, and just about doubled the amount of squash it called for, then added crushed amaretti at the time of freezing. The mix is extremely thick and rich and really needs thorough chilling prior to the freezing process.

The mix tastes very sweet even with all the extra squash, but once frozen it tastes less like “OMG SWEET” and the butternut flavor really comes through. The bits of crushed amaretti provide nice little nuggets of cinnamon-almond flavor. It’s kind of like butternut ravioli in ice cream form. I am pleased. When I make it for the event, I will keep the extra squash and add either more amaretti or perhaps a touch of almond extract or amaretto liqueur. Mo’ flavor = mo’ better!